“You were close to her, I remember.”
“Yeah.” Talking about family had always been a sore point for him. Growing up, there was always the “what happened to your father?” And how do you answer that? How do you say he just up and left and not get those pitying, judgmental gazes?
It wasn’t like his father really went anywhere. He wasn’t in jail, wasn’t a drunk or on drugs, despite what Anglos always assumed. He was a bass guitarist for a Dominican meringue band that played the Latin bars in the Bronx and Washington Heights in Manhattan. Sometimes, when Vega was little, he’d see him at Manny’s Bodega on East Tremont Avenue, a ropy, good-looking man whom everyone seemed to like. His dad would even slip him a dollar or two and tell him a joke or roughhouse with him. It always made Vega wish for more and it was the wishing that hurt the most, the sense that his father’s presence was little more than a fog that came without warning and left with the slightest change in temperature.
The dog lifted her head and ran suddenly out of the kitchen. Dogs always know everything before humans, it seemed. She came back a moment later, doing a little jig to herald the return of her master. Vega slipped off the kitchen stool, feeling self-conscious and guilty though he reminded himself that he was only here because of his job.
Olivia skipped into the kitchen first, brandishing an open shoebox to reveal two bright blue soccer cleats with lime green Nike swooshes running along their sides. Vega expected her to go all shy in his presence. Joy would have at that age. But the girl simply walked up to him as if he were an uncle she’d been expecting.
“Want to see my new cleats?” she asked. Her long, black hair had been tied back into two ponytails, and a baseball shirt—red sleeves, tan body—hung loosely over a pair of red sweatpants with the word “Justice” running down the side. Not a concept. A brand name. Shockingly expensive. Wendy used to buy their clothing for Joy.
Olivia was stockier than her parents. She had that Indian blood that tended toward a thick, square torso. But her eyes were large and full of energy. She looked like a happy child, like Linda and Scott were giving her a life she never could have hoped for in Guatemala.
“Those are pretty cool cleats,” said Vega. He heard Linda’s voice in the mudroom off the garage, filling her husband in on the visit. Vega was sweating. He wondered what Scott Porter already knew about him.
“Detective? Good to meet you.” Porter stepped forward, his handshake one psi short of a combat hold. Vega wondered if there was a little alpha marking going on, but what the hell? They were in his house. Linda was his wife. He was entitled to claim his territory.
Vega normally disliked criminal defense attorneys. A lot of them patronized cops, treated them as stupid and racist—little more than meter maids with guns. Vega had gone on one too many witness stands where some abrasive lawyer in a suit tried to twist his words or turn him into the bad guy for doing his job. But Scott Porter seemed more personable than that. Maybe it was his smile, the way it curved up a little too much on one side, gave him a goofiness that made him seem more sincere and amiable than most of his colleagues. Or perhaps it was because they weren’t in a courtroom. Nobody’s integrity was on the line here.
“Linda tells me Adele sent you.”
“Uh, yeah.” Vega waited for more, some mention of the past. But Porter just smiled his goofy smile. Linda sent Olivia up to her room to play. She poured her husband a cup of coffee and he sat down at the counter.
“What can we do for you?” Porter’s eyes were blank. No one’s that good an actor. Vega shot a look at Linda. She looked away and Vega felt a stab of something sharp and unexpected in his gut. Linda Kendall was his first love. He was hers. They’d lost their virginity to each other. He’d jumped off a goddamned cliff and nearly died to win her over. And Vega didn’t even merit a mention to her husband? It never came up? Not even that terrible last time they were together? All these years, she’d never entirely left his thoughts. All these years it seemed, he hadn’t even registered in hers.
Vega tried to brush the hurt from his mind and keep his thoughts on the job at hand. He found the flyer he’d stuffed into his back pocket and flattened it out across the kitchen counter.
“I’m here about a woman. Do either of you recognize her?”
Porter put down his coffee cup and stared at the picture. “Is she dead?”
