by Mark Gimenez
Beck turned back to Polk, who said, "But, Jesús"—Hay-Zeus—"here, he speaks English real good, Judge."
The D.A. added, "And he signed a written confession."
Jesús Ramirez was a short wiry Mexican national. He was not a county inmate; he was neatly dressed in jeans, boots, and a work shirt. Beck opened the red file. Jesús was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He had gotten drunk on a Saturday night and battered his wife. The deadly weapon was a burrito.
Beck looked up at the D.A. "A burrito?"
"It was frozen."
Beck turned to the defendant.
"You hit your wife with a frozen burrito?"
"Yes, sir."
He spoke with a heavy Latino accent.
Beck glanced at Lawyer Polk, who quickly said, "I didn't kick him, Your Honor. I swear."
Back to the defendant: "Why?"
"Oh, Macarena, she has the mouth. Sometime, she drive me loco."
"Is she here?"
"Yes, sir."
Jesús turned and pointed to a Latino woman sitting in the audience with six young children.
"Are those your children?"
Jesús smiled. "Yes, sir, those are my niños." He pointed. "Marita, Manuel, Maribel—"
The D.A. sighed. "Your Honor …"
Beck held an open hand up to the district attorney.
"Marco, Miguel, and Marvin."
"Marvin?"
"After the landlord."
"And what do you do, Mr. Ramirez?"
"Kill line at the turkey plant. Hang the birds by their feet and cut their scrawny necks, to let them bleed out."
"And you go home and drink?"
"Judge, I see now the dead turkeys in my sleep … Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and now we work the Saturday because of Thanksgiving coming. Twelve hours each day I kill the turkeys. I must drink to forget the turkeys."
"And you are still employed?"
"Oh, sure."
"Has your wife filed for divorce?"
"Macarena? No, she no file for divorce. She love Jesús."
"But you hit her with a frozen burrito."
Jesús turned his palms up. "I was drinking, she was yelling, the niños, they were screaming, I was watching the fútbol on the satellite, México y Brasil … I throw the burrito, but I did not mean to hit her. She call the policía."
Macarena Ramirez stood in the audience.
"Señor Judge, I love Jesús!"
"Mr. Ramirez, do you love Macarena?"
"Oh, yes, mucho."
The D.A.: "What is this, a courtroom or Dr. Phil?"
Beck ignored the D.A. "Mr. Ramirez, do you promise the court that you will stop drinking?"
"Oh, yes, sir. No more drinking for Jesús."
"And you will not throw frozen products at your wife again?"
"No, I will not do that no more."
"All right, Mr. Ramirez." Beck turned to Lawyer Polk. "Do you have anything to say on behalf of your client, Mr. Polk?"
Lawyer Polk shrugged. "No, sir."
Beck stared at Lawyer Polk a minute and shook his head. He turned back to the D.A.
"Mr. Eichman, the defendant is the sole support for his family. If I put him in jail for six months, he'll lose his job. What will happen to his wife and children?"
"Your Honor, that is not the state's concern."
"Does the state really want to prosecute this case?"
"Not unless you're going to send someone to jail today."
"No one yet, Mr. Eichman. So the state dismisses the charges against Mr. Ramirez?"
The D.A. shrugged. "Why not? He'll smack her around another Saturday night."
Two hours later, Beck had sentenced the Latino defendants and three of the women, all charged with possession of small amounts of marijuana, meth, and cocaine and other minor violations of parole, to fines, probation, and community service. He saw no sense in sending poor people to prison for non-violent crimes. The D.A. saw red.
Beck now had to send someone to prison.
The last defendant of the day was a twenty-year-old woman named Dee Dee Birck. She was the descendant of a wealthy old-line German family. She had been given everything in life, and she had sold everything for drugs. When her family had cut her money off, she had stolen for drug money. This was her sixth trip through the system. On her last trip she had been sentenced to two years, but Stutz had probated her sentence. Dee Dee Birck had then violated probation: she had robbed her mother at gunpoint. She needed money for meth. She would be boarding the bus to Huntsville tomorrow morning.
