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The second time I woke up, I got out my photo album and flipped through to the last photograph in the bunch. It was of Ali shortly before her death. She’d sent me a shot from her cell phone; I’d had it printed specifically for the album. She was in some dive bar somewhere with a neon jukebox in the background; the red lights gave her light blonde hair a pink hue. She was wearing a white tube top and low-slung jeans, and I could see the butterfly tattoo she’d gotten above her right hipbone for her 18th birthday. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, she looked happy and alive as she smiled and flashed me a ‘V’ with her fingers.
I don’t know exactly what she meant by the gesture, but I interpreted it as ‘V’ for victory.
That’s what I was aiming for, come hell or high water: victory.
For me, that meant her killer in prison for the rest of his life.
And no man was going to come between me and that victory, ever.
No matter how goddamn sexy he was.
I was finally able to go to sleep shortly before dawn, with the photo album laid out next to me on the threadbare sheets.
I didn’t dream of Jack Pollari again.
I only dreamt of my cousin, still alive and sweet and happy…
…and of a shadowy man whose face I couldn’t see, in a prison jumpsuit, behind bars.
19
The next morning, I did some internet research on Jack Pollari and Lou Shaw. Specifically, I got their criminal records off one of those background check sites.
It’s amazing what you can buy on the internet for 29 bucks.
Jack’s story held up completely. Two short stays in county jail, and a much longer one at the California Institution for Men in Chino, California for aggravated assault.
The victim had been one Rodrigo Alvarez. Just for kicks, I Googled him, too.
Jesus.
The mug shot alone was fucking scary. A bald Mexican dude with a killer’s eyes and three teardrops tattooed on his cheek, not to mention an entwined S and M in gothic font on his neck. He looked like he was about to go postal on the police photographer.
There’s some competing theories about teardrop tattoos. According to Sid, they were originally forced on someone who’d been raped in prison to mark them as a ‘prison bitch.’ But the victims lied to their friends and family when they got out, claiming the tattoos meant they’d killed people on the inside. Now that had become the popular meaning over the last thirty years, especially as popularized by rappers who did time.
I was pretty sure the guy in the photo hadn’t been raped. I guess it was possible, but judging from that psycho face… probably not.
Which made me wonder whether those three tattoos were there for the other reason.
The SM tattoo was easy enough to figure out with a Google search – and no, it wasn’t sado-masochism. It was the symbol for the Santa Muertes, a Hispanic biker gang named after the unofficial patron saint of murderers and drug dealers. Their official emblem looked like a hellish inversion of the Virgin Mary: a graceful skeleton in a hooded robe, with a garland of grey roses on her brow.
The gang reputedly had ties to drug cartels back in Mexico. They were insanely dangerous, with not just drug-running but half a dozen murder charges headlining the top search results online.
Jack had beat up this guy, and not only survived, but gone to prison for it?
Whoa.
I knew Jack was badass, but I didn’t know he was that badass.
Louis Shaw was a different class of dangerous, though.
He’d done five years in San Quentin for voluntary manslaughter.
To quote Wikipedia, “Voluntary manslaughter is the killing of a human being in which the offender had no prior intent to kill and acted during ‘the heat of passion,’ under circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to become emotionally or mentally disturbed.”
I did a little more probing and learned that the voluntary manslaughter charge had been a plea deal. The original charge was second-degree murder.
Holy shit.
