Street Justice

Street Justice

         "Kids," my father whispered, "I murdered a guy forty years ago, and I need to make my peace with his family."

         My father laid this bombshell on us from his hospital bed in intensive care. His eyes were closed, tubes in his nose and arms, and a blip on a monitor machine chased itself endlessly, if erratically, across the screen. At least, I hoped it was going to be endless. He'd suffered a massive coronary and we didn't know if he'd make it.

         "Oh, Daddy, don't be silly," my sister Maureen said. She looked over to me and said with conviction, "He's hallucinating with all the dope they're pumping into him."

         I stood there, shocked. He didn't sound like he was hallucinating. In fact, it sounded like a "death bed confession" to me. But I couldn't believe it. He'd been a policeman all his life. And not just an average cop. Before retirement, Dad was one of the old guard of Blue Knights who'd always believed in policing his beat with firmness, wisdom and street justice.

         He'd inspired me to follow him into the force. As far as I knew he didn't have a murderous bone in his body, but, as a policeman, I had reason to know you never knew about what a person was capable of doing. I thought I'd better get rid of Maureen.

         "Maureen, why don't you go try and phone Uncle Dave again?"

         "Why don't you do it? You've always been Uncle Dave's favorite, and I don't..."

         "Just shut up and do me a favor this one time without whining."

         Her mouth dropped open in shock, because I never talked that way to my older sister. But she got her things together and left in a very dramatic huff.  I thought about what Dad said for a long time. Finally my detective training drove me to ask a follow-up question. I had to know.

         "What are you talking about, Dad? You don't have it in you to murder someone."

         "One time, I made a mistake when I played God and gave a man some "street justice." Remember when you were six, and I got shot?"

         I remembered. Or at least I'd heard the story so often I thought I remembered it. A small-time drug dealer and confidential informant, Rudy Delgado, had killed Dad's previous partner, Ray Gonzalez, the week before. They were supposed to get information about a crooked cop who was on the take from Delgado's supplier, but Dad got sick and wasn't there when his partner died.
Delgado got away from the scene, and was rumored to have run to Mexico, but the following week, Dad's new partner, Dave Dubcek, got a tip that Delgado was hiding in a warehouse.

         Dad and Uncle Dave went into the dark warehouse to capture him. In the shootout that followed, Dad and Uncle Dave were wounded but Delgado died. Both cops got medals. Rudy Delgado got a grave in a potter's field. My Dad nearly died from a round to the chest, but Uncle Dave only got hit in his butt. He took a lot of ribbing for that. Cop humor!  

         "Yeah, the Delgado case. What about it?"

         "After Dave got the tip about where Delgado was hiding, we talked it over and decided to kill Delgado in revenge for Ray.  When we went in there, we never intended to capture him. We were gonna give him a little street justice."

         "For crying out loud, Dad, the guy was a cop killer. You did the world a favor. You shouldn't be stressing out about Rudy Delgado after all these years, especially now. It was a righteous shooting."

         "I dunno. Rudy was my snitch. He had no reason to kill Ray. Afterward, I never felt good about it. I may have killed an innocent man." His voice rose. "I want you to find his family, and let me tell them I'm sorry. I need to make amends." He closed his eyes.  

         "Sure, Dad, I'll look into it." I patted the frail hand on the sheet. "You get some rest."

         But when I left the room, my plan wasn't to help Dad make amends to a drug dealer's family. I vowed to give my Dad some peace by proving his confession about mistaken street justice was wrong.

****

         When I exited the intensive care ward, I found the hall filled with family and friends, mostly cops. I was working my way through the group, thanking them for coming, when the crowd parted to let Chief Dave Dubcek through, and then moved back to give us some space.

         Uncle Dave wasn't really my uncle, but after their near-death experience together, he'd become part of our family and treated me like a favorite nephew.

         Unlike my dad, Uncle Dave was ambitious, and he'd moved up the ladder fast after their shootout. He was a legend on the force, and still maintained his Physical Training and Firearms proficiency ratings. In fact, he annually won the force's pistol shooting competition. "Leading from the front," he called it.

