“What’s his name?” asked Lucia, so taken aback at the news that her father had been a bigamist that she could hardly get the words out.
“Enrique Maraz, like your father and brother. I’ve tried to find him, Lucia, but he and his mother have vanished. I need to know if that boy in the cemetery is your father’s son by that other woman.”
“It doesn’t matter, Mama. He’s hardly likely to be my half brother; that only happens in TV soaps. What’s most probable is what they told you at the Vicariate, that the identity of the victims gets mixed up. Don’t burden yourself searching for that young man. You’ve been obsessed for years with Enrique’s fate. Accept the truth, however horrible it may be, before you go crazy.”
“I’m perfectly sane, Lucia. I’ll accept your brother’s death when I have some proof, and not before.”
Lucia confessed that as children neither she nor Enrique had completely believed the story about their father’s accident, which was so shrouded in mystery it seemed like fiction. How could they believe it, when they never saw any expression of grief or visited any grave, but had to make do with a brief explanation and a cautious silence. She and her brother used to invent alternative versions: that their father was alive somewhere else, that he had committed a crime and was on the run, or was hunting crocodiles in Australia; any explanation was more reasonable than the official one: he’d died and that was that, don’t ask any more questions.
“You two were very young, Lucia. You couldn’t understand how final death is; it was my duty to shield you from that pain. I thought it was better for you to forget your father. I know that was a sin of pride. I set out to replace him: to be both father and mother to my children.”
“You did that very well, Mama, but I wonder if you would have behaved the same way if he hadn’t been a bigamist.”
“Most likely not, Lucia. In that case maybe I would have idealized him. I was motivated more than anything by rancor and shame. I didn’t want to contaminate you with the ugliness of what had happened. That’s why I didn’t talk about him later on, when you were of an age to understand. I know you missed having a father.”
“Less than you think, Mama. It’s true it would have been better to have a father, but you brought us up wonderfully.”
“The lack of a father leaves a hole in a woman’s heart, Lucia. A girl needs to feel she is protected; she needs masculine energy to develop trust in men and later to be able to give herself in love. What’s the female version of the Oedipus complex? Electra? You didn’t have it. That’s why you’re so independent and jump from one love to the next, forever searching for the security of a father.”
“Oh please, Mama! That’s pure Freudian jargon. I’m not looking for my father in my lovers. And I’m no bed-hopper either. I’m a serial monogamist, and my loves last a long time, unless the guy is a hopeless case,” said Lucia, and the two of them burst out laughing when they remembered the guerrilla she had abandoned in Montreal.
Lucia, Richard, Evelyn
Brooklyn
Ten minutes later Lucia came down from the bathroom to find Richard in the kitchen toasting bread, the coffeepot full, and three mugs on the table. Evelyn entered from the yard with Marcelo shivering in her arms, and proceeded to devour the toast and coffee Richard served her. Swaying on the stool with her mouth full, she looked so ravenous and young that Richard was touched. How old could she be? Most likely older than she looked. Maybe she was the same age as his Bibi.
“We’re going to take you home, Evelyn,” Lucia told her when they had finished their coffee.
“No! No!” cried Evelyn, standing up so suddenly that the stool toppled over and Marcelo fell to the floor.
“It was only a small dent, Evelyn. Don’t be frightened. I’ll explain what happened to your employer. What’s his name again?”
“Frank Leroy . . . but it’s not just because of the accident,” stammered Evelyn, ashen faced.
“What else is there?” asked Richard.
“Come on, Evelyn, what are you so afraid of?” added Lucia.
Then, stumbling over the words and trembling severely, the young girl told them that there was a dead body in the car trunk. She had to repeat it twice for Lucia to understand. It took Richard even longer. Although he spoke Spanish, he was much more comfortable with the lilting Portuguese of Brazil. He could not believe what he was hearing: the enormity of her declaration froze him to the spot. If he had understood correctly, there were two alternatives: either the girl was raving mad or there really was a dead body in the Lexus.
“A body, you said?”
Evelyn nodded, her eyes on the floor.
“That’s impossible. What kind of body?”
“Richard! Don’t be ridiculous. A human body, of course,” Lucia cut in. She was so astonished she had to struggle to suppress a nervous laugh.
“How did it get there?” asked Richard, still incredulous.
“I don’t know . . .”
“Did you run over the person?”
“No.”
