The Girl in the Glass Box

by James Grippando

  “Objection.”

  The judge shot an angry glare in Jack’s direction. “Mr. Swyteck, I’ve already ruled. The witness can answer.”

  Julia was struggling. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Judge, I would ask the court to direct the witness to answer the question,” said Jerrell.

  “She’s answered to the best of her ability,” said Jack.

  “Mr. Swyteck, I’ve warned you,” the judge said. “Stop coaching your witness with speaking objections. It’s one of my pet peeves.”

  “Thank you, Judge,” said Jerrell.

  “Don’t thank me!” the judge snapped. “That’s my other pet peeve. I hate when lawyers thank me for a ruling.”

  “My apologies,” said Jerrell. “I would simply like an answer to my question.”

  “Your question has made its point in spades,” the judge said. “I get what you’re saying: Ms. Rodriguez has no reasonable fear of being sent back to El Salvador.”

  Jack had to jump in. “Excuse me, Your Honor, but that was not her testimony. Ms. Rodriguez’s husband is a member of the gang Eighteen, which, along with MS-Thirteen, rules San Salvador, and which persecutes ‘disobedient’ women through torture and sexual assault while the government of El Salvador is either unable or unwilling to do anything about it.”

  The judge looked as if he might overheat on the spot. “Mr. Swyteck, this is your last warning. Stop testifying for your client.”

  “I’m only trying to make the record clear,” said Jack.

  “Not another word, Counsel,” the judge said. “Let’s move on.”

  The cross-examination continued for another thirty minutes, but it couldn’t be said that Jerrell was following the judge’s direction to “move on.” It was a relentless theme, and it was clear to Jack that the Department of Homeland Security had made a strategic decision to avoid setting a bad legal precedent: DHS did not want to take the risk that an immigration judge on the brink of retirement might issue a ruling that chipped away at the attorney general’s very narrow view of asylum based on government failure to protect women from domestic violence. Jerrell’s strategy was to send Julia back to El Salvador on the strength of the much simpler argument that the instrument of persecution—her husband—was no longer there.

  By two o’clock, Julia had reached her limit, and Jack spoke up. “Your Honor, could we have a break, please?”

  “Does the witness need a break?” the judge asked.

  “I didn’t eat lunch or breakfast,” said Julia. “My stomach is empty, but I honestly feel like I’m going to throw up.”

  “Welcome to my world,” the judge said.

  “Judge, I truly have just one last question, and it calls for a simple yes-or-no answer. And then I’m finished.”

  “Counsel, I’m going to hold you to that representation. Ms. Rodriguez, if you can handle one question—just one, Ms. Jerrell—we can wrap this up.”

  “Judge, the witness requested a break,” said Jack.

  “I heard her, Mr. Swyteck. But you know how these things work. Right now, Ms. Jerrell has one last question, and that’s all I’m going to allow. If we take a five-minute break, she’ll come back into this courtroom with her legal pad all marked up with a list of fifty more questions that she wants to ask, and I’ll let her ask them. It’s your choice.”

  “I can do it,” said Julia. “I can answer one question.”

  “Good decision,” the judge said. “Ms. Jerrell, your one question, please.”

  Jerrell closed her notebook, as if to double down on her assertion that this was her last question. “Ms. Rodriguez, yes or no: Does your husband smoke cigarettes?”

  “No.”

  Jerrell’s expression fell. “But—”

  “No buts!” said the judge. “That’s it. That’s your one question.”

  He glanced at the clock in the back of the courtroom. “Counsel, it is now almost two thirty, and I have at least three hours of work on my other cases before I can go home tonight. Ms. Rodriguez, take the afternoon off and eat something between now and tomorrow morning. I’ll see you at nine a.m. in my courtroom. Ms. Jerrell, which courtroom would that be?”

  “The one with your name on the door,” she said begrudgingly.

  “Very good. We’re adjourned.”

