Sweet Mary

by Liz Balmaseda

  Gina leaned over and pinched the tip of my chin.

  “You have a great life. You have an amazing son, a good house, a nutty but lovable family. You’ve got kick-ass real estate skills,” she said. “Forget everything else. Just go home and handle your business.”

  “Home? There is no home anymore,” I said. “I know more about that other Mary than I do about myself right now. As long as she’s out there on the run, there always will be doubt about me. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Casey took a deep breath and abruptly exhaled. In his eyes I saw a look, a flash of frustration, I had not seen before.

  “No,” he said, “you’re not wrong.”

  Three days later, I faced Tony in family court. I walked into the courtroom feeling confident that I had enough reason and evidence to bring Max home. I was mistaken.

  I had given Casey everything I had—Tony’s financial records, the letters from France, even a fax from Wharton admissions officers certifying that no one named Antoine Ramonet had ever attended their school. Casey also had managed to get a rare statement from the feds in the form of the following memorandum:

  TO: Dulce Maria Guevara, fed. ID-12618

  FROM: Spec. Agt. Daniel Green, DEA

  SUBJECT: Clearance

  A review has been made in the case involving you, Dulce Maria Guevara. Based on an investigation of the facts, no evidence can be found to sustain the charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. You are cleared of any wrongdoing in this matter. This case is closed as it pertains to you.

  But we never got the chance to present any of our evidence.

  The guardian ad litem delivered a rambling report about how Max was beginning to “thrive” in his new environment. He had developed a formidable backhand in tennis and had expanded his French vocabulary, she said. It was too soon to subject the boy to another abrupt change, she said.

  Despite repeated objections from my lawyer, the judge, a fellow traveler in the extreme wing of the child welfare system, agreed with the guardian. And when the court-appointed psychiatrist reported that Max was having nightmares about the federal raid, Judge Jane Anne Costello decided the boy should not be placed in a situation where he could relive the trauma. In other words, he could not come home, at least not until the psychiatrist said it was okay. Even worse, the judge decided it was best that I limit my visits with Max to once a week and that our visits would be supervised closely by the guardian ad litem.

  “We’ll monitor this case for a few more weeks, and we’ll see where we go from there,” the judge concluded as she set another hearing for thirty days later. She then scheduled my first visit with Max in ten days.

  “This is preposterous, Your Honor. My client expected to see her son today,” Casey objected.

  “She’ll have to be patient,” said the judge, turning to speak directly to me. “He’s having nightmares, Ms. Guevara. Let’s give him a chance to work things out with his therapist.”

  “Max doesn’t need a therapist,” I said, rising to my feet. “He needs his mom. He needs his bed and his toys. He needs to be home.”

  “He does,” said the judge, putting on an air of gravitas. “But let’s do this the right way.”

  “You mean, let’s do this your way,” I said, prompting Casey, who was standing at my side, to give my arm a nudge.

  “She doesn’t mean that, Your Honor,” he said, although I could tell he agreed with me.

  Judge Costello fired an icy look at me. The particular setting of Miami’s family court, somewhat more relaxed than its federal counterpart, allowed for more casual banter. In this spirit, Judge Costello bypassed formalities and spoke directly to me.

  “According to his psychiatrist, the boy is afraid there will be another incident in your home. He’s afraid you—and, by proxy, he—may be in some kind of danger. He doesn’t fully understand what it is you do for a living, so he’s dealing with a lot of mystery and fuzziness in his life. I’m sure you can understand this,” said the judge.

  “With all due respect, my son knows exactly what I do for a living. There is no mystery between us. You are way out of line in suggesting otherwise,” I said, my voice rising in anger.

  “He’s afraid. He doesn’t feel safe with you at home. And, quite frankly, I don’t blame him,” said the judge.

  “Well, Your Honor, had you seen fit to examine the evidence we brought today, you might have known his fears are unfounded. Now that I’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing, there is neither danger nor fuzziness in my life. I’m sure you can understand this,” I said.

