PANDEMONIUM Taskforce File: THE_WIDOW'S_SON

The following signed hardcover was found in the collection of TV 18 news reporter Trisha Tanaka after the August 19th, 2030 Legacy attack in Gotham City and the September 3rd, 2030 protest riot resulting in the death of Natalie Elaine Hendricks. As of this writing, no next of kin could be contacted for either Tanaka or Hendricks, and their joint assets were placed in perpetuum of the state.

Gotham, a Tragedy

Or

The Brief, Wondrous Life of Manuel Delgado

by Christopher Holden

Trisha: two important things that both you and life have taught me are to keep smiling, and to tell the truth, no matter the costs. There's a story hidden someplace that I hope one day you'll have the strength to tell. Perhaps someday soon I'll be the one asking you for a job—please be kind. My sincerest thanks, Chris.

For Mani

For Johnnie

For Everyone

Some stories must be told.

1

Mani Delgado. His name was Spanish, his neighbors English, and Spanglish was easily his mother tongue. Mani Delgado. Wasn't that ironic, 'mano. The thin man, Mani. But Mani was never thin. There was nothing about this chubby Chicano that was ever little. Not his waistline, not his hands, not his smile and certainly not his heart where hundreds of children in Gotham found their home.

2

When he was born, his mother called him Manuel. Emmanuel. He was a Savior of sorts to some. When he was a teenager she named him sucio. Mariposo. Maldito. Culo. Pene. She cursed them both. Mani was gay and she never forgave him for it. Stood praying and cursing still over his grave, red fingers and swollen knuckles wringing like the clacking beads of a wooden rosary.

3

Let me tell you a story about a man. A dead man. Mani. This is the story of how Mani Delgado lived. This is the story of why he died.

4

Mihijo, his mother called him, pobrecito, tan delgado. Tan flaco. But that little bebé didn't last. He was born three months early in Gotham General, so small they had to swaddle him up in doll's clothes in that NICU bassinet under the bili lights. Tan fly, 'mano. That baby's got shades. His future so bright, he'd better wear them. He had a big fat mouth that he'd bawl from, suck down milk from his mother's big breasts and drive his five sisters crazy, el hermano menor, la pestilencia. When he was only five months old his sister María, a lovely morena with wide brown eyes and an unruly, adorable plait of curls put a pillow over his mouth and held it there until he turned blue.

Mani went back to the hospital.

Maria was sent to her room.

Maria's backside, so soft and accustomed to doting parentage, was a raw red and jaundiced grey. She never forgot that spanking. The first, she told me. La última, her earnestness was clear. The last.

But Mani recovered. That big gaping mouth his sisters hated just kept sucking down air, sucking down milk. You have to wonder, 'mano, if he knew then his mother's tits were the only ones he'd ever touch. When Mani reached his first birthday he was bright-eyed and healthy, with thick dark hair and the chubbiest cheeks this side of the Rio Grande. His mama had to ward of El Mal Ojo, her viperous vecinas were tan celosa.

Adorable infant. Chubby little tyke. He was his father's pride and joy. His mother's little boy.

But he never grew out of that baby fat. You look at pictures of los primos, that puberty catching up with them turning buttery little chicano boys into lean, wiry Latino men. Not Mani. Pobrecito. Mihijo, mihijo. Papa said just lose the weight, gordito. Fuck all the putas you can. Mama said he was her good boy, not some tramp, not some whiteboy, dominicano or nigger. Wasn't a womanizer. Whatever curse left the latinos to cheat and fuck their way through women had missed her boy, Santa Maria be blessed. Dios be praised. Alabanza.

But los primos were already teasing.

Sí, Mani said in his head, too ashamed to admit it. No.

Mani, Mani, quite contrary. Brain damaged twice as a young infant. Even your mother's womb rejected you. Youngest male with a papa who took the patriarchy far too damned seriously. You loved theater and dance, you sang and played a mariache guitar but it was never a girl in the window you were watching for. It was one of your hombres in those tight white slacks, tocando la trompeta and your dark eyes watched his ass with intrigue, with longing as he danced around, lithe and wiry, dangerous as a fighting cock. Did you ever have a chance? Your mother wondered as the priests descended. She asked herself every day from the hole your life left until she drank so much she pissed herself then disappeared into rehab (If she's been released, you think, she would've called you by now.) Did we do this to you?

