Summer of Love Part I

        There was a Honduran blow dealer named Ricardo Cantón who lived in one of those houses down off Little Falls Road that look like they were painted with pastels on an easel. It was a two-story job with a one-car garage. He could have afforded any car he desired, but Ricardo drove a Honda Accord Hybrid. It was cheap to run and very low key.
         Despite his humble surroundings, Ricardo, or Rico, was not the type to be stingy. He engaged his guests and customers with the finest coke at the lowest prices. Though only his closest circle even knew his last name, he was the biggest player in the llello game out of all the hustlers in the Washington area. It was all because Ricardo had struck gold where the other pushers never thought to look: the too-much-of-daddy’s-money suburbs of Northern Virginia. No, it wasn’t 2nd and P or Southeast where the real weight was stacked. It was in the greener pastures across the Potomac.
         But when Ricardo ended up with no head in the Shenandoah River that summer, a whole lot of people were getting a whole lot less quality coke. And that made people act out; over their wasted money, their dead connect, but must of all, over their lost highs. The platitude “desperate times call for desperate measures” hovered in the summer air as all hell broke loose in the normally quiet suburb of Alexandria, Virginia.

                                       *****************
Monday
July 2nd, 2007
5:05 P.M.
         
         He heard the helicopters a ways before he could see them.
         “Fuckin’ Goodfellas, man. This is like fuckin’ Goodfellas.” said the man as he peered through the blinds he held open with his index finger and thumb. He hadn’t slept in three days but he came to the decision that he didn’t really need it. Now that the police choppers had found him, it’d all be over soon anyway. He racked a shell into the chamber of the 12 gauge Beretta shotgun he held in his shaking hands.
         The small stream of light coming from the one open blind cut through the dark of the motel room. The man’s eyes were so dilated they looked like cue balls with black holes drilled in the center. They were open so wide you could practically see his whole eyeball. He looked permanently surprised about something.
         It was really hard to see anything in the room, but if you looked carefully you could see the pile of shotgun shells on the desk and the kilogram brick of coke that had been sliced open down the middle, presumably with the box-cutter that lay beside it.
         He whispered, “Getting closer...closer...closer...come get me, you motherfuckers.” He clutched the shotgun tight. A small trickle of blood led from his nose to the corner of his mouth. His teeth were stained red.
         His voice was louder this time. “I know you’re out there, you fucking pigs. Come and get me.” His breathing was heavy and strained.
         He shouted, “Fuck you! Fuck you fucking ass-grabbing fucks!” The tears started flowing. It was over. He’d be in Leavenworth for the rest of his life. It wasn’t even worth it.
         “God, what have I done?” The sound of sirens came from the parking lot. The helicopters were circling above. He turned his eyes towards the sky but they met the humble stucco ceiling of the Regal Motel. He started pacing rapidly, frenetically.
         Back and forth.
         Back and forth.
         Back and forth.
         There was only one way out of this. Make like a defeated Japanese soldier and get the fuck out. On his own terms.
         He racked out a massive line of blow and sniffed it all in one go. A crazed-looking smile curved his lips upward, but there was no joy behind it. This was over.
         “Come out with your hands up!” said the man with the megaphone. Keys started jingling on the other side of the door. The cops must have gotten the motel manager to open the door. He wouldn’t go out like that. Not him.
         “Arrest a dead man, you fucking maricones!”
         He put the barrel of the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
         Ricardo Cantón was gone. By looking at the walls, you could practically see what he was just thinking.
         
