Next Time You See Me (23 page)

Chapter 19

K
eeping his promise to me, Billy Staples drove up from Brooklyn to personally bring us home. Between the time he’d heard the news and I was released from the hospital with my nose in a splint, he had arrived at the White Palace and helped my mother pack up most of our things. Their ambitious plan had been to leave immediately, get out of here, go home—now that both Ana and Diego were in custody, there was no reason to stay. But when everyone saw my bandaged face and woozy eyes, the plan was revised. We would leave tomorrow.

Billy greeted Mac with a big hug. “Oh, man, it is
good
to see you. I hear you flew out of Mexico in a box. You cheap bastard.”

“You know me, can’t resist a bargain.” Mac chuckled, and then his expression darkened. “Actually, we drove. I got to experience what it was like to
be
the drugs getting smuggled in.”

“It’s incredible you survived.” Mom was standing at the counter stirring mayo into tuna, building sandwiches. The kettle was on behind her and she had the teapot out.

“They took me out every so often, gave me some food and water, let me stretch my legs. Then this kid, this teenager they had working for them—a Mexican American, he didn’t have an accent, that’s why I figured they were bringing me across the border, that’s why I felt the tiniest ray of hope—this kid would shoot me up”—his gaze dropped to the floor when he said that, knowing how disturbed we’d all feel to hear it—“and they’d stick me back in the box. What can I say? It was a nightmare. But I’m here. I survived.”

“Sounds like they went to some trouble to keep you alive,” Billy said.

“More like they went to some trouble to not kill me, to keep me semialive, or alive enough. Diego hadn’t decided what to do with me yet.”

“That’s one scary case of ambivalence.”

“You’re telling me.”

With tears in her eyes, Mom sliced the sandwiches into quarters. I reached over to gently touch my husband’s shoulder. I was so thankful he was safely back that all recollection of my anger at his leaving vanished.

“And look at you,” Billy said to me, shaking his head. He pulled out a chair at the table. “Sit down. Think you can eat?”

I shook my head. “Not very hungry.”

“It hurts her to talk.” Mac sat beside me.

“I can listen.” I looked at Mac and he knew what I was after; I had asked enough times: I wanted to know what had happened in Mexico.

He looked from me to Billy to Mom and back to me. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“No.” Mom joined us at the table with a plate of quartered sandwiches for them and a yogurt smoothie for me with a straw peeking above the top. “When you get to be my age, and when you go through what we’ve been through today, you don’t put things off. And frankly? I think you’ll sleep better if you get it out now.”

Mac sighed. “You may be right.”

I leaned over the smoothie and managed to sip a little through the straw. The cool, sweet strawberry flavor ignited a tumult of hunger in my stomach. I drank some more. All the curtains were open and the dark winter night beyond the windows created a vacuum, erasing the outside world, time, exhaustion, reluctance, despair. I looked at Mac.

“Talk.”

He ate a quarter sandwich in two bites, swallowed, took a deep breath, and began.

“When I landed in Morelia, the first thing I did was call Oscar, one of Ana’s men. We had kind of bonded those months I was in Playa, and whenever we went to Miami Ana always brought Oscar along, too—he was, you know, her strong-arm. He was tough, but he was also basically a drunk, which was how Ana kept him under her thumb. But what she didn’t know was that he hated her. I always thought that she didn’t realize he was her weakest link. I figured he’d be the easiest to buy off—give him a wad of cash and he’d drink his way to the bank, you know?”

“Sounds right,” Billy said.

“So. I call Oscar, and I ask him to be discreet, and I tell him there’s five thousand bucks in it for him. I tell him I’ll be waiting for him behind the airport, and an hour later, he’s there.”

“You had the money with you?” Mom asked, always the practical planner.

He nodded. “Jasmine arranged it. I told Oscar that for five thousand dollars, I wanted to know where Diego was. And for another five, I wanted Ana’s whereabouts
but I did not want her to know that I was there
. He told me, he said, ‘I’ll take the ten,’ and then I got into his car and off we went.”

“Already I don’t like the sound of this,” Billy said.

“I know, but in Mexico it’s quid pro quo. That’s how it works.”

“So he took you . . . where?” I asked.

“We drove for about twenty minutes. Then he stopped in front of a kind of a hut—banded logs, thatched roof—and in we went, me expecting to see Diego.”

The tea kettle screeched and Mom got up.

