This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha (17 page)

T
he embattled emancipation process continued until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when Greg finally received the judge’s reluctant order to declare Brenda a legal adult. At the last moment, the Fairfax County judge had tried to block the emancipation. According to colonial law in Virginia, the parents of emancipated minors had to be informed with a notification placed on the courthouse door. In Virginia’s early life as a commonwealth, courthouse doors were littered with such notices. Hundreds of years later, the notices were stored in a binder kept by the court clerk. Over the due course of an emancipation process, the court was required to prepare the notification and file it with the clerk, but in an administrative snag, Brenda’s emancipation notification had not been filed. Locked in a stare with the judge, Greg was absolutely livid. He wanted to strangle someone, yell, jump up and down, smash benches and chairs. He was barely able to contain his anger and frustration at this unbelievable situation.

The FBI was finally ready to receive her and this judge had slapped him with a minor technical error that was a result of the court’s own failure, not Greg’s lack of preparation. Greg was not surprised, given what he knew about the court’s proclivities for clumsy administration. During a recess, Greg was relieved when an eleventh-hour solution presented itself. The clerk prepared the notice and amended a legal
juke that allowed her to file the notice “on the door” after the deadline. The paperwork was prepared on notebook paper. With the notice in place, the judge reluctantly issued Brenda’s emancipation order before the Thanksgiving holiday.

With the order in hand, Greg ran over to the detention center and demanded that they release Brenda. Out of breath and full of excitement, he was delayed by the front-desk attendant, who wanted to double-check the order with the judge.

“If you think I’m going to ruin my career over a judge’s order to let this girl out of detention, you’re fucking stupid,” Greg said with a self-righteous tone of voice and enough force to verbally beat the front-desk attendant into submission. Faking such an order would be the end of his career if someone found out, and he couldn’t believe the attendant was brazen enough to suggest he would do such a thing.

Brenda was brought out with a broad grin. She was finally free. Greg held up her papers, weary but with a satisfied look. Brenda took one look at him and knew he’d made good on his promise. With the emancipation process out of the way, she was more than ready to be checked out of the detention center, sleep in a real bed, and wear real clothes again.

Greg felt like he was on top of the world. He had won Brenda’s freedom in a hard legal battle where the system was up against him in every way. They had won that day, despite a judge who was in no mood to have a teenaged kid declared a legal adult and a county prosecutor who was unhappy about the legal fiction, that fake charge Greg and Porter wanted to have dropped.

Brenda’s emancipation was just as much a legal triumph for Greg’s career as it was a confidence builder for the two of them. It was also a culminating moment in the long roller-coaster ride of building trust with Brenda. He had told her he would pull it off and he had. After months of taking her out, teaching her table manners, buying her books, clothes, and toiletries, letting her cry on his shoulder, and giving her stern talks about safety and making smart decisions, Greg had become more than Brenda’s lawyer. He was more than her guardian. He had become a father figure, and standing there on the street in front of the detention facility, Greg felt like the light at the end of the tunnel was shining on both their faces.

Greg finally allowed himself to believe that Brenda actually had a chance of moving on. Brenda could have a future after the Mara
Salvatrucha. She had already realized that her intelligence could get her somewhere, maybe even into a career where she could help young people like herself, kids who had been confused and had become tied up in something that they felt they couldn’t get out of. Now it was time to move forward and make that future a reality.

For this moment alone, Greg had saved something special for Brenda’s new future. He handed her his personal copy of
Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was one of her favorite books. Greg had lent her a copy a couple of weeks after having met her, hoping Brenda could find inspiration in the one book that seemed to resonate with many people who dragged themselves through a life of crime.

Brenda had surprised Greg. She had devoured the book and asked intelligent questions concerning various layers of meaning in the plot. Brenda read between the lines. This book, in so many ways, had helped bring out the real Brenda for Greg, and had solidified their relationship. It was the appropriate ending to the long battle they had fought together and the friendship that they had formed.

Greg was optimistic as he handed Brenda over to the very capable hands of Special Agent Laurence Alexander, who would drive Brenda to her new apartment. It was an apartment the FBI agent had selected personally.

