Authors: Derek Blass
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 Sure
ñ
o.” They became acquainted about ten years ago when Raul was doing a story on cross-border drug running. El Sure
ñ
o 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 Sure
ñ
o 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 Sure
ñ
o 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 Sure
ñ
o 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 Sure
ñ
o raised his eyebrows. “Sergeant Shaver?”
“
Yeah.”
“
Dammmn. Who's that?”
Raul chided El Sure
ñ
o 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.”
El Sure
ñ
o 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 Sure
ño'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
.”
* * * *
Cruz stood behind a producer who was watching a small screen. The producer was about average height, had disheveled hair, black-rimmed glasses and a goatee. He wore a black shirt and pants so that he nearly disappeared in the dark viewing room. A seemingly infinite number of lights blinked around them. Red, yellow and green. Signifying things foreign to Cruz. Like stepping into the cockpit of an airplane and marveling at all of the switches, levers, knobs and dials.
“
This video is fantastic,” the producer whispered as he turned two dials one way and pushed a sliding button vertically. It was a different mentality, to be able to look at loss of life and call it fantastic. A certain hardening to life which Cruz fought off, but at the same time saw its inevitability. People in the media would call the video fantastic. People viewing it would consume it as entertainment. Another roadside crash they pass by mid-gape. “I think we can use this whole thing, Sandra.”
She smiled, but not with the same depravity as the producer. “We'll be breaking this news, Eric.”
Mason had put it all on the line. He'd never actually checked the video into evidence—perhaps with some inkling that it wouldn't get to the trial. Cruz's plea and the injustice of Judge Melburn's ruling were enough to force Mason's hand, and he gave the original video to Cruz.
“
I know, how fantastic! We haven't had a story like this in years. Let alone be the ones to break it. This is going to do wonders for your career.” A silver lining, buried deep beneath folds of bloodshed. Sandra looked at him and he gave her a supportive wink. What was actually fantastic? How Sandra looked, Cruz thought. In the time since their adventure in the restaurant bathroom, they hadn't come together that way again. There was no weirdness in the break. Both understood the attention the circumstances around them demanded, and both could subsume their desires for the time being. Although Cruz was finding that difficult as he stood there and watched Sandra in her element.
“
I want to run this on tonight's six o'clock news,” the producer said, frenetically. “And I obviously want you to report it. Do you have any witnesses that you can roll into the piece? Any of the people in the video?”
“
Cruz here.” Cruz looked at Sandra with surprise.
“
Me?”
“
Yeah, I think it's important to discuss the case as it currently stands. Plus, you have personal experience with how we got to where we are.” Cruz had never been on television before. He looked into the recording studio next to them. It was silent and dark except for the stage.
“
Sure, I can do that.”
“
Perfect!” the producer exclaimed. “Come back in two hours and we'll start the setup.” Cruz waited for the producer and Sandra to walk out of the room. He stood there, wondering how this chess move would be received. Worried it would fall on deaf ears, people already calibrated to violence.
He dropped his head and turned to walk out of the room. Sandra was standing just inside the doorway. She grabbed his hands and kissed him on the lips. “It's going to work. Don't try to let yourself down before the video's been given a chance.” He appreciated her insight. “Come on, let's go get a bite to eat.”