         Now he moved forward, gripped me by the shoulder, and said, "Johnny, I was out in the Gulf on the boat. I came as soon as they got through to me. How is he?"

         "The doctors say it's touch and go. A lot of it depends on him, whether he wants to make it or gives up."

         "Ahh, that's alright then. Kevin Reilly, never gave up once in his life, not even when that bastard Delgado shot him."

         "Funny, we were just talking about that a moment ago."

         "Really? What about?"

         "He's got some idea in his head that the shooting wasn't righteous," I lowered my voice so only Uncle Dave could hear. "He said you and he meant to kill Delgado--gave him street justice."

         "Never argue with an ill man," said Uncle Dave and tipped me a wink.

         It didn't surprise me. Although nothing had ever been said about it before, I knew cops that sometimes handled cop killers with street justice, especially in the old days. Not many cop killers make it to a court trial. There was even a rumor going around about a rogue organization in the police force called the Blue Wolves that meted out street justice against gang members and career criminals when it looked like the system would fail.

         "What does he want you to do?" he asked after a moment's thought.

         "I don't know. Find the Delgado family and give him a chance to apologize. What do you think I should do? Hell, it's been forty years. Who knows if Delgado still has family living?"

         "Well, Boyo, you're a good detective, aren't you?" His eyes twinkled when he smiled. "Why don't you look into the old case files? They may have something to start on." He paused. "I seem to remember he had a girlfriend."

         "Just drop my current cases? You gotta be kidding!"

         "If anybody asks, you're on special assignment for the Chief. Goddam, Johnny, being Chief has gotta have some perks when your adopted family needs help." He laughed, then pulled me close so he could whisper. "By the way, if your dad needs anything, you know you can count on me. Don't hesitate a minute."

         That's the way Uncle Dave always treated his adopted family. He'd invested in the stock market all his life, becoming a wealthy man over the years. He tried to get Dad to invest every month--dollar cost averaging he called it--but he knew Dad struggled financially with our big family, particularly when Mom's long bout with cancer came along.

         Sometimes, when I was growing up, or in college, he'd put a $100 bill in my shirt pocket without a word, putting a finger to his lips as if to say: "Let's keep this between the two of us."  I felt myself choking up and forced back some tears. I nodded.

         "Good. Now you get on this silly request of his, and let me go see the old scalawag."

         As he walked down the hallway, the crowd, even the doctors and nurses, parted for him to pass. Everyone recognized the legendary Chief Dave Dubcek.

****

         When I got to the Records division the next day, I used Uncle Dave's name shamelessly. The Chief Clerk, a matronly black woman with graying hair in an upswept bun, removed a pencil from her hairdo, pointed it at me, and said, "Are you crazy? You want the records on a closed case from when?"

         "Actually, I want the records on two cases: A murder file on a narcotics detective named Ray Gonzalez and an another file about a deadly force shooting of Rudy Delgado by Kevin Reilly about a week later. I need 'em ASAP."

         "No way, Detective, I've got a department to run..." she waved her pencil over her employees at their computers much like Marshal Ney must've used his baton to send in Napoleon's Old Guard at Waterloo. "They're underpaid and overwhelmed with the load of current cases."

         "I understand, but I'm not sure the Chief will," I said. I gave her Uncle Dave's cell number, and she caved. She told me it would take some time because the old records were stored in an annex. In fact, it took most of the day, but she finally called, and I went to pick them up.

         The official reports, detective's notes and bagged evidence were in two dusty cardboard boxes with lids tied down with string. I signed them out and carried them up to my desk on the second floor. I planned to just scan the reports for any mentions of Delgado's family or girlfriend, but I got hooked into reading them. However, reading them didn't take long since file notes and reports weren't complete or precise in the old days because no one took the time. Even though I was familiar with the story, there were a few surprises.

