Speak of the Devil (11 page)

“Don’t give me that shit. When your rent goes up, you raise your prices. You’re a smart businessman. Don’t treat me like a fool. And next week it’s two hundred and fifty.”

“We can’t do it!”

“Then we’ll bring the Devil.”

“No!” The burn on the cook’s forehead turned brighter red. “God, no, not the Devil. We’ll find a way.”

“Yes, you will.” Gato looked at the other side of the truck. Rooster was pushing the old woman farther into the corner, unbuckling his belt. Idiot. Sometimes, Gato felt like the only grown-up in the entire gang. He pulled Rooster’s shoulder. “Come on. They paid.”

“I want a tip.”

Gato narrowed his eyes at Rooster. He would not stand for insubordination, not anywhere, but especially not in front of these suckers. “I
said
, they paid.”

Rooster released the woman. She sobbed into her hands. Gato and Rooster hopped out of the back of the truck. The cool night air was a relief after the heat of the truck.

An older woman at the gas pumps watched them nervously as they ambled past. They put their heads down—making it harder for her to see their faces—and clambered up the little embankment to Piney Branch Road. They walked by sprawling garden-style apartments where immigrant families lived several generations to a unit. Gato didn’t worry that the pupusa makers would call the police. The couple feared deportation and gang retribution more than they trusted the system.

He and Rooster walked the gravel shoulder as cars sped by on Piney Branch. The swishing vehicles seemed to mock them, showing all they didn’t have. Although the gang had managed to build a reputation as the most violent gang in America, almost none of the MS-13 members owned cars. Or houses. The people driving by had been born with all the advantages in life. Gato wanted those things.

“Why’d you make me stop?” Rooster asked.

“Save your shit for Buena.”

“That
puta
.” Rooster spit on the ground. Gato nodded sagely. After Buena’s initiation, Rooster would never be able to look at her the same way again. The initiation often killed the spark a man felt for his girl. But it made the men closer to each other. It made them family. In the end, that was what they all craved. Family.

Gato’s mother had been a schoolteacher in El Salvador. His father had worked in the gold mines, until there was a workers’ strike. Although he’d been a small boy, Gato vividly remembered the police dragging his father from their home. They never heard from him again. The family continued to live in the two-room apartment in a poor section of Soyapango. The concrete building overlooked bluffs going down to polluted rivers. It wasn’t uncommon to see a body sprawled on the slope, having been thrown off the balconies by the gangs who controlled the neighborhood. Gato had the job of going to the communal fountain every day and carrying home clean drinking water. After his father disappeared, Gato’s mother worked to support the family, but her teacher’s salary never stretched far enough. When Gato was twelve, he and his mother made the dangerous crossing into America in order to find work and send money back home. They got to Langley Park, Maryland, where his mother’s brother lived. His mother enrolled him in school and got a job as a nanny. A few months later, she was killed, hit by a car while crossing the street.

Gato’s uncle allowed him to continue living in the house, but Gato was barely tolerated there; he certainly wasn’t loved. His only real friendship was with Psycho, in his seventh-grade class. Psycho’s “family” was MS-13, and the gang welcomed Gato. The thirteen-second beating Gato took to be “jumped in” was worth the friendship and sense of belonging he got in return. Eight years later, Psycho and his band of homies were the only real family Gato knew.

A small voice whispered in Gato’s head.
Maria-Rosa could have been your family.

He strangled the voice, then shoved it into a dark corner of his brain. He wouldn’t listen to it. He couldn’t. He slung his arm around Rooster’s shoulder, and they walked down the road, together.

16

McGee didn’t think it would amount to much, but if Anna wanted him to do a walk-and-talk around Langley Park, he would. He spent the day walking up to civilians and talking to everyone who didn’t run in the other direction. Some people were known to be helpful to the police, and he made a point of visiting them. Some folks he picked at random. He showed everyone the police sketches, and brought a Spanish-speaking officer to help translate.

He learned that Diablo had developed quite a reputation.

“He’s a gangster,” said a man pushing a shaved-ice cart. “I heard he chopped up a bunch of kids in El Salvador and sent their arms and legs to the police chief’s home. The government don’t bother him no more.”