“She was found in the reservoir this morning. I won’t have a time frame for the death until the medical examiner looks at the body.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“It’s still under investigation.”
“Where’s the baby?” asked Linda.
“That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out.”
Porter pushed his coffee aside. He stared at the picture a long time, as if searching his memory banks for a name. “I don’t recognize her,” he said finally.
“Let me see,” said Linda, taking the flyer. “Hmmm. The picture’s a little blurry. I don’t recognize her offhand. I’d have to go back through my client files.”
“Would she be in those files if she came into La Casa?” asked Vega.
“Not necessarily,” said Linda. “A lot of people don’t want their names or information in our system. They’re afraid, even of us.”
“How about the name José Ortiz? Do either of you know him?”
“Guatemalan from Quetzaltenango?” asked Linda.
“Late twenties? Has a small scar on his cheek?”
“That’s probably the guy. Do you know where I can find him?”
“I haven’t seen him in several weeks.”
“How about his wife, Vilma, or his two-year-old daughter?”
“I didn’t even know he had a wife and daughter.”
“Would you have a photograph of him in your files?”
Linda shook her head. “I’m afraid we don’t take pictures of clients. It’s a breach of confidentiality.”
“Since when?” Hell, Vega had five pieces of picture ID in his wallet right now.
“Why do you want to find him?” she asked.
“I just need to ask him a few questions.” Vega turned to Porter. “Maybe you’ve had some dealings with him? He was cited for harassment on a DV complaint from his wife about six weeks ago.”
“Name’s not familiar,” said Porter. “Had he been arrested, I’d probably know him. But in case you haven’t noticed, Detective, Latinos in Lake Holly tend to get arrested only if their victims are legal or their crimes make them de-portable. Undocumented women—as I’m assuming Vilma is—are more or less on their own in Lake Holly.”
“Has this always been the case?” asked Vega. “Or has the situation gotten worse since the Shipleys were run over?”
Linda looked at her husband. Vega sensed they’d had this conversation before. “We need to tell, Scott. This can’t go on.”
“Let’s just say,” said Porter, “that since Valentine’s Day, the sentiment in Lake Holly among cops and locals seems to be that the only good illegal is a dead or deported one, and no one seems that picky which of those it comes down to.”
“That’s a pretty serious allegation,” said Vega. “Got any proof?”
Porter cradled his coffee mug and scrutinized Vega as if seeing him for the very first time. “What’s your interest in all this, Detective?”
“I can’t ask what goes on in town?”
“In my experience, cops are never idly curious.” Porter leaned forward. “What happened to that woman at the reservoir?”
“I told you, it’s under investigation.”
“Quit with the party line, Detective. We both know she’s a homicide or the county wouldn’t even be mixed up in the case. So let me take a wild guess: you want to find José Ortiz because you think he’s involved. Maybe you saw that DV complaint and you’re wondering if, while the cops were playing, ‘see no evil, get no U visa’ with Vilma, José went a little over the edge. But you’re not entirely convinced you’re on the right track. That
’s why you’re fishing here. Because you already believe there’s a pattern of hate crimes going on in town, and you want to know if the dead woman’s part of that.”
“I never said any of that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Silence. The men stared at each other. Vega wondered if he’d feel such a desire for one-upmanship if Porter weren’t Linda’s husband.
“Scott,” Linda said, putting a hand on her husband’s arm. “Show him the report.”
“What good will that do?”
“More good than if you don’t show him.”
Porter shoved the flyer to one side of the kitchen counter and left. Vega wasn’t sure if he was following his wife’s directive or disengaging entirely. His absence sucked all the purpose out of the room. Vega played with a pen on the counter. His head thrummed with silent accusations.
“I never told Scott about us,” Linda said finally.
“No shit. Nice to see I counted for so much. I guess I should have figured as much when I never heard from you after that cop spread-eagled me across Bobby’s old Plymouth and Bobby spread-eagled you soon after.”
