Land of Careful Shadows (13 page)

“Twenty minutes and fifty bucks says you're wrong.”

Adele frowned. “What? You think you can buy me?”

“Buy you? Never. Bet you? Absolutely. You're a lawyer and a fencer. My guess is, you hate to lose at anything.”

“So do you, apparently.”

“I wouldn't know,” he grinned. “I don't get much practice.”

She sighed. “Twenty minutes—if only to wipe that smug look off your face.”

“Deal.”

The employer files were in Adele's back office in a locked cabinet. A red light blinked on her answering machine and she listened to her messages, scribbling notes on a pad.

“Do you need to call someone? Let them know you'll be late to the
quinceañera?
”

“I don't think I'll get Gabby's father. The whole Martinez family's probably still at the church.”

“I mean—” he stumbled about “—a date.”

“It's not that sort of event.”

“You could've fooled me with that pretty red dress you've got in the car.”

Adele blushed. He hadn't meant to embarrass her. He wondered whether she had many opportunities to wear such a dress if she was wasting it on the fifteenth birthday party of a former client's daughter. He never cared much for
quinceañeras.
All the frills and formality. All the rampant materialism dressed up in the guise of faith and culture. Just like Joy's bat mitzvah.

“Diego Martinez was one of my first clients at the center,” Adele explained. “He was one of the plaintiffs in my suit against the town. I'm very close to his family.”

“Sure. Okay.”

Adele pulled four files out of the middle drawer and laid them on her desk. “These are the records we have of people who hired clients from the center between September and December of last year. I'm not sure what good it will do you. Like the clients, a lot of employers won't give us any information because they don't want to get in trouble for hiring someone without papers. So these files are mostly homeowners who hire clients sporadically.”

She handed Vega a stack of folders and he began to thumb through the contents. Most of the individuals who hired La Casa's clients were from surrounding towns or The Farms. The board members themselves hired a lot of people. The jobs were what Vega expected: nanny, cook, groundskeeper, handyman, stonemason, housepainter.

Adele was right that the files were sketchy. Most offered a more telling glimpse of the employers than of the immigrants. One lady hired Rodrigo and his friends to move her exercise equipment—presumably because moving it required too much exercise. Another lady hired a woman to do nothing but clean out her twelve-year-old son's room. Still another, to babysit her three dogs while she went skiing in Aspen. There were outrageous requests as well: for a cook who could fix vegan, gluten-free meals. For a housekeeper who could care for three kids, two dogs, a four-thousand-square-foot house and also tutor the children in Spanish for their Regents Exams every evening. Vega wondered how these Anglos managed before they had a steady source of cheap labor. He supposed they actually had to raise their own kids, walk their own dogs, cook their own meals, clean their own homes, and mow their own lawns. The immigrants had allowed upper-middle-class Americans to live like pampered adolescents. No wonder the country was getting soft.

He even found a page from Wendy in the files. She had hired a man named Pablo to weed her flower garden. Kenny Cardenas's father Cesar was a gardener. He would have probably welcomed the work. Vega was surprised Wendy didn't hire him. Maybe it made Joy uncomfortable to have her boyfriend's father working like a field hand for her mother. Vega could understand that.

Adele slid a sheet in front of him. “I think I may owe you fifty bucks.”

The sheet was dated September thirtieth of last year. Cindy Klein of 43 Apple Ridge Drive, Lake Holly, had hired a live-in housekeeper from La Casa. Name: Maria Elena Vasquez. Age: thirty. From Aguas Calientes, Guatemala. Apple Ridge Drive, Vega knew, was in The Farms. About four streets over from Wendy.

“If it's her, you can use the fifty to buy Gabby Martinez a
quinceañera
present from me for keeping you all this time,” said Vega.

“You said Vasquez wasn't Maria's real name.”

“That's what Morales said. I'll just have to see what I can get from Cindy Klein.” He copied down the particulars in his notebook and dialed Klein's number. No answer. He was in the process of leaving a message with all his contact information when Adele got a call on her cell. He could hear her speaking to the caller in Spanish, assuring him that she'd be on her way soon.

Vega finished his call and stuffed his notepad in his jacket. “I'm real sorry I kept you, Adele. This helped a lot. I won't involve you or La Casa in any of this. You don't even have to drive me back to the station. I'll walk.” He headed for the door.

“Come.”

He turned. “Pardon?”

“You could come.” Her words had the weightless quality of a child's soap bubbles. Vega felt like if he examined them too closely, they'd burst and disappear.

“You mean—to the
quinceañera?
”

She ran a finger absentmindedly across the dented edge of her desktop. “You want the Latino community in Lake Holly to open up to you and trust you.” She shrugged. “A
quinceañera's
a good place to start.”

