“Yes,” he spoke in a low undertone.
“So much for taking him alive at any cost,” I said dismissively. “That was all pretense, wasn’t it? Empty rhetoric.” I walked to the stand again and got in his face, inches away. “Sterling Jerome would have been just as happy taking Juarez dead as alive, wouldn’t he have been! Happier! He wanted Juarez dead, and when he couldn’t kill him then—”
“Objection!” John Q. was on his feet, shouting over me.
“Sustained!” Judge McBee yelled, even louder.
“—he killed him later, didn’t he!” I thundered on.
“Objection!”
“He was out to kill Reynaldo Juarez, and he did!”
“Objection!”
“Sustained!” Wham wham wham! The gavel slammed home.
I stepped back. I don’t know who had the reddest face, Judge McBee, John Q., or me.
“You are out of order!” Judge McBee screamed at me. “You are this far”—he held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart—“from being severely cited for contempt! Do …you…hear…me?”
I stepped away. “Yes, sir,” I said, properly chastened. I turned my back on Dutton and walked to the prosecution table—I’d done my damage, and then some. “I’m through with this witness,” I said over my shoulder. “No further questions.”
Kate was waiting for me outside my office. I unlocked the office. We went inside. I grabbed a beer from the fridge, opened one for her, flopped into my chair. “You got anything for me?”
She opened her ubiquitous notebook. “The architect-slash-contractor they both used was Dean Vaca of Connelly Associates, offices in San Francisco, L.A., Phoenix, Denver, and so forth. He was originally contacted by Nora, who turned him onto Miller.”
I took a hit from the can. “The connection could be through her family in Denver. Her father’s a big deal there.”
“Right.” Reading on, she continued, “Both paid cash. No mortgages. Nora’s raw property cost sixty-five thousand, Miller’s seventy-five. Her house, turnkey, was a tick under two hundred grand. His went for one seventy-five.”
I marveled at the figures. “In Santa Barbara those houses would go for ten times that. Five times, minimum, back when they built them. What a deal.”
“But you’d have to live here,” she reminded me. “No sushi bars, no surfing, cold in winter and hot in summer. Boring.”
“Picky, picky, picky.”
“Anyway.” Back to her notebook again. “By your standards it’s a deal, that’s true, but it’s still a lot of cash to lay out. I’m checking on that. I’m also checking into a few other things, nothing you have to know about now, you’ve got your hands full with the trial. If anything jumps out at me, I’ll ring your bell.”
She put her notebook away. “Was there something in particular you’re looking for? Why do you have me doing this?”
“Idle speculation, I guess. Sometimes coincidences happen and they make you wonder.”
“I’ll keep at it,” she promised. “You want me to stay up here until the end of the trial, don’t you? Just in case?”
“Yes. Just in case.”
The air-conditioning had gone on the fritz, so the courtroom was sweltering. Repairmen were feverishly laboring to get it working, but if parts were needed, they’d have to be brought in from Reno, which wouldn’t happen until tomorrow; another endearing reason for living in the outback. Coats were off—even Judge McBee was in his shirtsleeves. Contentiousness was in the air, waiting for a spark. I hoped I wouldn’t be the one to strike it.
Despite the crummy conditions, Filipe Portillo looked sharp, sitting up on the witness chair, one leg crossed over the other, styling in a sharp pinstripe suit (he kept his coat on), dark blue dress shirt buttoned to the collar, no tie the way they do at the Academy Awards, and hand-tooled alligator cowboy boots, a nice touch, I thought, for up here. A simple ruby earring in his left ear completed his ensemble and made a nice statement, although it was lost on these jurors, I’m sure.
John Q., Portillo’s opposite sartorially, slouched over the lectern.
“Mr. Portillo…” His voice sounded as if he’d eaten an extra helping of gravel for breakfast. “Were you acquainted with the deceased, Reynaldo Juarez?”
“Yeah. Me and Reynaldo were close. Like brothers, man.”
