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panama jones | An LA Crime Story

Apr 05
0

Pacific Dreams

By | Serial | No Comments

At seventeen, Panama Jones was achingly, heartbreakingly beautiful… from his Mexican green eyes to the arch of his feet to the warmth of his smooth, sweet skin.
He didn’t think about it much, all he thought about while working part time as a janitor at the Vasquez senior center on Whittier Boulevard was making enough money to hang on to the studio apartment he shared with his mom, Lourde. 

After work on a Monday in August,  he cashed a paycheck for $237.12. He bought two milanesa tortas at La China Poblana and ate a late dinner with his mom at home. He put two hundred bucks in the drawer in the TV stand for rent. An hour later, Lorde’s boyfriend showed up with a stash. The two of them smoked an old one then found they were out of papers. “Do us a favor would you mind and get us some?” Lorde asked Panama. She opened the tv drawer, took out a five and handed it to him. She opened it enough that the boyfriend noticed the cash. Panama noticed the boyfriend seeing the cash. They locked eyes, for a second.

“Sure.” Panama told his mom as he took the five and left, hoping the weird feeling he had would go away.

Panama left, closed the door and was three yards down the hall when he heard the deadbolt latch shut. He went back and tried the door. Locked. He knocked. He heard them talking. He knocked harder. No one came to the door. And he knew. He wasn’t welcome. He said a silent goodbye to his mom, hit the boulevard and started walking. It was a little after eleven.

Panama dropped down Alameda to Venice then headed west. He bought a donut and coffee at the Donut King then didn’t stop until he hit the beach a little before seven am. He’d never been there before, never seen the ocean, never left home. The cool mist surprised him. It cocooned him.  He had three and a half dollars and nowhere to go but he knew he wasn’t going back.

Before the sun set that day, he ventured in. The force of the waves close to shore surprised him; knocked him down. 34 year old Chelsea was just ending a long ride on a short board. She grabbed him up. Then she took him in. For three months and four days, she called him “Baby.”

“Hey, Baby, bring that lotion over here. Lie down, now… roll over on your back.” Or “Baby, you hungry?” And sometimes, “Baby, you’re gonna break my heart.”. 

She shared her bed with him, her food and soon enough, her heart. She knew she couldn’t keep him but she tried.

“Just get in there, Baby, get in there. Hold your breath and dive under until you feel the rush pass over.” Chelsea taught Panama how to get past the first set of waves until they got to the breaks that were big enough to ride. He took to surfing like religion. Indeed, it was his savior. Every time he went under a wave, he forgot everything. Every single wound, every single fear. The first time he rode one, good things almost seemed possible. He used Chelsea’s board every morning while she was at work. But afternoons and weekends, she wanted it for herself.
“A good used one’s under two hundred bucks.” She’d tell him, “You can save that in no time bussing tables on the or even working at McDonalds.”

She could’ve bought him one but she knew he’d probably take it and run – he was starting to talk about the breaks at other beaches he’d heard about: Point Dume, San Onofre, Imperial, San Felipe. 

She also knew he could find another woman to buy him one. And he did. 

Women gave Panama everything: shelter, food, sex, pot, love. They turned him on to the chili verde at Felix’s in Redondo; the surf breaks at Solana, San Elijo, Rosarita; the strips at Huntington; Lady M weed; Astro Burgers’ onion rings; Kama Sutra positions four through sixty-nine and the Yellowtail marinated in tequila and lime at Joe’s café in Ensenada.

Panama had just finished a plate full of the fat, sizzled fish and was buying some twinkies – they called them “Bimbos” down there – at Boom Boom carneceria just down the street from Joe’s when he first met Leland Hays. He’d been between women for a few months, sleeping on the beach, making a few bucks selling joints to surfers from the two ounces of Salinas Gold a woman in San Diego had given him.

“Could get you killed.” Leland mentioned as he slipped Panama a twenty for a joint of the smooth weed.

“Hey man, be cool.” Panama backed away, “Just a couple sticks’s all I got–“.

“I am cool.” Leland leaned in, “Just sayin’, sellin’ can get dangerous. Cartel doesn’t like competition–”

“Three sticks. That’s all I got– just need a few bucks for food.” Panama walked away.