         Rich Carol was black but he worked for the Latinos. He got grief for it sometimes, but the stare he returned was the only reply necessary. This was the twenty-first century and people were still hung up on color.
         He was headed up the motel stairs to the second floor when he heard shouting and commotion. “Shit,” he said; it sounded like Rico yelling about police again. Ricardo Cantón’s main personal shortfalls were a big ego and a high tolerance for coke. The two didn’t mix well and situations often ended violently. Countless people had arms broken or teeth knocked out because of Ricardo’s personal shortfalls.
         There was more shouting from the second floor. Rich looked around. The parking lot was empty and the only things up in the sky were cirrus clouds. The Alexandria Police were nowhere in sight.
         In front of the room, Rich fumbled with the keys. The motel was still using standard metal keys instead of keycards like a lot of the dives on Route 1.
         Crack.
         It sounded like a car backfiring, but Rich’s trained ears deciphered the aural code.          Shotgun. Large gauge.
         Rich dropped the keys, drew his Glock, and kicked the door in. He saw the body on the floor and immediately knew the worst had happened. There was no need to check for a pulse, it was pretty obvious that the dude had expired. Rich put his gun away and slumped down into the shitty armchair that came with the room.
         A dead boss.
         A bloody mess.
         Coke everywhere.
          Everything had gone to shit.

         Carol came back thirty minutes later but waited in his Oldsmobile across the street at first. He wanted to be sure that no one had heard the report from the Beretta and called the cops. He wasn’t too worried because the Regal’s rooms were filled with nothing but prostitutes, johns, and crack dealers, none of which wanted the law around.
         After ten minutes of staking the place out it became clear that there was no police presence at the motel. He drove back over, parked, and went up to Ricardo’s room. He wrapped the near-headless body in a carpet and quietly carried it out to his old Cutlass and tossed it in the trunk. Now he would take Rico somewhere far away, somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
         A river, maybe.

***************************
         Saturday
         July 7th, 2007
         10:21 A.M.
         
         The pans and pots were empty. The Pyrex measuring cups lay strewn about the kitchen and many of them were chipped. There was a faint but lingering odor of turpentine in the air if you took a really good whiff. Everything though, was in good working order. You could still cook.
         Sam O’Malley and Martin Sullivan relaxed on the couch and watched CourtTV. Sam leaned forward and reached for the remote. “There’s never anything on TV but fuckin’ cop shows. It’s freaking me out, dude.” He was a fairly stout, Irish-looking 19 year-old. Due to several ongoing acts of fraud set in motion by the late Ricardo Cantón, the house was actually in his name. The independence was fine as far as Sam was concerned - hadn’t been welcome at Mom and Dad’s house in years. No way, not after his mom found seventy-five half-gram bags of heroin in his underwear drawer. He was a relatively bright kid but had little common sense or restraint.
         Martin Sullivan was in terms of height a giant but his stature was not imposing. The 18-year-old was six-feet-four so he held his head high above most. But at only 145 pounds, most agreed a stiff breeze would probably knock him to the ground. In addition to being a skinny bastard he was also a mean bastard a lot like his pops. The elder Sullivan was a mean drunk and would often give Martin a couple black eyes to show up to school with. The Sullivan kid stayed away from home except to steal money and rarely made it to school. Sam’s house was tight enough anyway.

         There wasn’t much to do around O’Malley’s crib anymore. 1398 Franklin Street wasn’t as flashy as some of the neighboring addresses; it was one of those cookie-cutter McMansions that pop up everywhere in suburbia. It was just a nice place in a nice part of Alexandria. It used to be a large way-station for Ricardo’s weight coming through Washington. Ricardo supplied the cash-money for the down payment on the house, tossed him ten grand a month, and Sam O’Malley agreed to help transport and store large amounts of cocaine at great personal risk. If the police ever showed up, ol’ Sammy boy never knew anyone named Ricardo.
         Hell, he didn’t even hang with those “Mexican motherfuckers.”
         Thing is, odds were he wouldn’t get the chance to talk to the jakes. If the police ever came knocking, Ricardo would send one of his many soldiers to stick a gun in Sam’s mouth. He knew this and that’s why he was so damn careful, what with the video surveillance at every door and the multiple active police scanners scattered around the residence.
         But these days there wasn’t much to be afraid of in terms of police activity. It’s kind of hard to bust rackets when the target changes every day.
         See, the cocaine that came through O’Malley’s place now was distributed by random factions of different gangs hailing from El Salvador. Because of the scattered nature of their organization, the law had a hard time maintaining any kind of concrete investigation; they were never sure who was going to be where at what time. However, on the down side for Sammy boy, the re-up on product was unreliable and the threat of violence from “those goddamn spics,” in the words of Martin Sullivan, was ever present.
         Sammy O’Malley never again had to worry about Ricardo putting a bullet between his eyes. But MS-13 was even more of a distinct and tangible threat than Ricardo had ever been.
         
