by Derek Blass
“Man, it's no surprise,” Martinez said. “Shaver's a cop. Who knows how high his connections go. Or, who is implicated by things that man has done. It's no surprise,” Martinez said with a shrug of his shoulders. “The blue line—it's more like a blue mountain.”
“What do we do now?” Sandra asked.
Neither Cruz nor Martinez responded right away. They didn't have the answer. Cruz finally said something, “We put Martinez on against Shaver. That's what it's come down to.”
* * * *
Shaver moaned and tried to roll over onto his side. A pair of unknown hands restrained him. He started to fight back but the person whispered, “Easy...easy. Take it easy, Mr. Shaver.” Shaver cracked his eye open to a flood of world. A black woman was leaning down in his line of sight.
“Where am I?” he managed to ask.
“Shoot, the prison. The hospital in the prison. Had a nice dream that you were out, did ya?” She coaxed him to relax on his back again. Then she got on her knees and put her elbows onto his bed. “The Warden says you did good.”
“Oh yeah? Those spics get beat up?”
“Oh no! Worse than that, Mr. Shaver. At least three of them have been killed since the first skirmish you started. Warden says a rival gang saw the attack as an opportunity to take over some territory. Now there are Mexican gangs fighting it out. The brothers won't let an opportunity like this pass either,” she said, almost with a sense of pride.
Shaver moaned again and turned his head to look at her. She was a mid-forties woman. Cleanly pressed nurse uniform. She had some gray hairs showing on the side of her head. A worn but cunning expression on her face. “Warden says your case went well.”
“What's he know about that?”
“Mr. Sphinx told him.”
This caught Shaver's attention. “He talked to my attorney?” The woman looked away as if she had slipped. “Well, what did he say?”
“Said the judge did his job. The video is out.”
Shaver smiled. “Freakin' amazing. This trip to the hospital was definitely worth it then.”
“Mr. Sphinx also said not to get better too fast. Said it would be better if you looked banged up.”
“Wait, did the Warden or you talk to him? You seem to know an awful lot.”
The nurse flashed a coy smile at him and began to tuck the cover around his bed. “I was listening while Mr. Sphinx talked.” She finished tucking and then arranged his bed stand. “Your room number is #542, same as your phone number, if people want to call you. My name's Elysa. You can ring this button up here if you need anything.” She floated out of the room like an apparition. Shaver was left with only silence. Faint hums and beeps were audible if he concentrated.
“My man!”
Shaver shifted away from the phone. “What the hell?”
“Shaver, it's the Warden. Get me off intercom.”
Shaver picked up the phone. “That's really loud, Warden. Should watch where you burst into.”
“Awww, get your panties out their bunch. You hear yet?”
“Yeah, Elysa told me.”
“So...anything to say?”
“Sure, thanks. You got anything to say to me?”
“Thanks to you, Sergeant. You really kicked this beehive good. Fuckin' spics are getting killed by their own and others. It's a lovely thing.” The Warden's voice brimmed with happiness. What a lonely place this must be for the Warden, Shaver thought. Sitting in the middle of five thousand angry, criminal men. Every one of them would choke the life out of him. Him sitting there all day trying to figure out ways to further subject them to his control. His cell was solitary in comparison to the rest of them. Then again, that could be said for most people. Shaver crumpled an empty cup of water in his hand while these thoughts flowed through his mind. Some people just had more lavish cages than others.
When Shaver returned from his daydream, he realized the Warden had been talking the whole time. He was one of those people that couldn't care less whether you responded or even whether you were listening. The sound of his own voice was enough to carry a twenty-minute conversation.
Shaver heard a bit of commotion outside of his room. “Warden, gotta let you go,” he said as he hung up the phone. No sooner had he set the phone down then Sphinx came storming in. Elysa followed close behind him. She tried to slow the hulking man down to no avail.
“I tried to stop him!” Elysa exclaimed out of breath.
