Street Casualties

The Turning Point :The summer before my ninth grade year became the turning point in my life, it became the point where I got off track in life...One of those cousins was Ricardo. It had been Ricardo who had taken my mother and I off the streets. When Ricardo turned thirteen, he moved to the savage city of Tijuana, Mexico... But it’s not just human cargo that is smuggled across the border. There’s the weapons and drugs being smuggled, but at times it’s more than that. Tijuana, is the city of sin, then again, border towns are all the same. A city that is ruled by drug lords, violence, poverty, hunger, injustices, corruption, prostitution...He spent days living in the streets. By chance Ricardo met a henchman from one of the local drug lords. He was a drug runner, smuggling small amounts of dope across the border into San Diego. Ricardo quickly rose through the ranks. He was known to have notorious ways to deal with people and problems. He had an “I don’t give a fuck!” persona...I saw, parked in my driveway Ricardo’s luxury SUV. “Damn! That’s a clean ride!” My eyes were gleaming with excitement. I began to yearn their lifestyle. The lifestyle of money, brand new cars with chromed rims and a bumping sound system. I yearned their lifestyle of pretty girls; they always had girls and always got some fun from them, if you know what I mean. I wanted to be like them. I wanted respect, popularity, girls sleeping with me, and to be feared. But what I really wanted was to have my wallet like theirs, always bulging with money. Money is money and money is power...“I want in. I want to join you guys in the business. I want to have cash, I want your lifestyle. I want-” “Don’t you ever fuckin’ say that! Don’t you ever plan to live like this!” Ricardo interrupted...That didn’t discourage me. I was determined to enter their world... First Mission: The next morning, I left my house quickly so that my mother wouldn’t see the duffle bag in my hand. In order for me to be home on time and not raise my mothers suspicions, I cut school that day. I walked straight to Manny’s house... Thirty minutes on three freeways, three streets, and three blocks down one street, I finally reached Raymond’s home...Seconds later, the door opened. When I turned my head to see who had opened the door, I stood motionless and amazed. I saw the person who opened the door, everything seemed to go on slowly, as if time had paused for just this instant. There in front of me was the most beautiful girl I ever saw...Her colored eyes shined like honey, captivating my attention even more. My eyes gleamed when we made our eye contact. At that moment, I knew I was in love...Raymond began to give me directions of the warehouse. “All right, go straight and at the first light, make a right…” but I couldn’t get the girl out my mind though... It was then that Raymond announced we had reached the warehouse. I took out the duffle bag that contained the dope. We both walked inside the warehouse. I was scared, I didn’t know what to expect. My mind began to think, what if shit went wrong? What if this? What if that?...
It wasn’t all perfect: Our club was the hottest thing on both sides of the border. We were becoming a dominant force...Everything couldn’t possible have gone perfect for us though. There is only so much people are willing to get bribed. Only so much time before you can keep secrets and hide the truth. There’s only so many officials at one level you could bribe, before others start trying to dig up secrets about you. With the success of the club, others started to wonder, who owns it? What does that person do for a living? Where did so much money come from to help fund the construction of the club? And why was it so quickly?...Local news media began to do undercover investigations. Ricardo knew all these questions being asked were going to bring problems. Some nights we found ourselves finding reporters outside the club, asking questions to party goers... At first we didn’t pay any attention. But things got serious soon after. Kids began to say stupid things after that. Some began to go to the media, on both sides of the border, and began to speak about what happened inside the club. Of course those kids got money for doing that, all the more encouraging for others to start doing the same. Suddenly, our club was the center of attention in the evening news. These dumb kids kept going to the media and say all they saw. Yes that included the drug use, the sex, and the violence sometimes seen inside the club. To make matters worse, some of our bartenders and security staff began raping young girls partying at our club. All those girls would always be drugged up intentionally by our staff. Bartenders would give girls free alcohol, and once the girls passed out or were close to, that was when they would force them to a storage room, or any other place where they would be raped. One such girl died from a drug overdose. You can imagine the heat this brought to the club. Ricardo did his best trying to deal with this issue...Behind close doors, Ricardo was dealing violently with the staff. He had two bartenders shot and killed, the rapes stopped for a time. By then though, there were undercover journalists at the club all the time. And again, allegations about us being in organized crime arose even more...Life was still not perfect, and being harassed by the media didn’t help. But Ricardo managed to keep the lid on things and managed to keep the feds from both sides off of us. Or so we thought.