Gangster's Court

by Adam Van Susteren

  Jo held up a hand. “Wait. Am I a suspect in Officer Maggiore’s murder?”

  “No. She was killed by Filberto Rose. Of that we’re certain. I’m just trying to piece together her life. And I wanted to check off the easy boxes that won’t be leading anywhere. See if I can find some help in unexpected places.” Browning gave a smile. “So I just want to start with anything unusual with her. Losing a traffic trial seems a bit unusual.”

  “I read in the paper that Mr. Rose was killed as well. Am I a suspect in his murder?”

  Browning shook his head. “No. Just trying to check some boxes.” Browning gave a weaker smile. “And see if you might be able to help me.”

  Jo sighed. “In the traffic trial, Office Maggiore cut a few corners in her testimony. Then the defendant gave a compelling statement that his sister was killed by a speeding driver, so he now has a habit of not speeding, and stated he wasn’t speeding. Because Officer Maggiore didn’t testify as to the calibration of her device, or a visual speed estimate, she left me with reasonable doubt as to the speed she cited.”

  “Thanks.” Browning put a tiny scribble in his notes. “How about your handling of the Marcos Omar ticket? Why didn’t you recuse yourself?”

  What does he know? Jo tried to remain calm. “It was an arraignment, not a trial. And it was a fix-it ticket, he had the problem fixed. I didn’t see the issue. I gave no special favor or treatment.”

  Browning looked around the Judge’s chambers. “How well do you know Marcos Omar?”

  Too well. Jo shifted in her chair. “Not very. Really, Detective, what’s this about?”

  Browning set his notepad on the coffee table. “On the night Maggiore was murdered, Omar was at an Indian Casino. I checked it out. Then I checked out his history with the casinos and was surprised to find that you were his attorney for some sort of tax thing.”

  Oh shit. Jo remained still.

  “I’ve got Officer Gecina dead, and he was your client. Officer Maggiore had a thing for Brad. Brad was involved in trying to fleece the City of several million with Cassie Young. Omar is into collecting on debts—”

  Jo held up her hands. “But the City didn’t pay out.”

  “That’s what I can’t get figured out. I talked to Detective Larson about this. Seems the police had a bit of help. I’m guessing a thank you is in order to you for it.” Browning took in a big breath. “So Judge, I’m kind of stuck and was hoping for your help. Again.”

  “Help with what?”

  “Marcos Omar.”

  Jo started to blink - her mind raced to her meeting with Omar last night, to Omar helping Melvin get his things back, to the giant envelope of cash he gave her, to him being ready to dispose of Brad’s body if Brad died, to her hearing the Gangster’s Court tonight – she finished her blink. “I’m not sure I can help because of attorney-client privilege. Or that I even know anything of use.” Jo shrugged. “Want to tell me what you’ve got and I’ll see if I can add to it?”

  “How much do you know about Omar?”

  “Almost nothing.” Jo pulled a foot under her thigh to get more comfortable. At least that’s true.

  “Born in Los Angeles. Moved down to TJ, but went to junior high and high school in San Diego. Near perfect SAT scores. Drafted in the eighth round by the Angels to play baseball. In his senior year of high school, he’s arrested for killing three guys with a baseball bat.”

  “What?” Jo swallowed hard. “What happened?”

  “The arresting officer, Gibbs, is retired. I talked to him about it. Gibbs told me that three kids who dropped out of Omar’s high school were recruiting girls from the high school to be prostitutes. They had a thing for the homecoming queen, the prettiest girl in the school, but she wouldn’t go with them. So they kidnapped her.”

  “He’s a kidnapper?” Jo asked quietly, feeling Omar let her down.

  “No. That was his girlfriend.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “The house they used for sex was a well-known secret. Omar went there at midnight with an aluminum bat and his pit bull. Gibbs said Omar snuck in, made it upstairs to a bedroom where he heard his girlfriend crying out as she was being raped. Omar kicks in the door and whacks the guy in the head, killing him with one shot. Two other guys rush to the commotion. Omar and his dog take them out. A nasty bloody mess.”

