Children of the Knight, Michael J. Bowler [classic book list txt] 📗

Chapter 1:
All Is As It Should Be

Once upon a time in the City of Angels, chaos was king, and carelessness ruled. Street gangs roamed the city. Most politicians bettered their own lives, not those of the people they were elected to serve. Neighborhoods declined to slum-like conditions. The Los Angeles school system stumbled headlong toward total Armageddon. And the most victimized segment of the populace?

The children. The teens. The next generation.

Limited choices and often abusive or neglectful home lives forced hundreds, if not thousands of children, into the streets to join gangs, turn tricks, do drugs, sell drugs, drop out of school, get arrested and sent to prison for life, and in all ways subjugate their goodness in the name of survival.

All hope seemed lost. Until the mysterious “tag” appeared throughout the city, spray-painted on walls and over graffiti, obliterating gang markings without mercy, without favoritism, with impunity.

A “tag” that became the symbol of a revolution.

The gangs of Boyle Heights often clashed over turf or drugs.

Tonight it was about disrespect.

LAPD officers fought to contain the brawling, screaming gang members, firing rubber bullets, banging heads with nightsticks, slapping cuffs on tattooed wrists. These rival Latino factions clashed often, especially on this street, a dividing line between their two ’hoods.

Scrawled on the wall behind the brawling youths and struggling cops were various gang monikers and names, indicating the back and forth struggle for control of the area. Above all these, written in beautifully articulated lettering and accompanied by the drawing of a dove flying over a rainbow—and partially scribbled over by graffiti—was painted: “Pray for Peace in the Barrio.”

Anarchy reigned as cops in riot gear struggled to apprehend the fighting youths, while other gang members ran helter-skelter between numerous police and local news media vehicles attempting to escape the police cordon. The news cameras rolled, taking in every violent moment while the flashing red lights of police and paramedic vehicles cast a dramatic strobe-light effect over the scene.

As the situation slowly settled into containment, with most gang members either restrained or dashing off into the darkness, the last two boys were roughly pulled apart by four cops. These two boys fought so furiously that two officers were required for each boy to keep them from killing one another.

Nearly seventeen, Esteban was a strong, buffed-up teen with unkempt facial hair and a nearly bald head. He wore a torn tank top undershirt that revealed several tattoos on his naked, muscular arms.

Jaime was sixteen, clothed in a muscle shirt that revealed his own assorted tattoos, which included his name on his neck and Our Lady of Guadalupe on his right forearm.

As cops shoved these boys toward different police cruisers, their faces slashed by the flashing red lights, Jaime kicked and screamed, shrieking furiously at Esteban, his face red with rage, “You’re dead, Ese! Dead!”

Esteban, calm and composed now that the fighting was over, gazed solemnly back at his raging rival.

“You ain’t gonna touch me, fool,” he announced quietly before being forced into the backseat of a police car. The doors slammed behind him.

The other officers shoved Jaime violently into the back of another cruiser before the youth could shout a response. Suddenly, the bedlam ended, and the clean-up began.

Sergeant James Ryan wore his fifty-five years more like a weary sixty-five or seventy, his hair having turned almost completely gray, his craggy face worn and weathered by stress.

Forty-year-old Robert Gibson was African American, tall and imposing, with broad shoulders and a well-groomed mustache.

Ryan surveyed the mop-up operation and shook his head in disgust. “Hell, Gib, our tagger’s been here too!”

“We’ve got to nail this guy, Ry, before he ignites the whole city.”

They gazed at the brick wall before them. Painted in bright purple paint or ink, was a simple, but unusual symbol. This symbol, having been painted over the gang logos and gang names, and appearing on walls and buildings throughout the city in recent days, had precipitated numerous outbreaks of gang-on-gang violence. Both sides in these clashes believed the other had disrespected them by placing this “tag” over their own.

The symbol—a large A with a sword thrust down through it—now adorned the wall, clearly asserting its dominion over what had previously been claimed.

Helen Schaeffer, a blonde and ambitious thirtysomething newswoman for a local TV station hurried over to Ryan and Gibson with her cameraman in tow. The bright light of the camera fell on the furious faces of the two officers, momentarily blinding them.

“Sergeant Ryan, any comment on this latest incident?” Helen asked with authority, her mic shoved professionally up under Ryan’s chin.

Ryan shoved it away. “Yeah, it stinks!” He turned and strode back toward his car. Gibson shrugged as Helen swung her microphone toward him, and quickly followed his partner.

Helen turned back to the camera, flashing her perfect television teeth. “As you just saw, the police still aren’t saying much about this latest outbreak of gang violence.”

Within the Hollenbeck Station Gang Task Force Division, activity was at a premium due to this latest gang brawl. Paperwork was rushed through as gang members, some as young as twelve, were booked and carted off to juvenile hall while phones rang off the hook. No surprise to Ryan was the obvious lack of parents checking on the health and welfare of their kids.

Chewing absently on a pencil, he and Gibson sat watching a flat screen TV mounted on the wall above them. Other cops bustled past, a few stopping to glance at the broadcast before moving on.

On the screen, Helen’s vivacious ambition shone through. She spoke directly to the camera, the last of the police mop-up going on behind her. “This is the seventh large-scale gang fight in the past two weeks, and the police refuse to comment. The only connection seems to be this strange symbol.”

The camera cut to a close-up of the A symbol while she continued in that dispassionate newscaster tone, “Or ‘tag’, as the graffiti artists call it. Is this—”

Gibson angrily clicked off the TV with a remote. Sitting in a straight- backed chair beside them, shackled at the wrists and ankles, Esteban chuckled.

“I think it’s you guys, Ryan,” the relaxed boy stated calmly.

Gibson leaned forward, right into Esteban’s face. “You think it’s us, huh, Gallegos?”

Esteban smirked. For a cop, Esteban knew, this guy wasn’t too bad, but Ryan was a real loser, like one of those old, burned out cops in movies who always get outsmarted by guys like him.

Ryan put down his pencil and leaned forward. “Look, the only reason you’re up here, Esteban, is because you’re probably the only one of these punks who has a brain.”

Esteban nodded. He and Ryan knew each other too well. “It all fits, man. You