         The “MS” in MS-13 stands for “mara salvatrucha,” which translates roughly to “gang of El Salvadoran soldiers.” MS-13 itself is an street gang that began as a form of resistance to the old-standing Mexican cliques that tried to shake down Central-American immigrants in 1980s Los Angeles. However, when a group of military-trained El Salvadoran toughs gained power through a series of gangland assassinations and robberies some years later, the original goal of defending the livelihood of their people was lost. As the century turned, MS and its scores of imitators were no longer protecting their compatriots in any way. At first, inner cities were the pastures in which these gangs grazed, killing and robbing with reckless abandon. Soon though, a new wave of immigrants brought a few more bad seeds and many were planted in the suburban areas outside cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. However it could be argued that nowhere was hit harder than the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Murder rates shot up, violent felonies were logged more frequently than ever, and more importantly, the citizens were frightened.
         But it was not a question of whether or not Sam O’Malley could defend himself. Yeah, his wicked left hook won him a lot of battles when he was a kind but now he kept at least two Colts on him at all times. At 19 years of age, he had already taken three lives. Now he wasn’t a psychopathic bastard; he wouldn’t shoot an innocent person. But in this game it was kill or be killed and sometimes you had no choice but to select the former. He did not by any means grow up hard, but in a place where boredom and superficiality reigned supreme, it was not hard for a young man’s blood to chill.
         
         “Fuck this TV, man!” Martin Sullivan heaved the dead batteries from the remote control across the room.
         “Martin, you stupid cunt, let’s talk about the project. Forget the fucking TV.”
         “What project?” Martin’s eyes were glazed over like a dead man’s. “Let’s do another line, dude. I’m coming down too hard and it sucks.”
         “We’ve already killed an eightball and it’s not even noon yet, you goddamn cokehead. Any more and its cutting into the brick we’re supposed to flip.”
         Martin looked disappointed. “Dude, no one is going to miss one gram out of a bird. Let’s just take it.”
         “Martin, you dumb fuck. First of all, you’re not a rapper from Harlem so don’t say bird. There’s a thing called a lab scale and if that key does not weigh one thousand grams, we will never do business with that connect again. Even if it’s nine hundred and ninety nine grams, we’re still screwed on the re-up.” He emphasized specific words to increase the “you’re an asshole” quotient. He felt like the one smart character on Looney Tunes who always has to devise the plans for the stupider guys. The one that always ends up thoroughly charred by Acme dynamite.
         Martin was fazed by Sam’s hostility. “I’m just saying, man...” He cast his eyes onto the shag carpet in front of the TV. “I didn’t mean to say we should jack the yay or anything. I don’t even know...” 
         Sam felt bad for Martin to some extent. He had been out of line with him. But there was no way he could apologize now. “Okay, fine. Tell me, do you remember the plan we talked about?”
         “You mean killing the spics?”
         “Stop saying that goddamn word, Martin! You know I hate that goddamn word!” O’Malley didn’t like to think of himself as a racist. Definitely prejudiced, but not outright hateful. Martin had now fully earned his ire.
         “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Martin looked genuinely apologetic.
         “Well at least you had the right idea. Taking out the bad guys, yes.”
         In this case, there was not much difference between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”. Perspective was the only thing separating them, and at the same time, the only thing deciding who was which.
         
         Coked up and fed up with the unreliability, bad attitude, and intrinsically violent nature of the Latin rackets, Sam and Martin’s plan was to eliminate potential “competitors.” Particularly the ones with street gang connections. Word on the street was that MS was responsible for Ricardo Cantón’s death.
         Nobody kills my boss, thought Sam O’Malley when he heard the news.
         Nobody.
         If only they knew the lives they would waste and the families they would break apart that day. If only they knew that Ricardo Cantón had eaten his own gun, not someone else’s.
         Then this could have been stopped.