14

It's September 2019. Mani Delgado is starting college. First of his family. Three sisters pregnant, another ran off with some worthless whiteboy, Maria la morena, se casó con un diablo. Those whiteboys were trouble, always hanging around staring at his sisters' tits. Not like los chicanos didn't do the same. Aye, pantorillas de marfil. Aye, aye, sexy baby. They'd cat call and whistle them walking down the street, turn those speakers up and pull those shades down low. His sisters were guapas and when los padres were out of the house las ventanas, los cuartos y las camas would be swarming with boys.

Sometimes men. And sometimes more than one.

He'd watched them once, Estrella and some negro, saw this nigger giving his hermana head in the dark. Guy had smooth black skin and those muscles cut right out of a gym ad. Sent Mani reeling in disgust and anger. In jealousy. In guilt. But at Gotham State University he meets more men like him. Like himself. Finds himself some fancyass Nigger from San Fransisco, here getting his doctorate in modern American poetry, dresses like a European pimp and smokes himself a goddamned pipe. They talk about theater and art and slam poetry and this guy takes him home to this neat little apartment where they read and drink and fuck. He's a fat nineteen year old virgin. Never so much as put a tongue to a girl's tetas, never been brave enough even to let some homeless hobo stroke him til he came for the low low price of twenty bucks.

The Nigger he only ever refers to in his journals (this homeboy was making memoirs, 'mano. That's the sort of vato he was.) as El Profe. The Professor. He writes at length about his penis. Uncircumcised. Seven inches. How his cum tasted. The plaid patterns of his pants and his loca obsessión with operetta, 'mano.

Professor and Pupil. Their study sessions lasted long into the night. Spring came. Then summer. The Profe he had to go back to his boy in San Fran. Mani, he's crushed, but he understands. Theirs was never a long term thing. A two semester romance to pass the time, to pass from boy to man. There's a string of lovers, one-night stands, guys who use him, guys who treat him like shit and those who think he's the shit, 'mano. Fast forward four years later. Our Mani gets a degree in Theater, Costume Production and Design. He goes on to be nominated for a Tony.

But there's a bigger victory here, 'mano. Has nothing to do with no damn degree. No fucking Tony.

At GSU, he learned a different lesson. One the Profe started him on four years ago: our man Mani, he accepts his body and himself the way he is.

Manuel Delgado was chicano. Gordo. Gay. Ain't nobody going to tell our boy otherwise.

Gracias a Dios for a higher education.

19

Who was Mani? Quién fue? He spoke with the ritmo of Spanish guitars and the twanging drawl of Gotham's City's streets. He had a bit of a lisp and loud manner with effeminate posturing that immediately identified him as gay. In a culture full of machos he was content to be el mariposo. Sticks and stones may break my bones, he might have sang. But you're un ignorante gigante if you think saying I love a man's an insult, assholes.

You like it up the ass, Mani, they told him.

Lo prefiero en la boca, he'd shrug.

Mani was not ashamed. This chubby chicano never threw a punch in his life. But he never hid. Never backed down. He never apologized for who he was. Lo siento? Para que? For what? Loving someone? No. Nunca. Nada. He'd never say he was sorry. Para nadie.

He spoke unaccented English, spoke his Spanish like un norteamericano. His words were a jumbled, purposeful mess of Gotham City slang and Caló, that hearty Chicano dialect that made him feel at home. No need to take back el Norte, 'mano. Mi 'mano Mani was already home.

Qué te pasa, calabaza? He said a hundred thousand times.

Nada, nada. Limonada. He would have answered.

146

Not all stories have happy endings. If ever a man deserved one, it was Mani Delgado, the chubby chicano with the grubby hands and heart as big as his smile. He didn't get it.

147

Like all stories, his has an ending. On December 14th 2025, Mani Delgado went home and put a bullet in his brain.

148

¿Por qué, mihijo, the City sighed, por qué?

149

Fag-butcher for the world, Heart Breaker, Stacker of Slums, Player with Railroads and Migrant Dream Handler, Stormy, Husky, Brawling, City of the Two Faces,

I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why Mani Delgado died.

You killed him.

151

I feel like you did. But it was his heart, 'mano. His heart. Some in Gotham say it was ten hundred thousand times too big. I'll tell you what killed him. He cared too much.

152

So let's take a break, yeah? Let's go back. Let's do this thing in parallel style. Let's find Kevin Santy before he was a byword like that Nazi Hitler. Before those Iscariot days that stained his name and memory forever. Let's talk about that Kevin 'mano that Mani Delgado knew, not the one that came after.

