Chapter 6

Rachael Pearce sat in the front seat of Daryl Garcia's unmarked sedan as they cruised the area east of Downtown Los Angeles. In the backseat, a photographer from the Los Angeles Times, a bespectacled man in his mid-thirties named Lance Benatar, clutched his Nikon in his hands. She was glad Lance was with her. She had worked with him for the last five years, and he could get the best shots on spur-of-the-moment or threatening situations. He covered the 1992 riots with her, and the 1993 Malibu firestorms. He had an eye for detail, a great sense of timing, and he blended in well with the background of whatever scene they were at.

Rachael glanced in her sideview mirror. They were being tailed by a black and white patrol car. When Daryl called her last night—two days after she had cornered him at Parker Center and taken him out to lunch—to tell her the news, he told her that they would be escorted to the Eighty-first Street bridge by four patrol cars and two unmarked cars. He was only able to get this amount of backup between the times of 12:45 and 2:00

p.m. the following day. Knowing it was the only window of opportunity she had, she took it.

She had called Lance that night at his home, told him the plans, then agreed to meet him in front of Parker Center at 12:15. Lance showed up, and fifteen minutes later they were in Daryl's car on their way.

For the last ten minutes they had been driving through the crumbling streets of Los Angeles, past dilapidated apartment buildings, rows of shops and liquor stores, rows of industrial buildings and gas stations. The buildings were all sooty looking, muli-colored graffiti covering them. The sidewalks were filled with pedestrians of mostly Hispanic and Asian background. “Chinatown and East LA are pretty close together,”

Daryl Garcia explained as he drove. “You don't get many of the black gangs up in this area."

Daryl had been making idle chatter ever since they began their journey. She had cut their conversation short last night when, after he told her the good news and what the plans would be, he started nattering about how the rest of his day went. She could tell he was attracted to her, that her flirting earlier that day had worked in gaining his cooperation. She smiled to herself as he rattled on, recognizing that he was buttering her up, trying to ease her into something. He was kind of attractive, and she had entertained the thought last night of letting him sleep with her at some point. But she drew the line at letting anything progress beyond that. She had had enough of men worming their way into her life. At least for now.

After ten minutes of idle chatter she had finally cut the conversation short and told him she'd see him tomorrow. And she thanked him. He mumbled that it was his pleasure, and then they hung up.

Now they seemed to pick things up right where they had left them last night. With Lance in the car things weren't destined to go beyond idle chatter. Flirting was out of the question, although Rachael knew she could tease Daryl if she wanted to if something came up where she needed his help again. Lance knew she used her sexuality to get what she wanted, to manipulate men into doing things for her, getting her into places that she could later write about. They joked about it sometimes. “You know, if I had a pair of tits and an ass like yours I'd have it made,” he always quipped.

Until now she'd never had to use sex to get what she wanted. Using the right body language was always enough to gain access to an area that was normally off limits. She sometimes suggested that she would trade sexual favors for certain things, but she never delivered. After getting what she wanted she was on to the next story, the next sucker.

She had heard through the grapevine that some city officials, detectives, and other men referred to her as a cock-teasing bitch, but then she had a career she loved and a couple of awards, too. She had gotten what she wanted, which was enough for her.

She played up to Daryl the same way. And he had taken the bait hook, line, and sinker. Only this time, as she sat in the front seat of his sedan, chatting with him about the weather and whether the Angels would make the playoffs next year, she thought that if she would ever fuck anybody as payback for opening certain doors in getting a good story, it would be Daryl. He was attractive: black hair and eyes, mustache, tall and lanky, but muscular. Plus, the way he carried himself suggested that he was a man who knew where he was going, a man who was confident in himself and his abilities. True, two days ago she had been able to chisel away at the stone of his veneer, but he managed to keep himself under control. By now most men would have been on their third or fourth try in asking her for a date.

Daryl motioned ahead. “That's the Eight-First Street bridge up ahead."

Lance rose up from the backseat, peering ahead. “Into the Lions Den we go."

Rachael checked her mini-cassette recorder, which she had slung over her shoulder like a portable camera. She clutched her note pad in her hand, her mind already going over what questions she was going to ask the gang members that were down there.

“Now remember,” Daryl was saying. “Danny Hernandez talked to the guys who claim that area as their territory, and he assured them that everything was cool. The guys that I have tailing us are on their lunch hour and they're doing this as a favor to me. We only have thirty minutes or so to talk to these guys, then we get the hell out of there."