         I hadn't known that Uncle Dave was the officer who volunteered to go with Ray Gonzales to meet with Delgado when my Dad went down with the flu. According to his report, after arriving at the Delgado house, they split up in case Delgado had changed his mind and tried to run. Uncle Dave went to the back yard along the driveway while Gonzales went to the front door. Then Uncle Dave heard a shot and found that Delgado had shot Gonzales in the head and took off.

         The murder weapon, a Colt .32, wasn't found at the scene, but the bullet was recovered with enough ballistic information for identification and was logged into evidence. Nowadays they keep that stuff in the evidence room, but the bagged bullet was in the file box. After all, technically the case was still open; Delgado hadn't been tried and found guilty.

         A citywide manhunt failed to find Delgado. During this investigation, a couple of detectives talked with Delgado's pregnant girlfriend. Then I found what I was searching for--her name, Alma Rios, and her mother's address on Linda Street on the Southside.

         I could have stopped there, but of course, I didn't. The second box held the reports of the shootout in the warehouse. When your old man is the featured officer in a lethal shooting, the curiosity to read the Action Report is irresistible.

         The description of the Delgado shootout in the warehouse by Uncle Dave and my Dad riveted my attention. For some reason, my dad and Uncle Dave split up to cover the front and back of the building despite the disastrous consequences of the same tactic the previous week. They should have called in backup, but they apparently wanted to keep the information about Delgado's hideout to themselves.

         Like most eyewitness accounts, the reports differed slightly. In his statement, Uncle Dave wrote that after he was shot in the butt he passed out and didn't remember anything else. I smiled when I read it. It was part of our family lore, repeated and embellished by Uncle Dave with every telling, how he'd fainted while Dad saved the day.  He'd been so embarrassed afterward that he wouldn't even let the hospital take out the bullet. Dad sometimes called him Lead Butt when they were kidding around.

         My dad's report was much the same. He heard a shot and then Dave hollered, "There he is! Shoot him!" Then, as Dad ran toward the sound of Dave's voice in the dark, he was hit in the chest. While falling to the ground, Dad managed to get off a round that miraculously hit Delgado in the head. The graphic crime scene photos of the head wound showed gunpowder stippling around the small entrance hole in Delgado's right temple.

         The missing Colt .32 snubnose from the first killing was found on the floor near Delgado. I was surprised to find it was also still in the box in a tagged plastic bag along with another bag that held the .32 bullet that hit my dad. I shuddered. You don't often see a weapon that almost killed your father.  

         I made copies of the reports for my own use and closed down for the day. Although the reports were interesting in themselves, I hadn't found out much that wasn't already known about the related cases to relieve my Dad's irrational guilt feelings. But at least I'd found out the name of Delgado's girlfriend and a possible lead to her whereabouts. I left the office for the day and headed for the hospital.

****

         Visiting hours in the intensive care department were over, but the head nurse made an exception for me because I was a cop coming off duty. I entered the room and stood looking at my dad in the subdued light. If it hadn't been for all the equipment and tubes, he might have been sleeping naturally. I decided not to wake him and pulled up a chair to his bedside. But he'd been playing possum. Without opening his eyes, he whispered, "Did you find her, the girlfriend?"

         "Not yet," I said. "But the old reports had her name and her mother's address on the Southside."

         "Check her old address and the neighbors," he said. "The families in those neighborhoods are real close knit. Even if they move, they don't go far."

         "I know, Dad. I'm a detective, remember?  How do you feel?"

         "Like I been rode hard and put up wet. But I can hold on till you find her."

         "Don't talk like that, Dad. You're gonna be OK." He smiled at my white lie, but I let it go and tried to change the subject. "Say, I read the files on the Delgado shooting case today. You guys shoulda been fired for breaking procedure instead of getting medals. Going in without backup was crazy, you know?"

         "Yeah, I told Dave we oughta call in, but he convinced me we should take Delgado out by ourselves. I didn't take much convincing. Ray and me were tight, and I felt guilty for not being there when he died. Delgado was my snitch and to have him kill my partner..." He sighed.

         "I hadn't realized it was Uncle Dave who went with Ray Gonzalez to the meet with Delgado."