  Chapter 55

  It was a busy afternoon for Jorge and Rosa.

  First stop was “the gun shop,” which wasn’t a shop at all, just a nickname for a three-hundred-pound thug named Felipe who called himself “the gun shop” and fenced stolen firearms to other thugs like Jorge—serial numbers rat-filed away, no extra charge. It was legal in Florida to buy a suppressor, and Jorge had actually walked into a legitimate gun store with Rosa and tried to buy one under her name. But the federal paperwork to buy a suppressor made immigration forms look easy, and Jorge couldn’t wait the eight to twelve months it would take to get the approval from the bureaucrats in Washington. Fatso Felipe charged double the price for his stolen goods, but an untraceable suppressor was probably worth the extra money anyway. It was one thing to purchase a suppressor so that the crack of a hunting rifle didn’t scare away the animals. Jorge had something else in mind.

  The deal with Felipe done, Jorge pulled out of the parking lot. They were stopped at the traffic light when Rosa got the lifesaving call on her cell phone—lifesaving for Jorge.

  “It’s the rental office from my apartment,” she said, checking the display on her caller ID.

  “Take it on speaker,” said Jorge. “If you even hint that you’re with me, you know what will happen to you.”

  Rosa answered. If it made the manager angry to tell her tenant that the police had been to Rosa’s apartment to execute a search warrant, it made Jorge even angrier to hear it.

  “I want you out by morning,” said the manager. “And I’m keeping your security deposit. Let your parents know that I’m coming after them as guarantors for the cost of the missing furniture.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and the call was over.

  “Shit!” Jorge shouted, as he pounded the steering wheel.

  “You have to take me back there.”

  “We’re not going back there!”

  “But I have to get my stuff.”

  “Forget your stuff.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  Jorge was too deep in thought to hear the question. If the police had searched Rosa’s apartment, they would be looking for her car. He needed to stay one step ahead of them. He quickly pulled a U-turn and drove back to the parking lot they’d just left. Felipe “the gun shop” was still there in his truck. Rosa’s car skidded to a screeching stop beside him, and Felipe rolled down the driver’s-side window.

  “Gun shop is closed,” he said. “No returns.”

  “I’m not looking to return anything. I need a car.”

  “You trading that one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How soon?”

  “Right now. Can you help?”

  “No problema,” Felipe said, his gold caps flashing in the sunlight. “Welcome to Felipe’s chop shop.”

  Cy’s Place was quiet on Monday night. Beatriz was alone in a booth near the front window, headphones on, doing her homework. Julia was at the bar drinking an iced tea.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Theo.

  Julia drew a breath, as if the world’s problems were weighing on her. “I may have lied in court today.”

  Theo leaned on the bar, shifting into listening mode. “Tell me what happened.”

  “It was at the end of my testimony. The judge gave the DHS lawyer one last question. Just one.”

  “What was the question?”

  “Does Jorge smoke cigarettes.”

  “Why does that even matter?”

  “Jack said the Department of Homeland Security is trying to prove that it’s safe to send me back to El Salvador because Jorge is here in Miami. We know that MDPD found some DNA on a cigarette. Jack says the lab work mu
st not be completely clean. He thinks there might be some question whether the DNA belongs to Jorge, so the lawyer wanted me to admit that he smokes cigarettes.”

  “Does he?”

  “He did for the first five years I knew him. But honestly, the last year we were together, I never saw him touch a cigarette. So I said no.”

  “Atta girl! You jammed that mean ol’ lawyer!” Theo smiled and reached across the bar, trying to draw a fist bump from her. But Julia didn’t feel like it.

  “You don’t think I told a lie?” she asked.

  “Not at all. As far as you know, the man doesn’t smoke cigarettes. Right?”

  “I didn’t say ‘as far as I know.’ I said no.”