She pursed her lips. She’d never been one for crude language and Vega’s life as a cop meant he lived on a steady diet of it.
“You never came back to school,” she said softly. “Your mother never left a forwarding address.”
“How could I come back to school? Everybody assumed I was a drug dealer after that. Bobby never copped to it. I was on probation. My music scholarship was history. We couldn’t very well keep living with Bobby’s dad as our landlord. We only moved to an apartment in Granville. You coulda called me if you’d wanted to.”
“So could you,” said Linda.
“You don’t think I tried? Your parents hung up on me. They threatened to take out a restraining order if I got near you. I didn’t need any more legal problems. And then I found out about you and Bobby.” Twenty-five years later, and the memory still stung. “What the fuck was I supposed to do?”
“Don’t curse, Jimmy. My daughter’s upstairs.”
“Sorry.” He dropped his eyes to his coffee cup. He told himself it shouldn’t matter anymore. He wished he could feel that.
Porter returned to the kitchen brandishing what looked like a police report. Not Lake Holly’s. This one said METRO-NORTH. That was the problem with the county. Too many police agencies: FBI, DEA, DEC, ICE. It was a dyslexic’s nightmare every time someone dialed 911.
Porter slapped the report on the counter in front of Vega. “I don’t know what I’m doing showing you this or why it will help anything.” Then he took a deep breath as if he were about to plunge into very cold water.
“After Dawn and Katie Shipley were killed in February, there were a number of incidents in town, most of them small. A couple of fistfights at the high school. Some graffiti in back of the supermarket. A fender bender between two middle-aged guys that ended up in punches and epithets being exchanged.
“But then,” said Porter. “Things started to escalate. In early March, someone set that fire in the community center’s Dumpster. No witnesses. No leads. Personally, I thought they needed to look at the kids who were suspended for those fights at the high school. One of them was Bob Rowland’s older boy—the one who works with him at the hardware store?”
“Matt,” Linda offered.
“Matt Rowland, yeah,” said Porter. “The kid’s had a few minor brushes with the law. But the cops said they spoke to Matt and his friends and they all had alibis. Then, about a week later, two Latino males were beaten and robbed in Michael Park. They were very drunk and couldn’t identify their assailants, so once again, we had nothing.”
Porter opened the police report. “Then, two weeks ago, this.”
Vega flipped through a stack of glossy 8 x 10s. All he could tell from the photos was that someone had found their way in front of a northbound train near Lake Holly station. The victim had been pureed as a result, the mother of all roadkills. Muscle, bone, and tissue lined the tracks in striations and puddles. The only part of the person that was preserved was a backpack that had been tossed to one side. It lay there, completely unblemished, mocking the grisly remains of its owner.
“His name was Ernesto Reyes-Cardona,” said Porter. “He was a Honduran busboy, age twenty-one, a resident of Lake Holly. He was last seen at two a.m. on March twenty-seventh, walking home from his job at the Lake Holly Diner. The ME says the cause of death was electrocution. His foot touched the third rail and he collapsed before he could get out of the way of the train. His sister—my client—believes he wouldn’t have been crossing the tracks if he weren’t being chased. But once again, we have no witnesses.”
“What about the video cameras at the train station?” asked Vega. “Didn’t they pick up anything?”
“Reyes was too far away from the platform. The cameras close to the station show a figure running and then collapsing across the tracks. But they didn’t pick up images of anyone in pursuit. Either no one was chasing him or they were far enough behind that they never got on camera.”
“Did the engineer give a statement?”
“He says it was too dark to see anything. All he saw was a bundle of something on the tracks. By then, it was too late to stop.”
Vega scanned the report. It looked thorough enough. No whitewash. No leads, either. He slid the report back to Porter.
“My wife wanted me to show you, so I’m showing you,” said Porter. “Is there a pattern of violence against Latinos in Lake Holly since Edgar Lopez ran over Dawn and Katie Shipley? Absolutely. But it has been next to impossible to build any of it into a case that would stand up in court. My clients are afraid to come forward as victims or witnesses because they fear getting deported.”
