Santos Martinez

Concept: The King Inside

AKA:  “Little S”  “Ghost Eyes”  “El salvaje”

Desc: On the short side, but muscular and wiry. His boys have seen him climb up in the pockets of bigger dudes and beat the living shit out of them from sheer ferocity. Keeps his hair short, and his face shaved because his Mamacita likes it like that. Strong intelligence in his eyes. 

History: When Santos was little. His Abuella told him, “Santos, you must be strong and you must keep your eyes open and pay attention. Everyone is going to try to make life rough on you. But you must not let them...”

Santos never forgot what his Abuella told him. She sat on the side of his bed and brushed the hair out of his eyes and wept for him knowing that he would face many struggles in his life.

    When he got up for school the next day...They told him that his Abuella had passed away in the night.

And he had known...that it was not a dream.

Santos was never going to be a good student. He couldn’t see very well and he fell behind in reading.  But he was a good listener and many time could manage to pick things up that way.  He also had come from a large family. 2 brothers and 3 sisters. So his social intelligence was off the charts. He got good at reading people. And when he got picked on for his size. He never bothered with trying to tell the teacher. He would wait, be patient, and then, at some point find one of the people who’d picked on him and jump the guy from behind with a sock full of pennies.  After a while, other kids stopped picking on him.  One of his uncles, one of the dead ones taught him that.

The gang guys came around looking for fresh meat. Santos joined because he needed money and he wanted respect. He got both. Mainly because he had something the other new recruits lacked.  He was tough already, and he knew things. He knew things that he had no business knowing. And anytime he failed, or screwed up, or caught a beating he didn’t deserve. He used it as a means to learn and toughen up more rather than cry about how unfair it all was. 

He rose through the ranks. He was smart. Maybe not book smart. But certainly street smart. And while he still wasn’t a strong reader, he could do math like he could breathe it.  His only strange habit was that he would still go to church on Sunday.  He could be seen making offerings and lighting candles and visiting graves. No one seemed to know why and when he occasionally got asked about it, all he would say was. “Hey. It’s not for me you understand. It’s for my mother.”

But it wasn’t.  Santos is a fairly strong medium. He has no trouble bartering with ghosts for things they want to be done in the real world in exchange for useful information. Sometimes it’s simple. “Light a candle for me at mass”  Sometimes it’s not simple. “Talk to my woman and tell her to move on with her life.”  Sometimes it’s lucrative. “Tell my son where I stashed the money so he can get out.”   Santos might take SLICE, you understand, But he’d never cheat the dead because they ain’t got nothing to do but make you miserable if you do.

Santos pays attention. Some months ago, he got popped and went for a middling long jolt on the inside. But even inside, he’s got more pull on the streets than most. Between his weekly phone calls to his woman, messages he can pass through guards he’s intimidated or bought off, and the occasional bit of haunting, He gets the job done. And lately, he’s been finding that sometimes it’s SAFER to be inside. Being up at Clearwater Correctional Institute for Men is no picnic certainly. But there are times when it’s goddamn peaceful compared to being out on the streets.

Still. Santos is working the angles and hopes to manage an early release. He’s kept his set together by dint of solid planning, having REALLY good people radar and putting his homeboys into roles that play to their strengths, and again, the occasional bit of haunting. Most of his boys think he’s into the Santeria shit hardcore. He’s not, although he does lean into the expectation if it’s useful and probably wouldn’t mind learning more if he could find someone who could teach him.

Attitude: “it’s good to know things, Esse. And when you fishing blind...It’s even better to act like you know more than you do.

Skills: On the physical side, He’s tight. Better with a knife than with a gun. Pretty decent with his fists, likely to have dots of Boxing and probably brawling dodge and stuff like that.

On the social side, he holds very few people dear and is distrustful of anyone who isn’t from his hood or isn’t actually deceased. It’s not that can’t be social mind you. He’s actually quite adept when he wants to be. He just has trust issues. As I mentioned, He’s good at reading people and it’s saved his life more than once in the yard.

Mentally, He’s a product of street education. Long on streetwise, heavy on tactics and organization. But short on actual academics.  He can certainly read, but most of the time he tends to think of it as a waste of time. His one literary vice is military manuals. He tends to pick them up at flea markets. Lately, his woman has been sending them to him.

As far it goes, He’s got Unseen Sense (Ghosts) AND the Medium merit, or he might, if you want him to have a bit more juice, have something like the “Voodoun” template from Second Sight (Obviously, It’ll be more like Santeria, but the powers are probably very close to one another.)  He may even be a Sin Eater in some way.

Gear: As a habitual offender in for a fairly long bit, Santos doesn’t really have a lot in the way of gear. But unlike a lot of dudes, Santos only ever really keeps a pad of paper and a pen in his cell with him. He’s very very self-contained.

Home: Block D. Cell 14.  Although, back home, He and his girl had a nice place. Lita needed a bit more room than Santos ever would. Lita’s garden was the pride of the neighborhood.

Circle: His boys. His girl. His family. His Dead People.

Story Uses:

“Yeah...I heard all about you. Although I AM surprised you came all this way to see me.”

It’s possible, that from inside, Santos might be issuing orders that are causing you and your fellows PC’s some problems. Nothing to do with YOU necessarily, just muscling some other dudes, and maybe there are problems with other people getting caught in the crossfire. Hey, homes, it’s just business, you know?

“”Some friends of mine put the word out. I just wanted to see who would come calling.”

It may be, with his other “career”, that Santos hears about things going on in the old neighborhood. You never know, he might seek the PC’s out in order to professionally befriend them.

Connections:

* Carlos Villalobos "I met this guy once. Never seen somebody shoot so fast. Glad I was his back-up that day instead of being downrange of him.

* William Lee Travis  "Yeah. I don't mess with that guy. If you're smart, you won't either.

* Jack Marston "Man. I don't blame that guy. He was just doing his job. That don't make us friends though."

* Rika Martinez Santos's cousin is Rika's pop. Maybe weird shit just runs in the Martinez family.

* Clavo Hernandez "Days gonna come when I'm going to get out of here, and when that happens, I'm going to drop off the radar.  My man's already seen to it."