Above the Law (40 page)

“Well, I’d include her in, if I was running the show, it’s hers, she brought you in. But since I’m not running the show, I’ll leave her involvement to your discretion.”

“Thanks. For now, that’s how it has to be.”

I hung up, knowing I’d planted seeds of doubt in his mind about Nora. They were for the wrong reasons, but I couldn’t help it. She had initiated our sexual encounter, she was going to have to pay the price for that. After I got an indictment, assuming I did, I could bring her back into the loop before the trial, which would be months away, if I was comfortable with her by then. For the present, I couldn’t do it any other way.

It was a shame, and ironic. I hadn’t known or cared about this. She had, deeply. And now she was on the sidelines, not even being allowed to watch.

“This next witness is here under a grant of immunity,” I told the grand jurors. “That means nothing he says here can be used against him in a criminal proceeding.”

I motioned to Keith Green, who was standing by the door. He went out and came back a moment later escorting Curtis Jackson.

Getting Jackson to testify was a real coup on Keith’s part. He had been working Jackson for a long time. The gang leader’s contradictory testimony had been troubling to Keith; to me, too, but particularly to Keith, who kept looking for hidden meanings in it. Why had Jackson wanted to talk to him in the first place? He had nothing to gain, ostensibly, except to show off, and that wasn’t a good enough reason, Keith thought, not to the point where he would jeopardize himself by shooting his mouth off That could get him into real trouble, as much with his own as with us.

He hadn’t softened his wardrobe or persona for the upstate white hicks. His outfit was almost caricature pimp. Chartreuse suit, purple shirt. Gold chains around his neck, crosses dangling from his ears, a nose ring in his right nostril. Jordanesque head shave.

I swore him in and started right up. I wanted to get him on and off as quickly as I could. He was not a good witness; his demeanor, his entire being, was threatening. And he was an outlaw, he was like Juarez, a true menace to society.

But he could help us. We were strange bedfellows, but you can’t always pick your allies. Curtis Jackson was yet another example of the upside-down nature of this case, the scumbags helping to bring down what were usually the white knights.

I elicited his biography, his particulars, including his ranking in the California drug hierarchy, which he embellished, of course, he couldn’t resist making himself look good. Perversely, that worked, in this case. Importance equated credibility.

“You knew Reynaldo Juarez,” I noted.

“I knew him by reputation,” Jackson answered. “I never met him, face-to-face.”

“Is that normal? That you wouldn’t have met? Since you’re in the same line of work? Close competitors, so to speak.”

“Of course it’s normal. Where’re you from, man, the dark side of the moon? We were enemies. You don’t associate with your enemies. That’s a good way to wind up dead. Or them dead. Kill or be killed. That’s how it goes. I know—I’ve been there.” He turned and glared at the jury, to make sure they got his message.

My jurors, listening to Jackson’s ravings, were fascinated with him in the same way they would have been if I’d brought in E.T.—he was alien to their existence. Seeing a man like Jackson, a career criminal who was openly boasting about killing people, isn’t the same up close and personal as it is on TV or at the movies. It’s much scarier.

“You do know that Juarez was killed during a Drug Enforcement Administration raid, don’t you?”

“Of course I know. Everybody knows that.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“Good. I felt good.”

“Because he was a rival.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you have any other feelings?”

He nodded. “I felt bad, too.”

“Bad?” I asked in surprise.

He drew in a deep breath. “Not bad. Scared. I don’t mean I’m scared or anything, but getting shot down in cold blood like he was, that’s cold, man.”

I stepped back. “Where did you hear Juarez was killed in cold blood?”

“It was all over the street. Soon as it happened.”

“News travels fast.”

“That kind does.”

“What else was on the street?” I continued. “About that killing.”

“That it was a contract hit.”

I turned to look at the jurors. They looked as if they’d been zapped with a cattle prod.

“Would you repeat that?” I asked slowly and deliberately.

“Man who capped Juarez was paid to.”

“You’re saying the person who shot Juarez was paid to shoot him?”

“Isn’t that what I just told you?” Jackson asked indignantly. He wasn’t, really, I’d prepped him, but he was acting it well.

