Day 94 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 43 (2169 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 43

Bonita did not know her cousin, not really. She knew him by his reputation, and by the stories that her aunt told him about Julio and what a good boy he was. It was hard to believe that the same sweet boy that had grown up in the sleepy little town, with the white picket fence had grown up to be a banger in the big city in such a short space of time.

She came to defend him when he was arrested, charged and arraigned as the prime suspect in the deaths of two gang members. He also had a confession on tape to three rapes, all of which were ordered by the gang he was affiliated with. It was all a bit of a blur and then, for no good reason the judge approved her bail request, for an amount that even the jaded prosecutors were stunned at hearing. She took the decision quickly and got her client, who was also her cousin to leave while they could, before the judge regained some sanity.

Now looking back at the last few months, Julio had disappeared, assumed to be in Mexico or dead at the behest of his leaders, but in reality playing Darwin's Game in some bizarre twist of fate he escaped justice in the courts only to find it again in a more unforgiving light outside of the law.

Bonita took him home, to his mother before anything else and watched them as they fussed over each other and his mother prepared food for him and he, he gave her money and a necklace. He had been home less than five minutes, went to his room and came out with gifts for his mother. They did not discuss the case at all, the fact that he was accused and had confessed to raping three women in the last year and a half, his mother never addressed, just glad to see him home.

She believed nothing bad about the boy, the police had set him up, they must have beat the confession out of him, they do that to Hispanic boys you know, she had said to her niece. She begged Bonita to come and defend her boy, her innocent and sweet boy, and Bonita had come for her aunt. The reputation that her cousin Julio had was one of brutality and efficiency, tempered with a fierce loyalty for family, and his gang was part of his definition of family.

His first victim was a young girl of sixteen, she was causing problems in school for her brother, one of their recruits they wanted to keep in line. She was his first initiation, and his second was the death of a rival gang member they had picked up on the streets, killed in an empty warehouse and left to be found. He had compromised the body and DNA was gathered and kept on file until a second body came up, another rival gang member that was marked for death. This one though had been working with police as an informant and had passed enough information about the gang and about Julio in particular that linked the crime back to Mr Suarez.

Then when the DNA matched up they had a link for two murders, and the informant had a wire on him when he was killed, when Julio had bragged of his exploits with women before killing the man, all on a hidden recording. The police had caught wind of what was going down but did not get there fast enough to save their source. They had taken this out on Julio, which only serve his mother's narrative further that he had been beaten into confessing, yet he had not said a word to the police.

Bonita had to assume that the beating was somehow connected to the judges sudden leniency in her cousin's case, she had made mention of it in her pleading, and the physical state of him in the courthouse certainly added some weight to the argument. Yet the ruling made no mention of the beating as an excuse, the decision was short and sweet, like he wanted to be done with it, impatient and irrational. It was a win, Bonita took it and then took her cousin home to see his mother.

She was an old woman, Julio was the baby of the family and his older siblings had little to do with him, due to this position in life and the seventeen year age gap between him and his nearest brother. She treated Julio like he was still her baby, to be protected even though he was a man in his mid-twenties that spent most of his time away from home in a gang, a violent family of thugs and that used rape and murder as a currency of pride and position. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who defiantly stared down the weight of the law and the inevitability of a jail sentence that would be heavy and harsh.

When they spoke it was like he dropped fifteen years and regained some of the innocence and sweetness that her aunt remembered and held onto so dearly. He was so tender with her and so gentle, he was like a child again, but as soon as she went to bed, early as was her custom to do so, he changed his personality like flicking off a light switch. His face hardened and he rounded on his cousin and she saw that the man he was and the man he wanted to be for his mother were polar opposites. He made his point about her ability as a lawyer and what he expected from him very clear, and he underlined that message violently.

She was shaking as she left, hands barely able to turn the key in her ignition but in less than two minutes and with few words and only striking once her cousin turned her world upside down and she wanted to get in that car and drive until she could not stop.

When she came back the next day she brought an attorney from her firm, an imposing and tall man, black and broad shouldered with a glare that could stop most men in their tracks. It was all posing, and it was a racist vein they were tapping into but it felt like fire needed fire to be fought. He was a former banger made good, he knew something about intimidation and posing, and he agreed to be the firewall she could at least get some breathing room behind. The trip was a wasted one, the house was empty when she got there and there was no sign of her aunt or her cousin. She was leaving a note for Julio when her Aunt came in, dragging her shopping bags from the market wearily.

