The Finishing School

12

EVERYTHING OKAY?” Ray-Ray asked, turning with a start as Melanie slammed the door.

“Fine. Sorry.”

She’d better calm down and focus. This was an important interview. Juan Carlos Peralta might admit to providing the heroin, which would lay to rest any speculation about foul play in the girls’ deaths. He might even be able to tell them where to find Carmen Reyes. Whatever information he had, Melanie wouldn’t get it if she didn’t control her emotions. Seeing Dan again had left her even more shaken than she’d anticipated, but she needed to put those feelings aside now.

She walked slowly and deliberately around the small conference table and sat down across from Ray-Ray and Peralta. Ray-Ray introduced her to a second DEA agent who was acting as a sentry, leaning against the wall near the door.

Juan Carlos’s right hand was cuffed to the arm of the chair in which he sat. He leaned forward, holding a massive cheeseburger in his left. It dripped gobs of mayonnaise and ketchup onto the congealed fries in the round foil container below. The overpowering smell of grease so early in the morning turned Melanie’s stomach.

A short, beefy kid with a crew cut, maybe in his early twenties, Juan Carlos wore baggy but perfectly creased khaki pants. The sleeves had been cut off his spotless gray sweatshirt, though you might not notice, since his buff arms were sheathed in elaborate tattoos from shoulder to wrist, mimicking the look of a garment. That much tattooing must cost a pretty penny, Melanie reflected. Juan Carlos obviously had a steady source of income.

“Where do we stand?” Melanie asked Ray-Ray.

“Juan Carlos here was just giving me some intelligence on MS-13. The big Salvadoran gang out in Corona?” Ray-Ray said.

“Sure. Is that why you’re wearing that do-rag?” she asked, nodding toward the blue-and-white bandanna arranged just so around Juan Carlos’s thick neck. These cholo kids were very precise with their fashion.

“Yeah, this they colors,” he said, through a mouthful of burger. “I be initiated and shit. Know all about la vida loca. I got names, dates of meetin’s, anything you want. I ain’t never participate in nothin’ illegal, of course. I jus’ join for social purposes.”

Juan Carlos talked like any other gangbanger from the projects. You’d never guess he wasn’t born stateside. Luis Reyes had been right on the money about this kid.

“Intelligence on MS-13 is worth something, Juan Carlos,” she said, “but not enough to get you a plea deal. We need to hear about the heroin Agent Wong found on you, and we need to hear about Carmen Reyes.”

“Like I told your boy here, ma’am, those drugs ain’t mine. I be holding for a friend. I ain’t never sell. Mi abuela, she smoke me if she catch me scammin’ dope.”

“Yeah? What’s your friend’s name whose dope it is?”

“I ain’t know his name. I just met him yesterday.”

“What does he look like?”

“I don’t really remember. He real average-lookin’.”

“Funny, I’ve heard of this guy before. That nameless, faceless guy who the drugs really belong to. You know about him, right, Ray-Ray?”

“Seems like he’s in on every bust I make,” Ray-Ray said, chuckling.

“So you’re really telling us with a straight face you don’t sell drugs?” Melanie asked Juan Carlos.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“They let you in MS-13 just because you’re a nice guy?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“They’re relaxing their standards,” Ray-Ray said, laughing.

“Word. That’s the truth.” Juan Carlos nodded vigorously.

“Are you enjoying that burger?” Melanie asked him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Because the food in the MDC sucks. Even with only twelve glassines, you’ll do time. After jail it’s immigration lockup, where the food makes the MDC look like Le Cirque.”

Juan Carlos put the burger down in the foil container. “Aww, shit! Come on, dawg, help me out here,” he said to Ray-Ray.

“Much as it pains me, Juan Carlos, I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself,” Ray-Ray said.

“What if I aks for a lawyer?”

“Then we’ll stop talking and get you one,” Melanie said. “You’re entitled to due process before getting locked up and deported.”

“Deported. Fuck! I step up and do my time, fine, but this my country. I live here since I’m five. God, apple pie, and the flag and shit.”

“Not much we can do about it if you don’t have papers, Juan Carlos. I hope you’ve kept in touch with your people in El Salvador so at least they give you a big hug when you get back,” Melanie said.

“Okay, okay!” he said. “I cop to the drugs. They was mine. But it’s the first time I ever sell. I ain’t even know it was heroin. Thought it was cocaine. That’s less time, right?”

Melanie sighed. She’d been through the same song and dance a thousand times. This kid had probably been pitching dope since he was eight years old, but he’d never fess up. No defendant ever admitted anything unless you had it on video, and even then they’d do their damnedest to convince you they were somewhere else at the time and the guy on the tape was their evil twin.

