Voice with No Echo

by Suzanne Chazin

  Aviles stared into his hands without answering.

  “Is this about Lissette?” Adele asked him. “If there’s something I can pass on to the police—something that will help them find her—”

  “There is nothing.” Aviles cut her off. “Please, señora. You must give me your word that you won’t say anything about what I’ve told you until after the meeting at ICE tomorrow.”

  Sixteen hours. That’s all he was asking for. Adele took a deep breath.

  “Okay. We’ll wait until after the meeting.”

  She gathered up her papers and shook his hand. He walked her down the stairs and as far as the front door of the synagogue.

  “What time will you be back here?” he asked.

  “Eight a.m.,” she said. “Do you have a suit?”

  “My wife brought it over earlier.”

  “Good. See you tomorrow then—and lock the door.”

  She walked down the steps, stopping for a moment to hear the click of the lock. Satisfied, she headed over to her car, unlocked the doors, and hefted the paperwork on the front passenger seat. Then she walked around to the driver’s side, stuck her key in the ignition, and drove out of the lot.

  A little yellow warning light lit up on the far right of her dashboard. Adele had noted it on the drive over, but she hadn’t wanted to stop. The car drove normally. It had to be an electronic malfunction.

  A half mile down the road, however, the right side of her car began to shudder. Adele pulled onto a quiet dead-end street and got out. Her rear right tire was flat. She bent down to examine the rubber and noticed a nail head poking out from the now-flattened tread. Ay, caray! She couldn’t afford a flat tire right now—not with all she had to do.

  She pulled out her phone to dial AAA. She suspected that on a late Sunday afternoon, it would take at least forty minutes before a tow truck got here.

  She started to dial when her peripheral vision caught sight of a black-and-white Lake Holly Police cruiser pulling onto the street. The patrol officer turned on his flashers and pulled up behind Adele’s car. The cruiser door swung open, sending a crackle of dispatch voices across the quiet street. A figure in uniform stepped out. He was tall, broad, and sculpted like a granite cliff. Mirrored aviators covered his eyes even though the sun was tilting into the trees. Not that she needed to see them.

  She knew who he was.

  He pressed a hand possessively on the taillight of her car.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Figueroa.” His tone carried an authoritative edge to it. Like he’d caught her doing something she shouldn’t be.

  “Good afternoon, Officer Bale.”

  Ryan Bale walked around the edge of her car. He whistled when he saw her rear right tire. “Don’t you check your tires occasionally?”

  “It was fine this morning. I was going to call Triple A. Do you know of a tow service that might be closer? I’m sort of in a hurry.”

  “A hurry, huh?”

  Bale squatted down on the opposite side of her car. She couldn’t see him, but she gathered he was examining all of her tires. When he straightened, he switched on his body cam. All the cops had personal body cameras these days. Adele hoped she didn’t make some offhand comment that ended up circulating around the police station.

  “Your other tires look sturdy at least,” said Bale. He brushed his dusty palms along the sides of his uniform pants.

  “Perhaps I should just call Triple A,” she said again.

  Bale gestured to her rearview mirror with an Ecuadorian flag hanging over the mount. “You know that’s illegal in the state of New York.”

  “What is?”

  “Hanging anything from your rearview mirror.”

  “Really?” And how about demanding to search an immigrant center without a warrant? Adele bit her tongue. He’d surely write the ticket if she provoked him. Plus, the whole encounter would be on video.

  Bale folded his arms across his Popeye chest and stood in front of her, blocking out the sun. “Look, Ms. Figueroa—I’m not going to ticket you—”

  “Thank you.”

  “In fact, if you want, I can change your tire for you.”

  Adele looked up at those mirrored shades. She saw only her own face in the lenses’ reflection.

  “I thought the police didn’t change flat tires.”

  “As a policy? No,” said Bale. “But it’s a slow evening. You’re a local resident and . . .” He ran a glance down her slacks and blouse. “You don’t look dressed to change a tire.”

  He walked over to her trunk as if the matter had just been settled. “You got a doughnut and jack in back, right?”

