by Alex Abella
Carlos was the first to see José and Ramón enter the store, walking abreast of each other like cheap hoods in a B movie. He was on the phone trying to reach Beverly Alvarado, a newly hired employee who was already an hour late and had not called in or given any reason for her delay. (Later, during the investigation, police would find that Beverly had gotten into a fender bender coming out of West Adams and was delayed by the other driver.)
The moment he saw the Cubans walk in, Carlos knew there was going to be trouble. He put the phone down, not bothering to let it ring ten times as he routinely did. The two Cubans had shown up three months before, buying pendants, earring, necklaces, all of gold. They wanted 18 karat but since the store sold only 14k they went along, especially after Carlos convinced them 14k was better because it lasted longer. They'd shown him a card for a discount signed by Mr. Schnitzer, so he'd cut the price by half, leaving an outstanding balance of eight hundred dollars, which they financed. While their job references were shaky-they'd only been working at the Meneses Body Shop for six months-Carlos figured he could always repossess if worse came to worst.
When it did, it was a messy affair, one of the messiest he'd ever been in. The men ignored his repeated phone calls to pay up. They claimed the jewelry was supposed to be a present from Schnitzer and they had no intention of paying for gifts. Carlos, refusing to believe Schnitzer would give away his merchandise to these lowlifes, called in the sheriff's department to do its duty by the merchants of Los Angeles and return the goods to their lawful owner. One of the sheriff's deputies who went into the apartment to rescue the jewelry told Carlos the items had been on an altar as an offering to some kind of voodoo god and that the men had sworn they'd get them back.
Carlos turned to Hawkins, nudged him with his elbow.
"Hey, Star, check out those guys."
Hawkins turned and saw the two black Cubans swagger in. He put down his instant oatmeal and unclipped the safety strap of the holster of his. 387 Magnum.
"Be careful," said Carlos.
It was Hawkins' shuffling gait, the kind of lopy, off-balance walk that made him such a comforting figure even when packing a gun, which sealed his fate. José saw him approaching and before the guard had cleared his throat to ask, "Could I help you, gentlemen?" he had already tapped Ramón on the arm. They had no prearranged signal but Ramón, seeing the large figure in blue with his hand on his gun, in a split second whipped out his Sten and to the amazement of everyone in the store, including himself, fired two shots at Hawkins' knees, which buckled as the bullets tore through the bone and cartilage, exiting in a perfect oval shape above the upper end of the calf.
Absolute silence descended for an instant, a moment in which all the people that time and circumstance had brought to the store paused to contemplate the bloody disaster before them and to ponder briefly if the same fate awaited them. Then the silence died.
The Asian customer, Nam Do Pang, burst into a stream of obscenities in a high keening pitch while the little girl, her granddaughter, broke out in sobs and cries and quickly wet her pants. Hilda and Schnitzer, who were in the back office examining a shipment of aquas brought by their Romanian friend, Vlad Lobera, rushed out. Carlos pressed the silent alarm button by the side of his desk to alert police of a robbery in progress and stood up, his hands up, a quivering smile on his lips.
While José pointed the gun at them, Ramón went to Hawkins' side to take his gun. But Hawkins, through some inner reserve of courage that even he was unaware of, refused to be disarmed and swatted at José's hands, as if he were a child grabbing a brownie from the cookie sheet.
"You're not gonna take it, let it be!" hollered Hawkins.
When José finally got hold ofthe gun, Hawkins struggled briefly. The gun went off and the round slammed into Hawkins' thorax, collapsing his left lung and snipping the main artery to his heart. He gave a quick shudder, then went limp into death, blood dripping from his mouth and nose.
Nam Do Pang attempted to get through and out to the street but Ramón kicked her back into the store.
"Don't move or I'll kill you!" The woman cowered by the emerald earring display case and embraced her granddaughter.
José unraveled two Hefty plastic bags he'd been carrying in his pocket and opened them, puncturing a hole in one in his haste. Then, with the butt of his gun, he smashed the glass cases, shards flying out in showers, setting off another silent alarm. He swept the cases clean, tossing the velvet-lined boxes over his shoulder, moving rapidly from case to case while Ramón kept his gun trained on the group.
