Vega knew that fear in his marrow.
He peeked down into the room. Just seeing it made him feel faint and dizzy. His tongue swelled. His stomach churned. His whole body broke out in a sweat. He closed his eyes and saw that closet again, the one he conjured in his dreams where the floor was littered with damp, mildewed towels and the big green fingerprint-smeared door wouldn’t open. Only now, he could locate those dark images and give them a name.
It happened when you got sent away. Through no fault of yours. Through no fault of your mother’s.
“Jimmy?” Michelle emerged from the root cellar with a second blanket for Lissette. “Are you okay?”
Vega took a deep breath. His chest hurt—but only from his broken ribs. For the first time, the ache went no deeper. His fears had a context. He could never say for sure all that had happened to him in those eight weeks his mother lost custody of him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. But he knew the most important part: His mother and grandmother loved him. They fought hard to get him back—and even harder to help him heal. And he had.
Michelle wrapped the second blanket over Vega’s jacket, which was big enough to cover Lissette to the midpoint of her thighs. Already, Vega heard the EMTs above them, scrambling through the kitchen. Vega met the frightened woman’s eyes and spoke softly in Spanish.
“Your family will be waiting for you at the hospital,” he assured her. “I know you’re scared. It’s going to take time to heal. But you’re safe now, I promise. You’re going to be okay.” He looked across at Michelle. “Nita,” he said softly, hoping his endearment would convey what his words could not. “It’s going to be okay.”
* * *
Charlene Beech Crowley was charged with the murder of Talia Crowley and the kidnapping of Lissette Aviles. Somehow, she managed to convince a judge to allow her to post bail instead of waiting out the months in the county jail. Even so, Vega wasn’t quite sure the former Junior League president really processed what was happening. She greeted the detectives warmly when they showed up to interview her and sent them handwritten thank-you notes afterward.
“Another thank-you note?” asked Vega, waving Charlene’s latest flowery missive at Greco. “For helping to put her away?”
“She doesn’t believe she’s going to be convicted,” Greco pointed out. “Remember, she’s spent her life rearranging the facts to suit her private narrative.”
“Well, this time, we’re writing the script.”
“For one Crowley, at least,” Greco muttered.
Glen was another matter. He’d stepped down as district attorney, citing concern for his “family’s welfare,” and his desire to not “taint the judicial process.” Privately, he’d managed to cut a deal to help the U.S. Attorney’s Office in their case against Solero and the Ramirez brothers in return for immunity from any charges.
“Mark my words,” said Greco. “Come the fall, Crowley will be a talking head on some cable news show. Who knows? He might even get his own show.”
“I hope he gets electrocuted by his microphone.” Crowley’s ease at evading prosecution enraged Vega. He could still see Deisy Ramos’s baby face on that Bronx pavement the day he and Michelle tried to save her life. Deisy mattered—even if powerful men like Glen Crowley and the U.S. Attorney’s Office were willing to sweep her under the rug. Vega attended her funeral. He kept tabs on her mother through Danny Molina, who’d managed to raise funds for a college volleyball scholarship at the high school in her honor.
Vega took comfort in the fact that Lissette had survived and was doing well. The feds had granted her the same visa they’d given Edgar. With it, she’d become “legal” for the first time. She found work as a teacher’s aide in a nursery school. Teaching was her real love. Adele said that working with children had begun to heal her in a way nothing else could.
Vega was glad someone was healing. He sure wasn’t. His concussion gradually faded and his ribs stopped being painful to the touch. But his heart was another matter.
Richie.
Solero hunkered down in prison, refusing all visits from his fellow band members. Especially Vega. For weeks, Vega couldn’t even pick up his guitars without feeling an acid burn in the pit of his stomach. Armado cancelled all their upcoming gigs. Their audio tracks sat dormant in Chuck McCormick’s home studio. Vega wondered if he could ever go back to playing again.
When he was seven, music had saved him. But he wasn’t seven anymore.
Then he thought about Cecilia Osorio’s words, about how the past could burn a hole right through you if you let it. He was determined not to. Four weeks after Solero’s arrest, Vega picked up his guitar and played again. First hesitantly. Then every day. He called up Danny and Brandon and Chris, the other members of Armado. They admitted that they, too, had stopped playing. They missed the band. It would take time, but they agreed that they would regroup and come back. The music was eternal. It was bigger than any of them.
It would outlive them all.
With Vega on medical leave and his band on hiatus, he had a lot of time to spend with Adele.
“Too much time,” Adele quipped one day as she packed for Sophia’s weekend camping trip with the Girl Scouts. Adele had been roped into chaperoning. Vega had spent the last few days checking and rechecking their supply list. He’d even color-coordinated their bungee cords.
“Jimmy,” Adele said, gently nudging him from yet another examination of the batteries in their flashlights. “Do something fun this weekend while we’re away.”
“Like what?”
“Have lunch with Joy.”
“She’s going to the beach with friends this weekend.”