“And the cops that are with us aren't supposed to do anything, right?” Lance asked from the backseat. “I mean, they aren't going to be assholes and try to bust somebody or something."

“No,” Daryl said. He gripped the wheel tightly. “I hand picked these guys myself.

I know them all very well, and ... well, some of them owe me favors. I'll owe some of them favors when this is over. I explained the situation to them, and they know that if Rachael gets this story it may be a way to bring whoever is responsible for these murders out in the open. They also know that we have an agreement not to talk to anybody else in the press. Rachael is the only one they talk to, and even then, after this is over and they go on their own ways, they are to forget this ever happened."

Rachael and Lance let this sink in as Daryl steered the car down a side street toward the Eight-First Street bridge. Rachael checked her gear. In the backseat, Lance checked his equipment. Rachael stared out ahead through the dirty windshield of the sedan as they approached the arches of the bridge. The area they were entering was almost barren, desolate. The dirt floor was dry, small tufts of weeds sticking out here and there, small buildings and factories standing like lonely sentries in the desert. Daryl steered the car down another side street, down an alley where crackerbox houses were piled one on top of the other, white faded picket fences kept in children and animals ranging from dogs to chickens. It was an area that fostered fear, bred despair, and harbored criminals. Rachael clutched the strap that held her tape recorder to her hip, her stomach rumbling with a nervous twinge. Today she was venturing where most normal folks would never dare enter.

Here there be Tygers.

She glanced in the rearview mirror as they drew up to the bridge, noting two of the patrol cars following them. She turned to Daryl as he stopped the car and let it idle, noticing for the first time half a dozen men dressed in gang attire; baggy tan slacks, baggy white t-shirts and plaid shirts, shaved heads, attitude turned up to eleven. “Where are the other patrol cars?"

“They're approaching the scene from a different route,” Daryl said, his hands tapping the steering wheel, watching the gang members approach the car cautiously. “I've also got a couple of plainclothes cops nearby and a few more salted in the area keeping watch. Everything's cool."

“If you say so, man,” Lance said, his voice squeaking like a pre-pubescent boy.

Rachael had never heard him sound so nervous before in all the years they'd worked together.

The gang members were drawing up to the car and two of them broke away from the others and approached them. One of them, tall, good looking, wearing a white tank top that exposed his muscular tattooed arms nodded. “Officer Garcia, que paso?"

“How are you doing, Victor?” Daryl said. He held his hand out and Victor grasped it in a power shake.

“Okay, man.” He motioned toward Rachael. “That her?"

“Yep.” Daryl turned toward Rachael. “You ready?"

Rachael took a deep breath, her heart pounding in her chest. She had thought Daryl and some of the backup officers would frisk the gang members for weapons, but they made no attempt to do that. Surely they knew the gang members were armed! She supposed with the eight cops that had come along as backup, and the plainclothes detectives watching the area they were pretty safe, but she didn't feel it. She felt both scared and excited; she could feel the adrenaline pouring through her veins. She took a deep breath. “Ready as I'll ever be."

Daryl turned to Victor. “Everything cool?"

“Everything's cool, homes,” Victor said. He stepped away from the car. His partner remained at sentry duty, chest thrown forward, head tilted back, macho tough.

Daryl opened the driver's side door and got out. Rachael got out on her side, barely aware of Lance scrambling out of the backseat behind her or the officers that had been assigned to follow them getting out of their squad cars. Her only aim now was to get her interview, do it quickly, and get the hell out of here. She sought eye contact with Victor, got it, and smiled. “Hi! You're Victor?” She stepped forward, holding out her hand. Time to turn on the charm.

Daryl made the introductions. Rachael and Lance greeted Victor amicably, and met his sidekick, Gomez Mendoza. As the introductions were being made, the remaining gang members that had been lounging against the graffiti stained concrete columns that supported the bridge moved forward. Victor introduced them all by their nicknames.

Rachael acknowledged them all and connecting their names with their physical appearances: Midget was the little guy with the shaved head; Gordo was the chunky man with the knee length baggy shorts; Joker was the medium built man with slightly slanted eyes that suggested Indian or Philippine background; and Rascal was the only guy with hair, a greasy explosion of it corkscrewing out of his head like the rap star Coolio.

