by Michael Nava
Marc swallowed the information with another gulp of beer. “If you know all that, why haven’t you amended the complaint to add him as a defendant?”
“I told you, our real target is the church. You should talk the city into settling, Marc, because when we do amend the complaint to add Moore, you’ll be walking into a media buzz saw. I can already see the headlines: LAPD assistant chief implicated in murder conspiracy; department harbors religious fanatics who impose their views on rank and file. You want to be defending that?”
“The department’s not responsible for the actions of an officer who wanders off the reservation.”
“Agreed. If Moore was freelancing, that’s all the more reason to settle the case and get the city off the hook.”
He took another drink. “From this moment on,” he said, “our conversation is completely off the record.”
“Understood.”
“I don’t know anything about this conspiracy and your allegations seem crazy and/or unprovable.” He smiled sourly. “You’re probably bluffing.”
“You can leave any time.”
“Fuck you,” he said without heat. “You have enough right about Moore to embarrass the department if you drag him into the lawsuit. Religious fanatic? That doesn’t begin to describe him. I’ve got half-a-dozen internal complaints claiming he promotes guys on the basis of religion and discriminates against non-Christians. Don’t get me started on his off-the-cuff comments about Jews. We know he’s got a little gang of fellow believers who proselytize on the job, but Gates doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem.”
“The chief part of that gang?”
He shook his head. “He’s smart enough not to openly identify as Christian, but his religious beliefs align with Moore’s.” He tipped the can to his mouth and finished his beer. “Even if you can’t prove your cockamamie conspiracy theory, you could still drag a lot of those skeletons out of the closet.”
“Sounds like you kind of want me to,” I observed.
“I’d love to see Moore go down for murder but only if it doesn’t implicate the department.” He looked at the empty as if considering whether to get another beer. He crushed the can. “You understand what I’m saying, Henry. The department is dismissed from the case with a clean bill of health, and anything Moore did, he did on his own.”
“I don’t have a problem with that.”
“Hypothetically, what kind of settlement would you be looking for? Don’t ask me to break the bank, not with the weak shit you’ve got.”
“You and Susanna can work out the amount of the settlement, but once the city’s dismissed from the case, Sumaya testifies that he was directed by Moore to infiltrate QUEER and to work with people in the church to kill Herron.”
“You want Officer Sumaya to admit to felony murder?”
“He could testify under immunity so that nothing he says could be used in a criminal prosecution.”
“You’d let him walk to get to the church?”
“And Moore. They’re the ones who concocted the murder scheme. Sumaya was a foot soldier.”
Marc raised a skeptical eyebrow. “He pulled the trigger, Henry. Hell, he built the gun and you’re okay with him getting off scot-free?”
“I want justice for Theo and Dan,” I said. “That means public admissions that Theo Latour was a pawn in a conspiracy he knew nothing about and that his and Daniel Herron’s deaths were murder.”
Marc belched softly, stood up, and said, “You’ve given me a lot to think about. Thanks for lunch.”
••••
Election day finally dawned. I stopped on my way to work to cast my ballot. The polling showed the No vote on the quarantine initiative ahead but within the margin of error. That evening Josh and I curled up on the couch in the study with a Mexican takeout and watched the first votes come in. They were bad. The Yes vote surged ahead by seven points but, as it turned out, the first returns were from the state’s most conservative counties around the Oregon border and in the central valley. Around ten the urban vote began to come in from the nine counties comprising the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles county with its eight million inhabitants. Slowly, the No votes piled up. By midnight, the quarantine initiative had gone to defeat, 49 percent yes to 51 percent no. We wept for joy, but our happiness was tempered by the realization that nearly half the voters had been in favor of the measure.
I switched off the TV while Josh gathered up the leftovers and took them into the kitchen. I followed with plates, cutlery, and glasses. I’d just started washing up when the doorbell rang. Josh said, “I’ll get it.”
As I put his plate into the dishwasher, I heard a man say, “Hello, Josh.”
And then Josh said, “Hi, Freddy.”
SEVENTEEN
When I realized who Josh was talking to, my first thought was, He has a gun. I dried my hands on my trousers and stepped into the foyer where the two men were standing, Josh warily, the other with a slight, almost embarrassed smile.
“Hello, Henry.”
“Hello . . . what do I call you? Alfredo? Sumaya?”
“Freddy,” he replied. “That’s what everyone in my family calls me, so I used it when I went undercover, easier to remember that way. Saavedra’s my mom’s maiden name. Are you going to invite me in?”
“That depends on what you want.”
He smiled an easy smile. “I could use some legal advice, and you’re the only lawyer I trust.”
He was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a leather jacket over a black T-shirt; I looked for any gun bulges. As if he knew what I was thinking, he said, “I’m not armed, Henry.” With a flirty grin, he added, “Frisk me if you want.”
“Wait for me in the living room.”
After he left, I said to Josh, “Go to bed.”
He looked at me incredulously. “Are you crazy? I’m not leaving you alone with him.”