         Already cooling in the basement of the Alexandria home was the body of 21-year-old Felipe Castañeda, a drug runner for the South Hill Sureños, a gang on the fringe of the Mara Salvatrucha organization. Earlier that day, Castaneda showed up with a duffel bag full of product and was let inside. As soon as the front door had slammed home, Sullivan punched him in the face and O’Malley grabbed the dazed man from behind and drew a straight razor across his throat in a single, quick motion. He bled out in minutes. All O’Malley and Sullivan worried about was how they were going to get the crimson splotches off the hardwood floor before they soaked in. Someone somewhere paid good money for that floor and they didn’t want to be the ones to ruin it.
         Pretty soon though, somebody somewhere noticed that Felipe hadn’t come back.
         Backup was already on its way.
         

***********************
         
         Saturday
         July 7th, 2007
         10:53 A.M.
         
         Oscar Roma Cortez-Arroyo was not usually called that. Only his mamá called him Oscar. Everyone else just called him “el Brujo.” A Brujo, in Central America, was a medicine man (another of Cortez-Arroyo’s nicknames) who supposedly possessed preternatural powers. Some old folks said they were able to harm people hundreds of miles away with their minds alone.
         When it came to harm, El Brujo himself favored not malicious thoughts but a .44 Smith and Wesson revolver. He found that a slug from the pistol did more than any thoughts or words could ever do. The Medicine Man was smart; he could use his words if he wanted to. He just didn’t like chatting that much.
         Let la pistola do the job.
         This particular job, however, was going to be more difficult. He didn’t know the three little niñitos that the boss called in as his backup. Each one of them would shoot or cut a human being at the drop of a hat if it meant more respect from their peers. All they were after was a little bit of street cred; El Brujo knew they weren’t on his level. He was only five-foot five but his presence eclipsed theirs. It was almost tangible in the quiet of the car.
         Fuckin’ kids, he thought.
         As they staked out the house, el Brujo hummed a tune to himself. Breaking the silence of the Chevrolet Suburban they rode in, he spoke as he used an old cloth rag to wipe down his gun’s barrel. “What is your name, kid?” Though his eyes never left the steel plating of the .44 you could tell he was talking to the driver. His diverted gaze kept the kids on their toes; they’d never really know what he was thinking about if they couldn’t look into his eyes.
         The driver, too, kept his eyes away from the Medicine Man and happily responded, “El Conductor.” The driver.
         The kid behind the driver chimed in. “Sí ese, they call me Asiento Izquierdo.” Left seat.
         “Shit, well I guess they call me Asiento Derecho.” Right seat.
         God help me, el Brujo thought. I am working with a fucking comedy troupe. He surmised he might as well put a bullet in his chest now just to get it over with. These kids they were going to see were not the brightest of fellows, granted. But el Brujo knew that most people who trafficked cocaine low on the totem pole indulged in their product with great frequency and voracity. These kids also definitely had firearms and most likely knew how to use them.
         Basically, they were going to ask a couple of armed cokeheads where their package- boy Felipe was. 