“Then grab a beer with Danny. Catch a movie with Chris or Brandon. Or . . .” She held his gaze. “Call Michelle. Invite her and her boys up to the lake. You know they’d love it. And so would Diablo.”
“The case is over—”
“It’s not about the case,” said Adele. “Call her. It will be good for both of you.”
* * *
Michelle jumped at the offer, as Adele said she would. The problem was her car. It had a busted alternator. She offered to take a train, but Vega decided to pick her and the boys up instead. She suggested he meet them outside her mother’s place in the Rosedale Projects.
“It’s easier to park there,” she explained. “You can pull up to the curb by the basketball courts. Text me when you’re close and we’ll be waiting.”
It was a warm June Saturday and the basketball courts were hopping, the balls bouncing across the asphalt to the blare of rap and reggaeton from stereo speakers.
Michelle was there, standing beside a suitcase that looked like she’d packed for a three-month trip. She was wearing jean shorts and a halter that made her brown skin glow. The boys, Alex and Artie Jr., were both wearing track shorts that hung below their knees and basketball sneakers that encased their ankles. Their eyes were hesitant beneath the brims of their baseball caps. Vega’s heart dipped. He was technically their uncle. He was also a stranger.
He hoped after this weekend, he’d become a friend.
Vega nosed his pickup to the curb and stuffed Michelle’s suitcase in a space behind the rear seats.
“What the hell have you got in here?” he asked. “A dead body?”
“I wanted to come prepared,” she said. “You know. Mosquito repellent. Tick repellent. Sunscreen. Iodine wash—”
“We’re not going to Alaska.”
“Mano, compared to here, it might as well be.”
The boys got into the backseat. Michelle cupped a hand over her brow and gazed at the benches by the basketball courts. She lifted an arm and waved. Vega followed her gaze to an older, rounded woman with a soft, expectant look on her face. Michelle’s mother, Carmen Rodriguez. Vega couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen her.
Carmen set her eyes on Vega and slowly raised her arm to wave at him. He felt a swirl of emotions. Anger at what she’d likely covered up all these years. Confusion at what had s
et it all in motion. But something else too. Forgiveness. Not just for her but for himself. He’d made some terrible mistakes in his own life. Some, he could walk back. Some, he couldn’t. Cecilia Osorio was right. The time had come to accept and move on.
Slowly, he raised an arm and returned her wave. It wasn’t much. But it was a start.
Acknowledgments
Writing fiction about current events is a roller-coaster experience. All too often, I begin a book with a premise that feels implausible only to discover that by the time the book is published, the circumstances have become all too real. Whether the story has been about the vulnerability of women and children in immigrant families, the tribulations of young people with DACA, or the way politics can tear apart a community, I have often felt more like a journalist chronicling events than a fiction writer inventing them.
Voice with No Echo is no exception. What started as fiction—a story about a custodian in Max Zimmerman’s synagogue who gets caught up in a deportation—turned into reality a few months into the writing. That’s when an undocumented immigrant who had worked for two decades as a custodian at a local synagogue was arrested and deported. The man, who had no criminal record, arrived in Mexico without money, his cell phone, or ID. The officer who escorted him over the border predicted he would be kidnapped within a week. In a country he hadn’t set foot in since he was eighteen.
The synagogue members scrambled, much as they do in the novel. They hired lawyers. They raised money to take care of the man’s wife and American-born children. They wrote dozens of letters to officials. There were rallies. Articles in the local paper. Months went by with no news. I finished my book. It had a happy ending. The man’s fate is far less certain. He did get back to the United States, but it took ten months and a change in a federal court ruling to make it happen. His long-term prospects for asylum remain unknown.
Unlike fiction, nothing is for certain.
Stories like these—of people caught up in events beyond their control—are what drive my fiction. Thank you, readers, for your support. And many thanks, too, to the individuals who continue to provide me with guidance and encouragement throughout the series. Special thanks, as always, to Gene West, for his insights into law enforcement and his pitch-perfect sense of story. Thanks, also, to Janis Pomerantz, who reviewed the synagogue portions of my story for wording and accuracy, and to my agent, Stephany Evans and Ayesha Pande Literary, who are always there to lend an ear, even as I had to put the book on hold for a personal emergency.
Thanks to my editor, Michaela Hamilton, marketing director Vida Engstrand, and Kensington CEO Steven Zacharius for championing what some might call a controversial series. I don’t know many publishing houses that would take such a risk—and be so supportive throughout.
And most of all, my thanks to my family: my husband, Tom; son, Kevin; daughter, Erica; and stepfather, Bill. I couldn’t do this without you.
About the Author
Suzanne Chazin has won widespread acclaim for the Jimmy Vega series, including Land of Careful Shadows, A Blossom of Bright Light, No Witness But the Moon, and A Place in the Wind. She has twice been the recipient of the Washington Irving Book Award for fiction. Her fiction, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, as well as the award-winning short-story anthology Bronx Noir. She lives in the New York City area. Visit her on Facebook or at www.suzannechazin.com.
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