“But I don't know Diego Martinez or his daughter Gabby.”

“I was invited along with a date. You can be my date.”

“Huh.” Vega rubbed the back of his hand along the stubble on his chin. He was surprised and more than a little flattered. Adele fascinated him. That sharp intellect. That fiery streak. But she scared him a little too. Either way though, it was out of the question. “I can't, Adele.”

She turned away. “Okay, never mind. Bad idea.”

She thought he was rejecting her. It wasn't that at all. He glanced down at his muddy, blood-stained shirt and trousers. “Look at me. I can't go to a
quinceañera
dressed like this. Not with you in that pretty red dress.”

“You can just say ‘no,' you know. You don't have to let me down easy.”

“I'm not letting you down easy. Honest. I'd go if I had clean clothes.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

A smile slowly curved the corners of her lips. “Okay. Wait here.”

She went into the front room and came back moments later with something on a hanger wrapped in a dry cleaning bag. Vega frowned. He wasn't wearing some castoffs she had lying around for the day laborers.

“Adele—”

“—A couple of my clients have a little cumbia band going on on the side. I do them a favor and keep their clothes and instruments here so they don't have to worry about them getting stolen. The clothes are clean, I assure you. I get them dry-cleaned in exchange for the band playing at some of our events. I picked the shirt and pants of the tallest band member.”

“I'm not wearing some mariachi getup—”

“—It's not. It's just a black cotton shirt and tan pants. Would you at least look before you say no?”

The shirt was a hand-stitched
guayabera
, a traditional Mexican wedding shirt with four patch pockets across the front and tiny rows of tailored pleats running along the front and back. Vega had a shirt just like this before he married Wendy, also in black. He loved that shirt. It was comfortable, lightweight, and you never had to tuck it in. Wendy teased him that he looked like he was auditioning for the movie
Scarface
—all that was missing was the Cuban cigar. She gave the shirt to Goodwill a couple of years after they were married. He always said he'd buy another but he couldn't figure out when he'd wear it so he never did.

“Come on,” Adele coaxed. “It'll be fun. Good music. Good food.”

“My presence might make them uncomfortable.”

“
Their
presence might loosen you up.”

T
he
quinceañera
was in full swing by the time Vega and Adele showed up. They had missed the Mass at the church and the opening waltz but to Vega's mind that was better. All the formalities had been dispensed with. Men were already loosening their shirts and taking off their jackets and some of the women were kicking off their high heels so they could dance more comfortably to the cumbia and salsa tunes being rolled out at fever pitch by the live band. The smell of chili-and-garlic-spiced beef filled the air. Colored lights twinkled from strands that crisscrossed the ceiling of the assembly hall and gave the whole place a Christmas-like feel. In the middle of the dance floor, Gabby Martinez whirled around a sea of girls in poufy pastel-colored ball gowns. She was easy to spot because she was the one in pink ruffles wearing a rhinestone tiara and carrying a matching scepter that one of the teenage boys was stroking rather obscenely at the moment to all the teenagers' delight.

There were easily a hundred guests inside what had once been some sort of warehouse and now constituted the banquet space of the church next door: Iglesia La Luz del Mundo. In English: Light of the World Church. The immigrants didn't attend Our Lady of Sorrows, which probably explained why Vega never saw more than a handful of old-timers and bored children coming out of there these days.

“I don't know any of these people,” he said nervously. “Maybe they wouldn't like me being here.”

“Relax, Vega. You're my guest.”

“Well if I'm your guest,” he flashed her his best smile—“maybe you should start calling me Jimmy.”

She blushed until she was practically the color of her dress. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, the way the seams hugged her curves in all the right places, the way every man turned his head as she walked across the floor. But he knew he couldn't. Greco would have a fit if he found out Vega was here. It wasn't bad enough that he might be charged with police brutality. Now he was skating dangerously close to a departmental reprimand for conflict of interest. Being off-duty didn't change that. So he took a seat next to Adele and smiled and nodded at conversations in Spanish he could barely hear from wave after wave of people who gushed at Adele like she was royalty, which, in this world, Vega supposed she was.

A lot of these people owed their jobs and their sense of security in this town to her, including Diego and Inez Martinez who came running off the dance floor to embrace her like she was a long-lost relative. Vega had wondered before this why someone with a Harvard law degree would choose to spend her days running a struggling community center when she could have been a player on Wall Street or in some other glitzy and powerful venue. But seeing the outpouring of affection these people had for Adele, he could sort of understand. If he'd learned anything in his four miserable years as an accounting major, it was that most things worth having couldn't be totaled up on a balance sheet.