Bonita's imposing colleague helped her with her bags and sat her down, got her a cup of tea while she asked about where her cousin was.

“He's gone, he left last night. I heard the men come for him.” She seemed wistful, she had wanted him to stay longer at their home, like old times.

“Men?” Bonita asked.

“Well I did not see them but I heard Julio call out to tell me it was all ok and he had to go and take care of some business, that he would not be back for a few days.” She seemed undisturbed.

“A few days? Aunty, he has to be back in court tomorrow for a new hearing, if not he could lose his bail.” Bonita looked at her colleague, who shrugged.

“Typical, that is the way they treat these poor boys, call them criminals and then move things around to make them break laws by just being late for things, that's what is criminal if you ask me.”

“Excuse, Mrs Suarez?” Her colleague was very respectful and had such a soft voice for such a large man. Bonita knew that the softness of his words could be very intimidating in the right setting, but her with he Aunt, he was like a little boy, like her cousin had been the night before.

“Yes, dear?”

“Did he say where he was going, or if how he could be contacted at all?”

“No dear, tell me would you like some tea? I have some cakes to go with it if you like.”

They left not long after and Bonita had reached a decision, she would withdraw as his lawyer and leave the city as soon as she could, she wanted to get as far away from her cousin and the problems he brought with him as soon as she could.

She made an appointment to see the judge and apply to get leave to drop the case, but he took her aside and told her to drop her motion. Off the record and away from the courthouse the judge started acting very oddly, advising her to wait her patience and bide her time. If her cousin skipped out on his hearing, then the bail would be revoked and the bail hunters would try and find him, but then, well who knows what would happen or when that would ever resolve itself.

The judge knew something, but he was acting oddly and was very insistent on her not changing anything, and he talked her into waiting a few days, and there was not a note anywhere that showed she had approached him for any kind of change to the case.

The hearing date came and went, the bail bondsmen were on the hunt and then she heard nothing. Weeks went by, then they became months and still nothing. No communiques, no sightings and no word from her client. His fellow gang members were looking for him too, they assumed that he had taken some kind of deal, maybe got witness protection, even though that made no sense. They came looking for him, but no one had heard and no one knew where he was, he had vanished.

And the the Game came out and Bonita was watching it with her Aunt on television that first time. Her Aunt was worried for her baby, and she called it a mistake, she thought that it was the government, picking on the Hispanics and the Blacks, neatly not noticing that the bulk of the players were white men, far from a minority. They watched the Game unfold over the weeks, saw Julio out of his depth with these men, some of whom were monsters and his posturing was of no use here.

They saw him decide against killing Vargas, through fear or determination of an unknown element was anyone's guess. Outside of his family, outside of his gang he was lost, and direction less. It made more sense to Bonita now, she could see him struggling to fit in, to find his purpose. He was not violent necessarily for the sake of it, he had that in him but he needed a focus for it, a narrow confinement with which he could apply it to the 'enemy' of whatever group or dynamic he belonged to. He would have made an excellent soldier, and a defiant defender of any system under siege.

When he is faced with a new system, the Game, where he is not against any other group but against the individuals that make up his current 'gang' or 'family' he is lost. When Simpson refuses to play, when he decides to be the anarchist and put himself on the outside of the group, he makes himself a target for Suarez and his path is clear. He is not fighting for survival, he is protecting the Game against the outsider, the one not playing along.

Her Aunt does not watch the unedited version of her son's death, she quietly accepts his demise she knows has been coming for some years but has not wanted to face. She organised a funeral, laden with pictures and stories of him up until he was about thirteen years old, when they moved to the city and everything changed. She chose to remember him as the baby of the family, permanently encased in the murky view of selective memory.

Bonita knew that the judge was connected in some way to Darwin, he had to be either in on it, or being blackmailed or coerced maybe? What could she do about it? What would she do about it? These were questions she did not want to answer, ever if she did not have to. The last time she intervened in something that was deeper and more involved than it looked on the outside was when she took her cousins case and that brought he face to face with the evil in his heart. What would she find if she went looking for this Darwin person? Nothing good, she was sure of that.