“Ana was sitting there in the one comfortable chair in the place, like a queen on a throne. Four or five of her men were with her. When I walked in, I couldn’t believe it. I looked at Oscar and I wanted to throttle him. He already had five thousand dollars. But it was too late; I’d lost that bet. Ana stared at me and then she said—calmly—she said, ‘I’m disappointed in you.’ Very creepy, because of how even her voice was. No feeling at all, not even anger. Then she told me Felix was dead, it was my fault, and it was a good thing Diego hadn’t been hurt. I told her I could never hurt my own child, and that was why I came back. She smiled but it was a
ruthless
smile, like she not only didn’t believe a word I said but it didn’t matter what I said. Then she dropped the real bomb, ‘I know you’re working for your government.’ Just like that: She knew, and I was cooked. She told Oscar to take me to ‘the diamond hole’ and that was when I found out she had more than one hole—she must have them scattered around the country, just in case.”

“I’ll never forget being in the hole,” I said. That dark, damp pit. But something else flashed into my mind when I heard
diamond
: the necklace I had never found. Who had he given it to? I felt a new pang of jealousy and shooed it away; it was no longer important.

“So Oscar pulled a gun on me and that was the end of the conversation. He and another one of the guys drove me to an abandoned field of diamond mines—Ana had claimed one for her own purposes; the mines were huge pits but this one was relatively small, like a false start—and opened the hatch long enough for me to see that someone was already in there, and to push me inside. The other person down there shoved me away when he felt me come too close, like he was guarding his space. Maybe he was scared. I didn’t know what to think.” Mac took a deep breath and exhaled. “We didn’t talk at first, and then after a while he said something to me in Spanish and I recognized his voice. It was Diego.”

“So you found him.” Mom passed mugs of tea to Mac and Billy and sat back down to join us again.

“She’d had him beaten. I could smell that one of his wounds was infected. My clothes were a lot cleaner than his so I ripped a sleeve off my shirt and turned it into a bandage for his arm. He was in bad shape—exhausted and disoriented. I had a really strong feeling that he was about to die.”

For a split second I wished Mac had let Diego die in that hole. But then I corrected myself, because Mac might have died with him if somehow they hadn’t gotten out.

“I wasn’t there five minutes before he made it clear that he knew I was an informant. Ana had told him before she threw him away. She wanted him to understand he’d been a fool to free us—a fool to betray her.”

“Her own son,” Mom said. “Heartless.”

“When she threw me into that hole, she was giving me to Diego: He had no choice but to hate me. So now he hated me, and he hated her, and he hated himself for hating us. His loneliness was deep and
sticky
, you know? You could
feel
it. It was really sad.”

I wiped my eyes, having suddenly realized they were tearing.

Mac looked at me. “It’s okay to feel bad for him. Despite everything, he’s human, and he was still . . .”

He couldn’t finish but no one needed him to. I took one of his hands between both of mine and warmed its dry, cold surfaces: skin, muscle, bone. Humans were made of only that, and yet through sheer imagination we had concocted the capacity to extend terrible power into the world. Power we could use, abuse, or ignore. Our choices complicated everything.

“I don’t know how much time passed,” Mac continued. “A day, maybe a night. And then all of a sudden the hatch opened up and there were voices, and it seemed like it was raining. But it wasn’t rain. Someone was urinating into the hole, onto us.” He sipped his tea, put down his mug, closed his eyes a moment, opened them. “It was Oscar and he was with a woman. They were speaking Spanish, laughing about the gringos and the Americanos; I understood enough to know that she was goading him into peeing on us. He was very drunk, and obviously he’d told her he had a couple of captives and she seemed to find that amusing.”

Mac paused, and Billy urged, “Go on.”

“I recognized the woman’s voice. It was Jasmine.”

“Tell me the dude didn’t have his gun.”

“The dude had his gun. But you know Jasmine; she had a plan, and she was packing, too. I heard her tell him, ‘Drop your weapon!’ He begged her not to shoot him. And then there was a shot; hers, I think. She told him again, ‘Drop it!’ and he must have—if I knew Oscar even a little, he was a classic coward—and then she told him, ‘Show me where Ana is.’ The car started up and they were out of there.”

“She didn’t wait . . .” Billy said.

“My guess is she didn’t want him to get any ideas about finding his gun and shooting us to cover himself. He was in deep water at that moment: us getting away, and then Jasmine with a gun on him, wanting Ana.”

