This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha (8 page)

R
odriguez sat Denis in the interrogation room and left him to await Ignacio’s arrival. The room was a tight space with a metal table bolted to the floor, flush against a wall. One side had a handcuff chained to the table and a small metal stool affixed to the floor. An identical stool stood opposite the first.

Ignacio entered the room with the National Park police investigator and got straight to the point. He told Denis he was looking at many years in prison, and the best thing he could do was cooperate. Ignacio was angling for information on the Daingerfield Island murder. He needed Denis to open up and tell them about what happened, but it was a long shot. Denis didn’t say a word. He was determined to hold out.

Rodriguez detected silence and peeked through the small window in the door. He rapped his knucles on the glass and motioned for Ignacio to come out. Rodriguez was getting antsy and frustrated with Denis.

He wanted to have a go at Denis but needed to run it by his colleague first. Denis had known Ignacio for a long time, so Rodriguez thought he could use that to their advantage. The plan sounded almost too simple, standard good cop, bad cop, but Rodriguez had found in his many years of investigating that a gang member’s anger was usually his number one weakness. He intended to tap into that anger full force.

As the plan went, once Denis was good and fed up with Rodriguez, Rodriguez would leave the room and allow Denis to tell Ignacio whatever he wanted to say. Denis didn’t like Ignacio, but he knew him. The two had a long history, and a plausible foundation for trust. Rodriguez was counting on this.

After hearing Rodriguez’s plan, Ignacio argued to hold off a little longer. He still had his own angle, with Denis’s mom and aunt waiting in another room. Ignacio was still betting on them. Both women were determined to talk to Denis, convinced they could get through to him as family, as blood. Ignacio was willing to give it a shot.

First, Denis’s mother entered the room, her expression pained. She sat on the stool facing her son leaning forward, but she dared not reach out to caress his face. This was not the time or place to be soft. Denis would resent any physical act of emotion, she thought. Still, Denis’s mom looked at her son longingly, willing him to come clean—to become the young man she always wanted him to be.

“Talk to the police,” she pleaded. “Tell them what you know.”

Denis only stared forward. His silence pushed her further. It was a mother’s last chance to save her child from the possibility of life behind bars.

“Don’t take the blame for things that you’re not to be blamed for. Please, my son, help yourself,” she begged in a terse whisper.

Still, Denis didn’t bat an eyelash. They sat in silence for a long moment before his mother heaved a sigh and looked at the ceiling, trying not to cry. She rose to leave, realizing with resignation that she had gotten nowhere. As she stood, Denis also rose and reached out to give her a hug, as if acknowledging that it would be his last opportunity.

As Denis’s mom left, deflated, Ignacio ushered his aunt into the cramped interview room. She was tough and direct.

“If you don’t talk to the police, they’re going to mess you up,” she said. Her voice was like a taut wire, high-strung but strong. “You’re gonna be put in prison. They’re gonna put everything on you and you’re going to pay the price,” she warned. Nothing she said fazed Denis. He knew the stakes. He wasn’t going to talk for anyone, not for his mom, not for his aunt, or for anyone else. This was child’s play.

Rodriguez, watching through the glass, turned to Ignacio.

“Why don’t I go in there,” Rodriguez offered. “Let me get under his skin so maybe he feels it’s better off for him to speak to you or somebody else,” he said.

Ignacio finally agreed. Rodriguez pushed the door open and entered the interview room looking directly at Denis. He sat on the metal stool and stretched out his long legs, crossed his arms, and leaned against the wall. He was relaxed on the outside, but inside he was ready to rip into this kid.

Rodriguez started slowly. After a few easy questions, he folded his legs under the stool and shifted his weight to the front of his seat, so he was just a foot away from Denis’s face. Rodriguez got louder with each question, closer to Denis’s personal space, until they were nearly nose to nose. He wanted to know names, places, dates, plans, everything, and was using all the verbal force he had to squeeze information out of Denis.

