Torment Drove Man Who Joined Slain Son in Death : Families: Father first tried to find youth’s killer. That failed and he killed himself on the spot where boy died.

In the end, the bullet that killed 16-year-old Jesus Perez claimed two lives.

His father, who lived hand-to-mouth in a Skid Row hotel, was so anguished by the murder that he stalked the gang neighborhoods of South Los Angeles last week, hoping to find those responsible for killing his boy, known on the streets as “Turtle.” Overcome with guilt and alcohol, Armando Cartaya then sold his color TV and bought a small handgun.

Finally, on Monday night, the 48-year-old Cuban immigrant went to the desolate industrial strip near Florence Avenue where Jesus died. Clutching his son’s black rosary beads in one hand and the gun in the other, Cartaya turned the barrel to his head and fired a shot.

“If possible, bury me close to Jesus--my son, my life,” he had written in a neatly lettered suicide note. “Please ask God to forgive me.”

Police said Tuesday they had no suspects in the shooting of Jesus, who died about 9 p.m. last Wednesday in the 6600 block of Stanford Avenue--a grim alleyway between a recycling yard and an auto dismantler. “We buy junk,” reads a hand-lettered sign next to the blood-stained asphalt.

The boy, who had lived with his father, was standing next to a white station wagon when one of two men he was with fired a shot into his head. The car sped away, leaving his body in the street. Detectives say they have no motive for the killing, but family members believe Jesus was taken there by fellow gang members to be executed.

Los Angeles Police Detective Gil Herrera has had the unpleasant task of telling many a parent that a child is dead, but when he told Cartaya--who lived in Room 511 of the Baltimore Hotel at 5th and Los Angeles streets--the father was beside himself with grief.

“He appeared to take it really hard,” Herrera said. “He just kind of went off there for a bit.”

In interviews with friends and family, a story emerged of a father and son whose lives had taken on tragic dimensions; each seemed to believe he was destined to fall, yet neither was capable of stopping the slide.

Jesus, relatives said, had lived like a gypsy, bouncing from one school and low-rent hotel to another. Desperate for recognition, he memorized the lines of action movies such as “Rambo” and “Scarface,” then tried to live out those fantasies on the streets.

His father, traumatized as a young man by combat in the Bay of Pigs invasion, sought succor in the bottle. He loved his son, family members said, but to a fault. Even when Jesus began to disappear for weeks at a time and once requested that his gang moniker be written in frosting on a birthday cake, Cartaya placated him, fearful that discipline would drive his child away.

“He tried to give him so much love, but he was destructive,” said Cartaya’s sister, Carmen Mayo, 49. “The only thing that kept him alive was his son.”

When he lost his son, Cartaya became obsessed with finding the killers. He traveled to Florence Avenue, where he took photos of gang names scrawled on the walls. With a tape recorder, he interviewed members of Florencia 13, one of South Los Angeles’ largest Latino gangs.

After calling detectives repeatedly with tips, family members said, Cartaya was told to lay off because he was interfering with the investigation.

“After he was told that,” said Cartaya’s brother-in-law, 33-year-old Jim Perris, “he didn’t have nothing else to live for.”

Cartaya, who paid his $265-a-month rent by peddling discount cameras and flowers on the streets of Skid Row, passed his birthday on Valentine’s Day in a drunken stupor. In the lobby of the Baltimore--where elderly men smoke, drink coffee and buy canned stew from a vending machine--he told friends of his torment during tearful conversations.

“He felt guilty because he had created a monster,” said tenant Vincent Marchese, 57, as he leaned on a stainless steel cane near a sign in the lobby that warns: “No Pets. No Hot Plates. No Padlocks.”

“He tried to be good,” Marchese added, “but what kind of life can you have for a kid here in this motel?”

Cartaya had spent most of his life in a struggle to survive. In 1961, when he was 16, he was drafted into Fidel Castro’s militia and sent to hold back the Cuban exiles who had invaded the Bay of Pigs. Although Castro’s forces won, Cartaya was horrified as friends died before his eyes.

“That really affected him all his life,” his sister said.

After fleeing Cuba a year later, he became vehemently anti-Communist, his family said. In his room, they found Cuban maps, military boots, combat fatigues and a letter addressed to Castro describing how Cartaya hoped to return to the island and assassinate the revolutionary leader.

Jesus was born in Hawaii, where Cartaya worked for several years as a welder. He gave him the second name of Kala, which means “sunshine” in Hawaiian. But Cartaya and Jesus’ mother, Carmen Perez, who now lives in Bellflower, had a stormy relationship. For a time, Perez’s sister took custody of the boy, contending his mother was unfit.

Over the years, Jesus was passed between relatives and Cartaya, as he made a nomad’s journey across the United States. Eventually, Cartaya decided to take sole responsibility for his son, and last summer they checked into the Baltimore Hotel.

“I picked my life and I dragged my son with me,” a despondent Cartaya told his sister-in-law last week.

While Cartaya struggled with alcohol, Jesus turned to the streets, where the 6-foot-1, 250-pound teen-ager seemed most at home. He was suspended from Huntington Park High School for attendance and behavior problems. In a family photo he is wearing a crisp T-shirt, hair slicked back, flashing a gang sign.

“He respected his dad, but there was just too much out there, too much temptation,” said Larry Swartz, 32, a resident at the Baltimore Hotel. “The kid knew all the crack dealers--three blocks up that way and three blocks down--and would get right up to them and shake their hands.”

In the hope of appeasing his son and keeping him off the streets, Cartaya allowed Jesus to bring his girlfriend to sleep in his room at the Baltimore. But that was not enough. Jesus moved out several months ago, though he returned each week for the $100 his father would provide.

“He loved his son but he wouldn’t let anybody guide or discipline him,” recalled sister-in-law Magda Perris, 31.

After Jesus’ murder, Cartaya’s sister called from New Jersey and said she would fly to Los Angeles Monday morning to console him. Cartaya told her to delay the flight until the evening.

By the time she arrived, he was dead.