Ghettoside (28 page)

BABY MAN

Devin Davis was seventeen in the first weeks of 2008. He was an awkward-looking kid with a large head, high round cheeks, and very round, large brown eyes. He was afflicted with ADHD and high blood pressure—a diagnosis rare in teenagers but not uncommon in South Central. He had been struck by gunfire some months before that had injured his wrist.

Devin appeared to be constantly on the lookout for something to guffaw at, in the anxious way of teenagers who fear being left out of a joke. But Devin was not cheerful. His eyes had a plaintive expression. His affect was peevish and unhappy.

When the probationer first uttered Devin’s moniker Baby Man to Skaggs, Skaggs was pretty sure Devin was the killer. Then Midkiff fingered his photo, identifying Devin as the “crazy boy” in the back of the Suburban, and Skaggs was certain. He intended to come right at Devin, plunging forward, as always, in the straightest possible line.

Devin’s imprisonment gave him time to prepare. Skaggs wanted every advantage. The interrogation of Devin Davis would be the most important juncture in this most important of cases; it would be a pivotal moment in his whole career.

Skaggs knew what he wanted from Devin—a full confession. In his mind, he had already constructed the outlines of a case built solely on the accounts of the man in the wheelchair, the probationer, and Midkiff, supported by corroborating evidence. But he knew the case would be far stronger with a confession.

Skaggs had interrogated hundreds of murder suspects, and a striking number had confessed, at least partially. This was not entirely a tribute to Skaggs’s talent: confessions were astonishingly common in ghettoside cases. Sal La Barbera maintained he’d gotten some version of a confession on almost every case he had ever cleared. Perhaps not in the actual interrogation, but in the long waits in between—during meals, or while being processed for arrest—young men nearly always let something slip. It was relatively rare for suspects in gang cases to invoke their right to an attorney.

Skaggs couldn’t understand why suspects confessed. But La Barbera, who ascribed sentimental motives to everyone—even murderers—had a theory. He believed it was the burden of guilt. Murder, he suggested, had a kind of existential weight; one had to be very hardened indeed not to be bested by it. Other detectives had similar notions. Brent Josephson, the old ghettoside hand from the previous generation, had a memorable story from the peak years. It involved a scoop-and-carry homicide case in a park. Assigned after the fact, with the evidence cleared away and no witnesses, Josephson was standing helplessly at the scene, thinking he didn’t have a prayer of solving the case, when he noticed a skinny Hispanic youth in the distance. Josephson called out to him, thinking the kid might have some pointers. Thunderstruck, the young man hung his head and shuffled over. “You got me,” he told Josephson, and proceeded to confess. The specter of an LAPD detective beckoning from across the park had apparently been too much for him. It was like a summons from God.

All Skaggs knew was that, as common as confessions were, you couldn’t count on getting one. Many gang members were interrogation experts. They knew the cops’ methods. Older men in particular had the edge on the very young cops the South L.A. divisions attracted. These
suspects had cunning and strategy. And just like the cops, they were smooth liars. So although there were those who refused to talk, or bailed midinterview, the more common scenario was a tense tit for tat in which suspects offered detectives bits of information in exchange for finding out what the police knew.

This approach was not as irrational as it seemed. Without an attorney present, gang suspects could get a sense not just of what the police were thinking, but also of what was happening on the streets. If your homeys had snitched, you wanted to know it. If it was in your best interests to snitch on them first, you wanted to know that, too. The cops were only part of the equation. The willingness of gang suspects to be interrogated demonstrated, again, how such men inhabited two legal structures—a formal one and an informal one. They had to negotiate both, and the LAPD interrogation room was a space to explore their options, play one side against the other.

There was possibly another reason suspects submitted to being interrogated: it was interesting. Few people can resist talking about something that really interests them with someone who shares that interest. For all these reasons, suspects talked. South end homicide interrogations by Skaggs’s era lacked the brute terrorism of the old LAPD, and they were sometimes almost cordial. But they were nearly always elliptical games of cat and mouse in which the mouse was as curious as the cat. Skaggs was expecting that Devin would agree to talk a little. But that didn’t mean he would get what he wanted.

