This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha Read online

  CHAPTER 31

  Just under six months after she was arrested in Arlington, Brenda sat in her safe house alone. She was forced to wait out the time between the closure of the emancipation process and her entrance into witness protection, the opening of a new chapter in her life. Days blended into weeks, and Brenda couldn’t sit still. She had to get out of the apartment, and she knew more or less when Alexander would stop by to check on her. It was easy for her to get out during the day and return in time for Alexander to stop by. Eventually her wanderings brought her back to the Arlington County Jail, where she knew her boyfriend was still behind bars.

  Brenda and Denis had stopped talking after they were separated by Arlington police, but they never stopped writing. Brenda wrote him letters and he responded, sending her mail to the Landmark Juvenile Detention Center or the Fairfax Juvenile Detention Center. Brenda agreed to share these letters with Greg and Porter, but she never agreed to stop seeing Denis. He had replaced Veto as the love of her life, and Brenda had no intention of leaving him behind, despite his leadership status with the Mara Salvatrucha.

  When Denis told Brenda to take care of herself in the back of the police cruiser after they were arrested in June, he knew his arrest meant the beginning of a long legal process that would likely find him guilty of a number of crimes.

  After they were separated, Denis was placed in the Arlington County Jail while he awaited his trial date in December. It was shortly after his arrival that Detectives Rodriguez and Ignacio brought in his mom and aunt for the interview. Denis didn’t love Brenda, but he respected her and saw in her a way to make himself more powerful. Brenda was also known as an MS member who had been jumped in by a clique from Los Angeles, and in Virginia such history meant instant street credit.

  After his arrest in June, Denis was in a tight situation. He kept his mouth shut, but as the months rolled by, the realization of state and federal charges began to sink in. He wasn’t up for just a few years. He was looking at a tall stack because of his state crimes and a possible death penalty for his federal crime. Denis remained a prime suspect for the Joaquin Diaz murder, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he would be charged with that murder and possibly locked up for life.

  At the end of November, when his girlfriend moved into an FBI safe house, Denis Rivera decided it was time for him to talk to the police. He broke the Mara Salvatrucha’s number one rule: don’t rat.

  Denis’s lawyer called Rodriguez to say he had knowledge of the threats against him. That phone call corroborated Brenda’s claim. Officers who worked as homicide or gang unit detectives were accustomed to threats made on their lives. This situation is never comfortable, no matter how experienced the detective. Rick Rodriguez didn’t live in the Arlington area, but he still had to watch his back everywhere he went after the warning went out. The fact that a gangbanging punk could pull up to a stop light and unload a clip into his car was unnerving.

  As word spread that the Mara Salvatrucha was out to kill Rodriguez, his chief pulled him off the gang unit detail. This upset him more than the threat against his life. Rodriguez was determined to get to the bottom of the threats and possibly help the investigating officers make an arrest so he could get past it and back on the gang unit detail. His boss was being cautious, but Rodriguez’s die-hard attitude chomped at these constraints.

  “Well, okay, but what does he know?” Rodriguez asked Denis’s lawyer when he called at the end of November, skeptical Denis knew anything that would be helpful.

  “Well, he wants to talk,” the lawyer responded. He wanted to be very careful not to give anything away prematurely.

  “Does he mind being interviewed?” Rodriguez asked, pushing a little.

  “No. He will talk but there have to be certain things that need to be known. He’ll help you guys, but are you going to help him?” the lawyer said. He was working to pull together some sort of deal for his client.

  Deal or not, Rodriguez couldn’t lose. There was a chance he could gain important information about the threats against his own life. He made it clear to the lawyer it didn’t matter what his client said. The information his client shared had to lead to an arrest. There had to be results.

  Rodriguez was interested in any information Denis had on the luz verde the MS issued on him. Anything else was a fringe benefit. It would be up to the Virginia commonwealth attorney prosecuting Denis’s case and Rodriguez to decide if his information was valid.

