Outsider in Paradise
Outsider in Paradise
A visit to Los Gatos, California results in some interesting encounters with the locals
On a sunny mid-spring afternoon, I drove a rented Jeep through the winding residential streets of Los Gatos.
The air in the western foothills of the Santa Clara Valley smelled like I remembered it from childhood — perfumed with night-booming jasmine, roses and other flowers — native, invasive and cultivated. The sun had broken through a thin layer of clouds and filtered through the trees. A light breeze was blowing off the Santa Cruz Mountains and into this canyon. I guessed it was the first warm day of the year.
The neighborhood above downtown is an eclectic mix of Victorian, California ranch and highlights California architecture of several eras. There are mid-century modern and craftsman style homes and condos built in the last century with stucco walls and red tile roofs — sort of like an original Taco Bell.
I’d been here many, many times before, many, many years ago. In the mid-1970s, I learned how to drive on these residential streets. I remember the day well. I’d begged my dad to teach me how to drive. We had a yellow four-speed 1974 Honda Civic CVCC and we took it to our massive parish parking lot at the Church of the Ascension and drove for around for a few minutes until my dad got frustrated with my impatience and lack of coordination or smart mouth, or all of the above.
After about 15 mintues, he lit a Winston and told me to drive him home. We walked through the front door and my mom called out.
“That was quick! You must be a fast learner.”
“I don’t think I learned anything,” I said.
My dad was still holding the key ring. Suddenly he tossed it to me.
“You want to learn how to drive? Do it on your own. And, don’t come back until you know how.”
I rushed toward the door, with the car just beyond it on the driveway. I remember clutching Honda key with the big black rectangular piece of plastic at the end, jamming it into the steering column and turning it only to remember that the car wouldn’t start unless I depressed the clutch.
I tried again and as the Honda came to life, I pointed it toward Highway 9 and thought about driving to Santa Cruz in my parents’ car. I ended up driving through Los Gatos instead.
That memory was in my mind as I approached the address on Overlook Road where Mark Achilli lived and died. The one-time Los Gatos bartender and businessman was shot to death between a carport and his condo. The shooter had been seen by quite a few people that morning in March 2008. When he fled, he discarded items including a printed set of directions from MapQuest that led detectives right to him.
Police and prosecutors would later say the shooter, identified as Lucio Estrada, was hired to do a hit on Achilli and driven to Los Gatos from his home in Burbank. He was spotted all over the neighborhood in the hours before the slaying. Take the statement of neighbor Laurie Babula, for example. It is summarized in several court documents including a federal judge’s 2017 denial of a habeas petition filed by Estrada.
At approximately 7:30 a.m. on March 14, she looked out of her bedroom window (on Overlook Road) and saw a man in the parking lot dressed all in black with a black messenger bag; he was wearing a black baseball hat. When Babula left her townhouse at approximately 8:00 a.m. she saw the same man at a nearby intersection; he was looking at a newspaper. She described the man as a thin Hispanic in his twenties. A couple of weeks later she identified Estrada from a photographic lineup as the man she saw on the day of the murder.
As I mentioned, I was driving through the neighborhood reliving old memories when I came upon the complex. At the main entrance, a woman about my age was pulling tall weeds from a patch of ivy. She looked up as I drove by and began to intently stare. She managed a waved as I drove past. I flipped the car into a second driveway, parked in a guest spot and set out to find the carport and Achilli’s condo.
The terrain was steep and I trudged uphill to the far end of the complex and counted off the numbers that adorned each condo. By the time I was at the top of the hill I realized I had missed the murder scene and began to walk down. I came to a stairway that wound through a strand of shade trees. The complex swimming pool came into sight. As I made my way down the remaining three flights of concrete stairs, two gardeners and the woman who was pulling weeds were there to greet me.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
I looked past her for a second, across the way, and saw Achilli’s condo. The unit next door was for sale. I answered.
“I was just looking for a unit. Now, I’ve found it,” I said.
“Are you meeting a Realtor or someone who can show it?” she asked.
“Nope just looking. I’m Frank.”
I think she replied with her name. Just then the gardener turned on his blower. I didn’t hear the name. It didn’t matter. I turned away and looked to my right, up a long slope was the carport. We were standing in about the spot where Mark Achilli was murdered.
The neighbor asked me if she knew me from somewhere. I said I get asked that a lot.
“I don’t think we know each other,” I added.
She must have been satisfied I wasn’t there to steal, rob or stalk, and walked off. I snapped some photos and walked briskly down the hill to my car.
Los Gatos is a weird place. It’s insular. People in the little mountain town are nosy— always have been. They pay attention to things around them like they’ve been reading too many detective novels or seen too many true crime shows on late night TV.
I walked around on a Tuesday night. Hoping to visit Mountain Charlies and ask folks if anyone remembered the story or know and of the players.
I took notes by reading into my telephone. Here’s what came out:
This is a place where the hardware store sells pies. It’s a Tuesday night and it’s extremely quiet on the retail / food / main drag in the heart of town. About the only sound you can hear is a too loud car radio playing something unoffensive.
I look for Charlie , couldn’t find it closed on Tuesdays. There’s a place that sells comic books called the “Bronze Age Bat Cave.’ My God, that name and genre makes sense in a weird Silicon Valley way.
There’s no boarded windows here, no homeless, no graffiti. Everyone seems wealthy. There’s an Apple Store here and a Lululemon. From a marketing perspective it’s mix of all the old towns you might find in California, from the Gas Lamp in San Diego, Front Street in Temecula, Old Pasadena. Old Town Monrovia. Less bars than San Diego, less traffic than Pasadena, more prestigious than Monrovia or Temecula.
…town theater is still open. They’re showing “The Phantom Menace.” Again somehow this screams bougie Silicon Valley.
I walked into Carrie Nation. A handful of people sat at the bar in silence watching the Giants. No one talked. The air was filled with that natural and awkward divide between regulars and interlopers that one finds stepping into a neighborhood bar for the first time .
The always on-the-lookout suspiciousness here seems like baked-in component of the community and its denizens.
After I graduated high school, my friends and I used to watch midnight movies at the Los Gatos cinema. Most Friday nights we’d get off of work, steal beers from our parents’ refrigerators and sneak then into the theater as refreshments during showings of “Jimi plays Monterey”, “Woodstock” or “The Song Remains the Same.”
One night standing in line we got bold and popped open our cans of Coors. THe cops were on us in a heartbeat. We were detained, booked and released on OR for underaged drinking in time to get back to the theater and see the show.
The point is: We were seen.
Now when I go back, I instantly feel those watchful eyes and know I’m out of place.
Like the younger version of me in line for the midnight movie with an opened can of Coors, the young men on a mission from Southern California didn’t pick up on the vibe of being surveilled, of being out of place. They were seen the second they crossed the border from San Jose. And, after the deed was done, they left a trail of evidence that led all the way back to Burbank and Monrovia in southern California.
It ultimately led to the arrest and conviction of Paul Garcia and set off a decades long reckoning that hasn’t yet run full circle.
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