Faced with the possibility that they really were dealing with an anonymous dead person, Richard started scratching with both hands at the hives that broke out on his arms and chest in moments of tension. A man of unchanging habits and routines, he was ill prepared for unforeseen events like this. Although he was not yet aware of it, his stable, cautious existence had come to an end.
“We have to call the police,” he decided, picking up his cell phone.
The young Guatemalan girl gave a shriek of terror and began weeping with heartrending sobs for reasons that were evident to Lucia but not to Richard, even though he was well aware of the constant state of uncertainty most Latin American immigrants lived in.
“I suppose you’re undocumented,” said Lucia. “We can’t call the police, Richard. We would be getting this poor girl into trouble. She took the car without permission. She could be accused of theft as well as homicide. You know how the police treat undocumented immigrants. They always go for the weakest link in the chain.”
“What chain?”
“It’s a metaphor, Richard.”
“How did that person die? Who is it?” Richard asked.
Evelyn told them she hadn’t touched the body. She had gone to the drugstore to buy diapers and had opened the trunk with one hand while holding the shopping bag in the other. It was when she tried to push the bag in that she had noticed the trunk was full. She saw an object covered in a rug; when she pulled it aside she saw there was a curled-up body underneath. She was so scared she fell back onto the sidewalk but stifled the scream fighting to come out and slammed the trunk shut. She put the bag on the backseat and locked herself in the car for a good while—she wasn’t sure how long, at least twenty or thirty minutes—until she had calmed down enough to be able to drive back to the house. With a bit of luck her absence might have gone unnoticed, and no one would know she had used the car, but after the collision with Richard, with the trunk dented and half-open, that was impossible.
“We don’t even know whether that person is dead. He could be unconscious,” suggested Richard, wiping his brow with a dish towel.
“Not too likely, he’d be dead from hypothermia by now. But there’s one way to find out,” said Lucia.
“Good God, woman! You’re not suggesting we look inside the trunk on the street . . .”
“Do you have a better idea? There’s no one outside. It’s very early, it’s still dark, and it’s Sunday. Who’s going to see us?”
“No way. Count me out.”
“Okay, lend me a flashlight. Evelyn and I are going to take a look.”
Hearing this, the girl’s sobs increased in volume by several decibels. Lucia put her arm around her, feeling sorry for this young girl and all the suffering she had been through in the past few hours.
“This has nothing to do with me! My insurance will pay fo
r the damage to the car, and that’s all I can do. I’m sorry, Evelyn, but you’ll have to leave,” said Richard in his broken Spanish.
“You’re going to throw her out, Richard? Are you crazy? As if you don’t know what it means to be undocumented in this country!” cried Lucia.
“I do know, Lucia. If not from my work at the center, I’d know from my father, who’s forever harping about it,” sighed Richard, caving in. “What do we know about this girl?”
“That she needs help. Do you have family here, Evelyn?”
A sepulchral silence: Richard went on scratching, thinking of what a tremendous mess he was in—the police, an investigation, the press, his reputation down the drain. And his father’s voice deep inside him reminding him of his duty to help the persecuted: “I wouldn’t be in this world, and you wouldn’t have been born, if some brave souls hadn’t hidden me from the Nazis,” he had told him over and over, about a million times.
“We have to find out if that person is still alive. There’s no time to lose,” Lucia repeated.
She picked up the car keys Evelyn Ortega had left on the kitchen table, handed her the Chihuahua as a precaution against the cats, put on her hat and gloves, and asked again for the flashlight.
“Oh shit, Lucia, you can’t go on your own! I’ll have to go with you,” said Richard resignedly. “We’ll need to defrost the trunk to open it.”
They filled a large pot with hot water and vinegar and between the two of them managed with great difficulty to carry it out, treading carefully on the slippery staircase and clinging on to the handrails to stay upright. Lucia’s contact lenses began to freeze, feeling like shards of glass in her eyes. Richard often went in winter to fish in the frozen lakes of the north and had experience with extreme cold, but he was not prepared for it in Brooklyn. The light from the streetlamps cast yellow, phosphorescent circles on the snow. The wind blew in gusts, rising and falling as if weary with the effort, then moments later stirring up swirls of loose snow. When it died down, complete silence reigned, a threatening stillness. Cars covered with varying amounts of snow were parked along the street; Evelyn’s white Lexus was nearly invisible. It was not directly outside his house as Richard had feared, but some fifteen yards away, which in fact made no difference. No one was around at that early hour. The snowplows had begun to clear the street the day before, and there were mounds of snow piled on the sidewalks.
