The Killing of the Saints

by Alex Abella

  I hear a strange loud noise in the background. I realize it's the sound of my own heart. I remember the old rules and tricks. Take a deep breath and smile. Look at small groups of twos and threes in turn. Make everyone feel recognized and appreciated. Smile as hard as you can, then smile some more.

  I stop. The moments pass. Everyone stares.

  I realize all the arguments I have collected have no purpose. There is nothing I can say that hasn't been stated or implied. I have no defense. I have no arguments. Everything is lead and dross.

  Reynolds clears his throat. "Mr. Morell?" he prompts.

  "Yes, Your Honor," I reply, the good doggie at the show, ready to trot for his master.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," I start, "as you may surmise"-stop the fancy words, get plain and simple!-"it's not easy coming into the middle of a case like this so I must ask for your indulgence if I seem somewhat less than at ease. While it's true that I helped Mr. Valdez with his defense, it certainly never occurred to me that one day I'd be here standing before you, facing you, entrusted with the case. I hope you'll bear with me." That's good, keep it straight, make them feel important.

  "When Mr. Valdez was interrupted by his ... condition, he was in the middle of answering a question from the judge, a question that I think sheds light on the way that we view this case.

  "Now, everything here has already been said, that is, the factual arguments to counter the proposition of the prosecution that Mr. Valdez is the man who murdered those six people at the Jewelry Mart. The question, as you will recall, was what did Mr. Valdez intend with all those arguments about God and man and evil and sin and all of the terrible things that we see in our world every day. I believe that if Mr. Valdez could talk-and by the way, he can't, he has lost his faculty of speech-"

  "Objection, Your Honor," interposes Phyllis. "Irrelevant."

  "Overruled. Proceed, Mr. Morell."

  "Thank you, Your Honor. As I said, could Mr. Valdez finish what he had intended to say, I believe he would have told you this. Men are sometimes picked by God to be the instruments of His will, without their being aware if they are chosen to be the sword that cuts or the hand that heals. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what happened here."

  The rolling rush of fear and excitement courses through me, as the strategy unfolds like a white ribbon in a blood red field.

  "One of the two occurred. Either Mr. Valdez or Mr. Pimienta-who has obtained a deal from the prosecution for his testimony, as you saw-one of them was visited by their gods during this incident at Schnitzer Jewelers. In plain English, one of them was possessed. Yes, possessed, like the people in the Bible possessed by devils, who Jesus cast into swine, possessed like the saints who levitate and work miracles, possessed like the girl in The Exorcist-possessed, in other words, by a force that recognizes neither right nor wrong, that laughs at our Christian morality and seeks only its immediate gratification."

  I pause, let the words sink in. "Whether it be sex, food, love, hate or death, only the immediate exists for that force. It's beyond our good and evil, beyond what we believe is due and proper. It comes from a world that none of us really knows, from that African world of pagan deities-from there came these gods."

  Now the last words, the sobering brooch to the fulsome story.

  "We intend to prove that both Mr. Valdez and Mr. Pimienta were followers of an Afro-Cuban religious cult known as Santería and that these deaths occurred while they were in a trancelike state, when the gods descend and possess the bodies of their followers, and that therefore Mr. Valdez cannot be found guilty of the crime because he had no consciousness of his actions while under the spell of these dark and ancient gods. Thank you very much."

  I sit down, empty and exhilarated. I hear Reynolds tell the jury that because of witness problems, the defense will not resume for three days. The jurors are still filing out when I finally turn and look at Ramón, who's now being tapped on the shoulder by the bailiff to return to his cell. He makes an O with thumb and index finger and mouths a silent OK. I watch him rattle into the lockup, my heartbeat slows down.

  God help me, I think. God help me.