Shaver put his hand up to stop her. “It's all right Elysa.” She looked thankful and slowed to a stop before turning back out of the room.
“What the fuck do you have going on here Shaver?”
Shaver spread his hands out on his bedsheet and rubbed his legs. “This is certainly no way to greet your best client Sphinx.”
“You're my worst fucking client, Shaver. I've been involved with some scum but the things you've got going on are beyond all of them.”
“Come over here, Sphinx, closer to the bed.”
“Screw that, you maniac.”
Shaver smiled and shook his head while he looked down at the bed. “What'd you expect Sphinx? You expected me to sit here and play by the rules? Would you trust your fate to another man or someone else's system?”
“Guess what, that's how...”
“I wasn't actually looking for an answer, Sphinx. If you don't see that, problem number one,” Shaver said as he wagged a finger at Sphinx. “Problem number two: the system and the man are fucked. Never mind that I don't trust either of them even when they work right. When they operate as they do every day, no way. I ain't the one.”
Sphinx paced to the window and stood there with his hands on his hips. “You've got me in a crap position Shaver. What did you do to that judge?”
“I didn't do anything—and that's the truth.”
“Who did then? That was the craziest shit I've seen in a courtroom before. He ruled before I even rebutted the State's evidence.”
“Look Sphinx, just do your best job. The place you're in, it's called by the balls. Your best bet is to ride it out. You can't withdraw. Just let the bigger forces work themselves out.”
“I'll tell you what, Shaver,” Sphinx said as he left the window and moved towards Shaver's bed. “If I lose my license over all of this bullshit you're pulling, I'll have your heart for dinner.” He stopped by the side of the bed. Shaver feigned fatigue until Sphinx got within lunging distance. Then Shaver pushed himself onto his side and reached for Sphinx's collar. He grabbed it and pulled Sphinx down towards him. Sphinx returned the favor by wrapping his two enormous hands around Shaver's neck. The men froze there, grimacing as their strength collided.
“Just try the fucking case,” Shaver spat. Sphinx pushed away and broke free from Shaver. He stormed out of the room just as he had stormed in. That's how Sphinx moved.
F O R T Y-T W O
__________________________________________________
Cruz waited as the guard scanned him with a hand-held metal detector. “Lift up your pant legs.” Cruz complied and the guard nonchalantly waved him forward. He moved through a series of familiar corridors until he got to the “talking room,” as it was called. All of the seats were empty. He took one by an end of the row and waited. Almost as soon as he sat down, he heard a faint click and a door on the other side of the glass opened. It was Mason.
Mason picked up the phone, “Hi, Cruz. What'd you need?”
Cruz shifted on the circular stool as he tried to find a comfortable position. “How long did Judge Melburn give you?”
“Two days.”
“Ever been in jail before?”
“No. You?”
“Can't say that I have,” Cruz said with a smirk that wasn't returned. “I need a favor.”
Mason frowned. “You know, I don't exactly have spare time in here. I'm obsessed with protecting my asshole like the Holy Grail.” Cruz couldn't help but laugh. “When it's you in here I'll remember that. What do you want?”
“The video.”
“I don't want it for the trial, Mason.” Cruz caught Mason's full attention.
Mason looked into his eyes and saw a bit of wildness. “You're a little crazed over this Cruz.”
“Shouldn't you be, too? Isn't your job to strive for justice?”
“That should be all our jobs, as lawyers.”
“Well then fucking strive, Mason. We got blindsided in that hearing. I've never seen anything like that—the judge ruling without considering any evidence. Without giving us a chance to put on our side. It's a goddamn wake- up call, Mason. The system is broken. Either we play within the bounds of a broken system or we work around it. I say we work around it.”
“That video is still evidence in the investigation and...”
“Give it a rest, Mason. That videotape is never going to see the light of day in this trial.”
“Could be an issue on appeal. What if we need the tape on remand?”
“You mean, what if we need the tape in three years? You also mean that one of our appellate courts is going to find that the trial court abused its discretion? You know how high that standard is. Not gonna happen.”
