Final Victim (1995) by Stephen Cannell

He closed his eyes. "I'm just gonna bone out back here till you two geniuses make up yer minds."
    Lockwood sighed and looked at Karen. "Why not?" she finally said. "What's the difference whether we do it here or there?" He wondered whether he'd be able to steal some time to see Claire and Heather.
    Karen put the car in gear and headed back onto the freeway. "One other thing, Chacone. . . . She ain't gonna be your 'tight,' so you can stop the rubdown. I'm in charge."
    Malavida nodded earnestly. "I know," he said, but he was already working on his next move. He was determined to splash on John Lockwood. Malavida hated him, and, one way or another, he would find a way to fuck him up.

    Chapter 10

HOMECOMING
    Malavida's heart started to pound in his chest as they neared his mother's apartment. Elena Chacone had raised all seven of her children by scrubbing floors and washing windows in the big houses up in La Habra Heights. She had never asked for anything in return. Malavida used to be her favorite child. Now she looked at him with sadness. He hated the thought of going home in chains.
    Elena had been born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and in the evenings, she used to tell her children stories of the beautiful tree-shaded public squares in that mountaintop city. She would close her eyes and remember the colorful flowers and the children riding ponies in the park. She described the magnificent churches with their huge stained-glass windows and ornate Spanish arches. "Dios mio, son bonitas," she would sigh. Her family had all worked in one of the pottery plants there, and she told her children about the blown glass and clay artifacts that had won the city international fame.
    To Malavida, it seemed a crime that she had left such a beautiful place to live in a two-room apartment in graffiti-ridden Pico Rivera. She had been only sixteen when she left that Mexican paradise to come to "El Norte" to work on her hands and knees, scrubbing floors. In an even worse turn of fate, she had married Juan Chacone. He was also an illegal alien, but was ropy and mean. His hometown was Chubasco, which he remembered with seething hatred. Elena had seven children by Juan, and Malavida was the youngest. Juan was a brawler and a drunk, who often came home on Saturday nights and took swings at Malavida's beloved mother. Malavida hated Juan with every fiber of his existence. He prayed that his father would be hit by a car or killed in some Saturday night brawl. And then, one day, Juan had simply gone to the store and hadn't come back. Malavida prayed every night that he would never return. As the days passed, it seemed that Malavida's prayers had been answered, but his mother was paralyzed by her husband's disappearance. She had been abused by him, but couldn't seem to face the idea of living without him. His mother had been afraid to go to the police, because she was sure they would send her back to Mexico and she would be separated from her children.
    When Malavida was twelve years old, he had been given a used Apple computer by one of the people whose houses his mother cleaned. He was fascinated by its bright screen and beautiful graphics. He worked at it endlessly, and in five years, at the age of seventeen, he was already so adept that he was a legend on the Internet. His username was Snoopy. Long before that, however, he realized that his computer gave him immense power over a system that had held him down and enslaved his family. One day, he decided to use this new power, and that was the day he started out on his career of crime. His initial goal had been simple. He would get enough money so that he could send his mother back to Guadalajara in style. She had finally become a U . S . citizen b y v irtue of the Amnesty Act of 1987, so now she could come and go across the border. He decided he would fulfill her dream of going back to the beautiful city where children played in the shaded town square and rode ponies and ate gelato in the huge green