This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha (9 page)

I
n the span of minutes, Greg’s case went from boring to exciting, from simple to a considerable challenge, possibly even life-threatening. Greg felt like he was in over his head. He had practiced criminal defense for just over eight months, hardly the expert counsel Brenda needed.

As he stood in the hall and turned the possibilities of Brenda’s gang affiliation over in his mind, Greg realized he needed to talk to her again and try to get to the truth. He walked back to the holding cell where Brenda sat with the probation officer for another chat. Greg started firing away as soon as he walked in the door.

“Look, you can play it straight with me or not,” he started. “I don’t really care. But it’s a lot easier for me to do this thing, to help you, if I know what’s going on. Tell me what’s going on,” Greg said, looking down at Brenda, trying to read her.

Brenda still didn’t say much, so the probation officer helped her out.

“She’s Denis Rivera’s girlfriend,” the officer said, pushing Brenda to speak. The officer turned to Brenda and offered her a bit of advice. “Don’t bullshit him, honey.”

Before Brenda could react, the officer reached forward and pushed Brenda’s T-shirt low enough on her chest to reveal a large
M
tattooed above Brenda’s right breast and an
S
tattooed above the left. Greg was now convinced. Brenda was definitely MS.

“This is going to be a fun case,” Greg said with biting sarcasm. “I’ll see you in court in the morning,” he told Brenda before turning on his heel and walking back to the judge’s chambers.

On the way, Greg bumped into an Arlington County detective who was eager to speak to Brenda. In Grand Prairie, Detective Rick Oseguera had put out a national alert on Brenda Paz and the capital arrest warrant waiting for her in Texas. The detective had seen the bulletin on Brenda Paz, and when he had heard that she was in custody in Arlington County, he set out to find her and see about sending her back to Texas. Oseguera would be happy to know a Virginia colleague had served his warrant.

Greg cut the detective off before he got too excited. “Look, she isn’t talking about anything because you can’t make her. She’s got Fifth Amendment rights, and I understand that as of right now you’ve got nothing.”

Take that, Greg thought. He was right—the detective had nothing. Greg was a fierce advocate, even as he struggled to get his head around this bomb of a case that had just landed in his lap. In that moment, though, Greg was more interested in putting the detective in his place than protecting Brenda. This was a matter of professional pride. Greg’s first impression of Brenda as a smart-ass runaway soon changed, but at that moment he didn’t have time to think about where Brenda’s case would take him. There were more immediate concerns, and at the top of the list was keeping Brenda in Virginia until he could get a handle on her case.

Still reeling, Greg speed-walked the rest of the way to the judge’s chambers.

“This case is way more complicated,” Greg said when he walked into the judge’s chambers. “I know you were expecting to sign an order sending her back to Texas, but it’s not going to be that way,” he continued. “There are warrants coming in,” daring to point out the obvious, but in need of buttressing his position before pressing on.

“Look, I don’t think I’m qualified to do this. You know, she’s definitely going to need criminal defense counsel help on that side because it’s an ethical thing.”

The roles of a defense counsel and a guardian ad litem are naturally in conflict. What’s best for a client from a legal point of view is not always what a parent would want for the child. Greg wasn’t comfortable working as both Brenda’s guardian and her defense counsel.

“All right,” the judge said. “Tell you what, here’s a list of who’s going to be here tomorrow. Pick someone on this list you’d like to help you out,” the judge offered, only letting Greg off the hook slightly. Greg would remain Brenda’s guardian. He chose a young lawyer and friend named Jason Rucker to be her defense counsel.

The next morning, Greg visited Brenda with Jason before her court case to give her the reality check she needed to make a hard decision.

“Look, you’ve got a capital murder warrant coming from Texas and a list of other stuff. You can help and get out, or you can not help and, you know, go to prison for what somebody else did.”

The warrant from Texas was for the murder of Javier Calzada. Brenda absolutely did not want to go back to Texas and deal with Rick Oseguera again. As she thought about her options, Brenda remembered what Denis had told her in the car right after they were cuffed.

“Get out. Tell your story. Do what you gotta do to save yourself because I’m going to prison.” They were words Brenda had taken to heart. She didn’t want to go to prison. And she knew Denis could take care of himself. She had to do the same.

Minutes dragged by as Brenda considered her options and weighed her decision. Brenda was torn. She was a smart girl, and the pragmatic side of her knew talking to the cops was the best way to save herself from what she truly thought of as a dead-end lifestyle. For all her time on the street and experience as a member of the MS, she had had a good childhood and had not yet spent even a year running full-time with the MS. But how could she betray her homies? Since arriving in Virginia, she had become very close to the group that ran with Denis. If she became an informant, could she prevent them from finding out?

