by Steven Gore
Pole-lit intersections and neon-blasting storefronts passed them by like they were tumbling down a kaleidoscope.
A different voice. “He’s moving again. Right on Webster … left on Fell. Watch out. He may spot you.”
Navarro turned right on the steep Masonic Avenue, nose down toward where Fell bordered the north side of the Golden Gate Park Panhandle.
The original voice. “He’s about sixty yards ahead of us … Shit. He’s pulling over again. We’re trapped. No place to stop. He’s gonna make us.”
Donnally pointed at the Chevron station on the opposite side of Masonic. Navarro cut across two lanes of traffic, pulled in, and turned off his lights.
The second voice. “Forget the deal and the money. Let’s just grab him and the dope.”
A jumble of voices and sirens blared from the radio.
“Fell at Broderick … Fell at Baker … Fell at Lyon … Fell at Central.”
Navarro flipped on his lights and siren and eased into the intersection. Donnally could see patrol overheads coming toward them on the one-way street; leading the pack was the silver Escalade, jerking and swerving into the lanes to his left and right. Donnally imagined Chino both trying to watch the road and trying to reach for the cocaine and throw it out the window. And moments later Donnally saw flashes of light on plastic as kilos arced from the truck and bounced along the pavement and then puffs of white as they exploded and fogged the street.
Navarro angled his car, forcing the Escalade into the far lane, but he didn’t leave enough room for the SUV to get by. Just before it would’ve hit, Navarro shifted into reverse and backed out of the way, but too late for Chino to react. He scraped door-to-door with vehicles parked along the curb until his front bumper caught the rear deck of a delivery van, spun tail first, then slid to a stop.
Chino pushed off from the driver’s side like a football lineman, head down into a sprint toward the Panhandle. Donnally had his door open by the time Chino had cut between two cars and was crossing the sidewalk, trying to get beyond the reach of the streetlight and into the darkness of bushes and trees.
Donnally heard Navarro broadcasting the route. Siren wails enclosed him like a tornado of sound as he started after Chino. Cutting between the same cars, voices yelling behind him, surveillance cars accelerating again to cut through the park and intercept Chino on the other side.
The slap and squish of boots on wet grass led Donnally into the shadow between the trees. His front foot hit a lump and his leg went out from under him. A shock of pain tore into his hip. He fell onto his back, his breath blown out of him. He rolled over and onto the leather jacket he’d slipped on. He guessed it was Chino’s and that he’d tossed it aside to change his appearance for when he emerged from the park. Donnally grabbed it and pushed himself to his feet and ran toward the sound of distant sirens—then a thunk and a yell twenty yards ahead. He spotted Chino on his knees reaching up toward a low oak branch to pull himself up. Donnally accelerated and dived, driving a forearm into Chino’s side, ramming him into the trunk. Then footsteps from behind him and hands grabbing and cops yelling, “Got ’em, got ’em, got ’em.”
Chapter 51
It wasn’t me, man. I was just taking a piss in the park and I heard sirens and people running and I had some weed in my jacket so I ran.”
Sitting across from Chino at the gray metal table bolted to the concrete floor, Donnally could see why he had the nickname. He looked Chinese. Square-jawed. Black-haired. Mongolian-eyed.
Donnally and Navarro’s agreement with the DEA and the narcotics task force was that they wouldn’t say anything to Chino that might disclose the wiretap and how they knew he’d be making a delivery that night.
Navarro pointed over his shoulder toward the door leading from the SFPD interview room, and said, “Look, Chino—”
“My name ain’t Chino.”
“Don’t play that game,” Donnally said. “Your face is practically a confession.”
“In ten minutes we’ll have latents lifted off of the kilos you threw from your Escalade,” Navarro said, “and from the steering wheel and the door handle and the rearview mirror and the console.”
Chino stared ahead, not responding.
“All we want from you is a good faith gesture,” Navarro said. “Something I can take to the agents waiting out there that’ll encourage them to cut a deal with you.”
