“So,” Furness said, initiating the conversation, “you want to buy that property adjacent to yours.” He thumbed through the letter. “The one that belonged to that drug syndicate.”
“We’d rather you outright gave it to us,” Louisa said with a smile. Her compatriots smiled along with her. She tried the coffee—tasty. It’s what she drinks at home, brewed up in a Krups coffeemaker. None of this supermarket-house-brand cowboy coffee crap for her, like her mother used to drink.
“What a stellar idea,” Furness responded jovially. “Would you like us to throw in the California Water Project along with it?”
He liked bantering with Louisa. She was sharp and had a good sense of humor. For an older woman she was damn attractive, too. She was wearing a Mexican-style blouse and a skirt that showed off her bottom nicely, had her hair coiled up in a braid. Some turquoise and silver jewelry around her neck and wrists. None of the dumb squaw about this woman, she could make it anywhere.
“That’s state,” she joked back. “You don’t control that. But that property we want is federal. That’s yours.”
“Technically,” he explained, “the Justice Department’s taken receivership of it, since the DEA confiscated it. Interior isn’t involved. Seizing property isn’t allowable for us. Wish it was.”
She made a brushing-aside motion with her hand. “It all gets thrown into the same big pot. But anyways, you’re right, we know no one’s going to give it away, even though it doesn’t have much value, being isolated up there in Muir County, which ain’t nothin’ but rednecks and redskins. We want to buy it, like our letter says.”
“Where’re you going to come up with the money, Louisa? The location might not be as great as some others, but it’s a formidable piece of property. Some rich hunting type might want to buy it for a lodge type of scene.”
“The money’s for us to worry about. As far as some rich Anglo buying it, I don’t see that. All the good hunting surrounding it is our property, reservation land. We’re the logical party to buy it, Sylvan. You’ve got to agree with that.”
He bobbed his head neutrally, but didn’t say anything that could be construed as a commitment or even an endorsement.
Louisa pressed on. “What we want now is to know is this something we can talk about seriously? ’Cause we’re serious, and I can’t see anyone else being serious about it. Like I said, it’s too far and gone.”
Furness thought for a moment.
“It’s a white elephant. Sylvan,” Louisa continued. “Every month it sits out there unused, it costs the taxpayers money in upkeep. If it was me back there in Washington in charge of handling it, I’d want to get it off my hands as soon as possible. To the first serious bidder,” she emphasized. “I’m sure the bean counters would agree with me.” She made a mental note to fax her congressman when she got back to her office.
“Well…I’ll have to find out what kind of price we’re putting on it. They’re putting on it,” Furness amended quickly.
“Okay,” she said, stealing a glance to the rest of the delegation. The tribe had gotten its foot in the door. That was the hardest part. Now it would be a question of negotiation.
“So getting back to my question,” he said. “How is your tribe going to come up with the money to buy it? White elephant or not, it’s pricey.”
“Float a BIA loan, is what we’ll try first. Cheap money.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs offered low-interest loans to tribes for capital investments. The more self-sufficient a tribe was, the less money the government had to shell out to keep them afloat. The tenet “the end of welfare as we know it” applied to reservations as well as the inner cities.
“You’d have to have a commercial use for it,” Furness reminded them. “If it’s so isolated up there as you claim—and I agree with you—how can you make money off it?”
Louisa leaned toward him, flashing a conspiratorial smile. “Gambling.”
Furness rocked back in his chair. “Pretty far off the beaten track for gambling, isn’t it?” he said tentatively.
“For a white man’s hunting lodge it’s isolated, that’s true. But gamblers go where the action is. It already has the airfield, big enough to land jets.”
“What if Prop. Five is declared unconstitutional?” Furness fretted. “You know there’s going to be a constitutional challenge.”
“So what?” Louisa said with an air of dismissal. “We’ll go back on the ballot and change the Constitution. People want gambling, Sylvan. And they want the Indians to have their shot—finally. Anyway, Governor Davis is on our side. He’ll figure something out.” She leaned toward him. “Don’t worry, it’s our problem. You take care of your end.”