Mason squinted his right eye and ran his tongue over his teeth. Apparently this was his thinking face. “Say I give it to you, what's the point?”
“The point?” Cruz asked incredulously. He moved closer to the plexiglass separating them. “The point is to let the whole world be the judge in this case rather than some decrepit, old, white man. The point is to put this video on the tendrils of the Internet and have it burst out from where we are to the rest of the world. It will be disseminated at blazing speeds. And then they will know.”
Mason shook his head as if to say no.
“You have to understand, Mason, someday everything will be on video. Everything will be recorded. The rise of the smart phone mandates it. Then there will be no police beatings in back alleys because every alley will be covered by a person on the ground or one in a building. One hundred times zoom will allow people to shoot coverage across football fields. They capture the video, post it to the Internet and in minutes, it spreads like a demon wildfire around the world. And that's just the beginning.”
“I'm too old for this, Cruz. I won't live to see any of it.”
“Bullshit! You're seeing it right now, Mason. The 'Internet reporters'. Photos in the morning news from viewers. The media is already riding people on the street for its news. They don't even need their own crews in the field. Someday it will just be an army of viewers giving other viewers content.
“Now you're just getting downright outlandish, Cruz. All this is why you want to release the video?”
Cruz leaned back from the plexiglass. “One of the reasons. What I'm telling you is it's inevitable, Mason. We're slaves to consumption. Media has simply turned into another form of consumption. News is sent out, bashed, mashed, stirred, and spit out. We've turned into a collective vampire, sucking the life force out of news events. A little girl is raped and killed. It shocks us the first, second time we see it. The third time we begin to get desensitized. The fourth, fifth, sixth, twentieth, hundredth times we see it? There's no reservoir of emotion for it anymore. Compare that to the times when the news you knew was your town's news. There was still the possibility to shock and awe.”
“So if that possibility doesn't exist anymore, why leak this video?”
“That possibility does still exist, but the window is closing. This is also a much different situation. People still want to believe in police. Even with their faith in police shaken, they want to believe. They want to believe that the people lawfully allowed to carry guns, to tazer and mace people, to handcuff people and restrict their rights, are good people. That hope has been slowly eroded. The prevalence of police shootings, beatings, abuse of force, verbal abuse—all of them caught on tape—will be the end of that hope. Police will become enemies of the citizen. If you don't believe that, just look at how all of the minority communities view the police. Los cerdos, the 5-0. Every community except the white community views the police as the enemy.”
After a few seconds of silence, Mason said, “Pretty good argument.”
Cruz nodded. “It makes sense. Plus, there's no sense in fighting off the inevitable. Our country is browning. The world is browning. Sentiment will change. We stand at the edge of that change and have a catalyst.”
“Todd has access to the video. I assume you're going to work with Sandra on this?”
“And Martinez. He feels as strongly about this as I do. Perhaps more. Remember, he lost his partner in this battle. That anger will never go away. It's smoldering inside of him and leaking this video is about the biggest 'fuck you' he can shove back at the establishment.”
* * * *
Raul sat in the middle of a boarded-up apartment. Gang tags were all over the walls. A radio in the corner belted out hardcore rap. Two men sat in the apartment with him. They wore black and-white bandannas covering their faces from nose down. Each had a flat-brimmed hat pulled down low on their forehead, making little of their faces visible. A handgun rested unabashedly on each of their laps. They were close enough to intimidate but far enough away to avoid conversation.
The wheelchair was still unfamiliar to Raul. Apartments in the ghetto weren't exactly handicap accessible, so the two men in the apartment mean-mugging him had actually helped him up a flight of about five stairs.
He understood now what people meant by ghost limbs. Sometimes he would reach down to rub his leg. Twice he had tried to get up out of the wheelchair as if he could walk. Twice he had fallen.