“He’s the Devil,” said a lady working at Señor Pollo. “If he touches your skin, it’ll rot.”

“I hear he makes the gangs shake down local businesses,” said the manager at Pollo Campero. “Not me, no sir. We’re fine.”

No one admitted any direct knowledge of the gang, or having seen “the Devil” in person. Late in the afternoon, McGee stopped at the pupusa truck at the Sunoco on Carroll and Piney Branch Road. The smell of fresh dough and savory meat mixed with the scent of gasoline and exhaust. Through the window at the side of the truck, McGee could see the cook, flipping stuffed pancakes on the grill. The man had a nasty quarter-sized burn on his forehead. It was still bright red, must’ve happened recently. A gray-haired woman worked the cash register.

McGee held up his badge. “Afternoon, folks. Can I talk to you?”

The cook looked nervously around, then gestured for McGee and the other officer to go to the back of the truck. The man climbed down from the truck and met them on the pavement, where they were hidden from the view of people standing on the curb.

“That’s a nasty burn,” McGee said.

“Yes.” The cook touched his forehead. “I had an accident yesterday. Slipped and fell on the grill.”

“Just slipped on your own?”

“I’m clumsy.” The cook held out a paper bag, greasy with melted cheese. “Two pupusas. On the house.”

“Thanks.” McGee said. He’d had a snack at every food store he visited. His stomach rumbled in protest of its umpteenth meal of the day, but his mouth watered. “I’m looking into a gang called MS-13, La Mara Salvatrucha. Know anything about them?”

The man looked terrified. “No, sir.”

“How about the Langley Park Salvatruchas, the neighborhood clique?”

“No, sir. Sorry.”

“Anyone giving you trouble?” McGee asked. “Anything I can help you with?”

“Very kind of you, sir. But, no. We are fine.”

The man was lying, but McGee was used to being lied to. He held out his MPD business card. “Nothing’s gonna change unless someone’s brave enough to talk about it. Call me if you remember something.”

The cook looked at the card, puzzled. “Sir, may I ask: Why are so many police coming around, asking about the same stuff?”

“What do you mean?”

The man fished in his pockets and handed McGee another card, almost exactly the same as McGee’s. The name on it was Hector Ramos.

McGee smiled evenly at the cook. “What’d Detective Ramos ask you?”

“Same as you, whether I saw anyone from this gang.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That I didn’t know nothing. Just like I told you.”

“Well, sorry to bother you twice,” McGee said. “Detective Ramos and I gotta coordinate a little better, is all. Thanks for the pupusas.”

He pocketed the card.

• • •

Hector Ramos lived in an apartment on Ninth Street, in the transitioning Shaw neighborhood. McGee didn’t call. He just showed up. Another officer stood behind him as he knocked on the door. McGee had considered doing this alone, but decided he wanted a witness.

Hector opened the door a few inches, but kept the chain on.

“What’s up, McGee?”

“Can I come in?”

“Now’s not a good time, sorry.”

Hector wore a ratty T-shirt and his face sported a four-day growth of beard. McGee peered through the crack of the door. The TV was on, playing a rerun of
Law & Order: SVU.
Beer bottles and a pizza box littered the coffee table.

“It’ll just be a minute. I found something today I’m hoping you can help me with.” McGee flashed a friendly we’re-all-in-this-together smile.

Hector shook his head and ran a hand through his hair; he was obviously uncomfortable keeping McGee out, but determined to do it anyway. McGee noticed that the knuckles on Hector’s hand were scraped up.

“Been in a fight, Hector?”

“I gotta go.”

Hector pushed the door. He was fast, but McGee was faster. McGee stuck his foot in the doorjamb, wedging it open. He used this move at least once a month on reluctant witnesses—but rarely on police colleagues.

“What have you been doing, Hector?”

“I can’t speak to you without my union rep. Now get outta here before I start to think you’re violating my Fourth Amendment right to be secure from police intrusion in my home.”

“You’re gonna get yourself in some trouble, my friend.”

“So are you.” Hector looked pointedly at McGee’s foot. McGee pulled it back. Hector shut the door in his face.

