All this work for nothing. Well, not for nothing as far as we’re concerned. Our client was not convicted of murder.
Loomis and his team leave a trail of angry smoke as they exit. Somebody is going to tie one on tonight. The whole team of them. Cordova and his group will match them shot for shot, and then some.
“What does this mean?” Salazar asks me as we stand in the fast-emptying room. “Am I free?”
“No,” I answer. “You’re not.”
His eyes widen with uncertainty. “Am I going to have to go back to jail?”
“For now. Until the prosecution decides whether they want to try you again.”
He looks baffled. “How can they do that? I thought they could only try you once.”
“Not if the result is a hung jury. I’ll explain it all later.” I grip his arm. “Hang in a little longer. Trust me. We did better than I expected.”
“How better? I’m not guilty.”
I can’t deal with this now, especially since the baby has decided to go bronco riding inside my belly. “We will talk it all out later.”
Standing at the railing behind me, Amanda and Mrs. Salazar converge on us. The bailiff cuts them some slack, so they can have time with him. Mrs. Salazar is in shock—she doesn’t know what is happening. Amanda, however, is beaming. She knows that under the circumstances, not losing was almost as good as winning.
She gives Roberto a hug of encouragement. “We’ll beat this,” she tells him. “Don’t give up.”
Joe, who is shoving his papers into his briefcase, looks at Salazar and Amanda as they embrace. He shakes his head and chuckles to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I ask him. I’m thrilled for what we pulled off, but I see no humor in it.
He looks at Salazar and Amanda, still close to each other. “You ever see those pictures of dogs and their owners? How the owners and dogs wind up looking like each other? Winston Churchill and his bulldog—that sort of comparison?”
“Yes, I’ve seen them. So?”
“Turns out, it’s true. Some ancient genetic built-in safety factor—you’re attracted to those who look like you. A protective element.”
“I guess. So what?”
“Her and him,” he says. Meaning Amanda and Salazar. “Don’t you see the similarities?”
“What?” I look at Amanda, then from her to Salazar. “No way. She’s your quintessential WASP, and he’s Latino. How do you get that?”
“The basic structure of their faces, particularly around the eyes. They resemble each other,” he insists.
I look at both of them again, more carefully this time.
Oh, my God,
I think. I start to shake.
Oh, my God.
BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT
Amanda Jill Thompson
Place of Birth: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,
Los Angeles, California
Weight: 8 pounds, 14 ounces
Height: 22 ½ inches
Color of hair: Black
Color of Eyes: Blue
Condition of Child: Perfect
I
T WAS, ALL THINGS
considered, not the hardest of deliveries in the history of the world. The pain was excruciating, but I managed to bear it and get through without succumbing to drugs. Amanda, godmother and surrogate grandmother, was a wonderful coach and supporter. She broke into tears when I told her what I was naming my baby.
Giving birth hurt more than running the marathon. A lot more. Dealing with that pain will make the next marathon easier.
Mother and daughter are at home, resting and (in mother’s case) recovering. I took a leave of absence. The Public Defender’s Office allows six months of maternity leave, but there is no maternity pay, which sucks. We are the bottom of the totem pole. Rank has its privileges, and lack of rank doesn’t.
It doesn’t matter. I’m not going back.
The District Attorney revived the case against Salazar. He will be tried again, next year. Our office won’t be handling the defense this time around. Frankly, there was no appetite for it. We would have if we’d been compelled to do so—that’s our job—but Amanda stepped in and hired a private attorney. Abby Lench is one of the best criminal defense lawyers in Los Angeles. Salazar is in good hands.
“Abby may do better than we did,” Joe said, when we found out who Salazar’s new lawyer was. “He might turn up an alibi witness for Salazar.”
More than anything, that was our Achilles’ heel. No alibi witness. If we’d had one, the momentum, and probably the verdict, would have swung in our favor.
“Because he’ll have a blank check to hunt one up,” I answered. I agreed with Joe. We did the best we could, but we work for the government. Our budget and resources are limited. Amanda will pay for whatever Abby Lench tells her he needs.
