by Samuel Logan
Her wish was granted. The social workers at the Landmark Juvenile Detention Facility could no longer house Brenda. She was a minor who had committed no crime in Arlington: she had to go. But Greg knew she couldn’t return to the streets. She had already provided so much information, more than she originally intended, including the contents of five letters from Denis and one letter from Veto she had received during the month of June. It was simply not an option to put her back on the streets.
Greg scrambled, and with Porter’s help, he managed to find a bed for her at the end of July in the Less Secure Facility in Fairfax County. As the name implied, the facility had little more security than a regular college dorm building. After they checked her into the facility, Greg arranged another meeting with Porter, Rodriguez, and one other detective. They had very specific questions about MS activity in Fairfax, but Brenda didn’t have all the answers.
After saying good night to the cops and Greg, Brenda waited until lights-out, and with two girls she had met that day, she snuck out the back door. It was easy. The two attendants on duty that night were making out on a couch in the lobby. All Brenda needed to do was walk out quietly and not let the door slam shut.
Free of the Less Secure Facility, Brenda and her friends waited at a nearby bus stop for the George Mason bus to take them to the Vienna metro stop, the last stop on D.C.’s orange line. At the metro station, Brenda and the girls hopped the turnstiles and boarded the train for East Falls Church, the stop closest to Bailey’s Crossroads in Fairfax County, where Brenda knew there was always an MS party. An older member of her clique held a party at the same house every weekend. Brenda didn’t think that this weekend would be any different.
On her first night of freedom, Brenda took her two friends to a destroyer party, a celebration of the gang life. MS members would drink Coronas, smoke pot, and share stories, and those who had earned rank or respect would receive tattoos. They were wild parties that lasted all night.
When they arrived, Brenda fell right back into the gang life. She introduced her friends around and began partying. She had been away for close to two months, but she didn’t have to make up any excuses. Most of the people there didn’t question her absence. Those who did received a well-constructed lie. Since leaving Texas, Brenda had grown accustomed to lying and knew how to leverage her special position as a member of the venerable Normandie Locos clique and as Denis Rivera’s girlfriend.
Brenda got high, had a few drinks, and introduced her friends to the upside of gang life. They were in awe of what they saw. The excessive partying was easily absorbed, but when one MS leader got into a shouting match with another, the party ended in a fight. One pulled a knife and stabbed the other. For Brenda it wasn’t a big deal. She’d seen her fair share of knife fights and was comfortable behind the gangster façade she wore. But the other two girls were scared. They wanted to leave immediately.
Brenda arranged a ride with a homie who was headed into D.C. It was early in the morning. Making up some excuse, Brenda got the driver to drop her and the girls off at the National Mall, where they walked around the Reflecting Pool before catching the metro to Columbia Heights. Brenda picked the location because she thought it was a place where people from Colombia lived. She thought she would feel more comfortable surrounded by Latinos before she tried to call Greg again and get a ride back to the Less Secure Facility.
During the night Brenda had tried to call Greg with the disposable cell phone he had given her, but wasn’t able to reach him. Greg’s cell phone was on the charger and not set to ring.
The next morning Detective Porter received a call from the Less Secure Facility. Brenda and two other girls were missing. Porter called Greg, who was at home with houseguests.
It was an emergency. Porter and Greg knew if Brenda was back on the streets, she could be in serious trouble with her gang. She had been in custody for nearly two months, long enough, they thought, for her homies to note her absence. Best-case scenario, Brenda would never come back. Worst-case scenario, she was dead.
Before Greg decided what to do, he received a call from Brenda. She was at the Columbia Heights metro stop in Washington, D.C. He knew he had to go get her, but in the back of his mind, Greg wasn’t sure if it was a setup or not. He thought that Brenda probably wouldn’t try to harm him, but he didn’t trust the men she ran with. He decided to grab his Sig Sauer P228 pistol before heading into D.C. to pick her up. But there was no threat. He found her standing in a slice of shade by a pharmacy on Fourteenth Street NW with two white girls.
