Osprey - 1-18-2014 at 05:57 PM
Killing Angel
I killed Angel Cosio Cota. I admit it --- I murdered him during the Rose Bowl Parade last year. It wasn’t something planned and it wasn’t an accident.
I was on the patio of my little Mexican house with my wife Estelle, my daughter Ginny and her school friend Maria watching the parade on TV. It all
happened quick, like a snake striking; we heard Gino barking wildly across the dirt street, saw Angel come down with the machete, heard more than saw
the tool cut deep into Gino’s skull and ear. The scream struck some deep primeval nerve inside me and I bolted from the couch, jumped the wall and as
he raised the weapon again, with a furious headlong tackle, I took him down into the dirt.
We hit hard but he still held the big blade and as I applied more pressure to his throat he flailed it about behind him trying to cut me, dislodge me
somehow. My eyes were filled with sand and I could smell his awful field sweat, whatever was matted in his hair. We rolled over a few times and once
my elbow hit hard, applied even more pressure to his air passage. The whole sound of the melee was drowned by Gino’s ungodly screams of pain.
It ended as quickly as it began – Gino’s screams died in his throat as Angel went limp and the blade dropped from his hand. I pushed him up and off of
me while Carl, my neighbor got a blanket and put it over the dying dog. He checked Angel’s pulse, looked back at me and the girls and just shook his
head. As I was getting to my feet Ginny ran to the spot, put her hand on Angel’s mouth and began to administer the CPR she learned in school. It took
the police and the ambulance a few minutes to get to the scene and she worked all that while but no real pulse or breath appeared.
The girls were crying when the police took me away. Later Estelle told me her tears were for me, for the blood running down my arm, dripping from my
fingers. He must have nicked me with the blade a couple of times.
San Isabel has a very small jail, two tight little cells; cement block building, roof and floor, one whole wall is just bars. Holes in the floor are
toilets – no bed, chairs, tables, mattresses. The cops all know me but since they had to call in the real police from San Jose, they put me in Celda
Una to make a show. One of them, Raul, a guy I fish with, talked them into giving me a chair. Saul took a couple of quick pictures of my cuts with
his phone. Nothing to do now but wait for the heavyweights from San Jose to come fetch me or let me walk until my appearance.
Lest you think I just jumped off the couch to attack and kill a stranger, some passerby, I’ll clear that up by telling you Angel (pronounced Ahnhel)
and I have a long unfriendly history. He’s a complete bum, has no house, no property, just a grown son, Marcos. Some of my neighbors call Marcos a
thief but they seem rather vague about being a victim of his thievery.
He/they squat in one or more abandoned hovels in the village close to this bluff where the gringos have built big homes to get an ocean view. He
prowls the streets in hopes of getting some work but most of the time the gringos let their own gardeners do all the work – he stops and sits on his
haunches for hours like he was casing the houses, looking for some weakness in their habits or security systems. He gave me the creeps if you want the
truth.
Gino barks furiously at him from behind the gate and when Gino jumps the wall sometimes he growls at him, hectors him as he walks the dirt street with
somebody’s gardening tools in hand. All Mexicans seem to have little fear of big dogs in the streets because they know the animals are imprinted with
an archetypical trait that puts them on the run when a human reaches down into the dust as though to pick up a rock. I suppose I’ll never know what
singularly unlucky set of circumstances came together that morning to cause them both to be in mal humor.
Estelle drove to the Commandancia and brought some stuff for me: first aid for my cuts, some Gatorade, my pills, my papers, our cell phone and all the
pesos we had in the house. I told her not to wait. She got Raul’s cell number and went on home. All I could do was wait and wonder. A lot to think
about. In their big book of crime I suppose this will go down, at least at first as he killed my dog so I killed him. A dog, in Mexico, having very
little value and a man’s life, in earning power being a little bit more, somebody, somewhere would soon start doing the math, looking at options.
The judge, juez, might call in Inmigracion to get a fix on deportation reasons. Then if he ruled out self-defense he might look hard at jail time and
last but not least the pesos in Distrito Federal, the price of the crime in the current daily minimum wages of a man working in Mexico City.
They take their time. They moved me to a cell in San Jose del Cabo while formal charge papers were prepared for the court. Except for the drunks and
druggies who they shuttled in and out I was fairly comfortable. Estelle brought me some extra bedding, a battery reading lamp, some books. I bought
food from the vendor who came several times a day – by the end of the eighth day I was wondering if I had enough money for the process and an
attorney. Finally it was time for my appearance in Santiago. In the meantime Estelle had our bank in Colorado wire money to Banamex and she brought it
to me at the hearing.
The judge was a lovely young woman in slacks and western shirt behind a big desk. Her two assistants had arranged everything including the translator.
Angel’s son Marcos was there with a woman and a baby. I was never read the charges but I heard the word asesinato, murder, two or three times between
the assistants, the translator and the judge. I would be allowed to give my side of what happened to the translator --- Marcos was not at the crime
scene and would not be allowed to speak.
Finally it was time for me to speak. I looked directly into the eyes of the judge and began but she cut me off and pointed to the translator, Sergio.
I turned to him and laid out what had happened, how it all went down. I could hear most of his translated testimony to the judge and assistants and
because he spoke so clearly I felt he gave fidelity to my words. The judge asked us all to leave the hearing room and the police escorted me outside
to a small courtyard under some huge Ceiba trees. Then the judge and her assistance walked out, crossed the courtyard and went into another office. I
was sweating bullets for the next 40 minutes when they came back our way and went back into the hearing room.
We were summoned inside and I was asked to stand. Sergio read her ruling first in Spanish, then in English. I’ll just give you the highlights.
I would now be caused to reside in the same jail facility in San Jose del Cabo for 30 days. I was to pay the court the sum of 114,400 pesos. From that
sum 44,000 pesos would be given over to Marcos Cota and the balance would be remitted to the court in lieu of jail time.
I had a whole month to think about justice and man’s best friend. I have asked myself a million times the one burning question about the whole thing.
If I had it all to do over, if I had walked, not run out there, had I simply tended to my dying dog, asked Angel to leave, spent the rest of the day
giving the dog a decent burial just how would I feel about myself? I guess the big question is how do I see myself? Who am I? What sent me into such
a rage that I was made to suffer all these consequences while taking another man’s life?
Wasn’t easy to settle up with Mexico and I guess it won’t be easy to settle up with me and my family. Angel belongs to a very primitive tribe and I
can’t say mine has reached some higher plateau. We both can’t fill the same space at the same time. Somebody, some times, has to give, step aside.
This time fate told all three of us to do what we do and that’s all it took to put the sand in the buttermilk.
[Edited on 1-19-2014 by Osprey]
Mulegena - 1-18-2014 at 06:40 PM
Damn powerful tale, Osprey.
Ken Bondy - 1-18-2014 at 09:36 PM
Dazzling Jorge. Dark, disturbing, eloquent. I'm not going to ask you where this came from, you never tell me, but.......???
Kgryfon - 1-19-2014 at 12:05 AM
Wow, that's quite a tale. Is this a true tale of yours, a true tale as related to you, or fiction? In any case, very powerfully told.
watizname - 1-19-2014 at 12:20 AM
Bravo, Jorge. 
Bubba - 1-19-2014 at 06:10 AM
Good read, Thank You!
Osprey - 1-19-2014 at 07:29 AM
Ken, Angel is real, the story is fiction. I don't imagine killing anyone. I imagine characters who can kill. I see Angel walking around these streets
almost every day. He's just one of those guys in the neighborhood who can give you the jim jams just by being there.
shari - 1-19-2014 at 08:07 AM
....as it happens.