  Denis had a few cards to play, but he was running out of time. He would be tried on the malicious-wounding charge in December and likely convicted for the crime that Brenda had been unwilling to commit. He was sure to do some time, but if he could throw out a few names, there was a chance he could enjoy a reduced sentence.

  Rodriguez, Denis, and Denis’s lawyer were seated in an interview room at the Arlington County prison with the prosecuting attorney, a hard woman. Rodriguez tried not to be hopeful. Denis was a man with a vast knowledge of local MS activity, but everyone in the room knew he would serve some time at both the state and federal level. If Denis’s decision to speak with the police ever hit the street, he would have serious trouble in prison. It would likely mean his death. Rodriguez was just as likely to catch a bullet on the street from one of Denis’s homies. The two were locked into a dangerous game. Rodriguez had the prosecuting attorney and Denis’s long list of crimes on his side. He was holding a number of cards. Denis likely knew who was ordered to kill Rodriguez. Stringing Rodriguez along long enough to get some time shaved off his state sentence was his only play.

  “The things we’re interested in are the following,” Rodriguez began. “We’re interested in knowing about stolen cars.” Rodriguez knew Denis was a master car thief, but that was an easy pitch. Denis sat on the location of any number of stolen cars. “We want to know anything about who’s taking them, where they’re taking them to, and any robberies or any other crimes MS is committing.”

  That request was already a little harder for Denis to meet. As a celebrated MS leader, he knew better than most the consequences of ratting out his homies to the cops. Many of the cars MS members stole were almost immediately driven to Mexico, where MS contacts south of the border would buy them for a decent price. These cars were long gone. There was no sense in talking about stolen cars, and both knew it. But Rodriguez wanted to give Denis a way to gradually work himself up to sharing the most important information. Gang members who were willing to talk rarely, if ever, gave up critical information during the first interview.

  Rodriguez pressed on. “We want to know about weapons trafficking and who has these weapons. And any crime you get wind of between this moment and whenever, we want to know about that too.”

  Rodriguez put pressure on Denis to talk. He knew what Denis was up against. The young gangster would talk if he valued his freedom. An extended moment of silence passed.

  Then Rodriguez delivered the bottom line. “And, most importantly, we want to know about any, any threats you have heard, or know of, toward me or any other police officer, including Victor Ignacio.

  “My understanding,” Rodriguez said, focusing solely on Denis, “is that what’s kicking this off is the fact that you have information concerning threats about me.”

  Denis remained silent.

  “So that is your ticket,” Rodriguez said. “There is the big one.”

  He had made his position clear. It was now Denis’s turn to deliver.

  “Well, I can tell you where you can find a stolen Corolla,” Denis offered.

  It was a start, and something Rodriguez could use to establish Denis’s credibility, but it was far from what he needed. Rodriguez had little confidence in the young man as a star informant and was still convinced Denis didn’t care about where he was headed. He was looking at jail time as his final rite of passage, the moment in which young gangsters graduate from small time to the real deal. But Rodriguez knew Denis would never get out to enjoy his newfound respect on the street.

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nbsp; “He’s going to start by giving you little things,” Denis’s attorney told Rodriguez after two fruitless interviews in late November and early December.

  “That’s fine. We’ll take whatever,” Rodriguez said. Any shred of information could help solve a crime. “But time is of the essence here,” Rodriguez reminded the attorney. Rodriguez was able to talk to Denis as long as he was under the jurisdiction of Arlington County, which would hold until he had been tried for all his Virginia state crimes.

  Leads on the threats against Rodriguez were thin. So far they had little more than Brenda’s initial comments to work with. It was frustrating, and Rodriguez hated to think that the only man who had information preferred to play games with stolen cars. He knew damn well that Denis had information on the guy who was planning to kill him.

  “Let’s talk about stolen cars and let’s talk about parties and let’s talk about meetings, talk about assaults, that’s all fine. But somewhere along the line he needs to lead up to who and when and why there are threats against me and any other police officer,” Rodriguez told the lawyer, driving home his bottom line.