Furness was buffaloed. He didn’t think a gambling casino would qualify for a BIA loan. On the other hand, if it was successful, it would take the tribe off the dole. Anytime a tribe could be weaned from the government’s teat, Washington was happy, especially the congressional subcommittees that had to authorize the money, which always came grudgingly. “I don’t know…”
“If they don’t,” Louisa told him with authority, “we’ll find it. Maybe we can talk some of the rich tribes into kicking in. Indian power.”
She smiled. Where they’d get the money from was none of nosy Uncle Sam’s business. He’d been dictating to the original Americans for two hundred years now. Now they were fighting back, and winning.
“You really think you can make a go of gambling up there?”
She nodded. “It wouldn’t only be gambling. Some of the best hunting in the country’s on our reservation. We control that—no one can hunt our land without our permission. We could put together gambling and hunting junkets. Like going on safari in the Serengeti. It could be the new chic thing. Sylvan. And it would provide employment to our people on their land. That’s the most important thing.”
The tribe planned to bring another wrinkle into the mix, but Louisa wasn’t going to mention it to any government official, even one she had an easy relationship with. The drug compound, and several miles of the reservation north of it, were flush up against the California/Nevada border. The corresponding Nevada county on the other side of the line, Bison County, offered legalized prostitution. She had surreptitiously discussed leasing a sliver of that land with some members of the Bison County supervisors’ board and adding it onto the existing compound. A big hotel on the Nevada side of the border. A big whorehouse. Gambling and hunting in California, fucking in Nevada, all on private or Indian land, where neither the federal or state governments could touch them.
Furness thought about her proposal. Maybe it could work. He’d listened to wilder schemes. This woman was a powerhouse. If anyone could make it work, she could.
“Okay,” he said. “Why not give it a try? I’ll start getting the paperwork together.”
Louisa leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks, Sylvan. You’re a good friend.”
The others got up to leave. They all shook hands with Furness.
“This is a long shot,” Furness cautioned as he walked them to his door. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
“We’re Indians,” Mary Redfeather said. She hadn’t spoken a word until that moment. “We never get our hopes up.”
“I didn’t mean to imply it was hopeless,” Furness corrected himself. “You have to try, right?”
They nodded in agreement.
“So.” He had taken them as far as he could for now. “Why do you think this will work?”
Louisa Bearpaw gave him a sage, knowing look. “If we build it,” she said, “they will come.”
Juarez’s former chief lieutenant, Filipe Portillo, a thin, pock-faced man in his late twenties, sat across from Kate Blanchard and me in a booth in El Sombrero, one of the stellar old Mexican restaurants in the heart of the east LA. barrio. His lawyer had appealed the trial judge’s denial of bail on the Muir County bust and had been successful. So Portillo was out now, awaiting his trial.
It was a w
arm day, dry, the sky light blue, cloudless. Two-thirty in the afternoon, the end of the lunch cycle. We were sitting on the patio behind the restaurant. Traffic from Whittier Boulevard could be heard cruising by, whomp-whomp mufflers. Portillo was wearing a white T-shirt, baggy khakis, Kobe Bryant high-lops. His sinewy arms sported numerous jailhouse tattoos as well as a few legitimate ones, the most conspicuous a monstrous snake curling around his right biceps. A raven’s bright black tailfeathers protruded from the snake’s mouth, as if the rest of the hapless bird had already been devoured. There were some letters and numbers high up on his shoulder, gang ID, I presumed. A gold cross dangled from his left ear. A large plate of food—enchiladas, tacos, rice and beans, salad—sat in front of him. Portillo ate with gusto, rolling the beans up in tortillas, washing the food down with a Corona out of the bottle.