Rachael turned the tape recorder on and reached for her notes. She didn't really need them-she had already memorized what she wanted to ask them-but she had them on hand to assure them that she was the real thing. She smiled at them, spoke to them softly, respectfully, drawing them out, inserting herself in as one of them. Despite the joking sexual innuendo of Joker as he lightly teased her-"Damn, you're beautiful, baby. You married?” Laughter broke out from the others after each attempt from Joker at cutting through to her defenses. She merely smiled and attempted to go on. For the most part she had them at ease right away.

“You guys hang out here all the time, right?” Rachael began after the light banter had run its course. By now they were all standing around in a rough semi-circle; gang members on one side, cops standing off about twenty feet away observing; her, Lance and Daryl about five feet from Victor, Joker and Midget. “I mean, this is your territory and you do business here all the time."

“Can't admit that, man,” Midget said, chuckling, motioning to Daryl. “Shit, if we admit that he'll bust us."

Joker laughed. “Bullshit. Hey, Daryl, you ain't gonna bust us if we talk about that shit, are you?"

Daryl said, “With God as my witness, you guys can talk to this lady about anything and you will not go to jail."

There was more laughter about this, about how they were “one up on the man,”

and that this sudden change of balance indicated that they really were in control of this area of the Eight-First Street bridge. Daryl merely smiled at them and joked along with them. Rachael smiled, waiting patiently. It appeared that Daryl was trying his hardest to be civil with them. The feeling she got from Daryl now was that if he had the chance he would shoot all five gang members on general principles if she and Lance weren't around.

Victor finally answered her question. “Yeah, we're here all the time. Somebody from Los Compadres always is. And none of us saw anything."

“You mean none of you saw when Rick Perez's body was dumped in this area?”

Rachael reiterated.

They all shook their heads. Gordo said, “None of us did. He was just there one morning when we came down here."

“Who do you think killed him?” She asked.

“Shit, man,” Midget said, throwing up his hands in the Los Compadres gang sign.

“We know Tortilla Flats did it. They fucked him up, they been into us forever."

The gang members murmured general agreement on this. Joker piped in a: “But they ain't gonna get you, baby. Not with me here to look after you they won't!"

She flashed him a smile, all the while thinking Jesus, I haven't seen so much fucking macho bullshit since high school. “But suppose it wasn't Tortilla Flats? What do you think about the FBI's idea that it might be a serial killer?"

“A serial killer?” Victor intoned. “You mean like Jeffrey Dahmer? Eatin’ people and shit?"

“Not all serial killers practice cannibalism, Victor,” Daryl explained. “But, yes, Jeffrey Dahmer would be a good example."

The gang members traded glances with each other and instantly broke out with

“no, man, it ain't no serial killer,” laughter following, along with sexual jokes aimed at homosexuals and women's private parts. A few Jeffrey Dahmer jokes flew around: what did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit? You gonna eat that? Hardee har har. What did Jeffrey Dahmer tell his mother when he had her over to his apartment for dinner and she said, ‘Jeffrey, I don't like any of your friends?’ That's okay, ma, just eat the vegetables.

Hardee har har. Daryl and Lance laughed along with them. Rachael laughed too, noticing that Lance was shaking in his shoes despite his good natured features. He had good reason; Los Compadres Mafia was one of the deadliest, most homicidal street gangs in Los Angeles. She had to reel this thing in and get this interview over with.

“Suppose it is a serial killer,” she put forth, on a roll now. “Let's just suppose.

How do you think somebody could just ... kill Rick and dump him down here without any of you seeing him?"

Scattered “I don't knows.” Rascal spoke up: “Anybody we see that we don't know, they get their ass kicked."

“Or killed!” This from Midget. He cocked his middle and index finger like a gun and pointed it to his head. Bang.

“Yeah, we fuck ‘em up,” Gordo emphasized, pounding his meaty fist into his meaty palm.

“What usually goes on here on a normal day?” Rachael asked. Halfway finished now.

“What do we do here?” Victor asked, as if trying to get some clarification on the question.

“Not just what do you do here, but what goes on here on a normal day even when you guys aren't around?"

“Shit, nothing much,” Victor motioned toward the vast graffiti wasteland with his tattooed arms. “What usually goes on here is us and our homies kickin’ back, partying, messing with our ladies. That sort of thing."

Rachael traded a glance with Daryl, who nodded at her to continue. She had gone over the questions she intended to ask them and this next one was potentially self-incriminating. But Daryl had assured her that he had told the gang members that no matter what they told her—whether it self incriminated them in crimes or not-that they would not be arrested. She had come up with several different versions of the question and decided on the least self-incriminating one. “Do you suppose the guy that killed Rick could have been somebody that buys drugs from any of you guys?"

