A Criminal Defense

Chapter 43

Hector Ignacio Camacho-Fernandez, aka Nacho-and if Ramon Navarro had come to the right conclusion from his analysis of Mark Hamlin’s cell phone traffic-aka Raton. A rat. A snitch.

And Navarro was right. The file lay on Hamlin’s kitchen table in front of Donnally. He and Jackson had searched Hamlin’s office cabinets, desk, and storage room, but hadn’t been able to locate it. Donnally had then driven to Hamlin’s house and pawed through the mass of papers on his living room floor and dining table, until he found what he hoped was all of it. But he couldn’t be certain. Hamlin’s filing system seemed geographical, with related pages sharing a general area of the house, rather than specific, with everything fitted into a particular folder.

Scribblings on a page torn from a legal pad told most of the tale.

At the top were Hamlin’s notes of meeting with Camacho.

Camacho knows he’s under surveillance. Thinks his calls are being tapped. A fifty-kilo load of cocaine from Mexico was seized from a shed in Salinas. The spot had been mentioned only in a single call from his Mission Street taqueria to Juarez.

That was followed by notes of a call to Hamlin from an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.

DEA is agreeable to considering a cooperation agreement with Camacho as long as he doesn’t get a complete walk on the case.

Conditions: He names his sources in Michoacan and in Long Beach, identifies everyone in his organization, agrees to a full debriefing, surrenders drug profits including the house in Daly City and his cars. Can keep his taqueria. Will consider a reward of up to $250,000, based on assets seized from targets he IDs.

Then notes of a call between Hamlin and Reggie Hancock.

Deal possible. Camacho willing to roll on Rafa.

Split 40/60 from Guillermo, 60/40 from Nacho, and 40/60 from Rafa.

The flurry of calls ended with notes from Hamlin’s meeting with Camacho.

Agreed. Debriefing in a week. Lange will sit in.

Even as he searched for other notes, a phrase kept repeating itself in Donnally’s mind like a tune he couldn’t get out of his head.

Can keep his taqueria.

The last time Donnally walked toward a taqueria on Mission Street to meet an informant was also his last day on the job as a police officer.

Can keep his taqueria.

Donnally pushed the notes aside and thought back on that day, then winced at the clash of past and future in his present memory, and closed his eyes. He saw himself getting out of his car on the west side of Mission Street, looking over his hood toward the restaurant door.

A laugh from his left. A young couple, maybe Salvadorean or Guatemalan, compact bodies, Mayan faces, sitting at a wrought-iron table in front of a coffee shop. Magazines spread on top. A woman posing in a wedding dress smiling from the cover of one.

He had taken a step toward the front of his car, then-

Bam-bam-bam.

Gunshots from behind him, but not at him, from a Norteno gangster up the sidewalk, ten yards away, maybe fifteen, shooting at a Sureno down the other way.

He’d ducked behind his hood, reaching for his gun and yelling to the couple, “Down! Down! Down!”

Too late. The male slumped over. The female screaming.

Bam-bam from Donnally’s left. He caught the motion of the Sureno’s black, silver-toed boot and pressed Levi’s pant leg disappearing behind a trash can.

Donnally’s gun had followed his eyes. Barrel steadied by a double-handed grip braced against his car. So focused on each other, neither the Norteno nor the Sureno had spotted him yet.

Bam-bam. . bam-bam-bam. The Norteno firing. But Donnally had lost sight of him. He was using the cars behind Donnally’s as cover.

The Sureno tumbled forward and over the curb, then raised his semiautomatic, but Donnally fired first.

Bam-bam from his right.

The Sureno slumped onto the oil-slicked pavement.

Then again from his right. Bam-bam. . bam-bam.

Donnally felt a thud against his hip and his leg gave way. He reached up, locking the fingers of his left hand into the gap between his hood and the windshield. Pain from shattered bone lit up the wound, then vibrated down his leg and up his side.

Thunking leather. Boot heels on concrete getting louder, running toward him.

Metal scraped against metal as the Norteno jammed in a new clip.

Bam.

Glass fragments burst from holes in the back window and windshield.

The footsteps stopped.

Bam-bam-bam.

The clunk of punched metal and the tink, tink of fractured glass.

He pulled himself up and fired at the Norteno through his own car windows.

Bam-bam-bam-bam-click-click-click.

The Norteno reached for his chest and staggered into the street.

Screeching tires. No thud.

The Norteno dropped to his knees, balanced for a moment, then pitched forward. A head-thunk against a bumper.

The smoke of burned rubber swirled and attacked Donnally’s eyes. He looked toward the woman, now splayed over the table, dead arms reaching in a final gesture toward her fiance.

Distant sirens, then silence.

Coming to consciousness again.

An EMT putting pressure on his hip. A paramedic leaning over him, speaking into his radio.

Officer down. Four dead.

Donnally opened his eyes. The legal pad a bright, painful yellow on the desk in front of him. He thought of Hector Camacho sitting in his office at the back of his restaurant. El Raton. Norteno gangsters at one end of the block. Surenos at the other. .

I don’t want to do this again.