Above the Law

by J. F. Freedman

Nora was beaming. “You won’t regret this, Bill.”

  “As long as we bag a turkey.”

  “The DEA doesn’t think their people are dirty,” I reminded both of them.

  “Somebody killed Juarez,” Nora said. The entire operation had left a sour taste in every Muir County mouth, and Binaca wasn’t getting rid of it.

  “And everybody in the world thinks he deserved killing.” The first words out of Schwartzman’s mouth since the meeting started.

  “Not by lynch mob,” she shot back. “Cops aren’t judges, not where I come from.”

  Fishell calmed everyone down. “Enough already. We all know this is going to be a test of the system.” He looked to me. “How many people, Luke, and what’s your timetable? Any more thoughts about it?”

  I pulled some pages from my briefcase. “I want to wrap it up in six months. I’m thinking three or four detectives, plus support: secretaries, paralegals, runners. Quality people, the best I can get. It won’t be cheap—we have to investigate everyone who was there, that takes time and talent. I’m assuming this wasn’t an accidental killing, an agent losing his head and shooting Juarez in the confusion of the chase. Their OPR investigation would’ve smoked that out.”

  Fishell and Nora nodded in agreement.

  “Almost sixty agents, eight of Juarez’s bunch in prison. We may be going back as far as grade school, looking for connections, grudges, sneaky motives, money that can’t be explained. A dirty cop, if he’s smart, covers his tracks, and the men on this detail were capable agents. This is going to be a national case, Bill. Once we get started, we’ve got to drive hard to the finish, and win. We drill a dry well, we’re the Time magazine cover of the year for assholes.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said dolorously. Prosecutors hate getting involved in potential prosecutions they aren’t assured they can slam-dunk; it fucks up the batting average.

  “Agreed,” Nora chimed in, nervous over the prospect of what might be coming, but clearly excited, too. Why shouldn’t she be? This was going to be the biggest event in her life, a way for her to forget, or at least to begin to overcome, all her negative baggage and forge something positive.

  “When do you want to start?” Bill asked. He glanced at Schwartzman, who was taking notes.

  “As soon as possible. We’re playing catch-up ball.”

  From across the room, Schwartzman kicked in, “Is there any kind of budget you can give us?” Schwartzman, as a career assistant A.G., had been there for half a dozen administrations. He knew how to deal with the power players, the state senators and assembly people who approved budgets.

  “No,” I answered, “I don’t know who the players are going to be yet. I’ll do the job as cost-consciously as I can, but you can’t hold me to a figure. It’s the nature of the beast.”

  Fishell nodded. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Millions of them, if it dragged out.

  “This will be a political goodie,” I told them, reading their minds, which were transparent on the subject. “We win, there’ll be plenty of reflected glory for everyone to bask in.”

  There was nothing more to say. We stood up, shook hands all around.

  “I’ve got about a week of cleanup to do at home,” I said, “then I’ll get going. I’ll be making calls, see who’s available and willing. I hope to be set up and running within a month.”

  “Whatever I can do,” Fishell said.

  “You’ll be hearing from me plenty,” I assured him. “But,” I also reminded him one more time, “this investigation is mine to run. It has to not only look completely independent and neutral, it has to be, in fact.”

  Bill cuffed me on the shoulder. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

  Nora and I had lunch at Frank Fats, the downtown Sacramento restaurant where the power brokers break bread. All around us, men and women, the men in dark suits and white shirts, the women in the female equivalent, were chowing down on high-cholesterol mandarin food, virtually every table overflowing with platters. All on someone else’s tab, the same as with Nora and me.

  “This is going to be exciting!” She was giddy with anticipation.

  I had to deliver the news; I wanted to be diplomatic about it, but it had to be said, in plain, clear, unadulterated English.

  “This is my show.”

  What I’d said already, more than once. I took a bite of my Chinese chicken salad—I gave up the heavy lunch thing years ago. I want to dance at my son’s wedding, when I’m old and sloppy.

