The stalker slithered through the dry brush behind the wall of the gray stucco house in Highland Park, five miles and many worlds away from the spires of downtown Los Angeles. He crouched behind a boxwood hedge, nauseated by the smell of fried tortillas wafting from a nearby kitchen. The odor of cheap, burnt oil reminded him of his childhood, when his mother earned a miserable living selling codfish fritters at a roadside stand in South Florida and he promised himself he’d do whatever it took to avoid her stinking, sorry life.

Through a window he could see the ramshackle dining room of the house next to his hiding place. At the head of the table a pot-bellied Mexican in a t-shirt alternately sipped a beer and pecked at his enchiladas, surrounded by a brood of hyperactive children in diapers and soiled pyjamas who would take turns to come sit in his lap.

Damn snotty kids should be in bed by now.

The stalker looked up at the sliver of yellow moon floating above the downtown skyscrapers. He stared hard, praying to almighty Oyá, to the great Shangó and above all, to Ochosí, the magnificent hunter who was the saint of his devotion, to grant him the cover of darkness. His prayers were answered as a shimmer of low clouds drifted out of the Pacific and put out the moon. Then, with feline grace, the stalker vaulted over the six foot tall masonry wall of the gray stucco house and landed silently in the yard of his intended victim.