by Sean Lynch
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t agree with you,” I told her. “That’s why I’m here.”
“She was a good girl,” Karen said. “A sweet girl. And as far away from all the drugs, and sex, and gang activity as a girl could be in this school.” She rubbed her eyes. “Or so I thought.”
“Tell me about her,” I said.
“She was quiet, but very articulate. She loved writing and had real talent. She had no conflict with anyone I knew of. She was very diligent; her homework was always done on time, and her desire to learn was refreshing.”
“She have a best friend? A boyfriend?”
“Don’t know about a boyfriend. As far as her best friend, I never saw her hang around anybody except her sister Belicia.”
“What about Belicia?”
“Don’t really know much about her, except I heard she’s pretty fast. As much as Marisol kept on the straight-and-narrow, Belicia made up for it. I know Belicia always has boys sniffing around. I think Dave told me she has truancy issues, but that’s all I know.”
The more Karen Pearson spoke, the softer her eyes became, though she remained otherwise composed. It was obvious she had been genuinely touched by Marisol Hernandez, and deeply wounded by her death.
“Is it true?” she asked.
“Is what true?”
“That Marisol was murdered while hooking? That she was a street whore? That’s what everybody is saying.”
“That’s what the Oakland cops think,” I said.
“What do you think?”
“I think I’m going to find out.”
Karen Pearson tilted her head and looked at me for a long time. Then she said, “I believe you will.”
I stood up. “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, Ms. Pearson.”
“I wish I could be of more help,” she said as she got to her feet. “And my name is Karen.” She again extended her hand. I gladly took it.
“My friends call me Chance,” I told her. I handed her my card.
“It would figure you’d have a nickname,” she smiled. “Chauncey is not the most common name I’ve ever heard.”
“Apparently my parents wanted me to learn to fistfight,” I said. She laughed an honest laugh while she walked me to the door.
“I’m available, if there’s anything else I can do for you,” she said. “To help your investigation, I mean.”
“Is there a number I can reach you?” I said, praying she didn’t sense the eagerness in my voice. She responded by returning to her desk and writing a number on a post-it.
“If it wouldn’t be improper, I’d like to know what you find out in your investigation. I know I’m not entitled to that information, but for what it’s worth, Chance, she wasn’t just another student to me.”
I liked the way she spoke my name. “I’ll keep in touch,” I said. Would I ever.
“You promise?” she said, the corners of her eyes wrinkling playfully.
“Try and stop me.”
Chapter 10
I couldn’t resist stopping by the Guadalajara Taqueria on East 14th Street in San Leandro on the way home. My stomach guided me there; it does that sometimes. The place is a hole-in-the-wall, but the fact that most of its clientele were illegals said something for the authenticity of the cuisine. The location of the restaurant wasn’t lost on me either. A little more than seven miles west, on the same street with a different name in a different city, was the place where Marisol Hernandez’s life had ended in a volley of bullets.
As I wolfed down a couple of cheese flautas and a chile verde burrito, I reached into my coat pocket for the scrap of paper I’d been given by Reyna Sandoval. Instead I came up with the post-it given to me by Karen Pearson. Fearing a guacamole smudge might render the phone number unreadable, I gingerly folded it and placed the paper inside my wallet. If I lost that number, I’d cut my wrists.
I eventually found the address Reyna had given me for her daughter Carmela. Her last name was Hernandez, not Sandoval, which presumably meant she’d either married or taken the name of Marisol’s father. I wasn’t sure what insights Carmela could provide in her daughter’s death, if any, but I was relatively close to the address and still had some workday left.
I finished my chow and got my truck moving east. I had a full belly, a destination, and a purpose, which is rarely a bad combination. It was a little after five o’clock, almost dark, and according to the radio, traffic on the Nimitz freeway was already jammed up. I chose to stay on East 14th Street until it became Mission Boulevard, and took me all the way into Hayward. Carmela Hernandez lived in one of the flat-tops of the Palma Ceia.
