Land of Careful Shadows (22 page)

It was only a mile or so to La Casa from the center of town, but the scenery transformed in stages, like a time-lapse photo. The frilly, gaudy Victorians full of restaurants and Realtors gradually disappeared, replaced by more modest businesses: secondhand stores, check-cashing services, Laundromats, and auto body shops. Vega watched a group of day laborers squatting on the stoop outside one of the Laundromats near La Casa. Linda waved and a few waved back.

For some reason Vega couldn't put his finger on, the wave irked him. Maybe it was the sense of playacting in all of it. Linda could move in and out of this world at will. Just as she had with him when they were teenagers. It was a game. A role that she was free to discard at any time. There was always a hint of dismissal in all their encounters. She was on the verge of dismissing him again, only this time he had more than personal pride at stake. He had a dead woman and her baby on his conscience. He had to do something. It would cost him whatever vestiges of feeling she still had for him but he didn't think he had a choice.

“So much for all this champion-of-the-oppressed bullshit,” he muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“I thought you really cared about these people.”

“I do.”

“But only when it's convenient. Only when you don't have to get your hands dirty. The moment something becomes a little unpleasant, you run away.”

She exploded as he knew she would. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here making unfounded accusations against my husband? Against
me?
Because you're a cop? That gives you the right? What do you know about our lives and the work we do here?”

Vega nodded to the men at the Laundromat. “I know they call you
Horchata
behind your back.”

Adele had told him that. They called Linda
Horchata
after a milk-colored rice shake popular in Latin America. They called Adele
Cajeta
after a Mexican caramel sauce. The nicknames were harmless, mostly just a way of distinguishing the women, a little inside joke among the men. But Vega knew it would bother Linda. He knew she probably spent all her time trying to be their friend when the truth was, they would always see her as an outsider, this wealthy milk-skinned American
rubia
who chose to spend her time in a place they wouldn't if they didn't have to.

“You can stomp off and tell me I'm full of shit about Scott,” said Vega. “But a part of you is wondering—just a little—if maybe I'm not.”

Vega turned onto the street and was greeted by the grind of hydraulic saws at the auto-body shop and the rumble of compactors at the dump. He pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine. The immigrants sitting and talking at a picnic table outside of La Casa barely seemed to notice the noise. It was part of their daily routine.

Linda sighed. She sounded beaten down. “I don't know what you want from me.”

“Tell me about Socorro.”

“I don't
know
anything. That's the truth. We picked Olivia up from a neighbor who was taking care of her after Socorro got arrested. Everything of Socorro's got trashed after the raid. Unless you have family to look after your stuff, that's pretty much what always happens, even here in Lake Holly. The landlords and neighbors steal everything of value and the rest gets thrown out.” Linda kept her gaze on the dump at the end of the street as if she half-expected to find Socorro's things lying in a pile behind the chain link and razor wire.

“How did she die?”

“Cervical cancer, I believe. The prison doctors didn't see the signs. Or maybe they didn't want to see them. She was only thirty-eight.” Linda spread her hands, a hint of frustration on her features, as if she sensed that down the line, she'd have to share this same thin biography with Olivia and it would be just as disappointing. “I wish I knew more, but I don't. That's the truth, Jimmy. And besides, I still don't see what any of this has to do with Maria Elena.”

“Linda,” Vega said, laying a warm hand over hers and looking at her evenly. “You're kidding yourself if you think Scott didn't know Maria. She wasn't just a voice on the phone.”

“She probably just needed some legal advice.”

“The last three calls Maria Elena ever made in her life were to Scott's personal cell phone number.
The last three.
”

Vega saw the knowledge move around beneath the muscles of Linda's face, trying to take up residence behind her pale blue eyes, in the press of her thinning lips, in the comma curve of her jaw. She was trying very hard to reconcile it with that book of stories she kept on her inner shelf. She removed her hand from Vega's and reached for the door handle.

“Obviously then,” said Linda, “she needed that advice pretty badly.”

V
ega could practically dial the number by heart, he'd dialed it so many times. It had started to feel like a commonplace occurrence, like he was ordering concert tickets or pizza at a place that put him on hold a lot. He was prepared for the robotic voice again, not even really thinking about it, when he heard the click, the breath, the pause that told him a real live human being was on the other end of the line in a country he'd never been to, two thousand miles away from the cubicle in the Lake Holly police station where he was sitting.

Aguas Calientes, Guatemala.

