DIRTY SALLY
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2
(Continued)
I
patrolled like I meant it: if I couldn't stop the
mob, I'd clean up the world one crook at a time. Amy
left just shy of our third anniversary, the day I
passed the sergeant's exam. She said she couldn't
live with my anger.
"Have
I ever hit you?" I said, barely holding it back.
"Have I ever even yelled at you?"
But
I could see her cringe. "I'm always afraid you're
going to."
I
celebrated my sergeanthood by punching the wall, yelling, "Why? Why? Why?!" and resolved
to be a better cop, since I didn't have anything else.
People always leave.
They
sent me to Criminal Investigations, working robberies
and petty thefts. Meanwhile, Homicide Sergeant Joey
Velez was trying to convince the Fifth Floor that
there was such a thing as organized crime outside
of the movies, but no one wanted to hear the news.
Joey
zeroed in on Bertrand Gautier, who ran a record label
out of his famous blues club, Gautier's, Austin home
of the greats: B.B. and Albert King, Arlo, Clapton,
Stevie Ray—all Gautier's close friends. A rash
of car thefts was blowing through town, and Joey was
tracking a murder that happened near one of them when
an owner caught the theft in action. "The witness
said he never saw anything like it," he told
me. "A dozen of 'em pulled the doors and windows,
yanked the radio, hoisted the engine and hauled ass
all in about fifteen seconds. You gotta admire that!
" Joey connected the killing to the thefts and
the dub: they were selling the parts and turning the
money into coke they could have on the street the
same day.
Joey
put together a team with guys from Vice, Narco and
Surveillance. He said he needed somebody on CIB to
track the car thefts, somebody smart.
"Reles.
Where's that from?" he asked as he drove us toward
the club.
"My
old man's family's from Galicia, but—"
He
laughed. "Pueth, ereth Gallego! No tuve ninguna
idea!"
I
had to wait till he was done saying Buenoth diath and Thí, thí, theñor before I
could tell him it wasn't Galicia, Spain, but Galicia
that laid over part of Poland and the Ukraine.
He
chuckled. "So you're not—"
"Nah,
I'm a Jew."
"Yeah,
I didn't think so." He flashed a grin. "You
could be passing."
"If
I was passing, would I tell you I was a Jew?"
"You
might. Have to work on that Spanish, though, mi'jo."
"I
took it in school, but, y'know ... I'm thinking about
taking a class ..."
"You
should." Long pause. "I never met a Jewish
cop before. You're my first."
I
said, "Bueno, mazel tov, amigo." He roared with laughter, a big booming laugh that
made me laugh with him. It occurred to me that I could
be friends with this guy. I didn't tend to make friends.
But for years afterward, long after I'd learned enough
barrio Spanish to rattle the homies, he'd find a reason
once in a blue moon to turn to me and say, "Mazel
tov, amigo."
We'd
sit at the Magnolia Cafe and he'd jive with Paul the
manager while scribbling crazy diagrams on napkins.
A family tree: Big Bosses lead down to Gautier, leads
down to car gangs and coke dealers. Or he'd draw a
triangle: car theft to car sales to coke, like molasses
to rum to slaves. Every time it was a new diagram—lineage,
circles, 3-D scrawls that cut across time—but
once in a while he'd point to a spot where a name
was missing and say, "This-is the guy we need."
We
started hanging around Gautier's club. Joey "bumped
into" Gautier a few times and they became pals.
Gautier sold him grams of coke, like a pal. One weeknight
we were in there and a local group was on the bandstand,
five guys with short mohawks doing Rolling Stones
covers for a small crowd of about fifty people. Gautier
stood at the bar, shmoozing with customers in his
signature cowboy hat, string tie and plaid jacket.
Joey was holding court at a table with a guy and some
women, doing kamikaze shots. I stood at a wall scanning
the room and pretending to watch the band.
So
I was the first to see a heavyset, fiftyish white
guy at the bar eyeball Joey and stagger across the
room to him like a drunk with a mission. "I know
you," the man said when he got within ten feet
of Joey, with the unmistakable look of someone about
to finger a narc. The comment caught Joey as he raised
another shot to his lips and the smile froze on his
face.
Later
Joey told me he'd ID'd the guy as Rush Clayton, a
child molester Joey had sent to Huntsville "for
a little reverse therapy," transferred to county
jail because of overcrowding and released after thirty
months for the same reason. Joey didn't wait for details:
he tossed his drink into Clayton's eyes and lunged
for him, pops to the mouth too close together for
Clayton to spit out the word "cop" in between.
A bouncer the size of a truck grabbed Joey from behind
and pinned his arms. The crowd tumbled away from them. Clayton
climbed up on all fours, drooling blood, and spotted
Gautier. I grabbed a wooden chair and flung it through
the front window, alarm ringing a high C. The crowd
rushed the doors so fast you could see the smoke swirling.
Clayton made it toward Gautier, who flashed a look
of horror back at him. I ran for Clayton and grabbed
him, said, "Stay away from that motherfucker"—with
a nod at Joey—"he's crazy," and pulled
him toward the door, glancing back at a grateful Gautier.
Joey was bloody in the mouth but just getting the
better of the bouncer as Gautier made toward them
to intervene.
Patrol
cars rounded up the few drunks and stragglers who
hadn't made it out of the parking lot. They hauled
in Gautier, the bouncer, the bartenders, Clayton,
Joey and me, the last three of us sitting silently
in the back of the same patrol car. At Central Booking
they split us up, let Gautier and his people go, and
put Joey in a room alone with Clayton.
Joey
went back to the club the next afternoon while they
were caulking the new window in place. He brought
a bottle of Chivas an an apology for starting a fight.
Gautier, already three sheets to the wind, said, "S'
okay, man, happens all the time. Wanna do some candy?"
Rush Clayton left town that day and never came back.
The next story Joey told a cluster of detectives was
how I protected hid cover by throwing a chair through
a window and beating the crap out of a child molester,
not half the true story but it made me out to be a
team player. And out of a barroom brawl a partnership
was born.
We
piled the evidence. Joey wore a wire, witnessed the
deals and brought everyone in: car thieves, dealers,
Gautier and—thanks to the RICO Act—everyone
up to the hands-off guys on top, hiding their faces
from the TV cameras as patrols marched them into Central
Booking. Joey was a big hero: the press loved him,
the Organized Crime Division was made permanent with
Joey and me on regular staff, and the DA got reelected.
When the DA was indicted for tax fraud eight months
later, the Department decided OC needed to be "reorganized,"
and Joey and I got sent back down. Joey saved me from
the scrap heap of a long-term assignment on CIB and
mentored me onto Homicide—the squad's youngest
member, first Yankee, first Jew, and, now with Joey
gone, the designated outsider, the foreigner.
Mazel
tov, amigo.
I
cut under the interstate, a mortician's wet dream
of fifteen-foot entrance ramps—zero to sixty
in half a second or you're dead—separating East
Austin from White Austin, headed south on the frontage
road and parked under the highway at Eighth Street
behind a minivan with a cute bumper sticker reading
WHATS YOUR HURRY YOU'RE ALREADY IN AUSTIN! The municipal
parking lots served APD staff and visitors, the municipal
courts, Central Booking and, quietly in back, the
office of Margaret Hay, M.D., the Travis County Medical
Examiner.
That's
when I first met Aaron Gold.
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