  “Omar,” Jo whispered with sadness in her voice.

  “Gibbs recovered six teenage girls from that house, plus Omar, and his girlfriend. He arrested Omar. They put the dog down. But no charges were ever filed. DA concluded it was defense of another so they didn’t even charge.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Gibbs said after that, he kept an eye and ear on Omar. Seems like the parents of the girls took up a collection and gave Omar a couple grand.”

  “What does that mean?” Jo asked.

  “Maybe something. Maybe nothing.” Browning shrugged. “I don’t know. Maggiore was killed by a member of La Eme. Vicious prison gang. Someone off’d him right after he off’d her. Omar’s car was at the scene. I just know that Omar’s involved. I’m not sure how.”

  “Why was officer Maggiore meeting with a gang member?”

  “I was hoping you might know, or might know of a way to know.”

  Jo sighed. “Detective, as a member of the bench, I’m really limited in what I can do. Plus, I did the tax case for Mr. Omar, so I’m even more limited.”

  “What about Brad Gecina? Did you help get him busted?”

  Jo put her foot back on the ground. “Detective, if you ask questions like that I have to invoke attorney-client privilege and my Fifth Amendment rights.”

  Browning rubbed at his large belly in thought. “Like you were saying. What if I lay out a little more, and if there’s a piece I’m missing or I got wrong, maybe you can let me know?”

  Yes! Tell me what you know! Jo hesitated, trying to play disinterested. She looked over at her desk. “I have a few more minutes.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jo nodded.

  “So the day Cassie killed Brad, Brad takes an Uber downtown. No record of him for a few hours until he charges a few hundred bucks at a cheap motel just north of the border. Got a couple hundred in cash back for a hooker.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “His Uber driver the next day told me he was with a hot Mexican girl. Just an educated guess based on the hotel and cash pull that she was a hooker.”

  “Oh.” Jo leaned back in her chair.

  Browning chuckled. “The Uber driver remembered Brad distinctly because Brad didn’t have any pants on when he picked him up. Then I checked with the cleaning crew. They said nothing was out of the ordinary, but there were two silver canisters under the bed.”

  Jo remained still. The oxygen canisters. “Drugs?”

  “Don’t know. They threw them out. Trash was gone. So if those were part of Brad’s story – they are long gone. We swabbed for prints and DNA to see if we could identify other people in the room, but with so much DNA and so many prints in there, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything to find.”

  “That’s too bad.” Jo refrained from jumping up to dance.

  “His cell phone and text message records indicate he was talking to you before he went downtown that day. And his sent emails show he sent you an email that night.”

  “Really?”

  Browning nodded. “You didn’t get it?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “You’d remember this one.”

  Jo shrugged.

  “It was a video of him getting a blowjob. He wrote, ‘Wish you were here.’”

  Jo’s face reddened. “I would have remembered that. I must have deleted it without watching, or a junk filter blocked the attachment.”

  “He died the next day.”

  Jo exhaled.

  Browning nodded. “Anything in my story that I’m missing or got wrong?”

  Jo took a breath. “Officer Maggiore writes Omar a ticket, then a
gang member, Filberto Rose, kills her.” She looked Browning in the eyes. “Off the record, even if he could, I don’t think Omar would order a hit based on a taillight ticket.”

  “Me either.”

  Filberto Rose. Jo’s eyes widened with a memory of Omar last night. I was almost killed by a Rose. She looked at Browning and knew he saw her reaction. “I had a thought,” Jo admitted. She paused. “Was Omar’s car really stolen?”

  Browning shrugged. “He called the police to say it wasn’t there. Hard to know if it was actually stolen or a setup.”

  “Omar’s alibi is tight? He didn’t shoot the other guy?”

  “Yes. Couldn’t have been Omar. But he could still be involved.”

  Jo looked at Browning’s notepad. “Off the record.”

  Browning nodded.

  “My thought,” Jo bluffed, “is one of the remaining Salazar guys is involved. They might think Omar helped get them busted and tried to set him up.”

