Above the Law

by J. F. Freedman

  “Oh? And how do they know that, Filipe?”

  He looked away for a moment. Lunchtime was over now; we were the only ones left on the patio. He tilted his beer bottle back, but it was empty.

  “How?”

  “Reynaldo was the leader,” he said, finally admitting the truth. “You don’t kill your main man and survive very good.”

  I flashed to Keith’s interview with Curtis Jackson. Jackson had said the same thing.

  “Reynaldo was our meal ticket. Why would we want to do in the man who was making us all rich?”

  “You wouldn’t, if that’s how it worked.” I turned to Kate, who nodded. We were in agreement. “So what they’re saying on the street is wrong.”

  He looked at me.

  “You’re not the man. You’re just a foot soldier.”

  “I’m more than a foot soldier,” he said, unable to not show his wounded pride.

  “You’re not the man.”

  “No,” he finally admitted. “The man is dead.”

  Portillo’s burgundy Infiniti Q45 was parked in front of the restaurant in a handicapped space, a parking ticket on the windshield. He extracted it from under the wiper blade, ripped it up, dropped the pieces in the gutter.

  “You’d better watch your ass, Filipe,” I cautioned him.

  He looked up and down the street, trying to play it casual. “What do you give a shit for?”

  “I don’t care if you live or die, ace,” I told him candidly. “The more scumbags like you aren’t on the street, the safer it is for the decent people. But I may need you as a witness later on. So until then, don’t be careless.”

  “Hire a bodyguard,” Kate advised him. “If you haven’t already.”

  He shook his head. “My people know I’m clean.” He didn’t sound convincing—to us or, I was sure, to himself. He got into his chariot and drove off into traffic.

  Kate and I walked down the block to her car. We were driving back to Santa Barbara. We wanted to get going to avoid the heavy rush-hour traffic on the westbound Ventura Freeway.

  “What did we learn?” I asked her, as she pointed us toward the northbound Interstate 5. “That we didn’t know already?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing, really.”

  “We need to know more about Juarez. He’s the key, not his minions. What his life was, who he was connected to. Maybe we can find a common thread through all this.”

  “I’m already on it,” she assured me.

  I relaxed in the passenger seat. It was nice having someone else drive. “Portillo didn’t kill Juarez, we know that.” I was thinking out loud. “And I don’t believe he was part of a setup to do it. It was humiliating for him to admit to us that Juarez was the cock of the walk and he was just another chicken in the barnyard. A man like him doesn’t fess up to that unless there’s no way around the truth of it.”

  “Or else he’s way smarter than I think he is, and he’s trying to fake us out.”

  We were inching up the freeway ramp. It was going to be a long trip home. At least I wasn’t driving. Even when L.A. traffic isn’t at its worst, it’s terrible.

  “He isn’t.”

  Portillo may have been a good lieutenant, but he was no leader, he had no imagination and not enough ruthlessness in him, one meeting with him told me that.

  “He’s being used. Which he knows, and he’s scared about it. We need to keep an eye on him, for his own good as well as ours.” I looked out at the sea of cars surrounding us. It felt like every vehicle in America was on this freeway. “I’m getting the feeling we’re all being used.”

  “By who?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Whoever would benefit, and I don’t know where that goes, yet. Maybe I’m overly suspicious—you can get paranoid real easy when you’re dealing with characters like these.”

  I pulled out my cell phone to call Riva and tell her I’d be late for dinner—we weren’t going to beat the traffic, it was going to beat us, which was too bad, since this was one of the few weekday nights I’d be home for the next several months. Riva would understand, but she wouldn’t be happy. Me, neither.

  “But if we are being manipulated,” I continued, “whoever’s orchestrating it is connected to Reynaldo Juarez’s killer.”