  21

  graciela de Alba did not look at all as though she'd just left her deathbed. Short, stocky, leaning on a Nigerian ceremonial tribal cane, with a head of bushy red and gray hair and deep green eyes, she was a baobab, a tree of life in the plains of LAX, surrounded by hordes of passengers around the Pan Am counter. She raised the silver-handled cane when she saw me approaching, wagging it in the air.

  "You must be Charlie," she said.

  "Yes, I am, Señora de Alba. Sorry I was delayed, a truck jackknifed on the Santa Monica Freeway."

  "I know, I know. Four cars smashed, two dead. Terrible."

  "How did you know?" I was ready for revelations from afar. She pointed at the speakers in the newsstand nearby.

  "Radio. Ready?"

  Her luggage consisted of a large black steamer trunk that weighed at least two hundred pounds. The porter who carted it to the 944 shook his head wearily when he dropped it in the back.

  "What you got in there, lady? A body?"

  "Four. For good luck."

  "Four?" The man looked at her surprised, then burst out laughing. He wheeled his cart away. "You crack me up."

  De Alba waddled around to the front of my Porsche, bent over the front fender.

  "They didn't do a very good job fixing this," she said.

  "What do you mean?

  "See these waves in the body?" She pointed out some barely discernible ripples along the side of the right front fender. "The man at the shop didn't smooth that out correctly. If I were you I'd ask for my money back. I mean, this is a nice car and all." She extended her hand. "Mind if I drive?"

  I couldn't help a smile-the little old lady from Miami with a four on the floor-five, actually.

  "Sure." I tossed her the keys. She grabbed them with her free hand and, opening the driver's door, slid behind the wheel. Her wide girth forced her to slide the seat all the way back, so that by the time her belly fit inside, the tips of her shoes barely touched the pedals.

  "You sure you want to do this?" I asked.

  "Positive." She gunned the engine. "Love sports cars. I got a Lotus back home."

  She drove fiendishly around the traffic circle in front of the terminal, cutting off a Cadillac to make a light and exit on Century Boulevard out of the airport. She didn't slow down below sixty until we reached the 405 on-ramp, where she decelerated briefly to fifty, then revved all the way up to ninety, weaving in and out of the chugging lanes of traffic with the assurance of an Emerson Fittipaldi.

  "But my car back home doesn't handle like this. Nice set of wheels."

  "Thank you. You said you were sick. What happened, too much car exhaust?"

  She glanced around, her eyes gleefully taking in the dull green hills leading to the Mulholland Pass. "If that made you sick, I think all of L.A. would be one giant rolling hospital. No, cancer of the colon."

  "How did you beat it, with chemotherapy?"

  She looked at me puzzled. "What chemotherapy? Didn't Ramón tell you?"

  I should have known I'd be set up for the sucker punch. "No, he hasn't been quite himself lately. He can't speak."

  "Really? How did that happen?"

  "He had a seizure of sorts last week. Right in the middle of opening arguments. Sort of like he swallowed his tongue."

  "The orisha must be very angry at him. That must be his punishment." She eyed me quizzically. "Perhaps it's something else. Maybe they wanted you to handle the case."

  "I'm sure. Watch out for the truck!" De Alba glanced forward again. The car was about to plow into a smoking cart of roofer's pitch towed by an aging Ford barely making forty up the grade. She braked, but just at that moment traffic opened up two lanes away so de Alba shot straight for the opening. By the time I regained my breath, she was tooling along at a normal seventy-five per hour.

  "Sorry about that," she said. "Your freeways are
really busy."

  "Now you notice."

  She drove on in silence for a while, observing the green and gray masses of pampa grass growing along the sides of the road, the strands of oak, the compact shadowy chaparral.

  "These hills have much nganga," she said.

  "What's that?"

  "Spiritual power. I can feel it in spite of this traffic. This place is truly like a magnet, isn't it? Oh, my God!"

  We'd come over the pass, leaving Mulholland behind us. The entire San Fernando Valley opened before us, the tall shoulders of the San Gabriel range looming portentously over the paved-over orange groves, the car dealerships, California ranch homes and shimmering swimming pools.

