Confidential Source Ninety-Six

by C. S. 96

  I knew the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office had recently made arrests in the desert where much of the methamphetamine was cooked, and large quantities of raw (unprocessed) ephedrine were seized. So I set up a deal with Devon that I’d get him the eph if he found me cooks, and then buyers for the meth, which he did.

  This operation lasted for six months, and it turned out to be one of the largest meth busts to date in California. We locked up forty-six dealers and took down a dozen meth labs and the cooks who ran them—and Devon, too, of course.

  This was one of those cases where once I started the groundwork and all the potential targets were set up, I slowly worked my way out of the operation by introducing scores of undercovers who acted as my workers. Throughout the six months, I’d show up only occasionally to preserve the appearance that I was still in control of the entire operation. The hierarchy gave me the insulation I needed so that once everyone involved was arrested, the criminals would assume I either left the state or was locked up and charged separately.

  I was wrong.

  I’d like to think I’ve honed my skills to a point where I’m undetectable, where you’d sit across from me on the subway reading this and never realize who you’d come face-to-face with. I try to be completely insulated from whomever my targets might be. But as much as I try, something always comes back to kick me back into reality.

  About three years ago, a number of years after our second relocation from our home, Inez and I were celebrating my son’s win at a state track meet. It was just the three of us at a family-friendly restaurant in Southern California. I was paying the check at the cashier’s booth and through a cake display I noticed a very large man staring at the back of my head. I collected my change and pulled Inez and my son in front of me to block them from this man while they walked out of the restaurant.

  The bells were going off in my head. I’d been a CI for seventeen years at that point, so I knew the signals loud and clear. In the corner of my eye I noticed the big man slowly walking toward me. “Grab his hand and go to the phone,” I whispered in Inez’s ear. This was a signal that we had developed for this exact situation many years before. Inez, by this time, had become a pro at escape and evasion, and she knew the moment she was out of sight to call 911.

  I took two steps forward then quickly spun on the big man who was now three feet behind me; he was within the kill range—seven to fifteen feet—if he had a gun.

  And there he was, as big as ever—even bigger.

  Devon, from South Moreno Valley, was studying me, unsmiling. I slipped my hand into my coat pocket, indicating to him that I had a weapon, which I of course did not. Nothing had changed, and CIs were still forbidden to carry firearms. I noticed Devon glance down at my hand and he unconsciously took a step backward. He smiled.

  “Roman. That you?”

  I determined he wasn’t carrying a weapon, so I smiled back at him and said, “Holy shit, Devon? How long has it been—twenty years? How’ve you been?”

  He stuck his hand out and we shook. “Yeah, man, damn close to that, I think. I been well. Still with my old lady, the kids are all grown up, doin’ they own thing now. You know how it goes.”

  I nodded my head, pretending to remember everything about his personal life, but there had been so many “Devons” in between it was impossible.

  Devon just nodded his head back. I could now see he was not thinking of rekindling an old friendship, but rectifying a problem he must have been harboring all these years. I felt a drop of sweat run down my back. I needed to move this along because I knew I had been compromised and had to inform my handlers at the DEA. I stuck my hand out and said, “Well, I have to go, long drive home. I’ll see you around, man. Was good seeing you!” I couldn’t tell if I was maintaining any normal control of my breathing.

  His smile was gone. He said, “Yeah, you too, catch ya soon.”

  Seventeen years of zigzagging through the country, hell-bent on taking out as many drug dealers and their gangs as I could—that had become my life, and I had become the best at it. It stood to reason there were hundreds of men who, just like Devon, would love to know where I was living. As insulated as you are, the more people you put behind bars, the more the law of averages begins to work against you when you leave your house.

  The moment I got into the car I called my handler and told him I’d just been made by an old enemy. I waited and watched as Devon got into his car; Inez wrote down the make, model, and plate number, which I relayed back to the agent, along with Devon’s name and the dates of his arrest as best as I could remember. The agent told me not to leave, to stay put and wait for the uniforms to come get me. He said, “I’ll send out two teams now as well. Where are you?”

  I gave him the address of the restaurant, and he said he was getting all of Devon’s info as we spoke, including his cell phone information. Technology had become a great friend in seventeen years. Within minutes, with the agent still on the line, three police units surrounded Devon’s car, guns drawn. This was all unfolding right in front of us. The agent still on the line told me Devon had made three phone calls already and he ran the names of the people he called: all of them were known predicate felons, two of which had done time for murder. Devon was calling hitters, alerting them where I was, and was probably trying to get them to his location that moment to end an old score.

  The cops arrested him on the scene and brought him in for questioning. They did not have a warrant to listen in to his calls so there was no evidence to keep him remanded on a conspiracy-to-murder-a-federal-agent charge. Though my handler told me that he personally went to visit Devon, telling him if anything happened to me they’d make sure that he was going down for it regardless if he did it or not—that didn’t change my circumstances. Another home had to be sold, and my younger children had to start all over again.

