March 2004. The hottest month of the year. Two more months and the rains will start. With them come mosquitoes spreading disease: chikungunya, dengue, zika. But in March there’s only heat. It’s a crushing, humid heat, like a hellish burst of hot steam.
The Clown was twenty years old and an important member of a clique that hadn’t only grown, it had also cozied up to a lot of other cliques in western El Salvador. In those days, MS-13 cliques were working through a very difficult problem.
One of the Hollywood Locos had been murdered. Cirilo, a longtime member from the lost boys generation, had been shot dead. Along with a fellow MS, named El Horse, Cirilo had been sent to kill an Eighteen from Chalchuapita. But only El Horse came back from that mission, unscathed. He said they’d killed an Eighteen, a chavala, and, without a word about Cirilo, El Horse walked away. A body turned up in Chalchuapita. Days later, MS members found out it was Cirilo.
The leaders of the various cliques came together to confer. Others from western cliques reported they’d lost members in a similar way, always shortly after being seen with El Horse. Luckily, especially for the young rural gang members, taming El Horse isn’t too hard. The MS-13 intelligence apparatus feeds off gossip. They started asking around. They put eyes on El Horse, kept their ears pricked.
That’s how they found out that a hitman was hiding among them, a player on both teams, who killed on one side as much as he killed on the other.
This man had crossed a dangerous line. It wasn’t double agent work, but something closer to madness. He had MS tattooed on his chest and 18 tattooed on his thighs. As if he’d been split in half by opposing forces. This sort of double-dealing had been unthinkable in those first years of the Salvadoran gangs. El Horse had warred from both sides of the battlefield. When all the face tattoos looked like little more than decorations, and gang life itself looked like a violent children’s game, one player had wanted double the decorations and to take two turns in the game.
El Horse had killed Eighteens. He’d killed MS. Everything pointed to this truth. But truth wasn’t even important. The two competing tattoos, at that point, were all that mattered. The decision had been made. The Clown didn’t know how the gang had found out about the tattoos, but he didn’t care. He was a faithful soldier. The Beast had emitted its orders, and the Clown was ready to obey.
We’ll never know if El Horse was scared out of his mind or simply insane. It’s unclear how he started this dark game in which he bled for two families at once, for two Beasts. All we know is how it ended.
The young Clown of the Hollywood Locos, Chepe Furia’s star pupil, was in charge of the job. At twenty years old, he’d honed his skills and tricks. Mission Hollywood had taught him a lot. The clique trusted him to kill. To the Clown, this was an honorable mission. The honor of his homies was in his hands.
But the brief wasn’t simple, either. His victim was a seasoned killer. And everyone was watching. This time, he had to show off more than his knack for violence. He had to show off his smarts.
The Clown began slowly—gaining El Horse’s trust. He’d have him over to his house. There, the Clown had a small bakery, a modest outfit, something to distract the authorities from the stench of the gangs, something to get him a bit of spare change. He offered El Horse fresh bread, marijuana and Cuatro Ases. Hours passed, the two of them alone, talking in the midst of the weed smoke and cloying heat.
El Horse’s strategy to dispel the homeboys’ suspicions was to sign up for every single mission, and never decline a hit. Killing had become a vice with him, and that vice would be his downfall.
“Look,” the Clown said, “we have information on where two bastard chavalas will be later today, El Viejo and Raddish.”
It was a clever lie. The Clown knew El Horse was friendly with those two gangsters. Once before, MS-13 had sent El Horse to kill Raddish, but he’d failed and had left Raddish with barely a few scratches. The Hollywood Locos were upset about El Horse’s mistake. And they were furious when they realized it wasn’t a mistake. The Clown didn’t just have orders to kill, but to teach a lesson, to create a precedent.
El Horse accepted the mission to finish off what he’d started with Raddish. The Clown gave him a .38. and told him that members of the Parvis Locos would join in on the hit, bringing the ammo. They walked together toward Atiquizaya in silence. And then the Clown turned a corner.
“The chavalas will be coming this way,” the Clown said.
El Horse looked nervous.
“Tsk, tsk,” said the Clown.
They saw more than five members of the Parvis Locos, the sister clique of the Hollywood Locos from Park View, Los Angeles. All bearing machetes.
“Gimme the cannon, it’s got no bullets,” the Clown said to El Horse. El Horse checked, a last desperate hope, and then obeyed.
The ritual began.
They took hold of El Horse, calmly at first, like a priest about to offer communion. El Horse didn’t resist. They taped over his mouth and made him kneel on the fertile Salvadoran ground, ground that had already absorbed so much blood.
First, the Clown cut off his ears, spraying El Horse’s face in blood.
“Today you’ll tell us how many homeboys you’ve hit, you son of a bitch,” the Clown said, committed to his ceremonial role.
They put tourniquets on El Horse’s arms and legs. It’s amazing what young gang members know about human anatomy when it comes to torture.
They hacked off his arms.
They hacked off his legs.
It’s called the vest cut.
But the Beast wanted more.
“Come on, homeboy, give it to me in the head,” begged what was left of El Horse, the tape having been removed for the next step.
“Who said we’re your homeboys? You’re going to die like the Beast says.”
They cut out his tongue.
They gouged out his eyes.
The piece of meat that was once El Horse swung in and out of consciousness. The former sicario was writhing but could no longer beg for mercy.
The Clown was deep in it, invoking the Beast. He had one body in front of him, but thousands of possibilities. Blades slipped in, organs came out. What the first maras, the stoners, did with dead bodies exhumed in Californian cemeteries, the Clown did with the living body of a traitor.
The rest of the sicarios had taken a few steps back and now watched in silence. It was only the Clown hacking into a chunk of flesh. Some of the Parvis Locos left: this went beyond killing. Some stayed to watch the final act.
The spoiled remains of El Horse awoke, or so it seemed. With no eyes, he could no longer see. With no tongue, he could no longer speak. But he snored, a throaty whistle, a choppy groan. Life is strong and stubborn, and resists being stamped out.
The Clown slowly slid in his machete, carefully feeling the heart beating through the blade. He slid it further in. A clean cut above the abdomen. He pulled out the machete and slipped in his hand. His fingers curled over the weak, fragile heart.
“That’s how they’re born and that’s how they die. I gave him an operation, like bringing a child out of a womb. So from now on I’m no longer the Clown, this is where the Hollywood Kid is born,” exclaimed the Kid, staring at the heart in his fist.
From that day until his death, Miguel Ángel Tobar would be known as the Hollywood Kid.