         "Yeah, when I went down sick with the flu, he volunteered to take my place. We really didn't know each other too well before Ray's killing. The shootout brought us together."

         "One thing I thought was strange. You said Uncle Dave called out after he got shot, but he said he blacked out and didn't see or hear anything."

         Dad smiled. "You know, I'd forgotten all about that. I guess the story got better with the telling all these years. But that's why I went charging toward the noise, because he was hurt."

         He grimaced. "I had to go past the only light in the place, it made me a good target, and that's when I got shot. I pulled the trigger by reflex or instinct. It was a damn unlucky fluke that I hit anything with that shot, much less Delgado."

         "You must've been pretty close to hit him in the head like that."

         "Nah, I must've been thirty yards away across that warehouse floor from Delgado. And you know I'm not anywhere near as good a shot as Dave, especially with that old .38 Special. Like I said, pure bad luck, but I still feel guilty about it."

         "Well, I'm gonna find Delgado's girlfriend tomorrow for you."

         "Thanks, Son." He sighed. "I'm gonna go back to sleep now," he said and closed his eyes.

         "Sure, Dad, get some rest." I closed my eyes too and said a prayer. When I left, the little blip was still chasing itself across the monitor screen.    

****

         The next morning after I got dressed, I called in to the office, and told them I was going directly to an interview. A quick check with R&I gave me nothing on Alma Rios. She was clean, not even a traffic ticket. The old Rios' address was now listed to a family named Cervantes.

         I stopped off at a Taco Cabana for my daily fix of breakfast tacos. I read the paper with a second cup of coffee while I waited for the morning traffic to die down. After 9:00 o'clock, it was a quick trip on the expressway to the South side.

          Linda Street was in one of those subdivisions where builders put up small, cheap, asbestos-siding houses after WWII. They were cut from a pattern which repeated every three houses. I found the old Rios house address and pulled to a stop.

         A chain link fence surrounded the tiny front yard where a gray-haired woman stood, sprinkling the flower beds and grass. She wore a shapeless flowered housecoat over a gray nightgown and run-down slippers. She didn't acknowledge me as I got out of the car and walked up to the gate. It was that type of neighborhood. Even if the residents were law-abiding, they felt they had to keep their distance from the cops.

         "Good morning, ma'am. Are you Ms. Cervantes?"

         She turned around to face me and let the water from the hose splash the cement walk near my shoes. I jumped back and put on my best smile. She stood there, mute, with absolutely no expression on her face. I tried again.

         "I'm looking for the Rios family who was the previous owner of this house."

         "You're a cop."

         It came out flat, with no inflection that could tell me whether I would get anything out of her. In this neighborhood, some folks didn't have a particularly warm relationship with cops, particularly white cops.

         "Yes, ma'am." I decided to show a little edge.  "Always here to protect and serve law-abiding citizens like yourself"

         "Why you wan' the Rios? They died years ago."

         "Actually, I'm looking for their daughter, Alma."

         "What for? She ain' done nothing."

         "I'm trying to clear up something on an old case about her boyfriend. She may have some information."

         "Those cops killed Rudy cause of what he knew!"

         "How would you know that?"

         "I'm Alma Rios Cervantes," she said simply and twisted the sprayer on the hose so the stream of water drooped and died.

****

         When I left Alma Cervantes, my mind was more confused than when I started. Driving to the hospital with my emergency flasher on, I kept my mind on the interview instead of on my destination.

         A policeman talks to a lot of relatives of criminals over the years. Generally, they know when there loved one is involved with criminal acts.  If there's been a shooting or violent arrest, you develop a sense of when outrage is real, or simply faked to bring up the old bugaboo of police brutality.

         Alma Cervantes story scared me. Because it had the ring of truth. She readily admitted that her old boyfriend, Rudy Delgado, was a drug dealer. But she adamantly denied he had anything to do with the killing of Detective Ray Gonzalez the week before my Dad and Uncle Dave cornered him in the warehouse.