Vega opened his mouth to argue, but Porter beat him to the punch. “And don’t tell me about U visas, Detective. Or any of the other things that are supposed to protect innocent people from capricious prosecutorial misconduct. None of them is a magic bullet. People get deported if a federal judge decides they should. And that decision has a whole hell of a lot to do with which way the wind is blowing on any given day in Washington. Believe me, I’ve been doing this a long time. First, in the Midwest, and for the last seven years, here. I’ve seen too many people get deported over nonsense to risk a client that way.”
“So you’re not from around here?” asked Vega.
“I’m a farm boy,” said Porter. “Frankly, I prefer the Midwest. But my wife is from Lake Holly. Born and raised here. She wanted to move back to be closer to her folks.”
Porter rose. He looked exhausted. Vega took his cue and rose as well.
“Thanks for your time.” He handed Porter his business card. Porter stared at it a moment, then cocked his head.
“You don’t happen to have a daughter named Joy, do you?”
“Yeah. She’s a senior at Lake Holly High.”
“I play tennis with an obstetrician named Marc Feldman.”
Vega puffed out his chest a little, ready to deliver his “efficacy” speech. But something in Porter’s face threw him off balance. The goofy smile. It was gone, replaced by a look of concern.
“How’s she doing?” asked Porter.
“She’s—doing great,” said Vega. “Just ask Dr. Feldman.”
“Marc hasn’t seen her since the accident.”
“Your daughter had an accident?” asked Linda.
“Nothing serious,” said Vega. “She stalled out my car about a month ago on the train tracks north of town. The car got totaled, but she walked away. She’s probably just been busy at school.” Joy loved working for Dr. Feldman. It seemed inconceivable to Vega that she’d just stop. It seemed even more inconceivable that neither Wendy nor Joy would have thought to tell him.
“Have her call Marc,” said Porter. “He’s been worried.”
He wasn’t the only one.
Chapter 6
The cops in town referred to Vega’s old neighborhood as La Fron
tera—“the border” in Spanish. It was just a short walk from the station house. Vega was dying to grab some dinner, take a hot shower, and put some new gauze pads over his blisters. But the residents of La Frontera were working-class people. The only time he was likely to find them home was in the evenings.
He left the Escalade at the station because it was easier to walk than to find parking at this hour. He trudged up the hill, past the fortress-like doors of Our Lady of Sorrows that took all of Vega’s strength to open as a boy. He turned onto Magnolia. All the streets in this part of town were named after trees. Until he moved from the Bronx to Lake Holly when he was eleven, Vega had no idea there were oaks and pines and sycamores and magnolias. To him, a tree was a stick in the ground with a necklace of dog feces around it and a plant was a factory that you hoped you were lucky enough to get a job at when you finished school.
A landscaper’s truck rumbled past and a man in muddy jeans hopped out of the cab, a backpack slung over one shoulder. Two other Latino men rode by on bikes. Lights flicked on behind closed curtains. The smell of fried onions and chilies called out to his stomach. It was a different place than Vega remembered. The lawns were sparser. Some were paved over entirely to make room for more cars. Clusters of cable dishes sprouted like mushrooms from rooftops and mailboxes were stacked atop one another along doorways. Everything seemed more crowded. Noisier and grittier. But it was full of families, full of life. There were toy bins and faded Little Tikes playhouses in the front yards and pots of geraniums along windowsills. There were work boots and tools being aired out on front porches and bicycles padlocked to chain-link fences. In some ways, Vega thought, he might have been happier growing up in the neighborhood now than when he stood out as the only dark-skinned kid on the block, the only child without a father—there, solely because John Rowland could get more rent from an overworked Puerto Rican nurse than he could a white family. Not every idealized neighborhood is ideal for every child.
Land of Careful Shadows Page 5