  “I’ll make sure to note your tone, Ms. Guevara,” said the judge with a slam of the gavel. “This hearing has concluded.”

  I didn’t say a word. I didn’t cry. I stared into a distance that held a disturbing, unacceptable scenario, one of protracted warfare with Tony and labyrinths yet to be traveled in family court. At the root of it all was the lingering doubt over my true identity. The judge herself inferred so in her babblings from the bench. “I don’t blame him,” she said of my son’s supposed fear of my “mysterious” life and “fuzzy” alliances. Euphemisms. I knew what she meant to say—she meant to say I was unreliable and possibly corrupt. The way I saw it, I had only two options:

  One, I could blackmail Tony with the proof of his theft and deceit. The ethics charges could derail his wife’s political ambitions. He would be forced to return Max to me. But that scenario had its risks. Tony could drum up competing evidence from his shady financier sources and kick up enough dust to keep himself in the game. Such a scenario could drag on much longer than our case in family court.

  Two, I could attack the disease at its root and be done with it once and for all. I could go find Maria Portilla.

  SEVEN

  I WENT BACK to Casey’s office and photocopied the entire case file, including transcripts and pictures. I went across the street to the clerk of the court’s division and researched all cases involving Portilla’s coconspirators. As I found document after document, I felt something long dormant awaken inside me, an old streak of curiosity I once considered to be my greatest childhood asset. I was the girl who wanted to grow up to be a detective. I had questions about everything: Why can’t chickens fly? What makes air conditioners cool? If the Easter Bunny really exists, why don’t the Cubans in my family even know about him? As years passed, that curious streak faded as something else, something far more pragmatic, took its place, a blind drive to succeed. I came to think success—in school, in business, in relationships—was about well-tested formulas and proven models, not far-flung questions. Too many questions, I came to believe, were nothing but deflections and excuses in disguise, the last resort of the unprepared and of quintessential procrastinators. If you had to ask, it meant you didn’t do your homework. So I sharpened my life’s focus into that one brilliant Nike slogan. No questions. No curiosity. No nonsense. Just do it. But that day, as I stood at the counter in the clerk of the court’s office, I let the questions stream into my head, first as a trickle, then a torrent. I paid $137.50 in copying fees and lugged the box of documents back to Casey’s office.

  I got there as he was winding down from a long day. He poured a couple of glasses of Bacardi 8. The amber liquid mirrored the sunset outside his window.

  “Got what you needed?” he said, swirling the rum in his glass.

  “Probably not. I’ll know when I read all this crap,” I said, glancing out the window just as an overloaded freighter churned across the Miami River with its mysteries. “But I know what’s not in here, and I’m hoping there’s still a way I can get it today.”

  “Can I help?” said Casey.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” I said, pulling a handwritten list from my paper stack. “My wish list. Don’t worry, it’s short.”

  Casey scanned the five items on the list, checking them off aloud: “Yes on the first, third, and fifth—I’ve got some background on those in my files. No on the second item—I�
�ve got nothing on that. And about number four, tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I know it may require a small favor or two, but I figure, you know, you’re a connected guy. Doesn’t hurt to ask,” I said.

  Casey cocked his head in disbelief and thought about my request for a long minute.

  “You’ll owe me big after this,” he said, only half joking.

  He clicked a few keys on his laptop and scrolled through his contact logs before picking up the telephone and making a call, all the while shaking his head at me.

  “Elaine, my love,” he said into the telephone receiver as he reached for his monogrammed notepad, “I need a very strange favor.”

  When I got home, I found my parents had descended on my house. It was their first real visit since my release from jail. Daddy was outside, sweeping the driveway. My mother was in the kitchen, cooking up a storm. She had roasted a perfect tenderloin of lime-marinated pork, steamed and fluffed a pot of white rice, boiled and mashed some green plantains, then drizzled them with a warm mojo of olive oil and smashed garlic. She sliced ripe tomatoes she had bought at the U-Pick field and put them atop a bed of thinly shaved white onions. And for dessert, cream cheese flan in a guava reduction.

