JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps

by phuc

  Daryl knocked on the door. A moment later the door was opened and Danny Hernandez was peering out at him through the half-opened door. “Yeah?"

  Daryl flashed Danny his shield. “Mr. Hernandez, my name is Detective Daryl Garcia. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

  Danny opened the door wider and now Daryl got a better look at the man. He was small and wiry, standing five foot five and probably topping the scales at one hundred and twenty pounds. He was shirtless, dressed only in a pair of ratty jeans. His arms and chest were heavily tattooed, a vast myriad of black inked figures: ships at sea, eagles, Indian Gods, Jesus and His Blessed Mother, a bare breasted woman with long flowing hair. It was nice work, better than most of the tattoos most gang members adjourned their bodies with. Daryl stole a quick glance at the living room behind Danny; the television was tuned to the evening news and the room looked nicely furnished and neat. His eyes rested back on Danny and he smiled. “Just a few minutes of your time is all I'm asking."

  “Did you talk to Detective Ray Skipp?” Danny asked. His voice was still inflected with that East LA barrio accent, but it retained enough of a tone that lent a semblance of intelligence to the man. His brown eyes danced with eagerness, his features were open, friendly. Daryl could easily picture this amiable young man, who appeared so eager and helpful, as a former die-hard gangbanger. This man was obviously one of the lucky ones; a man who had miraculously turned his life around and was now dedicated to helping others. It was rare to encounter them, but in Daryl's mind he had a high degree of respect for former gang members who had turned their lives around completely and worked to try to help those around them do the same.

  “Yes, I did talk to Detective Skipp,” Daryl said. “He suggested I see you since I'm working on the murder case of the ... individual that was found at the river a few days ago."

  “Good. Come on in.” Danny stepped away from the threshold, bidding Daryl entry.

  Danny motioned to a couch against the wall and the two men sat down. Danny was leaning forward, eager to help. He picked up the remote control of the television and turned the volume down. “What can I help you with?” he asked.

  “Ray told me that you might know who our friend at the LA River might be,”

  Daryl said. He pulled out a pad of paper and pen from his shirt pocket. “I'm eager to hear who you believe it is."

  “Okay, man,” Danny said. He put the remote control down on the cluttered coffee table and faced Daryl. “Now, I'm only going by what the description in the paper said, which was a Hispanic male between twenty-one and thirty, slightly overweight at about one ninety or two hundred pounds, five foot eight, a scar on his right bicep.” Yesterday the man's right arm was fished out of the river two miles downstream. “The story I read said the coroner thinks the body might have been in the river for something like, three days?"

  “Right.” Daryl said, nodding.

  “And that he might have been dead for a week?"

  Daryl nodded affirmative.

  “Well, okay here it is then,” Danny leaned forward. “This guy I used to hang with back when I used to gang bang, guy by the name of Javier Ramirez, I still see him around the neighborhood, know what I mean? He still bangs with Eighteenth Street, but we're cool, you know what I mean? I got him through rehab once but he fell off the wagon and got back into using, got back into the gang and shit. But I still try to help him out, you know? Try to get him to come to some meetings, go to church, come to my support group."

  “What support group is this?” Daryl asked.

  “I lead a support group at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church for young Hispanic men who are caught up in the whole gang trip,” Danny said, making motions with his arms.

  “You know, homies that are either in a gang and want to get out, or former gang members that need to talk about the shit they've been through. Kind of like AA, but this is open to guys who are either in a gang or not in one."

  “Isn't that a deadly combination?” Daryl asked. “I mean, former gang members and present ones all in the same room?"

  “Not with my group,” Danny said proudly. “Shit, I got guys from four different gangs that come to my meetings. These are guys that would normally be killing each other in the street, but in my meetings they embrace each other as brothers. And they carry that brotherhood out in the streets where they're trying to lay a truce.” He nodded.

  “It was working real good there for the last four years until this killing shit started."

  “Did Mr. Ramirez attend your meetings?"