Leland’s words slowed him, “I can get you five, six hundred for a few nights work.  Easy money.”

“Easy money.” Words that should’ve made Panama run. But he was so young then… stoned and way less worldly than he thought. Five or six hundred was enough for a month’s stay at the San Ysidro Motel –  he was a little scared of sleeping on the beach ever since  a friend of a friend had got his head cut off one night sleeping at Imperial. Plus he could get a board of his own. He’d sold the second hand one a woman in Pismo had bought him – he’d had nowhere to keep it.

He followed Leland across the street.  As Hays got into a sweet, sweet ride – a new blue VW van, Panama was right behind him.

“How easy?” he asked.

Apr 06
0

Over

By | Serial | No Comments

Back in Joe’s, the Yellowtail burned. Lard-filled smoke veiled the air as Joe looked everywhere for Aggie, hoping she was somewhere inside. The door was still open a crack and through it came the wails of Steve and Rhea calling Aggie’s name over and over and over until their voices cracked. The fat man turned the stove off. No one found Aggie. It was nearing three o’clock.

Panama drove slow on the partially paved bumpy desert road that led Northeast, toward the border. He didn’t want to rush things, didn’t want to get to the crossing until it was dark; it made him feel less anxious – that and the Medusa weed buzzing his head. But it was the praying that got to him. It knocked him off his high, made him lose his cool.

“Please God.” The little girl said an hour into their journey. Her clear voice startled him. He looked at her. The churro he’d given her was lying in her lap, uneaten. The sunroof was still open. She held her hands up to the sky. “Please.” She prayed, “I want to go back now.”

In Spanish he told her to leave God out of it, that he was there to help her. “No no no. Dejar a Dios a solas.” He told her.”Yo voy a ayudar.”

Finally she let him know what he’d failed to figure out. “Mister I don’t know Spanish.”

Panama looked at her again, seeing her really for the first time. She was blond. She didn’t speak Spanish. Hays had said they were taking poor little Mexican girls–

She put her hands together again and looked up at the sky. “Dear God…” she began but he cut her off, “You don’t have to pray. You don’t have to get God involved, I’m going to help you. I’m going to get you a room of your own.”

“I don’t want my own room. I want to go back.”

He drove on. Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He didn’t want to figure it out, didn’t want to know. He opened a window and lit a joint, pulling hard, letting the smoke fill his head. He blew it out the window and sprayed a tin can of air freshener all over him. And he drove on, ignoring Aggie. She rode in silence, for awhile. Then looked out the window and mumbled,

“Too far. You went too far.”

The fuck was she talking about? He sucked harder on the reefer; sprayed a little more freshener; drove a little bit faster.

“Too far. Too far. Too far.” She said softly, precisely and over and over and over until it pierced his brain.

He pulled over, skidded in the sand off the road, turned to her.

She looked him in the eye. “We went too far.”

“Now you listen to me–”

“Now you listen to me.” She interrupted him, “We went too far, now how will my sister find me?”

His mind started racing,”… She has a sister? Is she looking for her? Could she even drive? No, she’d have to be a kid, too. They were poor. No car. Did they have a car? He could leave the little girl here. Someone would find her. Maybe not. Maybe she’d die. Not good. Yes, he should take her over. She’d be happy. And he’d get to keep using the van. And he’d get a few hundred bucks. And… she’d be happy. He thought for a second, “You want to leave her a note?”

“OK.”

He found a pen in the glove box and a receipt. He gave them to her. “Here. Write it on the back.”

“I can’t write good yet.”

He snatched them back. “OK. OK. Dear– ” he looked at her. “What’s your sister’s name?”

“Rhea.” She told him. “Rhea Porter.”

“Dear Rhea Porter,” he wrote on the back of the receipt then looked at her again.

“I am here.” she said. He wrote it down. As he opened the door, she told him to also write, “From Aggie.”

He added that to the note then got out of the van, stuck the note under a big rock, got back in the van and drove them on.

Apr 06
0

Tecate

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Four dusty miles from the US border in the beer town of Tecate, Panama pulled over again. He waited thirty-some minutes for night. No one else was on the road. He opened the side door to the van and pushed aside four carved wooden rustic Mexican dining chairs. Behind them was a small wooden sideboard. He opened the cabinet doors and told Aggie to get inside.