“For a long time?”
“All our lives, practically.”
“You worked together?”
Portillo repositioned himself to get more comfortable. “We did business together, yeah.”
This is great, John Q., I thought. One drug dealer testifying about another. That’s going to help you? If that’s the best you’re going to do, you might as well pack your bags and go home now. I’d been baffled when I’d seen Portillo’s name on John Q.’s witness list; I was still baffled.
“Were you and Mr. Juarez together on the night of the raid on Mr. Juarez’s property?” John Q. asked.
Portillo nodded. “We were together, that’s right.”
“Were there others present?”
“Yeah.”
“About how many?”
“Including Reynaldo, an even dozen.”
“Would you tell us where you were?”
“In Mr. Juarez’s house.”
“Was that here in Muir County?”
“Yeah.”
“What were you and Mr. Juarez and these other men doing?”
“Hanging out. R and R, you could say. We’d been working hard, all of us, we needed to get away and goof.”
“It wasn’t a business occasion?”
Portillo shook his head. “Strictly recreation.”
This was bullshit, as Dutton had explained earlier. John Q., of course, had anticipated the problem.
“You weren’t there to receive a shipment of drugs, as one of the agents who was there has testified?”
Portillo gave him a look of disbelief “No, man. That’s a crock. Did they find this shipment of coke they’re talking about? A ton? I mean, come on. There weren’t going to be any drugs there. Reynaldo would never give anyone like Jerome an excuse like that.”
Which was true, except for this special occasion. But John Q. had raised a little mound of doubt about the entire enterprise by bringing this lie in. What I didn’t understand was the point of it.
John Q. shambled over to the defense table to consult some notes, came back to the lectern.
“Let’s set the record straight. Were there drugs present on the property during that time you and the others were there, Mr. Portillo?”
“No, sir,” Portillo answered vehemently. “There were not.”
“No drugs of any kind.”
“Well, there was booze. Beer, wine, booze.”
“But no illegal substances.”
“No.” Portillo gave the jurors a droll look. “You can get arrested for that.”
“Indeed,” John Q. commented dryly. “So there was nothing illegal going on at Mr. Juarez’s compound that night.”
“Not a thing.”
I thought about objecting to this line of questioning as irrelevant and a waste of time, but I decided not to. I was at a loss as to where John Q. was going with this, but it didn’t seem to be helping his client or hurting me, so I kept my mouth shut.
John Q. nodded, as if this confirmed something important to him.
“Did you have security at Mr. Juarez’s house and grounds, Mr. Portillo?”
“Oh, yeah,” Portillo answered.
“What kind of security?”
“Sensors that detected if someone had come onto the property. Stuff like that.”
“High-tech?”
“The latest and best equipment we could get,” Portillo boasted.
“So you felt safe from intrusion.”
“Felt safe, yeah.”
“Had there been any intrusions onto this property before that night?”
“A couple.”
“What kinds of intrusions, Mr. Portillo?”
&
nbsp; “A couple times kids tried to sneak over the fence. One time a common thief, who didn’t know who he was messing with. Stuff like that. Nothing heavy.”
“Did the people inside respond?”
“Sure they did. That’s why you have a security system.”
“What was the nature of those responses, Mr. Portillo?”
“We intercepted them and asked them to leave.”
“You confronted them.”
“Yeah.”
“With force?”
“Yeah, with force.”
“So you had weapons present at this compound.”
“Of course we did. Who wouldn’t? Valuable piece of property like that, you got to be prepared to protect it.”
“Okay. Now let’s go back to that night, Mr. Portillo. You and Mr. Juarez and about a dozen other friends were in the compound. You were relaxing. You had no illegal substances with you. You were acting in a law-abiding fashion.”
“That’s right.”
“So you didn’t expect anyone to try to invade your property. Because you weren’t doing anything wrong. Against the law.”
“Well, we weren’t doing anything wrong, but we did expect some visitors.”