Joe gave me the old fisheye then. “Because he’ll buy one.” He sounded tired and cynical. “Like the eyewitness who suddenly changed her story.”
We did stick around long enough to petition Judge Suzuki for bail, and over Loomis’s strenuous objection, it was granted. The bond was set at a million dollars. Amanda wrote the check without batting an eye. Salazar has gone back to work, although more than half of his clients dropped him, particularly on the Westside. He has picked up some new ones, but in less expensive neighborhoods. He is out of jail and walking the streets again, that’s the main thing.
But not at night or early in the morning, regardless of the phase of the moon. Joe and I drummed that into his head. They are going to be gunning for you, we warned him. You have to be cleaner than Mr. Clean. Immaculate. He understood. If it means he has to fight traffic on the freeway in the morning, that’s better than being locked up again.
Speaking of Joe, he came over for a visit a few days ago. He comes to the house a couple times a month. As usual, his arms were full of clothes and toys for the baby. He has adult children, but no grandchildren yet, so he carries on about her like crazy.
Not the way Amanda does, though. As far as she is concerned, this is the most special baby that has ever been born. The Christ Child pales in comparison. She has already established a trust fund for her namesake’s education. Not just for college, but beginning with nursery school. My baby is never going to want for anything, at least materially.
And she will be greatly loved. I know what it feels like not to be. The sins of my mother shall not be visited on my daughter.
We fly Southwest Airlines, Burbank to Albuquerque. The baby was four months old yesterday. This is our first trip away from home. The attendants are very helpful—they board us early and give us the best seats. Amanda fusses a little during the flight, but I calm her by nursing. I pick up our rental car, a new-smelling Toyota Corolla complete with baby seat, and head north on 1-25. At Santa Fe we connect to U.S. 285, and take it to New Mexico State Highway 68, which will lead us from Española to Taos.
The northern New Mexico landscape unfolds outside the car windows. The sky is clear, blue-white, virtually cloudless. Cactus, sage, brown earth outcroppings. Mountains loom in the north and west. This is a beautiful part of the world. The elevation is high, the air is thin, clean. So different from Los Angeles. You can get lost here, inside your own head. A good place for rejuvenation, rebirth. It’s easy to understand why Amanda chose to retreat here, thirty-five years ago.
I pull off the paved road onto a private hard-packed dirt one that is barely wide enough for one vehicle. The dirt was oiled recently, so it isn’t too bumpy, but I drive at a snail’s pace. I am in no hurry. In her car seat in the back, my baby snores little bubbles.
The sanctuary is a cluster of low adobe buildings. They are almost the same color as their surroundings, so you don’t see them until you are almost on top of them. I park in front of the largest one. There are a couple of other vehicles in the compound, an old Jeep and a Dodge minivan that is caked with mud. I get out and stretch my legs, inhaling deeply. A sharp smell of sage burns my nostrils. I take Amanda out of her car seat and slide her into the Snugli. She folds herself into my chest.
The nuns who run this refuge don’t wear traditional habits. The one who comes out to greet me is clad in jeans, Birkenstock sandals, wool socks, a ratty sweatshirt. Her gray hair is shapeless, almost bowl-cut. Decades of exposure to the high sun and sky have weathered her face, lines crisscrossing it like an old road map that has been folded and refolded a thousand times.
Now I know the meaning of the word
beatific.
It is her smile of greeting. She is, as I gleaned from our correspondence, more than eighty years old.
She looks at Amanda, who stares back at her. For a four-month-old baby, her stare is penetrating. “Oh, my,” the old nun coos. “She is a beauty.”
We walk through the compound to her office, passing other nuns along the way who are variations on the same theme as hers. All older women. None, I would think, younger than sixty. Most of them in their seventies and eighties. As they die off, they are not replaced. Attrition will close this place within a couple of decades. That’s a shame—they have been providing an important service for many years. From before Amanda Burgess came to them in her time of need.
“Hundreds of women have come to us,” Sister Mary Barbara tells me. “I remember most of them. I certainly remember her,” she says, when we are seated in her office, two mugs of steaming green tea in front of us. “She was different from the other girls who come here. A woman, not a girl. And not poor. Educated.” Another warm smile. “We take everyone who needs us. Age or race or money is not a factor.”