“The road’s gonna get bumpy.” He told her. “Inside there, you won’t get sick.”

Aggie got inside. Panama rolled up his jacket to make a pillow for her then gave her another churro.

“Keep really quiet. Maybe even try and go to sleep. I’ll check on you in an hour.”

Aggie took the churro. “Unless Rhea comes before.”

“Yeah.”

He closed the cabinet, sprayed some more air freshener, closed the van doors, got in the front and drove on, into Tecate.

Except for the brewery, Tecate was a small-building, low lying town. Panama drove down streets of tiny houses and markets and beauty salons and car repair shops, criss-crossed with railroad tracks. He followed the signs to the border. As he pulled up to the crossing, he noticed Aggie’s pink sunglasses were lying on the front seat.

There were two guards at the gate. The bigger one, a strawberry blond twenty-five-year old named Donnelly, walked around Panama’s blue van with a sniffer dog, Yodel. Inside, Panama tried to look calm and sober despite the little pink sunglasses he’d stuck on his head, using them to hold back his long hair. He watched Donnelly and Yodel in the rear view. When they looked done, he stuck his head out of the window.

“We bueno, dude?”

Donnelly approached the window, looked at Panama. “Quirky.” He thought to himself. “Young. Tired.”

“The road’s pretty wind-ey ‘til you get to the eight. If you get tired, you should pull over.” he warned Panama. “Guy last week fell asleep two miles in and went off a cliff–”

“I’ll be OK.” Panama told him as he shoved the sunglasses back down on his head – they were small and kept popping up, “In three hours, I’m home–”

He started the van, waved at Donnelly and drove across the border. And into the blackness of the hills.

About an hour after he’d let Panama through the border, the phone in Donnelly’s booth rang.

Apr 08
0

Rustic Imports

By | Serial | No Comments

One hour before Rhea got on the train, twenty-six miles north, in an alley behind Palmetto Street, Leland Hays stood on the loading ramp of his downtown LA furniture warehouse and peeled off three hundred dollars from a roll of bills and handed the money to Panama Jones.

“You told me five or six—“ Panama reminded him.

“I had to take out for gas, insurance, wear and tear—” Leland explained.

Panama wasn’t happy. “I gotta pay for that too?”

Hays went on, “You only got one girl. Don’t get me wrong, one’s OK but—five or six hundred for one? We’re trying to do these girls a favor here, right? Their new… ‘employers’… are paying me a little something but no one’s getting rich, here.”

Panama nodded, he understood. He gestured toward the closed steel door at the top of the ramp. “She still goin’ to Beverly Hills?”

“Yep. To a great family.” Hays assured him, then added, “Remember, no one knows we do this. Government wouldn’t like us not payin’ them their immigration fees–”

“I know.” Panama interrupted–

“We’d all be in deep shit—“ Hays went on, emphasizing “all”.

“I know.”

“Good.” Hays said, like a threat. “Come back by in a few weeks— I’ll have more work.”

Panama nodded and walked away, past the blue van parked in a spot in front of the warehouse, next to an old Mercedes and an ’88 Camry. He headed toward the bus stop on Fourth Street. Something felt weird to him but, he had a few joints in his pocket to smooth it all out.

Back inside his warehouse, Hays went into his office and looked around. “Larry?” he called out.

“Over here.” came a male voice. Hays followed it back outside to the top of the ramp where the furniture that was in the blue van had been unloaded. The door to the rustic cabinet was open. Inside the cabinet, Aggie was sound asleep. A balding man in his thirties, Larry Ozrin, pointed at her, smiling. Hays agreed with a smile. “Blond. Yeah–” He rubbed his fingers against his thumb in the gesture of “money.”

Ozrin nodded, “How much?”

“Extra five grand.” Hays told him. Ozrin reeled, “C’mon, man–”

“Firm.” Hays wasn’t negotiating. After a minute, Ozrin agreed. He handed over a neat stack of cash to which he added five thousand dollars.

“You’ll make that back in a week.”

“Easily.” Ozrin admitted then he lifted Aggie out of the cabinet and carried her, still sleeping, out to his Camry. He put her in the back seat, wrapped in a blanket. He drove off, keeping well within the speed limit.

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