Greg pulled up to the curb and got out. Brenda explained she had met the two girls at Less Secure. One girl didn’t want to go anywhere with Greg. He couldn’t force her to do anything, so he gave her $20 and told her to go home. The other girl wanted to go to jail, or anywhere safe. She was observably nervous. She got in the backseat and Brenda happily hopped in front. Greg thought it would be a good idea to get them something to eat.
“Where do you want to eat?” Greg asked Brenda.
“I dunno, maybe Italian?” she replied.
“How about the Olive Garden?” the other girl chimed in.
“I’ve never been to the Olive Garden, but I’ve seen those commercials,” Brenda admitted, clearly interested in what she thought was a meal fit for kings.
When Greg, Brenda, and her runaway friend were seated at the Olive Garden in Tyson’s Corner, back in Fairfax County, it was immediately apparent to Greg that Brenda did not know how to act in a restaurant. Brenda was embarrassed by her table manners. Greg immediately set out to teach her basic table skills—no elbows on the table, napkin in your lap, eat with your mouth closed. Greg showed her how to use a fork and twist the pasta noodles on a spoon before taking a civilized bite without slurping. Greg restrained himself the whole meal. Brenda had made a stupid decision when she left the Less Secure Facility. She had endangered both their lives. But he held back. He didn’t want to get started on her with the other girl present.
Once they were back at Less Secure, Greg dropped off the runaway girl. He was burning to ask Brenda why she had escaped, but before he could begin on Brenda, they ran into Detective Porter.
“They’re refusing to take her,” Porter said. Great, Greg thought. What a fucking mess. The only place in Virginia that would take Brenda was now out of the question. He thought a lot of Brenda, even respected her. But she could be a real pain in the ass, he thought, as he absorbed the consequences of Porter’s news.
Brenda had burned the only place they could legally keep her. There was nowhere else Greg could place Brenda, and he still hadn’t managed to remove the capital murder warrant out for her in Texas. Greg knew that if they couldn’t get Brenda into a safe place that night, she would most likely be extradited to Texas the next day and face a very serious charge in a state that had a long history of capital punishment.
CHAPTER 24
It was late on a Sunday. Greg was tired, and the last thing he wanted to deal with was finding Brenda a safe place to stay. He and Porter were at a loss for where to put her. They stood just inside the doors of the reception area of the Less Secure Facility with Brenda seated on the couch and talked over their options, trying to force out a solution. An idea finally formed after long minutes of back and forth. They would have Brenda charged with a crime that Porter and Greg agreed would later be dropped.
Denis Rivera had once tried to kill the father of a rival gang member, but failed when the gun misfired. Brenda had knowledge of the event. It had happened earlier that summer. Brenda was supposed to make the kill. She was in new MS turf, and despite her street credentials, she had to prove her loyalty to her new homies in Virginia through an act of violence. When the moment arrived, Brenda didn’t have it in her to kill the man, so Denis took the gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The gun didn’t fire. Denis pulled the trigger a second time. Nothing. He grabbed the barrel with one finger wrapped around the trigger guard and hit his victim repeatedly in the face with the pistol grip.
Denis had been charged with the assault, called a malicious wounding in Virginia, and Porter agreed they could charge and hold Brenda as an accessory after the fact.
It was legal fiction. Greg was certain that if Porter asked the judge to drop the charge, there would be no questions asked. It was a rare leap of faith between an arresting officer and a defense attorney, but it paid off. Porter arrested Brenda so he could legally place her in the Fairfax Juvenile Detention Facility. It was a building connected to the Less Secure Facility and considerably safer. Her new home was a place where Greg knew Brenda could remain safe until he figured out their next move.
With that troubling snag out of the way and Brenda safely checked into the detention facility, Greg picked up where he had left off. He needed to know why Brenda had snuck out.