She was short and skinny; her hair was brown and ratty. Her face had been ravaged by five years of methamphetamine use: she looked twice her age. She stood before Beck, and her lawyer stood beside her. Beck glanced at the older white couple sitting in the front row. The woman was crying. Mavis leaned in and whispered, "Her folks." Dee Dee had put a gun to her mother's head, but her mother cried when she was being sentenced to prison. A mother's love.
"Ms. Birck, you are charged with violating your probation, do you understand that?"
"Yeah."
"Do you plead true or false?"
"Yeah."
"Yes, you plead true?"
"Yeah."
"You understand that because you violated your probation, I must now enforce your original sentence?"
"Yeah."
"Which was two years in the state penitentiary?"
"Yeah."
Beck leaned back in his chair and stared at this young woman. She just stood there. She wasn't crying or begging for mercy or showing any emotion at all. She was about to be incarcerated for two years—and she just stood there! What had happened to her? What if fifteen years from now, that were Meggie standing there? What if Meggie got off track in life because of drugs? It broke Beck's heart to think of that, just as it was breaking his heart to send this young woman to prison. He sighed.
"Ms. Birck, your probation is revoked. You are hereby remanded to the custody of the Texas Department of Corrections for confinement in the state penitentiary for a period of two years pursuant to your original sentence. Good luck to you."
Dee Dee Birck broke into a big grin, turned around, and waved at her parents like they had just dropped her off at summer camp. Deputy Clint escorted her to the door. Beck's eyes followed her all the way out of the courtroom.
She was grinning!
Mavis was crying.
"What's wrong, Mavis?"
"Nothing."
"Why are you crying?"
"I always cry at weddings, funerals, and sentencings."
"Okay. Why was Dee Dee Birck grinning?"
Mavis dabbed her eyes. "Because she's been in the system. She knows TDC can't afford to keep her in prison for her full sentence and she knows she gets credit for time served in the county jail. She knows she won't spend more than sixty days in prison." Mavis shrugged. "She did the math."
FOURTEEN
Sentencing day was over.
Dee Dee Birck's grin—and the fact that a twenty-year-old girl knew how to do the time-served math—had so disturbed Beck that he had no appetite for lunch. So he walked out the back door of the courthouse and across the rear parking lot and into the Gillespie County Law Enforcement Center; he was carrying the Heidi Geisel file. Doreen jumped up this time.
"Judge Hardin, sir."
"Grady in?"
"Yes, sir. I'll get him for you."
She almost ran to the back offices. When she returned, she was followed closely by Gillespie County Sheriff Grady Guenther with a toothpick in his mouth.
"Judge, I would've come over to the courthouse."
"I needed some air after this morning."
"First sentencing day. Don't worry, you'll get used to it."
"That's what I'm afraid of. And, Grady, I'm still just Beck, except when I'm in the courtroom."
"And I'm still just Grady … except when I pull you over and conduct a body cavity search on the side of the highway." He smil
ed. "Come on back."
Beck followed Grady into his office, placed Heidi's file on the desk, and sat. Grady plopped into his chair behind the desk and picked up a massive hot dog.
"Mind if I finish my lunch? Kraut dog. You want Doreen to run get you one?"
Beck shook his head. Grady blew the toothpick into a trash can across the room like an aborigine firing a dart out of a blowgun. He then bit down on the dog.
"First sentencing day and you get 'assault with a frozen burrito.' " Grady shook his head. "Don't know why the city cops arrested Jesús. He's a good man, works at the turkey plant, construction on weekends. Built my barn. And Macarena, she does have a mouth, that one. Was me, I'd've thrown a side of beef at her, something with some heft behind it. You did the right thing, sending Jesús home. Hell, living with her is hard time compared to six months in my jail."
"What about Ignacio Perez? I do the right thing with him?"
"Questionable."