Perhaps even then a greater tragedy could have been averted but Carlos chose that moment to show off his cojones. He spoke to José and Ramón in the broken, halting Spanish of the barrio: "You know this will cost you the life."
José glanced up at Carlos briefly, then at Ramón, who waved the gun, ordering him to go on plundering. Whether out of humiliation or out of some unavowed death wish, or simply because all his life he'd been able to get by through bullying, taunting and hectoring people of color, a foreman with the field hands, Carlos needled the Cubans, not realizing the cultural chasm that divides
Castro's children from the sons of Montezuma:
"Pendejos, assholes, don't you know the white man is waiting for you? You kill a man, you forget about it. Put down your arms. You don't think that voodoo shit of yours is going to do something, no?"
José looked aghast at Carlos, who did not know he had just uttered the worst insult he could have ever cast at a santero. Ramón stood trembling, hesitating whether to shoot Carlos for his impertinence. The little girl's cries broke through the haze of drugs and the singleness of mind with which Ramón had come into the store, her yelping like bells going off in his head, signaling crisis, alarm, imminent death, setting off panicky memories of fire drills when everyone in the Combinado del Este prison would leave their cells running the minute they heard the bells to race down to the yard, and the curses and the taunting and whippings and blows with rifle butts, ax handles, two by fours and chains of the jeering guards rang in Ramón's mind as he turned and stuck his gun in the face of the little girl.
"Callate, callate, shut up or I'll kill you, shitty chink!" Ramón was about to press the trigger to blow her brains out because it didn't matter anymore, it was just another life and now he, Oggún, would be able to add her slanty-eyed little head to the mound of skulls his followers laid before him when the old Asian woman covered the girl's mouth with her hand, and pulled the child toward her, telling Ramón in Vietnamese how stupid her little granddaughter was and that she would never bother his lordship again.
Ramón struck Carlos in the jaw with his rifle butt, throwing him to the ground on the carpet of shattered glass.
Carlos got on his knees, rubbing his mouth, his broken upper lip filling his mouth with blood. He spat out a tooth.
"Oh, my God!" whispered Hilda, as though that blow was in some measure harder to explain than what had happened to Hawkins or the threat to the little girl. It was vicious, uncalled-for violence, the whirling cyclone of pain she had seen one time too many growing up in Iran. She moved behind Schnitzer for protection while the old man looked on and pondered if he had enough time to make it to his desk and take out the gun he kept taped to its underside.
"What the fuck's wrong with you niggers," said Carlos, still defiant. "What are you, crazy? What are you going to do, kill us all?"
José had stopped plundering and set his bag, half full, by the display counter. Ramón had told him there was an outside chance this might happen, that some fool would put up continued resistance even after the guard was out. He shuddered now as he looked at Ramón, in full embrace of Oggún, as he pranced around in the arrogant posture of the god, belly forward, arms akimbo, legs spread wide. The god had descended from heaven and José feared for what the orisha would demand. To refuse him would be worse than death but to obey him was just as tragic.
Meanwhile, in the back, Vlad Lobera, the adipose Romanian who had brough
t in the aquas for Schnitzer, scanned the old man's office, searching for a way out. It was a windowless cubicle with two doors, one leading to a small bathroom and the other to a hallway which connected the office to the shop in one direction and to the emergency escape in the other. Lobera had heard the gunshots blaring Hawkins' death and now he didn't dare step out. He felt his bowels moving out of fear and ran to the bathroom, locking it behind him. There he would smoke cigarette after cigarette, sitting on the commode, his pants around his ankles, listening but not knowing who spoke, feeling the terror as the bullets rang time and again.
"Oggún, ña ña nile, Oggún kembo ti le," implored José, throwing himself on the ground and kissing Ramón's feet. "Please return to your house, oh mighty God, do not honor us with your presence for you are a mighty being and these are petty dogs."