  That night, my daughter and son were picked up and brought to a hotel near the DEA office in north San Diego. The kids were angry about the move, and what broke my heart is that they were taking it out on their mother. It was time to let them know what I did for a living, though not all of it.

  I gathered everyone around the bed.

  I explained that many years ago I’d made some bad choices and ended up in the wrong business, but eventually—with Inez’s support and a stroke of luck—I’d gotten out and started helping the feds catch bad guys like the ones I’d once worked with. I reminded them of our first move and told them that was when I’d began to work for the right side.

  I told them a man I’d helped take off the streets had seen us in a restaurant, and he was calling other bad men to let them know I was in the area.

  After a thousand questions, they finally nodded off.

  Within two weeks we were relocated for the third time, and after my explanation, not one of my children, or Inez, complained. I had a feeling they knew they were a part of something bigger than all of us.

  In Search of Redemption

  The moment I wrapped my hands around those two suitcases, way back in 1986, each filled with thirty pounds of marijuana, I knew with certainty that my life would never be the same. It was one of those crossroad moments we come upon, and if we’re lucky—and smart enough—we choose the right path.

  I chose wrong, and my life spun out of control on a downward trajectory that, in its wake, not only helped destroy countless lives—and decimate neighborhoods—but also altered the way my wife and children would live their lives.

  There is nothing I can say that can change that fact, nothing I can do to force myself to stop wondering how different our lives would’ve been had I not made those first few mule runs to New York for a measly $6,000. For years after becoming a CI, I clung to the hope that snagging high-profile criminals and working to stem the flow of drugs that I’d once facilitated would quiet that guilt I felt, that feeling that I was falling deeper and deeper into a void. But it turned out that no one could help pull me from this funk, not the agents, who clearly knew something was wron
g, nor Inez, who tried everything and whose attempts to brighten my mood would only register as another pang of guilt for what I was continuing to put her through.

  Then Inez had an idea. I could take the dirty money that I’d made while in the life and use it to provide an opportunity to friends Inez and I had met through church. Some of these people were barely making it, surviving hand to mouth.

  At first I did small things for them, like shopping for groceries for them every week; if they were short on the rent I’d pay it, then I’d buy their children clothes for the year, and when school began I’d buy school supplies. Some looked at me funny, wondering where my money was coming from, but most were grateful for the help. I was grateful to know that I was helping to keep these families from falling into the same trap I fell into. Though I never gave money directly, I made it my business to help these people live better lives, especially their children. One family turned into two, then three, and word spread through the churches in the community. Before I knew it I was helping more than thirty families.

  Yet none of this seemed to fulfill this emptiness I still felt in my heart.

  I tried harder, visiting the schools in nearby drug-infested neighborhoods. So many of the students wanted nothing to do with these schools, and it was obvious why. The schools looked like they were in war zones, the buildings bombed and cheaply repaired so many times. They were no better than busted-down city jails, infested with roaches and vermin, leaky pipes, cracked walls, broken windows, classrooms without doors, and holes in the ceilings and walls. Beyond all of that, there were no sports or after-school programs to offer incentives to stay off the street.

  I knew the children in these neighborhoods would play a major hand in our future, and they could, and would, go one of two ways, my way—the wrong way, where they’d repeat my mistakes and could only hope to escape before it was too late for them—or the right way. And if their surroundings continued to look more like a prison than an institution of learning, I knew it would be that much harder for them to go the right way.

  So I began donating, everything from sports equipment to computer workstations, which at the time many of the so-called elite schools in the United States didn’t even have. I organized with the school administrations to bring in construction crews and exterminators. Had these been any other schools in the country, I’d have to jump through hoops, and my donations would be kept and dispersed by the school board when they deemed necessary, but to their credit these administrators recognized the needs I described and helped me cut through the red tape.

  Taking care of all of these families and schools became a full-time job, and the huge mass of money I’d accumulated in the life began to disappear. With it, my misery began to melt away.

  I knew Inez and I would survive just fine. She had graduated and was now a physician’s assistant, working at a community clinic in one of those very neighborhoods whose schools we were helping. The money she was making was nowhere near the money she could have earned had she gone into a private practice in an affluent area with a different doctor, but I believe she was, in her own way, quietly working off her own penance. To subsidize her salary, I was getting paid 10 percent on every case I brought in, or 10 percent of the sum total of the weight of the drugs, and of course the money, confiscated from these arrests.

  However, despite all of my efforts to help these folks and the successes that I’d been a part of as a CI, the awards and certificates of achievement that came with it, I remained unable to confront the life I’d led. Lying in bed at the end of the day, I could not escape the suffocating thought that I’d gotten away with it all.

  Inez is a very spiritual person, and seeing that I was lacking a deeper meaning in my life, she began insisting that I start going frequently to church again and seek guidance from within.

