Steve Martini: The Judge

Acosta’s talking about my client. Tony Arguillo is in his mid-thirties and good looking, a neophyte cop with the city P.D., only four years on the force. He has now been subpoenaed by the grand jury. He is related to Lenore, some distant family connection, the cousin of a cousin, something like that. But they are closer, it seems, than blood would indicate. Tony and Lenore grew up together on the tough streets of L.A. It seems he was the muscle, she was the brains.

Arguillo is now the ball in a game of power Ping-Pong between the Police Association and the city fathers, a brewing labor dispute turned ugly. The last volley, a backhand shot by the Coconut on behalf of the mayor and the city council, has sent my client across the net into the union’s side of the table, ass-end first.

The city has leveled charges of police corruption, something they would no doubt swiftly drop if the union found a quick cure for the blue flu, a rash of cops calling in sick. Acosta for his part is currying favor with the power structure, other politicians who can, if he does the right thing, give him cover in an election-or if he loses, a cushy appointment to some city job that doesn’t need doing.

The Coconut is out to break the police union. They have endorsed his opponent in the upcoming election and are busy funneling vast sums of money to their candidate of choice.

It is true what they say about most judges. The principal qualification for the office is that they are lawyers who know the governor. And now this one, the man I hate, has my client by the unmentionables.

Unfortunately for Tony Arguillo, what started out as a few loose and unfounded charges has suddenly grown hair. There is now budding evidence that some union dues and pension funds were skimmed by a few of the union higher-ups. Things are quickly escalating to the point of public disclosures from which prosecutors can no longer divert their eyes.

We banter back and forth about the substance of these charges. I call them “gossip, unfounded conjecture,” and pray that the D.A. has not completed an audit of the funds. Acosta for his part tries a little moral indignation. This is like spinning gold from straw, given the man’s limited virtue.

“Can you believe?” he says. “Officers are now handing out flyers at the airport, telling tourists that this city is unsafe. Can you believe the arrogance?” he says. This is whispered, hissed through clenched teeth, low enough so that Acosta’s bailiff, who is outside chewing on sunflower seeds and spitting the shells on the carpeted floor, cannot hear it.

“Like there’s some direct correlation,” he says. “As if the guy who robbed you last week wouldn’t have done it if the cops had gotten their eight percent pay hike in Friday’s envelope. They make it sound like they’re selling protection,” he says. “Unprofessional,” he calls it. “Fucking extortion,” he says, as if profanities and veiled threats of physical force against my client by a judicial officer were acts of high moral tone.

I tell him this.

“I didn’t threaten anyone. And I take offense. . ”

“I’ll tell my client that when you put him in the cell with Brutus.”

“He’s putting himself in that cell.”

This is deteriorating. I try a little reason.

“My guy was just the bean counter,” I tell him. “He kept the union books.”

“Cooked them is more like it,” says Acosta. “From what I hear, the union fund is about a half million light.”

I give him a look, like news to me. “Maybe you should ask the union officers. Tony wasn’t even the treasurer. He just did the books on the side, a favor for some friends.”

“No doubt,” he says. “He was probably the only one in that crowd who could count beyond double digits without taking off his shoes.” Acosta does not have a high opinion of cops. To him, the competent ones are people to be shot at during times of danger; the more inept can spit-polish his black, pointy cowboy boots in moments of tedium. I have actually seen his bailiff doing this chore.

My client has sworn to me on successive occasions that he has taken no money. Still I suspect Tony knows where substantial quantities of it are buried, like bleached bones, and who among his cabal of junkyard dogs did the digging. It is this, evidence of some criminal conspiracy and financial fraud within the union, that Acosta wants-something he can trade with the city bosses, a political commodity like pork bellies. It would break the union’s back, send the boys in blue, tails between their legs, scurrying back to work. In short, a criminal indictment would bust what is now a budding strike.

“You issue an order for contempt,” I tell him, “and we’ll get a stay. Take it to the appellate court.”

“In two or three days maybe.” Acosta’s face says it all: In the meantime your client gets a whole new insight into the human sex drive .

This is an outrage and I tell him so, a potential death sentence to an officer who is only on the fringe in this thing, not one of the movers and shakers in the association.

There is something dark and subterranean in Acosta’s smile as he stares at me from the other side of the desk, its surface littered with papers and assorted objects the culturally deprived might call art. There is a metal work of Don Quixote tilting at a tin windmill, a gift from some gullible civic group that mistook the judge’s avarice and political ambitions for a noble quest. The only thing the Coconut has in common with this metal rendition of fiction’s great Don is a hard ass.

“Do we have an understanding?” he says. Acosta is in my face.

“Let me see if I got this right: You want my client to give up his rights-maybe incriminate himself. If I refuse, you will stick him in a cell with some animal and let the law of nature take its course.”

He gives me an expression, the loose translation of which confirms my description of the options available.

“Maybe we should call in the reporter and put it on the record,” I tell him.

His thin lips curl, a dark grin, as if to say, “Fat chance.”

“Your man is going to talk or do time, maybe both,” he says. “But he is going to talk. You should prepare him for that”

“You make it sound personal,” I tell him.

“No. No. It is not personal.”

“Then political,” I say.

“Ah. There you have me.” With Acosta there is no embarrassment in admitting this. “There is always a price when you back the wrong horse in a race.” He searches for a moment, then says: “What’s his name-Johnston?”

He is at least honest about this. It is business. He can’t even remember the man’s name who is running against him.

“It is. .” He thinks for a moment, finds the right word. “. . a matter of survival,” he says. “I’ve been on this bench for twenty years. Treated them decently. Never abused a man in uniform on the stand. And they do this,” he says.

He ignores the fact that he has been letting pimps and prostitutes go for years. With Acosta it was either professional courtesy or a deposit on the layaway plan. You could never be sure. Either way, the cops on Vice didn’t like it. It was cause for some rancor among the rank and file, and no doubt a major factor in their decision to back another horse.

“Sounds like you have a conflict. Maybe you should step down on this one,” I tell him.

“Nice try,” he says. “But your client didn’t give my opponent any money. Just the union. And they have no standing in the question of whether he testifies.”

Legally he is right, though as a practical matter it is the brotherhood of cops and their union that are the focal points of this entire exercise. And Acosta knows it.

“We know damn well that your client heard things,” he says.