  “And let me guess. The smarty-pants government lawyer got right up in your face like this,” he said, playing lawyer. Then he took on the voice of the Wicked Witch of the West: “It’s a simple question, Dorothy! Does Toto smoke cigarettes? Yes or no!?”

  Julia smiled. “Well, it didn’t go exactly like that. But kind of.”

  “Then you did the right thing.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Julia reached across the bar and took his hand. “I really like you, Theo.”

  “I like me, too.”

  Flagler was one of Miami’s oldest and busiest streets, and the Flamingo Motel was at its western end, midway between Miami’s Little Havana and the Florida Everglades. Jorge chose it on the recommendation of Felipe, “the gun shop/chop shop.”

  Most of the old motels in this once-vibrant area were in decline and slated for demolition, but Jorge had seen much worse in Soyapango. The two-story building was typical of Miami in the 1970s. Rooms faced the parking lot and opened to the outdoors. Noisy climate-control units protruded from below the front window. The neon letters on the roadside marquee were partially burned out, leaving the vacancy sign to proclaim vaca, which Jorge read in his native tongue: cow. He smiled, wondering if there were sheep and goats, too. He found a parking space near the marquee.

  “Sit tight,” he told Rosa.

  He got out of the car and walked across the parking lot to the manager’s office. The glass door was locked, a reasonable precaution in this neighborhood, but Jorge could see a woman seated behind the reception counter. She laid her cigarette in the ashtray and, with the press of a button, her gravelly voice crackled over the speaker.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I need a room,” said Jorge.

  “I’ll buzz you in. And fair warning, mister: I have a gun, I’ve used it before, and I don’t miss.”

  The buzzer sounded and Jorge entered the small reception area, positioning himself by the glass so that he could keep an eye on Rosa in the car. The elderly woman behind the counter said nothing, but the name tag that was pinned to her blouse told him plenty: hello, my name is a. bitch.

  “How much a night?” he asked.

  “Eighty.”

  Jorge could afford it. His “new” Chevy was priced at less than half the chopped value of Rosa’s two-year-old Toyota, and Felipe had paid him the difference in cash. But Jorge didn’t need to see the room to know the rate was too high.

  Jorge laid a fifty on the counter. “No names, no receipts. That’ll cover it.”

  She took a drag from her cigarette, her eyes narrowing on the inhale, which brought out a whole new pattern of smoke-hardened wrinkles. “No problem.”

  She gave him a key to room 115. “It’s on the south side of the complex. You’ll want to drive around to the back and park along the fence facing the gas station.”

  Jorge took the key and headed for the door, but she didn’t buzz it open.

  “That redhead in the car out there,” she said. “She with you?”

  Jorge knew exactly what she was up to. A. Bitch was a smart one, and she was going to get her eighty bucks a night if it killed her. He walked back and laid more cash on the counter. “Forget you saw her.”

  “Saw who?” She put the money in a drawer.

  The buzzer sounded, Jorge stepped out, and he returned to his car. Rosa was seated obediently in the passenger seat.

  “Good decision,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Not to run,” he said, as he pulled her long hair away from her neck. “Lemme see.”

  She turned her head and showed him the back of her neck. The three-inch burn from the red-hot choker chain was starting to ooze.

  “Looks a little better,” he lied. “Shouldn’t get any worse. Unless you try to run. You’re not going to run, are you, Red?”

  Rosa was afraid even to look at him, but look at him she did, if only because she’d been trained to do so whenever he asked her a question. “No,” she said softly.

  “No what?”

  “No, I won’t run.”

  “Good girl,” he said.

  Jorge started the car, backed out of the parking space, and drove around the rental office to their new home in room 115.

  Chapter 56

  Julia’s asylum hearing resumed Tuesday morning. It was the usual cast, with the addition of Assistant State Attorney Phillip Arnoff, who stood with the DHS lawyers on the other side of Judge Kelly’s courtroom. Jack had subpoenaed Detective Barnes to testify at nine a.m. The assistant state attorney was there to explain why the detective wasn’t.