  “I guess.” Adele was embarrassed to admit she’d never checked.

  “The Shell station’s open for another hour,” said Bale.

  “They could probably mount a brand-new tire for you if I put the spare on now and you get over there right away.”

  “Thank you,” said Adele. “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Pop the trunk.”

  She pulled out her electronic key fob and beeped it open. Bale gestured to a gym bag full of Adele’s workout clothes and another with Sophia’s soccer cleats and ball. “May I remove these? I’m going to need to take this stuff out to get to the doughnut,” he explained.

  “Of course.”

  Adele took the bags and threw them in the rear seat of her car. She walked back to the trunk and watched Bale lift up the piece of carpeting to expose two storage compartments over the doughnut. He went to pull the first compartment out when his hand froze in midair.

  “What do we have here?”

  “Pardon?” Adele poked her head inside. She hoped Sophia hadn’t left a candy bar to melt.

  Bale pulled the storage compartment closer and nudged something with his finger. Adele wondered if the dealership had sold her a broken jack. She’d had the car four years and never needed it. Figures.

  But Bale’s face looked more concerned than it might for a broken jack. He reached into the compartment and pulled out a clear plastic gallon-size ziplocked bag. Inside the bag were bundles of palm-size square envelopes, each bundle fastened with a rubber band.

  Adele’s mouth went dry. Her heart raced. She knew what those bundles looked like.

  They looked like heroin.

  Bale began to count the bundles through the bag. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .

  “Those aren’t mine,” Adele protested. “I’ve never seen them before.”

  Bale ignored her. Five . . . six . . . seven . . .

  “I’ve never even checked to see if I had a spare or a jack.”

  . . . Eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . eleven . . .

  “This is crazy!” Adele stammered. “Do I look like a junkie to you?”

  . . . Twelve . . . thirteen . . . fourteen. Bale finished counting and looked at her. Fourteen bundles. Each bundle contained probably ten hits—half a gram. Which added up to seven grams in total.

  Felony weight.

  Adele worked hard to find her voice. “I swear, Officer, I don’t know where that bag came from.”

  “Right.” Bale told her not to move while he went back to his vehicle and fetched a field drug test. He dropped a small amount of powder from one of the packets into a test tube. The solution turned cloudy.

  Adele threw up her hands. “This is ridiculous!”

  She wanted to prove that this was all a mistake. But she didn’t know how. Heroin use was rampant in the county. Where once it had been solely the province of hardcore addicts, it was now being snorted and injected by plenty of people whom no one would suspect. Business executives and lawyers and Ivy League college students home on break. Having no needle marks meant nothing. Snorting was more common than injecting anyway.

  “Officer, please.” Adele felt her voice rise in pitch. All her years of Harvard legal training went out the window. “This isn’t mine. I don’t know how it got there, but it’s not mine!”

  “Turn around, ma’am. Place your hands on you
r vehicle.”

  Bale didn’t wait for Adele to comply. He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her into position, kicking her legs apart until he had her under his control. She heard the jingle of handcuffs and felt the cold steel of a bracelet lock around one wrist and then the other behind her back. Her shoulders burned from the sensation. In all her years of dealing with criminal defendants and detained immigrants, she’d never once experienced what it felt like personally.

  “You are under arrest for possession of heroin,” Bale grunted as he ran his thick hands down her body, looking for—what? A gun? A joint? More heroin?

  “I don’t think I need to read you of all people your Miranda rights,” said Bale. “But let’s run through them anyway. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  Bale droned on. Adele’s mind raced. The lawyer in her knew she shouldn’t say anything from this point forward. But the human being in her was panicked—and angry at herself. Why in God’s name had she allowed a police officer to go through the trunk of her car? Why had she consented to a search?

  And then she remembered: All of Aviles’s papers were in that accordion folder on the front passenger seat. His Salvadoran passport. His birth certificate. Copies of Noah’s and Maria’s medical records. Everything she needed to make his case tomorrow for a stay of removal.