"Dogs are my favorite meal," replied Ramón, laughing. "My anger has been aroused. I will not rest until I am appeased." He stomped his right foot just like the god, shaking his head and moving the rifle in his hand like a spear.
But Carlos, with that same reckless impulse of the matador kissing the rump of the bull as it gallops past him inches away, with the same daring of the Acapulco high diver who plunges down ten stories off the cliffs at the precise moment when the incoming waves will mattress his fall-which is to say, with stupid thoughtlessness-Carlos rushed to grab Ramón's gun.
Oggún, the proud god who inhabited Ramón, looked on with contempt at this measly attempt to disarm him. With his free hand, Oggún seized the two-hundred-fifty-pound warrior, lifted him above his head like a squirming iguana and slammed him against the wall.
"No, no, Oggún," cried José, but Ramón pointed the gun at the unconscious body and riddled Carlos with forty-seven bullets in two seconds of deafening fire. Ramón walked up to the lifeless body, knelt on one knee and scooped up a handful of the warm blood of the victim, smearing the life source on his face.
"Oggún nika! Oggún kabu kabu, Oggún arere alawo ode mao kokoro yigüe yigüe alobilona, Oggún iya fayo fayo!" cried Ramón, raising his arms in victory, his feet stomping the ground, a tall black man in white clothes in the guise of a god.
Hilda and Schnitzer had crouched down behind the display counter when Ramón and Carlos had gone into their mano a mano. Now, seeing the gunman in full delirium, the two of them started crawling away, moving to the back door. But before they could turn the door handle that would have opened to salvation, Ramón spotted them. At that instant, his task completed, bowl full of the warm human blood he loves, Oggún departed for his tribal homeland. In his place, left shaking, sweating and confused, stood Ramón, who woefully looked around at the destruction his divine alter-ego had caused. He felt lifeless, exhausted, his mind a blinding torrent of suds swirling down a drain. He saw, far away, like figures moving down a football field in the slow motion of TV replays, Hilda and Schnitzer clawing at the door. A voice that he recognized as his own but that seemed to emanate from elsewhere shouted out, "Stop! Stop or I'll shoot you!"
He felt like asking José who was it that had managed to imitate his voice so convincingly and then he saw himself casting down the empty Sten and taking out his pistol from his waistband and he felt like asking if that was the wisest thing to do. He saw the bullet come out of the gun and pierce through Hilda's bobbing brown hair and blast into the base of her skull, which exploded into three pieces. The bullet then entered the old man's right shoulder piercing the layers of padding in the jacket and the shirt fabric and the undershirt and burrowed into the flesh and cartilage and gristle of the shoulder coming out on the opposite side and lodging itself in the acoustic tile by the door. A second bullet spewed out of the gun and traveled with the speed of death toward Schnitzer's jaw.
Ramón stood in the middle of the store, his gun still in his hand, and overcome by the uselessness of it all, collapsed and sat on the ground.
"Coño, chico, what the fuck have you done?" shouted José in Spanish, knowing the god was gone. Ramón looked blindly around him, then shrugged his shoulders.
"That's life," he muttered, remembering the song his wife, Maritza, played time and again at their apartment near El Prado in Havana when their little girl died of typhoid.
(In the back office, on his seat at the commode, Lobera felt another spasm as his bowels moved again.)
Ramón staggered to his feet, bracing himself on the counter, his knees still wobbly from too much divinity, too much anger and blood. He looked down and saw the old Asian woman and the little girl, staring wide-eyed back at him. Then he looked out the door for the first time and saw the police barricading themselves down the street. A bullhorn blared, "We have you surrounded. Come out with your hands up!"
Ramón had not counted on the police blocking his escape; in his plans he had always given himself enough time to make a clear getaway. He glanced quickly at his gold and diamond Piaget which showed the time and the phases of the moon-10:35 A.M., rising crescent. He could not understand where the time had gone. By his plans at this moment they should have been on their way out of town, down to the apartment he'd rented in Encinitas to hide in before heading down to Baja. What happened? He noticed the bodies strewn on the glass- and blood-covered floor and smelled the sweetness of the blood on his face, saw the crimson stains on his white suit. His eyes landed on the old woman and the girl, still cowering by the emeralds.