“Yes. I want to be very clear on this point,” I stressed. “According to your grapevine, the assassination of Reynaldo Juarez was a murder for hire.”

“Yes.”

Talk about sucking air out of a chamber.

“What was the reason? Did the grapevine say anything about that as well?”

I turned to the jurors again. They were watching intently. They had not paid this much attention to any previous witness I’d brought in.

This was a delicate line I was walking. Nothing Jackson had said would stand up in a courtroom; it wouldn’t even be allowed. It was all hearsay. I couldn’t use it in a trial. But in the grand jury room, it’s permissible. Moreover, it’s necessary. Sometimes you have to use hearsay and other indirect kinds of evidence to get your indictment. Then you work on substantiating it, and more often than not, you do. The rationale is that the ends justify the means. The danger is that sometimes they don’t.

“Yeah,” Jackson said. “There was a reason.”

“What was it?”

“The word was, a DEA agent crossed over.”

“Crossed over.”

“This other drug gang bought this agent, like you buy a car, a house, a woman, anything. Everything’s for sale in this world, it’s just about how much. That is one true thing I have learned.”

“Who were they rumored to be?”

“Another big east L.A. Mexican gang, who wanted to eliminate Juarez, take over his business, own it all. They made this agent an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“What was the offer?”

“Money. Lots of it.”

“Was there talk about how much?”

Jackson shook his head. “Not a number I heard exactly. But heavy. Maybe up to seven figures.”

“A million dollars.”

“Up to.”

“This agent was offered up to a million dollars to murder Reynaldo Juarez.”

“That was what I heard, yeah.”

I looked at the others in the room. Rapt attention. Back to Jackson: “And the agent took the deal?”

Jackson looked at me like I was brain-damaged. “Juarez is dead, ain’t he?”

“Yes, he’s dead, all right. Do you have any idea why this particular agent was selected? Or did they go from one agent to the next, until they found one who’d get in bed with them?”

He chortled. “Like they’re gonna go to a bunch of ’em, find out if one was down with ’em. Why not take out an ad in the
L.A. Times
? Shit, get real.”

“So it was one specific agent who was targeted from the beginning.”

“Yes.”

“Why this particular agent?”

“ ’Cause he had a hard-on for Juarez a mile long.”

I glanced at the grand jurors, particularly the women. They were so caught up in what Jackson was saying the obscenity went right by them.

“That was known?”

He nodded. “In our business, you know who’s after who. You have to, to survive. This one had his crosshairs on Juarez, forever.”

He grinned, showing a diamond in one of his front teeth.

“What had been frustrating this guy was that Juarez could never be pinned down. He was more of a ghost than the Holy Ghost, nobody knew where he was, except his own tight circle. Sometimes even they didn’t know. He knew how
not
to be there, you know what I mean? This one time, it was about the only time he ever did get pinned down. One time too many for him, it turned out.”

I nodded. “But if Juarez was so elusive, why did this rival group think this particular agent could get to him? That anyone could?”

“It was his mission in life,” Jackson said simply. “Man on a mission, he’ll hunt until he dies. Or he kills.”

I stepped away from the witness chair and glanced over at Keith, who gave me a silent thumbs-up Jackson had come through. For his own selfish, egotistical reasons, of course; he didn’t give a shit about helping us, we were the law, the enemy. But to be involved in getting an indictment against a prominent DEA agent who’d been a major warrior in the fight against drugs? He’d crawl a mile over broken glass on his hands and knees to do that.

I turned back to him. “You know this agent’s name, don’t you.”

“I know what I heard,” he said precisely.

I leaned in close to him. “Would you tell us the name that you heard?”

He faced the grand jurors. It was a time-warp tableau. Ice Cube meets Tommy Dorsey.

“The name I heard was Sterling Jerome.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jackson.” I turned to my jurors. “For the record, Sterling Jerome was the special agent in charge of the Western States Task Force that stormed the compound the night Reynaldo Juarez was shot to death.”

Evening. Our office. Major strategy powwow. Myself, my investigators, Tom Miller, and Nora.

I’d engaged in a strong internal debate about whether to include her. I was uncomfortable in her presence, naturally. But after a lot of soul-searching, I relented.

