Garbage Man

Needed to speak to Justin Laboa. Figured the best thing would be to smuggle a phone in somehow. Ilana hit on the idea of a garbage truck. Laboa pushed the dumpster out for pickup, pulled it in after pickup. We got some filthy gray jumpsuits, headed out on trash day, and Ray gave the sanitation engineers a nice tip to let us borrow the truck. Ilana had a good time driving it, and she let Solana play with the forks. Ray and I hung on the back.

Sure enough, Laboa pushed the dumpster down. Security — a rent-a-cop also not allowed to leave the site — asked where the regular guys were, we told him stomach flu. Ray chatted up Barney Fife while I helped Laboa push the dumpster back. I told him I was a Federal Agent and was going to get him out. Was afraid he was going to start crying and hug me and blow it right there. I slipped him a phone with text and camera and told him to contact me later. He held it together.

This was coming together.

Corazini

Had Solana whip me up a perfect fake Immigration and Customs Enforcement ID, using the name Charles Palin. No relation. Wanted to play to Corazini’s sense of citizenship, and when I paid her a visit in her office it paid off. Told her she wasn’t under investigtion, we know all of her staff are legal, but we were investigating a neighborhood in the Foothills where illegals had been reported.

She gave me all the info on the staff assigned to the Intentionality Meditation compound. Three people, all live on site, all have their paychecks sent there. Two of them have no family listed, which figures. No one to notice if they vanish. One has a sister, but when I checked her out she said they don’t talk much and it wasn’t unusual that she hadn’t heard from him since Christmas.

He was the guy that looked nervous when he was taking out the garbage, though.

Changed out of my Fed suit and back into BDUs, surveilled the compound some more. Justin Laboa, the garbage man, was the key, Just needed to find a way to talk to him.

Cult

Things are moving quickly, so I’m not finding myself with a lot of time to document recent events. I investigated Intentionality Meditation some more, because we’ve traced the Unborn Venom to their compound in the Foothills. It’s in a wealthy neighborhood, the home of some real estate mogul. We know there’s construction going on inside, to retro-fit it into dorms for cult members.

I spent some time surveilling the place from out front, and watching MDO people watching the place in shifts as well. There are 4 MDO guys in rotation, and they always park in the same spot, which means they’re either sloppy or they don’t care if they’re spotted.

I headed up into the hills above the place to get a better view, and to avoid any issues with the MDO. The only people that come and go are cult members, who all wear khakis and polo shirts. Very yuppie for cultists, but this is the Foothills. I saw a guy in jeans taking out the garbage, and he looked terrified, like he didn’t want to be there at all.

A little research and I was able to track down what agency the cult is using for its labor staff. A place called Tucson Maid and Landscape, local employment agency. Teresa knows the owner a little bit, a Chamber of Commerce member named Susan Corazini. Not a place we’d use for job placement, Corazini is apparently a good upright citizen, a staunch Republican and a McCain supporter in the last election. She’d never hire an illegal in a million years.

Need to talk to her. Need to find out more about the staff inside, see if they could be a way in, or a way to get more intel about the inside.

Ilana

The other day Ilana came up to me and asked me if I’d like it if she were okay with me marrying her mother. I told her yes, I’d like that very much. She told me there was something I could do. I wasn’t quite ready for her response, and was actually ready to defend myself. She told me that I had to ask her dad if it was okay. If her dad was okay with me marrying Teresa, then Ilana would be okay with me marrying Teresa.

Her dad’s been dead for eight years. He was killed in the same MDO sweep that killed Solana’s parents. I’m realizing for the first time how badly that jacked her up. I knew she was a rebellious, strong-willed kid, but I never realized she might be off balance in the ways Solana is. Then again, everyone’s always treated Solana with kid gloves and sort of assumed Ilana could handle herself.

No idea how this will play out, but I don’t see it ending well. I almost half inspect him to show up.

Eduardo

Ray and Teresa have been keeping me out of the dealings with Eduardo, primarily because my opinion is to simply have him killed and be done with it. Yes, if he falls, someone else will pick up the torch and start running drugs, but that person won’t have the resources Eduardo has and likely won’t be so deeply tied to the Gomez family and drag everyone under. But he is family. That counts for something. We can’t get him arrested, because he’s sell us all out, so we end up having to protect the bastard. We can’t just let him get killed in a drug war with the MDO or the OMM or any other cartel, because to them a Gomez is a Gomez and we’re all screwed.