Hayward’s Palma Ceia District is a seemingly endless sea of one-level, flat-roofed houses, nicknamed flat-tops, built during the great housing expansion of the late 1940’s. Varying only in color, the countless rows of cookie-cutter homes had in those days been the pride of blue collar Hayward and a symbol of the South Bay’s thriving economy and robust work ethic.
Today, the houses of Palma Ceia were run-down and neglected. The majority wore burglar-bars on their windows, and over the years had lost any semblance of the promise the once-thriving California economy imparted. When the jobs went south to San Jose’s Silicon Valley, most of the Palma Ceia District’s residents who could afford to get out went with them.
The largely Hispanic Palma Ceia District was in the heart of Norteno territory. The dominant regional gang claiming the turf was a posse known as ‘DGF,’ or ‘Don’t Giva Fuck,’ and as Hispanic gangs go, certainly as prone to senseless violence as any other.
I parked my truck in front of a flat-top with an address matching the one Reyna Sandoval had written down for me. It was worse than most flat-tops on a block with no good ones.
The house had once been white; now it was a dingy brown color. The windows were covered with cardboard or plastic and the front door stood ajar. I could see light from within the interior.
A mangy Pit-bull was staked by a thick chain to a post in a front yard with no grass. There was a weight bench and assorted dumbbells rusting alongside a cracked driveway which held a wheel-less Monte Carlo frame on cement blocks. The car had no hood, engine, or windshield, and was covered by a blue plastic tarpaulin with a lot of holes in it. I made sure my guns were accessible and got out of my truck.
As I made my way across the dogshit minefield of the front yard, the Pit-bull stood up from where it had been lounging. Its ears went back and its eyes fixed on me. Not a comforting sight.
I’d grown up in farm country and don’t have an unreasonable fear of dogs. I’d had to shoot more than my share as a cop, and the most common breed I’d put down was the Pit-bull; the preferred choice of thugs everywhere.
I gauged the chain’s length and walked in a wide arc as I headed for the door. The dog began to bark and strain against the chain. I knocked on the frame of the open door. I could hear music inside. It was angry rap with a thumping base.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice from inside called out.
“Carmela Hernandez?” I shouted above the combined din of the Pit-bull and the music. “I want to speak with Carmela Hernandez.”
The music quieted and a woman approached the door. I saw in the woman a general resemblance to Reyna Sandoval. That is, if Reyna Sandoval had started doing heroin and meth at sixteen years old and never stopped.
Carmela Hernandez looked twenty-five years older than her age, which couldn’t have been much more than her early thirties; Reyna told me how old Carmela was when she gave birth to Marisol. Carmela had dyed her scraggly hair jet-black and wore it under a Norteno red bandana handkerchief. She had a lit cigarette burning from lips adorned with blood-red lipstick, and enough make-up slathered on her face to rival Lady Gaga. She wore a dirty, sleeveless T-shirt with the Corona beer logo over sagging, bra-less breasts, and an even dirtier pair of skin-tight jeans. She was barefoot, and by the look of her split and filthy toenails hadn’t worn shoes in a while. Neither the cigarette smoke, nor the
aroma of cheap perfume she radiated, could come to grips with the overpowering, rancid, scent of methamphetamine emanating from her.
Anyone who has ever smelled methamphetamine, or crank, as it’s more commonly known, seeping from someone’s pores doesn’t forget it. Meth has a putrid, three-day-old sweat-sock odor as unmistakable as mom’s apple pie fresh from the oven.
In addition to the distinct fragrance it induces, methamphetamine robs the user of nutrients and vitamins, leaving them with the modern equivalent of scurvy. Consequently, regular crank users exhibit a jaundiced pallor, aged, wrinkled skin, tooth loss, and an epidemic of body sores and abscesses which make them resemble participants in the Bataan Death March. Despite all this, I could tell Carmela Hernandez had once been pretty like her mother; maybe even beautiful.
“Angel! Shut up!” she yelled. The Pit-bull quieted.
“Who are you?” she said around the cigarette. When she spoke I could see she was missing several teeth. “You a cop?”
“I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into the death of your daughter Marisol.”
She gave me a hard look and her chin began to quiver. Tears squirted out of the corners of each eye. She spat her still-lit cigarette at my feet.