Winesburg Manor, Brenda mouthed to herself as she and the agent passed the sign to her new home. As they entered the one-bedroom apartment, Brenda noted so many things. The refrigerator was stocked. She had new clothes and a prepaid cell phone. He had bought her magazines, books, and toiletries and planned on giving her about $15 a week to have some pocket cash. Brenda was ecstatic. She was within walking distance of the Silver Spring stop on the Washington Red Line, just inside Maryland. It was the perfect location for a safe house. No one coming in or out cared enough to ask questions or notice anything that seemed out of place.

Brenda was on the way to becoming a normal kid. In late November it appeared that the worst was behind her. But when Brenda called Greg the day after Thanksgiving, he realized his belief in a happy ending couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“I’m so lonely,” she said, between choking sobs.

W
hen Greg transferred Brenda to FBI custody, he was no longer her lawyer or legal guardian. Brenda was now in the federal system and, legally speaking, an adult. Greg’s role as her legal guardian was relevant only as long as Brenda was a minor. Once she was placed in the safe house, he was no longer bound by law or legal ethics to oversee Brenda’s well-being. But he didn’t stop caring.

Brenda hadn’t been alone for more than forty-eight hours before she called Greg.

“I’m so alone,” Brenda said, upset and crying. “They gave me this cell phone and the first thing I did was call Mom. Now I’m nearly out of minutes,” she continued between sobs.

Brenda had spent all the money Alexander gave her on prepaid cell phone cards calling Honduras to speak with her mom. Greg knew Brenda had a difficult and special relationship with her mom. He wasn’t sure what the problem was, but Brenda had told him her mom needed her help. Someday Brenda wanted to bring her mom back to the United States from Honduras and take care of her.

After Alexander dropped Brenda off at her safe house, he reminded her of the lessons she had learned from Greg and Porter once they knew she would eventually be on her own. They had instructed her not to write down any of their names or what they had talked about.
A paper trail could be easily followed and would lead directly from her to the police.

She was also told that if she ran into old friends with the MS, she would have to lie about where she had been. She would have to do everything possible to maintain a façade of loyalty to the gang. After her first weekend at the safe house, Brenda hadn’t seen anyone. And instead of being a relief, that happened to be the most pressing problem.

“I didn’t want to call you over the holiday,” Brenda told Greg, a little calmer.

“But you can call me anytime, you know that,” Greg said.

Brenda talked about her mom and wanting to take care of her. For Greg, Brenda’s relationship with her mother was an effective fulcrum to leverage a strong argument in her mind for staying away from the gang. “If you’re going to take care of your mother, you need to be able to take care of yourself. If you need a job, what would you do? You know, you need an education,” Greg said.

These words were part of the repetitive lectures he used to push her to getting serious about her future. Greg had purchased GED practice books for Brenda, encouraging her to study for the test. She had already passed the practice tests before her emancipation hearings concluded, and once ensconced in witness protection, she could schedule the real exam. As far as Greg knew, Brenda’s formal education had stopped at eighth grade. With the GED, she could skip over high school and head straight into college.

“Honey, so long as you’re here I will do everything I can for you, you can call me anytime. I’m going to see about getting clearance to see you and meet you and take you out. I know it’s tough but I know you can read. I know you can watch TV.

“Whatever you need, we’re going to get it,” Greg continued. “The U.S. government has all those resources and they want to help you.”

Brenda was silent, listening to the only man she could trust.

“Honey, you’ve got to get off the phone. You’ve got to get some sleep. It’s just like being in jail—the first day is always the worst. It’s a new environment. That first day is really long. You’ll remember it forever,” Greg said, empathizing with her.

He could sense she was feeling a little better.

“Look, have you got food in the place?” Greg asked. He wanted to make sure she had enough to eat.

“No, no,” Brenda replied. “We bought a bunch of food, so I’m going to be fine.”