********************
         Saturday
         July 7th, 2007
         10:55 A.M.

         Franklin Street was narrow and lined with houses on both sides. Every house had a three-car garage and a gazebo in the front yard. Each lawn was carefully manicured but almost no one owned a lawn-mower. Almost every household solicited the services of a professional landscaping company. The lowest tiers of work – shoveling, planting, trimming hedges, blowing leaves in the fall – were reserved almost exclusively for the illegals. Underpaid and overworked, these men and women slaved away for hours in the yards of wealthy homeowners, something they could probably never be.
         The undocumented workers who clipped grass and raked leaves that day waved to their current employer, Ken Little, the owner of 1396 Franklin Street. He wasn’t trying to be patronizing towards the men in his yard so he didn’t say “Hola” back, but he did wave. He felt bad about it but in reality, he was afraid to speak to them. He had heard about the people they were finding headless and handless in rivers. He had heard about the terror that the Latin gangs were causing.
         What Ken Little did not realize was that these people were the ones who hated those gangs the most. Because of groups like MS-13, 18th Street, and Southside Locos, honest and hard-working Latinos were being accused of some terrible things. They were almost all good people who just wanted their families to have money to scrape by with.
         José Guevara, who was mowing the lawn, would never sell crack to twelve-year olds.
         And Jaime Sierra-Sanchez, who was pulling weeds, would never cut someone’s hands off to prevent forensic identification.
         And Omar Roca, who was watering the Littles’ azaleas, would never in a million years shoot a person on the street because they were talking smack.
         But Ken Little knew only what the news stations were telling him. Showing one Latino mug-shot after another and connecting them to the most heinous of crimes just seemed so commonplace now. Ken would never say it, but deep down, he thought he was better. He thought his two kids were better than any of those men’s kids. They’d grow up with a home, with something to hold onto. His boy John would be a doctor, a surgeon perhaps. His daughter Karen would be a lawyer in a major practice someday.
         Not their kids, he thought. They’ll be gardeners too. Or plumbers. Or roofers. Or painters. Or criminals.
         He picked up The Washington Post off his driveway. Right there on the front page, though not at the top of the paper, was a headline that Ken noticed.
         Body Found In Shenandoah County, Gangs Suspected.
         Sickening, thought Ken Little as he stared at the foreign people in his yard.
          He then noticed that a large black SUV was parked across the street. He didn’t think it belonged to any of the neighbors, he had never seen it before. But it did have dealer plates on it so who knows, maybe somebody splurged and bought a new car. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened in this neighborhood.
         Ken Little winced. At least it’s not another goddamn Hummer.

         He went back inside, careful to flick the deadbolt as the door shut. He saw his wife Sherry had put breakfast on the table. She was a redhead, around 30. Ken Little was around 35 himself, and their kids were 4 and 2. They were a pretty Wonder Bread American family through and through. They had life-insurance, a puppy, and an American flag hanging outside on a pole.
         He ate the scrambled eggs and toast quickly and then returned to his La-Z-Boy by the bay window that faced the street. According to the Post, the body was of a Hispanic male around his own age. The identity of the body had not yet been determined as both the head and hands had been removed, presumably post-mortem.
         Who knows with these bastards, he thought. They might have done the hands before he died just like that kid out in Herndon last year. He didn’t even want to think about it anymore so he set the paper down on the ottoman and stared out the expansive bay window that his high-rolling title insurance job had paid for.
         There that Chevy was again. Something about it just didn’t sit right with Ken Little of 1396 Franklin Street. He couldn’t see inside the back because the windows were so darkly tinted. Last time he checked, tint that dark was illegal in Virginia. And those neighbors would never think about breaking the law like that. He started to get worried. What made him even more worried was that the driver of this car, who he could see through the windshield, appeared to be Latin. This was a nice neighborhood and it could be someone staking out a house for a burglary, or worse.
         “No, I can’t think like that. This is the 21st century.” He whispered it to himself like a monk would a prayer. He couldn’t help but think though that something was up. There was something about that car. Ken managed to extract himself from the chair and grab a cordless phone. He looked up the cops’ non-emergency number and punched the dimly lit keys.
         “Alexandria Police Department. How can I help you today?” said the dispatcher cheerfully.
         “Hey, yeah. Sorry to bother you guys but there’s a car parked outside my neighbor’s house that I’ve never seen before and I’m pretty sure it’s not theirs. It has tints so dark you can’t see into it and it’s been here for a long time.” He knew he had to lie a little to get the cops off their asses. In reality he had no clue how long the SUV had been there but he had to make it sound more suspicious.
         “Have you talked to your neighbors at all today, sir?”
         “They’re out of town.” He lied again. He knew he had to. He didn’t feel safe with that car out there. After giving the dispatcher a plate number, which he had to use his hunting binoculars to obtain, she promised to send a unit out “soon.”
         Hopefully sooner rather than later.
         


****************************

         Saturday
         July 7th, 2007
         11:28 A.M.