  "This is truly a magic town," she muttered, almost in disbelief. "It's an oasis, just like everybody says."

  I had nothing to say to that. If this was the watering hole, then what was the desert like?

  "How did you meet Ramón?" I asked.

  "Look at the houses!" she said, pointing out the tile-roofed homes of the Hollywood hills as we descended through the Cahuenga Pass. "Just like Italy. Bell tower and everything. How quaint! How did we meet? Well, you know, we never have."

  "You haven't?"

  "No. I know of him. He is a very high-ranking babalawo, you know, a high priest of Santería. I have been told he's an omokoloba, a high initiate into the mysteries of the religion. We have mutual acquaintances in Miami."

  "But isn't a priest supposed to lead an exemplary life?"

  "Yes. That's his problem. He's been ignoring the dictates of his god. Besides, I hear he's gotten into palo mayombé as well."

  "You mean the black witchcraft, raising the dead and all that?"

  "Yes. Maybe because his saint left him and he turned to the dead, maybe he's power hungry, I don't know. What do I do now?"

  She pointed her chin at a fork in the road, one to Pasadena, the other to downtown and Santa Ana.

  "Take the Harbor and off on Sixth Street. So you think that's what happened to him in the Jewelry Mart?"

  She drove swiftly through the joining lanes, skirting traffic at the interchange. "I don't know what happened there but I'm sorry I wasn't here when it did happen. It was a divine retaliation of some sort. You know that in Santería, prisons and jails are two of the five manifestations of evil in the world, especially for Oggún, Ramón's saint. He must have sinned enormously to be locked up on charges like this."

  We exited on Sixth and slipped down to the old, gilt Biltmore Hotel at Pershing Square. She screeched the Porsche to a halt, grinned. "Great car. Have to let me drive it again some time."

  She picked up her cane, waddled out into the street and waved at a bellboy to pick up her trunk.

  "Listen," I said, "you never told me. What happened to your colon cancer?"

  The bellboy huffed, lowering the trunk to the dolly. "Careful, there!" she warned. Then, "I had a dream that Oggún came with a potion. When I drank it he told me I'd been cured so I could come help his son, who sinned but is still loved. The next day the cancer was in remission."

  "How did you know it was Ramón?"

  "Oggún held up a figurine of Ramón. He spoke to me and told me where to come. He was holding another one. I didn't know who it was then. But now I do."

  "Who was it?"

  She smiled at me and the chill of realization tore down my back.

  "See you tomorrow in court," she said.

  It was about eleven-thirty, just a half hour before our lunch break, when I finally called in our first witness. Pedro Ramo took the stand with the practical ease of someone who's had to justify his existence countless times, not certain of what story he would tell but knowing that once again his thoughts and actions would be displayed in the bright light for all to see. I'd already reviewed out in the hall the questions that I'd be asking him, so now, having sworn to tell the truth, he looked directly at me, calmly waiting for the testimony to begin. The interpreter, an old bull of a man with a gray mustache and a hearing aid, translated in the singsong rhythm of East Los Angeles.

  "I don't know how to write," said Pedro, when asked by the clerk to spell his name. Reynolds rolled his eyes in exasperation and instructed the interpreter to give the standard spelling.

  My turn. I rose, walked to the lectern, put down my notepad, made believe there was no one else in the courtroom, that Pedro and I were there only for a few friendly questions.

  "Mr. Ramo, do you know the defendant, Mr. Valdez?"

  "Oh yes, I do. He has been very good to us, me and my family," he said. "He has been our protector."

  "How long have you known him?"

  "Ooh, a long time, almost five years now. May I say something?" He looked imploringly at the judge, but Reynolds cut him off before he could go on.

  "Wait until the lawyer asks you the question."

  Ramo's features tightened from repressed storytelling.

  "In what capacity do you know Mr. Valdez?"

