Above the Law (27 page)

“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
business
man, 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.

“Or agency,” Louis added.

“Let’s take Lopez at his word this one time, for the sake of conjecture,” I said, wanting to look at this angle a bit more before we moved on. “That they didn’t know there was going to be a raid, and that their security was lax. Doesn’t that point to an informant from the outside? And wouldn’t that have to be someone on the task force? No one else knew.”

“Which leads us back to a suspect from within the task force,” Louis said. “Where we’ve been from the beginning.”

“For the raid,” I pointed out, “not the killing. There’s cross-purposes working there. Especially for Sterling Jerome.” I was thinking out loud. “Jerome doesn’t go in if he thinks there’s going to be resistance, because Juarez could be killed and that fucks him up. He was emphatic about that. We knew about his impassioned statements to his people before the raid—‘Take Juarez alive, that’s the reason we’re doing this.’ So maybe it does fall on Lopez—that he lied to Jerome about that.”

“Like I said, a snitch is a snitch,” Kate proclaimed.

“Let’s table Lopez for now,” I said. “What Curtis Jackson told Keith is more disturbing to me. With deeper implications as to how we’re going to conduct our investigation, I think.”

The others concurred.

Keith turned to me. “How do you feel about the possibility that our local D.A. and sheriff
are
orchestrating this because of the shabby way they were treated?” he asked. “She’s your friend. Could she be using you?”

“I can’t imagine it,” I said. “But anything’s possible.”

I had to say that. I didn’t believe it, but I couldn’t deny the possibility, however remote.

“I don’t believe it,” Kate averred. “It’s Jackson shooting off his mouth, trying to influence this. The more muddled it all gets, the more suspicion is spread around. Which is good for criminals. It’s like taking sides with the Iraqis against the Iranians. You get in bed with wrongos because you think you’ll get something out of an unholy alliance, and in the end you get screwed regardless.”

“Jackson had a point, though.” Keith tapped a ballpoint pen against his palm. “The DEA was damaged by Juarez’s being killed. And Juarez’s people were saved the possibility of being ruined by their boss turning evidence. They’re still out there, and now the government has to be a hell of a lot more cautious in going after them.”

“What about the notion of Juarez being mixed up with the DEA? If he’d been turned, that would be cause for killing him, wouldn’t it?” Louis asked.

“I think it’s the opposite,” I said. “He can’t help them if he’s dead.”

“But he could rat out that DEA agent. Or the whole agency,” Keith reminded us. “If his handler thought that was going to happen, killing him makes sense.” He paused. “You think Juarez could’ve been on the DEA’s payroll?”

“That would be wild,” I said. “We can try to check it out. I don’t think we’ll get anywhere, seeing as how we’re on their shit list. But I’ll see if we can find anything out.” I went on, “About Juarez’s own people snuffing him. Does anyone buy into that?”

I looked at them. It wasn’t a popular proposal.

“No,” Keith said, speaking for everyone. “lf that’s the case, then they don’t wait until
after
the bust to kill him. They do it
during.
We’ve been through that already.” You could hear the frustration in his voice; and we were just getting started.

“It doesn’t hurt to repeat it,” I said. “Sometimes the circumstances change your thinking. Or fresh evidence.” I paused. “There’s one situation where it’s possible, though.”

“What’s that?” Kate asked.

“When all hell broke loose, Juarez hid out in that freezer without his people knowing it. He knows he’s in jeopardy, so he hides and hopes either that the DEA will find him first, or no one will.”

“Jesus, Luke, that’s really pushing it,” Kate said. “Besides, he would have come out when the shooting stopped. What’s he going to do, wait in there until he freezes to death?”

“He wouldn’t have known it was over,” Louis pointed out. “You can’t hear in there. Anyway, even if he could, how would he know his side lost? They had superior firepower, or thought they did, they usually do. What does it look like if he does come out and all his guys are waiting right by the door? What’s he gonna say, ‘I was looking for a Popsicle’?”

Everyone laughed; hollowly.

“I know it’s a lame notion,” I said, “but we have to examine all the possibilities, even if they’re foolish and stupid. This is a bizarre case. We shouldn’t assume anything is the way it ought to be, or normally is.”

Louis interjected another wrinkle. “Did you hear they might file a lawsuit against the DEA for illegally raiding them?” he asked, his voice rising in weary indignation—this would not be the first time the bad guys sued the good guys for doing what their job description says they must do. “The warrants were issued for a drug deal, which there wasn’t one, technically. Their lawyers are going to marshal a strong argument that the raid had no standing.”

“Too bad the scumbags get the same rights as the good people, ain’t it?” Keith said. “Better. They have better lawyers.”

I nodded; I’d heard about that lawsuit. Why shouldn’t they? They had nothing to lose. If some misguided judge let a motion like that in the door, there’d be more egg on the government’s face. The bad guys become the good guys. Ruby Ridge all over again, with even less justification. Which were potentially the circumstances here. It was the reason Nora had brought me in, after all. We were still, essentially, at ground zero.

“If a DEA agent killed Juarez and we find evidence to support that, then we’ll go to trial,” I said, concluding the meeting. “Regardless of our personal feelings. If it was someone else, we’ll prosecute that. Whoever we can find to prosecute,” I said, spreading my arms wide, “we’re going for it!”

They tried to muster laughter. It wasn’t easy.

“Listen, people,” I said. “If the Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, says a president of the United States can be criminally indicted for lying about getting a blow job, then a DEA agent sure as hell can be held to the same standards for killing an unarmed drug dealer. Even if he deserved it.”

That evening Nora and I had dinner at her place. She asked; having kept her out of my loop I couldn’t say no, even though I wanted to.

“How’s your investigation going?” she asked. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Too early to tell anything. You know how that goes.”

“Tom Miller told me you took his deposition and his deputy’s.”

I nodded.

“Does that mean they’re in the clear?” She caught herself. “You’re not supposed to discuss the case with me, are you?”

“You’re right,” I said, trying not to let her hound-dog look of supplication bother me. “But to answer you anyway, we did, and they are. I have to go by the book.”

“Like talking to me? Or not? You’re not going by the book now.” She tried out a smile. It didn’t work very well.

“We’re friends, Nora. Friends are allowed to talk to friends.”

“I agree. They should.”

I sipped some wine. I was buying time, to try to figure out how to respond to this conversation.

Nora and I were old friends. We’d been in school together, an important time in people’s lives. Having dinner, talking about work that was important to both of us, should have been not only allowable but natural, candid. And she was the lead player in this; she’d hired me. We should be talking about this case as much as she wanted to.

But I was holding back.

If Nora was Norman, a male friend from law-school days, it would be different. I’d be telling him whatever came to mind, even using him as a confidant, a partner. With Nora, I wasn’t doing that. It wasn’t that she was a woman and I was a man—many women lawyers are my friends, and I have easy, comfortable relationships with them when it comes to work, values, so forth.