Speak of the Devil (20 page)

“Ms. Curtis?” The judge turned her scowl to Anna.

“We believe Ricardo Amaya was killed by MS-13 in an effort to obstruct this investigation. He was decapitated and stabbed thirteen times—a classic MS-13 signature—three days ago. His timekeeper was killed in the same fashion. If anything, these homicides and Ms. Guerrero’s obvious intimidation
add
to the charges we intend to bring against the defendant.” She pointed at Psycho. “Letting him go now would reward an organization that’s doing everything it can to undermine the system.”

“Ms. Curtis,” the judge said. “Do you have any evidence that Mr. Garcia was himself involved in your witness’s death or recantation?”

“Not yet,” Anna said. “But there is evidence connecting him to the gang, and connecting the gang to the murder of the brothel owner.”

“How do you plan to prove this case if you don’t have your key witnesses?”

Good question. Anna would like to know that herself.

“We’re confident in our case, Your Honor. We intend to reveal our evidence and witnesses when required under the rules, but not sooner.”

“Please approach, Ms. Curtis. Alone.”

Psycho kept smiling as Anna walked up to the bench. The judge turned on the husher so the rest of the courtroom couldn’t hear their conversation. “You’re presenting this to a federal grand jury?”

“Yes,” Anna answered. The grand jury investigation was secret, and could not be disclosed to the defendant—or anyone aside from law enforcement and the judge—until an indictment had come down.

“When do you expect to return an indictment?”

“In a month.”

“At which time it will be a District judge’s problem, and not mine. Very well.” Judge Spiegel turned off the husher, indicating the sidebar was over. Anna walked back to the prosecution table. Psycho was glaring at her as he smiled.

“I find that there is enough evidence to keep the defendant in jail for now. However, I am setting a status hearing for four weeks from today. If this case has been federally indicted by then, Mr. Amaya’s bond decision will not be up to me. If it hasn’t, then I’ll expect the government to tell me how it intends to prove the serious allegations it has charged. So ordered.”

The judge had given Anna some leeway, but not much. If Anna was going to keep Psycho off the streets, she needed to rebuild her case against him, quickly.

• • •

When Anna got back to the office, she went through the preliminary translators’ reports for Psycho’s jail calls. Psycho spent a lot of time talking to a woman named Lola, who seemed to be his girlfriend. He called his mother and his grandmother. He talked about family gossip, how he was faring in jail, and all the things he wanted to do when he got out. There was some phone sex. But he never called male friends. And he never mentioned a word about his case. Nothing. Usually, that was the main thing prisoners wanted to talk about.

Anna paused at a telling sliver of conversation.

The girlfriend said, “So, Gato’s gonna—”

“Nah nah nah!” Psycho said. “Not now.”

The girlfriend started talking about a friend who’d recently had a baby.

Anna realized why there was nothing incriminating on Psycho’s jail calls. She picked up her own phone and called Michael Kevin, a supervisor at the D.C. Jail. Kevin was familiar with the contraband that got smuggled into the jail. More important, he liked Anna. She asked if one of his guys could toss Psycho’s prison cell, but in a way that Psycho wouldn’t know it had been searched. Kevin agreed. Unlike a citizen in his home or office, a prisoner had no expectation of privacy, and the government didn’t need a warrant to search his cell.

Two hours later, Kevin called back.

“Found a cell phone under his mattress,” he said.

“Great,” Anna said. “Can you send me the details? And put the phone back exactly where you found it?”

She spent the afternoon writing an application for a wiretap. It might take a few days for a court to approve the wire, but then the agents could hear what Psycho was saying when he thought no one was listening.

29

Meanwhile, Sam drove to Benning Road and parked her Dodge Durango near the alley where Nina Flores had been killed four years ago. This was a residential block lined with low brick apartment buildings. Sam had been to this street before; it was one that was often named on police reports.

Walking past the alley, Sam noted the spot where Nina’s corpse had lain in the crime-scene pictures. This afternoon, there was only some trash and a stray cat.

In the paperwork detailing Nina’s death was a list of six witnesses who had seen or heard the shooting. Sam was going to knock on their doors.