Another man entered the room, went over to the radio and turned it down. Raul knew him only as “El Sureño.” They became acquainted about ten years ago when Raul was doing a story on cross-border drug running. El Sureño had done an anonymous interview in the piece. Raul showed him respect even though the man was a stone-cold monster. He was one of the country's premier drug runners. He used thousands of burros, oftentimes women, who would ingest a number of condom-wrapped drug pellets before trying to get over the border. It was an inexact science, as El Sureño explained. Sometimes, the condoms ruptured, sending the burros to a drug induced death. Other times the burros couldn't handle the load in their stomachs and lost control of their bowels. Some of the burros tried to get away with the payload. The price of the drugs were so minimal in comparison to their ultimate selling price that the inexactitude didn't matter.
El Sureño was a ridiculous hulk of a man. Easily six-foot-five, shaved head, handlebar mustache, tatted from scalp to soles, and wide, very wide. He wore black canvas pants and a white wife-beater. The two other men in the room sat motionless, catatonic.
“What the fuck happened to you, Raul?”
“A long story, but the short of it is that I got into a gun fight. My legs got shot up. This is what's left, or not.”
“A gun fight, hombre? Ain'tchu a reporter?” El Sureño said with a smile directed at the two men in the room. They didn't respond. Two Spartan-like figures, there to do nothing but kill should the need arise.
“I am a reporter, but I got wrapped up in something heavy.”
“We all been there. What's this got to do with La Eme?” He grabbed a chair, flipped it around with a slight twist of his wrist and sat down.
“The man that did this to me, his name is Sergeant Shaver.”
El Sureño raised his eyebrows. “Sergeant Shaver?”
“Yeah.”
“Dammmn. Who's that?”
Raul chided El Sureño with a sound from his mouth. “Hombre, you know who that is.”
“How do you know what I know?”
“I've got people everywhere. I know what's going on down at the prison. La Eme is in an all-out war. Survival time right now. Nuestra Familia is fighting you guys. You were wrapped up with the Aryan Brotherhood and the Guerillas. You're fighting a multi-front war because of that cop.”
&
nbsp; El Sureño stared hard at Raul. “You do know some vatos, huh?” he bellowed. “Yeah, that pig has caused us some shit. Don't matter though. La Eme don't get down on things like that. I just had three soldiers rob a liquor store to get into the joint. Reinforcements. You can't fuck with that kind of loyalty.”
“You're going to let Shaver get away with starting these wars?”
“I didn't say that, but I also didn't say what the fuck we gonna do.”
“I know what you can do.”
“You gonna give me advice?” The emphasis on me was enough to wake the Spartans. Raul watched their fingers maneuver to better grip the guns.
“Look, not advice. Just a suggestion. A lead.”
“Okay, what's your leaddddd? Semantic motherfucker.” Raul couldn't help but be taken aback by El Sureño's use of a word that he didn't even know.
“Shaver's trial starts in four days. What better statement than to kill that pendejo during the trial?”
El Sureño laughed, a deep, condescending belly laugh. At that moment Raul wondered what the hell he had been thinking. This was extreme and seemed to be on the verge of backfiring. “You want us to do a hit for you?”
“Well...” Raul fumbled for the right answer, “...not just for me. For La Eme too.”
“Listen,” El Sureño said as he walked behind Raul's wheelchair and disengaged the brakes, “You worry about Raul and his little world.” He started to push Raul towards the two men at the other side of the room. They both grabbed their guns and stood up. “I worry about La Eme. Besides, we ain't gonna do a fuckin' thing right now. La Eme and the Brotherhood have had a pact for years. Too much money there to fuck it up.” El Sureño wheeled Raul right up to the two men. They looked into El Sureño's eyes, waiting like two Doberman pinschers for their master's order.
Raul felt his gut flip over and his heart jumped into his throat. “Damn, Raul, why you sweating?” He pushed Raul past the two men and out the front door. “Our answer is no. If you ever come back here asking me for a favor, Raul, you may leave missing another part. Don't forget that, hombre.”