Above the Law

by J. F. Freedman

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” was what he said to Lopez. He pressed the signal to the outside. The guard opened the door immediately.

  “We’re done here,” Alvarez said.

  The guard pulled Lopez to his feet.

  “I don’t think I’ll need to see you again,” Alvarez told Lopez.

  Lopez looked at Alvarez’s briefcase. “What about that?”

  “It’s going in the shredder. No one’s ever going to know. You have my word.”

  Lopez nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  Lopez was taken away. Alvarez sat down in the empty room. He thought of the question he hadn’t asked Lopez: If the men inside were warned, why didn’t Juarez make his escape before the raid?

  The answer, of course, was that they didn’t know until it was too late. So the next question would be, Why didn’t they?

  He knew that answer, too: Because whoever tipped them off waited until it was too late for Juarez to get out. And the second part of the answer was: Because that person wanted Juarez to he killed. Because if fire was answered with fire, that would be the perfect cover to do it.

  At the same time Alvarez was meeting with Lopez, Keith Green was being driven in a Range Rover 4.6 to a clandestine meeting with Curtis Jackson, the head of the 94th St. Terrors, one of the major black gangs in Los Angeles. The word gang is a misnomer, a trivialization; they’re a conglomerate that moves tens of millions of dollars of drugs a year, plus weapons, stolen cars, other ill-gotten items; that sometimes does deals with Mexican gangs such as Juarez’s, as well as with Asian gangs, especially Vietnamese ones based in Orange County, and Chinese tongs in San Francisco.

  Keith didn’t know where they were going, precisely. Somewhere in south-central L.A. Jackson’s people—two men in their twenties—had picked him up in the parking lot of Musso & Frank’s restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, where he’d gone to have chicken potpie for lunch after flying in to Burbank Airport from Oakland on Southwest Airlines. The rendezvous had been arranged under a blanket pledge of immunity—nothing that came out of the meeting would be used in any criminal proceeding. It was tacitly acknowledged by both parties that a meeting between brothers, especially when one of them flashes a world-championship ring (Raiders 38, Redskins 9, Super Bowl XVIII, 1984), would be the most likely to bear fruit. The Raiders may now be a shadow of their former selves, but their badass reputation and bygone glory (long bygone) still hold a mysterious, if unexplainable, cachet among their loyal fans, which includes black gang members, outlaw bikers, other citizens of dubious character, and some die-hard Los Angeles politicians.

  Keith harbored no such illusions. His season tickets were for the 49ers—he runs with the winners, unapologetically. Although he doesn’t broadcast that tidbit; if his former glory opens doors, that’s fine.

  It was rush hour, which in Los Angeles is about twenty hours a day. Traffic crawled bumper to bumper down the Harbor Freeway. The tinted windows were up, the air-conditioning cooled the interior to a consistent, crisp sixty-eight degrees. A rap group Keith didn’t know blew out of the CD, eight speakers, better than being there in person. Keith stared out the window. Some small talk about the Raiders, why have they been down for so long now? Why don’t they have a black coach. Art Snell was better than the current chump. That played out, the conversation drifted to the recent NBA contract. It was agreed by all aboard that the players were chumps who caved in. You don’t put a ceiling on your profits, profits are unlimited, whatever the market will bear. If that ain’t the American way, what the fuck is? They should know, Keith mused. He sure doesn’t drive a Range Rover that goes out the door at seventy thousand dollars.

  They got off the freeway at Ninety-sixth Street, cruised over to Central, headed south a few blocks, pulling into a parking lot in a shabby strip mall behind a nondescript two-story office building, which was flanked by a barbershop, a beauty parlor, a Pioneer Chicken take-out joint, other small businesses, none of which looked to be thriving. Same old same old, Keith thought. Two riots and thirty-five years and nothing’s changed.

  Not his problem. Not today.