  “Yeah, but he attended very sporadically,” Danny said reflectively, as if he was already speaking of the dead. “He was in and out of jail the last two years or so for drug dealing. He got married, but I don't think that settled him down much. I think he wanted to settle down, you know, but he was still hooked, you know what I'm saying?"

  Daryl didn't know what Danny was saying—figuratively, he did, but literally he couldn't understand how the lure of getting fucked up, getting shot at, stabbed, the risk of getting thrown in jail or killed was preferable to settling down with a good woman and your child. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Ramirez?"

  “Two weeks ago,” Danny said, and now he looked somber. “He came to the meeting and hung around till it was over. Then he pulled me over, gave me a hug, said he was through with gang banging. You should have heard his voice, man, he sounded like he was going to cry. He was literally thanking me for keeping on his ass all those years. It had finally sunk in.” Danny's voice slipped a notch. “He was through with it, man. And this time I believed him."

  “So what happened?” Daryl asked, already knowing the answer.

  “He didn't show up last week,” Danny said. “I was concerned, so I called his house. His wife answered the phone. She sounded angry. Said that what Javier told me about quitting the gang and going straight was bullshit. She said she hadn't seen him in a week and that he was probably using again."

  “What was he into?” Daryl asked.

  “Speed,” Danny said. “And crack."

  Daryl jotted this down, as well as a brief version of the story Danny had just spun out. Speed and crack. Nothing worse than a gangbanger on amphetamines. It made them more prone to violence.

  “Did you check his former hangouts, talk to any of his buyers?” Despite this first meeting with Danny, he was already recognizing him as an experienced counselor who would be well tapped into the criminal underground for his counseling purposes.

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “Nobody had seen him since ... well, right after he showed up at the last meeting, which would have been almost two weeks ago."

  “No word of him at all from the street?"

  “None."

  “What about his former homeboys?"

  “They haven't seen him either."

  Daryl was writing all this down. “Do you know if Mr. Ramirez's wife called the police to report him missing?"

  “No, she didn't,” Danny said, rather disappointed. “She said, ‘fuck him. Javier can go fuck himself. I don't want him around anymore.'” He shrugged helplessly. “I called myself about a week ago, but nobody's come around to talk to me yet. Except for you.

  Shit, I had to flag Ray down when I saw him driving down Broadway and tell him about it. I'm glad I did now."

  So am I, Daryl thought, jotting down some more notes.

  Danny looked restless. He leaned forward on the couch as Daryl jotted his notes.

  “The paper said that so far all you found is the body, arms and legs. You haven't found his head yet?"

  “That's correct,” Daryl said, clicking his pen and putting it back in his pocket.

  “We haven't found his lower arms and hands either."

  “Damn,” Danny whistled. “So, you can't like, ID him or anything yet."

  “Right now identification will be pretty tough, but with the description you've given me of your friend, we might be able to work with the remains we have in coming up with an ID."

  �
�Yeah?"

  “Yep,” Daryl said, putting his notepad away. “We can identify people now a lot of different ways. We can check Mr. Rameriz's criminal record and check his physical description; see if he has any tell-tale scars or tattoos, or if his medical record shows anything like, say, broken bones, We can check our still unidentified man at the morgue and if we got a match, bingo! We can even use DNA to identify him."

  Danny nodded, solemn again. “Good. I'm really worried, you know. I don't want it to be Javier, but then I gotta know. You know what I mean?"

  “Yes,” Daryl said, rising to his feet. He had gotten some useful information out of Danny about a possible identification and now he was feeling tired. But his mind was still running in overdrive with a thousand questions. He turned to Danny with another thought on his mind. “Mind if I ask you something else?"

  “Sure."

  “There's some shit going down between four gangs. Eighteenth Street, the Los Compadres Mafia, Boyle Heights Thirteen and another group, can't remember which."

  “Tortilla Flats,” Danny said.