“Why is that, Mr. Portillo?”
I sat up. We were getting to something. Finally.
“Juarez got a call.”
John Q. took a beat before going on. I was alert now, listening. This was the first I’d heard of this.
“Mr. Juarez got a telephone call? Someone called the compound?”
Portillo nodded. “He got two calls.”
“About what time of the night was that, Mr. Portillo?”
“Late. The first was around three in the morning. The second came about half an hour later.”
“Do you know what these calls were about?”
“I don’t know about the first one. The second was that we were about to have some company pretty soon.” Portillo paused. “A lot of company.”
“Expected company?”
Portillo brayed. “Hell, no.”
“Hostile visitors, then.”
“Very.”
Another pause from the old fox, another show of deep thinking. It was clear to me what the two calls were. The first was to tell them the cocaine wasn’t coming in. The second was to warn them of the raid.
“These telephone calls to Mr. Juarez. Were they to his listed number?”
Portillo laughed. “Rey didn’t have no listed phone numbers. He protected his privacy.”
“To your knowledge, Mr. Portillo, did many people know this particular phone number?”
“No. Hardly any.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Did the other ten men who were present in Mr. Juarez’s home that night know that number?”
Portillo nodded. “Yeah.”
“Would you describe the people who knew that number as Mr. Juarez’s inner circle?”
“The most inner. He changed his secure phone all the time, so people couldn’t track him down.”
“Would it be fair to say that Mr. Juarez was obsessed with privacy and secrecy, Mr. Portillo?”
Portillo laughed. “He made Howard Hughes look like Jay Leno. The man was totally obsessed with his security. With good reason,” he added. “He’d had plenty of attempts on his life.”
“What was Juarez’s reaction when he got the telephone calls?”
“The first one, he was pissed. The second one, he was freaked.”
“Because you were about to be invaded by a hostile force while on private property, minding your own business?”
I stood up. “Objection, Your Honor. Argumentative.”
Judge McBee nodded. “Sustained.”
John Q. was undaunted. “Did Mr. Juarez tell you why he was freaked?”
Portillo nodded. “He said we were going to get busted. That they were coming for him.”
“Did he say who ‘they’ were?”
Another nod. “Federal agents. A task force that had been set up to get him.”
Shit. This was new news to me. And not welcome.
“They were coming for him? Him specifically?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Dead or alive? Did he say dead or alive?”
“Either way. If federal agents are coming after you, they don’t care. Long as they have your body in a bag. Check out Ruby Ridge, Waco, other places tike them.” Portillo glared past John Q. to Jerome, sitting at the defense table, as he said that.
I was utterly confused now. On one hand John Q.’s witness was saying Jerome was going to take Juarez dead or alive, on the other that he had been forewarned. The two didn’t match up. I listened carefully as John Q. went on.
“I want to sidetrack for a moment, Mr. Portillo. Do you know a man named Luis Lopez?”
Portillo practically spat, right there on the witness stand. “Yeah, I know that son of a bitch!”
The courtroom buzzed. McBee gaveled down hard. “There will be no profanity in this courtroom, Mr. Portillo! You are to refrain from using such language in here! Do you understand me?”
Portillo stared up at him. “Yes, Your Honor. I’m sorry. I got carried away.”
“Keep your temper in check,” McBee warned him.
“I’ll be careful, Your Honor.”
McBee nodded at John Q. “Proceed, Counselor.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. I apologize for my witness’s outburst. This is a very emotional issue with him. His best friend was murdered that night, and Mr. Lopez was a party to that.”
Again, I thought of protesting, and again, I decided not to.
John Q. turned to Portillo again. “Was Mr. Lopez one of the men who was at the compound on the night of September twenty-eighth?”
Portillo darkened. “Yeah, he was there.” He paused. “Some of the time.”
“Some of the time?” John Q. asked, pretending to be confused. “Why would anyone leave a remote place like that in the middle of the night? Unless he was trying to get away because of this impending assault on Mr. Juarez’s private property.”
