Tod Goldberg: The Reformed

“I gave everything to Madoff,” I said, “so he’s out of luck.”

“My sources tell me your old buddy is a big player these days. Maybe he wants to pick your brain on fashionable sunglasses.”

“He’s not my old buddy,” I said. “And who are your sources?”

“You ever hear of NBC?”

“That some CIA front?”

“No, the network. He’s on one of those local chat shows about twice a week, talking about helping the poor and all that. Always wears a smart-looking suit. Good hair. He’s got a smile that people trust, too.”

“Really?”

“Well, you know, one of those local rags said he was the most trustworthy man in Miami. I read all about him at the dentist’s office.”

“He was a shot caller for the Latin Emperors,” I said.

“And you were a spy,” Sam said.

“I’m still a spy,” I said.

“And I’m still a hundred eighty pounds. They’re just buried under the other seventy-five.” Sam took a sip from his Peroni. “I ever tell you about the time I dated a model from Milan?”

“No, I never heard about that.”

“Her father owned a small fraction of Peroni. Whole house was like one big keg. I tell you, Mikey. I’ve made some mistakes in my life, but that relationship was not one of them.”

“Where is she now?”

“Turns out she was KGB,” Sam said. “It only lasted a weekend. One long, glorious weekend. Didn’t find out she was KGB until I Googled her about a year ago. She’s written a memoir and everything. I’m waiting for the English translation to see if I made it in.”

“Your point?”

“People aren’t always who they end up being.”

That was true enough, but if Eduardo was really a different guy, why did he need my help?

“Apart from NBC,” I said, “you pick anything else up?”

“I talked to a buddy of mine in the Department of Corrections, and he couldn’t wait to talk about Eduardo. Says he’s the reason he has faith in his job.”

“No one talks like that,” I said.

“I know. That’s what I’m saying. He’s not just clean. He’s damn near an angel. His church is just one aspect of what he’s doing. He’s got a nonprofit called Honrado Incorporated that puts ex-gangsters to work doing everything from making T-shirts to running a bakery to learning how to invest their money, plus it sponsors a basketball league, operates its own Little League outlet, even has a huge bingo night and ladies’ Bunco tournament. Honrado employs two hundred people, most of them either ex-cons or at-risk kids, and the board of directors is made up of athletes, politicians, financiers, artists-you name it. Mikey, they’ve even got their own newspaper that they write, print and deliver.”

“This is a guy who used to shake down fifth-graders for their lunch money,” I said.

“And there are photos of me where I look like Sonny Crockett,” Sam said. “We all make mistakes.”

“When did he go from gangster to gang star?”

Sam tapped my bottle of Peroni with his. “Nice turn of a phrase there,” he said.

“I thought you’d like that.”

“Anyway,” Sam said, “looks like he got released from Coleman in 2000."

“That’s a lot of progress in ten years,” I said.

“He was already brokering peace deals between rival gangs from the joint,” Sam said. “Wrote a children’s book about the ills of gang life, and someone tried to get him nominated for a Nobel Prize. President Clinton mentioned him in a speech.”

“While he was in prison?”

“I told you, Mikey, the guy is bulletproof now. He’s made a complete change in his life. A standard-bearer for the good that prison can do for a guy.”

“Just so I’m clear,” I said, “they executed the guy who founded the Crips, right?”

“Eduardo wasn’t up on murder charges,” Sam said. “They had him on RICO charges-a lot of them-but he didn’t have a single conviction on violent crimes.”

“He got sentenced to fifty years for RICO?”

“Latin Emperors are a worldwide organization, Mikey,” Sam said. “And he was near the top of the chain. By the time he got into prison, he was the top guy in Miami. So he might have been calling shots, but no one ever was able to trace them back to him.”

I shook my head. “That can’t be,” I said. “Remember that thing we did in El Salvador in 1994?”

“With the tanks?”

“No,” I said, “the other thing.”

“Oh… with the Russians?”

“No,” I said. “I forgot about that. No, the other thing.”

“The urban renewal?”

“Yes. He was involved with that. He was the top of the pyramid. Even from prison, he was the guy making the calls.”

“Mikey, that was a covert operation. Even if he was involved, what we did in El Salvador didn’t actually happen.”

“So your guy says he’s a hundred percent legit?”

“It’s not just my guy,” Sam said. “Eduardo Santiago is known around the world for the work he does, Mike. This is a guy who is making a difference, which is a lot more than I can say for you and me.”

It seemed hard to believe that a guy like Eduardo Santiago could be completely rehabilitated, but everything Sam said seemed to indicate it was true. Which I guess is why people go to prison.

“I’m still having a hard time with the fact that he got thirty-five years clipped off of his sentence,” I said.

“He’s got influential friends,” Sam said. “Or he snitched out the right guy.”

“Or a combination of both,” I said.

“And what’s so wrong with snitching?” Sam asked. “He found the Lord and stopped covering for the cowards he ran with. That’s good behavior right there.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “You want to come with me tomorrow?”

“No can do, Mikey,” Sam said. “I’ve got a big date.”

“Really?”

“No,” Sam said. “I just thought I’d see what you’d say when I told you I couldn’t come. You want Chuck Finley for this?”

“I think Sam Axe will do just fine,” I said.

Our waiter came by then and dropped off our dinners-veal Milanese for Sam, fettuccini Alfredo with the sauce on the side for me, so, essentially, just a plate of noodles-and regarded the growing scale of Sam’s empty bottle collection. “Anything else to drink, sir?” the waiter asked.

“Whatever else you have,” Sam said.

When building a fortress, it’s important to understand the message you want to send. The White House, for instance, was built with the understanding that people visiting it for the first time would be awed by the size and scale and thus would feel awed by the size and scale of the American government. Your fortress tells unwelcome visitors who you are, what you’re made of and, likely, what you’re willing to risk to protect yourself.

It used to be that you could walk right up to the front door of the White House and ask to pet Calvin Coolidge’s dog. Now, in many Miami neighborhoods, you’re stopped at a gate by an out-of-work cop who demands a DNA sample before you’re allowed inside. And yet Eduardo Santiago’s fortress projected no such audacity. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like a college campus. A very small college, and one filled with tatted-up ex-gangsters sitting under trees, but a college no less.

“I didn’t know they still had trees in this part of town,” Sam said. We were a few blocks from the Orange Bowl, just off of Northwest Fourth Street, in an area mostly surrounded by stucco warehouses, three-story apartment complexes and small houses behind chain-link fences. In comparison, Eduardo’s church and the buildings for Honrado were bunched around a bucolic expanse of green grass, towering shade trees and discreet water features. There were picnic tables and Adirondack chairs placed seemingly at random in different areas, though it had a designer’s touch for what randomness should be, hallmarked by the fact that the chairs and tables were bolted onto concrete slabs. It was still Miami, after all.