Chino swallowed hard. “Like what?”
“First, who you’re working for.”
“And second?”
“Let’s see if we can get past first.”
Donnally cut in. “You got kids?”
Chino nodded.
“They’re saying they recovered ten kilos. Sentencing guidelines say that’s twenty years in the federal pen. Credit for good time, you’ll be out in eighteen years. That’ll make you …”
Donnally wanted him to fill in the data, make him give up something.
“Fifty-three.” Chino looked down at his folded hands, then up. “Why you asking me, you have to already know. If it was the buyer who snitched me off, you would’ve been waiting at the spot for me to show up, not following me there because you wouldn’t know where I was starting from. That means I got set up from my end.”
“So, say the name of the guy. But don’t lie. Lying means you won’t get anything out of this.”
“Hector Camacho.”
Donnally and Navarro knew it was a lie, or at best a half-truth, since he and Camacho could still have some unfinished business, but it was the name they wanted to hear. Chino had decided to talk about somebody who was now out of the business and couldn’t be hurt, rather than give up the name of the distributor he was working with now. The DEA would squeeze the true name out of him later.
“That’s a start,” Navarro said, then opened his folder and took out a legal pad. He drew a square at the top, and then ten more below it, and drew connecting lines to make an organizational chart. “Let’s fill in the boxes.”
Donnally imagined the DEA and narcotics task force agents comparing the names Chino then gave with the names that Camacho had given them and that they had used to target the wiretaps. They’d shown Donnally and Navarro the list when they had arrived at the station.
Chino told them a name that wasn’t on Camacho’s list.
Navarro asked about a couple of others to disguise his approach. Finally, he got to it.
“Tell me about, uh …” Navarro scanned the boxes as though he’d forgotten the man’s name. “This guy … Calaca.”
“Skinny old man. Been close to Camacho since high school in Mexico. Not really part of the operation. More like a silent partner, somebody Camacho talks to, gets advice from. A godfather to his kids. Story is that he was with one of the first cartels.”
“A guy he’d call if he needed help with something that really worried him?” Navarro asked. Like a murder.
Chino nodded, almost smiling. “Camacho had sort of a bat phone to call him. Two, three times a day. Didn’t use it for nothing else.”
And Donnally was certain Camacho hadn’t told the DEA about it when he agreed to cooperate.
“You know anybody who’s got the number?” Donnally asked.
Chino shook his head. “I don’t even know whose name it’s in.”
Navarro asked about a few more on his chart, then returned the legal pad to the folder. He and Donnally stood up.
“We’re gonna run this by the guys outside,” Navarro said, “and see how much it bought you.”
Chapter 52
After four hours’ sleep, Navarro arrived grim and red-eyed at Donnally’s front door at 8 A.M., and thirty minutes later they were sitting in a surveillance van across the street from Camacho’s house. A canine officer was stationed around the corner along the route to Camacho’s restaurant.
Camacho backed out of his driveway into the oncoming lane, then Hollywood-stopped at a red light and took a right turn out of Donnally’s view.
A patrol unit siren blared
for a second.
Navarro circled the block and stopped across the street from where the officer had pulled Camacho over. The officer glanced over his shoulder at them, then opened Camacho’s door and signaled for him to get out. The officer grabbed Camacho’s arm just above the elbow. Camacho pulled away. The officer pretended to lose his balance, then reached for Camacho’s wrist, twisted it behind him, and walked him to the front of the patrol car and bent him over the trunk.
“The idiot fell for it,” Navarro said. “We’ve got him on resisting.”
They needed Camacho to commit at least a misdemeanor in order to search him more thoroughly than just a pat down. The traffic infraction wasn’t enough.
The officer kicked at Camacho’s ankles, forcing him to spread his legs, then handcuffed and searched him, setting Camacho’s cell phones and wallet onto the hood. He then eased Camacho into the backseat of the patrol car. He slid into the driver’s seat of Camacho’s car so he could examine the phones out of Camacho’s line of sight, then called in a warrant check.
