“Fuck.” Rivers flipped a hand. If it got him a pass, he’d hand that pistol over to God Himself.
“Okay, so nobody’s calling the cops liars, I make the decision not to prosecute you, and we get another gun off the street.”
Rivers pointed at him, animated now, seeing real hope for the first time. “And you put it in writing, too.”
Kolarich smiled. “You’re a smart man. Yeah, of course I will. In fact, I’ll write it first, so you know I’m being straight.”
Kolarich slid the notepad over in front of him and removed the Bic pen from his pocket.
In exchange for the statement below, the county attorney’s office agrees not to prosecute Marshall Rivers in state court for unlawful use of a weapon or for any other firearms charge and will transfer this matter in accordance with Operation Safe Streets. Mr. Rivers acknowledges that he’s been made aware of his rights pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona.
Kolarich signed his name below the words and drew a signature line for Marshall Rivers, too. “There,” he said, sliding the notepad across to Rivers.
Rivers read it over, then looked up at Kolarich. “What’s that mean, a ‘transfer’?”
“It means I’m going to close the file,” said Kolarich. “I ‘transfer’ it from an ‘active’ case to a ‘closed’ case.”
Rivers looked down at the paper again. “And what’s this Oper-”
“Operation Safe Streets is our program for getting guns off the street. If you bring in a gun, we take it, no questions asked. That’s why I can do this, Marshall. That’s why I can give you a pass. Because you’re giving up the gun.”
The best lies, in Kolarich’s experience, had some truth interwoven. There had, truly, been programs like that in the past, sponsored by the city police department. Most people had heard of them, presumably Marshall included. Bring in your gun, we’ll take it off your hands, you walk away, no hassle.
But it wasn’t called Operation Safe Streets.
Rivers scratched at his face. “Should I get a lawyer?”
“That’s absolutely your right,” said Kolarich. “Might not be a bad idea. You want a lawyer to look at it, no problem.” He checked his watch. “Shit,” he said.
“What?”
Kolarich tapped his watch. There was a clock on the wall as well. “This time of night, there isn’t a public defender around. You can sleep in a cell downstairs and they’ll have one for you, maybe, noon tomorrow. Another twelve, thirteen hours. It’s absolutely your right,” he repeated. “Plus. . well. .” Kolarich grimaced.
“What?”
“Well, the coppers again.” Kolarich leaned his head on a hand. “Can I just say this? Cops are a pain in the ass.”
“What about ’em?”
Kolarich sighed. “The two cops that pinched you, they have to stay here until this is closed. They’ll have to stay here all night. I’m just worried that, if I make them wait, they’re going to say to me, Why not just charge Marshall so we can all go home? For them, that’s the easiest outcome. They just want me to sign off on a charge of unlawful use of a weapon so they can go home.” Kolarich sighed again. “Which, I suppose, is the easier thing to do, now that I’m thinking-”
“No, no.” Rivers waved his hands. “I wanna go home, too, right?”
Kolarich shrugged. “Yeah, we all do. But you definitely have the right to a lawyer-”
“Nah, nah. I get what this says. I get it.”
Rivers picked up his pen and started writing. He signed it in both places, next to Kolarich’s signature on the prefatory language and at the bottom after his written statement.
“Great,” said Kolarich after reading the statement. “You’ll be out of here in ten minutes, Marshall.” He extended a hand, and Rivers shook it.
“Appreciate that, man. Y’know, all of this.”
“No worries.”
Kolarich left the room with the piece of paper and walked into the squad room. Walking out of the kitchen was Steve Glockner, the assistant public defender assigned to the station house, holding a cup of coffee.
“Hey, Jason,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Not much. You?”
Glockner sighed. “Busy night. Sometimes I wish some of these mutts wouldn’t invoke.”
Glockner was prone to the occasional off-color remark about his clientele, but deep down he was a true believer in the Bill of Rights. Working inside this station house on a crazy multiple-day shift like Kolarich, but on the other side of the equation, he mainly wanted to make sure suspects didn’t confess without speaking to him first. But first they had to invoke, they had to utter those magical words: I want a lawyer. Until then, a public defender had no role in the process.
Kolarich put a hand on his shoulder. “The right to an attorney is inviolate,” he said. “Sacred. Cherished.”
Glockner gestured absently toward the interrogation rooms. “I heard someone came in on an attempted kidnapping?”
Kolarich made a face. “Didn’t pan out. Dropping that charge.”
Glockner put his face in the steam of the coffee. He was just as tired as Kolarich. “Score one for the bad guys,” he said.
When Glockner left, Kolarich looked around the squad room and had no difficulty finding his man. He looked like a bank manager in his suit.
“Mr. Kolarich?”
“Agent Drew?”
Special Agent Frank Drew was working the late-duty shift tonight for the FBI. He extended a hand to Kolarich. “Romie says you’re good people.”
Kolarich shook it. “What did he really say?”
Drew laughed. “He said he owes you.”
Patrick Romer was an assistant United States attorney who had worked with Kolarich on a joint state-federal drug operation last year. Kolarich had helped him beyond what was necessary, including helping a recalcitrant witness modify his attitude.
“This guy, Rivers, has one prior gun violation,” said Drew. “We usually want more than that for Safe Streets.”
Operation Safe Streets was a program launched by the U.S. Attorney’s Office that scooped eligible firearms cases from local law enforcement so that the cases could be prosecuted in federal court, where the penalties for repeat gun offenses could reach the double digits in years. Typically, they found offenders with multiple gun violations on their records and put them away for ten to fifteen years in federal prison.
“This is his third time using a gun,” said Kolarich. “He pleaded down the first one, so he only shows one gun violation. But it’s really two. Tonight is his third.”
“Only counts as two. You know that.”
“He’s a bad guy, Agent Drew.”
“Still.”
“Still, what? He attacks women. He’s evil, this guy. And anyway, is this your call?”
Drew smiled. “You know it’s not.”
“Romie authorized this,” said Kolarich. “He said if I got a confession, he’d authorize it. Well, I got a confession.”
Gun-toss cases could be tricky, Patrick Romer had told Kolarich over the phone. It’s one thing to find the gun on his person, another to find it on the street and say that you saw him toss it. A gun toss and only one prior gun conviction? he’d said. But Kolarich pushed the matter hard, and Romer finally got tired of listening to him. Get me a confession, Romer had said. You get me a confession, and we’ll prosecute.
“Romie authorized it,” Drew agreed. “I’m just saying, you won’t get fifteen years for this. Maybe ten, more like six or seven if he pleads-”
“Yeah, and we prosecute him in state court, it’ll be, like, two or three, probably. This guy attacks women, Agent Drew. This is his third victim. I’ll take six years over two any day.”
Drew wagged the file in his hand. “Speaking of women. What about this witness? Caridad. . Flores?”