  Wheeling, West Virginia, has never been on my must-visit list of American cities. But when you take on an investigation like this one, you get to go to places you never imagined you would (and don’t care if you never did). Nothing against Wheeling, or West Virginia as a whole, but it’s down the list, after China, Tahiti, Prague, and about everywhere else I can think of, even Disney World.

  Unfortunately for me, Sterling Jerome hadn’t been posted to any of those exotic locales. He had been exiled to Siberia, or the closest equivalent the Justice Department could send him to. A one-man office, with nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it in.

  I sat in Jerome’s office, which wasn’t even in a federal complex; the DEA had rented the office from the state—they didn’t have a regular presence in the region. There are drugs available in the area, of course, there are drugs everywhere in America, but not at the level that is worth spending government money on.

  This was a newly created office, an artificial post, because regulations prohibited them from firing Jerome—there’s something to be said for civil service protection, by those protected by it. The twelve-by-twelve cubicle, four windowless walls, was in the basement. Above ground was the Department of Motor Vehicles. I doubted that any of those people, busy issuing driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations, knew they had a DEA big shot in their midst. Former big shot.

  It was a dismal spot, a little rabbit warren stuck in a big Dilbert-like maze.

  Jerome was on the phone. It sounded to me, listening to his end of the conversation, that he was talking to a woman, probably his wife, who, I knew, had not forayed to this remote spot with him, but had remained in Los Angeles. It wasn’t a happy conversation. Apologetic, wheedling, angry. As I watched him, I thought of Sheriff Miller, almost a continent away in Blue River. Like Jerome, he had been exiled to nowheresville when he was in his prime. Each was the other’s shadow nemesis now, but the parallelism of their unfortunate circumstances, although separated by almost four decades, was almost karmic.

  I couldn’t imagine Jerome seeing his circumstances that way, should I point them out to him—which I wouldn’t, of course. Being compared to Miller would be the straw to break his back, if it hadn’t been already.

  He ended the discussion by slamming the phone down on his battleship-gray, government-issue metal desk, whose paint was peeling. The desk, and the other few pieces of furniture in the room—bookshelves, file cabinets, coatrack—looked as if they’d been requisitioned from storage, where they’d been buried under a thick layer of dust for years. Then he looked up at me.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” I said, trying to be pleasant. I sipped at my cardboard container of take-out coffee from the commissary. It was tepid.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” he said not curtly but forthrightly, “Orders from above.” He meant Washington, not the first floor of this building. “You would’ve dragged me back to Blue River otherwise.”

  “Thanks anyway.” I didn’t want to be this man’s enemy. He already had enough of them.

  “So,” he said, staring at me, “what do you want?”

  “I want to know who murdered Reynaldo Juarez, of course.”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  I had decided before interviewing Jerome that I’d be as civil and agreeable as possible. Given his fall from grace, and the stories of his arrogance and ill-temper, returning his wrathful attitude with one of my own would subvert my goal. Besides, that kind of short-fused behavior turns me off, especially in myself. Calm is a potent weapon.

  “Because you were there, you were in charge, it was your operation, Juarez was in your custody, he escaped from your custody, and he was killed by someone who was out there that night, most p
robably under your command, regardless of the spin your agency’s putting on it. So logically, I think you should have some ideas about it.”

  Curtly he replied, “Read the DEA material. The Shooting Incident Report and the OPR summary. It’s all in there.”

  “I have. It doesn’t answer my questions. I wouldn’t have trekked across the country otherwise.”

  “It’s all the answers I have, pal. I can’t make any up.”

  “I’m not asking you to do that.”

  “Then what do you want?” he threw at me a second time, his tone insinuating that I was either hard of hearing or feebleminded.

  “Maybe you can remember some things you didn’t before,” I suggested. “Now that you’ve had time to think about it.” I looked around his space—with only two of us occupying it, it felt cramped. Add another body and it would have been downright uncomfortable.

  He shook his head. “No, I can’t.”

  “Or won’t?”