  I had not seen such a feast in years, since the days when Puddle Morales, Daddy’s childhood friend, took up the habit of spending Sunday afternoons at my parents’ house and bringing with him a collection of sing-along-worthy records—Armando Manzanero, Ñico Membiela, and, of course, Aznavour.

  “What’s the occasion, Mami?” I said, dropping the box of documents on the kitchen counter.

  “You’re anorexic. That’s the occasion,” she said.

  “That skinny, huh?”

  “You’re a broomstick. But give me a week—you’ll be back to life,” she said.

  My mother seemed uncharacteristically energized and, I must note, profoundly concerned about my health and emotional wellbeing. She had purchased candles bearing the likeness of the Virgin of Charity and placed them in strategic places, the way one places roach motels in the darkest, most vulnerable corners of the house. She had tidied up Max’s room, washed all his clothes, and set his pajamas atop the bed as if he would be coming home to sleep that very night. She gazed at me in a way she hadn’t done in a long time, not since I suffered a two-month bout with anemia at age thirteen. In that gaze was a mix of love and pity, my mother’s purest state. It dawned on me that she was at her best in rescue mode. And in retrospect, it made perfect sense. She and my father had survived a harrowing sea voyage from Cuba during which their boat, a thirty-five-foot shrimper packed with forty-one refugees, ran out of fuel and drifted for nearly a week. My mother watched two women die of dehydration. She tried to save them by dragging them into a shady spot on the deck, but it was no use. The youngest one died in her arms. The incident turned my mother into a breathless rescuer. She gravitated toward needy strays and vulnerable people and kept a cool distance from strong, independent types, like me. But now that I had fallen, I was worthy of my mother’s most precious gift, her empathy. I would be lying if I said I didn’t welcome the maternal affection or the Cuban calories. All the questions? I could have done without those. No sooner had Lilia carved the pork than she started the interrogation.

  “What did they do to you in jail?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did the guards bother you?” said Lilia.

  “Not really. They left me in the cell most of the time. They called me whenever I had a visitor or when it was time to go exercise. It was fine, really,” I said. I smiled at her, hoping to redirect the conversation. I glanced over at Daddy—he was wolfing down his pork, paying no mind to our chatter. “What about the cruise? Did you guys have a great time?”

  Lilia watched as I served myself an extra-large scoop of rice, another big helping of plantains, a chunk of pork, and some tomatoes.

  “They starved you, didn’t they?” she said.

  “Nobody starved me. They had food. Not great food, but not horrible, either. Like the kind of food they serve at the cafeteria on Forty-ninth Street,” I said. “So. Did you go dancing?”

  “I like the hot turkey at the cafeteria,” she said. She seemed to drift off for a minute. “Did you have to shower in front of everybody?”

  “No, of course not. I had a private shower in my cell,” I said. I wondered if she believed me. I wasn’t about to tell her bathroom privacy was as scarce as a good, hot turkey meal in jail. “Did they have blackjack at the casino?”

  Daddy looked up from his plate at the mention of blackjack. He gave me a sly wink before digging into his dinner again. Lilia didn’t notice. She seemed preoccupied with her next question.

  “Did they give you drugs?” she said.

  “Drugs?”

  “To make you talk. Did they give you drugs?” she said.

  “No drugs, Mami.”

  It took a little coaxing, but I did get her to talk about the cruise. She described the floor shows as the grandest she had seen in decades. She admitted she had indulged in a few piña coladas at the cruise line’s private beach. She even copped to skipping out on the post-prayer coffee-and-pastries hour to meet Daddy at the casino. And when she said this, Daddy lit up.

  “I think your mother has a new addiction,” he said.

  I thanked my parents for their company and support and sent them home with a bag of key limes from my backyard tree. After dinner, I spread the box of documents on the living room floor, and I got to work.

  I read all about La Reina and her lethal crew, agents of the notorious Cardenal drug cartel. Their rap sheets appeared to be intertwining rosaries of escalating charges: drug smuggling, grand theft, racketeering, aggravated assault, attempted kidnapping, and even homicide.