  Adele’s arrest not only imperiled her freedom and future. It imperiled Edgar Aviles’s as well.

  Bale gathered all the evidence from Adele’s trunk and walked Adele over to his patrol car. He placed a hand on the top of her head and pushed her down on the seat in back. He closed the self-locking door. She was in the equivalent of a cage now. Her heart beat wildly.

  Bale got on his radio and ordered a tow truck. A police one, this time. And of course, this time, they’d come. Her car was now part of a police investigation. Worse, a felony police investigation. It could go into civil forfeiture. Adele might never see it again.

  But it wasn’t the car that worried her most at the moment. It was what was still in it.

  “Officer.” She tried for her most cooperative voice. “There are some papers in a folder on the front seat of my car. Legal papers that have nothing to do with my arrest. Can I please ask that you remove them from my car before it’s towed?”

  “No can do,” Bale grunted. “The contents are part of a police investigation. For all I know, those papers contain the name of your supplier.”

  “Officer,” Adele tried again. “A man’s life—his family’s lives—are at stake here. You don’t have to turn those papers over to me. You can turn them over to my attorney if you’d like.” Adele’s best friend, Paola Rosado, was a criminal defense attorney. If she couldn’t represent Adele, she’d find someone good who could. “I don’t want anyone else’s case held up because of my arrest.”

  Bale said nothing. He got out of his patrol car, walked over to Adele’s vehicle, and opened the front passenger door. Adele watched through the cruiser’s front windshield as Bale leaned in to examine the papers. She held her breath, waiting. Then he straightened, closed the door, and walked back to his patrol car, empty-handed. He stuck his chiseled face through the driver’s-side window and lifted his mirrored aviators.

  “You want those papers? You’ll have to go through a judge,” said Bale. “Edgar Aviles is a fugitive. I’m not going to help one criminal aid and abet another.”

  Chapter 30

  It took nearly ten minutes for the first patrol car to show up to the Rosedale Projects—and another five before an ambulance arrived. By then, it was too late.

  Sixteen-year-old Deisy Ramos was dead.

  Vega and Michelle were sweat-soaked and exhausted from performing CPR. They collapsed onto a bench while two young NYPD officers—a man and a woman—took their statements with the bored expressions of cops who’d already seen too many junkies die.

  Vega explained that Deisy was a witness in a death investigation they were involved in. He offered up Deisy’s mother’s name and the fact that she lived and worked in Port Carroll.

  “I don’t have the mother’s address,” said Vega. “But she works at the Port Carroll Diner. You should be able to get a home address from Daniel Molina. He’s a Port Carroll police officer.” Vega gave them Molina’s cell number. “He knows the family,” said Vega. “It would be great if the NYPD could authorize him to be the one to notify the mom.”

  “We’ll run it by our superiors,” said the black female cop. She was a little older than her white male partner and clearly the one in charge. She asked the questions. He wrote down the answers.

  “So”—the female cop flicked a finger between them—“you two came down here to speak to her?”

  “Not exactly,” said Michelle. “My mother lives in Rosedale. We just happened to recognize her.”

  Vega gave them a description of the lazy-eyed man Deisy was with and the car he got away in. “I don’t have the tag number,” Vega apologized. “I couldn’t see it.”

  The male cop stopped writing and made eye contact with Vega. “Back up a moment. You’re partners, you’re not on duty, and you’re ”—he gestured to Michelle with his pen—“visiting her mother?”

  “I live in the neighborhood,” said Michelle.

  “And you?” The female cop looked at Vega. “You live here too?”

  “No,” said Vega. “I live upstate. In Sullivan Falls.”

  “I see.” She and her partner exchanged smirks.

  “It’s not like that,” Michelle stammered. “Detective Vega and I . . . we’re not . . . That is, we’re—”

  “Honey,” the woman said to Michelle. “It’s no skin off my back. So long as your IDs and phone contacts check out, makes no never-mind to me what you do on your own time.”

  IDs. Cell phones. That’s when it hit Vega.