  “Right. They're killing each other because they think that one of their own is responsible for the killing."

  Danny nodded. “I know. I've tried talking to some of the younger homies I know from Eighteenth Street. They're convinced the guy you found is somebody from Eighteenth Street, too, but they don't know what I suspect, that it might be Javier."

  “I'd like you to keep that to yourself for now, if you can,” Daryl said.

  “Of course."

  “Has anybody asked you about Javier?"

  Danny shrugged. “Not really. His wife thinks he skipped town. She thinks there's a warrant out on his ass or something. I don't think any of the other homies think it's him.

  Javier hadn't been hanging with the younger set lately. They don't know him that well. So they don't know he's even missing."

  “Okay, “Daryl said. “Have you tried to tell them to keep the peace?"

  “Of course,” Danny said. “But you know them, they're stubborn. They're convinced it's Los Compadres, or Boyle Heights. I even tried to talk sense into them, said,

  ‘man, those hotos wouldn't know one thing about carving a man up the way this guy was.

  He was cut to pieces, literally. Cut his arms, legs and head off and everything.’ But they won't listen."

  “Well, rest assured,” Daryl said, heading toward the door as Danny followed him.

  “It's not the work of another gang member."

  “You think it's like, a serial killer or something? Like Jeffrey Dahmer?"

  Like Jeffrey Dahmer. Why was it that today's society equaled serial killers with Jeffrey Dahmer, as if Dahmer was the only one that had ever existed? If mass America knew that worse human monsters than Dahmer had existed, they would be less relaxed about their everyday activities. Ted Bundy was a perfect example. “I'm afraid so,” he said, answering Danny's question. “You read what the LA Times has called this guy, right?"

  “The East Side Butcher or some shit like that."

  “That's right."

  Danny appeared to shiver. His skinny, tattooed chest glistened in the slowly cooling evening. “I hope you guys catch this nut quick."

  Daryl opened the front door and looked out at the rapidly fading daylight. “So do I, Danny."

  Chapter 4

  Ten days after a big meeting at Parker Center, in which a special task force was formed to work exclusively on the Butcher case, Detective Daryl Garcia was sitting at his desk taking a break from filling out some paperwork when his phone rang. It was a transfer call from the receptionist. He picked it up on the third ring. “Garcia here."

  “Detective Garcia, it's Rachael Pearce from the Times again,” the female receptionist announced.

  “Damn!” Rachael Pearce had been pestering him the past four days for an interview. She was doing a retrospective piece on the Butcher murders for the LA Times, and was becoming more persistent in her attempts to gain an interview with him when it was announced last week that he had been appointed to head the Butcher investigation.

  The appointment had come as a surprise to Daryl. It had come the day after the big meeting at Parker Center when the detectives on the case, along with the brass and the FBI, brainstormed tactics. The meeting had been beneficial to both organizations, and Daryl's work on the murder of Javier Ramirez had gained the attention of one of the lead FBI Agents, a man by the name of Bernie Haskins. He felt both proud and honored to have been recognized for his work. He had accepted the task force position readily, but the fanfare faded a few hours later when he realized what the job would entail: supervising over twenty detectives, coordinating their efforts, assisting in tracking down leads, interviewing suspects, overseeing all the paperwork, and reporting everything to Bernie Haskins, who was officially leading the investigation. He was stuck in the middle of a bureaucracy sandwich; God help him if the egos took control and politics were thrown into the fray. If that happened nothing would get done.

  “Should I put her through, Detective Garcia?” The receptionist asked calmly.

  He sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.” Might as well get this over with.

  There was a click and then Rachael was on the line. “Detective Garcia, so glad I could talk to you."

  “I've only got a few minutes, Miss..."

  “Pearce,” Rachael said. He could picture her sitting in front of her desk, a mass of notes piled in front of her. He had never met Rachael Pearce, but he was already picturing her as being a pushy, overweight, middle aged woman married to her job. “But you can call me Rachael."