"Grab that old bitch for cover and tell the man we've got hostages."
As José disentangled the woman from the child, Ramón grabbed the girl by one arm and pulled her away.
"Tell them we've rigged up a bomb and we intend to blow it up if they try to storm their way in."
The next two hours passed in a confusing welter of voices, threats, telephone calls and whirring of helicopters overhead. Police turned off the ventilation system and the electricity and the sweetish smell of blood mixed with that of the excrement the bodies had voided. Negotiators for the police tried uneventfully to convince José and Ramón to give up the hostages and surrender, but Ramón refused to speak to them after the second phone call, asking for an intermediary, Juan "Cookie" Bongos, a morning DJ at KQOK, the number-one Spanish-language radio station in Los Angeles.
Bongos was a short, slim, terrier-haired man in his late forties. His dark mestizo face was plastered on billboards all over Hollywood and Echo Park, reminding Hispanics that Cookie was the next best thing to a prize-winning Lotto ticket in town. But Bongos found nothing funny when he entered the jewelry store at around eleven that morning. He saw the same carnage he had covered as a reporter back in Central America, in places like Huichinalgo and EI Playon, monuments to death, rooms full of slaughter commandeered by madmen.
The smell was so overpowering that Bongos gagged, almost retching into his handkerchief. He carried a tape recorder with him and turned it on. The sweaty, sour-smelling, blood-streaked captors poured out their message.
"We want a helicopter, with a safe-pass to the airport and a flight to Algeria or we're all going to die here!" hollered José, nervously.
"Igualdad, equality, that's what we wanted," said Ramón in a raspy voice. "Equality of treatment and consideration. Respect. Nobody had respect for us. They thought they could do what they wanted with us. Well, they were wrong. We demand the respect owed a human being."
"And tell these sons of bitches they have an hour to give in or we'll blow up the place. We don't mind dying. We're dead already," insisted José.
"This is the inevitable process of the fight for equality and dignity," continued Ramón, ignoring the desperation in José's comments. "If the Anglo won't listen to us and our situation, this is
what he'll find. The streets will run crimson with blood and the weeping of the widows and the cries of the children will be heard throughout the land.
"As blacks and as Cubans we have been doubly discriminated against. This is the bitter harvest-raise crows and they will eat out your eyes.
"We are here to recover our honor, our dignity, which had bee
n stolen by these men and their cohorts. What happened here, we are not responsible for, it was beyond our control."
"OK, you've heard enough," broke in José. "Now go tell the sons of bitches they've got an hour or we'll all go up in smoke."
Cookie left and in the half hour that followed no words were spoken in the stuffy jewelry store except for the quiet crooning of the old lady calming down her frightened granddaughter. José and Ramón sank into their own reveries, heads low, fingers on the triggers of their weapons. Finally, the whirring of a helicopter broke the stillness, as the aircraft slowly sank through the canyon of concrete and glass and touched down in the street in front of the store.
A bullhorn blared, "Gentlemen, we have acceded to your demands. This helicopter is ready to take you to the airport if you'll come out now."
Ramón and José looked at each other jubilantly-their gamble had paid off! They got up, took their arms and walked over to the old woman and the child.
"You take the old lady," said Ramón, "I'll take the kid."
But the moment he laid hands on the little girl, she started to scream and holler, kicking and biting, resistance born of fear. José slapped her but the old lady jumped in to defend the child. He threw the old lady to the ground. As she got up, a sharp pain pierced her left side, then she slapped down to the ground again, striking her head against a display case, dying from the blow. The little girl broke loose from Ramón and hugged the lifeless body. Ramón took the old woman's pulse.
"Coño, this shitty old woman just died, would you believe that?"
"What do we do now?
Ramón thought quickly. Like Pizarro, like the conquistadores, the road went in only one direction-forward. That's it, like El Cid!
"Pick her up and hold her like she's still alive, as a shield till we get to the helicopter."
José tried the front door to the store.
"Coño, it's locked!"