  Maria Portilla herself was a puzzle. The files gave me little more than what I had learned about her during my DEA interrogation and court appearances. Of her four coconspirators listed in the documents, three were dead and the fourth one, a cocaine dealer named Francisco Jose Cardenal, still roamed at large. But the file on him was thin. It revealed nothing about his background, his criminal history, or his blood ties to the Cardenal clan. It simply listed his approximate age—about thirty-eight—and the drug trafficking, sale, and distribution charges against him. Who was this guy? I knew he couldn’t be the kingpin.

  In my courthouse research and online archive search, I learned the family kingpin, Juan Cardenal, had been missing for more than a decade and was presumed dead. I could find no information about his life, death, or unresolved charges, for it was sealed inside classified federal files. If Juan Cardenal was alive, he would be seventy-three years old, some thirty to thirty-five years older than Francisco Jose Cardenal.

  I reread the charge sheet on the younger Cardenal twice, searching for some kind of clue, but it was thinner than the one on La Reina. And I was too tired to read it again. I gathered the documents from the floor and as I dumped them back in the box, a scrap of paper fluttered out of the pile. It was the information Casey had jotted for me on his monogrammed notepad. I picked it up and tucked it into my handbag.

  Exhausted, I went upstairs to shower and get ready for bed. But as I passed Max’s room, I felt a sad tug in my belly. After hours of research, I felt no closer to our reunification and I felt it was partly my fault. All my probing had yielded more questions than answers. I had failed my boy. I couldn’t go to bed on that feeling.

  I took a shower and foraged through my closet, searching for a particular kind of outfit. I found it tucked behind my work suits, my evening dresses, and my PTA jeans: a black, clingy slit skirt and a black, low-cut silk top. I slipped on my strappy, black satin, red-soled, 4 ?-inch Christian Louboutin heels and brushed my hair to a shiny, straight finish, letting it tumble loose around my shoulders.

  Then I called Gina with an offer.

  “Are you up for a drive?”

  MIAMI STREETS—DAY 25

  Mary and Gina, all
dressed up, speed along in Gina’s convertible.

  We trailed Yellow Cab no. 0524 from the Flamingo Motel through a patch of Little Havana and into the derelict fringes of the city. We came to a stop outside a nightclub where the taxi dropped off its passenger. We waited for him to disappear through the black doors of the club, beneath a violet flash of neon:

  CLUB IMAGINATION.

  I glanced over at Gina, who was brushing on some mascara.

  “Please remind me why I’m here,” I said.

  “You’re not,” she said. “Someone far more adventurous, daring, and slutty than you is here. You’re off the radar, remember?”

  I slicked on some ruby lipstick and followed Gina into the scarlet haze of the club. Across waves of thumping bass, I spotted the object of our pursuit. He stood, whiskey in hand, near the stage, watching a raven-haired beauty in a G-string and seven-inch Lucite heels shimmy out of a red satin bustier. He tossed fistfuls of dollar bills at her feet. More than two thousand miles from his desert home, Earl Winrock was making it rain at Club Imagination. He had stayed in town, hoping to make the most of his first trip to Florida, and there he was, clearly off the beaten path, watching the natives go buck wild. This wasn’t one of those fancy strip joints with marquee dancers, pay-per-view boxing, and muscle-bound security. It was a dump.

  The stripper, a strikingly lovely Latina, finished her number, scooped up her loot, and gave the big spender a come-hither look. When he bellied up to the foot of the stage, she whispered something into his ear.

  “What foul thoughts do you suppose she’s conjuring?” I asked Gina.

  “A private dance for the big guy?” she said.

  “Nice visual, G.”

  “He likes her. Then again, he gets his girls mixed up,” she said.

  A thought flashed between us as we watched the girl disappear through the curtains leading backstage.

  “Let’s go get him thoroughly confused,” I said.

  We staked out the side stage door until the girl reappeared, refreshed and ready for a romp in the back room. I stopped her before she headed back to Winrock.