  She answered blithely, “I know.” Like she heard me, but the words, not the portent.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m doing,” I said, “I’ll counsel with you every step of the way. But you don’t get a vote. That’s what independent counsel means. I answer to no one.”

  She looked up at me. She’d been concentrating on her plate.

  “You’re not happy hearing that.”

  “No. But I understand.” She started to fork up a piece of fish, put her utensils down. “I can offer advice, can’t I? If I have an idea, you’ll listen to me, won’t you?”

  “Of course. But we’ve got to be purer than the driven snow. I’ve never seen snow being driven,” I added, trying to lighten the moment. “What does it look like?”

  Her response was flat. “White.”

  “You won’t be shut out, Nora, I promise.”

  “Thanks.”

  She was glum now; she’d get over it. Those were the rules; I didn’t write them, but when I’m in the game, I’ll play by them. We all will.

  “That applies to your staff as well.”

  “I understand that.” She’d lost interest in her fish.

  “And everyone else.”

  She stared at me: Meaning?

  “Sheriff Miller and his deputies.”

  “Uhhh.” She looked like I’d kidney-punched her. “That’s hard.”

  “He’s a tough old guy, I know. Excellent at what he does, too, I’m sure. He has more experience, that the rest of us put together. But…”

  “I know you have to conduct this in a prescribed way,” she said, “and I can handle my end. But look, Luke—Tom was shut out of the raid, which shouldn’t have happened. Jerome went against his own department’s guidelines, which mandate local law enforcement has to be part of whatever they do. It’s not supposed to be optional, and he messed Tom over, and it hurt things. Tom could have helped, if that egotistical shit had listened to him. Now you’re telling me this.” She shook her head sadly. “Tom’s really going to be upset.”

  “And he’ll have the right to be, and I still can’t help it.”

  The waiter hovered over us with the bread basket. We both declined; he went away.

  “I’ll tell him,” I said. “You don’t have to. It’s my job to.”

  She pushed her plate away. “He’s going to be miserable. And angry.”

  “It’s a potential conflict of interest. He was there.”

  Her head jerked around. “You’re going to investigate Tom Miller?”

  “He was there. I have to.”

  Now she really looked morose. “This isn’t going the way I expected it to, Luke.”

  I reached over and covered her hand with mine. “It’s a formality. We’re together on this every step of the way. But I have to do this by the numbers. I’m going to be under intense scrutiny. If it does turn out that any of the DEA guys have complicity in Juarez’s murder, in any way, I don’t want them or their lawyers to be able to shoot us down on a technicality.”

  “I guess.”

  “Trust me. We’re partners.”

  Her eyes locked into mine. “You promise?”

  “We’re partners,” I reiterated. “It’s your jurisdiction. You won’t be disappointed.”

  I had to say that; she was miserable. I hoped she wouldn’t be for too long, but we were in the deep waters now. She was going to have to swim on her own.

  She forced a smile. “I trust you, Luke.” She paused. “Don’t hurt me.”

  I winced; I
prayed not visibly. I could feel the anguish in those three raw words all the way to my backbone.

  “I won’t.”

  Not only wouldn’t I hurt her, I’d bend over backward to make good by her. For the first time in her life since law school, Nora Sherman Ray was going to have a positive experience. And it pleasured me that I was going to be the instrument to make that happen. Sometimes, I thought to myself, the past can be brought into the present. And washed clean.

  I had a courtesy call to make—not one I wanted to make, but one I had to.

  I drove the 101 south from Santa Barbara into downtown L.A., getting off at the Temple Street exit, heading south on Temple past the Music Center and through Little Tokyo until I got to my destination, the tall, salmon-pink granite Roybal Federal Building at Temple and Los Angeles Streets. I parked in the six-dollar all-day parking lot and crossed Temple on the green.

