by James Mills
“You read them their rights?”
“They slept through it.”
“We know them?”
One of the men looked familiar.
“Only one.”
Carl was smiling.
Gus said, “So?”
Carl showed him a Colombian driver’s license. The fat guy. “Ernesto Vicaro-Garza.”
Gus turned the card over, examined the reverse side, turned it back to the front. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. Just a few years after Gus’s summer vacation from law school, when he had watched the teenaged Ernesto Vicaro pass champagne at the ranch, Ernesto had appeared in intelligence reports as a rapidly rising figure in the cocaine in dustry. Only six months ago Gus had read a DEA intelligence report that spent twenty-one pages profiling the young Vicaro. He’d been a member of the Colombian senate, a diplomat, an intelligence officer. The aging father, for years a controlling power in the Latin cocaine industry, had become too enfeebled to prevent his son from seizing power. The young man’s reputation for cunning, ambition, and brutality had continued to grow. A fourteen-year-old Mexican girl who lived on his ranch outside Cali, one of twelve teenagers available to him and his guests, had called him “an obese monster.”
“When I told you you wouldn’t believe it, I didn’t just mean the coke.”
Gus said, “Why’d he come?”
Carl shrugged, still smiling. “Couldn’t stay away? Sixty thousand kilos. Had to have a look. Everything’s new. Hasn’t been here more than a month.”
“How’d you find it?”
“Dumb luck. A vet came for one of the horses, smelled something funny, called a friend at the ABI who called me, and we came over together.”
“Pride and greed. Get you every time. The old man’ll be ashamed.”
“Family breakdown,” Carl said. “No respect for parental authority.”
“Fills the prisons.”
The TV had it that night, the papers in the morning. Biggest drug seizure in the history of the country. And Ernesto Vicaro-Garza was the biggest arrest. He and his father were legends. They controlled a Pan-American holding company that owned, among other things, a multinational corporation of banks, hotels, restaurant chains, shopping malls, soccer teams, health-care facilities, and a so-called trading conglomerate named TransInter, which turned out to have at its center one of the largest cocaine trafficking organizations on earth.
Ernesto Vicaro and his father owned virtually all the cocaine coming out of Colombia, which was just about all the cocaine in the world. DEA had run more than five covert operations over the past twenty years trying to entice the elder Vicaro into entering the States, where he could be arrested on a number of secret federal indictments. Now, finally, miraculously, sitting in the Montgomery Federal Correctional Center was his son, heir, and chief operating officer. Given his father’s age and diminishing operational importance, the son was the bigger catch.
Gus’s phone never stopped ringing. TV crews arrived. Newspapers. Magazines. Everyone wanted to talk to Gus. Every talk-show host from Jay Leno to Oprah wanted to fly him in for interviews.
Gus told his secretary, “Tell them I’m busy. Talk to them yourself.”
Even Dave Chapman called. Senator Dave Chapman. They’d been friends since Harvard, when Chapman accidentally broke Gus’s arm during a lunchtime game of touch football. Chapman had missed an afternoon history test, knowing it meant a failing grade, so he could stay with Gus at the hospital while they set the arm. He was two years ahead of Gus, had come to Harvard from a Denver high school where he’d been a star running back, president of the student body, editor of the school paper, and valedictorian. He was big, bright, friendly, good looking. Chapman went on to Harvard Law, followed by Gus two years later. They stayed in touch, had a meal together at least twice a month. After graduation, applying for a management job at ABC Television, Chapman was offered a spot as a correspondent. But the looks and personality that qualified him for on-camera TV also qualified him for politics, and within six months he’d left ABC and was running for the Colorado state legislature. He was elected. Four years later he was in Washington, in the Senate. People began talking about him for the Presidency.
Chapman called the day after Vicaro’s arraignment.
“You’re famous, Gus.”
“Yeah. I oughta run for the Senate.”
“It’d be great to have you here. We could clean this place up.”
