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at a time.” He pointed the pistol at the teenage boy in back. “You first.”

The boy slowly worked his way from the back of the van to the open sliding door.

“Okay,” Delgado said, “now step out and lean against the van’s hood, hands on your neck.”

Delgado had had some experience with this series of motions. However, he’d been the one taking orders from the police.

Delgado then pulled one of the zip ties from his pocket. He looked at Miguel Guilar and said, “Get my back.”

Guilar nodded, and aimed the shotgun at the van, the muzzle pointing between the boy on the hood and the man inside.

Delgado then decocked his Beretta and put it in his waistband. He stepped over to the teenager and with his right hand grabbed the boy’s right wrist. He brought it down to the small of the boy’s back and held it there. Then he started to do the same with the left. But when he grabbed the teenager’s left wrist, the kid spun on him, striking Delgado in the cheekbone with his elbow.

“Motherfucker!” Delgado yelled in pain, and wrestled the teenager to the ground.

Guilar stepped in closer, swinging the muzzle of the shotgun toward the two, trying to get an aim that didn’t include Delgado.

Then he saw the man in the van start to move. Guilar quickly pointed the shotgun at him, and the man cowered back in his seat.

Guilar looked back down at Delgado.

He saw that Delgado now had the teenager on his belly, a knee on the back of his neck that forced his face into the grass. Delgado’s other knee pinned the teenager’s right arm against his back. With some effort, he got the boy’s wrists crossed. He pulled out the other zip tie from his pocket and looped it around the wrists. He threaded the tag end of the tie into the box end and pulled tight. The kid screamed as the plastic banding cut into his flesh.

Delgado stood-and kicked the kid in the face.

The teenager’s nose began bleeding profusely.

“Pendejo!” Delgado said, gently touching his injured cheek. He spat on the boy’s back. “Try that again and you’re dead!”

Delgado then turned to the man in the van. His eyes were wide, and he had his hands up, palms out, in surrender.

Delgado went to the mirror on the door of the van and tried to inspect his injury. In the dim light, he could not see anything obvious. But it hurt like hell.

He looked at the teenager, who was trying to sit up.

“I’m not through with you,” Delgado said.

The teenager glared back defiantly.

El Cheque then stuck his head out the back door of the house.

“Done!” he called to Delgado.

After the older male had been zip-tied without incident, Delgado looked at Guilar.

“Okay,” he said, “now put the van in the garage, then get some chain and locks off the lawn trailers and bring them inside.”

When Delgado approached the back door of the house, he held the two zip-tied males by the back of their shirt collars. He pushed them through the open doorway and into the kitchen.

The women and children were sitting in mismatched chairs, some old broken ones made of wood, but the majority white molded plastic.

The girl in the pink lace shirt saw the teenage boy’s bloodied face and began screaming. She ran to the boy.

She looked back at El Gato, her eyes wide with fear.

“Why did you do this?” she wailed.

“He is a very lucky boy,” Delgado said in Spanish. “He could be dead right now.”