December 1981
The Black Striker Gets Hit
Lee Chagra lived in the border underworld of El Paso, a place where drugs were the game and even the good guys didn’t play by the rules. When you live that way, chances are you’ll die that way too.
On the night before he was murdered, Lee Chagra returned home to El Paso flushed with the euphoria a gambler feels when he believes his luck is changing. Lee had been in Tucson trying a case for most of the past two weeks, and when the Friday night plane began its approach over the Upper Valley and through the Pass, he caught a glimpse of the lighted Christmas star on the slopes of Mount Franklin. The verdict in the Tucson trial had been sublime: in a highly publicized, multicount bank fraud indictment, Lee had walked his man on every count. It was his most important victory in months—and his most profitable. It was three days before Christmas, 1978.
All things considered, 1978 has probably been the worst year of Lee Chagra’s life. Worse than 1973, the year the federal government indicted him on a trumped-up marijuana trafficking charge in Nashville and nearly destroyed his law practice. Worse even then the chain reaction of disasters in 1977: the crash of one of his brother Jimmy’s drug smuggling planes in Colombia, Jimmy’s botched foray to rescue the pilot, Lee’s frantic scramble to rescue Jimmy, his running courtroom battle with federal prosecutor James Kerr and Judge John Wood. This year, 1978, had been a year of galloping paranoia. Lee had always lived his life on the edge of respectability, goading the El Paso establishment by defending hardened criminals, consorting with known drug smugglers, and cultivating his image as the Black Striker. Through it all, he had somehow clung to the central fact in his life: Lee Chagra was a topflight criminal attorney.
But now the years of fast living were catching up. His practice had foundered, he had run up huge gambling debts, his life was peopled with shysters and thugs; and if the truth was known, Lee himself had become little more than a highly paid functionary in Jimmy’s fluctuating gang of smugglers.
What’s more, Kerr and Wood and the entire apparatus of the federal government were breathing down his neck. They were making a career, or at least a crusade, of trying to prove that Lee Chagra master criminal lawyer, was in fact master criminal.
For months Lee had been unable to shake the premonition that something wild and uncontrollable had broken loose. The madness seemed to peak in November, when two men in a van sprayed Kerr’s car with buckshot and .30-caliber bullets. Federal agents turned up at Lee’s office the next morning to confiscate his gun collection and question him about the unsuccessful assassination attempt.
On the plane from Tucson, Lee must have reflected on the paradox of his life. He sat next to a lawyer who worked for one of El Paso’s established firms in one of the high-rise glass towers that dominate the downtown district. The lawyer mentioned that he sometimes looked down at the office complex that Lee was remodeling and experienced pangs of envy. “You’ve got everything I ever dreamed of having,” the lawyer said. Lee laughed with pride. The other lawyer couldn’t appreciate the irony, but until that moment, Lee had always envied him. The new office was a show of faith, or at least tenacity, and it made Lee feel good to know that someone else appreciated it. His staff had completed the move while he was in Tucson, and in the morning he would officially take possession: it would be his first day there and, as fate decreed, his last.
Jo Annie, Lee’s boyhood sweetheart and the wife who had seen him through law school and nineteen years of an emotionally charged marriage, met him at the airport. Two of their five children were with her. They had a surprise for Lee—a new Lincoln limousine with a portable bar, a TV, a stereo, an even a secret compartment to conceal his guns and playing cards. The perfect vehicle for the imperfect time. The family had a late dinner. Lee couldn’t stop talking about Tucson. It had been months since anyone had seen him so animated.
Sometime in the middle of the night, after everyone else was asleep, Lee changed clothes and drove to his new office. He let himself in with a specially made key and walked upstairs. He unlocked the door to his private bath. The money was in the canvas tennis bag under the sink. There was a steel floor safe sunk into five feet of concrete, but like the other safes, it hadn’t yet been completely installed. Lee counted out $75,000, slipped it into his coat pocket, and headed for his clandestine appointment.