After he hung up, Greg realized that loneliness would be a challenge for Brenda. He made a point to call her over the weekend to give her some company. Greg genuinely thought Brenda was slowly adjusting to her new life in the safe house, but he remained worried. Brenda had struggled through the Thanksgiving holiday, a time when family and friends get together. With Christmas around the corner, Greg feared that Brenda might reach out to her old friends.

J
ust under six months after she was arrested in Arlington, Brenda sat in her safe house alone. She was forced to wait out the time between the closure of the emancipation process and her entrance into witness protection, the opening of a new chapter in her life. Days blended into weeks, and Brenda couldn’t sit still. She had to get out of the apartment, and she knew more or less when Alexander would stop by to check on her. It was easy for her to get out during the day and return in time for Alexander to stop by. Eventually her wanderings brought her back to the Arlington County Jail, where she knew her boyfriend was still behind bars.

Brenda and Denis had stopped talking after they were separated by Arlington police, but they never stopped writing. Brenda wrote him letters and he responded, sending her mail to the Landmark Juvenile Detention Center or the Fairfax Juvenile Detention Center. Brenda agreed to share these letters with Greg and Porter, but she never agreed to stop seeing Denis. He had replaced Veto as the love of her life, and Brenda had no intention of leaving him behind, despite his leadership status with the Mara Salvatrucha.

When Denis told Brenda to take care of herself in the back of the police cruiser after they were arrested in June, he knew his arrest meant the beginning of a long legal process that would likely find him guilty of a number of crimes.

After they were separated, Denis was placed in the Arlington County Jail while he awaited his trial date in December. It was shortly after his arrival that Detectives Rodriguez and Ignacio brought in his mom and aunt for the interview. Denis didn’t love Brenda, but he respected her and saw in her a way to make himself more powerful. Brenda was also known as an MS member who had been jumped in by a clique from Los Angeles, and in Virginia such history meant instant street credit.

After his arrest in June, Denis was in a tight situation. He kept his mouth shut, but as the months rolled by, the realization of state and federal charges began to sink in. He wasn’t up for just a few years. He was looking at a tall stack because of his state crimes and a possible death penalty for his federal crime. Denis remained a prime suspect for the Joaquin Diaz murder, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he would be charged with that murder and possibly locked up for life.

At the end of November, when his girlfriend moved into an FBI safe house, Denis Rivera decided it was time for him to talk to the police. He broke the Mara Salvatrucha’s number one rule: don’t rat.

Denis’s lawyer called Rodriguez to say he had knowledge of the threats against him. That phone call corroborated Brenda’s claim. Officers who worked as homicide or gang unit detectives were accustomed to threats made on their lives. This situation is never comfortable, no matter how experienced the detective. Rick Rodriguez didn’t live in the Arlington area, but he still had to watch his back everywhere he went after the warning went out. The fact that a gangbanging punk could pull up to a stop light and unload a clip into his car was unnerving.

As word spread that the Mara Salvatrucha was out to kill Rodriguez, his chief pulled him off the gang unit detail. This upset him more than the threat against his life. Rodriguez was determined to get to the bottom of the threats and possibly help the investigating officers make an arrest so he could get past it and back on the gang unit detail. His boss was being cautious, but Rodriguez’s die-hard attitude chomped at these constraints.

“Well, okay, but what does he know?” Rodriguez asked Denis’s lawyer when he called at the end of November, skeptical Denis knew anything that would be helpful.

“Well, he wants to talk,” the lawyer responded. He wanted to be very careful not to give anything away prematurely.

“Does he mind being interviewed?” Rodriguez asked, pushing a little.

“No. He will talk but there have to be certain things that need to be known. He’ll help you guys, but are you going to help him?” the lawyer said. He was working to pull together some sort of deal for his client.

Deal or not, Rodriguez couldn’t lose. There was a chance he could gain important information about the threats against his own life. He made it clear to the lawyer it didn’t matter what his client said. The information his client shared had to lead to an arrest. There had to be results.

Rodriguez was interested in any information Denis had on the
luz verde
the MS issued on him. Anything else was a fringe benefit. It would be up to the Virginia commonwealth attorney prosecuting Denis’s case and Rodriguez to decide if his information was valid.