  He followed the two men up a back set of stairs and entered a small reception area, which was empty. The sign on the door read WILLIAM PIERCE, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. An interior door that led to the office proper was closed. Keith Green knew the office’s tenant by reputation. Pierce was a well-known Los Angeles criminal lawyer, a middle-aged black man with a client list that consisted mainly of people like Curtis Jackson, who needed a crackerjack mouthpiece. Pierce’s main office was in Beverly Hills. This was a satellite facility for when he needed to meet with the ordinary folk in an appropriate setting.

  One of Keith’s escorts knocked on the inner door. A muffled voice spoke a few words from the other side. The escort opened the door and stood aside as Keith entered.

  Diplomas and testimonials on the walls. Pictures of Pierce with celebrities—jocks, entertainers, politicians. And an old blown-up photo-poster from the sixties of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Seated behind the pressed-wood, oak-laminate desk was a man who bore a resemblance to Spike Lee, the film director, except he didn’t wear glasses and was about fifty pounds heavier, all muscle. Curtis Jackson. He stared at Keith, unblinking.

  “You ain’t wearing a wire by any chance, are you?” Jackson started out.

  “No,” Keith answered, standing inside the doorway. “You want to check me out?”

  “I trust you,” Jackson said. “This time. We’re not wired here, either. Whatever we say, it stays in this room.”

  “That works for me.”

  Jackson smiled at Keith. “You were one of my idols, when I was a little kid.”

  Keith walked into the room and sat across the desk from Jackson, who looked past him to his men who were hovering in the doorway. Jackson nodded, and the door closed. Keith glanced over his shoulder. They were alone, Jackson and him. Jackson picked up a softball-sized Nerf basketball off the desk, started playing with it.

  “You play ball?” Keith asked. He knew the man wasn’t a jock, but it was an easy icebreaker. “You got the physique.”

  Jackson shrugged, a shade too nonchalantly. “Playground, shit like that. College wasn’t never in my future. Hoops, no football. I was a decent point guard,” he went on, elaborating on his lie, unable to stop himself in the company of this famous athlete, whose manhood, by virtue of his sports background, was beyond questioning. “I didn’t go for the rough stuff. Big-ass rhinoceros like you lay a hit on me, I’d be maimed for life, could be.” He smiled.

  “Basketball’s cool. Where it’s at now, far as the real money’s at. We all gotta go our own direction,” he added, stating at Jackson noncommittally.

  “This is true.” Jackson tossed the Nerf basketball between his hands. “You’re part of the team investigating Reynaldo Juarez getting killed,” he said levelly. “Which is why you want to see me.”

  Keith nodded.

  “What do you want to see me about, then? I don’t know who killed him, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “I didn’t think so. And if you did, you wouldn’t be meeting with me. You’d be running from me as hard as you could.”

  Jackson looked at Keith behind half-shaded eyelids. “I don’t run from no one.” He leaned forward. “You flew down here to see me, and I took time out of my busy schedule to accommodate you, so let’s get to it, all right?”

  “You called me.”

  Jackson stared hard. “Sorry, my man,” he said dismissively. “You’ve been fed false information. I’ve never talked to you, met you, been in your eyesight.”

  Keith was having no truck with this. He hadn’t flown down here and taken time out of his busy schedule to get jerked around, even if the jerker was a multimillionaire who purportedly hung out with such luminaries as Puff Daddy and Eddie Murphy.

  “You got word to Luke Garrison, my boss, that you had some stuff to talk about that we might be interested in.”

  Jacks
on stared at Keith. He flipped the soft basketball at a coffee-can-sized basket that was suction-cupped against the back wall. It bounced off the rim and fell to the floor.

  “Your lawyer tells us you have something that might help us,” Keith said. “What would that be? Information, some kind of physical evidence, rumors floating around, what?”

  Jackson leaned back. “Reynaldo Juarez. You’re trying to find out who did him.”

  “That’s no secret.”

  “Well, the thing is, him and us were rivals. His organization still is, though when they kill the jefe, the organization don’t survive too good. But anyways, I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead, you play the game, you gotta accept the consequences.” His eyelids narrowed further, thin slits. “Like getting killed.”

  “High risk, high reward.”

  “I ain’t weeping no tears over him or nothing, somebody takes out a rival, that’s good for my business. Strictly business, man. Nothing personal.”