  "He's our priest, our savior. Without him we would have known great calamities."

  "What do you mean?"

  "When we first came to Los Angeles he helped us find a place to stay, then he told us where work could be had. He has been a very helpful man."

  "Has he ever been cruel or acted badly toward you?"

  "Oh no, never."

  "And your family? Do you know how he has acted toward them?"

  "A very good man he has been. May I say something?"

  Reynolds again cut him off peremptorily with a wave of the hand. "Wait until the question is asked."

  I looked to my side and instead of seeing Phyllis scribbling notes or preparing for objections, she was very calmly filing her nails with an emery board no bigger than her little finger. Ramón grinned at me, approving my sorry performance so far.

  "Do you have any children, Mr. Ramo?"

  "Oh, yes. Five. Tomasito, Gabriel, Lupe, José and Panchito, he's on leave."

  "Excuse me?" I said. Ramo had used the word "feriado," which the interpreter had mistranslated. But the old man now engaged in a soft-spoken, rapid-fire exchange with the Indian, which ended with the interpreter nodding, turning toward me and saying, with dubious conviction, "He's on holiday."

  "A holiday. How old is he?"

  "He's five, yes."

  "Isn't he a little too young to be on a holiday?"

  "Oh no, the holiday can come and strike you at any time, you know."

  "I see. Is this a permanent holiday?"

  "Yes, unfortunately."

  "Is this what we call dead?"

  The word muerto resounded almost like a child's song in the courtroom.

  "No, no está muerto con tal de que yo lo recuerde," he declared. No, he's not dead as long as I remember him. Now everyone in the courtroom stopped what they were doing-Phyllis her nails, Reynolds the crossword puzzle on his legal pad, the bailiff leafing through his Guns and Ammo, the audience reading the Reader's Digest and the Times, to gaze briefly at a father who would not let his child go.

  "I understand," I said, "and please forgive me, for I know in your heart Panchito still lives. But his body, it is in the cemetery?"

  Ramo, crestfallen. "Yes, it is."

  "Did Mr. Valdez know Panchito?"

  "Yes. He was the one who convinced him to stay with us once before."

  "How was that?"

  "He had the fever for going, he was wasting away, but don Ramón gave him a bath and he got much better and decided to stay with us for a while."

  "You had taken him to a doctor?"

  "It was no use, they said, he had the malady deep inside him. It was in his bones."

  "And you are sure that Mr. Valdez, don Ramón, like you call him, helped your son get better?"

  "I know so. He lived for another two years. What wouldn't I give to have him back with us. He was the light of our house."

  "Did Mr. Valdez charge you something for this?"

  "Oh, no. He's our priest. A good priest. He doesn't charge."

  "What
religion is this?"

  "It's the religion of the saints, he says. Saints."

  "You mean Santería."

  "Yes, that."

  "Were you the only one who belonged to this religion?"

  "No, there are many of us. We were a flock but now our shepherd, he's here in jail and all the sheep have strayed. May I say something?"

  Reynolds is again going to stop him but I speak up first. "What would you like to say?"

  "I'd like to say that the man who cured my boy is not the man you have here, that was a different man, if it's true what they say that don Ramón did at that store. But I also want to say this, don Ramón, we love you and miss you and we are waiting for your touch and for your help. Thank you very much."

  I stood there, gripping the lectern, waves of restlessness pounding at my forehead, the room spinning, until I heard myself ask, "Mr. Ramo, do you believe in Christ?"

  "Christ? Yes, he's a saint, isn't he?"

  I took a deep breath, picked up my notepad, returned to my chair.

  "No more questions."

  "Ms. Chin?" asked Reynolds.

  Phyllis bent to whisper something to Samuels, who shook his head no. I knew Ramo had no record, there was nothing they could hang on him.

  Wearily, almost reluctantly, Phyllis answered. "No questions."

  Reynolds turned to Ramo. "I have a question. When did your son go on holiday, like you say?"