Victor and Midget traded a glance. The back of Rachael's neck tensed, as if expecting a blow. The other gang members shifted visibly, as if expecting Daryl and the officers to rush them in a swarm. Daryl nodded at Victor, emphasizing that it was okay to speak freely. Victor caught the gesture and relaxed and Rachael felt the weight lift off her shoulders. Be cool, she thought. Everybody just be cool.

“It's possible,” Victor said, looking and speaking to Rachael directly now. Of the six gang members here, Victor was clearly the leader of this particular set and the most articulate. “I mean, you should see the kind of people that come down here looking for junk or crack. Businessmen, celebrities—all kinds of people, man. Rock stars, movie stars, people like that. Even lawyers, man.” Victor looked more disgusted at the professional level of his clients than his role in the drug trade. “It's not just other ‘bangers that come down here buying shit from us."

“But if you want to buy from us,” Rascal piped in from the rear of the circle, “you got to have somebody who knows us introduce you.” He stepped forward, his wild shock of hair bobbing in the slight breeze. “Like, say you and me know each other, and I'm tight with Victor here. And say you want to score some Black Tar or something. Some real good stuff. You might ask me where you could get some primo stuff, in a place where the cops don't hardly go and where it's pretty safe. And since I know Victor and his crew hang here, and that the cops don't come here, I say, ‘yeah, I know the perfect dealer for you. I'll set you up'. Then I call Victor, arrange a buy, and I take you down here. You make your deal and if he likes you he gives you the okay that it's cool for you to come down. And he tells the other homeboys that you're cool, y'know what I'm sayin'?"

Rachael knew what he was saying and she got it loud and clear. She glanced around the area, noting the multi-colored graffiti staining the concrete columns that supported the bridge, the abandoned sofa resting against a graffiti stained wall, the trash that littered the ground, and the six gang members who stood grouped around them. She pictured what this place must be like at night, when the lights of the city barely penetrated the area, leaving it dark, ominous, the only sound the constant hum of traffic from the bridge. The only lights would come from the gang members who either brought flashlights to the scene, or the occasional bonfires that were built by homeless people on cold winter nights. No wonder the cops stayed away from this area.

Speaking of the homeless: “What about the homeless people?” Rachael asked.

“Do they come around here?"

Midget shrugged. “Sometimes. They don't bother us, though. They're cool."

Gordo was shaking his head. “Not many of them come down here.” He slammed his meaty fist into his palm again. “It gets boring down here sometimes."

The other gang members laughed at this and Rachael got the message loud and clear. She supposed the scariest thing about being homeless would be trying to seek shelter from the rain under this particular bridge and then having the daylights stomped out of you and whatever spare change you might have stolen, all just to amuse the local hoods.

“So I guess we can safely rule a homeless person out as being the murderer.”

Rachael meant the comment to be taken as a joke. Half of the gang members—Victor included—got it; the other half stared at her dumbfoundedly.

“Let's get back to what goes on down here on an average day,” she coaxed them back down that track and, with some encouraging and prodding, got them to paint a picture of what a typical day under the Eight-first Street bridge was like. Admittingly, nobody actually showed up at the spot until around ten in the morning. The first four hours of the day were spent shooting the shit, playing craps, gossiping, drinking beer, getting high. Occasionally a customer would cruise down in search of drugs. As the afternoon drew to a close the older gang members would stop by for a beer, a toot, a toke.

There was always much laughter and festivities. By the early evening most of the gang members were tanked and ready to go for a night on the town. Some of them hit the streets in search of cheap thrills-a car to jack, an enemy to kill, a girl to fuck. But their places under the bridge were always filled with other homies. As the night wore on, young gang members who hadn't been initiated into the gang life, and who were ready to take the plunge were jumped in. More drug deals went down. And as the night wore into the early morning, the area began to thin out as gang members began to go home or head off to brighter pastures.

All six of the Los Compadres gang members took turns telling her varying versions of this narrative, often from many different perspectives of the day. But she got the gist of it. And the bottom line was that between two and eight a.m., this area was largely uninhabited.

Which was roughly around the same time frame it was estimated that Rick Perez's decapitated body was left under the bridge.

She glanced at Daryl Garcia who returned her look. She was sure Daryl was thinking the same thing: whoever dumped Rick's body was either damned lucky that he had gotten into this area undetected, or he knew the area and the people who inhabited it very well. And if that was the case, he would have known that between the hours of two and eight a.m. would have been the best times to dump a body.