Ten minutes later, Camacho was again on his way. Twenty-minutes later, Judge McMullin signed an order so they could obtain the call and cell site records of Camacho’s secret phone. And an hour after that, Donnally and Navarro were reviewing them in Navarro’s office. They showed Camacho had made a call to Calaca from the area of Hamlin’s apartment at 2 A.M. on the night Hamlin was murdered and showed calls from and to some numbers they didn’t recognize on the night Frank Lange’s house was torched.
Donnally wondered why Camacho and Calaca hadn’t started with Lange. After all, he was the one actually in the DEA debriefing room with Camacho when Camacho shamed himself in his own eyes by snitching, and Lange would have been a more immediate target for Camacho’s rage.
They also spotted something else: calls a couple of days before Hamlin’s murder between Camacho and Ryvver Moon Scoville.
Chapter 53
You’ve got call records, but the rest is double hearsay, you overhearing Jackson talking to Janie about what Ryvver said to her,” Judge McMullin had told Donnally over the phone. “If you got it straight from Ryvver, then you could draft a search warrant that would stand up.”
Donnally wasn’t even sure he and Navarro could question Ryvver without advising her of her rights. These days, Navarro knew the law better than he did. He hadn’t read a DA legal advisory newsletter since he left the department. Who knew what the appeals courts were saying now as they second-guessed officers on the street whose duty required them to make quick decisions.
He was sure some judge somewhere would say that Ryvver running to a murderer like Camacho, to tell him something she knew would infuriate him enough to kill Hamlin, would make her part of a conspiracy, the death of Hamlin being a natural and foreseeable consequence of her action.
Ryvver hadn’t pulled the trigger, but she sure as hell had pointed a loaded and cocked gun.
Donnally didn’t like having to do it, but he asked Janie to come down to Hamlin’s office after Jackson got back from lunch and attempt to leverage Jackson’s guilt into a means to pry more information out of her about Ryvver.
Janie showed up, but she wasn’t happy about it, now uncertain about what her role was. She dropped into the chair across from Donnally where he sat behind Hamlin’s desk.
“There’s no expectation of confidentiality,” Donnally said. “She didn’t seek you out in your professional capacity and she didn’t ask you to come. You showed up here last time looking for me.”
“She knows what I do for living, that’s part of the reason why she talked, part of the reason I hoped she’d talk and unburden herself.”
“She also knows you’re an employee of the Veterans Administration—and no money changed hands between you and her. There’s no rational way she can see herself as your patient. At most, as a new friend.”
The sound of the opening door drew their attention to the outer office. Jackson looked toward them as she walked toward her desk, then stopped. Donnally rose. Jackson spun away, heading back toward the entrance.
“Wait,” Donnally said.
Jackson turned toward him. “This some kind of setup?” she asked, her eyes fixed into a glare as they shifted between Donnally and Janie.
Janie stood. “Only if you treat it that way.” She gestured toward Donnally behind her. “He’s getting close to the guy who killed Mark and Frank, but he needs your help.”
“Like what?”
“I need to see the payment history for the clients who cooperated.”
That wasn’t all he wanted, but it was a safer start.
Jackson took a step into the office and pointed at Hamlin’s monitor. “It’s in there.”
“I couldn’t find it.”
Jackson sighed like a frustrated little girl, then walked around the desk. Donnally stepped aside so she could sit down. She tapped a few keys, clicking tab after tab too fast for Donnally to follow until a report appeared on the monitor. He spotted Camacho’s nickname, Nacho. Short for Ignacio.
He tapped the screen. “Can you … what’s the word?”
Again with the sigh. “Drill down. It’s called drilling down.”
Jackson double-clicked.
A shorter report appeared, showing a deposit of fifty thousand dollars in the form of a check from the U.S. Treasury, marked Rafa.
