George recognized the sounds, six distinct shots in rapid succession and a siren, and later more sirens. Nothing was more chilling. Five minutes elapsed after the first siren. Three in the morning the shots woke him up. Not quite awake. Confused. Courage.
The first time in his life that he heard live shots. Shit! He was lying directly under an open window, under a clean sheet and on a fresh pillow. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. What was that? George sat straight up. Up to that point he’d slept soundly. “Shots,” he thought. ”It ends in death. Death is final.”
Then fully awake he lay on top of the sheets. With small, dull eyes he stared at the ceiling, and his lips twitched. His ear caught the sound of another siren. He wondered who got shot and tried to think of something else. Anything else. But unfortunately he couldn’t.
And he felt lucky to have a roof over his head. There now…there now; indeed he was lucky. George hadn’t yet gotten use to his new bed. Moonlight lit the room, and he’d opened the window to feel less confined. Lying in the middle of the bed he then felt too exposed. Yet he wanted to be left alone. Besides who could he trust?
In the morning he’d try to avoid his old mistakes. He’d reveal less of himself. He’d seen how he embarrassed the three sisters. Also he’d make himself useful, find out more about the people living in the house, and then observe what their insides were like. He didn’t think they could hurt him. No! He thought it was too late for that anyhow. He’d already jumped into the water. Now he’d have to swim, or would he?
Let’s speak of something else. Try to sleep. Another killing. To what end? George opened his eyes again and stared at the ceiling fan. Another siren. He wondered who shot whom.
Here was what Cesar remembered about his childhood: the daily reception he received from two bullies in his second grade class, and how he was left in a ditch after a thorough beating. Even living with a limp he refused to believe that he deserved the ridicule and that somehow he provoked the beatings. Only if he’d told his mother, or his teacher, someone, maybe the abuse would’ve stopped. The first question asked by his mother: “Well, where have you been?” In other words tell her and help her understand why he couldn’t stay out of fights. And he wouldn’t answer her. Even though he sometimes came home and went to school covered with blood, he didn’t snitch. He knew that if he snitched he’d get it. .
Not knowing who to accuse his teachers would ask, “What happened to you?” Answer: “I tripped and fell.” ”Right!”
And he’d get sent to the principal’s office. The principal: “Explain the black-eye.” “Or how did you get those nasty cuts on your face.” Right then Cesar let the principal know what he thought of him and didn’t anticipate the principal’s reaction to being called boss.
Guilty!
With each swat on the butt he got from the principal’s Enforcer, Cesar laughed and repeated, “Yeah, boss!” Whap! Boss! Whap! Boss! Whap, whap! How could Mr. Rogers then claim that he never spanked a child in anger?
Cesar’s toughness was, incidentally, quite apparent from the very beginning. Boss! And after so many decades hasn’t Cesar taught everyone who the boss was? Even in high school Cesar ruled the hallways. Then whatever happened to little Billy?
His mother made the following distinction: Cesar was distinguished from little Billy by how much he had to compensate for his limp.”
Bless her soul! A limp? Mentioned Cesar, and no one ever mentioned his limp. And no one knew when little Billy became Cesar, though everyone was aware of the transformation. Contrary to local lore he didn’t suddenly anoint himself boss but somehow managed to exhaust, wear down, weaken and render helpless his enemies, until there wasn’t any doubt about who won.
The adobe house where Billy grew up stood on busy Sixth Avenue and close to the railroad tracks and Sunset Park, and in close proximity to the heart of Tucson or the pulse of the city where most of the murders occurred and by the time little Billy started his transformation he personally knew about lawlessness. Sixth Avenue ran parallel to the railroad tracks, until it turned into the main highway heading south to the border. Interspersed with houses, the street had motels and bars, while little Billy’s house suffered the ravages of time. It was decrepit, with the ceiling in a back room literally falling down and was located in a part of town where most people were desperate. In fact little Billy felt ashamed of where he lived.
Even before his transformation little Billy felt he had to take care of his mother. After her husband skipped out on her Alma Gomez did her best but always just scraped by. As a single parent raising a kid required many sacrifices. People looking in from the outside didn’t realize how tough it was. For instance, what it meant to have to depend on the bus or having to walk when most people drove. Every morning Mrs. Gomez walked to work and worked cleaning motel rooms, clutching nothing but her lunch pail, and every afternoon little Billy, even in the first grade, came home to an empty house. The weight on little Billy came bearing down the most at night when after laboring all day his mother felt too exhausted to cook. They generally ate TV dinners, and he’d eat his on a tray in front of the television watching a half-hour of Dragnet. He obviously never believed the premise of the show, but if he didn’t learn anything else from it, it got him familiar with what to expect from the police.
Little Billy helped his mom and that didn’t leave much time for himself. With his mother as his focus he never asked to stay overnight at a friend’s house until he met Antonio. (Antonio’s influence will be dealt with later.) Little Billy slept close enough to his mother that he could hear her snore and found confront in that. Each morning he checked on her before he got himself ready for school. Mrs. Gomez, on the other hand, without smiling, stayed focused on her own aches and pains. She had long braided hair and looked exhausted most of the time. She compared her hard life to hell, and hell stooped her before she was fifty. Hell actually unfolded in front their house every Friday and Saturday night. Little Billy had become Cesar by then, and before he was finished he’d raise plenty of hell.
Cesar had a strong commanding voice and could be heard and understood for more than a block. Mrs. Gomez went to her priest for guidance. He told her to leave Cesar alone because of his maturity. She never said what she believed since she had never been that assertive. Cesar or little Billy? She always referred to Cesar as her innocent little Billy.
Antonio and his two bodyguards, Conrad and Julian, would arrive at Mountain View Elementary School in a black limousine every weekday morning at 7:50. On the surface this daily routine seemed unnecessary. This amount of protection for an elementary student seemed absurd to most observers. The idea had been for the Chicago mob boss to quietly retire with his family in Tucson where his children could grow up away from violence and he could grow old under the shade of a paloverde tree…overlook roasting in 115 degrees Fahrenheit. But resting in the shade never materialized, and he wasn’t fool enough to allow his son Antonio to ride his bicycle up and down the sidewalk without a couple of bodyguards slowly driving up and down the street beside the boy. The house was still there. With the iron front gate long gone the house looked pretty much the same as any other house on the block. The fuss at school caused by Antonio didn’t disrupt classes, though the buzz in the halls about him and his family never stopped. The school was just as lively after the final bell as it was in the morning. When he left the building Antonio always had two bodyguards waiting for him in a shiny limousine.
Almost always late little Billy would reach Mountain View just before the tardy bell rang. He’d run to class, and his day wouldn’t be complete without seeing the shiny black limousine pull away. The appalling idea that he had to walk to school…the humiliating taunts…his encounters with bullies and the principal’s Enforcer…all the blood and bruises and the black and blue marks so pissed him off that nothing could’ve kept him from getting even.
“What would the mob do?”
“Ask Antonio!”
Randy Ford