  “Well, Rachael Pearce, I am a very busy man. I've got a shit load of things to do today so I can't talk long. What can I do for you?"

  “All I want is a bit of your time,” Rachael said. “If you aren't too busy, perhaps after work we could meet someplace—"

  “I'm afraid not,” he said, cutting her off. “I've got plans."

  “Well, I can come to the station,” she blurted.

  “Won't do much good,” he said.

  “Really?” There was a weird tone in the sound of her voice, coupled with a tinny whine in the background. He winced. This was the third time he'd talked to her this week and she was proving to be a real pest. He had tried pawning her off to Paul Johnson in Public Relations, but she had sailed over his head and back into his turf. He'd tried sending her back again, even tried getting Steve Howe to tell her to fuck off. That hadn't budged her, and now she was on his ass again.

  “Yes, really,” he said, now growing a little more annoyed with her. “Unlike you, Miss Pearce, I've got work to do. I don't have time to waste talking to you or any other member of the press."

  “You don't look so busy to me,” she said, and now he was hearing her voice from two different perspectives; from the earpiece of the phone, and from directly in front of him. “In the last few minutes you've been hunched over your desk staring at the piles of paperwork stacked on it. Surely you can spare five minutes for a quick interview if you can sit at your desk for several minutes doing nothing."

  He looked up at the source of the voice and felt a twinge of embarrassment. A tall, woman with a caramel complexion and shoulder length black hair stood in front of his desk holding a cellular phone to her ear. She was wearing a tasteful, but alluring, navy blue business suit, black high heel shoes, and a white blouse, the top three buttons undone. Gold earrings dangled from her ears. Her skirt was cut at mid thigh, showing off a pair of long shapely legs that ended at hips that could only be described as seductively curvy. Her body was shapely in all the right spots. Her face was regal looking with high cheekbones, makeup tastefully and artfully applied accenting her green eyes and red lips.

  Her was black and lushly thick. Her features were exotic, lending her a sense of mystery.

  She was gorgeous, and Daryl felt a flush of embarrassment rise in him. She smiled at him as she spoke. “I see it's close to lunch time. What do you say? I'm buying."

 
Daryl Garcia hung up the phone, blushing. “I told you I—"

  “—was busy, I know,” Rachael said. She closed her cellular phone and leaned over the desk in front of him, giving him a view of her cleavage. “But it's still lunchtime and you must be hungry. Come on. I'm serious about buying."

  Daryl caught a quick eye-view of her cleavage and averted his gaze. He fumbled at his desk, his mind racing for a quick escape. There was nothing he could think of; he was hungry, he did need to escape from the office, and Rachael Pearce was damned attractive!

  She stood up to her full height. Her eyes locked with his. He couldn't tear his gaze away.

  “I suppose I could take forty-five minutes off for lunch,” he said automatically.

  “Good.” She smiled, her green eyes twinkling. “I know a good burger joint on Grand and Central."

  “Phil's Burger's and Sandwiches?"

  “Yep."

  “Great.” Daryl rose from behind his desk and threw his jacket on. “I love a woman who recommends a good old fashioned healthy dose of cholesterol and fat in her diet."

  As he left the station in the accompaniment of Rachael Pearce, who was a good three inches taller than his five foot eight frame, he felt the envious eyes of his co-workers on his back. Eat your heart out, guys!

  Daryl knew that he was being led by his carnal desires for Rachael Pearce, but he didn't care. As they sat in a corner booth of Phil's Burgers, the bustle of the noon time lunch crowd from downtown's business district just beginning to filter in, he couldn't help but kick himself mentally for allowing himself to be so led. But then he couldn't help that.

  Rachael was a goddess. Everything about her radiated pure sexual tension; the way she walked, the way she looked at him, the way she sat, her style of dress. She was alluring, and her exotic looks, which appeared to go beyond the normal WASP/Caucasian gene pool, gave her an air of mysteriousness. Therefore he didn't feel too forward in asking her nationality.