I feel like a babysitter sometimes. We’re babysitting Eduardo’s ass while he ramps up to get into the drug business, that what we’re doing.

His wife came north to talk to Ilana. Apparently tried to get her on board, looking to position her as the next capo. Ilana, true to form, reportedly told her to pound sand. Good for her.

Ray’s negotiating with Eduardo. They’re trying to fucking Michael to come in and negotiate with Eduardo. There’s no good and to this.

Solana

Solana’s been seeing a boy. That’s great. It’s normal. It’s what 18 year old girls should be doing. Given her problems, it’s amazing and something to celebrate. Then Ray calls me and tells me the kids she’s dating is Special Agent Wang’s son. Small world. Ray was a little freaked out, and gave her the talk (again) about not talking about the family business in front of this boy. She’s pathologically incapable of lying, which is actually one of her endearing qualities, but it can be a liability to the family business. Telling her not to date the boy wouldn’t work, it would probably just confuse her, and Ray knows her well enough not to take that tack.

After I hung up with Ray, I called Wang. I asked him what his son’s intentions were. When he asked what the hell I was talking about, I told him his son was dating my future step-niece. I tried to sound serious, like a concerned parent, and then I cracked up. He told me I was a jerk and hung up on me. This will hopefully accomplish what I want. He’ll forbid his son from seeing Solana because the girl’s part of a crime family, and the boy will either obey his father or he’ll rebel and clam up around his dad. He may even try to co-opt his son as an informant, while will likely result in the kid being torn and siding with the cute girl. In any case, it shuts down the possibility of the kid passing along anything Solana might accidentally let slip. Unless of course the boy isn’t governed by hormones and a deep resentment of his parents like other kids his age. Given the fact that his dad’s an FBI Special Agent and he’s in community college, I’m going to guess he doesn’t have his father’s discipline or intelligence, or he’s got other issues keepiung him out of Harvard. Not sweating this one at the moment.

Is This What Normal Looks Like?

Elana, who suddenly no longer wants to be called Mercedes, is giving Teresa fits. She’s upset that her mom’s getting remarried, which is understandable. I don’t think I’m good enough for Teresa either, so we’ve got no argument there, but it doesn’t mean I won’t try. Elana also has a new boyfriend, who used to be a banger in San Diego. He probably dealt drugs, and he may have shot someone. I checked up on him, because my job is to provide security for the family, and because Teresa asked me to. Elana sees it as a violation of trust, I’m sure, but I’m willing to give this Roberto kid the benefit of the doubt. For a start, he left San Diego and moved away from his gang buddies. There’s no indication he’s got connections out here. He seems to have moved to get away from that life. As Elana and I both pointed out to Teresa, he may be suspected of a shooting but he was never charged, and I’ve shot plenty of people in my time for reasons related to the lifestyle. I also told Teresa that Elana can handle herself. If the boy tried anything untoward, Elana would feed him to her dogs. Given the way she grew up, I also don’t think she’d relate to a kid that hasn’t tasted the life. Roberto’s more likely to understand her, what she’s gone through, what she’s struggling with now. I’m giving the kid a chance.

I’m more worried about Solana right now. The meds are working, she’s taking classes, she’s functional but she’s still following Elana around like a puppy dog, and that’s going to explode soon. Elana moved out, and Solana took that as rejection. So Solana moved out, into the same apartment complex. Neither Teresa nor Elana nor Ray can make her completely understand. I’ve been trying to hold back, give the kid some room, but Teresa calls her every day to check on her, and I drop by once or twice a week to make sure she’s got groceries and is taking her meds.

Is this what normal feel like? Yeah, there’s stress with the girls, and the normal cargo transport, and Special Agent Wang hovering in the background, but life at the moment doesn’t involve shootouts with drug cartels or demons lurking in the shadows. Not that they aren’t there, not that they won’t return, but if family is the worst I have to deal with I’m counting myself as blessed. Actually, having a family to deal with makes me feel blessed. Frankly, I feel less creepy watching over Solana now that I am part of the family and not just a cop with attachment issues. How long has it been since I lived in an actual house with actual furniture? Unless I’m on a delivery run, I’m driving a nice car and wearing suits and taking Teresa to nice restaurants. I’m doing CI investigations for Wang not so much to keep him off my back or out of a burning desire to take down the Original Mexican Mafia as to keep busy. I’m a “security consultant”, that’s what my business cards say and that’s how I’ve got Teresa funnelling my money for tax purposes (my client list is confidential, of course, to explain why I don’t have any reciepts).