Greg had worked Brenda’s case for less than a day and already knew it would be a challenge. As a child in need of services, Brenda had been assigned a guardian. From Arlington County’s point of view, the guardian could resolve any legal hurdles with enough paperwork and time in court. In neighboring Fairfax County there were at least two other charges against Brenda. One was a false-identity charge: she had given an officer a false name a while back when she was questioned after the police broke up a party. The other charge was accessory after the fact to a malicious wounding. The Fairfax charges were a little trickier to resolve, but Greg was confident he could have them dropped. As her legal guardian, Greg’s priority was to resolve Brenda’s legal issues and get her back to her last known address, which was
with her uncle in Texas. From his position, Greg’s top concern was the capital arrest warrant in Texas. He didn’t know the first thing about what Brenda had seen and done in Texas, but he was damn sure she wasn’t going to leave his care until the issue was resolved.

Greg thought the best strategy was to try to obtain immunity for his client from the district attorney in Dallas County, where Rick Oseguera had filed the warrant. They might go for it in exchange for her information on the MS, Greg thought. He had never done an immunity deal before, and thus far had seen little indication from Brenda that she was interested in talking. He looked down at her now and wondered where on earth this was going to take him.

As Brenda met the stare of the hulking giant who called himself her guardian, the loyal gangster in her was aware that Mara Salvatrucha members do not rat, no matter what. That was rule number one. She felt cornered. Brenda shivered as she thought of her most important tattoo, the symbol of three dots arranged in a triangle that represented the three places that gang life would take you: a hospital, a prison, or the grave.

None were inviting.

B
renda had seen so much death, pain, and suffering. Still, she knew there were options. Others, like Veto and Denis, were too far gone. There could still be a silver lining to her story. Maybe Greg can help me find it, she thought, still sitting there under his gaze. The allure of a future free of the gang life pulled her in one direction. The love she felt for her gang family and her addiction to the power of being a respected gangster pulled her in another.

Brenda knew the cops would be looking for information. Before her arrest with Denis, she had spent many hours wrestling with her loyalty to her MS family and her desire for a way out. She had finally come up with a number of people she wouldn’t mind giving up. At the top of that list was Little Zico, one of the homies who had brutally attacked Javier that night in Texas. It still haunted her dreams. Little Zico scared her, and she knew he’d be valuable to the cops.

Two strong arguments formed in Brenda’s mind. She settled on standing between the two. It was then in the crisp morning hours on the day after she was arrested that Brenda Paz decided to let down her guard, but only a little. She looked up at her towering legal guardian and told him she was willing to talk. Brenda had decided to give Greg Hunter and Jason Rucker general information, but to be very careful about specifics.

After her initial court case to resolve the CHINS placed on Brenda
in Arlington County, Greg began to move forward slowly. He was confident Brenda felt comfortable with her decision to talk. Back at his office, Greg made a few phone calls to gang detectives in Arlington and Fairfax, testing the water to see if there were any detectives in the area who were willing to take a chance with a potentially valuable informant. He would offer up the opportunity of speaking with Brenda on the basis that she would not sign any statement or be arrested and forced to give up information about ongoing cases. If he could establish Brenda as a reliable source of information on the Mara Salvatrucha in Virginia, he could build a case for keeping her there and ultimately argue that the charges against her in Texas should be dropped.

Mike Porter, a gang unit detective with the Fairfax County Police Department, was the only one who returned Greg’s call. Stout and professional, he was a pragmatic policeman, and his normally laid-back style and stature balanced well with his sharp focus and powers of observation. He was also a fixer—he believed in justice and sought to make everything right in his world. Porter was immediately interested in Brenda. Greg ran it by Brenda, and she agreed to talk to him.

Greg arranged a meeting with Brenda, himself, Porter, and Jason Rucker in a classroom at the Landmark Juvenile Detention Facility in Arlington, where Brenda had been held since her arrest. It was a dank, underserviced room with concrete walls, a chalkboard, and a worn table made of pressed-wood chips with thin metal legs. The plastic chairs were tired and cracked at the corners.

Porter was decidedly respectful at the meeting. He didn’t try a tough-cop routine with Brenda, seeing in her some potential as a valuable source of information. By now, word had spread among local detectives that Brenda was Denis Rivera’s girlfriend. Given Denis’s high rank within the MS, Porter assumed that Brenda would know something about a number of open investigations he was working that allegedly involved MS gang members.

She did.

Porter was just one of many cops looking for Little Zico. Along with a number of other gang members, after Calzada’s murder Little Zico had fled Texas with his girlfriend, Flaca, the same girl Brenda had described to Oseguera. Little Zico and Flaca had hidden out in North Carolina. When he finally came out of hiding, he headed up to Virginia, where he committed a string of crimes, including an alleged point-blank shooting of a Washington area taxi driver. By the time Porter met
Brenda, Little Zico was off the radar again. Brenda knew where he was hiding in North Carolina, and she thought that if she told the cops, they could arrest him and get him off the streets. He was a bad, angry man, and she didn’t have any respect for him or his girlfriend, Flaca.

