The Hidden Law

by Michael Nava

  “I’ve proved it to myself,” I said. “That’s all that matters.”

  “Oh, I give up,” she said. “You’re too fine for me.”

  “Inez, you don’t mean that.”

  “Of course not.” She ladled food onto her plate. “Eat, Henry. Some rice at least.”

  “No thanks,” I replied. “I have to be at Parker Center at twelve-thirty for a lineup. Tell me something, Inez, did Gus beat the kids, too, or just Graciela?”

  She picked up her chopsticks. “What makes you think I would answer a question like that?”

  “Under the circumstances, I think you owe me,” I said.

  “Let’s just say,” she said, “he never left any visible marks.”

  I walked to Parker Center from the restaurant. Patrol cars moved in and out of the lot beside the police headquarters, and the sidewalk was stained purple where pedestrians had trampled jacaranda flowers fallen from a few spindly trees. Dusty stalks of birds of paradise opened their orange-tongued blossoms. The heat raised the smell of urine from all the dark little enclaves that the homeless used as toilets. A few of them trudged along the sidewalk with the government workers, conspicuous in ragged layers of clothes far too warm for the season.

  I thought about Inez, gobbling lunch, and heading back to work to do the people’s business. Yet for all her busyness, and that of the thousands of bureaucrats who filled the towers that surrounded me, the people did not appear to be better off. The only power any of us had was what we held in our hearts and minds, and in that respect, the bag lady squatting to piss on the lawn of City Hall was no different from Inez Montoya, or me.

  I was standing in a narrow rectangle of a room, a couple of benches arranged to face a glass wall. Beyond the wall was a brightly lit platform and behind it, a wall marked with different heights. This room was not visible from the other side of the glass. I wasn’t alone. I had lots of company, Detectives Laverty and Merrill, Anton Pisano, and a frail-looking man with a drooping moustache who’d been led into the room by two uniformed INS agents. Pablo Saenz, the People’s star witness. He scrunched down in his seat, terrified by the authority arrayed around him. A very old man, with silky white hair, sat reading a paperback in the corner.

  I had been studying the six-pack, the photo lineup from which Saenz had chosen Michael. It was a square piece of cardboard with six slots holding booking photos backed by more cardboard. The six men looked uniformly menacing, but there was little other resemblance except that all were Latino with the same basic facial structure, thin and narrow. That didn’t bode well for this lineup; if Saenz had been able to pick Michael out of this group, then maybe he had seen him. Still, I was far from convinced his choice had been completely voluntary.

  I approached him. “Where’s the interpreter?” I asked Laverty. I didn’t trust my Spanish.

  “Why?” Pisano asked. “What do you want to ask him?”

  “I’ll have the questions and answers translated,” I said.

  The old man in the corner put his book down and said, in elegantly accented English, “I am the interpreter.”

  “I need you over here,” I said.

  He shuffled over, smiling, and bowing slightly. “At your service.”

  “Thank you, Mr.…”

  “Sevilla,” he said.

  “I’m Henry Rios, the defendant’s attorney. I want to ask Mr. Saenz a couple of questions.”

  Pablo Saenz had been listening to this exchange with mounting anxiety. I turned, smiled at him, and in my best, albeit faulty Spanish, said, “Mr. Saenz, I am a lawyer, and I have a few questions to ask you. Since my Spanish is not good, I will be asking through the interpreter, Mr. Sevilla. Please don’t be nervous or frightened.” He didn’t look reassured.

  Pisano, who had moved in, said, “What did you say to him?”

  I repeated my remarks in English. “Now,” I said to Sevilla, “ask him if the police showed him the photo lineup before he came here today?”

  “Jesus, Rios,” Pisano said, disgustedly.

  Sevilla translated the question, having some problem with the concept of photo lineup, but eventually, he made himself understood. Saenz said, “No.”

  Sevilla repeated, “No.”

  “Ask him if either the police or the INS agents said anything at all to him about why he’s here today, or what he’s expected to do.”