“You’re doing all right without me.”
That evening, Gus arrived home to find Michelle in the living room with Carl’s daughter, Ali, on her lap. Esther had taken Paul with her to the supermarket.
Michelle was watching the TV news, a deep frown clouding her face.
“Where’s this going, Gus?”
“Ernesto Vicaro’s going to prison, is where he’s going.”
“They’ve been talking about all the people he’s killed.”
“He hasn’t killed any U.S. prosecutors.”
“He’s never had to.”
“Michelle, don’t worry. The TV exaggerates everything. Tomorrow they’ll forget all about it.”
It was a week before the suppression hearing, when the defense team—six attorneys from Miami, New York, and Washington—would argue that the search warrant had been flawed, that it was improperly executed, that the cocaine had been illegally seized, that the evidence—$1.2 billion worth of cocaine—should be suppressed. Without the cocaine, there was no case. It was the quickest, easiest way for Ernesto Vicaro to win.
At 10 A.M. on Monday, John Harrington, a member of the defense team, appeared in Gus’s office. He was from Washington, with a million-dollar reputation and a smile to match. “Just wanted to introduce myself.”
They chatted, Harrington as warm and friendly as they come, grinning out at Gus from under thick black eyebrows. It took him less than twenty minutes of small talk, offhand as could be, to mention what a terrific job Gus had (“Used to be an assistant U.S. Attorney myself, loved the work”), and the great career advantages it offered.
Harrington said, “They asked me to run for the House, but I turned it down. Who wants the hassle?”
He never mentioned money. He didn’t have to. The reputation and the smile did that, as well as the wealth, power, and political clout of his client.
When Harrington left, Gus felt sick. He knew why he’d been there. Suppression hearings were so easy to lose. There were so many technicalities, so many ways the agents could have screwed up the search. And the loss never reflected badly on the prosecutor. Lose this one, the sky’s the limit. That was what Harrington meant. So easy. So profitable. It made Gus sick—sick and angry.
Two days later Gus received a brown manila envelope in the mail. Heavy, something loose inside. He tore it open and found two keys. Serrated edges on four sides, four-digit numbers on the plastic ends. Luggage locker keys.
Gus called Carl and they drove to the airport.
On the way, Gus said, “How’s Esther?” Carl’s wife was a tiny blonde firecracker. A very loving firecracker, but a firecracker nevertheless.
“The same. ‘You work all day, all night, you’re the SAC, make someone else work for a change, what’ll happen to your children when you get blown away, I thought this job, finally we’d have a normal life, no more up all night bang-bang,’ et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. She’s consistent, I’ll say that for her.”
“You’ll say a lot more, too.”
“Yeah, I love her. She says I oughta have a nice, safe nine-to-five job like you.”
“Yeah, right. Nine-to-five.”
“She loves Michelle. ‘Look at Michelle, she doesn’t stay up nights wondering where her husband is, dead in some alley. She leads a normal life. She’s beautiful. She’s not haggard, old before her time, bitching at her husband.’”
Gus laughed. “You’re lucky, Carl.”
“I know, I know. Great wife. Two terrific kids.”
For five minutes, they rode in silence.
Then Gus said, “So what do you think?”
“Someone wants you to find something. I just hope it’s not ticking.”
“I thought of that.”
“Don’t worry. If it was a bomb, there wouldn’t be two.”
The lockers were in the south concourse, side by side on the bottom row of a three-tiered stack about fifteen lockers long. Gus put a key in the one on the left, turned it, and swung the door open.
Two large black shell-back Samsonites, side by side.
He dragged one out. They stared down at it, sitting on the gray tile floor.
“So,” Carl said, “the bomb squad?”
Gus laid it on its side and pressed the latch. It snapped open. He lifted the top. Inside, layers of paper-banded bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
After a moment, Gus put his hand into the suitcase, counted the layers.