Brenda readily divulged to Porter the information about the specific interstate highway, the exit, the exact turns to take, and even a description of the house where Little Zico lived. She recounted the information as if watching a movie in her mind. It was always like that for her, clear images, as if any scene could happen over and over again in her mind. Her memory was both her greatest asset and her worst enemy. In this instance, it came in handy. Not long after that initial meeting, cops in North Carolina used Brenda’s information to arrest Little Zico.

Over the four-and-a-half-hour meeting, Brenda told Porter everything she knew about Little Zico’s location. She detailed statements made by over a dozen different MS members, implicating many of them in ongoing investigations in the area. Brenda also pointed out the location of an MS meeting spot previously unknown to police. Porter was impressed. So were Greg and Jason. From their point of view, Brenda was willing to share credible information and seemed to have intelligence on a number of cases. For Brenda, it was acceptable to sell out a member of the MS not close to her and give the police information she considered to be of little consequence. So far, she hadn’t ratted on her friends in Virginia.

Gang member loyalty was one of the greatest challenges for law enforcement. If arrested, members never talked to the cops; nor could cops easily insert an informant because gang leaders were savvy enough to investigate new members. Discipline within the gang was nearly as ruthless as the gang’s treatment of its enemies, further discouraging dissension within the ranks. Any would-be undercover officer had to think twice before getting involved in what could be construed as a suicide mission. The Mara Salvatrucha hated cops, and its members hated anyone who worked with the cops, especially a rat. Treason was the worst sin within the gang, one punishable only by death. This reality made Brenda’s decision to cooperate with the police more valuable and more dangerous.

Only a few hours after the successful first meeting with Mike Porter, Greg’s home phone rang. It was almost midnight. Greg recognized Victor Ignacio’s voice.

“I hear you’ve got Brenda Paz. I know she knows Denis Rivera, and I know the Mara Salvatrucha is talking about killing cops,” Ignacio began with little greeting or acknowledgment that it was late at night. “And if she’s talking, whatever you all know about is very important to me. So I want to know right now,” Ignacio demanded.

Ignacio had information the MS planned to kill two cops in the area. He didn’t know who, but he suspected he could be one of them, as he was known among the MS for having busted a number of their gang members. If Brenda knew something, Ignacio wasn’t going to wait around to hear about it tomorrow.

“Well, you can’t talk to her now, it’s late,” Greg replied, somewhat perturbed that Ignacio had called him at home. He never gave out his home number.

“She’s in my juvenile detention center, and I’m talking to her right now,” Ignacio said, reminding Greg that as a cop with the Alexandria Police Department, he had the right to speak to anyone at the Landmark Juvenile Detention Center. It was located in the city of Alexandria.

Greg had little choice. “Okay, I’m coming down now,” he said. Then he hung up and set out for a late-night rendezvous to see if Brenda knew anything about MS plans to kill cops.

Brenda did know of Ignacio. His gang-busting reputation had placed him at the top of her gang’s hit list. Before she met Ignacio, she had thought he was the bogeyman.

Ignacio was waiting for Greg when he arrived. The two men, along with a third detective, entered the building, asked an attendant to get Brenda out of bed, and then escorted her to an interview room, where they began asking her about cop killers. Brenda, still sleepy and a little groggy, talked to Ignacio and was forthcoming with enough information over the two-hour meeting to put Ignacio’s mind at ease.

“They want to kill you and another cop, but I can’t remember his name.” Brenda had nothing to hide about plans to kill cops. The truth was, she didn’t know much.

Women in the Mara Salvatrucha held a second-class stature. Jumped-in women could hang with the homies at the same level, but they could not talk back or show any disrespect. And most women were not allowed into the
misas,
the clique’s weekly meetings. Brenda’s closeness with some of her gang’s top leaders had opened doors most other women never considered walking through. Although she didn’t
attend the meetings, she had heard almost everything that had transpired, everything save the most secret plans. During the interview, Ignacio received enough information to close a couple of cases and decided he liked Brenda. He left the detention center satisfied.

Porter, Ignacio, Greg, and Jason decided to meet with Brenda again. It had been a week since her arrest with Denis. Though Brenda didn’t know it, the police had given her some time to see if any of her facts had developed holes. Over a five-hour meeting, Porter and Ignacio asked her many of the same questions as at the first long meeting, checking for consistency. By the end of the meeting, both Porter and Ignacio were convinced that Brenda Paz was a legitimate informant and a wealth of information. It was in their best interests to protect her. They knew what would happen if the MS found out Brenda was talking to the cops. The MS would show no mercy. Any death for a traitor MS member was slow, committed with knives or a machete, and sometimes even meant decapitation.