On the afternoon of January 14, Corey Farell and a young detective named Vince Carreon picked up Devin from Challenger Youth Camp in northern Los Angeles County’s Antelope Valley at the foot of the Mojave Desert and drove him back through the desert to the Seventy-seventh Street station, his hands cuffed in front of his body for the long journey.

When he arrived, Skaggs looked him over. Devin wore a blue jumpsuit and his hair was scruffy, in the manner of young men too long in jail without a haircut. He was dark-skinned, just as Midkiff remembered. His manner was petulant and anxious. Farell had told him nothing.

Skaggs wanted to secure an advantage over Devin from the start. He had devised a couple of ruses, driving Devin past the crime scene, suggesting to him that the police had evidence that didn’t exist, including a fictitious video that Skaggs claimed had been shot by a security camera. The goal was “just to freak him out,” he said later. He also wanted a read on Devin. By provoking an emotional reaction, Skaggs hoped to gather a sense of his state of mind, and to infer from that his susceptibility to questioning.

As they drove, Skaggs studied the teenager. Devin seemed immature for his age. He gave the impression of suffering from a mental or social disability. “Kinda weird,” Skaggs thought. It was easy to see what the young probationer had suggested about Devin—that he had problems making friends. If Devin had been your average high school student somewhere else, he might have been just another misfit. But Skaggs thought Devin “a little bit on the tough side, not just on the dumb side.” He had “a look.” To Skaggs, suspects fell across a spectrum. Some were very violent, some less so. And some were so unused to violence that it left them badly shaken. Skaggs had dealt with suspects who started babbling the instant they sat, spinning defenses and “fronting out” their friends. But Devin’s composure suggested that he would not crack easily.

They returned to the station house and climbed the back stairs to an interview room. Skaggs gave Devin a soda and asked if he wanted lunch. Devin said no. It was 2:30
P.M
.

Over and over, through years of little rooms, cans of soda, mismatched chairs, and Styrofoam cups, Skaggs had felt his way through scores of interviews like this, learning through repetition. Skaggs used relatively little profanity and kept calm.

He sought, above all, to assure suspects that it was okay to talk—that if they would just tell the truth, it would be all right. Beyond that, it was pure improvisation. The interrogator had to think fast and react quickly, “reading” the suspect while appearing not to, shifting tactics as dynamics changed.

Sometimes Skaggs sought to break down suspects. Other times he
tried to build them up. He would subtly insult them—“Do you take medication for psych problems?” And they would hasten to defend themselves. Or he would flatter them—“Dang! You still okay? I’ve heard your name on the street!” And they would puff up and start bragging. One of his favorite methods was to act distracted or bored until they became desperate for a reaction.

Skaggs and Farell now retreated to the hallway, leaving Devin in the room. Skaggs had no idea how he was going to proceed. Yet Farell could perceive nothing out of the ordinary in his manner. It was as if he were embarking on a weekend errand.

Skaggs prepped his tape recorder and noted the date and time. They headed back to the room. Skaggs sat down, not across from Devin, but on the same side of the table, pulling his chair so close that their knees almost touched. He always sat this way for interrogations. He was not being menacing in any way, yet he was violating Devin’s personal space. This subtle breach was unsettling.

Skaggs began speaking, sounding mild and reasonable. “Okay, Devin,” he said. “This is where we get to take care of all our business. Okay?”

Breezy. Businesslike. A light touch of regret. As if they were friends with an unpleasant matter to settle.

Devin was ready, in defensive mode. He had arranged himself in a posture signaling noncompliance, slumped way back, sullen, put out. “I’m gonna ask you to speak up. I’m a little hard of hearing,” Skaggs said, his standard line. He told Devin to sit up straight. “Show a little respect … a little mutual respect … If you’re sitting up straight, I know I have your attention! All right?” The last note was bright and lively.

Devin shifted in his seat and mumbled his assent—“Yes sir … yes sir,” he said wearily. It was typical gangster-cop interplay—the affected politeness, excessive use of courtesy titles, and emphasis on “respect.” The ’hood was perhaps the only context in America outside the military where the word “sir” was still appended sentence by sentence in conversational speech. Devin, it was clear, had spoken to many a cop.