“How’s your arithmetic, Carl? Ten thousand per bundle, thirty bundles per layer, five layers.”
“One and a half million.”
“One and a half million. Well, well, well.”
Gus gave the lid a touch and let it fall closed. He dragged out the second bag, opened it.
Carl said, “Another one and a half.”
Gus said, “Let’s check the other locker. We’re on a roll.”
He turned the key, swung the door open.
Carl said, “Empty.”
“Not quite.”
On the floor, in the center of the locker, a piece of paper. On top of the paper, precisely in the center, standing upright, two shiny brass bullets. Gus reached in, picked them up, held them in the palm of his hand.
Carl said, “Hollowpoints, .357 Magnum.”
Gus stuck his other hand into the locker and removed the piece of paper the bullets had been standing on. He turned it over, and his face went hard. Carl looked, opened his mouth, but didn’t speak.
The paper was a color photograph of the front lawn of Gus’s house. Gus and Michelle were walking across the lawn, holding hands. They were laughing.
His eyes still on the photograph, Gus said: “Get help.”
Carl jogged to a bank of pay phones at the end of the concourse. Three minutes later a Montgomery police sector car cruising the area, hearing a radioed “assist officer” code, responded with siren screaming. Five minutes after that, the airport filled with Montgomery police, crime-scene units, ABI agents, FBI, DEA. DEA agents took the suitcases into custody, the money, the photograph, the .357 hollowpoints.
Standing by Gus’s car, Carl said, “Michelle?”
“I’ll tell her.”
“You want me to come?”
“No.”
“This is for real, Gus.”
“I know that. I’ll call if I need anything.”
“Let me send some agents with you.”
“It’s okay. I’ll call you.”
Michelle was in the kitchen, stirring something in a bowl.
“Got a minute?”
She looked up, saw his eyes. “What is it?”
She put the spoon in the sink, and they sat at the kitchen table.
“This isn’t as bad as it’s going to sound.”
“What is it?”
“You know I told you about the lawyer who visited me? Wanted to give the impression there’d be great things in store for me if I should happen to blow the suppression hearing?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes looked ready for anything.
“Well, there’s been a little follow-up. Carl and I were just out at the airport looking in some luggage lockers. Someone sent me the keys.”
“Go on.”
“Well, one of the lockers had three million dollars in it.”
She sat back, as if he’d pushed her.
“Whose money is it?”
“Who do you think? Ernesto Vicaro’s, I would guess. Right?”
“What about the other locker?”
“That’s the problem, Michelle. I don’t want you to be alarmed. There were some bullets.”
Maybe if he didn’t tell her there were two. And if he left out the part about the photograph.
But he could tell from her eyes, from the tilt of her head and the slight parting of her lips, that she knew.
“How many bullets?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Two, right?”
“Yes. Two.”
“Is that all?”
He walked over to the sink.
“What else, Gus? Please tell me everything and get it over with.”
He sat back down.
“There was a photograph of us on the front lawn.”
He leaned toward her.
“It’s just intimidation, Michelle. These people never carry through their threats. If they’re really going to do something, they don’t warn you first. They’re just bullies. When you stand up they back off. It’s intimidation.”
She said, “Like, what’s his name, Alfredo something—like him?”
Alfredo Guzman, a Colombian informant, had gone home from a meeting with Carl and found his wife and three children stabbed to death in the living room. That night a police lieutenant in Medellin called to tell him his grandparents, an uncle, and three cousins had been shot to death. Two weeks later Alfredo was blown away by a shotgun blast on the street outside the hotel he was hiding in.
“That was different, Michelle. He was one of them, a traitor. They’ve never hurt an American prosecutor.”
“Not yet.” Her eyes began to tear. “I’m sorry. I know you have to do this. I’m glad you’re doing this. I just—it’s just hard, that’s all.”
Gus said, “Do you want to move?”
“No! This is our home. I’m not moving.”
