Rocky had confirmed with local Salvadoran sources that Alfonso’s a former gang member, now part of the ministry of the church targeting at-risk youth for salvation. He also found out who led him out of the gang and into God: Pablo Guardado, the accused murderer.
Guardado had actually led the ministry targeting gang kids in South LA. He himself was a kind of peacemaker. What would lead him to go back to la vida loca? Rocky wondered. Maybe he never left it and remained connected. Many a homie has.
Rocky parks on Compton Avenue, on the same side as la Resurrección. It is about twelve thirty in the morning when the young band members open the door. Rocky steps out of his car.
“Alfonso?”
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m Roque Anaya, private investigator. Folks at the Comite Esperanza asked my firm to look into the murder of Arnulfo Cartagena. I just want to ask you some—”
“Nah, bro. I ain’t got nothin to say to you,” the young church member says. “I’m not in that world anymore and already spoke with the police.”
“Which world?”
“Never mind.”
“The gang world. Actually, I’m told you’re still in la vida loca, using the tithes the faithful give you each week to buy one of God’s gifts: crack. Word is you’re like those Catholic curas who preach beautiful by day and party hard as hell by night.”
“What the fuck, ey? Who’s tellin you this shit?”
“People who have a lot more stuff to tell me, they say, stuff I can share with your wife, your friends in the congregation... and Homeland Security.”
“Fuck them — and fuck you.”
“Okay. I’m gonna give you a break and let you cool off and think about what you can and can’t tell me. I’d hate for your baby to graduate from elementary school without seeing his dad there.” Rocky had discovered that Mejia has a newborn son, a redeeming force without equal in the world of Salvadoran migrant gangs.
The young tiger’s balls have been touched. He adopts a pensive posture before speaking again. Rocky knows that deportation can often mean death to young Salvadorans. It also means not seeing their families. He knows precisely how to squeeze Salvadorans, many of whom live under the boot of being undocumented because the US government never recognized how it created a refugee and migration problem when it backed the fascist military dictatorships for all those years. Rocky doesn’t like using this lever, but needs to if he wants to get to the bottom of Arnulfo’s murder.
“Okay, okay,” Mejia says. “Look, I can’t talk right now. All I can tell you is that it involved escuadrones.” With that, the young man hurries to his Chevy and speeds away.
Escuadrones? Rocky says to himself, as he stands in the park pondering the possibility that Salvadoran death squads have indeed been resurrected to kill Arnulfo and frame Guardado. He wrestles with sudden feelings of anger and fear. He’s at a loss, but is humble enough to know when he needs help. So he leaves the park to go seek the assistance of the wizard of LA detectives, his boss, Jack Palomino.
Rocky walks up the stairs of Jack’s house on Silver Lake. The previous night’s rain has left a glitter on the sidewalk of the posh neighborhood.
Jack had put in the time and earned the house and his stellar reputation. A former hippie-professor, Jack Palomino started doing private investigation with a San Francisco — based firm founded in the early ’70s by a motley crew of poets, philosophers, scientists, Vietnam veterans, lawyers, journalists, former strippers, techies, and literary scholars. It distinguished itself as much for its effectiveness as for the funky backgrounds, swashbuckling swagger, and the unorthodox methods of its founding members. Among such methods were using guns only as a last measure, conducting extensive research, and gaining deep cultural knowledge surrounding the objects of investigation.
One member of the firm was clued in to the computer revolution rising out of Silicon Valley and expanded the art and science of secret recordings with miniature reel-to-reel tape recorders. On the social front, the firm did for private investigating what Sly Stone did for both soul and psychedelic music: employed women and Black people along with whites. The firm was antiauthoritarian, fueled by sticking it to the Man.
Rocky liked that Jack’s new firm was also dedicated to taking on leftist causas. Jack had moved to LA in the late ’70s and had done detective work for both God and the Devil, conducting investigations for the Black Panthers, Harvey Weinstein, former president Bill Clinton, and others. He offered Rocky a job as an apprentice investigator after he first migrated from El Salvador during the war. Rocky had been painting the man’s home/office when Jack somehow noticed that he “had some skills” and hired him. Jack’s politics, along with his brilliance and the opportunity to do interesting and good-paying work, persuaded Rocky to resurrect the investigative skills he had learned as a counterintelligence officer in the FMLN. And though he didn’t understand Rocky’s musical methods, Jack loved the lyrical aspect of Rocky’s approach.
The two men greet each other in the usual joking way before getting straight to the business of murder.
“The real question here, Jack, is who killed the peace?”
“What do you mean?”
“Arnulfo was a leader in negotiating gang truces. He’s been doing it since just after the war ended in ’92, the same year gangs started escalating violence. He’s been working between MS-13 and 18th Street since then and has facilitated conversations between Crips, Bloods, and the Salvadoran gangs.”
“Where did this happen?”
“In Slauson Park, near the corner of Compton and 54th. That’s where I’ve been staking out.”
“Compton and 54th? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. What’s the big deal?”
“That’s the corner of 1466 East 54th. Do you know what happened there in 1974?”
“No. I was a ten-year-old living in El Salvador, Jack. How the fuck would I know?”
“That’s the address of the hideout of the Symbionese Liberation Army.”
“Who?”
“Some called them the first domestic terrorist group in the United States. I was hired by Patty Hearst’s family to help find her, and that’s where the cops had a shootout with them. The cops ended up burning the house down. It was national news. The shootout was one of the earliest examples of copaganda, a commercial for the new, more militarized police units that were starting to appear: Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT. The cops used the SLA to justify bringing in heavy artillery, tanks, and other stuff that is ‘normal’ today.”
“This sounds like El Salvador,” Rocky says, “constantly looking for communists, subversivos, and other terroristas to justify the militarization of communities.”
“Yep. You need terrorists to keep police budgets fat.”
“Fuck. Arnulfo was one of the loudest voices calling to demilitarize and defund LA’s police force.”
“But how do death squads fit in when they have what sounds like pretty solid evidence pointing to Guardado? Why not accept their results?”
“That whole killing-with-a-machete shit feels fake.”
“So who do you think did this?”
“Cops are looking at it from a typical US perspective, when what you need is a Salvadoran lens. I tracked down this kid, a young ex — gang member in the church Guardado belonged to. I found out he’s involved in some small-time illicit shit, cornered him, got him to give up some info. He’s scared. Told me it was the escuadrones.”
“Death squads?”
“Yes.”