“I believe him when he says he isn’t armed.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous,” Josh said in a fierce whisper.
“You heard what he wants. Legal advice. I’ll be fine. Plus, if I am talking to him as a lawyer, you can’t be there anyway. There’s no attorney-client privilege if another person is in the room.”
He shook his head. “I’ll be in the kitchen. If things get weird, shout.”
“Okay.” I gave him a quick kiss
Freddy was sprawled out on the couch, the leather jacket in a shiny heap beside him. I’d only seen Freddy in the flesh a couple of times; my image of him had been formed mostly by Theo’s descriptions of a pissed-off, muscle-bound, good-looking macho man but now I saw that image was incomplete. He was muscle-bound and he was good looking: slicked-back black hair, blunt black eyebrows, warm brown eyes. The shape of his face was an oval with high cheekbones, a strong chin, and perfectly symmetrical features, mole above the left side of his lips. His skin was the color of fresh walnuts. His smile was blinding. He moved with a feline grace surprising in such a hard-bodied man. He had old-school animal magnetism, the power to compel you to look at him.
“You got anything to drink?” he asked me.
“Not booze,” I said. “You want coffee or a Coke or something?”
He shrugged. “Nah. You don’t drink.”
“No.”
He smiled. “You sober? AA and all that shit?”
“That’s right.”
“Cool, cool,” he said approvingly. “I should probably look into that myself. Where’s Josh?”
I’d been standing. Now I took the armchair across from him. “He went to bed.”
“He doesn’t mind you being alone with me?” he asked, cocking his head to one side with a grin.
“I know you’re not gay, Freddy, so knock off the flirting.”
He slowly pulled his legs together, sat up. “Don’t tell me you weren’t checking me out.”
I sighed. “For weapons. You want legal advice, answer my question. Where have you been? No one’s seen you since the bombing.”
“I got reassigned to desk duty out in Devonshire division,” he said, laying a hand on the leather jacket. As he spoke, he stroked it as if it were a cat. “After Theo was arrested, they put me on administrative leave. I thought they’d put me back on active duty after he offed himself but then these lawsuits happened, and they hid me in a safe house out in Harbor division.”
That explained why the process servers hadn’t been able to locate him to serve him with wrongful death actions.
“Why would the department hide you?”
He stopped stroking his coat. “Not to protect me. To protect themselves from me telling someone what I know.”
“What do you know?”
He sank back into the couch and frowned. “First off, you need to know the bombs weren’t my idea.”
“You built them; you told Theo where to plant them.”
“Because those were my orders,” he replied emphatically.
“Orders from who?”
He hesitated and threw me a hard look.
“I’m not law enforcement and you came to me because you trust me, remember? If you’ve changed your mind, you’re free to go. I’m not going to tell anyone you were here.”
My bluntness seemed to satisfy him. “Will you be my lawyer then?”
“In the civil suits? Marc Unger in the city attorney’s office is your lawyer. Why aren’t you talking to him?”
“’Cause he called me up and told me to hire my own lawyer. I asked him why, and he said the city had decided I wasn’t acting in the scope of my job. You know what that means?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then maybe you can explain it to me because that pinche pendejo sure didn’t.”
“The city’s only obliged to defend you in a civil suit if the things you’re accused of doing happened while you were acting in your official capacity as a police officer and you didn’t exceed your authority. If you taser an unarmed suspect and he sues you for excessive force, the city has your back. If you kill a guy in an off-duty bar fight and get charged with homicide, you’re on your own.”
He took this in for a moment. “Unger’s saying I did the bombing on my own time?”
“Something like that,” I said. I considered the other ramifications of the city’s position. “It also means if the DA decides to charge you, there’s no guarantee of any kind of immunity defense.”
He muttered, “Fuck me.” He looked at me. “What kind of charges?”
“If you’re charged like Theo was, first-degree murder with special circumstances. A death penalty case.”
He sank his head between his hands and rubbed his temples.
“You started by saying you were only following orders,” I prodded.
Through outstretched fingers, he mumbled, “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Whose orders?”
Now he looked up again. “I don’t hate gay people.”
I offered a tentative, “Okay.”
“Seriously, I don’t,” he insisted, sitting up. “Hanging out with you guys in QUEER, I saw the shit you take, plus the whole AIDS thing getting blamed on you. That ain’t fair.”
“Okay, you’re not a homophobe. What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just want you to understand that what I did to Theo wasn’t personal. I liked the little speed freak.”
“You were only following orders,” I said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Were you in the military, Henry?”
“No,” I said, confused by the abrupt change of subject. “I know you were. I’ve seen your service record.”