  He looked like he wanted to come over the desk at me. He restrained himself, but I could see how his hot temper and impetuousness got him into trouble. He was an act-before-you-think kind of guy. Which was why he was rotting here in purgatory.

  “Can’t,” he repeated, spitting out the word.

  I placed my hands on his desk. “You’ve dug a grave for yourself, Mr. Jerome.” I kept my voice low, evenly modulated, unthreatening. “But the dirt hasn’t been thrown over you yet. You still have a chance for redemption.”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said flatly. “I don’t.”

  “You sure?”

  He nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Why?”

  He indicated his cramped space. “Look around you. If this isn’t a coffin, I don’t know what is.”

  I didn’t have to look around. I was in it, I could feel it. Certainly spending eight hours a day cooped up in here would offer one a powerful preview of eternity in a box.

  “Look,” I started over, “if you didn’t kill Juarez—”

  “I didn’t,” he shot back at me.

  I leaned forward, toward him.

  “Look, man,” I beseeched him, “I’m trying to help you, okay? Not for you, for me. I want to get to the bottom of this. An important government witness was murdered. That didn’t help you. You know that better than me or anyone else. There’s two keys to this—you and Juarez. He’s dead, so he’s no good to me. But you’re not. You help me, Jerome, you’re helping yourself.”

  I didn’t know if what I’d said was true. Regardless if I indicted, brought to trail, and convicted Juarez’s killer, it might not help Jerome at all. He had been in charge, he had authorized a raid he shouldn’t have, it had turned to shit on his watch. He was responsible for the government’s losing someone they didn’t want to lose, as well as some of his own. Still, I figured his vanity, pride, or anger toward his bosses could be appealed to and used.

  He sat back, as if the effort of remonstrating with me had drained him.

  “I wish I could,” he said, his voice calmer now, washed of the bile he’d been spewing. “But I don’t know how. I’m fucked, that’s all there is to it.”

  He got up, started pacing the tiny confines. He couldn’t go more than three steps in any direction, but he was full of pent-up energy, he couldn’t sit still—I’d unleashed him from physical dormancy. “If you knew how much thought I’ve put into this…”

  He hesitated a moment. It was hot in the small room; there was no thermostat, he had no control on the temperature. I stood, took off my jacket, loosened my tie, sat back down again. He was primed now, ready to let out whatever he’d been holding in the past six months.

  “What happened that night destroyed my career. I was doing really well, I’m sure you know that. But that was an anchor, I’m dead now, dead in the water. All of us who participated that night are. Our careers are finished, none of us will ever move up. If we’re lucky, we’ll ride it out in places like this until we qualify for our pensions.” He grimaced. “They can’t fire all of us. It would make them look like shit. They just do this instead.” He indicated his cubicle.

  “You were all cleared.”

  He waved my disclaimer off. “Yeah, we were cleared. Technically. But not in the minds of the wheels up high. We disgraced the organization. After all the other fuckups of the past decade, this was the final straw. There’s a stench to this that is not going to go away. We can’t be cleared of that.” He gripped the top of his desk chair, his fingers turning white with the pressure. “I should resign, it’s what they want, but I don’t want to give the bastards the satisfaction.” He let go his death grip on the chair, walked the three steps to the other end of the room behind his desk, turned back to me.

  “I lost good men that night. They died because I led them into dubious battle. That’s a sword that’s going to hang over my head the rest of my life. As it should,” he added quickly. “I was responsible, and I take full responsibility.”

  Another pause—he was thinking of how to say what he wanted me to hear, clearly.

  “I don’t know who killed Juarez. But believe me, I want to find out as badly as you do, Mr. Garrison. Worse. To you, this is another case. But to me it’s my life, my career. I owe it to my friends who died that night to find out. That’s the most important thing.”

  I hadn’t said anything during this explosion of emotion. Now I asked the question, the same one I’d asked earlier, putting it differently this time. “Thinking back. Are you positive none of your men were involved in this murder?”