“You’ll have to ask Lopez that. I don’t think that’s why.”
I was starting to see where this was going. The old fox still had some tricks left in his repertoire.
“Do you know who that second call was from?” John Q. asked.
That question caught me off-guard. I looked around. Nobody else seemed to realize how important this was.
Portillo answered in the negative. “No. Reynaldo didn’t say.”
John Q. looked at some more notes. “Did Mr. Juarez ever talk about Sterling Jerome?” John Q. turned and pointed to Jerome, sitting up straight at the defense table. “This man. Did Mr. Juarez ever mention him?”
Portillo nodded vigorously. “All the time. He talked about him for years.”
“For years? Would you say that Mr. Juarez was obsessed with Mr. Jerome?”
“Obsessed ain’t the word. It was like Jerome was a what’s the word…succubus to Reynaldo, you know? Like that thing in Alien that grows inside you and eats your guts out? That’s what Jerome was to Reynaldo, a virus that was trying to kill him. Like a cancer growing inside of him.”
“He wasn’t friendly with Mr. Jerome, then.”
Portillo almost came out of his chair, he was so agitated. “He hated him! He hated him worse than anybody on earth!”
“Calm down, Mr. Portillo,” John Q. begged. “Please.”
Portillo was almost hyperventilating. “This is really hard for me, man. To be sitting here, in the same room with him…”
“I understand, I understand. Then it would be fair to say,” John Q. continued, lowering the intensity, “that Mr. Jerome would not have been the person on the other end of either of those telephone calls with Mr. Juarez. Particularly the call that warned Mr. Juarez that he and the rest of you were about to be placed in a state of siege.”
Portillo shook his head at the temerity of that question. “Jero
me would be the last man on earth Reynaldo would ever talk to. They were blood enemies to the bitter end. Jerome would go to the ends of the earth to get Reynaldo. And Reynaldo knew it.”
I could feel the vibe going through the courtroom: this man was saying everything I’d said, he was buttressing my case a thousand-fold. But I knew better; old John Q. was setting this up beautifully. I hated him for doing it, but I had to admire his talent.
“Okay. I hear you,” John Q. said. “I want to make this point one more time, so there’s no question. Sometime that night, Reynaldo Juarez was called on a telephone that almost no one had the number for and told that you were about to be heavily attacked. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“By Mr. Jerome and other agents of the DEA?”
“Yes.”
John Q. was moving closer to his target. “Obviously, whoever tried to warn Mr. Juarez had to be very close to him, didn’t he? Close enough that he had Mr. Juarez’s most secure telephone number.”
“Yes. Whoever it was had to be real tight with Reynaldo. Supertight.”
The old lawyer leaned in to Portillo. “If you knew in advance you were going to be attacked, Mr. Portillo, why didn’t you try to escape?”
Portillo stared at him. “It was too late. We were surrounded.”
“You knew that.”
“Yes.”
“From this telephone call.”
“Yes.”
John Q. pondered for a moment. “You knew the attack was coming. It wasn’t a breach of security in the compound.”
Portillo again said it wasn’t. “We knew they were coming.”
“Why didn’t you simply let them in? What could have happened?”
“They would have killed us. They were armed to the teeth. They did try to kill us, didn’t they? We had to defend ourselves, it was our only chance for surviving.” He bristled. “Why should we just let them in, anyway? We were on our own private property. We weren’t doing anything wrong. Somebody comes onto your property, armed like they do, you’re just going to let them? Who does that?”
I looked over at the jury. Some of them were actually nodding in agreement. Up here you don’t trespass lightly.
“So your security was in place on the night in question?” John Q. asked Portillo again.
Portillo leaned forward, gripping the rails of the witness box. “It turned out it wasn’t,” he said. “If we hadn’t gotten that phone call, they would have caught us bare-assed naked. We would’ve been ducks in a barrel.”
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