I arrive in my target's neighborhood shortly after dusk. His house is a white clapboard relic of forties architecture badly in need of paint and landscaping. Parking my vehicle one street away, I circle the block on foot.
My target is not yet home, but his family is inside. Kitchen pans rattle. A teenage sister chatters on the phone near an open upper-story window. I melt into the shadow of an untrimmed bush, trying to flush the memory of my sister tying up our phone in just that manner.
Fate is kind tonight. The kid brother departs with friends, sleeping bag over his shoulder. Minutes later, the girls emerge wearing their best dresses, escorted by their parents. Late church. None of them see me behind the bush.
For their sake I hope they don't return too soon. I pull my mask from my pocket. I stare at the green bull's eye on the forehead and feel like a skier who has forgotten where the snow is. Sighing, I tug the fabric over my head.
I pull my .45 from my fanny pack. Methodically I screw the silencer in place and pop in a clip of ACP Glaser Safety Shells. No stray shots will be penetrating walls across the street.
At ten P.M., a Buick low-rider pulls up to the curb, filled with young men wearing the white headbands that tag them as members of Las Luces. My target steps out. The driver cranks up the stereo and peels out down the street in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
My target laughs and flips the bird at his buddies. Chuckling, he stops beneath the streetlight and adjusts his headband, giving me ample opportunity to confirm his identity. He is wiry and brown-skinned, his hair a victim of prison barbers, his cheeks roughened by chicken pox scars. Raymond de Ocio. Nineteen years old, child of the barrio.
As he approaches the steps, I thrust my arm through a hole in the bush and put three rounds into his chest.
The impact knocks him onto the weed-choked lawn. He gurgles, jerks, and lies silent. The prefragmented ammo has done its job, sparing him a drawn-out death.
My mouth fills with the taste of blood. I have bitten my tongue. The saltiness nearly makes me vomit.
He's dead. This is not a moment to hesitate. I slide the .45 into the fanny pack and pull out the paint pistol. Standing up, trying not to look too closely at what's left of de Ocio, I mark the body. A splotch of fluorescent green blossoms on his hip.
The sound of the paint pellet sets a dog to barking in a house across the street, though the earlier noises had not roused the animal. A light goes on.
By then I'm vaulting the back fence of de Ocio's property and slipping around the side of his rear neighbor's home to my car.
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