         Corporal D.S. Staunton picked up his radio’s receiver out of the special center console in his unmarked green police cruiser.
         “10-4, headquarters, I’ll check it out.” He had just gotten a call from HQ about a suspicious vehicle idling in a residential neighborhood. Dispatch also said that there were at least two Hispanic males in the car at the time. That was the real reason he was given this call: to make the whites on Franklin Street feel safe again.
Whenever the people in this part of town saw brown skin, they assumed either their Gucci handbag was getting snatched or that their deck was being painted.
         Racist fucks.
         The number from the temporary dealer tags the claimant provided didn’t turn up a match in the DMV database. This wasn’t uncommon with new cars as it took time for a lot of the paperwork to get by all the bureaucratic red tape. But it usually got cleared up after a few days. Usually.
         Corporal Staunton turned right off the boutique-lined King Street, Alexandria’s main commercial drag. After winding through several neighborhoods with houses like castles, he flipped a left onto Franklin. He went a few blocks until he spotted the Chevy Suburban mentioned in the call. He kept his distance and put the Crown Victoria in park.
         He brought the radio up and spoke. “HQ, I’ve acquired a visual on the vehicle in question. I’m going to go see what they’re up to this fine day.”
         A female voice over the radio crackled, “10-4.”
         He stepped out of the car, pressed the unlock button on the door, and began ambling towards the car. He definitely was not your average buttoned-down Virginia cop. He was about 5’10”, 190. Not in perfect shape but not too slovenly either. His brown hair was long for a cop but not too messy. Since it was summer and the dress code was laxer, he wore a heather-gray polo shirt with “APD” stitched in the back and khaki shorts with New Balance running shoes. Other than the badge clipped to the seam of his shirt and the policeman’s belt, he didn’t really look like a cop. But he was good at what he did so he could dress how he wanted to. The sergeant’s test was next month and he knew he’d ace it. Conveniently, there was also a Detective Sergeant’s position open in Alexandria’s burgeoning homicide unit. Staunton was tired of dealing with drunks and small-time drug offenders on the street. He wanted to do real policework. In Homicide he could finally get his chance.
         The corporal kept his dominant right hand on the clutch of his service weapon as he came close to the rear of the car, which was tinted so dark you couldn’t see inside.
         He chuckled as he looked at the houses he was walking past. He couldn’t have possibly dreamed up a more stereotypically mundane neighborhood. There were probably two working parents in every home and 2.5 straight-A-students to go along with them. It was ironic because just across the train-tracks to the south was the neighborhood of Cherry Hill, the unofficial home of Alexandria’s ever-climbing violent felony stats. Corporal Staunton laughed when he thought of the juxtaposition between there and here. In Cherry Hill, you might not get a call for a shooting in broad daylight. But the closer you got to Old Town, the more calls you got requesting assistance in getting small pets out of trees or busting up high-school keggers. Having to go check on a parked vehicle full of day-laborers was right up there with busting jaywalkers. There probably wasn’t anyone in the car anymore anyway.
         If these guys are dangerous, I’m fuckin’ Mickey Mouse, he thought. If there’s so much as a bad intention on this whole block, I’m a friggin’ rodent.
         Staunton realized the vehicle was occupied about ten feet off when the driver’s side window rolled down.
         OK, so I was wrong about the car being empty, he admitted to himself. But this is still the most frivolous shit I’ve had to deal with so far today.
         He reached the driver’s side window and stood a short distance away. He was greeted by the smiling face of a Latino man with long black, curly hair. A surlier-looking Hispanic male with a backwards Nationals hat sat in shotgun. He laughed again to himself at the absurdity of the call: go check on a parked car with minorities in it so the rich people can feel safe again.
         D.S. Staunton looked the driver in the eye. “How you fellas doing today? Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