  Sevilla translated. Saenz began to babble, but Sevilla cut him off, telling him to answer only yes or no.

  “Wait,” I told Sevilla. “This isn’t a formal examination. Let him talk.”

  Sevilla apologized and asked Saenz what he was going to say before he had been stopped. I listened, able to translate that he had not been told why he was coming here, but only that if he cooperated he would soon be released.

  Before Sevilla could translate, I said to him, “Ask him who said he would be released?”

  Pisano said, “Wait a minute. What did he say before?”

  “He said someone offered him a deal,” I said. Then to Sevilla, “Go on. Ask him.”

  A moment later, Saenz was saying that the agents for la Migra, the INS, had told him they would release him as a reward for his cooperation with the police.

  While Sevilla translated his answer, I debated whether I should ask him about the photo lineup, but to do so, it might be necessary to show it to him, and inadvertently refresh his recollection about Michael’s appearance.

  “That’s all I have,” I said.

  “Then let’s get this over with,” Pisano said sourly.

  Laverty came over and began reading to Saenz from a preprinted card that Sevilla translated, explaining the purpose of the proceeding. He was asked to look at the six men who were about to be brought out and say whether he recognized any of them as having been present the night of Peña’s killing. He was cautioned that simply because the men were here was no indication that they had been present at the scene. He was asked if he understood. When he said he did, Laverty shouted, “Bring ’em out.”

  Six young Latinos, all about the same height and weight, all dressed like homeboys, in billowing khakis, sneakers, and plaid shirts over white T-shirts filed across the platform, as surly as models on a runway. Michael was the second from the right. Unlike the other men pictured in the photo lineup, these men bore a slightly closer resemblance to him. They glared and scowled into the glass, or feigned indifference. Michael stood stock still, looking straight ahead.

  A minute passed, then two, then three. At five minutes, Pablo Saenz raised his hand and pointed, “El.” I followed his finger. He had chosen the man at the other end from where Michael stood. “Tengo cierto,” Saenz was saying. I’m certain.

  I looked over at Pisano.

  “How about two out of three?” he asked.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A COUPLE OF HOURS later, I was sitting in the Ruizes’ living room. It was a big room in a big house, decorated with meticulous formality, less a home than a museum to hard-won affluence. Michael was sitting at the far end of the same sofa on which I sat, yards of white linen between us, his bare feet propped on the coffee table, eating ice cream. In slacks and a white polo shirt, his hair greased down in the fashion of the moment, he seemed the perfect, spoiled suburban kid. From this distance, even the tattooed tear looked like nothing more ominous than a mole.

  Only the thick plastic band around his ankle ruined the effect. Encased in the band was a device that sent a constant stream of electronic signals to a VCR-sized black box at the other end of the room. Somewhere, someone in the probation office monitored bleeps on a screen that represented the circumference of Michael’s freedom.

  Carolina came into the room, bringing me a glass of iced tea, a sprig of spearmint tumbling jauntily over the side. She moved around the room cautiously, as if afraid something might break.

  “Get your feet off the table,” she ordered Michael, as she set my tea down on an enameled coaster. Michael ignored her and went on eating his ice cream. “Get. Your. Feet�
��”

  He swung his feet off the table.

  “Are you sure I can’t bring you something to eat?” she asked me. We were good friends now, now that I’d brought her the news about the lineup.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said.

  “What happens now?” she asked, sitting down, and lighting a cigarette.

  “The preliminary hearing,” I said. “The DA will try to go with what he’s got, which may still be enough for the court to order Michael to stand trial.”

  She frowned. “But what about this lineup?”

  “It weakens their case, but doesn’t destroy it, entirely. Eyewitnesses make mistakes all the time. I imagine, if they decide to pursue the case against Michael, they’ll ask Pablo Saenz to make a courtroom identification.” I sipped the tea. “Even if he does identify Michael at that point, it won’t have much value after today. I mean, his original ID was weak, and then today he couldn’t identify Michael at all. After awhile, it starts to look like the prosecution’s beating a dead horse.”