“Get the fuck out of here,” she said. She tried to close the door on me. My size eleven foot wedged between the door and frame prevented it.
“I only want to talk with you, Ms. Hernandez,” I said.
“I got nothin’ to say to you or anybody else. Get the fuck off my property.”
“I’m trying to find your daughter’s killer.”
“Go away or I’ll wake up my man. He’ll fuck you up.”
“Ms. Hernandez, I didn’t come here to cause trouble.”
In response, she turned her head and yelled into the house. “Ernie! Ernie! Some asshole’s trying to break into the house!” When she turned her head back around to face me the tears were gone and she was wearing a wicked grin.
“Get ready for the ass-kicking of your life, White-Boy,” she smiled. In the back of the house I saw shadows move and sensed motion. “What the fuck?” I heard a baritone voice exclaim.
When I told Carmela Hernandez I didn’t come for trouble, I wasn’t lying. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t ready for it. Which was a good thing, because trouble was indeed coming.
There appeared in the hallway behind Carmela Hernandez a Mexican man about my height, but with at least forty pounds on me. He had a shaved head, a Fu Manchu, and plenty of XIV ink on his thick arms. He was shirtless, barefoot, and had a prison build; skinny legs under a swollen chest and arms. He’d obviously been out-of-custody long enough to start going flabby, as his bulging gut illustrated, but he didn’t look soft. His bleary eyes lighted first on Carmela Hernandez and then focused on me. He was holding an aluminum baseball bat in his right hand.
“Now you gonna get fucked up, Bitch,” Carmela said.
“I’d rather not,” I said truthfully. No point waiting for them to launch on me.
Never underestimate the value of a preemptive strike. I gave Carmela Hernandez a sharp backfist to the nose to stun her, then a half-power front kick to the gut. Actually, it was more of a push than a kick, but it had the desired effect. All ninety-five pounds of her flew backwards into the unprepared arms of Ernie.
Ernie should have sidestepped her, let her go down, and devoted his energy to using the bat on me. He didn’t, or couldn’t, because he was tangled up in Carmela, and I was grateful. Not grateful enough, however, to spare him.
Maybe it was because Ernie had just woken up. Maybe it was because he was still experiencing the residual effects of whatever combination of drugs and alcohol he’d ingested before his nap. Maybe he was feeling overconfident because of his size advantage, or because he had the bat. I didn’t care which, and wasn’t going to waste time pondering.
I leaped into Ernie directly behind Carmela’s flailing body and shoved her into him with everything I had. Both went down, with Carmela on top. Once down, she didn’t move fast and I didn’t give Ernest much chance to. I grabbed the bat with both hands and wrenched it away from him as he stumbled backwards. I tossed the bat behind me on the floor and stepped back.
Carmela lay gasping in a fetal position. Ernie got up and took a fighting stance.
“I got a Pelican Bay black belt, Guero,” he said. “And you are one dead motherfucker.”
He started dancing around, feinting jabs with his hands and twitching his head like he was a boxer warming up in his corner before the ring announcer called out his name to the crowd. His eyes blazed like coals, and only part of it was fury; the rest I assumed was meth.
I threw a couple of high left hooks to get his eyes and hands up. He easily batted them away. Behind the third left hook, which he again elevated his arms to block, I unloaded. I sent a full-throttle, everything-I-had, front kick under his arms, which connected directly into his solar plexus. I followed it with a maximum-power left roundhouse to his right knee, which took the leg out from under him and dropped him to a kneeling position. I finished the three-shot combination with a turn-back-kick to his face which laid him out.
To Ernie’s credit, or perhaps as a result of the pharmaceuticals he had on-board, he didn’t lose consciousness. He lay on his back, looking at the ceiling and blinking. He occasionally spit blood in a geyser from his shattered nose and teeth, groaned, and rolled his head from side to side. His massive chest rose and fell.
Carmela struggled to a sitting position. She looked at Ernie, then at me. “You are dead, Culero!” she hissed. “You hear me? Fucking dead!”