He nodded. “The first thing you learn in the army is you don’t think for yourself. They tell you your life and the lives of your friends depend on following orders. So, if they point to a bunch of people,” he pointed at a corner of the room, “and tell you, that’s the enemy, take them out. You don’t get to go, but, Sarge, some of them are good people.” His hand fell back in his lap. “You take them out. The department’s like the army.” He leaned forward, emphatically. “They send you into Watts and tell you, those Black people are the enemy and you forget about the Black kids you played basketball with during high school or how fucking great Hank Aaron was. The Blacks are the enemy, you treat them accordingly.” His voice had become sharp and angry. “They told me, ‘These fags, they’re the enemy. They’re spreading this disease, they’re molesting kids, they’re doing disgusting things with their bodies and they have to be stopped. You get in there, into this group that has the balls to shove the word queer in our face like it was something to be proud of and you fuck them up.’”
“By blowing up a church?”
He fell back onto the couch again and shook his head. “First, they told me, get them to take some swings at the cops at one of their demonstrations, but you know those QUEER guys.” He grinned. “They’re smart motherfuckers. They tried to provoke the cops to take swings at them. Make the department look bad. So I went back and said, ‘They ain’t biting.’ Then they told me, ‘okay, well, get the leaders to plan some kind of violent action,’ but they didn’t understand.” He clenched his fist in remembered frustration. “There’s no fucking president of QUEER to incite to violence. People do their own thing and that don’t include violence. So, then they say, ‘Okay, well if everyone does their own thing, find the weak link and turn him.’”
“Theo,” I said.
He nodded. “A fucked-up, submissive speed freak into guys who treated him like shit. He was perfect. Just the right combination of crazy, suggestible, and obsessed.”
“Who are these ‘they’ who were giving you orders?”
“Well, not so much ‘they,’ I guess, as ‘him.’ Chief Moore.”
“Raymond Moore,” I said. “The head of the anti-terrorism unit.”
“Now there’s a guy,” he replied with a smirk, “who really, really hates gays.”
“Was he the only one giving you orders? Were there others up or down the chain of command you reported to?”
“No, just Chief Moore. This was his special project. He even had a code name I was supposed to use when I wanted to talk to him. I’d call his office and ask for Eleazer. That’s how he knew it was me. I thought his secretary would hang up on me the first time I called, but she didn’t bat an eye. Just put me through.”
“Did Moore specifically order the bombing?”
He slowly nodded. “He asked me to come to his house one night. When I got there, he introduced me to this old dude, Metzger. They sat me down and explained that getting that quarantine thing passed was a matter of life and death. They talked about the innocent people who would die if the homosexuals were allowed to spread their lifestyle and their disease. The old guy began quoting the Bible about how even God was disgusted by what homosexuals did, and that back in the day they were stoned to death, it was that much of a sin.”
I interrupted him. “Are you religious?”
He shrugged. “Catholic. I haven’t been to church in a long time, but I know the pope don’t like homosexuals any more than Metzger does.”
“So then what?”
“They told me it was time for something big to happen to bring people’s attention to how much of a threat the homosexuals were. That’s when they said I should get someone in QUEER to bomb the church and help them do it.” His eyes widened. “I thought they were joking.”
“Why?”
“I know what bombs can do. You don’t play with that shit. And a church?” He blew out a breath, shook his head. “That’s hard-core. But Metzger told me it was his church, and that his church was ready to make the sacrifice if it would get the law passed. They told me damage would be minimal and no one would get hurt, but I had to make sure it looked like gays had done it.”
“Moore told you no one would get hurt.”
“Metzger said Thursday was the one night nothing goes on at the church and that’s when I’d plant the bombs.”
“And you said, sure, I
’ll blow up your church?” I asked, disbelievingly.
“Following orders, Henry.”
“Moore and some civilian hatch a plot to bomb a church to swing an election,” I said. “Didn’t that have the smell of being off the books?”
“No one let me read the book.”
I was, by now, pretty skeptical of his claim to have been nothing more than an automaton, blindly carrying out the orders of his superior officers. The department wasn’t the army— its officers were entrusted with the power to make their own judgments in critical situations— and Freddy wasn’t stupid. He had to have known something this outrageous was both criminal and morally wrong.
“How did you persuade Theo to help you?”
“Theo was into me, way into me. I pretended to be a pissed-off queer radical who wanted to get back at the people who wanted to lock us up in concentration camps. That’s all I talked to him about and, you know, like I said, he was suggestible, plus he was HIV positive, so he was already angry. I’d seen the way he’d scream at people at QUEER meetings, not making a lot of sense, just venting. Plus, he was usually speeding, and that shit makes you paranoid. I’d get him all worked up and then I’d fuck him and while I fucked him, I kept at him. Told him we’d be soldiers. It’d be us against the world. Made it sound kind of romantic. I led him to it, step by step, and by the time he knew where I was taking him, he was in too deep to back out.”
“You didn’t think twice about involving a screwed-up, HIV-positive emotionally troubled drug addict in a major felony that would destroy his life?”
“Hey, I’m sorry about Theo, but the way he was going, it was only a matter of time before speed got him or AIDS did.”
“You said you liked him, but you were willing to use him without any feelings about it.”
In a hard voice, he replied, “Civilians have feelings, not soldiers, not cops.” Then, “Are you going to help me or not?”
“What kind of help do you want, exactly?”