"Why?"
Grady swallowed hard. "Ignacio, he's a two-bit user. I told Junior not to waste county money on him, but he wants to build his conviction record. I wanted to use Ignacio to get the suppliers."
"Is there a drug problem here?"
Grady drank from a can of root beer. "Meth and marijuana, some coke, kids huffing, puffing, and dusting."
"I don't know what any of that means."
"You will soon enough." Another bite of the dog. "Alcohol's still the biggest problem here, kids raised on Weissbier, drinking and driving." He grimaced. "Sorry. But drugs came to our town—hell, cartels tried to fly a few tons of marijuana straight into our little county airport a while back. No Homeland Security here. Gutsy bastards. What'd you have today, ten drug cases?"
"A dozen."
"Used to be none."
"Why so many Latinos? Anglos don't use?"
"Course white kids use. Hell, last year couple cheerleaders got caught snorting coke in the restroom at the high school. Most of the softball team after that. Good German girls."
"What happened to them?"
"Nothing."
"Why not?"
" 'Cause their daddies run this town."
"Twenty-four years and nothing's changed."
"You won the election. That's a change."
"I didn't win."
"No, you didn't. But you're the judge just the same."
"So Heidi could've gotten the cocaine here?"
Grady finished off the root beer, swiped his sleeve across his mouth, and wadded the wrapping into a ball. He tossed it at the waste basket like Shaq shooting a free throw. He missed.
"Yep. You can buy condoms at the H-E-B and cocaine at the high school."
Grady was now digging around in his desk drawer; he gave up and dug into his pants pocket instead. He pulled out the pocketknife and opened a small blade. He picked his teeth.
"Used to be, Mexicans wanting to come north for work could just walk across the border. After 9/11 the Feds clamped down hard, so now they gotta hire the coyotes—smugglers, they charge a thousand bucks a head. Migrants can't afford that, so the coyotes make them mules to pay the fare. Which means we got more people bringing more dope across the border. They pack marijuana, cocaine, ice—crystal meth—up to San Antonio, locals bring it back here. They're the ones I'm after. And I'm gonna find 'em before they start selling meth over at the middle school."
He shook his head.
"Wouldn't know it now, but Dee Dee Birck used to be a cute kid."
"Grady, it's more than a job for you."
He nodded. "I got kids, and a grandkid now. I don't want it to happen to mine like it happened to Dee Dee … and Heidi. You look at her file?"
Beck nodded. "What happened to her shoes and purse?"
"Never found them. We searched a hundred-yard radius from where she was found and up and down Baron's Creek right there."
"New Year's Eve and she was barefooted?"
"She was stoned."
"And now she's dead."
"So, you find something I didn't?"
"No."
"Then do him a favor … Aubrey. Get him to let her go. She's never coming back, and we're never gonna find the guy."
"He's really fixed on finding him."
"Needs to find a woman."
"He wants Randi back."
"He's still pining for her after all these years?"
"Yeah. Said she lives in Austin."
"And he figures she's still available?"
"I guess."
"Doubtful. She was a good-looking gal, most likely married money."
"Aubrey figures winning state might land him a college job, maybe at UT. More money, he might be able to win her back."
Grady shook his head. "Men get a serious case of the stupids when it comes to women, don't we? Course, you take the stupid out of life, me and you wouldn't have jobs. So he's banking on winning state to get his life back together?"
"That seems to be the plan."
"That kind of puts you between a rock and a hard place, don't it, Beck?"
"What does?"
"You figuring on finding his daughter's killer, make amends for the past … now you hold his future in your hands."
"Grady, what are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about Slade."
"The quarterback? What about him?"
"His case."
"What case?"
"You don't know?"
"I must not."
"Three weeks ago, Slade beat the hell out of a Mexican boy over at the movie theater. Julio Espinoza. Good kid, stays out of trouble. Theater's outside the city limits, my jurisdiction. Time we got there, the boy was a mess … broken nose, broken jaw. We arrested Slade for aggravated assault. Second-degree felony plus hate crime enhancement, he's looking at five to ninety-nine years in the state pen."