  Denis continued to play. Interviews ensued, sometimes dragging out for hours with little to show for the time spent. One day, though, Denis identified MS members who had been captured on a security camera stabbing a rival gang member at a local hotel. Rodriguez thought that Denis might finally be willing to do more than blow smoke. Denis went further to reveal the location of a house in Maryland where some MS members lived, though the information did little to further the investigation into the threats against Rodriguez’s life.

  As hard as Rodriguez pushed Denis, he was not about to give up the information. There was much more at stake than winning a few years off his prison sentence. His life was on the line. Homies on the outside knew there were very few MS members under lock and key who knew the details of the plans to kill cops in Virginia. Any hint the police had found out and he would be a dead man.

  Virginia’s Mara Salvatrucha cliques were under pressure to prove themselves to their West Coast homies. A rift had grown between MS cliques in Virginia and California. Cliques on the East Coast were generally considered part of the new school of MS members. The hardened, old-school MS gangsters in California, who had experience fighting to the death for their turf, thought the East Coast cliques were a bunch of punks. They didn’t put in their work and couldn’t spread the power and respect of the MS in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and New York. Virginia especially had garnered the ire of the California cliques. Northern Virginia was considered the most important region for the new-school MS cliques. Denis did his part to spread MS respect and power in the region, but other leaders had not pulled their weight. In the eyes of the West Coast leaders, there simply were not enough bodies. The pressure intensified into the fall. Denis wasn’t even on the streets, and he could feel it. Mara Salvatrucha clique leaders from California were in Virginia to get answers. They wanted to know why the Virginia homies had not yet killed any cops.

  More pressure boiled up from El Salvador when a high-ranking member of the Sailors Locos Salvatrucha, a Salvadoran clique with members in California, Virginia, and Maryland, showed up in northern Virginia demanding that every individual in his clique kill two rival gang members every fifteen days. He was there to apply pressure. The Salvadoran clique leaders had received word that the Virginia new-school homies were soft. Together with the national leadership, they wanted to know why.

  While Denis played hardball with Rodriguez, he was acutely aware of the shifting sands of power within the Mara Salvatrucha, subtle changes that didn’t register with the police. Pressure from both California and El Salvador pushed down on his Virginia homies. A luz verde was out on both Ignacio and Rodriguez, but no one had the cojones to pull the trigger. Denis thought plans were in place to kill both, but he was locked up and didn’t know the latest. He knew better than to ask about it while talking on a prison phone. He could only hope that someone would take out Rodriguez soon so the cop would stop bothering him.

  Rodriguez remained on edge at work and discouraged until Denis’s court date for the malicious-wounding charge arrived on a cold day before Christmas. An hour before his case was heard by the judge, Rodriguez and the prosecutor walked down to the holding cell to confront Denis directly.

  “We’re going forward with this case today,” the prosecutor said, visibly irritated with Denis’s lack of cooperation. “And you’re screwed because you’ve given us nothing,” she said, emphasizing the word.

  After the prosecutor left, Rodriguez remained with Denis, hoping the weight of the last moments before his case would pressure him to say something.

  “Denis,” Rodriguez began, shaking his head. “Nothing, you’ve done nothing. Thank you for trying, but you’ve got nothing to show for it, nothing!” He couldn’t help but show his frustration with the process.

  Denis turned to his lawyer. “Can I tell him what I know?”

  “Why are you asking him?” Rodriguez exclaimed. He had run out of patience with Denis’s games.

  “If you know something more, isn’t it in your best interest and mine to share?” Rodriguez asked, not believing Denis had waited until the absolute final moment before sharing some information. He had been out on the street this whole time looking over his shoulder and enduring his office work, and he longed to be back on the streets on the gang unit detail.

  “Hold on a second,” Rodriguez said before turning to run and ask the prosecutor to convince the judge to delay the start of the trial by a couple minutes. Rodriguez returned with the prosecutor. “Okay, what do we have?” the prosecutor asked Denis.

  Denis looked at his attorney, who was visibly uncomfortable with the situation. It dawned on Rodriguez that Denis probably had scared his defense counsel.