  “We didn’t find any ID or a cell phone on the girl,” said Vega.

  “I’m guessing the dealer/boyfriend she was with took her purse,” said the female cop.

  “No,” said Vega. “I saw him. He wasn’t carrying anything. And she wasn’t either. Hell, my teenage daughter won’t go to the bathroom without her cell phone.”

  The two NYPD cops got the implication. Wherever Deisy Ramos was going with this man with the wild eye, it hadn’t been voluntary.

  “Crazy Eye was no boyfriend,” said Vega after the cops and ambulance had left. “He was her dealer. Or maybe her pimp.”

  “Looks like she got herself mixed up with some bad people,” said Michelle. “Her mother’s going to be devastated. I hope they let your friend in Port Carroll break the news to her.”

  “Me too,” said Vega.

  He stared at the spot where the young girl’s body had been. In the suburbs, a dying woman would excite an aftermath of conversation. Here, the crowd scattered as soon as the body was loaded into the ambulance. Mothers went back to nursing babies on park benches. Young men huddled in groups, smoking and eyeing the girls. The courts refilled with the sound of thumping basketballs.

  Vega didn’t move, struck as he was, by the purposelessness of her death. She’d traveled two thousand miles and endured God-only-knew what sort of traumas to end up like this. Dead on a Bronx pavement. The journey to the U.S. had ended up costing both sisters their lives. And for what?

  Still, Vega couldn’t shake the sense that this was more than a young girl making bad decisions. He didn’t buy a teenager going from varsity volleyball player one week to hooker and addict the next. A voice rose up from deep inside him. Somebody did this to you. Used you up and threw you away. But why?

  “Would you like to meet my boys?” asked Michelle. “They’re upstairs with my mother.”

  “Your boys?” Vega felt a panic grip his chest. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be. “Maybe some other time.”

  She looked disappointed. Vega felt guilty.

  “You’re going to Port Carroll, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Vega shrugged. “It’s on the way home.” Not really. Not even cl
ose. It wasn’t like he could interview Deisy’s mother. Not now—given that he and Michelle were witnesses to her daughter’s death. It would be a breach of protocol. But he still felt the need to talk to Molina.

  “Well.” Michelle let out a slow exhale of air. “Let me know what you find out.” She turned to go inside. Vega grabbed her hand.

  “Thanks for everything today, Michelle. I mean it.”

  “Sure.” She smiled, but her eyes looked sad. For her, for him—for Deisy Ramos—he couldn’t say.

  * * *

  Vega called Adele when he got back to his truck. Her phone went to voice mail. He supposed Aviles was taking up more time than she’d intended. He called Danny Molina next and told him about Deisy Ramos. He knew the NYPD wouldn’t get around to making a notification for at least several hours.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Molina. He sounded stricken.

  “It looked like a drug overdose,” said Vega. “Did her mother mention any drug problems?”

  “No,” said Molina. “Not that that always means anything. But she really had turned a corner and was getting her life together.”

  “Was she the target of any gangs?” asked Vega. “She was dressed . . . well, like a prostitute. Not that all the girls don’t dress provocatively these days. But I got the sense that the guy with her wasn’t a boyfriend. He was a pimp or a dealer. She didn’t have a purse or ID or even a cell phone on her when she collapsed. And I didn’t see the mutt run off with anything.”

  “This mutt,” said Molina. “What did he look like?”

  “Hispanic,” said Vega. “Late twenties, perhaps. Muscular. Full sleeves of tattoos. He had a left eye that wandered.”

  “A left . . . ?” Molina’s voice got a breathy excitement to it. “You got time to come into the Port Carroll station today?”

  “I’m in the Bronx,” said Vega. “But I can swing by on my way home. You have a dirtbag in mind?”

  “Yeah,” said Molina. “Ramon Ramirez. His nickname is Ojo Loco.”

  Crazy eye.

  “Is he one of the Ramirez brothers you were telling me about last night?” asked Vega.

  “Affirmative,” said Molina. “So much for going back to El Salvador.”