“So they were really close,” I mumbled. For one moment the whole campus seemed to go into slo-mo. Then she smiled a fake one and kept walking and I followed.
“To answer your question,” she said, “I think about my cousin Reynaldo every fucking day. Too much maybe. I see his face in all these young men.”
“What was he like?”
“Rey-Rey? Enthusiastic. That’s what got him killed.”
“Enthusiasm gets you killed?”
“Absolutely. People like their Mexicans lazy. Rey had gusto. Too upbeat and they take you down.” When I didn’t comment, she said, “He was my angel, my guardian. When he was alive, I mean. I looked up to him.”
“How old were you—”
“When Rey was murdered? Eleven years, eight months. I remember it like yesterday. I suppose I was in love with him in a way. We all were. He was the family hero.”
“I read a newspaper article that claimed the whole thing was over some drugs.”
“Don’t talk to me about what you read in the white man’s newspapers. It’s unreliable now, but then? They wrote about us like we were gerbils.”
“I don’t doubt that. But are you saying Reynaldo wasn’t a drug dealer?”
“Whatever he was into, it was small potatoes. Rey was not some big mover of contraband. At most, maybe he was a pot smoker who…who proselytized. In his backpack, he kept some herb in a plastic camera film container; I can remember the smell of it. Tell me, who on earth murders a seventeen-year-old, five-foot-five kid for three joints?” She kept walking but her eyes blazed with age-old indignation.
“What about Reynaldo’s gang? They took Emil down.”
“It wasn’t a they, it was a he, a person with a name—Frederick Castillo. Just some psycho trying to get into Sureños. He wasn’t even in the fucking gang.”
“So it wasn’t—”
“Sick piece of shit just used my cousin as an excuse to slay Emil and make a name.”
She had stunned me quiet—we walked in silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “as you can see it’s still fresh for me. My world caved in the day they told me Reynaldo was gone. Everything after that morning has been one long aftermath.”
“So if it wasn’t a drug deal—”
She stopped under the arches of Bunche Hall. “It was a lover.”
“A lover?”
“Absolutely. Or a jealous spouse—of course it was.”
“But who?”
“My cousin was handsome, like a Latino Monty Clift—with dazzling eyes. He was a powerful drummer, too—all muscles. And he had serious game—too many conquests for me to keep track. But he told me stories—to entertain me, and to make me jealous.”
“What kind of stories?”
“Oh, there were local girls and high school girls. In junior high, he screwed his art teacher, Mrs. Nicola. And there were others.”
“Do you think he was sleeping with Cynthia Persky?”
“I know he was sleeping with her mother.”
“Marjorie Persky?”
“Yes. And he told me he couldn’t shake her off. He was fond of expounding on the hypocrisies of married women.”
“But—she told me she barely remembered Emil even had a band.”
“Yeah well, she lied to you, okay? How could she not know? Madame Persky was a mover and shaker in the music biz. She used to be a teen DJ or something on KHJ.”
“And she had an affair with Rey?”
“That’s a stone fact. I don’t say she killed him, not with her own hands anyway, but she was having her way with him and not just once. I think she even conducted a little three-way with Rey and the singer.”
Professor Durazo turned into the giant building and I followed her, upstairs, down the fresh-mopped corridor reflecting dreamy sunlight. The hallowed halls. She stopped at an office door that bore her name.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have papers to grade. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
“Professor—who do you think killed your cousin?”
“Somebody killed him. Somebody that went unpunished.”
“Okay, but—”
“But nothing. Reynaldo’s death tore my family apart. Nobody was ever the same again, least of all me.” She glanced down the hall bitterly. “Sometimes I wonder what he would have become if he had lived. For all I know, he would have been an alcoholic FDA inspector like his dad. Or a valet attendant who sleeps with old white ladies for cash. That’s what I tell myself to get through the night.”