  He started to say something, didn’t, turned away, turned back to me.

  “No.”

  The air went out of the balloon with an audible whoosh.

  “No, I’m not.”

  As if purged by this admission, he sat back down.

  “I’m not positive. I don’t think so, I can’t imagine one was, but I couldn’t swear to it.” He leaned forward. “But—saying I’m not a hundred percent positive one of my people didn’t do it doesn’t mean I think that one of them did. I don’t. I’m saying it isn’t impossible.”

  “Then you must agree with the findings of the investigation. That someone associated with Juarez or his gang killed him.”

  “Or more likely, a rival.”

  “Someone who infiltrated his group?”

  “It’s very possible. We did it.”

  “Lopez. I know.”

  “If we could, a rival gang could, too.”

  More than one turncoat among Juarez’s close inner circle? Others had voiced that theory, but it still felt far-fetched to me. Maybe I needed to look at it more closely.

  “You want to find out,” he said again. “I have to.”

  “I’m going to.” I stood and put my coat back on. I’d gotten as much as I wanted, for now. The next time we talked it would be in Blue River, in front of my grand jury.

  “Can I help?”

  His question caught me by surprise. “How?”

  “With your investigation. I want to help.”

  I shook my head. “You’re the one who’s being investigated, remember?”

  “You think I did it?” he asked incredulously.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. You’re still under investigation. Everyone who was there that night is under investigation.” I waited a beat. “My investigation.”

  He nodded, stealing a glance around the enclosure like the walls had ears. They might have; I hoped not.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, reading my mind. “I have this place swept weekly. I still have buddies in D.C. who want to see me weather this shit-storm. It’s only a three-hour drive. Although it might as well be a million, as far as the power train goes.” He plucked at his starched white dress shirt, sticking to his body. “What I was going to say was, I know that technically I’m under investigation, by you. But I can help you. You’re going to come across names of people and organizations I’ll know more about than you ever can. You could wind up stumbling over the killer a
nd not knowing it—but I would. If I knew what you were doing.”

  I didn’t want to deal with this. Not now. “I’ll think about it,” I told him. “We’ll see.”

  He came around the side of the desk, so that we were face-to-face, inches apart.

  “This is my life, Garrison,” he implored me. “Don’t cut me out like the pricks in Washington did. I didn’t want Juarez dead. That night ruined my career. My marriage, everything.”

  I backed away from him—this was too intense, too personal. That call from his wife that I’d eavesdropped on could have been her telling him she had hired a divorce lawyer. That’s one of the worst calls a man can get; I know, I got one myself once.

  “You want this,” he beseeched me again. “But man—this is my life. I need it.”

  THE STREETS OF EAST L.A.

  REYNALDO JUAREZ ENTERED THE United States under the wire east of San Diego when he was two years old. He was the baby; he came with his mother, father, five older brothers and sisters. His father carried him wrapped up in a shawl, pressed close to his body, the two tied together with clothesline. The smell of his father’s body, combined with that of the dirt they crawled over for hours too many to count, the stomach-wrenching stench of rotting food left behind by previous groups combined with that of human excrement that clung to them like a second skin, plus the fear sweat from the dozens of Mexican men, women, and children who were in their group, was one of his first and most indelible memories. That and the gleaming red eyes of the thousands of rats who inhabited their dark passage and took bites out of some of them. One of his sisters died from rat-bite poisoning less than forty-eight hours after they had reached the promised land; for the rest of his life, Reynaldo Juarez lived in deathly fear of rats.

  At least they hadn’t been robbed, murdered, or raped, the fate of many wetbacks he later met when he was growing up in east L.A., some of whom became lifelong friends and members of his gang. That his own people would prey on others when they were in a hopeless situation was also part of his memory bank. After he was grown, and rich, he helped bring many Mexicans to the United States, especially those from his home region high in the central mountains, and he made sure they were treated decently on their journey.