I don’t like to lie, especially to nuns, but I had concocted an elaborate set of falsehoods to explain why I was searching for information about Amanda. That I was her niece. That she was about to die and wanted to close her circles, including the one regarding the child she had out of wedlock.
That information wasn’t hard to uncover. A good detective and the universal tentacles of the Internet mean there is no more privacy. The detective I hired was good. She found out what I needed in less than a week.
That was last week. Now I’m here. My daughter is nestled in the old nun’s lap. I asked if she would like to hold her, and my offer was eagerly accepted. The baby lies there peacefully. She can feel that she is in safe hands.
“Or religion? My aunt isn’t Catholic.”
“Or religion,” the sweet old nun confirms. “We have had Jewish girls, Muslims, nonbelievers. As long as they want to continue their pregnancies, we take them in. No strings attached, no questions asked.”
“Do the girls’ families know they have come here?”
“Some do. Some don’t. We prefer that the family knows, but for some girls that is not possible. Some were victims of incest or rape. Some are running away from abusive situations. We provide a safe haven.”
“And you handle the adoptions as well?”
She nods. “Yes. That is the only religious part of the process. We are a Catholic organization, and we try to put the newborns with Catholic families.” She sips some tea. So do I. It’s good. Lots of honey.
“We only place the children with families,” she continues. “No single parents, or single-sex relationships. I hope you don’t feel that makes us prejudiced,” she says apologetically. “But we are Catholics,” she repeats. “We follow the tenets of our church.”
“I understand,” I tell her.
She wants to make sure that I do, from their point of view. “We believe a child has the best chance of success in the most normal family possible. It is hard enough finding out you were adopted. That your birth mother did not keep you. There are always abandonment issues, no matter how loving the adoptive family is.” She pauses. “That is one of our rules. That the child will be told he or she was adopted.”
“A good one,” I agree. I believe that. Sooner or later, a child would learn the truth. If the adoption was kept from them, finding out under the wrong circumstances could be devastating.
I have another question. I have so many questions. “What happens if the mother wants to keep her child after it is born?”
The old nun frowns. “We discourage that. Legally, we cannot force them to give it up, but we put pressure on them.” Another sip of tea. “It isn’t because we don’t believe a child should be with its mother. Of course we do. But the girls who come to us don’t do so because they have their lives in order. They come here because they don’t. If they keep their babies, they will be taking them back into that same chaotic and dangerous life they were running away from. Too many times, the results are tragic.”
I know. I’ve seen what happens to kids growing up in poverty, surrounded by crime.
There is a bit of hypocrisy here, because I am a single parent; but my baby will not be in that situation. And this sweet lady sitting across from me doesn’t know my hubby isn’t waiting back home, pining for our return. She doesn’t know that the wedding ring on my finger was bought yesterday at a jewelry cart in the Third Street Mall in Santa Monica.
“Are the adoptions set up in advance?” I ask her.
“Sometimes. It isn’t always possible.”
“Was it with my aunt?”
“No.”
Now, the question. It is a guess, but an educated one. “Because her baby was part Chicano.”
She nods. “He was a beautiful boy. Almost as beautiful as this little one,” she says, cradling my Amanda in her arms.
Amanda Burgess did not leave Los Angeles and come out here for a spiritual retreat after her marriage collapsed. She came here because she was pregnant with an illegitimate child, by a Latino father.
“The baby was given up for adoption.”
“Yes.”
“To a Chicano family? Mexican American?”
“I believe so. Those records are confidential.”
“I understand. But do you keep up? To make sure the situation is good, later on?”
“Yes, we do. Not officially, but we do.”
“And his situation was good?”
A vigorous nod. “It was. Which was lucky, because there aren’t many qualified Latino families out there. Don’t get me wrong, Latinos are wonderful family people. But they usually have their own children, or children of relatives. Placing an orphan Latino child can be difficult.” She smiles. “But he was so adorable. And this family could not have children of their own. So it worked out.”