“So,” Billy muttered, “that was how the Feds found Ana in La Huacana . . . Jasmine. I had a feeling.”

“They tracked the signal from her cell phone. She left it near the place where Ana was staying, which tells us Oscar took her there. What happened next—where Jasmine is now—we just don’t know.”

Billy’s expression was muted but his eyes betrayed him: His pupils contracted as if someone had shone a bright light on his face.

“Go on,” Billy said.

“I helped Diego climb out of the hole, then I followed. We were standing in that field of abandoned mines, it was really dark. I didn’t see him pick up the gun, he just suddenly had it. He used it to knock me out. And here I am. So for us it’s over, but I’m worried about Jasmine.”

Billy’s gaze fell on his clenched hands; he refused to let emotion overflow in front of us.

“I talked to Fred Miller a few hours ago,” Mac said, “while we were at the hospital, and told him about the abandoned mines. They checked every single one.”

“And?” Billy asked.

“No Jasmine.”

Billy stood up so quickly his chair fell behind him. He didn’t bother to pick it up before taking his cell phone out of his pocket and dialing Fred Miller. His end of the conversation confirmed everything Mac had just told us, but also added a new bit of information, which he shared the moment he hung up.

“That Oscar dude—they found him off a highway near Ana’s hiding place, all cut up, way dead.”

“Jasmine?” I asked.

“Nothing yet. Still waiting.”

“It’s my fault.” Tears burned into the wound of my nose. “If I hadn’t screamed at her and blamed her for letting you return to Mexico,” I said to Mac, “and if she hadn’t gone after you—”

“She was working the job,” Mac said. “It’s
not
your fault.”

I still felt it was; but I couldn’t regret it. Because if Jasmine hadn’t done whatever she did to get Oscar to take her to the diamond mines, Mac would have died in that hole with a presumed son who didn’t love him, who didn’t want him, who he shouldn’t have gone after in the first place.

If Mac hadn’t gone back to Mexico, Diego would be dead, he would never have come to terrorize us, and both Mac
and
Jasmine would be here now. An undercurrent of resentment bubbled under my skin; I rubbed my arms, closed my eyes.

If
. Wishful thinking: It was toxic. I pushed it away.

Chapter 20

T
he next afternoon, we exited the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway onto Atlantic Avenue. We’d taken two long breaks that had both broken up the journey and prolonged it. Ben was bouncing in his car seat to “On the Road Again.” Halfway through Connecticut we had discovered that he was a major Willie Nelson fan and so we listened to dozens of his songs from Billy’s iPod; anything to pacify our restless toddler during the long car ride.

We pulled up in front of the brownstone and the car came to a gentle stop. I looked out the window at our home. It was the same as when we’d rushed out a week and a half ago, and yet everything was different—because our ordeal was over, we were safe now, and my face was in excruciating pain.

We unloaded the car, thanked Billy, and said good-bye. He had declined our invitation to join us for a dinner of take-out Chinese food; I suspected he wanted to be alone with his anguish over Jasmine’s disappearance. The silence about her whereabouts worried all of us, but it pained Billy in particular. He was in love with her. She had vanished. I knew the feeling and it was awful. Mac and I stood outside on the sidewalk and watched Billy drive away. Then we went into the house and joined my mother and Ben for a quiet family evening. It was the kind of evening you would consider typical, even dull. But for us, the homecoming was magnificent.

Later, after Mom and Ben went to sleep, Mac and I lay in bed talking. Stretched out on his side in his striped pajama bottoms and a clean white T-shirt, facing me with his head propped on one hand, you would never have known what he’d been through. He had showered away the grime and anguish that had coated him so profusely during his week in Mexico. A lavender edge of his tattoo peeked above his collar, enough to remind me of it, though I would have been happy never to see it again.

“So . . . are you going to find out if Diego really is your child?”

“You think he isn’t?”

“I think he is, but that’s just my opinion. A DNA test would tell you for sure.”

In the soft light of the single lamp we had left on, I could see enough of the remorse in his eyes to know how badly he felt about everything: accidentally fathering a child when he was practically still a child himself and the havoc it had wreaked. And how, as a result of all that, he had abandoned us twice . . . and now Jasmine had gone missing.

“I doubt Ana would have put everyone through all this if he wasn’t mine. She would know.”

“You’re probably right, but on the other hand, she’s a little off her rocker!”

He barked laughter and rolled onto his back. He was punchy from stress, but nevertheless his levity was contagious and soon we were both smiling.