  “Salazar.” Browning nodded at his notepad. “Maggiore went to see one of them in jail.”

  Jo put her hands on her knees. “Can we stay off the record? And go way off the record? Like you came up with this completely on your own?”

  Browning nodded.

  “I think there’s another member of the Salazar crew.”

  “You know for sure? You know who?” Browning asked with interest.

  No. No. Jo nodded. “I’m sure there’s another person in their crew. Jimmy is dead, you’ve got Umberto and Jesus in jail. I’ll see if I can get the fourth name for you.”

  Browning reached his hand into his outer jacket pocket and grabbed a few business cards. He handed one to Jo. “Please call me if I can think of this name or if I can think of anything about him.”

  Jo took the card. “I will. But keep in mind the judicial branch isn’t supposed to help the executive investigate. It would destroy our independence. So if I was able to help before as a lawyer, you can’t count on that now that I’m a judge. And I can’t hear about an investigation for a case that could be before me someday. So this whole meeting bordered on improper.”

  “Understood, Your Honor.”

  “But I want to help, if I can. So I’ll call you soon.”

  Browning stood. “Thank you.” He walked to the door.

  “Wait,” Jo called out. “This is a homicide investigation? Where’s your partner?” Jo knew homicide detectives always worked in pairs, they were trained to watch for reactions and to have a witness to any statements.

  Browning turned. “A cop was murdered and we’ve got no real leads. Like me, he’s trying beating bushes to find leads that we can chase down together. We’re spread a little thin.”

  Jo nodded. “Hopefully I can help.”

  19

  Jo sat behind her desk, hands shaking as she typed into her iPhone. [Can we meet for lunch?] she texted Dzuy.

  [Actually sitting down to eat now.]

  [Where?]

  [Work]

  [Can you please meet me for lunch now?]

  [Okay. Everything alright?]

  [Buca di Beppo at the Mira Mesa exit in fifteen minutes.]

  [Okay. You okay?]

  [Maybe]

  Jo put her phone in her purse and logged off her email on the computer. She couldn’t find a video file from Brad in her junk mail. She couldn’t tell if she deleted it in her fog that night so many months ago or if Detective Browning was lying to her about its existence.

  Detectives are allowed to lie, witnesses and suspects aren’t. “Not fair,” Jo muttered, grabbing her purse. This was the first time she was potentially on the wrong side of a criminal investigation. She wasn’t sure if Browning really thought she was helpful to the investigation or not.

  Jo stared at the place where Browning had just sat, looking at the size of the couch. Something was missing. Jo blinked and left the courthouse.

  She sat in her car and sighed. Omar knew he was being investigated, but Jo had to talk to him. She needed to get a name for a suspect but probably couldn’t risk being seen with him or talking to him.

  “Damn it,” Jo whispered to her watch. Afternoon session was to start in one hour, her time with Dzuy would have to be short.

  She backed out of the parking lot and was on the road. Per her newfound habit, she came to a complete stop at the stop sign and stuck to the speed limit. A traffic judge getting a ticket wasn’t something she wanted to deal with.

  For fifteen minutes in silence, Jo pictured herself in cuffs, Omar bashing her with a baseball bat, her parents visiting her in prison, and had flashes of her and Dzuy on a beach in some hidden corner of the world.

  Dzuy, looking handsome in his blue button-down shirt and khakis, was standing in the shade outside of the red brick building.

  Jo parked and darted to Dzuy as fast as her heels would allow.

  “You okay?”

  Jo hugged him, pulled back, and looked at his face. “I will be.” When she pulled back from the hug, a group of three walked by them to enter the restaurant. “Can we talk in my car?”

  Dzuy took her hand. “Sure.”

  A moment later, Jo had the air conditioning on full blast. She stared at the knob in disbelief. “A detective just came to see me. This gang member, Filberto Rose killed a cop, Kristen Maggiore, who was hassling Omar. Then someone killed Rose.” Jo looked at Dzuy. “And Omar’s car was at the scene.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “The detective said Omar has a solid alibi, so he didn’t do it. Either he’s being set up by some serious gangsters or he orchestrated the double-murder.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “And last night I told him I would do his stupid Gangster’s Court thing tonight.” Jo looked down at her lap.