As he pulled off the exit ramp above a truck stop on IH 10, Lee could see the Indian’s car parked in the shadows behind some eighteen-wheelers that idled in the predawn chill. The Indian brushed a strand of limp hair over his bald spot as he walked toward Lee’s car. The Indian wasn’t a man most folks would care to meet in the dark—there was a .22 pistol under his stained leather jacket, and his face looked like forty miles of bad highway. But Lee trusted him. The Indian worked as a collector for several Las Vegas casinos. Lee joked as he gave the Indian the $75,000, and the Indian mumbled and studied his boots. That was it, the last of the half-million the Black Striker had blown in Vegas the year before.
“What’s It All For?”
The next morning, a Saturday, was one of those perfect December days in El Paso when the desert air is so crisp you can hear it and the mountains loom out of the blue shadows and change colors before your eyes. Loaves of Syrian bread were baking in the kitchen. From a radio in another part of the house, Sinatra was singing about doing it his way. Lee’s morning coffee was perfect, and the cocaine was first-rate.
Lee had showered and was standing in front of the bathroom mirror in his shorts when his brother Jimmy’s ex-wife, Vivian, arrived. He called her into the bedroom. Vivian did her best to smile. She knew that Lee had just come through many weeks of hard times and she hated asking for money, but Jimmy was months behind in support payments. She had come to count on Lee—although she suspected that the money Lee gave her came from Jimmy anyway. And she suspected that some of the money that was paying off Lee’s elaborate new offices and his gambling debts came from Jimmy. But she wasn’t about to inquire; nothing brought Lee down faster than the slightest hint that he might somehow be beholden to Jimmy, even temporarily.
Vivian felt Jo Annie’s dark eyes following her into the bedroom. Whatever Jo Annie was thinking, she wouldn’t say anything. All of Lee’s personal affairs, especially those with women, were conducted behind closed doors. Vivian remembered the previous Saturday at his office; she’s heard murmurs from the staff as she followed him upstairs. Everyone had assumed they’d made love—Lee made a point of keeping her in his office long enough, then he flushed the toilet and gave her the money. The staff knew the ritual, but no one knew for sure what went on behind the closed door. That’s the way Lee wanted it.
Lee was preoccupied this morning. He hardly seemed aware she was in the room. He looked smaller than life as he stood there, facing the dresser, looking at the picture of his father and seeing his own reflection. Dad had been gone for eight years. Lee held the picture so it caught the light. “What’s it all for?” he said out loud, and Vivian could see the tears in his eyes and hear the catch in his voice. “He was up and down all his life…struggling. Just barely making it. Up and then down.” Vivian said she didn’t know. She had put the same question to herself. For six years now she’d been divorced from Jimmy and nothing much had changed. All she’d ever had was a future somewhat less than promising. Jimmy had given her a couple of kids and a lasting pain in the ass. There was a line from The Picture of Dorian Gray that she liked to paraphrase: “I hope that when I die and go to hell, they deduct those four years I spent with Jimmy Chagra.” She almost said it now, but the suffering in Lee’s eyes cut her off.
“I’m sick and tired of being the fall guy,” Lee said, and Vivian knew that he was talking about Jimmy. She didn’t know the details, but she had heard that Jimmy and his new wife, Liz, were living it up in Vegas. So Jimmy’s smuggling operation must be thriving as Lee’s law practice crumbled. Lee was down and Jimmy was up. And it was killing Lee.
“Maybe it will get better,” Vivian said. Lee kissed her and slipped her the money.
By the time Lee finished dressing, Jo Annie had breakfast ready—freshly baked Syrian bread, butter, and a variety of fruit preserves. While Lee ate, Jo Annie puttered with the Christmas decorations. If she realized how pressed he had been for money in recent months, she didn’t show it. Jo Annie’s own family, the Abrahams, had considerable wealth, and she continued to collect antiques and preserve an extravagant lifestyle. She had bought the Lincoln limo because she wanted to give her husband “something crazy after all these years.”
This morning Jo Annie had another surprise, a block of tickets to the afternoon’s Sun Bowl football game between Texas and Maryland. Lee had $15,000 riding on the game. He seemed pleased with the gesture but told her there was some work he needed to do at the office. He would try to join the family by half-time. That was when Jo Annie remembered the telephone call.
“A man named David Long phoned before you woke up,” she told him. “Something about a will, about some large estate in California? He needs you to look it over before he mails it back.”
“David Long?” Lee said. He didn’t appear to recognize the name.