I drank iced tea; Kate was toying with her Coke straw. She had done a preliminary interview with Portillo and had set up this meeting. Neither of us had an appetite, either for the food or for the man sitting across the table from us. I was hoping he could shed some new light for me. He had been there alongside Juarez, the prisoner Sterling Jerome had questioned after the raid.
I could have brought Portillo up in front of the Muir County grand jury, but it would have been a waste of time and money. He didn’t kill his boss—he’d been in handcuffs when Juarez had made his break. I was hoping to get something else from him: motive.
“The word on the street is you’re the man now,” I started out. I’d heard that from Kate, who had good sources.
He shrugged nonchalantly as if to convey through body language that what I’d said was true.
“My old lady thinks I’m the man,” he said in a lightly accented voice. “You talking about something else, I don’t know what that is.”
“Your organization.”
“I’m a carpenter, so you must mean my union. That’s the only organization I belong to.” Another shrug, followed by a tight smile.
I returned his smile with one of my own that was equally insincere. “You’re sitting on two priors, ace. Another fall, you’re buying twenty-five to life. That was me, I wouldn’t be taking it lightly.”
He shook his head slowly, almost mockingly. “Even the judge knows that bust was crap. He practically said so in open court. I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing.” He scooped up a forkful of enchilada, chewed with his mouth open. I noticed he needed dental work.
“What a judge thinks and what a good prosecutor can convince a jury of are two different things. Keep that in mind.”
“I’ve got a good lawyer. I ain’t worried.”
“Whatever.” I didn’t want to engage him in a spitting contest. “There’s another word on the street.”
He waited for me to continue. I glanced over at Kate. She was enjoying the repartee.
“Your man Juarez was done in by one of his own.”
“No fucking way.” He took a long hit from his beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“That’s the skinny. And you know what that means.”
“It ain’t true, and I don’t know what it means.”
“Somebody’s trying to pin the tail on the donkey.” I smiled. “Guess who the donkey is.”
He shook his head. “None of us killed Reynaldo, certainly not me.” Another hit from his Corona. “You trying to play games with my head? Don’t. It ain’t gonna work, and you’re gonna piss me off.” He leaned in toward me. “You’re gonna be needing me down the line, man. You’re gonna need witnesses to what went down there. I’m happy to cooperate, ’cause I want whoever did that to pay for it. But you’ve got to treat me with respect. And talking a bunch of shit don’t do that.”
“Maybe. But I’m looking at this, I have to think, who benefits from Juarez not being on the scene anymore? Who gets a bigger piece of the action? There’s only one candidate, Filipe. That’s you.”
“No.”
“Who else?”
“It don’t work that way.”
“Oh? How does it work?”
“First off, I’m not involved in whatever bullshit you think I’m involved in. Like I said, I’m a carpenter, journeyman union. That’s all.”
“All you’re going to talk about.”
“All, period.”
I sat back. “All right. You’re a journeyman carpenter, period. Let’s talk theoretical, okay?”
He gestured at his plate. “You’re buying my lunch. Talk theoretical all you want.”
“Let’s say—we’re just hypothesizing here—there’s an organization. Any organization. It makes a ton of money. And there’s no taxes paid on it. It has a boss. He makes the most money. Maybe as much as thirty, forty percent of the profits. Everyone else gets the crumbs, the leftovers. You with me so far?”
“Uh-huh.” He continued with his eating.
“The boss kicks off. Has a heart attack, gets hit by a truck, stops a nine-millimeter bullet at close range. However it happens, he’s dead. What happens to that thirty or forty percent?” I smiled. “The ones that’re left split it up. Isn’t that how it would work? Hypothetically, of course.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Or maybe a new boss would take over and rake it all in. You’re Juarez’s successor. You’re the logical candidate.”
He started to take another hit from his beer, then paused, his arm frozen in midlift. “You’re trying to set me up, you motherfucker!” He slammed his bottle on the table.
“Like how?”