The witnesses lived in buildings on either side of the alley. Sam got into the first building by buzzing all of the apartments. Some trusting soul buzzed open the front door. She went in and knocked on the door of the first apartment on the list.

An old lady opened the door and squinted up at her. “Yes?”

“Ms. Jackson?”

“Who?”

“Are you Ms. Ida Jackson?”

“No. Who are you?”

Sam flashed her badge. “How long have you lived here, ma’am?”

“Twenty years, missy. Is that a crime?”

“No. Do you know Ida Jackson?”

“Never heard of her.”

“Do you remember a shooting in the alley four years ago?”

“I barely remember what I had for breakfast. I’ve gotta go, my shows are on.”

The door shut.

Sam tried the next five apartments on the list. Two didn’t answer. One family had just moved in and didn’t know the prior residents. The other two families had lived there at the time of the shooting, but their names didn’t match up with the names given on the police paperwork. When Sam asked them if they remembered the four-year-old shooting, they just shrugged. It was so long ago.

Each of the PD-252’s—the police witness statements—was signed by Hector Ramos. Sam didn’t for a minute believe he had simply gotten the names and addresses wrong on every one. Detective Ramos had lied in his police reports.

Now Sam started knocking on random doors. Most people didn’t answer. Some faces peered at her from behind windows, but the doors often remained silent and closed. When someone actually answered, Sam held up a picture of Nina Flores’s body in the alley, and asked if they remembered the shooting from four years ago. Everyone shook their heads, relieved to have such a simple and easily negatable question.

She kept knocking. She was looking for one particular woman. Sam didn’t know exactly who it was, but she was out there somewhere. On every street, there was one woman who was the neighborhood’s eyes and ears. Usually someone who had lived there for decades and had plenty of gray hair. She’d raised kids there, but didn’t have any living with her now. She spent her time at her window, looking out on the street, or on her stoop, watching the action. She would ask why the police didn’t do more about crime in the neighborhood. She saw everything, remembered everything, and was willing to tell the police what she saw. Sam was going to find that woman.

Her lucky break finally came—but the old woman turned out to be a young man. De’Vone Jones was twenty-eight years old. He had a handsome face, smooth brown skin, and the most impressive biceps Sam had ever seen. His legs were skin over bones, sitting motionless in his wheelchair.

He invited Sam into his ground-floor apartment and wheeled himself to an open spot next to the couch. The way he spun his wheelchair around, the wheels seemed an extension of his graceful body. He had been a tree doctor, he said, trimming branches and cutting down old trees. But a few years ago, a branch snapped and his harness failed. He’d fallen forty feet to the ground. He no longer had feeling below the waist. But he was able to live near the mother of his children, and still be part of his community.

Sam showed him the picture of Nina Flores’s body in the alley, and asked about the shooting four years ago. He nodded. “I remember that.”

“What do you remember?”

“I was on the computer, right there.” He gestured to a desk that abutted a window overlooking the alley. “Heard the sound of a gunshot. One single blast. Unmistakable. Not the first time in this neighborhood. I looked over my computer, out the window.” Sam went to the window. It had a view of the alley, including the spot where Nina’s body had fallen.

“How much time passed between the gunshot and you looking out the window?”

“No time. I heard the shot and I looked out.”

“What did you see?”

“Woman was down, laying in the alley. Pool of blood under her head. Just like in that photo.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“Just one person. A Spanish guy.”

“What did he look like?”

“Late twenties, early thirties. Tall. Dark hair and a goatee. Street clothes.”

“Which way did he run?”

“He didn’t run. He just stood there.”

“Just stood there? What was he doing?”

“Holding a gun in his hands. He threw the gun down, next to the body. Then he called someone. Eventually, some police came. They walked away with him.”

“The police walked away with the same guy who threw down the gun?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you see
anyone
running on the street?”

“No. It was just the lady down, and the guy standing next to her.”

“Are you sure that you looked out the window the moment you heard the gunshot? For instance, could you have heard a gunshot, then the shooter runs away, somebody else comes up, then you look out the window?”