“So let’s count up all the things you missed since August.” I raised one finger: “Our anniversary.” Second finger: “Thanksgiving.” Third: “All the winter holidays.” Fourth: “Ben’s birthday. Not to mention two of Rosie’s kids’ birthdays
and
Danny’s birthday, which, by the way, he spent in jail thanks to you.”

“I have a lot of shopping to do.”

“No you don’t. You’re present enough for all of us.”

His eyes moistened and he reached for me. I reached back. And as the clock passed midnight and started a new day, we made love in the quiet safety of our own bedroom, in our own home, on the street in the neighborhood in the city where we had chosen to make our lives together.

We were home.

T
he next morning I awoke to the purr of breakfast chatter in the kitchen upstairs. It sounded as if everyone was up but me. I looked at the clock: It was after nine. Mac had let me sleep in, which was sweet of him and way beyond the call of duty. I stretched out and rolled over, and that was when I saw it on his pillow:

A narrow box wrapped in silver paper and tied with a crimson ribbon.

I sat up and pulled an envelope out from under the gift; it had my name on it. Inside was a pretty card showing a detailed illustration of a yellow orchid on a creamy green background. I opened it and saw that it was a blank card filled with Mac’s handwriting. He had written the date—September third of last year—in green ink I recognized from a pen that had run out months ago.

Happy Second Anniversary

to my beloved wife

Karin . . .

With love forever

and ever

and ever . . .

From your devoted husband,

Mac

I couldn’t help myself: I started crying.

Carefully, as if I would save the wrapping paper when in fact I never did, I pulled apart the seams without ripping anything. Then I pressed open the hinged top of a long black jeweler’s box. And there it was, the necklace I’d first learned about months ago on a receipt from a Manhattan store, a slip of paper that had arrived in a box from Mac’s office and set off a chain reaction in my imagination:
Diamond and ruby cluster pendant on 18k gold chain
. In my mind’s eye I had seen this necklace on Deidre’s neck, then on Ana’s. It was the totem of disaffection that had sown the doubts that hurled me to Florida and then Mexico. I lifted the delicate gold chain out of its box and looked at the glittering cluster of jewels dangling in mid-air. Then I put the necklace on and got out of bed.

That I had been crying must have shown because when I reached the kitchen, Mom and Mac and even Ben looked at me and froze.

“Oh dear, does your nose hurt a lot?” Mom asked.

“Yes, but that’s not it.” I unbuttoned the top of my nightgown so Mac could see I was wearing the necklace.

He smiled. “Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

“Last night, you reminded me. I hid it so well I could hardly find it this morning.”

“Where was it?”

“If you think I’m going to reveal my secret hiding place”—he grinned—“think again.”

I poured myself a bowl of cereal while Mac and Mom finished theirs, and Ben sat on the floor with a board book, pretending to read. As soon as Mom left the kitchen to take her shower, I stopped eating, looked at my husband, pulled the necklace out from under my nightgown, and held the cluster of jewels in my hand.

“In a way, this was what propelled me to Mexico.”

“But you didn’t know about the necklace then.”

“Tina sent over your stuff from the office. I found the receipt.”

He cringed. “Ouch.”

“I searched the house top to bottom. I even called Tina and she looked in the safe at Quest.”

“I can imagine what was going through your mind.”

“It’s funny—my first thought was that it was an anniversary gift. I assumed I just couldn’t find it. But when I saw the photo of you sitting at the hotel bar with some woman wearing a necklace, I thought it was
this
necklace, and I got a little . . .”
Jealous
. It felt silly saying it although it was an understatement.

He came around the table and kissed me. “You never need to wonder about me when it comes to other women.”

“I know—but what was I supposed to think?”

“I should have tossed out that receipt or hid it with the box. I hate the thought of you thinking about the necklace, and what it might have meant, on top of everything else.”

“Except then what would have happened? How long would you have stayed in Mexico? As far as I knew, you were dead.”

“I was looking for a way back. I didn’t know how long it would take. But I would have found a way.”

“But don’t you see? At some point, I would have started to really believe you were dead—and then you would have been. To me.”

“I was always aware of that. It kept me up nights.”

“When I thought I saw you at the airport that time—when I
did
see you—when you’d flown into Miami to meet with Jasmine—”

“I never flew there to meet her. Ana was there and she’d called for me; I knew the consequences if I didn’t go.”