         "Rudy wasn't no killer." She smiled gently at the thought. "He never even owned a gun," she said. "He was just a small-time guy, and a snitch, scared to death all the time, except when he was with me."  She had a wistful look and gentle smile as she remembered her first lover.

          "He came to see me after that cop got killed and he was running. He swore he didn't know anything about it.  The cops were supposed to pick him up at his apartment. He heard a shot and went outside. A cop was lying there, bleeding, so he panicked and ran." She sighed. "Rudy wouldn't lie to me," she said with the conviction that only truth can give.

         "Who did he think did it? He must have had some idea. People don't just go around shooting policemen on the street."

         "Quien sabe? Who knows? The only other cop who knew about Rudy being a snitch was his friend, Officer Reilly."  

         "If Rudy was set up, what about his supplier? Could he have done it?"

         "Francisco? My husband?" She laughed. "You cops don' know nothing about us, do you? Francisco and Rudy was cousins. The Jefe was his Uncle Genaro. He tol' Rudy to snitch out the dirty cop 'cause he was getting too greedy. After the cop got killed, they was hiding Rudy in that warehouse until the heat died down, and they could send him to familia in Mexico."

         That made sense. Generations of some Mexican families had been border smugglers. Rudy probably snitched on the dope dealers of rival families on orders from his Jefe to keep the heat down on their own operations and cut down on the competition.

         "What about the dirty cop, the one Rudy was gonna snitch on"

         Then my beeper went off and interrupted the interview. I called the hospital, and drove like hell with the siren on, but Dad was gone before I got there. I sat by his bed with his hand in mine and told him I'd keep my promise to find out about the killing that had haunted him for forty years.

****

         "You guys need another beer," asked Uncle Dave.

         The responses of the rowdy group of cops sitting in the cockpit of the Chief's 55' Hatteras sportfishing yacht rang out drunkenly: "Naw, Chief, I'm good," and "Thanks, Chief" and "Uno mas, gracias" After the funeral, Uncle Dave asked me if I wanted to use his boat to get away for a weekend to relax with some of my buddies. Uncle Dave was thoughtful like that. He hadn't planned to come, but I'd argued he needed some break-time after Dad's death as much as me, so he finally gave in.

         We were about fifty miles out, where the sandy Gulf gets blue after reaching the deep water off the shallow Texas coast. The fish hadn't been biting, so I'd been telling the story of my futile efforts on the old cold case. I'd just gotten to the part about Alma Cervantes when Uncle Dave interrupted about the refills. I picked up the story where I'd left off.

         "So there I was, hitting ninety on the expressway, trying to puzzle it out. There were some anomalies in the story that kept buzzing around in my head, but I couldn't quite get them to hang together.

         Dad was dead when I got to the hospital, so he never got to make his peace with Alma Cervantes, or her kid, or any of the Cervantes family.  It's a damn shame."

         Everyone nodded their heads, and Uncle Dave put his hand on my shoulder. "Johnny, you did the best you could." He sighed. "There was no reason why Delgado's death should have ruined his life."

         "I know...Dave," I said.

         "What'd you say?" he asked, puzzled at something in my voice he couldn't make out.

         "I said I know. Dave! I know it all now. Dad agonized for forty years over something you did."

         "What the hell are you talking about?"

         "You were the dirty cop that Delgado was gonna snitch on. When I got it figured out, I showed pictures of the cops in that precinct to Delgado's cousin, Francisco. He picked your photo out.

         By the way, Dave, this is a real nice boat, costs about two million. Too rich for a cop's salary, even for a Chief. I did some checking and found your small 'monthly investing' was a lie. You were putting big blocks of money into stocks at one time--money you could only have gotten from being on the take. Dollar-cost averaging, my ass!"

         "You've been out in the sun too long, Johnny." He licked his lips and looked around at the men in the cockpit who were listening intently to our conversation.  

