Publisher's Synopsis
Cha and Chu. Who are they? Champ and Chump? Boy activist and hero dad? Hell raising boy and hell-chasing dad? Some say, one is non-existent, the other is a hallucinating nut. Some say, Cha is only the aggressive alter ego of a disturbed man. Is Cha real or not? Only the reader will be able to say. In the interim, wild boy and wild dad are thrown out of communist Cuba by the Revolutionary Police. Forced to sail to Florida on a rickety dinghy with the splitters raking their butts, they try to slip into the United States, only to be run out of Miami by the Castro counter-insurgency. The troublesome duo locate to only city that will have them--Los Angeles. In search of Chu's illusive squeeze, the fun-seeking pair bump into the very busy South Central Cutter, who has had a successful month racking up an impressive number of victims. No one, especially the media, cares, as the victims are the dredges of the streets. Dopers, prostitutes, parolees. Good riddance, says the authorities. But Cha, the never-saw-an-injustice-I-could-ignore boy cares about the victims after the Cutter crosses his path. The search for the Cutter begins on the back streets of Los Angeles. Who could it be? There are many kinky suspects in the city under the sun? Could it be Babs, the high-ranking Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, who enjoys cruising the streets, picking up muscular vagrants? Could it be Ray, the California Penal overseer, who must frequent with prostitutes in the backseat of his car? Could it be Whites, the racist sadist who frames Chu because of his affair with a black prostitute? Two ounces of Crank that a corrupt detective planted sends Chu to prison and Cha scurrying to not only stop the South Central Cutter, but to free his dad from the trumped-up charge that sends him into the belly of beast for seven years. Cha runs through some nasty raindrops trailing potential victims and the sadistic Whites to catch the South Central Cutter, placing his life on a rain-slicked precipice. Life is no better for Chu inside the volatile California prison system, having the dubious honor of being the largest and meanest system in the nation, where life has less value than a cigarette. Chu avoids harm's way in prison by bringing the many ethnic gangs together to gain political clout within the prison system; this gets him immediately shipped to maxi-maximum Special Housing Units at remote Pelican Bay, separating son and father. Behind the walls, locked in a cement box, using a prisoner's ingenuity, Chu discovers the South Central Cutter's identity, but how to warn his son who walks arm and arm with the serial killer?
