26
“Ricky, how’s it going? It’s Oscar.”
“Hey Oscar. Things have been better. I figured. Can we meet?”
“Can you meet near my old office in an hour? It pains me to walk by the building, but I had to tell the renters that we could no longer afford the overhead. Another lawyer rented it and is working out of it. I hope that he has better luck than I did.”
“That works for me.”
While many people, including many law enforcement officials, only saw Oscar Cruz as a gang member, I didn’t see him as “Slappy” the gang leader. Instead, I viewed him as a troubled kid who had a hard time getting out of the gang life and kept struggling to survive. He was not a saint, but he treated me with more respect than many other people I knew in my life.
“Hello! I’m outside the coffee shop next to my office.”
