Tag: #gangactivity

GTA

Circa 1994: Jersey City

The realization that your car has been stolen hits you like a Dodgeball in Gym class. It burns. Emotionally, it makes the same THWANG as when the rubber hits your skin. I had walked up and down the block several times, second-guessing myself, convinced I had parked it down the street from my apartment. “…Is it on the next block?” And so, to the next block I walked. Up and down. Several times.

To be fair to myself, it had been a few days since I last drove it. I lived in a city. It was easier to take public transportation than find parking, and everything I needed was within walking distance. It also wasn’t my car; it was my sister’s. My car was a 1968 Pontiac Lemans, Corvette yellow with a black top, and very easy to find. But I hit a pothole on the entrance to the Pulaski Skyway from Jersey City. The car wasn’t fragile. It was a beast. A metallic rattle indicated something was obviously broken or had come loose. Fortunately, I was on my way to visit my parents, and my Dad was mechanically inclined.

“I’ll take a look at it over the weekend,” my Dad said, handing me the keys to my sister’s silver, 1986 Toyota Corolla. He had just given it a tune-up. “She’s got the Nissan; she can use it for a few more days.” The Nissan was a spare car for situations like this. While my sister claimed the Toyota, it was still registered and insured by my Dad. Inevitably, she’d have a problem with me driving “her” car, but she’d have to take it up with him. 

I walked up and down the block, scrutinizing every silver car I saw. I didn’t know the license plate. I knew it was a silver Toyota…something, possibly four-door. I peered in windows, hoping to recognize the interior. I had only been inside the car twice, including that drive home. That distinct sinking feeling set in.

The car was stolen.   

I walked back to my apartment. I’d need all the info on the car to report it stolen, which meant I had to tell my Dad. I already knew how the conversation would go down, but hoped for the best.

“You left the keys in it!?” My Dad’s Italian temper went from 0-60 before I even finished my sentence.

“No, I didn’t leave the keys in it! I have the keys!” I jingled them next to the receiver.

“Then you left it unlocked!”

“No, Dad. I locked the car.”

“Then how did they steal it?” This was the story of my entire childhood. Nothing could just happen. There were no accidents. Someone had to be held responsible. There were four kids in the house, and yet everything that broke, went missing, or was damaged, all fingers immediately pointed to me. I existed, therefore I was guilty.

I interrupted his lecture, “I need to report it stolen, so whenever you’re ready, can I get all the information on the car?”

“I’m so glad I put all that time and money into making it run great for the thieves.” His sarcasm bit through me as he rustled through papers. I heard my Mom walk into the room. “Kristine left the Toyota unlocked, and it got stolen,” my Dad angrily reported.

“Way to go, Kristine,” my Mom hollered from wherever she was in the room.

“Jesus Christ! I locked the fucking car! I lock my car when I park it. Why would I suddenly forget to lock her car?”

“You just put me in a tough spot,” my Dad snapped. “I only have liability on the Toyota. Theft isn’t covered.”

I should have taken the train. Even walking the 30 miles home would have been less exhausting.

“I’m gonna have to call you back. Your sister has the registration card,” he said, followed by a loud punch to my eardrum from the receiver being slammed down.

I stood in my bedroom, looking at my phone, in emotional and physical limbo. I had to wait for my Dad to call me back with the info, so I couldn’t leave my apartment. I didn’t know whether to be angry or sad that he didn’t believe me, or amused that I, even briefly, had entertained the idea that our conversation might have gone differently.

Before I could settle on an emotion, my phone rang. That was fast. I braced myself as I picked up the receiver. It was my Dad, as expected. “A Detective just called me. They found the Toyota. He wants to talk to you, and I gave him your number.” That was all he said before hanging up.

Okaaaaay. It seemed odd, and I thought back to all the cop shows I had ever watched, trying to remember if Detectives investigated stolen cars. That question was answered when my phone rang a minute later.

“This is Detective Cashio. We found your Dad’s car this morning.” He sounded like every Detective on TV and in movies. “When did you last use the car?”

“Um, three days ago, when I drove it back to my apartment from my parents’ house. I was going to bring it back to them this morning. That’s when I realized it was stolen.” Scenarios played out in my head. They found it stripped somewhere in the Bronx. It was taken for a joyride and sustained extensive damage before being abandoned in an alley somewhere in Newark. “Where did you find it?”

“It was left running in a parking lot in North Bergen.”

“It was running?”

“It was also used as a getaway car in an armed robbery of a liquor store last night. The clerk was shot and killed. You know anything about that?”

I felt a twinge at the back of my skull. “Wait. What?”

“One of the assailants was described as a tall woman, 20s, with dark hair. I’m looking at a copy of your license, and you fit the description to a T. It says you’re 5’10. That’s pretty tall for a woman around here.”

It was as if all the air left my bedroom. “Wait. WHAT?”