“But I thought—”

“—that Jasmine and I had arranged to meet?”

“Yes, for the case.”

“Never. It would have been too dangerous. She knew I was in Playa del Carmen and that was enough. So that’s what you’ve thought all this time? I didn’t even know Jasmine was with you that day, until right now. When I saw you at the airport, spilling that cup of coffee, I was stunned. I was scared you’d make a scene, that Ana would find out—it would have destroyed the safety I was trying to create for you. So I kept walking.”

We looked at each other and seemed to have the same thought at the same time.

“Why
was
Jasmine flying to Miami?” I asked. “She said it was to spend her birthday under a palm tree. But now that I think of it, so much of what she said was fiction . . . is her birthday even in November?”

“I have no idea.”

“So if she wasn’t going to Miami for her birthday or to see you—why was she going?”

I stood up to get the phone, and at the same moment Ben started to cry; he had gotten his finger caught in a cabinet door.

“Call Fred Miller.” I handed Mac the phone and went to Ben. “Ask him about Jasmine.”

“Don’t you think he would have called us if he knew where she was?”

“Not really.” I picked up Ben and kissed his finger.

Mac dialed from memory, having learned all the pertinent contact numbers of his DEA handlers before landing in Mexico the first time. I sat down and listened to his end of the conversation: a brief greeting and then a list of questions.

“What’s Jasmine’s birthday?” Pause to listen to Fred’s refusal; frustrated glance at me. “I understand.”

“Where did Jasmine grow up?” Pause; frustration. “I understand.”

“Where did Jasmine live before she came to Brooklyn?” Pause; frustration. “I understand.”

“Just tell me—why would she travel to Florida?” Pause; frustration. “I understand, I
understand
, but I’m just wondering—”

Then he listened while Fred told him something, after which the conversation, if you could call it that, was over. He blew out a long sigh after hanging up.

“Same as you’d expect: active investigation; can’t divulge anything. He made a point of reminding me I’m not a part of it anymore.”

“Technically,” I said, “that’s true. Except Jasmine went missing when she was in Mexico looking for
you
, and not because she was ordered to go.”

“I thought you ordered her.” He half smiled, but it was unconvincing; we were still too close to all that to make light of it. “The one thing Fred said that didn’t sound like a brick wall was that they haven’t heard a peep from Jasmine since I was in Mexico. He said it’s like she evaporated—that’s a quote.”

“How much did I tell you about Lucky Herman? The private investigator I hired to find you in Miami.”

“Just a little.”

“Let’s see if he can find any traces of Jasmine in Florida, just out of curiosity . . .”

“Karin, the DEA isn’t forgetting about her. They know she fell off the radar. They’ll find her sooner or later . . .”

That did it, his
sooner or later
. I wasn’t famous for my patience, and before he finished his sentence I was on my way to the front hall for my purse where I had Lucky Herman’s number. Back at the table I dialed the phone and in moments was talking to Lucky himself.

“Hello Karin,” he said with a smile in his voice. “Are you calling to say hello or do I have a repeat customer? Between you and me, I hope it’s the former.”

“Repeat customer,” I told him. “How was the Metropolitan Opera?”

“It was beautiful, the best gift my wife ever gave me, and we’ve been married thirty years. So . . . you still can’t find your husband?”

“He’s sitting right here with me.”

“I won’t ask what happened—I’ve always found that congratulations are enough.”

“Thank you, Lucky. Really,
thank you
.”

“All I did was take a picture.”

“It wasn’t just
a
picture, it was
the
picture. It set the wheels in motion for me.”

“I think the wheels were in motion before you called me. So what’s going on now?”

I told him.

“Jasmine Alvarez,” he spoke slowly, writing it down. “You say she’s DEA?”

“Yes.”

“That’ll be tough. Might not even be her real name.”

“You’re right, it might not be.”

“I’ll see what I can do. How much detail do you want?”

“As much as you can get. Especially why she might travel to Florida.”

“Can you send a picture? Real name or not, if I know her face it’s a leg up. No pun intended.”

I didn’t get it and didn’t try because a spasm of frustration was gripping me—why would I have a picture of Jasmine?—and then I thought of my mother’s Thanksgiving photos.

“I’ll send one right over.”

I gave him my credit card information (he hadn’t kept it from the first job, which made me trust him even more), and he reminded me once again that he had no idea how long it might take or if he’d be successful. But I knew from experience that he was competent and didn’t let his words discourage me.