Rigoberto “Diablo” Salcedo had a recurring nightmare. It was some time in the 70s when he was small. Living in a nameless Mexican village in the hills facing El Paso Texas. His mother had him young in East LA, both his parents were cholos from Varrio Nuevo Estrada. His dad ended up being a big man in the EME, been on Death Row for an overdosing the connect in drug house robbery in 1980. His mom left him in Mexico on vacation because she had to turn her self in to jail. She never did, or come back for him. His Abuela was a little blind woman who worked the local Brujas gathering herbs and special alcohol for love potions and rituals to contact the dead. She also ran a loteria game out of her bungalow.
As a kid Diablo loved candy. He could steal any thing to get some, and when caught Abuela would burn his back with grease from the hot stove. This left so many burns on his body he had more scar tissue than normal unburned skin. This made his tattoos look like melted cheese on burned bread. By the time he was 10 Abuela was hit by a military police jeep chasing a suspect up the hill. This meant that the local macho guys wanted the house and before the funeral was over every thing they owned was discarded in the street, picked over by goats, lepers and starving dogs. He lived on the streets for 2 years, stealing, hustling and running away from Catholic boys homes.
During this time he considered the priesthood. He learned to recite much of the Holy Bible in English, Spanish and some Latin. He didn’t have the spiritual aspect. To him it was a framework of grifting. If you could quote the Bible like the devil with a spiked tail, tourists and widows were more likely to offer you meals. This is where he learned about drugings. A couple times tourists slipped something in his drink and wronged him. Seeing those faces again, he subjected them to brutal assaults with bottles and sticks in the lonely allies where these types sought homeless children. Soon with his own arsenal of scavenged knock out drugs he made enough money to hire coyotes to guide him into San Diego from Tijuana.
Using these talents on people giving him a lift back to LA, he started to have strange addictions to luring people to lonely places and killing them. It could be a car full of christian girls on a charity mission, a rock band on tour or old white men with the long gaze of a pervert. Then he would guide them to some place to eat, or back into the trees where he would savagely strangle and beat them with a claw hammer or bowling pin. He liked stabbing the most but it left too many clues, and he was an ace about taking notes from cop shows. Every time he changed the M.O. Some times he would leave a tequila bottle in car and kick the gear shift into neutral, sliding it into a lake with popped tires. Other times a needle full of heroin broken off in vein, or a single gunshot to the lower mouth.
He has been good so far. Santa Monica College and UCLA were tempting hunting grounds but he didn’t want to shit where he eats. Always talking him self out of good chances. Sometime when walking along the bluffs by the pier he would find a girl crying about a lost love or a house wife drinking up the courage to jump. He would make them laugh, tell them enough lies to think he was an angel by their side, then spent the rest of the night roughly ravaging them in the bushes, doing messy cunnilingus on the corpse after they died. Always taking the ID and house keys, he would let him self into their house and see what was inside. A couple times he imagined he didn’t, he fell under their charm and let them invite him to come home with them. Making him meals and living that American apple pie dream. It lasted a day or two until they wanted the Mexican gang member with face tattoos to sneak outside so the neighbors wouldn’t see their double life. The shadows of late night weakness or lonely women cruising for hard young men to come inside, giving them something to live for.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
His night terrors were always less during these times. Sometimes he dreams of being in an apartment as a baby and watching the curtains burn, feeling abandoned by a teenage mother who went out to party with candles burning and windows opening in a storm. He sometimes feels eyes watching him as he walks at night. Feeling the voices of the unloved and murdered curse him from just beyond the street lights. Even if he was the leader of a big gang and had an army of little followers it didn’t keep the devils whispers away. He thought he heard so many stories of the damned in the still hours of the night. He never had a real job for more than a week. He tried auto work, tree trimming, pool cleaning and even painting abandoned stores at the pier for the city. His destructive nature was too much to stop as his urge to rip and slash and burn, powerful soul shaking, it was overwhelming.
Being in a store by himself or a nice house was too much. Kicking pottery, slamming dogs into the ceiling and crashing cars into fences was all he wanted. Crashing firme stolen rides into fire hydrants, sending a spray of fire lines into the air like Vegas. As a kid he used to like to smash the toilets at parks with a sledge hammer. The name for this was Misanthropist. He enjoyed violence and seeing calm days turn into screaming and dashing civilians panicked because he put firecrackers in a babies stroller or kicked an old man into traffic. He doesn’t know why, he just feels so good whipping a jogger across the face with a heavy chain or slashing throats at the porno theater. Even as a little chavalito he was busting windows with roller skates to steal comic books or climbing in windows to get his neighbors Nintendo. Breaking into cars to steal 8 track tapes he couldn’t even play. He even stole Christmas trees just to set them on fire to throw onto the freeway. A fortuitous time he met a bunch of famous traveling skate boarders and held them hostage in an abandoned strip mall down by Crenshaw for ransom. He got the money and instead of letting them go injected them with opiates, covering their faces and hands with cryptic heavy metal jargon in the same crayon from the note. Leaving a couple marked dollar bills tucked into their expensive basketball shoes. Leading the cops to think they planned it them selves.
This is what led to murder for hire. He did jobs for a couple Crime Families, what was left of the Italian and jew mob was pussy about murder now a days. They rather have a spick they never see again shoot their top guy at a traffic light or kick down a door to a secluded fuck pad in the hills to take pictures of a well known city council man dead with a young boy compromised. Outside the supposed gang war he also took jobs from the other Side. Jinx was at the same time the wife of a main founder of Ghost Town, but related to the Graveyard Bloods. Overtly their neighborhoods were kill on sight, but covertly he would clean house for her on his side. Knocking down rival dealers, planting evidence, luring enemies to be executed at meetings. Jinx wasn’t some enterprising mastermind, she was the spook mistress of the head of a squad of dirty sheriffs who sold dope and trafficked children on the side. These guys were plugged into city hall, the feds and the Israeli embassy. They even had special training for how to hide signs of torture on corpses from the Shinbet secret police with contracts to train cops stateside.
This meant Diablo had not just his rivals padding his pocket, but by proxy a license to kill from the cop side. He had no issue dressing like a swishy faggot to lure a group of bikers outside, right into he muzzle of a submachine gun belly high. He could also imitate surfers affluent accent of trust fund kids on the west side to zap porn distributors, strip club owners or rival real estate developers for the corporate side. He never met any body besides Jinx and a couple Sheriffs. They would drive him around looking at places and people, take him out to lunch with a envelope full or news paper clippings and photos. Then take him back to his detestable life where he would tie his mother off with dope, and sing her oldies songs while she called him by the name of his dead brother Timoteo who was her favorite before he got gay bashed in Hermosa Beach, found set on fire in a shopping cart by a group of skinheads back in 85.