“No, it was no time at all. I remember it clearly.”

Sam nodded. She wasn’t surprised when two witnesses’ stories had discrepancies, but this was nothing like the foot chase described in Hector’s police report.

“Do you think you could ID the ‘Spanish’ guy?” she asked. “If I brought you a photo spread?”

“I don’t know, it’s been so long. Somebody should have asked me that four years ago.”

“Yes,” she said. “Somebody should have.”

30

Gato sat on the second-story balcony of his apartment, his plastic chair tipped backward, his feet on the porch railing. The balcony overlooked a few trees, then traffic-clogged New Hampshire Avenue. The cars revved and honked, their constant noise part of the chill night air. But if he focused hard enough on the trees, he could pretend he was alone in a forest. In one hand, he had a can of Bud Chelada, in the other, he held his cell phone away from his ear as Psycho shouted curses at him.

He watched a squirrel with an acorn in its mouth dart up the trunk of a bare oak. Gato felt a stab of jealousy toward the animal, wishing he could be that free. Instead, he had to run this organization that he both loved and hated. Mostly, he had to live with his own fucked-up self. He drained the last sip of tomato beer and tossed the can over the side of the balcony. He picked up a fresh Chelada from the floor, cracked it open, and took a long gulp.

He rented one room of this two-bedroom apartment from the family whose name was on the lease. The two parents and their three little kids all slept in the other bedroom.

“And now I have to spend another month in jail!” Psycho’s rant was picking up steam. He was furious about his bond hearing in court today.

“I know, homey, I know,” Gato said. “We’ve doubled rents, been trying to collect money to get you a better lawyer.”

“How much you got?”

“Almost eight thousand.”

“That ain’t shit! That won’t get me a meeting.”

“We just need a little more time,” Gato said.

In the past, when homies went to jail, the gang sent no money at all—although they always made elaborate promises of help. But Gato was determined to actually help Psycho.

“And this bitch,” Psycho continued in Spanish. “The prosecutor. She pointed at me, homey.
Pointed.
I mean, the disrespect! From a
woman
. I want to tear her up. She needs to be dealt with. Do you hear what I’m saying? You need to change her mind. Have fun with her, whatever. But I don’t want to see her again. You understand me?”

“It’s not that easy. She’s got cops following her around now.”

“You’re the smart one, Gato. Figure it out. I can’t take this anymore. There’s no windows here. They got three of us in a tiny room, not fit for a dog. I’m going crazy, man. I mean for
real
crazy.”

Psycho’s voice had the hint of a scared child in it, which hurt Gato to hear. He and Psycho hadn’t set out to be the gang’s shot-callers. But time passed, the older guys died or were arrested or deported. Being MS wasn’t easy—you had to be strong, and if you wanted to live, sometimes someone else had to die. That was his crazy life,
mi vida loca
. He looked at the three-dot tattoo on his hand. He’d known where MS would take him when he joined.

But now Psycho was asking him to do more than just greenlight the prosecutor. A greenlight was often just empty bravado. According to MS-13 rules, any member was bound to kill on sight a greenlighted person, using whatever weapon they had on them. In reality, it was unlikely any of the soldiers would run across the prosecutor in their daily lives. Even if they did, many would just turn and walk away. It took effort to convince soldiers to go out and kill someone—especially a prosecutor. The greenlight as it stood against Anna Curtis could take years to happen, if it happened at all. If they really wanted it done, it had to be specifically assigned to a man whose job was to hunt her down.

Keeping the phone cradled to his ear, Gato stood and walked inside the apartment. His little bedroom held a twin-sized mattress, a cheap nightstand, and a scuffed dresser. On the dresser were the
Santa Muerte
figurine and the
Corazón Puro
candle that Señora Zanita had given him at the botanica. The candle was not burning right now, but he had been lighting it for an hour every night before bed. In his nightstand was the bag of herbs that Zanita had told him to brew every day. He had followed her instructions, and made the tea every morning, using the time to remember an act of kindness someone had shown him. In the process, he’d realized that, other than his mother, Psycho was the person who’d shown Gato the most kindness in his life.