‘We had a tip.’
Exasperated, Kelly stepped in front of the chair and leaned over Vega. The old man looked like some Grim Reaper come to collect Vega’s mortal soul. ‘That’s right, you keep it to yourself. Protect Raul, whatever you do. I don’t know if you’re a coward or if you’re crooked or just stupid, but I never thought I’d see a cop protect a cop killer.’
‘I’m not!’
‘What is it, Julio? Raul was your snitch, is that it? Your snitch killed your partner, is that what you’re afraid everybody is going to find out?’
‘No, I, I-’
Kelly loomed over him. ‘Don’t ever call yourself a cop. I’m a cop. This man is a cop.’ He pointed at me. ‘Artie Trudell was a cop. You’re nothing. Understand? You’re nothing.’
‘I loved Artie.’ Vega’s voice was disappearing.
‘I can’t listen to this bullshit anymore,’ Kelly sighed. He went to the window.
For a time nobody spoke. We heard the sounds of kids nearby, teens maybe, needling each other, laughing.
Vega’s soft voice: ‘I never knew who Raul was.’
More young shouts from outside, a radio, a distant siren.
‘I never met him.’
I shot Kelly a glance. He was staring out the window, shaking his head.
Vega again: ‘It was just a tip.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I sputtered. ‘This whole thing — Braxton skated because you wouldn’t give up Raul. The whole point was to protect Raul from getting killed. Wasn’t it?’
Vega stared at the blank television screen.
‘You couldn’t find him, you said. You testified — You said you drove around looking for Raul but you couldn’t find him.’
‘Maybe there never was a Raul.’
‘What?’
‘I never met him.’
I knelt down in front of Vega so I could look into his eyes.
‘Julio, it’s real important you tell the truth. No more lies. Everything that’s happened up to this point — none of it matters now. You can’t go back and do anything any different. You see what I’m saying? But you can do the right thing now.’
Nothing.
‘Julio, if Braxton killed Artie Trudell, we’ll get him. But we need to know what really went on that night. If the tip about the red-door coke did not come from Raul, where did it come from?’
Nothing. I had the sense the real Julio Vega was retreating like a boat on the horizon.
I prodded, ‘Listen to me, Julio, it’s not too late. You can still make this come out right. You can go back and make it right for Artie.’
Then, unexpectedly, Vega’s reserve simply collapsed. Maybe he gagged, finally, on the acid he’d been forced to swallow. Remorse and guilt and longing over Artie Trudell’s death. The thumbs-down of policemen, the loathing of the city, the finger-pointing — the community wheeling on one of its members, the many encircling the one. Of course all of this is my own supposition. Vega gave no outward signal, no movement in his face, no tears, no melodrama. The only motion he made was an involuntary tremor in his hand. But all at once, the truth poured out and out.
‘Everybody knew about it,’ he said evenly. ‘It was like, that summer everybody in the Flats was scoring coke from that place. Everybody had this red-door coke. And everybody knew it was MP dealing out of there. We all knew it. We had to close the place. The whole neighborhood was terrified, with all the sliders and the drugs and the gangs. But nobody would say anything. We tried to do a few buys but nobody would help us. They didn’t want to get mixed up with it. So we couldn’t get a snitch in there, and without a snitch we couldn’t get a warrant.’
‘So you just made up Raul?’
He shook his head no.
‘Where did the tip come from?’
‘Gittens.’
My jaw literally dropped.
‘Gittens always had snitches, man. When he was in Narcotics, it was like he knew more than anyone else. He was like the king of Mission Flats. Me and Artie, when we come along and we got to Narcotics, sometimes he’d help us out, like he’d give us some tip one of his snitches gave him. He was just helping us out so we could get a few pinches, right? You got to understand, nobody talks in the Flats. No-body It’s like the Code of Silence, like the Mafia or whatever. So we went to Gittens and asked if he could help us out. We told him, we got to close down this red- door place but we can’t get a CI — a confidential informant, you know? You need a snitch for the warrant. So Gittens tells us he’ll ask around. A few days later he comes back and he says this guy Raul told him all this stuff about the red door and Braxton. Gave up the whole thing. So we used it. We just wrote it all down and we used it. It was a good tip. The warrant was good.’
‘How do you know he was a good snitch? Maybe Gittens made him up.’
‘Gittens didn’t have to. He had guys would just talk. Everybody talks to Gittens. He’s just got a way. Besides, I’d heard about Raul before. Gittens used him in other cases. I don’t think that was his real name, Raul, but I know Gittens used him in other cases, called him Raul.’ Vega’s voice was flat, his tone did not waver.
‘You waited ten years to say this? Why?’ Kelly was incensed. ‘Why didn’t you just tell the truth and then let Gittens find Raul? Jesus, you let a cop killer walk!’
Vega shook his head. His pupils moved with his head like the buttoneyes in a stuffed animal. He was not seeing anything. ‘We had to,’ he said. ‘We had to stick with what we said in the search-warrant application. If it came out that we lied in the warrant, they’d have thrown out the whole case. My partner got killed, man. This was my brother. How could I let them throw out the case? We had to stick to the story. We needed that warrant to stand up.’
He pleaded, ‘What did it matter where the tip came from? What difference did it make? The tip was true. Every word of it was true! What was I supposed to do? Admit we cleaned up the warrant a little? Braxton would have walked right then and there!’
But Kelly wasn’t mollified. ‘Why didn’t you just ask Gittens to give you Raul? All you had to say was, We need to give up the snitch because this is a cop killing and all promises are off. Gittens would have understood that.’
‘I told him that. He said he did not know Raul’s real name, he only knew his street name.’
‘OG,’ I prodded, remembering the file in Danziger’s office.
‘That’s right. Old Gangster, some bullshit like that. Gittens and me, we looked for that guy, Raul, OG, whatever. He took off. He didn’t want to get caught between the cops and the Posse. I’d have done the same thing. Raul was dead no matter which side found him. Even if the cops had found him, he knew we couldn’t protect him, especially after the trial. So he took off. We were locked in,’ Vega said.
‘We?’
‘Me and Gittens. Well just me, really. Gittens didn’t have nothing to do with it.’
Kelly sighed wearily.
‘I don’t suppose there’s no way we could just keep this between us?’ Vega asked.
‘No chance,’ I said.
‘No. Didn’t think so.’ One of Vega’s hands sought out his forehead and began to knead the slack skin there. He said, ‘It wasn’t like you said, you know. It was all for Artie. I was trying to save the case. I’d do anything…’
I nodded. There was nothing to tell him, no comfort to offer.
‘I’d do anything.’
‘Julio,’ I said finally, ‘maybe there is something. You can take us back to that night.’
33