Rafa was the drug dealer Camacho had rolled on, and this must be his reward, or at least a down payment on what could go five times higher.
Below that was twenty thousand dollars withdrawn in increments and in cash and paid out to Camacho, and twenty more that had been transferred to one of Hamlin’s personal accounts.
Hamlin had split the reward with Camacho fifty-fifty, except for ten thousand paid out in a check to Reggie Hancock.
Hancock had gotten a cut because it was his client, Guillermo Gutierrez, who had rolled on Camacho.
“There,” Jackson said, her face angled up toward Donnally. “You happy now?”
Jackson was acting like she was being forced to confess a sin of her own, and maybe she was. One of omission.
Donnally pointed at the couch. Jackson rose, walked over, and dropped down into it, arms folded across her chest.
Janie sat at the opposite end, not close enough to make Jackson feel any more cornered than she already was.
Donnally returned to the chair behind the desk and backed out of the shorter report. The routine showed him how to produce more of them. He felt Jackson staring at him. He tried a few.
“Is this up to date?” Donnally asked her, not looking away from the monitor.
“I don’t know. Mark entered the data himself.”
Donnally found a tab to print out a detailed report of the entire account. He pressed it, and Hamlin’s printer activated. He closed the program and swiveled the chair toward Jackson.
“I need you to get in contact with Ryvver.”
Donnally watched her right hand tighten around her left bicep, her knuckle skin lightening as it stretched.
“I know you’ve been in contact with her.”
Jackson’s head pivoted toward Janie. “Isn’t there some rule about confidentiality?”
“I’m not your therapist.”
Jackson looked back toward Donnally. “What do you want from her?”
“Probable cause.”
“Whatever she can tell you is hearsay.”
“I’m not asking her to repeat what anyone told her, just what she said to Camacho. Her own words. That’s not hearsay.”
Jackson looked down at her forearms, then lowered them and folded her hands in her lap. Donnally could see her eyes moving side to side, as though she was watching a boxing match, but it was all in her mind, and he wondered what the fight was about.
Finally, she spoke. “That might make her a coconspirator.”
“How do you figure?”
Her body stiffened. “Don’t play games. You know the law. Foreseeable consequences.” More internal boxing. “Let’s s
ay I didn’t tell her how bad a guy Camacho was until afterwards. Maybe she was just warning him to get a new lawyer, not asking him to do something.”
Donnally didn’t challenge her. Whatever rationalization she wanted to make, whatever lie she wanted to tell herself was fine with him, as long as it got him to where he was going: his boot kicking in Camacho’s front door.
“That’s fine,” Donnally said. “Then she’s in the clear. What do we need to do to meet up with her?”
“Will you put that in your report?”
Donnally nodded. “Just like you said it.” As a lie.
Jackson reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. She searched the memory, pressed “send,” and waited with the phone against her ear.
“It’s me … hang in there, baby girl. It’ll be okay.”
Jackson listened. Eyebrows knitted, biting her cheek.
“There’s a man who wants to meet with you. The special master … No, he’s not a cop. He can’t arrest you for anything. He needs your help.”
Jackson listened again, then looked at Donnally.
“She wants to know about witness protection.”
“The program was created so the government could get witnesses to testify against crooks exactly like Camacho,” Donnally said. “I’ll go to the feds myself. Judge McMullin will help. When can we meet?”
Jackson spoke into her phone. “He can do it … Can we get together?” She fell silent, then covered the mike. “She won’t meet, but she’ll talk to you on the phone.”
Donnally shrugged his assent.
“Here he is,” Jackson said, then reached out her phone toward him.
Donnally took it, introduced himself, and said, “I don’t need much at all. Just a couple of questions.” He could hear sniffling on her end. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”
More sniffling as Ryvver drew in a breath. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you talk to Hector Camacho?”
“A couple of times.”
“What did you tell him?”