  It was one-thirty, the end of lunchtime. A warm, clear L.A. day. There isn’t as much smog in the basin as there used to be—the world makes cleaner cars than when I was a kid growing up in the San Fernando Valley, because the state of California and the U.S. government makes them. Which proves the government can work, even better than expected, when it’s forced to. I strolled by pretty Latina secretaries in tight blouses and black heels, Asian businessmen in dark suits wearing wraparound shades, lawyers and bureaucrats and government employees, the downtown L.A. workforce. Hot dog and burrito vendors sold food from carts.

  My first pass through the metal detector triggered the alarm, even though I’d deposited all the obvious stuff—money clip, keys, watch, briefcase—in the plastic tray. That didn’t satisfy the machine, however, which has a hair trigger considerably more sensitive than the standard ones, at LAX for example. This one was set up like Tel Aviv’s, with good reason: the Roybal Building, a nice piece of pork named after one of Los Angeles’ old-time congressmen, whose district this was when he was alive, is the regional headquarters of the DEA, ATF, FBI, Secret Service, almost every federal law-enforcement agency. From their perspective, you can never have enough security. If it was up to them, no civilians would ever be allowed in the building.

  My belt and wedding ring didn’t stop the buzz, either. It was a loud, irritating sound; even though I half-anticipated it, I still clutched.

  The line behind me was growing. That was their problem, although I was beginning to feel self-conscious.

  The guard running the machine eyeballed my wardrobe, settling on my feet. “Take off your shoes.”

  I slipped out of my Cole-Haan loafers, sent them via the conveyor through the X-ray machine. Then I tried the detector again, almost flinching. If this didn’t work, I’d be stripping down like Mike Tyson at a weigh-in.

  The third time was the charm. “Your shoes have a steel last, to help keep the shape.” The guard pointed to the X-ray screen. “They’re good shoes.”

  I slipped my good shoes back on and gathered up my personal items. Then I walked down a long hallway and around a corner, past the magazine stand that also sells cigarettes, coffee, breath mints, prewrapped sandwiches, and other snacks, and took the elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor, where the DEA offices are located.

  More security. I produced a photo ID—my driver’s license—and signed in, stating whom I was seeing, the time of my arrival, and the purpose of my visit. I put “professional courtesy” in that space, although I didn’t know how much I’d get.

  “What time is your appointment?” the receptionist asked, not looking at me, too busy with important work. She was a middle-aged, light-skinned black woman with a no-nonsense visage. Another civil-servant gatekeeper who took her work and herself too damn seriously for my current taste. We were separated by a reinforced Plexiglas window, which I assumed was bulletproof. All the doors leading into the complex were locked from the other side.

  I looked at my watch for her benefit. “Now.”

  She instructed me to take a seat and wait for Special Agent Kim to come out and escort me back to his office. Kim was the head of L.A. OPR, the Office of Professional Review, the DEA’s version of Internal Affairs. He was in charge of the investigation into the Juarez killing.

  He was pretty high up the food chain. I’d checked him out—his reputation was one of professionalism and incorruptibility. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t biased in favor of his own people. It’s hard not to be.

  “Agent Kim is in a meeting.”

  I didn’t sit down, as she’d asked me to. She looked up at me, peeved.

  “Please let him know Luke Garrison is here. Special Prosecutor Garrison. We have an appointment.”

  Kim didn’t keep me long, less than five minutes. Early fortyish, slicked-back black hair, sharp shantung-silk suit. Tailored, from the way it draped him.

  “How was the drive down from Santa Barbara?” he asked after we’d introduced ourselves and exchanged cards. His first name was Winston; his accent sounded East Coast, Philadelphia maybe. We’d never met, except over the phone, but he knew why I was here. Not a task to his liking.

  “Easy. No hassle, as long as you aren’t fighting rush hour.”

  “One of my favorite towns.”

  Santa Barbara’s one of everyone’s favorite towns.

  “My wife and I drive up for a weekend and eat at Citronelle. Do you like that restaurant?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Great views.”

  He gave me a good look-over. “I saw you on TV, last fall. Hairy situation. You handled it brilliantly.”

  I didn’t answer, there was no call.