“I went to find answers,” Brenda replied, showing Greg bits and pieces of notes she had taken on separate scraps of paper. She listed the nicknames and cell phone numbers of a number of MS members and additional information Porter and other cops wanted to know.
Brenda had risked her life just to get a few answers to questions asked the day before. Greg thought that it was a stupid risk to take, but Brenda was determined to get the information. For Greg it was a sign Brenda had become more sincere about helping, but he was worried about her judgment. She obviously thought she was smart enough to get away with fooling her MS homies. Greg couldn’t help but remind himself that for all her street-smart experience, Brenda was still only sixteen years old. Her importance as an informant and subsequent treatment often masked the very real fact that Brenda was still a teenage girl with all the weaknesses and vulnerabilities associated with growing through adolescence into adulthood.
After their quick chat, Greg turned Brenda over to the facility staff and headed home. He had a choice to make. In Arlington County, Greg was her guardian ad litem, but in neighboring Fairfax County, he was her defense counsel. A guardian ad litem had been assigned to her case in Fairfax, but he only did what he had to do, nothing more. The onus of responsibility for Brenda’s well-being was on Greg. He had initially been uncomfortable with performing the duties of both guardian and lawyer in Arlington, and still felt a little uncomfortable with his dual role between the two counties.
It had been a long, frustrating weekend, and keeping Brenda in a secure location and out of trouble had turned out to be a real job, not just a few hours of paperwork, as he had initially thought. Greg wondered if he should remove himself entirely from Brenda’s defense in Fairfax.
He could dump her case onto the Fairfax juvenile justice system and walk away, or he could stick with her. For the moment, Brenda was safely ensconced in the local juvenile detention facility. She had an established relationship with local gang unit detectives as a reliable informant, and Greg had kept careful notes. He could easily debrief any defense counsel in Fairfax who picked up her case.
Greg continued to think about his options the next morning as he sat in the front hall at the Fairfax juvenile court, waiting to apprise the judge of Brenda’s situation. He watched the faces of the Fairfax County lawyers as they passed him by. They were frustrated or bored, tired or uninterested, he observed, yet these were the men and women called upon to help children out of a tight spot. Greg could see clearly how the Fairfax County judicial system was struggling under the weight of a high caseload and a limited budget. It was depressing.
Enthusiasm and compassion were completely absent. In their place was a begrudging sense of duty, laced with some greed. Every day, the judge assigned one guardian ad litem and one defense counsel to all the cases that came through the juvenile court docket. That number swung wildly from half a dozen to well over triple that number. Two lawyers splitting an entire day’s caseload could make good money, but the attention they gave each individual, each child, was almost always lacking. The strained administration of a tired old court often got in the way of delivering blind justice.
Greg thought that most of the men and women who served the kids who came through that court system were lawyers who had failed in every other area of the legal profession, from divorce law to real estate and taxes. In those halls walked men and women who functioned best in a poorly run judicial system. This was welfare for bad lawyers, Greg realized as he reached a decision. There were a few decent lawyers in the bunch, but Brenda’s chances of landing one of them was slim to none.
That morning, as Greg sat on the bench waiting his turn, he ultimately decided to stick with Brenda. He had grown to like Detective Porter, and Brenda had become more than a client. She was almost like family. His first impression of Brenda as a street-savvy runaway punk had given way to a feeling of friendship. He simply couldn’t leave Brenda to the mismanagement of a hack lawyer.
At his hearing that morning, Greg felt renewed enthusiasm for debriefing the court on what had transpired with her case thus far. Greg had worked Brenda’s case for just under seven weeks and had earned only $117. But he didn’t care about the money. Keeping Brenda safe was his priority.
At the end of the hearing, the judge assigned Greg to continue on as Brenda’s defense counsel in Fairfax County. She also gave him an order that allowed him to check Brenda out of the Fairfax Juvenile Detention Facility without the presence of a Fairfax County police officer. It was a favor from a judge who realized that Brenda was in good hands. Greg planned to make every effort to break out Brenda for a meal or some mall time and talk to her about finishing high school and college, books she was reading, and other interests for a regular teenage kid.