Guy molested eleven kids. Maybe more. You want the good memories, are you loco? Ain't no one going to give a eulogy for a guy like that. I wanted to truth about Mani's old pal. It's harder than it sounds.

158

So here's the thing. There's nothing remarkable about Kevin Santy. You look through the pictures his mother threw out, dig through the garbage behind her house after this whole thing's over. Wet black plastic bags and foodstuffs, the empty wine bottles and sherry from the local grocery and you know she's got a problem. You know it before her family and her doctors and by then it's too late.

You feel like a murderer.

But you're only a journalist, you say to yourself. You can only do so much. But this ain't National Geographic here, 'mano. You ain't writing no story on some baby water buffalo. That was someone's mother.

Then you have to wonder how many more people Kevin Santy can kill. That dead man's still walking. Every time his name goes out in print, every snippet of his face on air, you know there's a death knell ringing somewhere. Victim. Family member. Friend. The death toll is rising.

But he's nothing special. Just your run of the mill Gotham City boy. You can't look at the pictures of a smiling baby, a boy chasing other boys through a sprinkler on a hot summer day, that graduation cap and gown surrounded by the promises and lies of grown-up life and tell yourself you'd've known then that the guy was dirty. A pedophile. You can ask. You can wonder. You see those pictures of him on that high school science trip as a senior and you think, did it start then? How many of the boys in this picture did he fuck?

…And if he did, did they want him to? Not every sex act a molester partakes in is nonconsensual. The label we gave him afterwards, it's retrospective to every time, every where. I think that's unfair. His girlfriend did to.

159

Katrina Emil lost her lover.

She also lost her privacy.

I went to her flat. Tiny. Tidy. It's got a smattering of dragon flies and lady bugs, all pink and purple. The sort of lacy decorations than make you think she's half-fairy, half-kindergartener.

I have questions, I tried to apologize.

They all do, she explained. Did I want some tea. Some cookies. I have some candies if you want.

They were sugar-free. She's got diabetes. Type 1. She never could afford a pump. He liked to give her the shots, she offered awkwardly, rubbing her chubby thighs like she misses his hands. He'd give them to me, and sometimes afterwards we'd—

You fucked.

She laughs nervously. Yeah. We fucked.

People forget that. That he had a normal life. We had a normal life, she glances off wistfully. She still can't bring herself to throw the photos away. Still got his toothbrush, a pile of dirty clothes, a pair of boxers laid crumpled beside her bed. She can't make herself move them. Like he got up to take a piss in the middle of the night but he'll be back.

Katrina Emil lost her lover.

Katrina Emil will never love again.

160

Were you happy, I asked.

We were.

Did you know.

Of course not. I never knew.

Not even suspected, I pressed. The press pressed. We all pressed her to know.

No.

Not once. Not ever, we demand of the grieving. We're desperate to think he was a monster always. We want her to be blind. We want her to have been accomplice. Even before she opens her mouth we're convinced of her guilt. Innocent until suspicion falls. She's a witch, we say. Burn her.

Those are the questions I had to ask. We all had to.

But I had another for her. Just one.

Johnnie Doe.

161

She met him. Just once.

162

She won't say another word.

No one will.

Whoever he was, he was a ghost. It is left to us, dear reader, to decipher the riddle, to decide the case. To be judge, jury, and executioner. How they met. Where. We must find the intersection of their lives and trace back from there in wonder, in speculation, and in doubt. We follow the tracks of his life, where their paths may have crossed, search through vast swatches of history like empty black and white photos of memory devoid of the people and faces that we love.

We find the run down ruins of the Gateway Center for At Risk Youth. God Hates Fags, Santy's killer had painted, but the words have faded from sunlight and graffiti until there is nothing left. There are flowers in the alleyway, tokens, bits and pieces, memories and memorabilia for Mani Delgado and some even for Santy himself. But there's an emptiness now. A ruin. A crypt. Mani's charity died with him, and with it, all memories of the children who used to play here.

Mani. Kevin. You're a part of Gotham's history as much as She herself ever was.

193

An Open Letter to Johnnie Doe:

I have questions for you, too. Questions that you will never answer. Eyes seeking a face, seeking truths they will never see.

They sheltered you. Disappeared you. I can't find any records that you actually exist. Where you Shakespeare? Were you Jesus? Were you a frightened little kid or a manipulative young man?