         The long-haired man looked over at the guy with the Nats cap then looked back at Staunton. “Eh, no hablo inglés. Lo siento. ” This cat thought he could pull the “I don’t speak English” card and get out of talking to the cops. He could tell when a man could speak English and was hiding it.
         The corporal could play ball.
         Staunton continued in perfect Spanish, his voice a little sterner than before. “Sir, could you please roll all your windows down? I need to have a view of all the occupants.”
         The driver looked shocked by Staunton’s Spanish skills. It was simple really. His name was Dominguez Santana Staunton but no one called him that except for his mother, who was originally from Cuba. His Scottish father, who gave him not only his boring last name but also his pallid complexion, abandoned the family when he was only 7. He grew up mainly speaking Spanish around the house though his mother insisted that he be fluent in both languages; she believed that good English was any poor Latino’s way out of the barrio.
         “Roll down the windows now, sir.” said the corporal again. After soaking the situation in for a few seconds, the driver of the Suburban rolled down the windows. Two more Latin-looking men were sitting in the back seat of the SUV. He gave them both a good glance-over and then turned back to the driver. “So what are you all doing here?”
         “We were working around the corner on Keller Boulevard, on a deck. We just drove over here on our break...I...I...I just came from San Salvador, in the old country. We have done nothing wrong, officer.” said the man behind the wheel.
         “Well, at the very least, today you’re going to be getting a ticket for illegal window tint. Only limousines are allowed to have it as dark as you fellas do, and even they only have it in the back. Now, what are you all doing here? You ain’t shoppin’ around for a good residence to case are you?” Staunton chuckled a little bit, knowing full well these men likely were working in the neighborhood and were just relaxing in their newly leased car. He had seen stranger things on the job.
         The driver squinted to read the name stitched on the front of the polo. “Come on, Officer....Staunton. We’re not doing anything wrong, are we? The car isn’t even running right now. How can you give us that ticket?”
         The young man had a point. Not a very valid one in the eyes of the law, but a point nonetheless. He felt some compassion for these four men. Getting the police called on you for what basically amounts to petty loitering wasn’t any fun. He’d let them go with a warning for tint. He didn’t really even feel like checking the guy’s driver’s license. Hell, the young man probably didn’t even have the papers to get one. No need to get the federal government involved in this.
         “OK, OK, OK. I’ll let you guys off the hook this once. But would you move the idling of cars somewhere else? I don’t want to have to come out here again. You’re lucky you got me this time and not one of the white cops. They’d try to get you sent right back to El Salvador over something stupid like this.” Dominguez Santana felt like Al Pacino in Serpico and it filled him with a sense of pride. “You guys have a good one.”
         “Thank you, Officer Staunton. You’re a decent man.” the driver said in plain, unaccented English. Staunton started to chuckle and walk away but stopped in mid-stride.
         This guy wasn’t an immigrant. Unless he had been learning it since childhood there no way could a new immigrant from El Salvador speak English that perfectly.
          Son of a bitch tried to trick me. Staunton flipped around, put his hand back on his weapon, and said firmly, “I’m going to need to see some form of identification, sir.”
         “I thought you said we could go. I...I don’t have my ID on me.” The driver spoke in impeccable English now.
         “Stop lying to me, sir. I cannot stand it when I’m trying to give someone a break and they lie to me.” He started walking back towards the car. “Step out of the vehicle, please.”
         “Hijo de putamadre. Fine, fine. I’m coming out.” the driver began to exit the big car slowly, glancing backwards towards his boys one long, hard time.
         It sounded like a boxer hitting a punching bag twice. D.S. Staunton was knocked down instantly. He was unconscious before the sound of the silenced Walther 9MM reached his ears. There were two fresh holes in his heather-gray polo.
         The driver jumped back in the Suburban and the car peeled out, off into the haze of the afternoon.