  I went to different churches with her, listened to different pastors, but I always resisted the lessons they were trying to impart. I’d been taken in by a charismatic man before in Tony, someone who claimed he could show me the path to a better life, and some part of me must have worried it could happen again. As the days turned into weeks, weeks to months, my depression began to work its way into my professional life. Every case I started began to somehow fall apart. Soon, with no cases to subsidize Inez’s salary, we began to struggle financially.

  I was now at the lowest point in my life, yet again on the wrong path and now with nowhere else to turn but inward. When you’re at rock bottom you begin to see your mistakes, and I saw how my stubbornness with Inez was hurting me. So I decided to go to church, but this time really listen to the sermons of the pastors.

  And then it happened.

  I was seated with Inez and our children, listening to a fiery woman pastor preach to a packed church. I sat in the middle of a pew about eight rows back, worrying over what those around us thought of me and my flashy clothes. I hoped they didn’t hold my appearance against Inez. The pastor lifted a hand and, without warning, pointed at me and said, “You, I can see you are going to spread the word, and you’re going to help so many people.”

  She proceeded with the rest of her sermon. And though I’d never met this pastor before—and I didn’t know why her apparent confidence in me, in all of her congregation, finally got through to me when nothing else could—but somehow I felt that she knew everything I was going through. It hit me like a thunderbolt: I needed to open up my heart to God.

  And I did.

  The next day, I visited the pastor of the church where I was a regular at the time, and I opened myself up to this man. He explained to me that no one can earn salvation. It is a gift bestowed upon us at birth, and once you’ve given yourself to God, you will understand that a man cannot atone for his sins—one man, Christ, has already done that for us. And once you begin to imitate God on Earth by helping others, that is when you will find eternal bliss.

  The pastor asked me what I wanted to do, and I didn’t know. “Think on it,” he said, “and you will find where your path leads.”

  That night, putting my kids to bed, I realized that I wanted to help children—to get to know them one to one and do whatever I could to help them achieve their dreams, and I decided that working to become a pastor was the best way for me to reach at-risk children in my community. I went back to the pastor and told him everything.

  It turned out I had a lot to learn. You can’t just decide one day that you’re going to become a pastor or a deacon of a church. Countless questions need to be asked and answered, and not only of me, but of my family and the limited friends that I have, questions about my morality, my character.

  I poured myself into answering these questions, studying the Bible, and preparing myself for the life ahead. Many months later, I was officially ordained as a minister.

  I started out slowly, because at first I didn’t know how to find the children who most needed help, but I did have four little disciples to help me—my kids. They all had friends in school, many that were troubled, and they told these kids about me, that maybe by talking to their dad they might come to understand what’s troubling them.

  My ministry started with one boy and has grown into dozens of kids and their parents coming to my home on two, sometimes three nights a week to talk through their problems. We brainstorm potential solutions together and reach back into the stories of the Bible for inspiration. After we have these discussions in an open forum, we cook a large meal together. Everyone has to help, whether it’s chopping up vegetables, helping prepare the food, or setting the table.

  Someday, when I’ve finally retired from CI work, I’ll tell my little ministry about the wild course my life took, how I led myself and my family down the path of despair and lost myself, how I cozied up to murderers and drug lords, and how, when my situation got so bad that I would wake in the night fearing for my life, I met a sheriff’s deputy who showed me the way out. How I’ve spent more than two decades trying to undo the damage I did in only one.

  When that happens—whe
n I’m done with my work and able to tell the world who I really am—I’ll need to go deeper into hiding. Until then, I’ll be walking the same streets you walk, trying to see into you without ever being seen, doing my best to pick up the shattered pieces that my drug life left behind.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Roman Caribe

  First and foremost I want to thank my LORD. My path was hazardous until my LORD changed my life. Today, I am a new man. As the LORD says in Psalm 23:2–3, “He leads me beside still water. He has restored my soul. He has led me in a path of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

  I’m grateful to DEA, ICE, ATF, FBI, and all the local police and state agencies across the United States that I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to prove myself.

  A special thanks to special agent MD of DEA and Richie Fagan, a first-grade gold shield detective of the NYPD, and his partner, BG.

  I also want to thank Richard Abate of 3 Arts Entertainment—you are the best literary agent in the world.

  What can I say about Robert Cea? Robert, you, have been given a special gift to write. Thank you, brother, for bringing my book to life. And to your very funny and extremely smart business partner, David Goldberg, thank you.

  I also want to send my gratitude to Mauro DiPreta, publisher of Hachette Books, and his assistant, David Lamb, for allowing me to tell my story. Thank you for believing in me.

  To my wife and children, I thank you for your unconditional love and support through thick and thin. Your faith has inspired me to become the man I am today. Without you, this book would never have been possible.

  Robert Cea

  First and foremost I’d like to thank “Roman Caribe” for having the faith and trust in my abilities, thus allowing me to record and write your truly amazing story. It was an incredible adventure reliving “the life” with you and I thank you and your family for the opportunity. You’re truly a brave man, and beyond question have not only redeemed your past, but have become a man I’m truly proud to call my friend.