“Look,” she said, “we’re very busy. If you don’t want to talk, fine. I’ll get Legal Aid on the phone, we’ll arraign you and go about our day.”

“But then I get deported!”

“You get deported anyway, unless we get you an S-visa,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“It’s for witnesses who are needed for important cases. Since you’re not talking, you don’t qualify.”

“I’ll talk. I’ll talk about anything you want.”

“It’s not a simple quid pro quo.”

“Not a what?”

“It’s not a given. It takes a lot to earn it.”

“I’ll earn it. You’ll see. Go on, aks me something.”

“Okay, tell us about Carmen Reyes.”

“Carmen? What about her? She’s my reading coach. My church got a program for kids who ain’t read. Carmen be teaching me letters and shit.”

“You can’t read?”

He shrugged. “What of it?”

“Ray-Ray, did you read him those waivers out loud?”

“No, ma’am. He never said anything. He sat there and acted like he was reading them.”

“Very funny, Juan Carlos,” Melanie said, shaking her head. This kid knew what he was doing. The whole interview would’ve been thrown out in court. Melanie reached across the table and picked up the waiver of speedy arraignment and waiver of Miranda-rights forms and read them to Juan Carlos in both English and Spanish. “Still want to talk?” she asked when she’d finished.

“Whatever,” the kid said.

“I need a yes or no, please.”

“Yeah, all right.”

“Make your mark, please.”

She passed him the forms, and he signed them again. Next to his signature, she noted the time and the fact that they’d been read aloud.

“Okay, so Carmen is your literacy coach. And what else?” Melanie asked.

Juan Carlos looked back and forth from Ray-Ray to Melanie, his forehead wrinkled, like he was struggling to understand.

“Well, seems to me Carmen ain’t popped her cherry yet, and I’m thinking about gettin’ in her pants. I like virtuous girls. More of a challenge, you feel me? But we ain’t never do nothin’ much about it. I try to kiss her once, and she get scared and run away. But she sixteen, so why you care? That ain’t statutory rape, is it?”

“I don’t do those cases, but I think the age of consent is seventeen in New York,” Melanie said.

“I don’t think so,” Juan Carlos said, shaking his head. “My shorty Bathead got locked up for statutory-raping some bitch who fourteen. I remember he say two more years and he wouldna had no trouble.”

“Bathead, you said?” Ray-Ray asked, looking up from his note taking.

“Yeah. Call him that because his head got, like, a dent from where somebody smash him with a bat. He talk real slow from it, too.”

“Can we focus, please?” Melanie said. “We don’t have all day. Tell us about giving the drugs to Carmen.”

“What drugs?”

“The heroin.”

“Carmen told you I give her heroin? Why she say that?” He looked very confused.

Melanie turned to Ray-Ray. “What was the stamp again on the decks we found in his sock?”

“WMD,” Ray-Ray said.

“We’re not interested in WMD. Tell us about Golpe,” she said to Juan Carlos.

“I don’t know Golpe,” he replied. “¿Es una marca de drogas? ”

“I can’t feed you the answers, Juan Carlos. You tell me what Golpe is.”

“You talking about a stamp? Ain’t nobody use Spanish stamps in New York. Jersey neither. Only place I heard of Spanish stamps is Puerto Rico, the DR, some shit like that.”

“Tell us about the two girls who OD’d. Whitney and Brianna. Did you ever meet them?” Melanie asked.

“The girls who OD’d last night, you mean?”

She and Ray-Ray exchanged glances. Now they were getting somewhere. “Yes,” she said.

“Yeah, I heard about it on TV.” As Juan Carlos looked at Melanie, his eyes suddenly went wide. Sweat began to collect on the dark fuzz of his upper lip. “The shit that OD’d ’em, it was WMD?”

“What?” Melanie asked.

“You sayin’ those girls OD’d on WMD? You know, weapon a’ mass destruction, the stamp I be moving?”

“Did you sell drugs to them, Juan Carlos?” she asked, avoiding his question.

His breathing got heavier, and he looked ready to cry. “I don’t know what Carmen tell you, but that ain’t me. They put WMD in every spot from here to Jersey City, okay? Hundreds of mu’fuckers movin’ that shit. Coulda been anyone who sold it to them girls. It ain’t me. I swear.”

“Did Carmen ever introduce you to Whitney Seward or Brianna Meyers?” she asked, slowly and clearly.

“Why she tell you that? Why she say something that ain’t true?” he asked, an edge of hysteria in his voice.

“I’m not asking you about what Carmen said. I’m asking you about what happened. Did you ever meet Whitney Seward or Brianna Meyers?”

Tears stood out in Juan Carlos’s eyes. “No more questions. I want a lawyer,” he said.