He pictured jungles full of biting insects and exotic birds. Muddy villages full of toothless old people, barefoot children, and soldiers in camouflage. Hills canopied in green and roiling rivers the color of chocolate milk. He had no idea if his images were more Hollywood than
National Geographic.
The farthest south he'd ever traveled outside of Puerto Rico was to Cancún, Mexico, once, with a girlfriend after he and Wendy divorced. He got royally sick and had to spend most of the week in the bathroom. The girlfriend got a bad sunburn. They split up soon after that. Not a happy trip all around.

“Alo?”
An older woman's voice came on the line, hoarse and tentative. Vega felt his limbs go slack.

“Señora Santos?”
His own throat tightened. He was as nervous as an altar boy doing his first vespers service.

“Señora Irma Alvarez-Santos?”
Just to be sure.

From his cubicle, Vega could hear phones ringing, the copy machine churning, cops discussing the upcoming NFL draft. He turned his back to the opening in the partition and stared at the dull beige fabric behind his computer. His body felt cold and numb. He tried to picture the woman. But all he could picture was his own mother in her gold-rimmed glasses, her thick iron-gray hair feathered short the way she had worn it most of her life. Her eyes would be curtained and reserved as they always were on first meetings. Her full lips would be parted slightly as if prepared to allow any news that was about to be delivered an avenue of ready escape.

“My name is James Vega,” he said slowly in Spanish. “I am a police detective in New York, and I am afraid I am calling with some very bad news about your daughter, Maria Elena.”

The woman said something Vega didn't understand. Her consonants were emphatic. Her voice sputtered and dipped with a staccato rhythm that sounded unlike any Spanish he'd ever heard. Vega knew his accent was different from Guatemalans. He knew the phone would exacerbate those differences, but he couldn't make out even one word of what she'd just said.

“Pardon, señora. My Spanish isn't that good. I don't understand.”

She started to speak again. Vega still didn't understand.
Puñeta!
This was turning into a nightmare. He was going to have to ask Adele to find someone at La Casa who could translate for him. He was going to have to deliver the worst news anyone could get in the most impersonal way possible. At least that asshole cop who'd talked to him about his dead mother hadn't needed a translator.

“
No cuelgue, por favor,
” the woman said after a moment.
Don't hang up, please
. This, he understood. There was discussion in the background. Voices he couldn't make out speaking in a way he couldn't comprehend. He felt for a moment the way the immigrants at La Casa must feel every day of their lives.

“
Podría ayudarse
?”
May I help you?
The voice belonged to a young man. He had the reedy uncertain pitch of adolescence in his vocal cords. Vega took him to be about fifteen. “My grandmother speaks Q'eqchi'. Her Spanish isn't that good, especially on a phone.”

Q'eqchi'. A Mayan Indian language native to Guatemala. No wonder Vega didn't understand a word. She might as well have been speaking Navajo.

Vega repeated who he was and asked the young man's name. The young man had no trouble understanding Vega's Spanish. He said his name was Oscar. A much darker thought suddenly cropped into Vega's head.

“Maria Elena—she's not your mother, is she?”

“No. My aunt. The sister of my mother. We have not heard from her in more than a month. We did not know who to contact.”

“I'm so sorry to tell you this, but she's dead.”

Vega heard the old woman in the background, the panicked requests for information that were the same in any language. Oscar excused himself for a moment and spoke to the old woman. Vega heard her break into sobs. He remembered the day he learned of his own mother's death, the way his breath left him, the way he struggled for composure as he watched her body being carted out of her apartment, zipped up like a piece of oversized luggage at JFK Airport. That was bad. This was worse. Maria's body wasn't even human-looking anymore.

“My grandmother wants to know how she died,” said Oscar, coming on the line again.

“The police aren't sure yet,” said Vega. “She died in March, possibly from being hit by a car, but it's still under investigation. Her body was only recently discovered. We would be happy to put you in contact with the Guatemalan Consulate in New York to arrange for transport of her remains back to Aguas Calientes for burial.”

Oscar tried to explain everything to his grandmother but Vega could hear the woman's rapid-fire questions shooting back at the boy, the anguish and panic in their tone. He felt for the grandmother. He felt for the boy, too. He was a kid and he was handling something that should only be handled by an adult.

“Do you have any other family who can be with your grandmother right now?”

“My mother will be here soon,” said the young man. He was alone. Vega could tell he was overwhelmed.

“Would you prefer I call back when your mother is home?”

“No, no. I can manage. Thank you.”