Adele caught Vega fiddling with a tin of mints on his plate. The tin had Gabby's name and the date of her
quinceañera
embossed on the front. “Hope you like the party favors,” said Adele. “I was the
madrina
who supplied them.”

“You play godmother for the
quinces
of all your clients?”

“Diego has long stopped being a client,” Adele explained. “He's got a green card now and he's studying for his citizenship test. He owns his own landscaping business and a small house in town that was a wreck when he bought it and is now the best-kept house on the block. He grows beautiful tomatoes in his backyard and always brings them to me in season.”

“So he's a friend,” said Vega.

“And a success story,” said Adele. “A lot of these people are. They're not all undocumented, you know.”

“How do you know who is and who isn't?”

“I don't. Nor do I care one way or the other. Look at them, Jimmy.” Adele gestured around the room to men and women laughing, dancing, eating, bouncing children on their shoulders to the music. “This is who they really are. Not what you see at La Casa. Or when someone in a uniform steps in front of them. They want the same things as you and I: a home, education for their children, security. Is that really such a crime?”

Adele led Vega to the food table where they helped themselves to plates of chicken with mole sauce and tamales stuffed with spicy beef and tomatoes. Vega eyed the seven-tier meringue-frosted cake on a side table with Barbie dolls flanking each of the alternating pink and purple tiers. Gabby may have been turning fifteen, but she was still a little girl at heart. Just like his Joy.

“Did you have a
quinceañera
when you turned fifteen?” he asked Adele as they walked back to their seats.

She shook her head. “My mother baked a cake and I got to pick out a dress at AJ Newberry's, a discount store in my neighborhood. My parents said a party was a waste of money. They put everything to my education.”

“Sounds like a wise choice,” said Vega.

“It was. But at fifteen, I wanted a party. So I'm a soft touch when a struggling family approaches me to be a
madrina
now.”

More people came over and Adele introduced Vega. She didn't say he was a police officer and no one asked so Vega kept that to himself. It's not like he was on duty, a fact he reminded himself of when he walked up to the bar to get a glass of white wine for Adele and a second beer for himself. He didn't pay attention to the stocky, broad-shouldered man in front of him until the man turned. It took Vega a moment to place the face out of context. But the man had no trouble placing him.

“Señor Vega. I didn't know you knew the Martinez family,” the man said in Spanish.

It was Kenny's father, Cesar Cardenas. He was wearing a starched white shirt and a dark suit that looked more somber than festive. His hair was wet-combed into place. Vega had never seen him out of work clothes.

“I'm here with a friend,” said Vega. He motioned to Adele at the table. Of course Cardenas would have known Adele. Kenny just got awarded that scholarship from La Casa. Vega would have expected Cardenas to be bursting with pride over his son's achievement. But he realized after a moment that it wasn't just the suit that was somber. The man was too. Maybe Cardenas had heard about how Vega had treated Kenny yesterday. Vega fetched the wine and beer from the bar and nodded sheepishly.

“I guess you heard? About last night?” Vega took a sip of beer. He tried to be lighthearted about the whole thing. “Teenagers and breakups,” he shrugged. “What are you going to do?”

“They are failing their classes,” said Cardenas.

“My son and your daughter. They are failing chemistry. And math.”

Maybe Kenny was. But not Joy.

“That's impossible,” Vega insisted. “I'd have heard about it. The school would have called.”

Cardenas was far too traditionally Mexican to contradict another man about his family in public. Instead, he fixed his dark, sad eyes on Vega until Vega understood that perhaps the school had called and his ex-wife hadn't relayed the message.

“Joy would have told me,” Vega argued. He would have said it with more conviction if he hadn't just found out yesterday about her blowing off Dr. Feldman for a whole month. Already, Vega felt the weight of Cardenas's words taking up residence in some dark corner of his heart.

“I don't understand,” said Vega. “What's going on?” Cesar Cardenas shook his head very slowly. Vega could see in his lined and leathery face that he had asked that same question of his son. Shouted it. Begged it. And from the slump of the man's shoulders, Vega understood: Kenny hadn't told him anything either.

To hell with Wendy. This time, Vega was going straight to Joy and demanding that she answer him. She was no better than her mother at returning phone calls but he knew from experience, she'd return a text. He put Adele's white wine on the table and felt relieved when he saw her talking to a group of people on the other side of the room. He sat down, took a gulp of beer to fortify himself and pulled out his phone. Hunching over the screen, he texted two simple questions:

Back came:
Out tonite. Talk tomrw
.

