Tales of Murder

chapter 9

 I knew Chico from the car wash in downtown Dallas that Vicki owned and my mother’s boyfriend managed.  I pulled up in my ’89 Corvette to get it serviced, and out came a flat-topped, wild-eyed Mexican worker dressed in rags to assist me.  When he approached, I got a good look at the crude tattoos carved into his dirty, dark skin, including the teardrop on his right cheek.  His gold tooth played peek-a-boo as his thick accent flowed out of his scarred lips.  I told him that I had come to see the manager as he leaned over my window to see my exposed legs in the driver’s seat.  I tried to gauge his age, but he hid it well.  I would have guessed mid-twenties if his skin hadn’t have been so leather-like, and I wondered how he got the jagged tattoos all over his body.  I pulled my car up and followed him inside to find Bob the manager. 

Vicki loved Chico.  She used every excuse possible to throw her money at him.  Fill her Jaguar up with gas.  Run across the street to grab lunch for her.  Shine her shoes.  One hundred dollars here, fifty dollars there for the smallest tasks.  Chico loved Vicki too.  She was the one who made sure that he had gotten the job.  He had no driver’s license, was an illegal immigrant in the country, and he had a criminal record—to say the least.  Chico had just gotten out of prison after serving a ten-year sentence for the murders that he had committed.  And what was Vicki’s next generous donation to Chico?  The bedroom next to mine in her house.

  When Chico moved in, my mother was not happy.  Although she was never there, she did not like the idea of him sleeping just a few feet away from me, but the issue soon become out of sight, out of mind to her, so I was left with him.  As a naïve eighteen year old, I was excited about having someone to share my upstairs utopia with.  He and I became inseparable right away.  He never made any passes at me or looked at me like he did the first day that we had met at the car wash, so I felt safe around him.  We were buddies, or so I thought at the time.  We went joyriding in Vicki’s Jag around the wealthy neighborhood.  I wasn’t in school and didn’t have a job, and he took time off from the carwash with the excuse that Vicki had urgent gardening that needed to be taken care of, so he and I spent every waking moment together. 

One morning I woke up to him banging on my bedroom door and yelling in half Spanish at me to get my a*s out of bed.  I opened the door squinting at the light, and there he stood covered in mud from head to toe, soaking wet holding two broken fishing poles and with a wide grin that showed off his gold tooth and gaps.  I threw on some old clothes and met him downstairs.  We hopped the back iron fence onto the country club’s golf course like two ten-year old mischievous boys and quietly ran over to the pond that he had fished the poles out of.  He started to explain to me how to cast a line, but I just laughed, reared back, and gracefully let my lure sail through the air with a soft ker-plunk in the center of the pond.  He starred at me, and then broke into a laugh.  For hours, we fished, pushed each other into the water, and competed for golf balls at the bottom of the pond.  Of course, all of this was illegal, so when a golfer came shouting and spoiled our fun, we high-tailed it back to Vicki’s.  The last thing Chico needed was a run-in with the police.

The cops did come though many times to Vicki’s house.  Any time Chico even stood in the yard, a neighbor called the police reporting a suspicious person.  This extravagant gated community inside one of the most expensive country clubs in the most elegant city in North Texas did not appreciate tattooed and scarred criminals having his way with their perfectly manicured lawns.  But Vicki came out and defended him every time, saying that he was temporarily staying with her until his odd jobs were completed.  Even as hired help, Chico’s presence was not welcomed.  There was nothing anyone could do though as long as he behaved, so Vicki would just usher him inside, and he would come up the stairs to find me and triumphantly tell me how he defied the law.

At night we watched movies in Vicki’s home theater.  On one particular night, we picked a Will Ferrell flick, but instead of paying attention to the comedy, we had the most in-depth conversation we had ever had.  I found out that Chico was forty, had too many children that he’s never met to count, and the tattoos had been scraped into his skin by his fellow inmates while in prison.  Abandoning all inhibitions, I asked Chico what his life had been like in prison, and how and why he ended up behind bars for so long.  He started at the beginning. 

Word on the street was that his illegitimate daughter had been raped, so he set out to find out who had done it.  When he got a lead, he planned an elaborate break-in to the alleged rapist’s apartment.  On the night that he stole the pistol, Chico picked the rapist’s apartment lock and snuck up behind him in the kitchen.  Chico grabbed his hair and threw him to the ground while putting a bullet in his leg.  After he was sure the man could not get up, Chico said to the man, “You raped my daughter, and I’m’a make sure you never do it again,” just before putting a bullet in his brain.  His story was littered with robotic I know I shouldn’t haves and I would never do it agains, as if his years in prison had programmed those sporadic sayings into his speech.  I saw no remorse in his eyes though, and as he continued, I learned that he did, indeed, do it again.

The second murder story took place in prison and was much more detailed and gory than the former.  I wanted to cover my ears at parts of his tale, but besides the uncontrollable looks of disgust on my face, I sat patiently and listened to his broken English.

Chico spent his first few years in prison as an outcast, as they all do, he said, until initiated.  When he finally got recruited into one of the Hispanic gangs, his initiation was already planned out for him.  In order to enter into the gang, Chico whittled a toothbrush handle on the corner of the lunch table everyday for weeks.  When the toothbrush became as sharp as a knife, Chico stripped down and entered the shower with his next victim.  When the other prisoner was all soaped up and the guards had left, Chico made his move.  With one swift movement, Chico spun around, and holding the toothbrush blade upwards in his fist, his right hook gouged the toothbrush into his victim’s eyeball.  As the prisoner writhed around on the slippery ground, the water pounding from the showerhead onto his face washing the blood away as quickly as it gushed out, Chico dried off and walked out. 

Again, his story was filled with emotionless phrases that were supposed to take the meaning of regret, but I was glad to have him on my good side.  The police never found out who had committed the crime, as the soap had taken care of the fingerprints and the man had died by the time the shower session was over, and Chico was released on good behavior after serving half of his sentence.  He did not say this with arrogance, and I was not under the impression that he had enjoyed committing the murder, just that he was indifferent to the murder; it was something he had to do, so he had no problem doing it.   

We sat quietly for a while, watching the movie.  He laughed at the actor’s absurd behavior, but I just sat there rolling his accounts over in my mind.  I had trusted Chico despite my basic knowledge of his crimes, but when I heard the details spill from his lips as if he was reading a newspaper, I began to think twice.  And his behavior from then on only reinforced my apprehensions. 

The next day when I was taking a bath in our shared bathroom, I jumped at the quiet creak of the knob turning.  The lock caught the handle, and I silently thanked God that I had remembered to lock it.  The incident was never mentioned, and I tried to act normally around him.  My nineteenth birthday came a few days after the heart-to-heart talk, and Vicki, Chico, my mother, and her boyfriend Bob had a big restaurant dinner planned.  Bob informed me that Chico had been telling the guys at work that I was his girlfriend.  I blew it off by telling him that I didn’t believe him, which was more hope than truth.  I took pictures with everyone as a group before we went out, and one alone with Chico at his request.  He had bought me a card, and in Vicki’s handwriting was a sweet, respectful message from him on the inside.  The dinner went well.  The next day Bob called to tell me that the picture of Chico and me was on the wall by Chico’s locker at the car wash, and when Bob told him to take it down, he just shrugged and said, “Hey, she’s legal, Hombre.”  I said goodbye to Vicki the next day and left.  I never saw Chico again.

Author's Note

Memoir chapter 9. Not edited fully yet.