No wonder they think a rival gang member was responsible, she thought. While the idea was tantalizing, theoretically it was impossible. After all, with one exception, all the victims were from different gangs. She brought this up to Victor.

The gang member appeared to think this over. “Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. Whoever killed Rick wasn't the same dude that killed those other hotos."

“But the murders are all the work of the same person,” Rachael said, reading from her list of notes. “The FBI determined that they're not separate random acts. One person is responsible for them all."

“So?” Victor eyed her, full of macho bravado.

“So what that means is that it's impossible that another gang killed Rick,” Rachael said.

“Why couldn't it be somebody from like Boyle Heights or Tortilla Flats if one of theirs was killed?” Midget asked, defiantly. “Maybe they killed Rick because they thought we killed one of their hotos. Since Rick was from Eighteenth Street, maybe Tortilla Flats killed him and dumped him here on our turf to make it look bad on us. Shit, we wouldn't kill a hoto from another gang and leave him in somebody else's turf."

“You wouldn't?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

Victor glowered at her menacingly. The other gang members took a step forward.

Rachael felt herself taking two big steps back as Victor bore down on her. “You accusing us of killing the putos from those other gangs that way? Cutting them up and shit?"

Rachael searched for a quick solution to the misunderstanding. “No, I'm not. I'm just trying to make you see a point. You see, if you didn't kill one of their homeboys in that manner-which I know nobody from Los Compadres is responsible for-than how could one of them have taken Rick out that way?"

This seemed to calm them down. They relaxed. Victor backed down, his face still darkened with the anger that any of his homies could have killed rivals in that fashion.

She smiled at them, hoping that would break the ice, trying to make eye contact with them. Only Joker, who seemed to see himself as the gangster Don Juan, would return her glance and smile.

“The bottom line to all this I suppose is that shit goes down here all the time, right?” Rachael asked.

Gordo nodded. “Shit goes down here all the time. Rick ain't the first dude to die down here."

“And he won't be the last,” Midget said, his scowl still etched on his little face.

Rachael glanced at Daryl, who nodded twice. Time to go. She turned back to Victor and held out her hand. “Thank you for your help. All of you. I really appreciate it."

She shook hands with all of them as they asked if she was going to use their names in the newspaper. She said that she would if they wanted her to. They laughed about their new-found fame, whooping it up. Lance stepped up, his cue to begin his work.

Rachael took the lead. “Now if we could maybe get some pictures of you guys just sort of hanging out."

The gang members were only too happy to comply. They pulled red and blue bandanas over their noses and mouths like bandits of the old west, squatted on their haunches, flashed gang signs amid the backdrop of graffiti covered walls and columns while Lance snapped away. During the quick photo session she managed a few words with Daryl. “That went over better than I thought it would,” she whispered.

“Yes, it did,” he said softly, looking on as Lance directed Victor, Gordo, Joker, and Midget for another shot. “Thank God for Danny Hernandez. He was really instrumental in pulling this off."

“I'll have to meet him sometime to thank him personally,” Rachael said.

“I'll introduce you,” Daryl said.

“He's involved at the church, right?” Rachael asked, watching as Lance seemed to ease into the quick photo session. The laughter of the gang members echoed in the dusty hangout. “The gang counselor?"

“That's right,” Daryl turned to her and smiled. “He's a good guy. He's in tight with these kids here in the streets. Used to be one of them. He runs a youth ministry at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in East Los Angeles."

“Maybe I can talk to him next,” Rachael said. She put her notes in her jacket pocket. Lance was finishing up the shoot.

“I'll give him a call,” Daryl said.

They bade the gang members goodbye, climbed in their cars, and turned around, heading out from under the bridge. As they drove down the dusty road out of the squalid neighborhood, Rachael couldn't help but ask Lance how he felt.

“Better now that we're out of there,” he said. He looked at her from the rearview mirror, his brown eyes showing relief. She smiled at him, then turned her attention back to Daryl.

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything."

“Don't mention it,” Daryl said, watching the road ahead. “You just write yourself one hell of an article. If you need to talk to Danny Hernandez, let me know."

“I'll call you tonight,” she said. He nodded, a little smile on his face. She smiled back. I can't string him along anymore, she thought. I think he's hooked a little too deep.

Maybe we can do lunch or something. That might ease the pressure.

She settled in the front seat, thinking about the article she was going to write as Daryl and Lance talked about the Dodgers.