Still, nothing seemed to faze Denis. He looked right through Rodriguez, who couldn’t help but remind himself that Denis was a killer. He had stared death in the face and wasn’t afraid of cops. Defeated, Rodriguez left the room to consult with Ignacio.

In the silent little room, Denis sat, knowing time was on his side. He was aware that the cops would come back and try something else. He didn’t care about what he’d done or what the cops were going to do to him. He knew he was in serious trouble, but he felt confident that these two cops would have a hard time putting anything on him. He knew no one would rat him out or testify against him. He hunkered down and resigned himself to sitting out the interview, acting tough, then waiting to see what would happen. He breathed a sigh as he wondered what Rodriguez would come up with next.

Speak of the devil, he thought, as Rodriguez walked back into the room and sat down, adjusted his weight, and leaned forward onto his forearms, resting on the edge of the small table. His blue eyes stared from behind his glasses into Denis’s dark pupils. He was calm and ready for a new approach. Hit Denis with the truth, Rodriguez thought. Maybe Denis hadn’t thought through what prison was really like.

“Denis, you’re eighteen years old,” Rodriguez said, staring at him. “What would you normally be doing on a Friday evening?” he asked.

Denis didn’t answer.

“I’ll tell you what you would be doing on a Friday evening, more than likely,” Rodriguez continued, leaning forward another inch, getting a little louder. “You’d be out somewhere with your homeboys, you might be at somebody’s house watching TV. You might be at somebody’s house playing a video game. You might be out roaming the
streets, driving around, maybe sitting at McDonald’s. You might be at a mall just walking around checking out the girls. You might be at a motel having a good time, drinking, smoking pot—who knows what you’d be doing? But you would be doing things that typical kids your age involved in gang activity would be doing. You might be driving around looking to steal a car. You might be driving around in a stolen car.”

Rodriguez gained momentum. He had filled Denis’s mind with images of freedom, of life as a happy teenager with not a care in the world. He knew the truth of his next words would stack in Denis’s consciousness with the weight of facing life behind bars. It would only be a matter of moments before the kid broke, he thought.

“But here’s the bad point, and you need to realize this. You are not going to be set free. Chances are, you’re not going to see the light of day anymore. And as an eighteen-year-old kid you need to start wondering. What is your life expectancy? Let’s say you live to be seventy-five. Do the math. How many years are you going to spend behind bars only because you don’t want to talk and you don’t want to cooperate?”

Denis didn’t care.

“Okay,” Rodriguez said, “let’s take it to another level.” He got right in Denis’s face, nose to nose, and with a forceful tone enunciated bitingly. “Do you realize that you will never—if this continues the way it’s going and you’re convicted of these crimes”—and here he amped up the decibels of his voice even louder—“you will
never, ever, ever
ride again in a car with your homeboys. You will never go to the beach. You will never go see a movie. You will never sit down at a food court. You will never walk at a mall. You will never enjoy another Corona. You might never enjoy another soda. You may not even get a chance to enjoy a marijuana cigarette. I don’t know, you may get that in prison, I don’t know. But you’re not going to enjoy another Christmas, New Year’s, or birthday.”

Rodriguez was counting off each “never” with his hands. As he moved ahead, Rodriguez remembered that after the interview with his mother, Denis had hugged her.

“This could be the last time that you ever embrace your mother,” he said with no note of sympathy in his voice, only cold, hard truth. “You will never hug her the way you hugged her tonight. There might be a partition between you two from now on. You will never smell her perfume. You will never feel her tears. You will see them, but you will never feel the actual tear.”

Still nothing. Rodriguez knew he hadn’t hit a weak spot yet. He hadn’t seen the flicker he was looking for that signaled that he’d tapped into that all-important anger. He knew there must be another approach. He thought he understood the mind of a teenage gangster, but he was running out of ideas. He looked past Denis at the back wall, going through his mental files on teenage gangsters. Then it hit him. Go after the girlfriend. With that flash of insight, he decided to focus on another female in Denis’s life. He backed off a bit before starting on his new angle of attack.