Tomrw when?
he texted back. But he received no reply. He looked up to see Adele beckoning him from the other side of the room. He pretended not to notice as he stared at his phone, willing Joy to answer. He had no idea how long he'd sat like that, oblivious to the voices and thumping music around him. All of a sudden he felt Adele's hand on his sleeve. He looked up from his phone to see her standing there with Gabby Martinez, all decked out in her pink frills with a look of nervous expectation in her chestnut eyes.

“Gabby wants you to dance with her.”

“Adele, I can't. Not now—”

“—Come on, Jimmy. You know the custom. Every man has to dance one song with the
quince.
Don't tell me a musician like you can't dance.”

Vega looked at Gabby. Gabby looked at the floor. She still had those baby cheeks that he pictured showing up on all her elementary school photos. Her bed probably overflowed with stuffed animals, her backpack with strawberry lip-gloss and packages of bubblegum. She was standing on that threshold between childhood and womanhood. So fragile. So easily undone by a look, a word, a gesture. Like Joy—Joy, who was unraveling faster than Vega could pick up the pieces. His daughter was not going to text him back tonight. All he'd be doing by refusing to dance would be to make another girl feel bad. He didn't want that.

He slipped his phone into his pocket and offered Gabby his arm. “I would love to dance with you.”

They went out onto the center of the floor. The girl was nervous and timid when the music started. Her hands were sweaty. She apologized when she turned the wrong way. But it was a salsa and it was hard to resist the pull of the beat for long. Vega had forgotten how much he loved to dance. His grandmother had taught him how to salsa and, after all these years, it was still in his blood. He gave himself over to the music, moving his hips and twirling the girl this way and that until she was giggling with delight. The floor was crowded and a boy soon took her off Vega's hands. Vega turned to leave but a hand grabbed his. Not a child's this time. The confident grip of a woman.

“Don't quit yet,” she whispered into his ear. “You're good.”

His heart raced unexpectedly. He felt the heat in his cheeks. “You're only saying that because you don't know me yet.”

He put his hand around the cinched red chiffon of her waist, feeling the gyration of her hips, the way they moved in perfect timing to his own. The music transported him, shut down all that nervous energy thrumming inside his chest and redirected it to his legs, his hips, his hands. Made it into something pure and beautiful.

Adele moved effortlessly beneath his touch, spinning and dipping, her body flexing and relaxing at just the right moments. Having her in his arms felt so natural, so instinctive. It had been years since Vega had held a woman who had real breasts and a backside that didn't look like it belonged on a thirteen-year-old boy. He had no words for the pleasure and sensuality it stirred within him so he just laughed. She laughed too, her red lips parting just enough for him to feel her hot breath on his neck, soft as kisses. He rested his sweaty palms on her hips and swallowed back the fantasy of what it would be like to make love to such a woman. She made him feel whole, made him forget for just a moment all the pain and worry he was feeling: for his job, for this case, and most of all, for Joy.

A sound brought him back to earth. A woman's scream.

It came from the front steps of the assembly hall where some of the partygoers had gathered to smoke. Vega broke from Adele's grasp, grabbed his jacket, and ran to the front doors. Outside, the darkness felt flat and unyielding. It took Vega's eyes a moment to adjust. The screamer was being hugged by two other female partygoers. They were all talking feverishly.

“I'm a police officer,” he said in Spanish. “What's the matter?” All three women started speaking at once.

“There's a man—”

“—In the bushes in the lot across the street—”

“—I think he's dead—”

“—Or maybe he's just drunk.”

“All right. Stay here,” said Vega. “I'll go check it out. ”

The church was on a side street that housed a plumbing manufacturer and two tire distributors. The lot was on Main Street, diagonally across from the church and tucked between two three-story stucco apartment buildings with mismatching front steps and filmy windows covered over in bed sheets. A mile or so north of here was the Main Street Anglos frequented, the one with organic grocery stores, sushi bars, Realtors, and nail spas. This part of Main was mostly warehouses, auto body shops, and cheap rental units. It was a part of town Anglos drove through rather than to. But it was not dangerous.

Not normally.

Vega heard a gurgle in the bushes.

“Police,” he called out in English. “Do you need assistance?” No answer. He tried again in Spanish. The Spanish produced a moan. He removed a small flashlight from a pocket of his jacket and raked it along the brush. An overturned shopping cart—part silver, part rust—played hide and seek behind a tangle of thorny brambles. A pile of soggy insulation lay beneath a mound of dead leaves left over from last fall. The bright pink was still visible, poking through the leaves like cotton candy. Vega stepped closer and zeroed his flashlight on a bundle of bright red rags next to the insulation. The rags twitched.
A man
. The red had a slickness to it.
Blood
.