  “But they could still put him on trial,” she said sharply.

  “They could.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Maybe they don’t have any better suspect,” I said. “Maybe they still think he did it.”

  Michael’s spoon clattered at the bottom of his empty dish.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything. Michael hadn’t said much to me after the lineup. What I really wanted was to talk to him alone.

  “I wonder if I could speak to Michael alone for a few minutes,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Please,” I said. “Just a couple of minutes.”

  She got up slowly from the chair, made a show of removing his ice cream dish and shuffled out of the room.

  When she’d left, I turned to Michael and said, “OK, we’re going to talk now. Who are you protecting?”

  He looked at me. “I’m not protecting anyone. I told you before, I killed him.”

  “Michael, I don’t believe you,” I said. “What I think is that you’re taking the rap for someone, but I don’t know who. Now I understand what you’re thinking. If we go to trial on this evidence, you expect to be acquitted, which is entirely possible, and then, not only will you be free, but whoever you’re protecting will also be off the hook.”

  He watched me intently, but said nothing. He reached for his cigarettes.

  “In fact,” I said, “I think you expected what happened today. You expected it because you knew that you weren’t there that night. But it was risky, Michael. The police got Saenz to identify you once, and they could have done it again.” I paused to let this sink in. “We’re probably lucky INS has had him all this time instead of the cops.”

  The door opened and Bill Ruiz came in, beaming. “Michael,” he said, hurrying over to his son. “I heard what happened. Give your dad a hug.”

  Sullenly, Michael got up and let the big man enfold him.

  “Thank you, Henry,” Bill said. He walked over and shook my hand. “I guess we get to keep this place.”

  I smiled. They had put the house up to make Michael’s bail.

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “The kitchen,” I said. “Michael and I were having a private talk.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said. “It’s great, really great.” His face was anxious. “I guess I don’t need to tell you how this has affected my business. Look, you two keep talking.” He hurried out of the room.

  Michael said, “I hope he fucking loses his business.”

  I studied him for a moment. “Maybe I’m wrong about your motives here,” I said. “Maybe you want to go to jail to punish them.”

  He looked around the big room, its white furniture, tasteful wall-hangings, the good reproductions of pre-Columbian art nudging volumes of unread books on sleek bookshelves. A vase of gladiolus stood on the mantle over the fireplace. Next to it was a photograph of Carolina and Bill Ruiz dressed to the nines. Beside that was a picture of Michael, taken when he was three or four years old. There was no other evidence of his presence in the room.

  “They want me in jail,” he said, scowling. “Out of the way. Dead would be best.”

  “And what do you want from them, Michael?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Not a fucking thing.”

  “You’re eighteen,” I said. “You could leave here, make your own life. Without drugs or booze. Without them. Just walk away from it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Stop trying to get back at them by fucking up your life,” I said. “Because sooner or later, you will end up dead. They’ll get over it. Believe me, they’ll get over it. And you’ll be dead.”

  “I got plans,” he said.

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it. Of course, there’s still the small matter of this murder charge hanging over your head. Now, if you weren’t at the restaurant that night, you were somewhere else. Don’t tell me you were at the park. Wherever you were, someone must have seen you, and could testify to it. With that testimony we can blow the case apart. Well?”

  “They can’t prove shit,” he said, reverting to a homeboy drawl. “I don’t have to say nothing.”

  That night I pored over every piece of paper I had that related to the Peña investigation: the official reports, Freeman’s reports, my own notes. I was looking for a key to a door that I wasn’t even sure existed, someone or something that would give me a different angle on this case. It wasn’t until I re-read the notes of my first interview with the Ruizes that something caught my attention and held it. I called Edith Rosen, waking her.

  “Edith, sorry to bother you, but do you know the name of Michael’s grandmother, and where she lives?”

  “Wait a minute,” she said groggily. “I have to go to my desk.”

  I heard rustling, and then the yapping of a small dog. A couple of minutes later, she picked up a different phone.

