Stranger Danger (10 page)

“Good but tired.” He stretched out on the couch in
what appeared to be a favorite position.
 
“I’ll talk, if it’s what you want.”

“You mean you’ll tell me who’s after you and why?”

“
Si, la
muñequita,
I will.”

Sara had waited for this moment, but now she almost
feared it.
 
Whatever the truth was, she
would possess it, good or bad.
“Now?”

He sat up and stared at her. “Is it not a good time?
I didn’t plan to tell you to keep you safe, Sara, but you need to know.
 
You’re involved now and that makes you a
target.”

She sat down in the old swivel rocker near the front
door.
 
She had to see his face as he
talk, be able to read his expressions.
 
“Then tell me,” she said.

Santiago sighed and began to speak.
 
Sara listened, aware they’d jumped head first
into deep water and that they would either sink to the bottom or stay afloat,
together.

Chapter
Seven

Before he
spoke, Santiago dug into a zippered pouch of his bag and pulled out a long,
thin cigarillo.
 
“Do you mind?” he asked.
“I smoke when I’m tense but if you’d rather I don’t, I won’t.”

“No, go ahead.
I actually like the smell.” Rich, fragrant tobacco smoke, as deadly and
damaging as it could be, always evoked her earliest years when her grandparents
served as her daily babysitters.
 
Her grandfather
smoked as he read the morning paper and sipped his first cup of coffee.
 
Sara, from birth until she began
kindergarten, often rested on the couch nearby, so the aroma always filled her
with a sense of comfort and happiness.

He fired his
smoke and drew deep, then exhaled.
“
Gracias.
 
I’ll start with what happened when I was
still with the LAPD…”

“You’re not
with them anymore?”

“No.” The way
he spat out the single word indicated something both complicated and somehow unpleasant.

“What
happened?”

He smiled and
blew a perfect smoke ring. “That’s what I’m going to tell you.”

Sara settled
back. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“All of this
began more than two years ago, in the summer. A perfect coastal breeze was
blowing and I wanted to go to the beach, not work.
 
I almost gave in to temptation, but I went on
duty anyway.
 
Maybe if I hadn’t, none of
it would have happened.”

Her mouth went
dry. “What did, Santiago?”

He waved one
hand. “Let me tell it.
 
This isn’t easy,
la muñequita.
My partner, Ted, had less
than forty days left until retirement.
 
We both expected a routine shift, and I remember being hopeful it would
be.
 
But, around ten that morning, we got
a call about an altercation at one of those cheap motels, the kind you rent for
the week or month, so we responded. By the time we arrived, it had escalated
into a fight.
 
I jumped into the middle
of it, telling them to quit and most of them did.
 
Ted hung back, more scared than me to get
involved, but he had my back.
 
The fight
ended so all the druggies and gang bangers wandered off.
 
I thought it was over until I heard her
scream.”

Intrigued and
yet horrified by Santiago’s first person account, Sara asked, “Who?”

He shrugged.
“I didn’t know her.
 
She was Hispanic and
ran toward me, screaming, asking me to help.
 
She said some dude had her baby.
 
When I glanced up, I saw him, some guy stoned out of his head on the
second floor of the motel.
 
He had the
kid on his hip and was leaning over the railing like he was about to take a
header.
 
There wasn’t much time so I ran
up the steps toward him, weapon drawn.
 
I
asked him to hand over the boy, but he refused.
 
He told me to fuck off,
then
climbed onto the
rail like a monkey.”

Santiago’s
eyes darkened as he recalled the terrible moments. “I could smell him, the
rank, horrible stench of a user, and I knew I had to do something or he’d go
over, with the kid.
 
In the parking lot,
the woman kept wailing and screaming, so I snatched the little boy from
him.
 
I didn’t even think about it, just
did.
 
I put him down and the guy pulled a
knife.
 
He waved it at me and so I shot
him, drilled him through the head with one shot.
 
Blood spattered on me and everywhere around,
blood and worse,
then
he went over and hit the
ground.”

“Oh,
Santiago.”

His lips
twisted together. “Yeah,” he said. “I put up my Glock and bent down to the
kid.
 
He’d stopped crying by then. I
think it scared the holy crap out of him.
 
I talked to him in Spanish, and he let me pick him up.
 
I took him down to his mother, and then I
bolted into the alley.
 
I puked until I
couldn’t bring up anything else and left Ted to deal with calling it in.
 
I’d killed before, in the line of duty, but
not like that.
 
It had always been a
clean shot and with more justification.
 
I
knew my judgment would be questioned and figured I’d be investigated.
 
And I was, but Sara, I couldn’t have been
sure I saved the kid otherwise.”

Sara listened
until he’d finished.
 
A few tears crept
down her cheeks.
 
He crushed out his
smoke and met her gaze. “I’ve done ugly things, no?”

“No,” she said
and meant it. “You did what you had to – you saved the little boy.
 
The druggie didn’t give you a choice,
Santiago.”

He shrugged.
“That’s what I thought, then. By the time all the investigations were over,
though, I hardly knew my own name.
 