Denis had a few cards to play, but he was running out of time. He would be tried on the malicious-wounding charge in December and likely convicted for the crime that Brenda had been unwilling to commit. He was sure to do some time, but if he could throw out a few names, there was a chance he could enjoy a reduced sentence.

Rodriguez, Denis, and Denis’s lawyer were seated in an interview room at the Arlington County prison with the prosecuting attorney, a hard woman. Rodriguez tried not to be hopeful. Denis was a man with a vast knowledge of local MS activity, but everyone in the room knew he would serve some time at both the state and federal level. If Denis’s decision to speak with the police ever hit the street, he would have serious trouble in prison. It would likely mean his death. Rodriguez was just as likely to catch a bullet on the street from one of Denis’s homies. The two were locked into a dangerous game. Rodriguez had the prosecuting attorney and Denis’s long list of crimes on his side. He was holding a number of cards. Denis likely knew who was ordered to kill Rodriguez. Stringing Rodriguez along long enough to get some time shaved off his state sentence was his only play.

“The things we’re interested in are the following,” Rodriguez began. “We’re interested in knowing about stolen cars.” Rodriguez knew Denis was a master car thief, but that was an easy pitch. Denis sat on the location of any number of stolen cars. “We want to know anything about who’s taking them, where they’re taking them to, and any robberies or any other crimes MS is committing.”

That request was already a little harder for Denis to meet. As a cel
ebrated MS leader, he knew better than most the consequences of ratting out his homies to the cops. Many of the cars MS members stole were almost immediately driven to Mexico, where MS contacts south of the border would buy them for a decent price. These cars were long gone. There was no sense in talking about stolen cars, and both knew it. But Rodriguez wanted to give Denis a way to gradually work himself up to sharing the most important information. Gang members who were willing to talk rarely, if ever, gave up critical information during the first interview.

Rodriguez pressed on. “We want to know about weapons trafficking and who has these weapons. And any crime you get wind of between this moment and whenever, we want to know about that too.”

Rodriguez put pressure on Denis to talk. He knew what Denis was up against. The young gangster would talk if he valued his freedom. An extended moment of silence passed.

Then Rodriguez delivered the bottom line. “And, most importantly, we want to know about any,
any
threats you have heard, or know of, toward me or any other police officer, including Victor Ignacio.

“My understanding,” Rodriguez said, focusing solely on Denis, “is that what’s kicking this off is the fact that you have information concerning threats about me.”

Denis remained silent.

“So that is your ticket,” Rodriguez said. “There is the big one.”

He had made his position clear. It was now Denis’s turn to deliver.

“Well, I can tell you where you can find a stolen Corolla,” Denis offered.

It was a start, and something Rodriguez could use to establish Denis’s credibility, but it was far from what he needed. Rodriguez had little confidence in the young man as a star informant and was still convinced Denis didn’t care about where he was headed. He was looking at jail time as his final rite of passage, the moment in which young gangsters graduate from small time to the real deal. But Rodriguez knew Denis would never get out to enjoy his newfound respect on the street.

“He’s going to start by giving you little things,” Denis’s attorney told Rodriguez after two fruitless interviews in late November and early December.

“That’s fine. We’ll take whatever,” Rodriguez said. Any shred of information could help solve a crime. “But time is of the essence here,”
Rodriguez reminded the attorney. Rodriguez was able to talk to Denis as long as he was under the jurisdiction of Arlington County, which would hold until he had been tried for all his Virginia state crimes.

Leads on the threats against Rodriguez were thin. So far they had little more than Brenda’s initial comments to work with. It was frustrating, and Rodriguez hated to think that the only man who had information preferred to play games with stolen cars. He knew damn well that Denis had information on the guy who was planning to kill him.

“Let’s talk about stolen cars and let’s talk about parties and let’s talk about meetings, talk about assaults, that’s all fine. But somewhere along the line he needs to lead up to who and when and why there are threats against me and any other police officer,” Rodriguez told the lawyer, driving home his bottom line.