  Like a drive-by shooting is business, nothing personal, Keith thought. Tell that “nothing personal” bullshit to your victims, motherfucker.

  “You’re out to nail the DEA for it,” Jackson went on.

  Keith shook his head. “We want to find out who did it. Whoever that was. We’re not out to get any particular person or organization.”

  Jackson shook his head. “You want a DEA scalp.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “All over,” Jackson answered. “You want to send a shot across their arrogant bow, that they can’t dis the local authorities.”

  “What?” Keith’s surprise wasn’t feigned. This was new. He hadn’t heard this wrinkle—Luke Garrison had not mentioned anything on this aspect of the investigation. And he would have, Keith knew, if it was in the mix. Luke wouldn’t hold anything back from his team.

  “The lead agent on that raid. Jerome.” Jackson said the name like he was saying the word turd. “You know who I’m talking about.”

  Keith nodded.

  “He disrespected the D.A. up there. Some woman, dyke probably. And the sheriff. That old sheriff up there, he don’t like being fucked over, even if he is an old fart who ought to be dead already. He used to be an important person, back in the prehistoric days. You know that?”

  “He was an FBI agent.” That was all Keith knew about Tom Miller. He had never met the man, not yet.

  “He got a memory like an elephant, this old sheriff. And he don’t like Jerome. Those DEA agents, they’re good at pissing people off. Not just dealers. Straight people. FBI and DEA, they don’t get along,” Jackson continued. “FBI, CIA, DEA, none of ’em gets along with the others. Bad shit between them all. They all want to hog all the gravy.”

  Keith didn’t reply. This was Jackson’s party.

  “Here’s the other thing got people’s mouths moving,” Jackson said, cutting into Keith’s train of thought. “Why was this Jerome such a hard-ass about keeping the local sheriff off the case, away from everything?”

  “Where did you hear that?” Keith asked, alarmed. That wasn’t common knowledge; not that he knew of.

  “It’s all over,” Jackson said dismissively. “The walls have ears, how do you think I survive out in that jungle?”

  “I have no knowledge of that,” Keith lied.

  “Check it out.”

  “I will. But so what?”

  “So why would they do that? That’s against their own protocol. You work with the locals, they know the lay of the land better than outsiders.”

  Jackson was right, again. Jerome had gone against the book by excluding Miller. One of the main reasons this task force had been formed—because the DEA had shut the Muir County authorities out. They had to conduct their own investigation, they’d been forced into it.

  “Unless…” Jackson stopped.

  “Unless what?”

  “The DEA planned something ugly and didn’t want any outside witnesses.”

  Keith shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. Juarez was no good to them dead, except as a trophy. Alive, he could have given them the skinny on his whole organization, every gang in the country, yours included.”

  “You fucking right.”

  Keith was perplexed. Jackson was contradicting himself from one sentence to the next.

  “Unless,” Jackson said again, “the DEA was mixed up with Juarez. If he stayed alive, he could fuck them up good. Remember that talk about how the DEA and CIA was working with the anti-Sandinistas to sell drugs in the ghettos?”

  “That turned out to be bullshit.”

  “The government is in the drug business, that isn’t bullshit. What do you think goes down in the fucking Golden Triangle, man? You think those Burmese and Thais and Vietnamese and whoever lives out there could move all their shit if our government really wanted to stop them?”

  DEA ops and drug dealers working together? It was done all the time—witness Jerome’s use of Lopez. But in this specific situation, that Juarez was somehow connected? That would blow this case into the stratosphere.

  “But that ain’t logical,” Jackson said, turning the discussion around again.

  “No, it isn’t,”

  “So what is? Out there that night?” Jackson leaned back. “Want to hear my opinion?”

  It was obvious to Keith that Jackson had been thinking about this. Heavily.

  “Sure.”

  “Who benefits the most, Juarez being offed?”

  “You.”

  Jackson laughed. “I wasn’t there.” He pointed at Keith. “Dead men tell no tales. Juarez is alive, the feds turn him, he could fuck up his own people, half the shit moving up and down the West Coast. Not to mention me and lots of others.”