  He fingerprinted us in, the heavy metal-reinforced door shutting behind us. I followed him down a hallway that was decorated like a Bakersfield Sheraton. Pastel carpets, seascape prints on the walls. As we passed by various offices, I could see but the plate-glass windows to the city, the Hollywood Hills. To the west, the Pacific.

  “Great views.”

  “Perk of the job. In lieu of better pay.” He smiled, quick, tight. “I thought you were a defense lawyer now. You haven’t been a prosecutor for what, four years now?”

  He’d done his homework on me. “Five. I still am. This is a onetime thing.”

  He escorted me into his office, closed the door behind us. He had a cherry space, southeast corner, views clear to the ocean, without the direct heat of the afternoon sun. We sat facing each other across his desk, which was clean of paperwork. He didn’t offer me a beverage.

  “Your letter is disturbing,” he said, getting down to business. He pulled it out of his middle desk drawer. “Uncalled for, unnecessary.” He dropped it in the center of the desk. “Insulting, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I don’t mind. I can understand your taking umbrage.”

  The letter was our initial calling card, sent by Nora, informing his agency that Muir County was going to investigate the Juarez killing, independent of the DEA and all federal agencies. That I’d been hired as a special prosecutor to run the case. I could have told Kim that it wasn’t my call, this was the decision of the D.A. of Muir County, California, and the attorney general. But I didn’t. I was the man now—all the light refracted toward me, for better or worse.

  The letter was nonaccusatory, but the DEA wasn’t going to take it that way, it was a shot across their bow. They’d done their investigation, their people had come across clean, who was this chickenshit county to question them? I would have felt the same way if our roles were reversed.

  “You won’t get anywhere, it’s a waste of your time. And their money.” His arm sweeping toward the grand view, the great people of the Golden State.

  “We’ll find out. It’s my job, I’m taking it on, I’ll do the best I can.”

  A distasteful look came across his face, which wasn’t at all inscrutable. “You want to make us look bad. Pick on Washington. The national pastime.”

  I wasn’t going to rise to his bait. I pulled the DEA investigation report from my briefcase, the one Nora had shown me in Blue River.

  “Can we go
over this? I have some questions.”

  “It’s all there.”

  “I was a D.A. for ten years, Agent Kim,” I said, the report dropping on his desk with a thud. “It isn’t all there, it never is.” He wanted to fire some high hard ones, fine by me. I’d start swinging for the fences. “I’m going to subpoena every agent who was there, if I have to. I’ll subpoena you, if I have to.”

  “Try it.”

  The lines were being drawn fast, too fast. Neither of us wanted this; we weren’t adversaries, just two men on opposite sides of the desk with difficult jobs to do and turf to protect.

  I sat back, affecting conciliation. “You don’t want that, and neither do I. Look, Kim …do you mind if we use first names?”

  “No.”

  “Winston…a man was murdered.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Okay. A man was killed. A federal prisoner who had been in the custody of your agents, who was supposed to be brought in alive. You know where the order came from. And you know she isn’t happy about the way it turned out.”

  He was listening—reluctantly.

  “Somebody may have broken him free, and somebody definitely killed him. The same person, maybe, or persons? Juarez was a federal prisoner at that moment in time, but he was also a California citizen.”

  “He was a piece of shit. Worse than shit. You know that, Garrison.”

  “That’s not the issue. Someone killed him, probably murdered him, that’s one thing I hope to find out, and who did it, and why. And how did he get loose, and why? How does this all tie together?”

  I put the documents back in my briefcase. “We’re not working together, and I’m not asking for your cooperation. I don’t even want it, it would cloud the issue. But if you have raw information, I’d like to see it.”

  I stood up. “I’m not looking to hang anyone. But when an agency investigates itself, it leaves them open to disturbing questions. Nothing to do with anyone’s personal honesty, it’s institutional—you know that.”

  He gave me a blank stare—the old bureaucratic stoneface. Screw this, I thought.

  I turned to leave. “I can find my way out.”

  He put up a hand to stop me, as I’d hoped he would.