“You’re trying to set me up for Reynaldo’s killing, aren’t you? What are you, trying to get me killed? You start spreading shit like that around, that is not healthy, man.” He glowered at me. “And if I ain’t healthy, I could think of other people who could get sick real easy. Terminal. You know?”
I glanced at Kate. She was listening intently. Later we’d play this back on the tape recorder she had hidden in her purse. Portillo had neglected to ask us if we were wired, and we hadn’t mentioned it.
“How am I setting you up?” I asked. “We’re talking hypothetically here, Filipe, aren’t we? You’re a journeyman carpenter, you’re not involved with any drug organization. So what’s the concern?”
He pushed his plate away—he’d lost his appetite. He was fidgeting now, and I was enjoying watching it. I knew Kate was, too.
“Rumors have a way of becoming facts,” he said. “Especially in what I do.”
“Pounding nails and sawing lumber?”
He turned away in disgust. Pointing at Kate, he said, “She told me anything we talked about here was between us. That it wouldn’t be used against me.”
“Like immunity?”
“Yes, like immunity.”
I could feel the sun heating up on my back. I drank some of my iced tea.
“I can’t offer you anything on that bust.” I paused to let him twist a bit. “Although I could talk to the prosecutor. If you were cooperating with me on this one.”
He snorted. “I ain’t worried about that one. Like I said, it’s crap, and I’m gonna beat it. I ain’t worried about that.”
“Then what?”
He started to answer me, then stopped.
“The rumors,” I said. “That become facts.”
He nodded. “The word starts circulating I set Reynaldo up, which I didn’t do, I’m exposed. We were partners, I loved him like a brother. Help set him up? That’s the last thing I’d ever do.”
“I heard someone else say the same thing,” I told him.
“Who?”
“Luis Lopez. Another one of your… carpenter friends.”
He spat on the floor. “Fuck Luis Lopez and his family for ten generations,” he growled. “That piece of dogshit is a dead man.”
“If you can find him.” The conversation was heading in the right direction now. “He’s gone underground, what I hear.”
“What am I, stupid? He’s in the slam, where he’s been since we were arrested. They’re watching hi
s bones like a hawk. But they can’t watch him forever.”
“He has too many enemies?”
Portillo nodded. “The world’s his enemy.”
“Inside as well as out.”
“Definitely.”
“I believe you,” I said. “But you know what’s interesting about that?” I glanced at Kate again. We were getting somewhere now. I’d opened the trapdoor, and he had accommodated us by entering.
“What?”
“That Lopez and all the rest of your people are inside, but you aren’t.”
He looked at me with a funny look, like he was starting to get the picture, but couldn’t see all of it. Yet.
“I have a good lawyer. He got me out.”
“What about the rest of your friends that didn’t get out? Don’t they have good lawyers?”
He could feel the door close behind him.
“They have good lawyers. They…didn’t take care of their business, like I did.”
“Do you know how lame that sounds?” I challenged him.
“I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck,” he said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing to me. But if I were one of your friends still locked up inside, eating bologna sandwiches and drinking Kool-Aid instead of sitting out in the sunlight in the free world chowing down on good food and beer, I’d think about my man Filipe making bail, when everyone else is denied…I’d be wondering about that.” I clapped my hands together loudly. He jumped. “I’d be thinking really hard about that, Filipe!”
He slumped back. “Those DEA fuckers are setting me up, aren’t they? They killed Reynaldo and they’ve got to have a scapegoat.”
I cocked a finger at him. “Could be. Wouldn’t be the first time they set someone up, would it?”
He shook his head. “It ain’t gonna work.”
I laughed. I didn’t have to fake it. “You don’t sound like you’re convinced.”
“I wasn’t involved. That’s fucking ludicrous.” He was heavily on the defensive now.
“Does that matter? When rumors have a habit of becoming facts?”
He stalled for time by pulling a pack of Marlboros out of his pants pocket, fishing one out, lighting up. “I didn’t set Reynaldo up.” He exhaled. “Anybody that knows me and him knows that.”
Above the Law Page 23