Vega hoped that was true. In his experience, nothing prepares you for death. It is inevitable, yet it always takes people by surprise. How can someone so unique in the world simply vanish? It still seemed inconceivable to Vega that his mother was really gone. No one told funnier jokes, made better
alcapurrias
or was a worse backseat driver. No one else would know his communion name—Emmanuel—or remember his first guitar or that crush he had on Rosalina Ramirez in the third grade. If scientists say energy can't be destroyed, where was the energy that was his mother? That was Maria Elena?

“My grandmother wants to bury my aunt in Aguas Calientes,” said Oscar.

“I understand,” said Vega. He asked Oscar for his grandmother's address and promised to pass along the information to the official at the Guatemalan Consulate who was in charge of repatriation of remains.
Repatriation of remains
—such a stilted term, thought Vega as he copied down the contact information. It sounded like a military objective. Worst of all, the poor families who pay a fortune to smuggle a loved one to the States often have to pay even more to bring their bodies back. Vega hoped the consulate had some sort of fund to help with the costs. He could only imagine how such a family might be ripped off in their moment of grief.

“Do you have any family in New York?” Vega asked Oscar. “Cousins, uncles—perhaps they could help facilitate the process?”

“Not in New York,” said Oscar. “Only in Texas and Colorado.” Vega asked for their names and phone numbers but already, he knew they couldn't help. They were too far away to act as the eyes and ears that the family needed so desperately right now. Oscar got the information from his grandmother and gave it to Vega anyway. Then he excused himself from the phone for a moment, had another exchange, and got back on the line.

“My grandmother wants to know if you've found Luz Maria.”

“Luz Maria? Who's Luz Maria?”

“My cousin. My aunt Maria Elena's daughter.”

“We found a picture of your aunt with a little baby among her things. Is this the Luz Maria you're talking about?”

“I don't know,” said Oscar. “I never met her. She'd be about nine or ten now, I think. She was born in the United States in someplace with an
I
in it. Ohio? My aunt lived there when she first came to the United States many years ago.”

“Iowa?”

Oscar said the name to his grandmother.

“Yes. Iowa. My aunt thought Luz Maria had died. When she found out she was alive, she came to New York to find her.”

“Do you know where the child is?” asked Vega.

A pause and words he didn't understand. Now he knew how Greco felt.

“She lives in
Lago Sagrado?
”

Lago Sagrado?
There was no Lake Sagrado, New York.

Oscar's grandmother said something sharp to the teenager.

“Where my aunt was living,” said the boy. Then Vega understood.
Sagrado
meant “sacred” or “holy” in Spanish. Maria's mother had mistaken the name,“Lake Holly” for “Lake Holy.” Maria Elena didn't come to Lake Holly because it was “safe,” as Morales had thought. She came to find her daughter.

“Do you have an address for Luz Maria? The last name she goes by?”

“My grandmother doesn't know.”

“Is she living with a relative? Her father perhaps?” More conversation. “My grandmother doesn't think so. But she's not sure.”

They were as clueless about Maria's daughter as Vega was. Still, Lake Holly wasn't that big. There couldn't be that many nine- or ten-year-old girls named Luz Maria in it. Vega would find her. He was sure he could find her. And maybe find the ex-boyfriend or ex-whatever who brought her here and check him out for the hit-and-run as well. The guy would have plenty of motive to get rid of a mother who comes all the way from Guatemala looking for her child. Maybe Linda was right: maybe Maria Elena did need to consult an attorney after all.

Oscar and his grandmother had more conversation back and forth. Vega could hear the plaintiveness in the old woman's voice.

“She wants to know if you will find her.”

“I will certainly try,” said Vega. He wished he could tell Irma Santos that finding Luz Maria and reuniting her with her grandmother were one in the same but they weren't. If Luz Maria was American-born and living with her biological father, there was nothing Vega could do about custody, visitation, or contact. The father could keep the grandmother out of Luz Maria's life and no court could intervene. Grandparents' rights never trump parents' rights even when they're Americans. A Guatemalan grandmother didn't stand a chance. On the other hand, if the guy was just a boyfriend who took a kid that wasn't his and ran, Vega had some leverage—especially if the guy was illegal.

Vega gave Oscar his cell number and told the teenager the family could call him anytime with questions. Normally, he didn't do this. But he could feel the helplessness of their situation. They deserved better than he'd gotten from that Bronx detective after his mother died. He would try to give it to them.

More chatter. He could hear something weak and spent in the old woman, as if she had already given up the fight.

“My grandmother says that my aunt worked for two years after she found out Luz Maria was alive to earn enough money to bring her home. She asks please, if you can make sure Luz Maria knows how much she loved her.”

“I will make sure,” said Vega. On the grave of his own mother, he would make sure.