"Hate crime?"
"He was calling Julio a wetback and a spic, while he was hitting him. Took four deputies to pull him off the boy. They would've just shot him, except the backup quarterback ain't no good."
"Four cops? Was he on drugs?"
"Toxicology came back clean for alcohol, coke, meth, PCP. Slade's a big boy, but he was wired on something."
Grady opened a side drawer and removed a file. He placed the file on his desk and pushed it across. Beck opened the file and recoiled at a color photo of a slight Latino boy. His face was badly bruised and cut in several places; his left eye was swollen shut; his lips were cut and puffy. His nose sat lopsided. Blood stained his white shirt.
"Jesus. What'd he hit him with?"
"His fists."
"Why?"
"Caught him talking to his girlfriend. Nikki Ernst, she's a cheerleader. That's what I'm talking about, why Mexicans don't even look at German girls. They don't want trouble."
"He did this just because the boy was talking to his girl?"
"Yep."
"No provocation?"
"Nope. Julio was working the snack bar, talking to the girl … witnesses say Slade stormed in, didn't say nothin', just grabbed Julio, dragged him over the counter, commenced to hitting him. Julio was in the hospital five days, signed his affidavit there. We got statements from Nikki and a few other kids."
"Slade played Friday, so he must've made bail."
"No bail. J.P. released him on his personal bond."
"For aggravated assault?"
"Walt's a big football fan. Walt Schmidt, he's the Justice of the Peace."
"So the star quarterback's case is on my docket?"
"Not your docket."
"What do you mean?"
Grady let out a deep sigh. "I knew this boy was trouble when they moved to town."
"Slade?"
"Yep. Now he beats up Julio, starts a time bomb ticking in my town. Got my men on alert in case that bomb goes off."
"Time bomb? What's going on, Grady?"
Grady shut the pocketknife and stuffed it back into his pants pocket.
"First off, we ain't having this conversat
ion. This is between you, me, and that stuffed buck up there."
"Okay."
"Second, you need to know the lay of the land these days. How long you been gone?"
"Twenty-four years."
"Well, things have changed around here. Considerably. Before you left, this place was all German all the time. But we got what they call 'competing interests' these days."
"What kind of competing interests?"
Grady held up a finger.
"There's the Germans, of course, and since their great-granddaddies settled this town they figure they still own it and everyone else are just renters. They still hold every seat on the county commission, city council, school board—employee directory over at city hall reads like the Berlin phone book. And they'll fight to their last kolache to keep control over this town."
"Well, that hasn't changed."
"No, but their town has, and they don't like it."
Grady pointed at an old map on the wall.
"That's what this place looked like in 1846, when the Baron laid out the town. For the next hundred years, the Germans lived out here, surviving off the land, isolated from the outside world—Austin was a week away by horseback. Then LBJ gave them the mohair money back in the fifties. Next forty years, they were fat and happy, raising their goats and getting government checks every year. Hell, life don't get no better than that."
"That's the way it was when I left."
"It ain't that way no more. When Clinton cut the mohair money back in ninety-six, people 'round here figured it was the end of the world. Goat ranchers my age and older, they went their whole lives getting those government checks. Then one day they go out to the mailbox and it ain't there. It was like someone died. Killed off goat ranching and all the Main Street businesses with it."
"So what happened? Downtown's booming."
"Well, about that time, city folk had gotten real tired of the crime and congestion, gangs and drugs, wanted a simpler life, so they started moving out here—Austin's only an hour away by Volvo. Yuppies, hippies, artists, folks with tattoos and money, they all came out here. Bought land, fixed up old homes, rented the Main Street buildings, started all those businesses and wineries and restaurants—we got two French restaurants now. Land values shot through the roof, and all of a sudden, the old Germans are making more money selling their land and renting their buildings than they ever did off mohair."