You poor thing. I pitied you. I look for you in public records, on street corners, in dreams and in speculations. But even when I wait for you, watch for you, you never come.

You've had enough privacy, you bastard. It's time to tell the truth. They did the trial behind closed doors, skirted all the documents away. They sealed it up like a can of radioactive waste to be dumped in the desert and discovered only as the ghost of cancers past. It's time to face us now. Tell your tale in all its sordid splendor. I'm damned sick of waiting. I'm going to interrogate you in print.

Did he have sex with you? Was in nonconsensual? Was it rape?

…Was it all a lie?

Where? How? When? Were you frightened, were you even aware? Did he drug you, sweet talk you, did he take you by force?

Did he penetrate you? Where? When? How often, how many times, and did you ever like it? Did you really say no? Why should it make a difference to us if he put his penis in your mouth or your anus, whether he came inside you or on your face, if he used a condom, if he ever came at all, what he said to you while you crouched or kneeled there, if he said nothing at all…

We voyageuristic vultures, we want to know.

Damn us. Damn us all.

We've raped you more times than Kevin Santy ever could.

257

God hates fags. Mani Delgado killed himself out of guilt. He believed until his dying breath that his friend was innocent. He believed with his last breath of stale Gotham air that the bullet that killed Kevin Santy had been meant for him. Se puede engañar mucha gente, mihijo, his mama said. Pero nadie puede evitar la Santa Muerte.

La Santa Muerte. Does she pray for you Mani, or did she damn you?

Sucio. Suicidio. They didn't bury you in the Catholic cemetery. Couldn't inter you in their sacred ground. They didn't approve of who you loved so they sent you to hell instead. You were just a man who loved another man. What's so wrong with that?

Dear Lord when I get to heaven please let me bring my man. My Mani. When he comes tell me that You'll let him in, Father tell me if You can.

Mihijo, mihijo, my Father tells me, everywhere he walked was sacred ground. I love the little children, los niños del mundo. What he did for the least of these he has done para Mi.

Epilogue

In 2025, there were five hundred and forty-one violent crimes reported against homosexual and transgender men in Gotham City alone. One hundred and ninety-seven of them were homicides. The suicide rate for homosexual teenagers and young adults like Mani continues to remain more than triple the rate of their straight peers. Young homosexual men of color continue to contract and die of STI's such as HIV at an alarming pace even in the most affluent urban areas of the United States, and are more likely to suffer from sexual violence and abuse.

Mani, Mani. We need you Mani. Que vives, Mani. Que vives.

Author's Note

Johnnie Doe's identity remains a secret to this day. We don't know whether he lives or died, whether he chose to live or took his life. Three of Santy's eleven other victims have now died by their own hands. It is likely there were many more, both living in secrets and shame or who took their silence to an early grave. No one knows why Kevin Santy chose to do what he did, whether the abuser had been abused in his turn, and in bitterness became his own tormenter. One thing is certain: Gotham lost three sons that day.

Two dead. One missing. One forgotten forever.

Mani.

Johnnie.

…Kevin.

Que Dios te cuide.

Note: Gotham, a Tragedy went on to win the Pulitzer prize for Non-fiction in 2026. In 2027, Christopher Holden was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature.

Additional Note: For more on People v. Kevin Santy, People v. Selina Kyle, ADA Rachel Dawes, Manuel Delgado, Trisha Tanaka and Maggie Kyle, see Lawless, A. MD. (2031). Angels in Disguise: the Life and Death of an American Icon. Gotham City: Hendricks & Holden Press. Unsubstantiated and controversial, nonetheless this work remains the most publicly accepted account of the Santy trial, murder, subsequent statement by Abram Bramowitz, posthumous evidences of Santy's guilt and the effect it had on Gotham's psyche. Also included is an account of the internal struggle of the alleged victim, who the author-correctly or incorrectly-identifies as the missing Angel of Mercy Jimmy Connolly.

The half-life of love is forever—Junot Díaz, This is How Your Lose Her

AN: Aurelie, if you're still out there, this one's for you.

Disclaimer: Mani Delgado was a side character who appeared in a much beloved fic on this site called "A Psychic Amongst Gotham Psychos" by Beowulfwulf. It has since disappeared and the author's account is inactive. Mani Delgado, the tragic, too-short story of a Chicano who killed himself in his shower for love, belongs to Beowulfwulf and her creative collaborators. I've taken my liberties with his story and incorporated it into my own, but the heart of it-the heart of him-remains intact.