Teresa’s given me something the Marines and the DEA never did: a sense of belonging somewhere, and a sense that what I do matters.

Clarity

Trina Nunez was a ghost. We tracked down the guys that raped her, killed her, and stole her baby to put her to rest.

The meth was poisoned by an evil artifact that was also in the backpack. Indiana Jones stuff. Thing’s still out there. The Montes de Oca’s have it, and no one knows what they plan to use it for. If they plan to use it for anything. Jose Montes de Oca could just think it’s pretty and keep it on his mantelpiece for all I know.

Just in case anyone reads this thing after I’m dead, those two bits of information might help make things make a little more sense. Whether it makes sense because you believe it or whether it makes sense because it confirms that I’m crazy is a toss up.

Teresa Cruz

Ray Saavedra asked me a while back about how long Teresa and I have been together. I don’t want to say we kept it secret, more like we kept it private, for a long time. There was one night, months ago, I don’t even remember when it was, something happened and I think it was either Solana or Mercedes that called everyone up and asked us to get to the house right away. Teresa and I showed up together. It raised some eyebrows but there was also a lot of denial, no one said anything or brought it up again. I figure it was hard on Mercedes especially, trying to image her mom with anyone other than her dad. That’s one of the reasons Teresa and I kept it private, while the two of use saw how things went. Ray asked me if it was before that. I just told him yes, it was before that. I while before that. I didn’t tell him how long.

I’m pretty sure that I had a thing for Teresa from the first time I met her. She’s gorgeous, she’s smart, she’s self-confident, it would be hard not to find her attractive. It was after the Gomez family massacre, after I’d pulled Solana out of that house of Hell. The kid was traumatized, practically catatonic. I insisted on riding with the EMT’s back to the hospital. I figured I’d sit there until someone from Child Protective Services showed up, I didn’t really think about surviving adult members of the family. Teresa, Solana’s aunt, came to claim her. Teresa’s own daughter, Mercedes, was the same age and they were already like sisters, so it just made sense that Teresa would take her in and eventually adopt her. We talked a little bit then, not much. I was the cop, it was a family matter.

Over the years I checked in. I felt an obligation to let Teresa know I was working the case, trying to bring the people that committed this atrocity to justice. Even after the DEA moved on and away from the case, let it go cold, I kept working it. It was personal for me, and Teresa knew it. I became a friend of the Gomez family, even though I knew they were coyotes and they knew I was a cop. That difference wasn’t something we talked about. I didn’t think Solana, this little girl who’s watched her parents get killed, was any less deserving of justice because her parents had been criminals. I didn’t think the surviving members of the Gomez family, the wives and kids and uncles and aunts, were any less deserving of justice because their family members had be executed by a rival drug cartel. There were people not directly involved in the drug war. Their relatives in the drug trade weren’t killing in a shoot out with the Montes de Oca cartel. They were executed, in their homes, men, women, and children, young and old. If they’d found Solana, they would have killed her, too. That she was alive was a miracle.

Anyway, I stayed in touch. Once in a while I’d drop a line, make a phone call, stop in the copy shop, just to left Teresa know I was keeping the case alive, and ask about the girls. I sent presents on birthdays and Christmas, without names, Solana and Mercedes had no idea who I was, other than maybe some vague knowledge that I was one of the DEA agents on scene at the massacre. Teresa and I became friends, that was all. It evolved into an occasional lunch, a cop of coffee now and then, that’s it.

The official story of how I was recruited into the Gomez organization is that Michael Saavedra recruited me. He saw that I was available talent, and suggested to Rafael Gomez, the head of the family, that they pick me up. Technically, that’s true. That’s how I understand it happened, that’s what Rafael told me, Michael Saavedra stood up for me and Rafael agreed and offered me a job. Now, why would the head of the Gomez family so readily offer a cop a job in a criminal organization? Because they knew me. Because they knew I cared about the family, and looked in on the girls and Teresa, that I was already a friend of the family. Because I’d gotten fired for insisting the Gomez family was deserving of justice. I think Rafael was doing me a kindness, repaying my kindness over the years by giving me a job. I’d never met Rafael before. I’d met Michale once or twice before, in passing, at the copy shop, and only really knew him through his rap sheet. Michael had no reason to stand up for me. Rafael had no reason to truth me enough to bring me in. It had to be Teresa.

How long have Teresa and I been going on, Ray? It depends on how you define it. We’ve been friends for around eight years. We started getting involved romantically once I started working for the organization. When it happened, and it just sort of happened, it felt natural, like it was a long time coming. Like it was something that was supposed to happen.