“I’ll ask Gus to send over a couple of agents. Maybe I can get some marshals. The cops’ll put the house on their watch list.”
“I don’t want any of that, Gus.”
“I know you don’t. It’s not your choice.”
Ten days later a federal magistrate in Montgomery denied the suppression motion. Less than a month after that, Ernesto Vicaro—faced with a Continuing Criminal Enterprise charge that could give him a life sentence with no parole—accepted a plea bargain guaranteeing twenty years in prison. It was a triumph for Gus. He’d locked up the biggest cocaine dealer on earth.
For the Montgomery papers it was a case of a local boy defeating a world-class dope dealer, an army of big-city lawyers, and doing it all despite threats to himself and his wife. And the praise wasn’t just local. Invitations continued to come from national talk shows. The New York Times ran an editorial: “A choice between a bribe or a bullet. Three million dollars or the murder of himself and his wife. And Gus Parham didn’t even think it over. He called the cops. Today the man who made that threat is in prison serving 20 years, and Gus Parham is still in his office in the Mont gomery federal building preparing what we hope are more cases against criminal bullies like Ernesto Vicaro-Garza.”
Nineteen months after the Ernesto Vicaro case, Gus was appointed federal magistrate in Montgomery. A year later he stepped up to district court judge in the middle district of Alabama, located in Montgomery. It was the answer to a dream, not as big as his Supreme Court dream, but big enough, to see if he could be the kind of judge he knew a judge should be, to answer not to clients or complainants or police or politicians, but only to the truth and to the law. When people thought to ask about his politics, the answer was always “He doesn’t have politics, he only has principles.” People who tried to contradict that came up empty.
Gus had been a district court judge for less than a year when his Harvard friend Dave Chapman, then serving in the Senate, was nominated to run for President. In November, Chapman was elected.
6
Traffic slowed and Gus saw flashing red police lights in the block ahead. An accident. It was early April, a beautiful spring day. He gripped the wheel and sighed. Why did these things always happen when he was in a hurry? A murder defendant, her at
torney, and the prosecutor were waiting outside his chambers, ready to work out a plea bargain to a reduced charge of manslaughter.
He didn’t usually take this road. A construction detour had forced him from his regular route onto something called Bakersfield Boulevard. The name rang a bell, but he couldn’t remember having been here before. And now it looked as if he might never be able to get off it.
Three minutes later the line of cars began to move. He crept forward, and as he approached the police lights, he saw a crowd.
It wasn’t an accident. Some kind of disturbance. A group of protesters was waving placards. The placards said BABY KILLERS!
And then Gus remembered where he’d heard the name Bakersfield Boulevard. Twenty feet in from the street, a one-story white stucco building sat behind a metal sign reading HAMILTON-SMYTH CLINIC.
Years ago, Gus had found it in the telephone book, the only abortion clinic in Montgomery. That must be where his child had been killed. He knew a lot of people wouldn’t look at it like that, that his child had been killed. He wished he didn’t look at it like that. But he could never think of the child as simply a lifeless mass of tissue, as anything other than a child—his child—who had been killed. Killed with his approval. At his insistence. The only child that would ever occupy Michelle’s womb.
It was then, when he found the name in the phone book, that he had thought of going over and looking at the clinic. It was the closest he would ever be able to get to the child. It was the only place on earth to which the child had had any physical connection. Maybe if he went he could get some sense of the child—of its presence, of its existence.
But he hadn’t done it. As much as he wanted some memory or experience of the child, he didn’t think he could spend the rest of his life with the picture of that clinic before his eyes. It wouldn’t do anything but increase the pain.
Now he knew he’d been right. He was in a panic to escape, to get away from the clinic, the protesters, the placards.
He jammed the car into reverse, twisted in his seat, looked back. Police cars blocked his way. He tried to move forward. An ambulance filled the intersection. He put his head on the steering wheel and closed his eyes.