Denis continued to play. Interviews ensued, sometimes dragging out for hours with little to show for the time spent. One day, though, Denis identified MS members who had been captured on a security camera stabbing a rival gang member at a local hotel. Rodriguez thought that Denis might finally be willing to do more than blow smoke. Denis went further to reveal the location of a house in Maryland where some MS members lived, though the information did little to further the investigation into the threats against Rodriguez’s life.

As hard as Rodriguez pushed Denis, he was not about to give up the information. There was much more at stake than winning a few years off his prison sentence. His life was on the line. Homies on the outside knew there were very few MS members under lock and key who knew the details of the plans to kill cops in Virginia. Any hint the police had found out and he would be a dead man.

Virginia’s Mara Salvatrucha cliques were under pressure to prove themselves to their West Coast homies. A rift had grown between MS cliques in Virginia and California. Cliques on the East Coast were generally considered part of the new school of MS members. The hardened, old-school MS gangsters in California, who had experience fighting to the death for their turf, thought the East Coast cliques were a bunch of punks. They didn’t put in their work and couldn’t spread the power and respect of the MS in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and New York. Virginia especially had garnered the ire of the California cliques. Northern Virginia was considered the most important region for the new-school MS cliques. Denis did his part to spread
MS respect and power in the region, but other leaders had not pulled their weight. In the eyes of the West Coast leaders, there simply were not enough bodies. The pressure intensified into the fall. Denis wasn’t even on the streets, and he could feel it. Mara Salvatrucha clique leaders from California were in Virginia to get answers. They wanted to know why the Virginia homies had not yet killed any cops.

More pressure boiled up from El Salvador when a high-ranking member of the Sailors Locos Salvatrucha, a Salvadoran clique with members in California, Virginia, and Maryland, showed up in northern Virginia demanding that every individual in his clique kill two rival gang members every fifteen days. He was there to apply pressure. The Salvadoran clique leaders had received word that the Virginia new-school homies were soft. Together with the national leadership, they wanted to know why.

While Denis played hardball with Rodriguez, he was acutely aware of the shifting sands of power within the Mara Salvatrucha, subtle changes that didn’t register with the police. Pressure from both California and El Salvador pushed down on his Virginia homies. A
luz verde
was out on both Ignacio and Rodriguez, but no one had the
cojones
to pull the trigger. Denis thought plans were in place to kill both, but he was locked up and didn’t know the latest. He knew better than to ask about it while talking on a prison phone. He could only hope that someone would take out Rodriguez soon so the cop would stop bothering him.

Rodriguez remained on edge at work and discouraged until Denis’s court date for the malicious-wounding charge arrived on a cold day before Christmas. An hour before his case was heard by the judge, Rodriguez and the prosecutor walked down to the holding cell to confront Denis directly.

“We’re going forward with this case today,” the prosecutor said, visibly irritated with Denis’s lack of cooperation. “And you’re screwed because you’ve given us
nothing
,” she said, emphasizing the word.

After the prosecutor left, Rodriguez remained with Denis, hoping the weight of the last moments before his case would pressure him to say something.

“Denis,” Rodriguez began, shaking his head. “Nothing, you’ve done nothing. Thank you for trying, but you’ve got nothing to show for it, nothing!” He couldn’t help but show his frustration with the process.

Denis turned to his lawyer. “Can I tell him what I know?”

“Why are you asking him?” Rodriguez exclaimed. He had run out of patience with Denis’s games.

“If you know something more, isn’t it in your best interest and mine to share?” Rodriguez asked, not believing Denis had waited until the absolute final moment before sharing some information. He had been out on the street this whole time looking over his shoulder and enduring his office work, and he longed to be back on the streets on the gang unit detail.

“Hold on a second,” Rodriguez said before turning to run and ask the prosecutor to convince the judge to delay the start of the trial by a couple minutes. Rodriguez returned with the prosecutor. “Okay, what do we have?” the prosecutor asked Denis.

Denis looked at his attorney, who was visibly uncomfortable with the situation. It dawned on Rodriguez that Denis probably had scared his defense counsel.