Force
Investigation Division, the Chief,
 
Office of the Board of Police Commissioners, the District Attorney, and
the Justice System Integrity Division all had to determine, one bunch at a
time, whether or not I was in compliance with the LAPD use of force
policy.
 
I was on administrative leave on
half pay for almost a year while they made up their mind.”

Bitterness
tainted his tone and she knew, before she asked, what his answer would be. “So
did they clear you?”

Santiago shook
his head. “No, they didn’t, not at first.
 
I was on unpaid leave for months.
 
After that, they decided I could return and I did, but then Areli was
killed...”

Shock
overruled manners and she interrupted. “Killed? Your sister was killed?”

“
Si,
I thought I told you.”

“You said she
died.”

“She did,” he
said in a crisp voice. “
Mara Salvatrucha
gang bangers killed her.”

“What
happened?”

“Her
novio
met her at the hair salon where
she worked and they left together, to go somewhere to dinner or a club,” he
said, his voice as dead as his sister. “It doesn’t matter which because along
the way, a four door, dark colored sedan pulled up beside them and shot them
both.
 
Areli tried to flee, but they cut
her down.”

Sara could
envision the woman she’d seen once with Santiago riddled with bullet wounds all
too well.
 
If she hadn’t misjudged their
relationship, she might’ve been friends with Areli, maybe even family. “That’s
awful,” she said, knowing no word existed to reflect the true horror of the
event. “Why, Santiago?”

“Ramon, her
novio
, resembled a drug player, looked
enough like him he was mistaken for him and executed,” he said. “Or so the
official ruling said.”

The deep frown
dividing his forehead told her he didn’t agree. “That’s not what you think, is
it?”

“No. I think
he was a member of M13 at one time.
 
He’d
left the life, though, and was working in construction.
 
But maybe he knew too much or someone thought
he did.
 
So he died and so did my
sister.”

Words would
never express the compassion and sympathy but she tried. “I’m so sorry,
mi corazon.
”

Distance stretched
between them, miles more than the floor space, and his eyes darkened to
midnight black as he nodded. “Me too,
querida,
all the more because I took the call on my first week back.”

He didn’t have
to tell her or describe what he’d seen, because she read the anguish in his
eyes. Though as he did, she listened because as much as he needed to tell, she
had to hear him.

“By then, Ted
had retired and I had a new partner, a rookie named Lucy Alexander.
 
She asked a lot of questions, but I didn’t
really mind.
 
Going back to work didn’t
seem so different, even after such a long time.
 
I got back into the groove until we took the call, shots fired and at
least one civilian down.
 
When we
answered the call, I never imagined it would be my sister.”

Sara could
hardly imagine. She ached to comfort him but something about the harsh
expression he wore warned her to keep her distance for now.

Santiago lit
another smoke and exhaled. “We got out of the cruiser and I walked over.
 
I knew it was Areli as soon as I saw her by
the hair, the poofed up pompadour she wore with a bow.
 
She was face down in a puddle of blood, and I
knew she was dead before I checked her pulse.
 
She’d had a hard life. I’d tried to help her so much, but seeing her
dead, it hit me.
 
I cried right there at
the scene, tears running down my face.
 
My partner didn’t know what to do, didn’t understand at first it was
personal.
 
I couldn’t even touch Areli,
cover her up or move her.”

He paused and
a single ragged sob burst from his mouth.
 
Then he sighed, crushed out his smoke and finished the story. “I got my
shit together, though.
 
Called it in,
waited for backup and all that.
 
They
took me off the case as soon as they realized the victim was my sister.
 
I made the arrangements for Areli once the
medical examiner released her body.
 
I
took care of the funeral and saw her buried.
 
The official verdict named M13 as responsible.
 
Two weeks later, they announced they wanted
some Hispanic officers to go into an undercover operation to infiltrate the
gang.
 
I volunteered so I could pay those
bastards back for Areli.
 
And to make a difference if I could.
 
I failed to save my sister, but I thought
maybe I could save someone else’s.”

 
“That
was two and a half years ago,” he said.
 
He held another cigarillo between his fingers, but didn’t light it. “I
became Javier Morales.
 
I spent the first
six months establishing a life for him and becoming Javier.
 
I have documentation, everything from a birth
certificate and driver’s license to a work history.
 
I started hanging out where M13 people hang
and then I got in, became part of it as Javier.”

When he spoke
of his undercover alter ego, his face shifted. He wore a harsher expression
than any she’d seen, and his eyes glittered, sharp as a knife edge.
 
“What’s it like?” she asked in a voice so
hoarse her throat ached. “Are
Mara
Salvatrucha
as bad as I’ve heard?”

“Worse,”
Santiago said. “It’s beyond anything you can imagine,
la muñequita.
 
They live for
blood, for violence, for death.
 
There’s
no commandment they don’t break a hundred times a day, nothing they respect but
the gang and their code.
 
A pack of
wolves has more
honor
, more respect.
 
They kill for sport. Plus they use drugs,
drink, and any available body for cheap thrills.
 
Money and power are their gods.
 
If you don’t watch your back, there’ll be a
knife in it. I could trust no one.”