  Dzuy took her hand. “We’ll get through this.”

  She squeezed, asking, “We will?”

  “Yes.”

  She turned towards him. “What do I do?”

  “What are our choices? One, work with Omar. Two, turn on him. Any others?”

  Jo paused. “Not that I can think of.”

  “After what he did for Melvin, I’m kind of a fan of his. So I’d lean toward one, but will support you either way.”

  Jo squeezed Dzuy’s hand in excitement. “Browning told me a story about Omar. In high school, some guys kidnapped his girlfriend to make her a prostitute. Omar found the house where she was and killed all three guys with a baseball bat. The police rescued a half-dozen underage girls from there. Their parents raised a reward for Omar, and that’s how Browning thinks he started down his current path.”

  With wide eyes, Dzuy said, “That makes me want to lean even more towards working with him. He’s like the Dukes of Hazzard. A good old boy, doing more than the law will allow.”

  “Huh?”

  “A TV show. Before your time, I guess.” Dzuy shook his head. “But Omar was a hero.”

  “Yeah. But if he’s killing people now, even bad guys, I can’t work for him. Not if he crosses the line.”

  Dzuy nodded. “That detective said Omar had an alibi, right? If his car was there, someone probably tried to set him up. He’s too smart to let his car be a part of it if he was part of it.”

  Jo nodded. “I need to talk to Omar but he’s being watched, probably with his phones tapped. So how do I talk to him?”

  Dzuy shrugged.

  Jo sighed. “I can wait and just tell his guy tonight to have Omar get in touch.”

  “So you’re going to do it?”

  Jo sighed deeper. “Yeah. I still owe him. Unless you think I shouldn’t.”

  “If Mel’s phone got into the wrong hands, I’d have been fired and he’d be in prison. Omar has been nothing but good to us, from Brad to now. So I’ll support you in helping him out.”

  Jo put her hands on Dzuy’s face. “Thank you,” she whispered, kissing him. “I couldn’t handle this without you.”

  “Of course you could. Aside from nearly killing you, I haven’t done much.”

  Jo
laughed a little. “Thank you.”

  20

  “You must be Milk,” Jo said to the giant black man dressed in a black suit. He approached the front door of the office building carrying a folding table in one hand and a shopping bag in the other.

  Milk nodded.

  “I’m Jo. May I help?” Jo asked while holding the door open.

  “I got it.”

  After Milk cleared the door, Jo said, “Two doors down on the left.” She closed the door on the dusky pink sky and followed Milk down the vacant corridor. “That’s it.” Jo opened the door to the waiting room of her father’s office.

  Milk grunted.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Not very court-like.”

  “It’s the best I could do on short notice.”

  Milk set the table down in the middle of the waiting room. He pointed at the chairs lining the wall, then he pointed to the actual office. “In there?”

  “Sure. Are we setting up in the waiting room?”

  Milk nodded.

  Jo used a code on the second door and they put four of the eight chairs into the main office. Milk was taking the fifth and sixth chairs into the office when Jo said, “Don’t we need chairs?”

  “You need a bigger chair. I stand.”

  Jo smiled with recognition. “Like a raised bench to add gravitas to the judge from the litigants perspective.”

  Milk nodded, then went to set up the table.

  Jo walked past the reception desk and into her father’s office where she located his high back chair. She rolled it across the office, navigating past the waiting room chairs. Through the office door, she saw Milk set the chairs at a slight angle, a small end table between them, across from a table covered with a black tablecloth. The room seemed different.

  Jo rolled her chair behind the table. “Thank you. Looks so much different in here.”

  Milk nodded.

  Did I do something to offend him? Why isn’t he talking to me? “Everything okay? Anything we need to do before I greet our litigants?”

  Milk pointed to the office. “I get you, when they both here.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t mind helping out.”

  Milk nodded towards Jo’s big chair, then sat down across from it. “So it be like a court. I introduce the dispute, call the court to order. You come in.”