After that day’s hearing, Greg closed out the first seven-week phase of the Brenda Paz case. It had been an exciting and challenging period, but he was just getting started. The following weeks would force him to the extremes of what he was willing to do to keep his young friend and Mike Porter’s most charismatic informant alive.
CHAPTER 25
The more Brenda talked, the more her notoriety grew. There were too many loose ends. Too many people were talking about Brenda. Greg’s most immediate problem was not the courtroom rumor mill. It was the legal battle to keep Brenda safely out of Texas. She was a minor who had more legal reason to be set free than incarcerated. Freedom was an ultimate goal, but it was not what Brenda needed while she was talking to cops about the MS.
Greg had already considered a list of alternatives. Initially he thought that placing Brenda back with her family in California might be an option but he quickly dismissed that idea. Southern California had a very active MS-13 presence. Although Brenda’s hometown of El Monte, outside of Los Angeles, was likely not MS turf, Greg couldn’t take that risk.
Brenda had told him her dad was an MS gang member. While he wasn’t sure this was true, Greg thought her father might be involved in some criminal activity—another reason to keep her in Virginia. Her uncle in Texas was another option, and he was considered by the Virginia courts to be Brenda’s first point of contact, since her father had transferred legal guardian status to Rafael. After several attempts made by Greg and the court to get in touch with Rafael resulted in little to no action on his part, it was clear her uncle didn’t want to have anything to do with her.
Greg also considered foster care, but ruled that out because he was certain the MS might harm the members of any family who agreed to house Brenda. He explored other locations. She could be placed in a rural youth ranch, the kind used to help rehabilitate criminally minded minors. Or she could be put into a girls program in Georgia. Yet none of these options were good enough to guarantee her safety. As much as Greg wanted to isolate Brenda, at least enough to keep her safe, he couldn’t be sure they could find a place outside of a juvenile detention facility where the Mara Salvatrucha couldn’t find her.
As time moved forward from July into early August, Greg had secured Brenda’s trust, no small accomplishment, but he still faced a paradox. Brenda met dozens more people as she revealed more MS secrets about hand signals, organizational structure, and the gang’s various criminal enter
prises. It was impossible to maintain the secrecy of her informant status. She had become a minor celebrity with the law enforcement community in northern Virginia. Eventually the wrong people would hear she was cooperating with police. The more she spoke, the harder it was to keep her safe. Fortunately, her rising star as an important informant did give him some leverage in Texas, where Detective Oseguera’s arrest warrant was still outstanding.
The Grand Prairie major crimes detective, Rick Oseguera, hadn’t seen Brenda since March 2002. There were warrant posters with Brenda’s mug shot in the greater Dallas area, but they had generated no leads. To him, she was gone.
In the first week of August, Flaca appeared on Oseguera’s radar. She was the girl who, according to Brenda, had killed Javier and stolen his car and might pass through Dallas at some point on her way to Maryland. The detective received a call from the officer on duty at Farmers Branch Police Department who explained he had a wispy young Latina female who went by the name of Flaca in his custody. Excited about moving his case forward, Oseguera drove out to Farmers Branch to take her into custody and drive her back to Grand Prairie for questioning.
Just as he had with Brenda, he walked her to his interview room and sat her down at the table. She wasn’t hardened or tough and smart like Brenda, nor was she well versed in what she could and couldn’t tell the cops. Scared of the men who had killed Javier, Flaca had decided she wanted to rid herself of the gang life. She was a gangster wannabe who didn’t want it anymore. She had seen and heard things that had scared her and had nearly been killed for her association with Brenda’s gang. Her boyfriend at the time of Calzada’s death, Little Zico, had tried to kill her in mid-July, only weeks before Flaca met Detective Oseguera.