         "Maybe, but let's see how it fits together. When Dad got sick and couldn't go to meet Delgado, you heard about it and volunteered to go with Ray Gonzalez. You planned to kill Gonzalez, blame it on the snitch and then kill him. Either way, the threat to your career was removed. You shot Ray Gonzalez with a 'throw-down' gun. All you old-time cops carried an extra piece in case they had a bad shooting and needed a self-defense alibi. But when Delgado ran before you could kill him, you kept it.

         "That's crazy. Everyone knew it was Delgado's gun."

         "Exactly. 'Everyone knew' it because a hotshot cop said so. But Delgado's girlfriend swore he never owned a gun. I believed her. So I did some checking on the gun via the serial number. That .32 was confiscated in another case. Later, it was sold at a police auction--to you."

         "I reported it stolen."

         "Sure, but as any cop knows, reports can be faked. It was your throw-down."

         "Johnny, this is all crap. What about your Dad?  Delgado shot him."

         "Actually, Dad only assumed Delgado shot him.  He heard a shot, and then you called out so he'd rush to your aid. He was still thirty yards away when you shot him with the throwdown gun that was tied to Delgado. Only a expert pistol shot could hit a moving target at that distance in bad light, especially with a .32 snubnose. An expert like you, Dave."

         "But your Dad killed Delgado, not me."

         "Yeah, that puzzled me for a while, but then I figured it out. Dad didn't shoot Delgado. You did--with the first shot. The crime scene photos show gunpowder residue on Delgado's entrance wound. That means he was shot from close range. You planned to kill Delgado, then my dad, and come out a hero. Nothing like a tried and true plan, right?

         "That's a really clever theory, Johnny, but how do you account for the fact that I got shot."

         "The best laid plans can go haywire. You hadn't factored in a scenario where Dad accidentally shot you. Dad was a lousy shot--that's why you got hit in the butt-and it was just bad luck that you got hit at all. You went into shock and fainted.

         When you came to, it was too late to set up the crime scene, so you played it like Dad killed Delgado. That's why you didn't want the bullet in your butt removed-someone might have noticed it was Dad's .38 special slug instead of a bullet from the .32 throw-down gun you'd planted on Delgado. Nobody ever checked anything because it was the story of two hero cops and a dead cop killer."

         "This is very interesting Johnny, but it's all very circumstantial."  

         He smiled nervously at the circle men in the boat. No one smiled back.

         "Ask any cop," I said, "He'd rather have a circumstantial case that hangs together in all the particulars than an eyewitness case any day. And this scenario is the only one where all the facts fit."

         "Well, you'll be laughed out of the DAs office if you try to bring a forty-year-old case about the killing of a suspected cop killer to an official inquiry."  He gave a forced laugh.

         "Proving the murder case would be tough. Even if I have enough to get a warrant for the bullet in your butt, we'd still be without Dad's testimony.

         "On the other hand, we might get an internal affairs inquiry into your finances that would show unusual investments for a cop, and along with the testimony of Francisco Cervantes that you were on the take from drug dealers..."

         The Chief interrupted, "The testimony of a drug dealer against a decorated veteran officer and Chief of Police." He sneered. "Good luck, Johnny."

         Every one of my buddies in the circle nodded in agreement. They knew the justice system as well as any judge or lawyer.

         "Yeah, you're probably right. It wouldn't work. You'd skate on everything." I sighed.

         "So that's the end of that fanciful discussion," he said. "Listen Johnny, I'm not going to hold this tirade against you, but I think you need to put in for some medical leave for stress. I'll approve it." He gestured at my friends. "And all these men can testify to your irrational conduct here today."

         "No, Dave. I don't think so."

         "Why not?"

         "Let me introduce you to the Blue Wolves" The men laughed. "Ordinarily, the Wolves give street justice to career criminals, but today we're gonna make an exception for a bad cop who kills other cops."

         I gave a wolfish smile, but didn't let it go to my eyes. After all, this man tried to kill my Dad. I scanned the empty blue sea around us.

         "Gentlemen," I said, "I think it's too far to swim to shore for a guy with lead in his butt, don't you agree?"

         On the way back to shore, The Blue Wolves howled until Uncle Dave's screams were drowned out by the sea.