But a chance encounter with a man called Razor had changed things. Razor worked for a Salvadoran named Diego Alturaz, who’d come to the west coast of Florida from Miami to organize the many street gangs in the predominantly Hispanic communities. Razor and Diego were MS-13, and soon grew the gang to a couple dozen members.
Given the choice of remaining on his own and competing against the notorious gang or joining it, Bones had agreed to work for Razor. He still made the same money, maybe a little more, even though he was now moving over half a pound of product every night. The upside was, he no longer had to babysit his customers, which suited Bones just fine.
In just the last two weeks, his customers, mostly hookers, had begun to disappear. Five days earlier, Razor had learned that the disappearances were caused by a rival gang to the north—the Lake Boyz of Harlem Lakes. He and Diego began making plans.
MS-13 had been providing protection for a number of crack whores, in exchange for a fee. They’d started there and then expanded their extortion to legitimate businesses in the area. The disappearances of the prostitutes they were protecting was an embarrassment to the new chapter of the gang.
The disappearance of one of the hookers hit close to home for Bones. His cousin, Carmel Marco, had vanished earlier in the week. While Bones and Razor were out looking for her, a bunch of the Lake Boyz had kicked in the door of Razor’s place and trashed everything. Carmel’s little boy had been staying there while she worked the streets, and he had also turned up missing.
With the hookers gone, MS-13 lost an income stream, and acquired the shame that loss brought from other chapters. The answer was simple. Get more hookers. Diego came up with the idea of just making them, instead of finding them.
Bones had been assigned to sit on several new girls that other gang members had snatched up from more affluent neighborhoods in the suburbs and surrounding towns.
The girls the gang kidnapped had been taken to one of the many crack houses in the area, where they’d been gang-raped repeatedly. All the while, they were shot up with meth until they’d become as addicted as the average street whore.
Bones’s job was to keep them as high as he could without killing them, until it was determined they were loyal to the gang. If one got out of line, he raped and beat her until she became submissive. Bones enjoyed that part of the training and was good at it.
Razor had come up with the idea to strike back at the Lake Boyz in the same way. That was why Bones was sitting in a motel room, waiting.
With his African-American looks and Salvadoran heart.
The first time, he’d been nervous. Bones had picked up a black hooker on MLK four nights earlier. He’d taken her to a crack house a few blocks away, where he’d offered her a rock of crack cocaine, which she’d greedily smoked. When she’d lain back on a dirty mattress, he’d simply fallen on top of her and strangled her.
She’d struggled, but not much. Her brain had been so fried, she’d thought he’d just wanted rough sex and even urged him on. The excitement of killing her and avenging his cousin had stayed with Bones for the rest of that night.
The second murder was even easier, but Bones took advantage of the moment and did have rough sex with the puta, waiting to choke her to death until the end.
There was a knock on the motel room door.
Bones rose slowly from the bed and moved quietly to the door, like a jungle cat stalking its prey.
He looked through the peephole and just outside, a black woman stood, fidgeting nervously.
There wasn’t anyone with her, so he unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.
“You the guy who called Tavarius?” she asked.
She wore a simple blue tank top with a square neckline and short, cutoff jeans, both of which she filled out quite well. Bones could tell by the way she kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other and rubbing her arms that she was a tweaker.
“Yeah,” he replied. “If that was who I talked to. Never got his name till now. I got a number from a brother—a number I could call if I wanted to party.”
“Let’s get this party started,” the hooker said, as she came into the room. “You got any party favors?”
Bones closed and deadbolted the door. “Yeah, I got a little weed.”
She turned and rubbed at both forearms. “Just weed?”
Bones grinned, as the rubbing of her arms caused her boobs to bounce up and down. “I got a little ice.”
The woman eyed him cautiously. “How do I know you ain’t a cop?”
Bones just shrugged and took a small vial from his pocket before unfastening his pants and pulling them off.
Inside the vial was a dime rock of meth. He placed the container next to a cheap crack pipe and a fat joint lying on the table. Then he picked up the joint and lit it. The pungent smell of marijuana quickly filled the room.
“Cops don’t get high ’n’ naked with someone they about to bust.”
Lying on my bunk in the aft stateroom, I thought about what I’d asked Billy to do. Sure, it could get dicey, but knowing him, if anyone got hurt, they’d have had it coming.
I knew the area where Callie and her family lived. I’d grown up not far from there. It was a rural area, just up the river from Fort Myers. Billy knew that part of the Caloosahatchee better than anyone, except maybe his dad. He’d be in his own element and able to keep an eye on things. If he had to intervene, I knew