  “Detective Barnes is testifying before the grand jury in another matter,” said Arnoff.

  “When can he be here?” the judge asked.

  “Possibly this afternoon.”

  “That’s soon enough. Mr. Swyteck, call a different witness.”

  Jack rose. “Judge, we have presented the testimony of several other witnesses through affidavits filed with the court. Other than Detective Barnes, the only live witnesses I would like to call are Israel Tovar and Gabriel Santos.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Mr. Tovar prosecuted Ms. Rodriguez under Article One-Thirty-Three of the Salvadoran penal code, and Mr. Santos was her defense counsel. Their testimony will corroborate my client’s testimony that her husband forced her to have an abortion against her will. These lawyers can also confirm that it is futile for a married woman in El Salvador to complain to the police about a sexual assault and other forms of domestic violence because, as a practical matter, nothing will be done about it.”

  “These witnesses are outside the subpoena power of this court,” the judge said. “How do you plan to get them to testify live in this courtroom?”

  “I’ve been trying to convince them to appear voluntarily via videoconference.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Not well. I have not yet been able to secure their agreement to testify.”

  “Then call another witness.”

  Jack glanced at his client. The only other witness they’d discussed was Beatriz, and a shake of Julia’s head told him that her position was unchanged.

  “At this time, I don’t have another witness,” said Jack.

  “Very well. I won’t force the respondent to rest her case, since we have Detective Barnes this afternoon. But I’m not going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs till then. We’ll proceed out of order. Ms. Jerrell, call your first witness.”

  Jerrell rose and said, “The Department of Homeland Security calls Cecilia Varga.”

  Jack forced himself not to show any reaction. Julia was not nearly as stoic as her sister rose from the first row of public seating, came forward, and swore the oath.

  Jack’s decision not to call Cecilia as a witness for Julia had been an easy one. He hadn’t forgotten his talk with Cecilia after Julia’s arrest, the two of them seated on lawn chairs outside Cecilia’s front door. Cecilia’s take on whether Julia had been raped was less than helpful. Jack had warned her that the prosecutor might call her to the witness stand, and he’d given her the standard lawyer’s lecture on how to be truthful without being hurtful. Jack hoped she was ready.

  “Ms. Varga, you just swore an oath to tell the truth, did you not?” as
ked Jerrell.

  The aggressive tone seemed to catch Cecilia off guard, but even though Jerrell had called her as a witness for the government, this was cross-examination. “I did.”

  “You understand that lying under oath is perjury?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you aware that perjury is a crime of moral turpitude under the Immigration and Naturalization Act?”

  “Objection,” said Jack. “Moral turpitude? What is this, a bar exam?”

  “I’m just asking if she knows,” said Jerrell.

  The judge was leaning way back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “Overruled. Ms. Varga, just tell her if you know or don’t know.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Cecilia.

  “Did you know that any alien who commits a crime of moral turpitude, such as perjury, is no longer eligible for a visa?”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained. Ms. Jerrell, the witness has sworn to tell the truth. You don’t have to threaten her. Move on, please.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Ms. Varga, have you ever met the respondent’s husband, Jorge Rodriguez?”

  “Of course.”

  “Has he ever hit you?”

  Again the question caught her off guard. “No.”

  “Has he ever threatened you in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever seen him abuse his daughter, Beatriz, in any way?”

  “No. I mean, he’s not much of a father.”

  Jerrell’s tone sharpened. “So the answer to my question is no. You’ve never seen Jorge Rodriguez abuse his daughter in any way.”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever seen him and your sister together?”

  “Sure. Many times.”

  “Did you ever see him hit your sister?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever see him burn your sister?”

  “Physically burn her? Like with fire?”

  “Fire, hot metal, laser beam, molten lava—anything at all. Have you ever seen him burn any part of your sister’s body?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever see him place a dog-choker chain around your sister’s neck?”