“Denis, do you realize you will never, ever make love to another woman or girl again?” He registered a flicker of anger as he repeated, “Again…never, ever!” Rodriguez continued, focused on winning another flicker of anger, “You will never touch another female again. It’s just not going to happen. If this continues, you will not. Which means that if you have a girlfriend, who do you think is gonna make love to her from now on? As a matter of fact, while you and I are sitting here, somebody in your clique may be hitting it. Somebody’s balls deep in your girl.”

That made him flinch.

“Why you gotta go there?” Denis asked, looking at Rodriguez, visibly perturbed.

Rodriguez drove his point home, probing the weak spot. “You’re not going to please her. She’s not going to wait around for you. She’s eighteen, she’s seventeen, whatever age she happens to be, she’s not going to wait for you, and you know it. You know how this thing works. You know one of your homeboys is going to take care of her. And you know why I gotta go there, Denis?” Rodriguez asked, softening his voice a little and backing away from Denis’s face.

“You know why I’m gonna go there? Because nothing else seems to get to you. We are trying to talk to you; we’re trying to figure things out. Whether you look at it as if we’re trying to help you or trying to harm you, legally, I don’t know. But you heard your mother plead with you. She pleaded with you. Your
own mother
, the one that gave birth to you and brought you into this world, who cares for you. She has pleaded with you and you have ignored her pleas. Your aunt came in here and she laid down the law to you. She told you exactly what she thought was going to happen to you—it didn’t seem to matter. Your mother’s tears did not affect you. And I’m sitting here as a detective watching an eighteen-year-old, and I can’t help think
that when I was your age, what were some of the things I enjoyed doing in life?

“Nobody’s perfect. But even if you chose to continue down a path of crime, you will not enjoy the things that I just mentioned to you
ever again
. You are going to be confined to a small room with bars. You’ll be fed certain meals a day. Your freedom will be gone. And you may not think that that’s a possibility, but it
is
a possibility, Denis. Your girlfriend is not going to be faithful to you. She’s not going to wait around until you turn fifty and get out, if you get out. She’s not going to wait around for you at all. While you’re sitting in here thinking everything’s cool and you’ll be out soon, some homeboy is just tapping it and probably mentioning your name, like, ‘Aww, poor Denis.’”

Denis still didn’t say much, but he had reacted to Rodriguez’s dig. Rodriguez could see it was a hook in him. He knew that whoever this girlfriend was, it was important to reach out to her.

Rodriguez didn’t know at the time, but that girlfriend was Brenda Paz.

W
hen Brenda left Texas, she knew she would probably never see Veto again. His name was tattooed on her wrist, but she no longer considered him the love of her life. Veto’s presence in her mind receded even further when she hooked up with Denis in Virginia. Veto was strong and confident, but so was Denis, and
bonito
too. He was good-looking and he gave Brenda all the attention and respect she was used to in the gang. During the weeks before their arrest, the two spent every day together. It was not long after Brenda’s arrival that they began dating.

After her arrest and joint interview with Denis, Brenda was separated from her boyfriend, classified as a runaway, and placed in a holding pen at the Arlington County court. Before any papers could be filed or her parents contacted, the court required a lawyer, appointed by a judge, to act as Brenda’s advocate, or guardian ad litem, on behalf of the state.

As Brenda awaited her fate, a judge began the process of deciding what to do with her. “Look out in the hall and tell me who’s there,” the judge told his deputy. After sticking his head out the door, the deputy quickly returned.

“Hunter’s out there.”

“Call him in,” the judge said, not even looking up from his papers.

Brenda’s case was classified as a child in need of services, or CHINS. She ultimately was just another piece of paperwork, one step in a process repeated every day as the court’s bureaucracy ground out its daily tasks. But for Greg Hunter, a rookie lawyer, the day was anything but routine.