The night the shadow was coming for Solana, the night I was ready to sacrifice myself to keep it from taking Solana, the night I decided I was sick of lies and living this dysfunctional, segregated life, I bought a ring. I told Mercedes that I was in love with her mother and was going to ask her to marry me. Mercedes laughed at me, but I told her I was just being straight up with her. I told Solana, and true to the way her mind works and the bluntness with which she deals with the word got confused and said she thought we were just having sex and didn’t know we were dating. God love that kid. Ray laughed at me, thought I was crazy, but I think he respected me for going for it even though he thought I was going to get shot down.

For her part, all Teresa said was “not yet.” I told her that I wanted to tell her, because I was afraid I wasn’t going to be around in the morning, and I wanted her to know. She told me I was brave, and that she believed in me, and knew we’d all get through that terrible morning. And we did. We bound the demon, or did whatever it was we did to sent that thing back where it came from and keeping it from coming back. A few weeks later, Teresa and I got engaged for real .

Look at me, I’ve got a life.

Little Frankie

Since I’m playing true confessions and reflecting on my personal lack of guilt and remorse, I might as well write about Little Frankie.

Francisco Mendez, Little Frankie’s father, is a legendary coyote. They guy allegedly broke someone out of a prison in Mexico, got him across the U.S. border, and deposited him in an American prison without any prison guards on either side having a clue. In a normal world, I’d write that off as a big fish story. Having seen too much of this occult stuff for me own personal tastes, it just makes me want to load up on silver bullets and holy water before doing any business with the Mendez family.

The Gomez family cut a deal with Francisco to use one of his routes. I don’t know the business details, but Francisco is retiring and turning operations over to his son Reynaldo. This route is a tunnel, what looks like a natural cavern, with entrances on either side of the border. It starts deep inside Mexico, far from the border, and comes up probably 30 miles inside the U.S. The freaky part is that when you’re in the tunnel, it’s only a mile or two walking distance from one end to the other. There’s something occult about it, obviously. We used it exactly once, and that’s where we picked up the guy that had escaped from the monster. That’s where that whole line of trouble started.

I’ve already written about the monster getting pissed off about us stealing its toy and wanting to take Solana instead. Well, the information we got from people who know about this demon shit is that it can only move around outside the cave because it cut a deal with someone, and that someone was Little Frankie. He wanted to be the legend, he was jealous that his father was giving the reigns over to Reynaldo, and who knows what else was wrong with him. He made some kind of deal with the thing in return for power.

I swear more when I’m writing than I do when I actually speak. I don’t get that.

So Ray and I grabbed him. Little Frankie was laying low, but I used to be a cop, I find people, that’s what I do. Found out that the Mendez family has a long-lost junkie sister, a meth head, and she and Frankie were what passes for close among junkies and demon-dealing scumbags. I think I already wrote about that, months back. Anyway, Little Frankie just laughed at us. He wasn’t afraid. He had a badass demon on his side. So I told him that based on the information we had, this monster can only move around because it had some kind of contract with Little Frankie. The way I saw it, no Frankie, no contract, no monster. If I cut Frankie’s fucking head off, problem solved. He didn’t think I’d do it, so I shot him in the knee. When he stopped screaming and bleeding, he still gave me lip, so I shot him in the other knee. At that point he was willing to share some useful information. The thing wasn’t able to move around because whatever deal Frankie made allowed it to. The thing could move around because it was bound to the area of the cave but Frankie had set it free. Killing Little Frankie wasn’t going to stop the monster.

Little Frankie told us other stuff, too. about how he’d feed the thing sacrifices, kids between 12 and 16 years old, to keep it happy and get it to do him favors. Now, there’s no physical evidence of that, obviously. demon sucks kids down to hell. No court of law’s going to lock someone up for that. I could go through all sorts of hoops to find evidence of other crimes to convict Frankie of and put him away, but that requires faith in the legal system that i just don’t have. So I was ready to put a bullet in Little frankie’s head and be done with it.

Ray talked me out of it. Not that Ray disagreed with me, but he was the one with the level head in that moment. People had seen Little Frankie snatched. It wasn’t prudent to be dropping bodies in our own back yard. And things could get messy with Reynaldo. So Ray talked to Reynaldo, explained what had happened and why, and explained that if we ever saw Little Frankie again he wasn’t coming back. Reynaldo sent someone around to collect Little Frankie. I don’t think things went much better for him once his brother got ahold of him, but you never know. Family makes people do strange things.