“Where were you last night?”

“Um…uh…,” I had to think, what did I do last night? “I had the night off. I was home.”

“You didn’t go anywhere?”

The one night I had off from the bar I was too tired to do anything. “No. I stayed in. I watched TV until I fell asleep.” I ran through the programs in my head. Please don’t make me admit I watch Melrose Place.

“Can anyone verify that you were home all night?”

“…No.” Scenes from more cop procedural shows ran through my head. Not having an alibi was always a problem. Innocent people without them went to jail or were interrogated for hours.

“Did you have any friends in the car, or lend the car to anyone?”

“No.” As absurd as it was, I had to ask. “Am I in trouble?”

“This is a homicide investigation, Miss Bottone. This is a very serious situation…”

The shock suddenly evaporated, and my outrage/audacity/sarcasm kicked in at full throttle. “You’re telling me that you actually think I dropped my car off at my parents’ house in South Plainfield, drove my sister’s car back to Jersey City, and used it to rob a liquor store where someone was killed, ditched it five towns over, and then, what? Took the bus home? No, wait, I took a cab because I had money.”

Evidently, the Detective didn’t see the scenario as ludicrous as I did. “Did you just confess?”

“…What? No! Oh my GOD! I didn’t do any of that! I bartend at Texas Arizona in Hoboken! That place is packed all the time! I make a ton of money! I don’t need to rob a store!”

“I see.” The Detective took a long pause. I had hoped he thought my exasperation was amusing and would tell me he understood, and I was in the clear. Instead, he said, “I’ll need you to come in for a line-up. I’ll call you.”

If it wasn’t for the authoritative tone of the Detective and my Dad making me promise that I didn’t knock over a liquor store, I would have thought the whole thing was a bizarre joke. I walked around in a daze after the Detective’s call. In the meantime, my sister left several scathing messages on my answering machine, accusing me of leaving her car unlocked and listing the items she had left in it, demanding that I replace them immediately.

I never heard back from the Detective. But a few days later, my Dad called and said the Police were releasing the car from impound. Evidently, when they dusted the interior, they got prints from the assailants. The same prints were found in other vehicles abandoned in the same way and tied to other armed robberies. The result was anticlimactic, but I was in the clear, and that was good enough for me. I picked up the police report and bummed a ride to the impound yard.

Once at the impound yard, an employee escorted me to the car. I was expecting it to be trashed, with a broken window and a shredded steering column. I was shocked to find it pristine, except for the black powder coating the interior. The intact windows silently gaslit me. “I know I locked the car! How did they get in?”

“The same way they started it, without jacking up the steering column. They used a key,” the guy said.

“But I have the keys.”

The guy shook his head, amused. “Some of these older Toyotas have similarly cut keys. They must have had a Toyota key and went around trying doors until one opened. And if it opened the door, it could also start the car.”

“Get the fuck outta here!” I looked at the keys in my hand. “And they left it running so someone else would steal it,” I concluded.

“Not necessarily. The key got it started, but the mechanism might not have let it shut off the engine. So they pulled out the key and left it running. A running car without a key is too suspicious to steal.”

“Ah, good to know,” I laughed as I signed the paperwork. I tucked the very interesting but useless info into the corner of my mind and drove the car back to my parents’ house.

I was astounded that most of the things my sister claimed were in the car, CDs, designer perfume, and a gold-plated watch were still there. I suspected the other items were never there to begin with, and she, true to form, was trying to profit from the situation. Even the gas level was only a little under half a tank down from the three-quarter mark I started with. I considered myself extremely lucky. It was a different kind of luck, but it was still luck, nonetheless.

I exchanged sets of keys with my Dad, few words spent between us. I suspected the Detective told him about the universal key theory because the accusations of my leaving the car unlocked ceased. I was vindicated by someone outside the family, but he’d never admit it. I knew, on some level, it burned him. Even without an apology, I took it as a win.

Later that day, my sister called. I let my machine pick it up. I stood there, listening and smiling, as she screamed about how I hadn’t wiped off the black fingerprint powder. That. Was. Everywhere.  

If the Glove Fits…

Los Angeles: 2003

It was winter. Rain-filled days were abundant. The humidity was laden with the pungent aroma of orange and yellow Lantanas that lined the pedestrian walkway along the alley behind my building. The deep, evergreen leaves glistened with fresh droplets of a recent shower. It was my first full day off in a week from working two different bartending jobs. I desperately needed to grocery shop but was exhausted. The overcast sky killed what little energy and motivation I had.   

I cut down the alley to the liquor store on the corner. It was a spontaneous deviation from the little convenience store at the top of my street. The distance was two blocks longer, but the prices at the liquor store were a bit cheaper. I could buy more snacks for my money to stave off the consuming effort of buying real food for a few more days. I brought my dog Carmen with me, a petite Shepherd mix that I had rescued from the streets of Mexico.