Greg Hunter’s tendency toward proper manners might have classified him as a southern gentleman, but those manners were just a fine veneer covering an underlying fervor and competitiveness. Greg was driven and ambitious, and he had no problem stepping on people in his way. At six feet, six inches, and three hundred pounds, Greg was easily the biggest lawyer in the courtroom. His towering bulk and swagger clashed with a youthful face that masked a sharp intellect.

Greg’s easygoing nature and appreciation of humor seemed to mix well enough with his profession, one that required a measured amount of levity to deal with courtroom politics and the grinding nature of bureaucracy. As a criminal defense lawyer, Greg dealt with some of the stupidest criminals in northern Virginia. “Evil is rare, but stupid is everyday,” he liked to joke.

Because of his relatively minor position at the time, and his fateful location in the hall when the judge needed a lawyer, Greg was called upon to serve as Brenda’s guardian ad litem. For all legal purposes, he was to serve the court as a parental representative for Brenda until she was free of her legal entanglements and could be returned to her real parents. It was a relationship that eventually brought Greg in close contact with more evil than stupidity.

Entering the chambers, Greg stood before the judge.

“You’ve been appointed as the guardian for this young girl,” the judge said, indicating a stack of papers on this desk. “Here’s the file; go talk to her,” he told Greg in his authoritative, matter-of-fact tone.

Quickly reviewing the case file as he walked to Brenda’s holding cell, Greg surmised it would be an easy case. She seemed just like a lot of the other runaways who came through the system. He quickly estimated investing about fifteen minutes in a conversation with the girl and then some paperwork. As he opened the door, he mentally calculated that within sixteen hours, maybe less, the case would be filed, and he’d bill the county for his time—easy money.

He smiled as he sat down with Brenda and began to walk her through the details of her case.

“Where are you from, Brenda?” Greg began. “And why did you run away?”

Brenda quickly glossed over her story about running away from her uncle’s house in Texas. She told Greg as little as possible, hoping she wouldn’t be sent back to Texas, but not willing to give this lawyer anything. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him the truth about her family in California. It was the best possible place for her to go. She would be with her father, aunt and uncle, and cousins, but it was the last place she would take her gang affiliation. The last thing Brenda wanted was to hurt her family in California.

Moving from the basics, Greg delved into more important questions concerning her past and possible gang connections.

“Look,” Brenda began, “I’m not gang-involved.” She was tough and unrelenting.

Brenda dodged most of the other questions. Greg focused on her uncle in Texas. One way or another, Greg thought, this girl’s going back to Texas.

For the moment, Brenda’s story was believable. Greg did not know she had been arrested with Denis Rivera. Nor did he see her gang tattoos. Feeling that he’d covered everything, Greg made his exit. Just as he stepped out of his interview with Brenda, Greg ran into the youth probation officer assigned to Brenda’s case. She was a short Latina woman who was very pushy and direct, likable but not one to sugar-coat anything. The officer had spoken with Brenda before Greg arrived. She took the opportunity now to share her findings with Greg.

“Did she tell you she’s with MS?” she asked.

“What?”
Greg was shocked, instantly realizing his slam-dunk legal guardian case had just become a little more complicated. He was a young lawyer, just turned thirty, but he’d been around long enough to know that the MS was one of the nastiest street gangs in the country. News of a near decapitation on Daingerfield Island just south of Reagan National Airport had made the Mara Salvatrucha a familiar name in Virginia’s law enforcement community. A number of violent crimes associated with the MS crossed his desk monthly.

The officer repeated herself. “Did she tell you she was with MS?”

“No,” Greg replied, his mental wheels spinning, thinking about how he would get out of this case and recalling everything he knew about the gang.

“She’s got a bunch of warrants. They’re coming in right now,” the officer told him matter-of-factly, almost as if she enjoyed watching the big man squirm.

“Oh,
fuck
. Okay,” Greg said, his mind racing. He’d better think quickly about his next move.