****************************

         “¡Mierda! El policía está aquí. ¡Mira, mira!” said el Conductor. About one-hundred feet behind them an unmarked police car had pulled over and parked. An officer in summer uniform exited the car with his hand hovering over his service automatic.
         The mere sight of cops makes criminals antsy. It would be a bad scene now if one of them to got antsy enough to pull out a gun. El Brujo had been in worse scenarios with the law. This was nothing. They weren’t doing anything technically illegal sitting by the side of the road. El Conductor rolled down the window for the cop as he approached. They’d be out of this fast if he knew how to talk at all.
         “How you fellas doing today? Beautiful day, isn’t it?” said the cop. He smiled at them.
         “Eh, no hablo inglés, papi. Lo siento, lo siento.” said el Conductor.
         El Brujo nearly put his head in his hands when he heard the dumb bastard try to pretend to not understand English. This kid probably spoke English better than he did himself. There was no point in making shit up to a cop who would probably let you off anyway. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
         “Sir, could you please roll all your windows down. I need to have a view of all the occupants.” said the cop in Spanish.
         Shit.
         He speaks Spanish...like an islander, Cuba or something, thought el Brujo. He knew that all hell could break loose if there was any kind of panic. One of these putos that el Jefe sent as backup could easily pull a piece and get everyone riddled with bullets. He turned around to calm down Asiento Izquierdo and Asiento Derecho. Not surprisingly, Derecho already had his gun drawn and was screwing in a silencer out of the cop’s sight. His hand was shaking a little bit.
         “No. Don’t do shit.” whispered el Brujo to Derecho. He spoke facing the window so the cop would think he was mindlessly staring off into the distance. He started to block what el Conductor was saying to the cop out of his head. He just could not handle listening to his line of bullshit any longer.
         Then he heard the magical words in the background. “OK, OK, OK. I’ll let you guys off the hook this once...” Derecho put his gun back in his pants. El Brujo was so relieved he stopped listening again and just enjoying what a beautiful day it was outside. Sometimes when the police were there he spaced out until the situation was over, seeming none the wiser to any criminal activity that was allegedly going on. In fact, it made him seem like the least culpable one. Several times his confrontational companions had been marched away in handcuffs and he went home scot-free.
         Wait...
         What was going on now?
         Why is the cop back?
         Oh shit. Derecho.
         “Step out of the vehicle, please.” El Brujo turned around in enough time to see Asiento Derecho reach for his gun and squeeze off two shots at the cop’s chest. Officer Staunton went down like a rock sinking in a pond.
         “Holy shit! Holy fuck! Go! Go! Go!” screamed Asiento Izquierdo at el Conductor. He put the gas pedal of the SUV to the floor and peeled out. He looked like a formula-one driver as he flipped the wheel in all sorts of directions, turning down every back street possible on the way away from the scene.
         Everyone was pissed at Derecho. Killing a cop, especially one with stripes on his arm like that one had, made everyone’s lives a lot harder. “You fucking idiota! What were you thinking?” screamed el Brujo. “Killing a coke dealer is one thing, but a policía is another. I’m seeing to it that you get taken off this job. Let’s get rid of this car and get the fuck out of here.” He looked right into Derecho’s eyes and said, “Pendejo.” Bastard.

         They called the boss, who was more than pissed, but he said there was a quarry they could dump the car in outside Dumfries in Prince William County. After the frenzied forty minute drive to the site everyone was worn out. A cop was dead and somebody probably saw what went down. They’d all have to be careful for the next few months, if not years.
         As they stood at the quarry’s edge and watched the car sink down into the industrial pond sixty feet below, el Brujo thought how he could get himself out of this bind. He could do at least one thing to rectify the situation. He started praying quietly.
         “Brujo, why are you praying?” asked el Conductor.
         “So that God forgives me for what I’m about to do.” El Brujo grabbed his .44 Smith and Wesson and put it to Derecho’s head. “We don’t need this liability around any longer. I don’t like any of you much, but only one of you specifically disobeyed me. Now a man is dead.” The other two men stumbled backwards to get away from the Medicine Man.
         “God have mercy on your eternal soul.”
         Pop. It sounded like an M-80 firecracker blowing up fruit. The splash came seconds later as Derecho hit the filthy water down below.
         El Brujo holstered his pistol and backed away from the cliff edge. “I’m running this operation. That was supposed to be the case from minute one but someone clearly didn’t realize it. Gentlemen, get out your driver’s licenses.”
         The two frightened hoods looked at each other and then almost simultaneously reached for their wallets. They took out their IDs and handed them to el Brujo. Without even looking away from the two thugs he stuffed the cards in his back pocket. “Now I know who you are and where you live. Are you going to listen to me now?”
         They both nodded, still speechless.
        He handed Izquierdo the keys to the GMC. “I didn’t like how el Conductor was driving.” He spit out the name “el Conductor” like it was poison in his mouth. He pointed at the rattled gangster. “You drive now.”