Skaggs went on, oversimplifying. “My name is John Skaggs. This is
my partner Corey Farell. We work homicide. Do you know what that means?”

“No,” Devin replied. Skaggs played it straight. “Homicide investigators investigate people who get killed,” he explained dutifully. “Not shot at. Not jumped on. Not robbed. When somebody gets killed on the streets, they call us, and we go to work.”

Skaggs launched his attack. He began talking aimlessly about the investigation. He started in the middle, digressed, and doubled back. He hinted at a Very Serious Talk about to occur. But instead of starting it, he burrowed into technicalities. He declared his intention to be up-front. Then he wandered. He promised to get to the point. Then he didn’t. He peppered his speech with various throat-clearing asides—“Are you with me?” “So, listen!” “We’ll get to that!” But he never got anywhere. Every gesture and inflection assured Devin that he was being clear and direct. But the words delivered only discursiveness and confusion.

It was infuriating—and effective. The tactic had served Skaggs well for years. Ordinarily, Skaggs was a man who never procrastinated, never went in circles. But in interrogations, circling was his weapon of choice.

“Your name came up in a murder investigation,” Skaggs told Devin gravely. “Flat out.” He paused, letting the flat-out-ness of his statement sink in. Then he was not flat out. He digressed, droning on about the video camera and its fictional video, its quality.

Then, finally: “So here’s what happens. Back in May, okay? You know the months of the year?” Devin was silent. Skaggs continued: “So kind of at the end of winter. The start of good weather …” And Skaggs riffed on weather.

Devin released a long sigh. “Some people loaded up …” Skaggs went on, using the same tone as he had used describing the sunny day in May. But Devin interrupted him, in revolt against Skaggs’s intrusive knees.

“Mind if I move my legs?” he said.

Skaggs was genial. “You can put ’em anywhere! Just don’t kick me!” he said. Devin shifted heavily as Skaggs talked some more. “I’m going
to give you the opportunity to say what’s on your mind,” he said. “But let me talk for about five minutes.” Skaggs nodded toward the fat murder book he held. “This is what I want to talk to you about today.” He wandered again, and then finally, speaking fast, almost collegially, returned to the investigation. He presented it as if it were a problem he expected Devin to help him fix:

“So, what I know is a black Suburban gets on Saint Andrews, a dude gets out, and somebody gets killed, okay?” he said. “And you’re in that video. Not only that, I got the Suburban. The Suburban is in custody. I will show you photos of it. I’m gonna show you everything so that you can see I’m not talking out of my ass.”

Here Devin interrupted again, for some reason objecting, not to the idea that he might have committed murder, but to the suggestion that he didn’t trust Skaggs. “I’m not trippin’ on you! I’m listening to you!” he said, his voice high and indignant.

Skaggs continued, his tone conciliatory. “We all know how there’s stories about cops who try to pull a fast one and stuff like that. I want to be up-front with you.”

Devin kept insisting that he wasn’t, as he put it, “trippin’.” Skaggs got him to calm down, then said: “This is the real deal. And this is the only—the one and only time—you will ever have a chance to talk to the two guys who investigated that murder.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Devin said.

“Absolutely!” Skaggs sounded downright buoyant.

“This is not going to affect my time in camp, right?”

He had been asking some version of this question over and over, in different forms, all afternoon. “That is a ridiculous question,” Skaggs said, sounding exasperated. Davis objected, sputtering. Skaggs raised his voice: “Let me talk!”

“That’s what we are talking about,” Skaggs said, when he had Devin’s attention again. “
We are talking about your future
. So, we will get to that part of your future when it comes up.”

Devin was beginning to whine. Skaggs scolded him to “act like a man.” Then his voice softened and he promised he would soon address
Devin’s concerns. Once again he hinted at the Very Serious Talk that was about to start.

“We are going to see what’s in your mind, whether you are going to be straight up,” he said. “So we’ll get to that.”

Skaggs was back in his mild, businesslike tone, spinning wool in the guise of being forthcoming. He told Devin that snitches “put him on Front Street” and called him by his gang name, Baby Man.

“I ain’ no Baby Man,” Devin said, drawling a little. “We’ll get to that, we’ll get to that,” Skaggs said. Always promising, never delivering.