Vigilante

CHAPTER 19

The cameras all moved to a nearby set and came on one at a time, lighting the control room’s video monitors. Then, after everybody was in place, Drew Burke said, “Camera Three, we open with you on Nix, then pull out.”

Nix was now seated on the edge of a conference table in a large room. On one wall was a lit map of Los Angeles.

Behind him, seated in high-back leather conference room chairs, were Marcia Breen, Frank Palgrave, and J. J. Blunt, as well as three other men and two women I didn’t know.

Judge Webster Russell was at the end of the table. Web hadn’t changed much since I’d testified in his court a few years back. He was a big, shaggy gray-haired eminence with an honest, solemn face, wearing black judicial robes. A perfect video judge.

Nix was smiling, and as the theme music faded, he said, “Welcome, my friends, to Los Angeles, California. City of Angels. This town spans 493.3 square miles, with a population of 4 million. According to Forbes.com, Los Angeles is the eighth most powerful economic city in the world. This is a city that hosts the L.A. Lakers, a world-renowned symphony, and the Getty Center. But it also hosted one of the worst police corruptions in modern law enforcement history. The Rampart scandal saw over a hundred convictions overturned on charges that included obtaining false confessions through torture, planting evidence, and yes, even murder. So don’t say it can’t happen here, because it already did.

“A lot is going on in this town. A lot of people live here, die here, and face injustice here. Tonight we’re going to focus on just one.”

“Ready Four; take Four,” Drew said, and the shot switched to a close-up of a picture of Lita Mendez being held in Nix’s hand. In the photo, she looked fragile and innocent. Her long black hair curled down on delicate shoulders.

“This woman’s name is Lolita Mendez. ‘Lita,’ as her friends called her, was not always a warm and fuzzy person. In fact, Lita could sometimes be a real fireball. But once you knew her, it was easy to understand why. She became a friend of mine when I practiced law in this city and, more than once, I found myself facing her moral outrage.

“Lita was mostly angry at the police because they chose to criminalize her family and friends who live in a Hispanic ghetto right here in L.A. In this eighth-wealthiest economic center on earth, there is an area called Boyle Heights, and Boyle Heights ain’t doing so hot. Boyle Heights doesn’t feel like it’s a suburb of the eighth-wealthiest city in the world. It feels like it belongs in a third-world country.”

The shot switched back to Nix still sitting casually on the edge of the conference table. “Lita is an ordinary single woman with a tenth-grade education. But more than that, she’s a social activist. She has filed over two hundred civil complaints against the LAPD for violating her rights and those of her friends.

“The vitriol that came to exist between this hundred-pound Hispanic woman and the nine-thousand, nine-hundred-man Los Angeles police force became intense, personal, and often violent. So why is this lone high school dropout so important right now?”

Nix took a moment to let his audience wonder. Then he leaned forward and said, “Two nights ago, Lita Mendez was murdered.”

He paused again for effect, then continued. “It happened in the middle of the night with no witnesses or physical evidence, yet the LAPD has already arrested two suspects, a married couple named Carla and Julio Sanchez. As far as I can see, there is no reason Carla and her husband should have been arrested, because they are certainly not guilty. The police have to be well aware of that fact. So, if they’re not guilty, why are Carla Sanchez and her husband, Julio, currently incarcerated in the Boyle Heights jail? The answer to that lies deep in the fabric of this particular demonstration of police corruption. Watch this.”

“Music up. Roll film package one,” Drew instructed.

Video of Lita Mendez came on the screen. She seemed fragile and vulnerable and was seated in her living room with the bedsheets tacked up on the windows behind her. The time-stamped date on the screen was a few weeks ago.

“My name is Lolita Mendez,” she said softly. “I live in Boyle Heights, a suburb of L.A., and members of the Los Angeles Police Department are trying to kill me.”