17

The grand jurors didn’t like Ricardo Amaya, and Anna didn’t blame them. The brothel owner looked like a snake who’d just eaten a dog. He had cold, calculating eyes and a comically round belly attached to an otherwise skinny frame. For his grand jury appearance, he wore three days’ worth of stubble, faded jeans, and a T-shirt with a picture of a tie on it. His graying hair was so stiff and spiky with product, it looked like he could use it to shred cabbage.

The Superior Court grand jury was housed in a small room that looked like a classroom in an underfunded community college. The jurors sat at three ascending rows of orange Formica tables. There was no judge or defense attorney. Anna stood in front of the room, next to Ricardo’s witness chair. On the other side of Anna was a young pretty stenographer. Ricardo eyed her up and down, as if evaluating what he would charge for her. He’d done the same to Anna.

She was amazed that he could be so lecherous after all he’d been through. He was just released from the hospital two days ago, with forty-six stitches closing up the machete wounds on his chest. You could take the pimp out of the brothel, but you couldn’t take the brothel out of the pimp.

Anna needed Ricardo as a witness, but she didn’t like him. If the police raid had gone as expected, Ricardo would have been her defendant. He was a bad man who just happened to be a victim of and a witness against men who were even worse. As a prosecutor, she often had to view evil on a sliding scale.

Anna led him through the basics: name, date of birth, where he lived. She was polite, but not friendly. She and Ricardo had an uncomfortable business deal. They were each using the other for their own ends—she to prove her case against the gang members, he to lighten his own criminal exposure. She fronted that to the grand jurors.

“You’ve agreed to plead guilty to one count of pandering and to cooperate with the government, in return for the government dropping the rest of the potential charges against you, correct?”

“That’s right.”

Anna led him through the terms of the plea deal. Ricardo was lucky he had a good attorney. Robert Ortiz was a former prosecutor who was now a partner at a large D.C. firm. Ortiz made ten times his prior government salary but he missed the action of Superior Court, so he periodically volunteered for pro bono cases. He was smart and had the experience to know that Ricardo’s best option was to cooperate immediately. Anna and Ortiz had hammered out the deal while Ricardo was still recuperating in the hospital.

“What do you have to do in order to get all the benefits in this agreement?” Anna asked.

“I have to tell the truth.”

“What happens if you don’t tell the truth?”

“I don’t get the deal.”

Ortiz had prepared him well.

“How do you feel about testifying today?”

“I hate it.”

“Why?”

“Because if the gang finds out, they’ll kill me.”

In here, Ricardo was a “cooperator,” but on the street, he was a “snitch.” Ricardo was facing so much prison time, he figured it was better to try life on the streets with Anna’s deal than years in prison without it.

Anna and her office had taken steps to protect him and keep his cooperation secret for as long as possible, at least until trial. His plea agreement was a public document, but it didn’t mention his cooperation. She filed his cooperation agreement as a Sealed Supplement, which was entered on the court’s electronic docket but wasn’t publicly available. So that the docket entry itself didn’t give away his status, every plea agreement in D.C. was filed with a Sealed Supplement. The Sealed Supplements were inside sealed envelopes that were not accessible to the public and not viewable on the court’s electronic filing system. For defendants who were not cooperating, the Sealed Supplement merely held a piece of paper that read “This is not a cooperation agreement.”

The Victim/Witness unit was also paying Ricardo’s moving expenses, to move his family to Havre de Grace, a small town on the Chesapeake in Maryland. His new address would be unlisted. If he stayed away from his old neighborhood, he would probably be okay.

“Are you familiar with the gang called MS-13?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know them?”

“They hang out in my neighborhood. They extort all the Hispanic businesses. They call it ‘rent’ or ‘taxes’ or ‘protection money.’ It just protects you from
them
.”

“How much rent was the gang charging you?”

“Less at first, but they kept hiking it up. When it got to a thousand a month, I couldn’t pay it no more.”

“So what did you do?”

“I just stopped. But a brothel needs protection, so I got a new guy to be my doorman instead. Jaime Lopez, may he rest in peace. He worked for half the price, plus . . . er . . . some freebies, with the girls.”

“Did the gang react when you stopped paying them?”