  “Somewhere,” she said. “Oh, here it is. Got a pen? Maria Ruiz. Here’s the address.”

  The front of her house lay in the shade of an immense pine tree, shaggy with dust, needles drifting through the hot air to a yard already deep in them, making a noise beneath my shoes like small bones breaking. Small dark birds winged between the branches. A red plastic ball was also lost in that tangle, tossed there by a child long ago.

  The house itself was a two-story cottage, very old, like most things in this neighborhood which was too poor and too dangerous for the redevelopers. It was the kind of place you would have found in New England, delicate and elaborate, as if it had been spun in confectioner’s sugar. I came to the dusty door and knocked, hard, the loud report echoing in the deep quiet of the place.

  After a few minutes, an old woman opened the door. Her wispy hair was done up in a bun. She peered at me from behind thick-lensed glasses, her black eyes huge and wary. The flesh hung from her face in wattles, and a dark dress emphasized her shapeless-ness. In halting Spanish, I introduced myself. She invited me in and moved aside to let me pass.

  She had me sit in the front room while she went back into the kitchen to bring us tea. I sank into a chair upholstered in deep maroon, resting my head on a doily. There was an oval portrait on the wall of a sailor that looked like it had been taken in World War II. The flags of Mexico and the United States flanked his expressionless countenance. Beneath the picture was a framed medal. The only other picture in the room was a large, bad oil painting of Jesus in the Garden at Gethsemane. At the front of the room was a new television hooked up to a VCR.

  She shuffled back into the room, bearing a tray with a cup of hot tea and a plate of store-bought cookies. She put the tray on a small side table next to me, then laboriously pulled up a chair so we could talk.

  I thanked her for the tea and cookies, complimented her house, and asked her about the sailor. He was her husband, she said, who had been killed at Iwo Jima. I expressed my regret at her loss, and she received this with
the equanimity of someone who had been receiving such condolences for nearly fifty years. I drank some tea, ate half a cookie, and then said I wanted to ask her some questions about Michael.

  “Ah, si, mijito,” she murmured.

  She nodded when I asked her whether he had stayed with her in the days before his arrest. Then I asked her whether he had been visited by a girl and a young man, about Michael’s age, who had come in a small white car.

  “Pero, si,” she replied, and added that they had come for him almost every day. He would leave with them for a few hours, and then return for dinner. Once they had stayed to eat, and they had both been well-mannered and respectful. “Muy amables.”

  I asked her whether she had ever overheard them talking about a man named Peña. No, she said regretfully, she had only met them that once, and they had not spoken much more than to praise her cooking. They had eaten well, she added.

  I drank more tea, ate another cookie, and then asked her why Michael had left.

  She said the young man had come, without the girl, and talked to Michael for a long time. Michael had left with him, and he had not come back. It was only later, when she heard about his arrest, that she knew where he had gone. She was weeping. I held out a consoling hand and sat with her a few more minutes before getting up to leave.

  She walked me out to the porch. How is he, she asked me, mijito.

  I told her Michael would be fine.

  I drove away, thinking not of Michael but of the hours I had spent with Raymond Reynolds talking about my father. My father had been a man who, outwardly, was a respectful, responsible member of our small community, a collection of neighborhoods called Paradise Slough, the Mexican district of a town in northern California, Los Robles. It was not too different in spirit from Boyle Heights, the neighborhood I had just come from, a Spanish-speaking village in an Anglo city. Disdained by the majority, its people were tribal in their outlook and mores. Its cornerstone was the family, and in the family the father ruled, irrevocably and without question. Outside, in the larger world where they labored under the contemptuous eye of Anglo bosses, the fathers were social and political ciphers. No wonder, then, that in the families they tolerated no dissent from their wives and children. And they drank. They drank to wash down the slights they endured by day and to enlarge small lives which became heroic in alcohol-glazed rumination, but at their cores the fathers knew the full measure of their unimportance and, so, finally, they drank to quiet the rage.