“But ever since Ruben,” Restrepo continued, “I believe these stories. They're true! I realize that, now -- but what can I do?” He shrugged, nervously aware that he was talking to people who had made that discovery a long time ago. “Just the other night,” he said, "I got a call from a man who said the cops killed his cousin in the yail. He was a homosexual, a young Chicano, nobody political -- and the police report said he hung himself in his cell. Suicide. So I checked it out. And, man, it made me sick. This guy's body was all bruises, black and blue marks all over him -- and right across his forehead he had 16 fresh stitches.

"The police report said he tried to escape so they had to dominate him. They got him sewed up at the hospital, but when they took him to yail, the warden or yailer or whatever they call the bastard wouldn't accept him, because he was bleeding so bad. So they took him back to the hospital and got a doctor to sign some paper saying he was OK to be put in the yail. But they had to carry him. And the next day they took a picture of him hanging from the end of the top bunk with his own shirt tied around his neck.

“You believe that? Not me. But you tell me -- what can I do? Where do I look for the truth? Who can I ask? The sheriff? Goddamn, I can't go on the air with a story about how the cops killed a guy in the yail unless I know something for proof! Jesus Christ, we all know. But just to know is not enough. You understand that? You see why I never made that story on TV?”

Acosta nodded. As a lawyer, he understood perfectly that evidence is necessary -- on the air and in print, as well as in the courtroom. But Frank was not convinced. He was sipping from a quart of sweet Key Largo wine, and in fact he didn't even know who Restrepo was. “Sorry, man,” he'd said earlier. “But I don't watch the news on TV.”

Acosta winced. He watches and reads everything. But most of the people around him think The News -- on the TV or radio or newspapers or wherever -- is just another rotten gabacho trick. Just another bad shuck, like the others. “The news,” to them, is pure propaganda -- paid for by the advertisers. “Who pays the bill for that bullshit?” they ask. “Who's behind it?”

Who indeed? Both sides seemed convinced that the “real enemy” is a vicious conspiracy of some kind. The Anglo power structure keeps telling itself that “the Mexican problem” is really the work of a small organization of well-trained Communist agitators, working 25 hours a day to transform East L.A. into a wasteland of constant violence -- mobs of drug-crazed Chicanos prowling the streets at all times, terrorizing the merchants, hurling firebombs into banks, looting stores, sacking offices and massing now and then, armed with Chinese sten pistols, for all-out assaults on the local sheriff's fortress.