Sheriff Miller convinced me.

“She’s miserable, being left out,” he told me.

That’s what I needed—to be guilt-tripped. But the old campaigner knew what buttons to push. He was carrying water for her; they were a team, that was his job. Even so, his logic was irrefutable.

“You want to use every ounce of brainpower available, Luke. The fact that you
can
legally exclude her doesn’t mean you
have
to. Good God, you’ve brought this beat-up old relic of a small county sheriff into the circle,” he said in his ironic self-deprecating way, “which you didn’t have to do, so why not her? It’s a slap to her pride if you don’t afford her the same courtesy. Besides”—he nudged me in a joking fashion—“people are going to wonder why you aren’t.”

Having tossed off that remark, he then paused and gave me a peculiar look, as if he suspected things no one other than Nora and I should ever know. “Is there personal animosity between the two of you?” he asked with concern.

“No,” I replied quickly, wanting to stay clear of anything of that nature about Nora and me. “I don’t want interference with what I’m doing, that’s all. It was the strongest condition of my taking this job.”

“She’s not going to interfere, you know that full well,” he said with easy assurance. “She believes in you, Luke, she’s your biggest supporter. That woman would do about anything for you.”

I didn’t know if she’d put him up to pressuring me or not, but I knew he was right—I couldn’t let my personal problems with Nora override my professional obligation, which was to do the best job I could.

Her input could help.

The consensus was strong that Jerome was Juarez’s killer, or part of a conspiracy. It’s what everyone wanted. We needed a killer, and he fit the bill.

I was the only demurrer, partly out of caution, partly because you have to look at both sides as carefully as you can—someone has to play devil’s advocate. Otherwise you can get caught up in emotion, which then takes on a life of its own. Emotion is fine as long as it’s grounded in fact. If it isn’t, you can be prosecuting a case that isn’t airtight after all, and you can wind up losing when you should have won.

But the evidence was powerful. Nora, being the other lawyer in the room, summed up the arguments, with buttressing from the others. Kate, standing at the blackboard, wrote the points down as Nora enumerated them. I sat back, listening.

“Jerome had a personal, intimate vendetta against Juarez, going back decades,” Nora said, ticking the items off on her fingers. “Not only DEA agent against drug lord, but brother avenging his sister.”

“Which he never told his superiors,” Keith put in. “A strong breach of professional ethics. He should never have been part of the operation, let alone being in charge.”

“That’s super-heavy,” Kate kicked in. “This was a blood feud, on the cosmic level of the Capulets and Montagues, with an overlay of ethnic bigotry and racial prejudice.”

“He violated administration guidelines by conducting the raid, without the drugs being on the scene,” Nora continued with her mock presentation. “He shouldn’t have gone in at all. And his information was false, which further aggravated the disaster. He relied on an unreliable snitch who had his own cross-motives, rather than having hard, irrefutable information.”

“Which resulted in the deaths of his own people, and others in the compound for whom there was no reason for arrest, under their warrant,” Louis said.

“All of which we knew about,” Nora said, “but we didn’t know the context. The personal issue gives his actions a completely different context, which I think is chilling.”

I nodded, listening.

“Now the three killer items,” she continued. “Jerome buying the full-metal-jacket bullets on the sly, Jackson’s testimony that a rival gang bought Jerome, and the Miami bank account. Those are huge; you put all that together, it’s a raging fire under the smoke. Especially the bank account, that’s the most damning piece of evidence to me. That is concrete, there’s no maybes about that. Jerome deposits half a million dollars in a bank account a week after Juarez is killed? That’s too coincidental for me. Put that together with Jackson’s testimony, to me that is a smoking gun.”

She turned to me as if we really were rivals in a courtroom. “If this was a normal case that I was prosecuting, I’d take it to court in a heartbeat. You would’ve, too, Luke, when you were a D.A. And I can’t imagine you not doing it here…can I?”

Everyone turned to me. It was my decision. I got up.

“First of all,” I said, “I’m not doing anything until I bring Jerome in front of my grand jury tomorrow and hear what he has to say. Every single one of these issues you’ve brought up are legitimate and could be building blocks for us. Or not, depending.”