  The prosecutor finally broke the silence. She wasn’t willing to wait another moment.

  “I’ve had it,” she huffed. “I’m done. I’m outta here. If anything changes, Rodriguez, get to me before I start the trial. Once it starts we’re not stopping,” she said, already walking back to the courtroom.

  “Denis, this is it,” Rodriguez said, making his final play. “She’s heading to the floor. When that judge comes back to the bench it’s over for you.”

  Denis continued to stall, looking at his lawyer.

  Rodriguez had reached his limit. He was angry and convinced Denis wouldn’t talk. “I don’t care if you open your mouth, at this point I’m not going to listen. Even if you tell me who’s doing it or when or where, it’s done,” Rodriguez said.

  Then the lawyer spoke. “Okay, here’s what he’s told me. It’s Porky. Porky is the one,” the lawyer said.

  “You mean Curly?” Rodriguez turned to ask Denis. The two street names were used for the same guy.

  “Yeah,” Denis said in a low voice. Rodriguez gave Denis a physical description of Porky. He agreed it was the same guy.

  Once Denis confirmed they were thinking of the same guy, Rodriguez walked out of the room and into the hall, where he could think back to an arrest he had made months ago.

  Porky was an MS member and rumored to be an arms trafficker who lived in Arlington. Weeks before Denis and Brenda were arrested, Rodriguez had visited him on a regular basis just to make his life difficult. When Porky robbed a check-cashing store, Rodriguez arrested him, and put him behind bars for a long time.

  After the robbery and before the arrest, Rodriguez had called Porky’s apartment number to see if he was there. A male voice answered the phone, and Rodriguez pretended he worked at a local garage and wanted to make sure Porky was home because the boss would call soon with a job offer. The guy on the phone told him Porky was home and wouldn’t leave. With the trap set, Rodriguez and his partner drove over to the apartment and knocked on Porky’s door. He answered and they arrested him for the robbery. It was a humiliating experience—one that Porky never forgot.

  Rodriguez stood outside the holding cell where Denis and his defense co
unsel waited to be called to court. He was spinning his wheels. In just a few minutes someone would arrive to escort Denis to the holding room just outside the courtroom. He had to figure out why Denis gave him Porky’s name, and quickly. Was Denis lying? He asked himself if Porky was actually capable of pulling off the planning and organization to kill a cop. Did he have enough pull in the MS to put a luz verde on Rodriguez, then order younger members to kill him? Could Porky be part of a larger plan to bring in members from another state to kill him? Rodriguez concluded that it was a stretch. Porky had means and motive. There was reason and history, but one thing was missing. Porky didn’t have the backbone to organize the death of a cop.

  Denis was just being clever. Rodriguez remembered that Porky and Denis had been in jail together since the summer. At least five, maybe six months had passed. It was possible Porky was just running his mouth about how he wanted to kill Rodriguez. Most gangsters behind bars at the Arlington County lockup talked tough to keep up their hardened street attitude, but few ever did anything about it. Rodriguez considered Porky a screwup, and even if he had the cojones, he doubted the kid had enough pull in the MS to put out a hit on a cop.

  Denis had likely heard Porky’s complaints, Rodriguez reasoned. Many of the MS guys in the Arlington jail complained about Rodriguez. Porky stood out, but Denis knew it was just talk. He had used the bogus information about Porky to prompt his lawyer to begin the interview process with Rodriguez. He had wanted to play the detective a bit, get some free phone calls to his homies, get off the cell block for interviews, and take a stab at reducing his sentence. Rodriguez would follow up on the Porky angle just to be absolutely sure, but now he was convinced that Denis had never sincerely wanted to help.

  Rodriguez left the holding cell area disgusted with Denis. He had allowed himself to consider Denis was willing to talk. But the kid was too far gone. He was willing to tell Rodriguez about small-time crimes, but killing a cop was a big deal inside the Mara Salvatrucha. Once the order was put out, only the highest-level leaders were involved in the planning and execution, not someone like Porky, or even Denis for that matter.