The excursion was a bonus walk for Carmen, and I let her set the pace as she meandered and sniffed her way to the end of the concrete path. Once off the curb, it was a straight shot to the store, dirty asphalt lined with commercial property walls and dumpster alcoves the rest of the way. I glanced up at the sky as more ominous-looking clouds chased the misty grey hues further East as a storm steadily crept in from the ocean.

As we padded down the alley, Carmen lifted her head and nose up toward the sky, pulling in long, scent-filled breaths. Identifying something of interest in the air, she picked up her pace, eyes forward and intent on discovery. I assumed she caught a whiff of something coming from the pair of dumpsters up ahead. Even though I had taken her off the streets more than a year prior, her survival instincts habitually kicked in on walks. She could detect a discarded chicken wing in the bushes from a block away.    

As we approached the dumpsters behind the liquor store and neighboring Chinese restaurant, Carmen pulled and whined. I kept her leash taut, her nails raked the asphalt as she tried to get closer to the three-foot gap between the two metal bins. I turned my attention to the space, expecting to see a rat, a cat, or a possum grazing on spilled Chow Mein or fried rice. It was a mannequin hand.

“Fucking weirdo,” I said to Carmen with amusement as I forced her to continue walking.

Yeah, that was a mannequin hand, I thought, the image sharply ingrained in my mind. But something inside me rejected the assumption.

No, it was too inelegant to be a mannequin hand, my internal monologue debated.

A gardening glove, then, the assumption paired with another, that it fell off a gardener’s truck en route to or from a nearby property.

The inner debate continued as we rounded the corner and entered the store. I smiled at the clerk and headed to the snack stand toward the back, Carmen obediently at my side.

What kind of gardening glove goes that far past the wrist?

“Hm,” I said aloud, acknowledging the valid question as I collected two bags of Chex-Mix.

And it was all one color, and there was no elastic cuff at the end, the image was superimposed over the array of candy bars.

“A Whatchamacallit?! I haven’t had one of these in years!” I said to Carmen, my excitement hijacking the glove debate. I grabbed three and headed to the counter, snagging a bag of cheddar cheese Ruffles potato chips on the way. “This one isn’t making it home,” I said to the clerk with a cocked grin, sliding one of the bars to the side as he rang me up. He smiled and nodded as he bagged my items and gave me change.

I had the Whatchamacallit in my hand open and had taken my first bite in the ten seconds it took for me and Carmen to round the corner of the alley, heading back the way we came. The light, crunchy, and slightly chewy texture with the perfect peanutty, chocolatey, and caramel combo was heaven. It was right up there with the 100,000 Dollar Bar and The Reggie! from my childhood.

Then, I saw the glove again. The internal debate resumed. Coming from the opposite direction presented a different POV.

A discarded glove wouldn’t be…plump like that.

I switched Carmen to the opposite side of the dumpsters as we neared them. I stopped and stared at the glove. The new angle revealed a jagged bone protruding past the meaty end. “Oh! It’s a Halloween hand,” I laughed.

No, it’s not.

“It’s totally a Halloween hand,” I argued and peered at the bloated, ashen-colored left hand that was palm-side down.

No, it’s not.

I fixated on the thin, puckering line across the back of it. It looked like a healing scratch, recognizing the similarity of the dozens of cat scratches my own hands had endured over the years.

“Isn’t it?”

I carefully pulled it out from between the two dumpsters with the tip of my shoe, a light waft of a pungent, stinging odor came with it. I attributed the smell to the dumpsters. As my mind continued to ping pong, details began to register: the color gradation of blood, broken fingernails, chipped polish, and streaks of dirt. While it had all the artistry of a high-quality Halloween hand, it had one feature I had never seen on a prop before. A discoloration at the base of the ring finger. Like where a wedding band would have been.  

“No. It’s not.”   

While I waited for a patrol car, I remembered a weird email from a few weeks prior. A fwd from a friend of a friend from someone’s cousin, and so on. It was an alert about an alleged gang initiation or competition based on a scoring system. Human body parts were awarded points, requiring participants to reach a designated amount. I didn’t give the circulating tale much merit. An uptick in murders or people showing up at the ER claiming their appendages were stolen would make the news. As unlikely as it seemed, I couldn’t help but stare at the woman’s hand, wondering what its point value was.

The responding officer was lackadaisical up until he got a good look at the hand. Then, it was suddenly “Stand back, Ma’am,” followed by a roll of police tape from the trunk and a request for assistance over the radio. I gave my statement and left thinking, just another day in LA.      

A few weeks later, a series of torrential downpours turned canyon roads into rivers and flooded base streets due to debris clogging the sewer drains. A city worker had been dispatched to clear one of the blockages and discovered a large black garbage bag containing body parts. It was assumed they were from various victims as there were multiple right feet and limbs of different colored skin.