“All right, already,” I said. “I’m dead. I get it. You’ve been saying that since I arrived. Can we talk about Marisol now?”
“Fuck you!” she spat blood at me. Fortunately, I was out of range.
I walked back to the entrance and retrieved the aluminum baseball bat. Carmela’s eyes widened when I picked it up. They became saucers when I strode directly over her. She looked up at me. Her gaze lingered on the bat.
“We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, Carmela,” I said. “Let’s start again, shall we?” Miraculously, she didn’t say ‘fuck you’ or tell me I was dead this time.
“I’ll speak slowly, because you and Ernie look like you might have trouble with words larger than two syllables. I’m going to ask some questions. You’ll answer them. If you don’t, or lie to me, I am going to beat you and Ernie into hamburger with this fine bat Ernie was thoughtful enough to provide. Comprende?”
Carmela nodded. I went on.
“My name is Chauncey Means. I already told you I’m a private investigator. I’m looking into the murder of your daughter Marisol.”
“Why do you care what happened to Marisol? What’s she to you?” Carmela asked. “Who’s paying you?”
“The only thing you need to know is that I promised I would. I keep my word.”
“Don’t tell this bitch anything,” Ernie said to Carmela in a weak voice. “When I get right, I’m gonna fuck his shit up.”
“Shut up, Ernesto!” Carmela admonished him. “You ain’t in no position.”
“Fuck you!” he answered her. “And fuck this asshole!”
I walked over to where Ernie lay on the ground and tapped his right knee, the one I’d kicked, with the bat. His body convulsed and he grunted in agony.
“You’re going to be on crutches for quite a while, Ernesto,” I said. I tapped his good left knee with the bat next. “You want to make it a wheelchair?”
“Chupa mi verga, Bitch!” he said. “Me and my boys are going to find you, and then we’ll see who’s riding a wheelchair. You’re gonna be riding my dick!”
I dropped the bat and knelt next to where Ernesto lay threatening to kill me. I drew my .45, and as Carmela’s eyes got even wider, if that was possible, I put the barrel against his forehead and thumbed the hammer back with an audible click.
“So I guess the thing to do is make sure you can’t come after me, eh, Cabron?”<
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I thought for a second that Ernie was going to spit and continue his prison-yard machismo routine. I guess something in the tone of my voice changed his tune. Or maybe it was the barrel of my German-made semi-automatic pistol caressing his noggin. In either case, he shut up and calmed down. His eyes were as wide as Carmela’s.
“I’m a simple guy,” I told him. “I take people at their word. You tell me you and your punk friends are coming after me, I believe you.”
“Please Mister,” Carmela said. “Don’t kill him.”
“Don’t shoot,” Ernie pleaded. “I was pissed and talkin’ shit because you beat my ass down. I ain’t gonna come after you, I swear.”
“I guarantee you aren’t coming after me,” I said.
“Don’t kill me! I give you my word.”
“Okay,” I said. I stood up, de-cocked and holstered my pistol. “I’ll take your word for it. But if I ever see you in my rear-view mirror, I’ll finish what I started.” His headed bobbed in assent.
“You Marisol’s father?” I asked him.
“Fuck no,” he said. “I only been with Carmela a few years. She already had them bitches when I hooked up with her.”
Carmela nodded. “He ain’t their father,” she confirmed.
“When was the last time you saw Marisol?” I asked her.
“At her Quinceanera,” Carmela said. “In November.”
“You were invited?” I asked, mildly surprised that Reyna would have allowed Carmela to attend.
“No. My concha Madre won’t let me within a mile of Marisol; she’s got a restraining order. But I went anyway. It was at the Yucatan in San Leandro. I watched her from the parking lot.”
“It’s true,” Ernie spoke up. “I drove her there.”
I know the Yucatan. It’s a large Mexican eatery with a dance floor and room for a lot of seating. The food was only okay, but the establishment’s primary source of income was from hosting weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, first communions, Quinceaneras, and other big social events. If I wasn’t mistaken, the Yucatan was one of several restaurants in a family-owned chain. I was pretty sure there was a Yucatan restaurant in Alameda and Oakland, too.
