The next morning, September 30, 1992, now back in my own apartment, I
was
sleeping fitfully, feeling nervous and jumpy, never quite entirely asleep.
Around 6:00 a.m., I woke up, alarmed. Someone was jiggling a key in
my apartment door. I was expecting the Feds, but they don’t use a key, they
pound. Was this somebody trying to break in? I shouted,
“Who’s there?”
hoping to scare the intruder away.
“FBI—open up!”
I thought,
This is it. I’m going back to jail
.
Even though
I had known they were coming, I wasn’t emotionally
prepared. How could I be? I was petrified of getting arrested.
I answered the door, not even realizing I was stark naked. At the front of
the pack was a lady agent, who couldn’t keep herself from glancing down.
Then a whole team stepped into view and pushed their way into the
room. They shook down
the place while I got dressed, even thoroughly
inspecting the contents of the fridge. No one commented or cracked a smile
at my “FBI doughnuts” sign, and the entire dozen went untouched.
But I had done a good cleanup job. They didn’t find anything
incriminating in the fridge, and they didn’t find anything anywhere else that
would help their case.
Of course they didn’t like that, and they didn’t like my naive, playing-
dumb attitude.
One agent sat down at the kitchen table and said, “Come over here, let’s
talk.” FBI agents are generally very polite,
and this guy and I knew each
other. He was Special Agent Richard Beasley, an agent who had been
involved in my DEC case. He said in a friendly tone and with what sounded
like a Texas drawl, “Kevin, this is your second time around. We’re
searching De Payne right now. He’s cooperating.
Unless you cooperate,
you’re going to be sitting on the back of the bus.”
I had never heard the expression before, but the meaning was clear: the
first guy to roll over on the other one gets a much better deal. Lewis and I
had talked about this many times. “What would you do if the police
questioned you?” one of us would ask the other.
The answer always was, “Tell them to talk to my lawyer.”
I wasn’t going to rat on him, and I knew he’d be a stand-up guy for me,
as well.
Beasley pulled out a tape cassette. He asked me, “Do you have a cassette
player?”
“No!”
I couldn’t figure this. The agency that likes to think it’s the best law
enforcement
agency in the United States, if not the world, comes with a
cassette tape they want me to listen to but nobody thinks to bring along a
player?
One of the other agents spotted my large boom box and brought it over.
Beasley put in the cassette and punched Play.
I heard a call being dialed and Mark Kasden talking in the background.
Then my voice. It sounded like Mark and I were talking in the same room. I
could hear the ringing sound after the digits were dialed.
The next voice to spill out of the boom box said something like,
“Welcome to Pacific Bell voicemail. Please enter your mailbox number.”
More digits being dialed.
“Please enter your password.”
“You have three new messages.”
And then, “Hi, Darrell, this is David Simon. Please call me at 818 783-
42XX.”
Then another call. My voice again, saying, “Hey, Detective Simon just
called Santos.”
Beasley shut off the tape player.
“What do you have to say?” he challenged.
I’m afraid I sneered at him. “It’s amazing what the FBI can do with
technology.”
I said it arrogantly, looking him straight in the eye.
Another agent who’d been standing next to us throughout this exchange
reached over, grabbed the boom box, and yanked the cassette door right off.
Like a four-year-old having a temper tantrum.
The agents fanned out to search. I sat at the table watching.
Another agent arrived. He handed me his card, which said “Supervisory
Special Agent.” He opened a large loose-leaf notebook he had brought and
started jotting notes.
After a few moments, he looked up and asked,
“Where’s his computer?”
“We didn’t find one,” he was told.
He looked annoyed.
They kept searching.
Finally I asked the agent in charge, “Am I under arrest?”
“No,” he said.
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