  “One of his own.” Keith said it.

  Jackson nodded. “It makes sense,” he said forcefully. “Business sense. Which is the only kind of sense I’m interested in, you dig? The DEA wanted Juarez alive, correct? His people knew where that could lead, correct? The rest of it—DEA hotheads, pissed-off sheriffs, that’s speculation.” He leveled his heavy-lidded stare at Keith. “I’m a businessman, Mr. Oakland-old-football-player. I don’t deal in speculation.”

  Keith stared at him. What the fuck was this all about? “Why are you telling me this?” he asked. “The DEA is your enemy, their mission in life is to shut you down and put you in jail past forever, and my ears are hearing that you’re saying they didn’t do it? Wouldn’t have, couldn’t have?”

  “Wouldn’t have, I think not, couldn’t have, fuck yes. Somebody there shot the man, and they were the ones that were there. But what’s the motive? I just told you who had one and who didn’t. That’s what you should be looking for. That’s why people kill other people, usually. ’Cause they got a reason.”

  Keith felt like a character out of Alice in Wonderland. “I missed something, I think. Tell me again, why are you laying this on me?”

  “Because I don’t deal in speculation, and neither should you. Somebody out there setting up businessmen like myself and then offing them for no good reason and plenty of wrong ones? That makes me nervous, you understand? Like, who can I trust if I can’t trust the government to play by their own rules? I mean, they’re fucked up, but they got rules. I know they broke a lot of ’em just going in like they did, but they did take him prisoner; if they’d wanted him dead so bad, they would’ve concocted some bullshit on the spot. Happens all the time—you know that as good as me. So if they killed Reynaldo Juarez when he was their prisoner, then they’re just gonna walk in my crib and shoot my head off. On the street, my mother’s house, wherever.”

  “You’re overlooking one thing, aren’t you?” This was a worrisome conversation.

  A disturbing thought came to Keith’s head—was this meeting a setup? Had the DEA sunk their hooks in Curtis Jackson and were now using him to try to discredit, muddle, screw up, the investigation?

  “What’s that one thing?” Jackson asked Keith.

  “Juarez was in the custody of the DEA agents
on the scene when he broke out. How did that happen if someone there didn’t help him?”

  Jackson shook his head in exasperation. “People escape custody all the time, my man. You never heard of that? Everyone there was so juiced and pumped they didn’t know shit from what was happening. I been in those situations, it’s ground-level warfare. You ain’t thinking, you’re barely reacting. It’s all confusing, everybody’s running around like crazy, Juarez sees his opening, boom, he’s the Roadrunner.”

  “That sounds like speculation to me,” Keith said dryly.

  Jackson showed his disagreement. “That’s presumption, not speculation. One’s about what you know, one’s about what you think you know.” He leaned back in his lawyer’s chair. “Like I said, I’m a businessman. I can’t afford to deal in speculation. That’s for women and children.” A brief pause, a tight smile. “And dead men.”

  And investigators chasing a wild goose? Keith wondered.

  I deposed Sheriff Miller and his deputy, Bearpaw, in front of the grand jury. It was pro forma—it had been clearly established that Bearpaw was miles away from the compound by the time of Juarez’s escape and killing, and that Miller was among the last of the pursuers to arrive on the scene. Then I walked down the street to our office and sat with Keith and Louis while they briefed me. Kate sat in with us.

  “We can’t believe anything out of Lopez’s mouth,” Kate said tartly. “Snitches are liars until proven otherwise, and everything about him points the opposite direction from what he said.”

  We all agreed.

  “But that still leaves the question open as to whether Juarez knew an attack was coming,” Louis observed. “Or if it was good security, and Lopez was sandbagging Jerome? Egging him on, even.”

  “To what purpose?” Kate asked.

  “So there’d be a raid,” Keith theorized. “No raid, Juarez escapes uncaptured, no big reward for Lopez.”

  “And no trophy for Jerome,” Louis added. “It was his best chance to nail Juarez, which was his mission in life. He might not have had another opportunity that good.”

  “Or lost him to another agent,” Kate kicked in.