Just as Evelyn had said, the trunk was tied with a yellow belt. They had a hard time untying it because of their gloves: Richard had become paranoid about fingerprints. They finally got the trunk open and saw a bundle partially covered with a bloodstained rug. When they pulled it back they found a woman dressed in workout clothes, her face hidden in her arms. She was curled up in a strange position and barely looked human, more like a disjointed doll. What little skin they could see was lavender. There was no doubt about it: she was dead. They stood for several minutes trying to work out what had happened: they could not see any blood on her but would have to turn her over to examine her properly. The poor creature was frozen as solid as a block of cement. However much Lucia pushed and pulled, she could not budge her. Richard shone the flashlight on her, almost sobbing with anxiety.
“I think she died yesterday,” said Lucia.
“Why do you think that?”
“Rigor mortis. A body becomes stiff about eight hours after death, and the rigor lasts for thirty-six hours or so.”
“So then it could have been the night before .”
“True. It could have been even earlier because the temperature is so low. Whoever put that woman in the trunk was counting on that, I’m sure. Maybe they couldn’t dispose of the body because of Friday’s blizzard. It’s obvious they were in no hurry.”
“It could be that the rigor mortis has finished and the body has simply frozen,” suggested Richard.
“A human being is not the same as a chicken, Richard. It takes a couple of days in an icebox for a body to freeze completely. Let’s say she could have died between the night before last and yesterday.”
“How come you know so much about this?”
“Don’t ask,” she said categorically.
“In any case, that’s up to the forensic pathologist and the police, not us,” Richard concluded.
As if summoned by magic, they saw the headlights of a vehicle slowly turning the corner. They succeeded in lowering the lid of the trunk just as a police patrol car pulled up alongside them. One of the policemen stuck his head out of the window.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“All okay, officer,” replied Lucia.
“What are you doing outside at this time of day?” the man asked.
“Looking for my mother’s diapers. We left them in the car,” Lucia said, pulling the big bag from the backseat.
“Good morning, officer,” said Richard, his voice reedy.
They waited until the car moved off and fastened the trunk again with the belt. Then they went back into the house, slipping on the ice on the stairs as they carried the diapers and the empty pot, and praying to the heavens that the patrolmen would not think of coming back to take a look at the Lexus.
THEY FOUND EVELYN, MARCELO, AND THE CATS in exactly the same position as they had left them. When they asked the girl about the diapers, she explained that Frankie, the boy she cared for, had cerebral palsy and needed them.
“How old is the boy?” asked Lucia.
“Thirteen.”
“And he wears adult diapers?”
Evelyn turned red with embarrassment and explained that Frankie was very advanced for his age and the diapers had to be loose because the “little bird” often woke him up. Lucia translated for Richard: erection.
“I left him on his own yesterday. He must be desperate. Who’s going to give him his insulin?” murmured Evelyn.
“He needs insulin?”
“If only we could call Señora Leroy . . . Frankie can’t be left on his own.”
“It’s risky to use the phone,” Richard said.
“I’ll call from my cell with the number blocked,” said Lucia.
The phone only rang twice before an angry voice began shouting at the other end. Lucia ended the call at once, and Evelyn sighed with relief. The only person who could answer on that number was Frankie’s mother. If she was with him, Evelyn could relax; the boy would be well looked after.
“Come on, Evelyn, you must have some idea of how that woman’s body ended up in the car trunk,” said Richard.
“No. The Lexus belongs to my boss, Mr. Leroy.”
“He must be searching for his car.”
“He’s in Florida. He’s supposed to come back tomorrow.”
“Do you think he could have had something to do with this?”
“Yes.”
“In other words, you think he could have killed that woman,” Richard insisted.
“When Mr. Leroy gets angry, he’s like a devil . . . ,” said the young Guatemalan, bursting into tears.
“Let her calm down,” Lucia told Richard.
“You realize we can’t go to the police now, don’t you, Lucia? How would we explain that we lied to the patrolman?”
“Forget the police for the moment!”
“My mistake was calling you, Lucia. If I’d known this girl had a dead body hanging over her I would have gone to the police right away,” said Richard, more pensive than angry. He served Lucia more coffee. “Milk?”
“Black and no sugar.”
“Shit, what a mess we’ve got ourselves into!”
“These things happen in life, Richard.”
“Not in mine.”
“Yes, I’ve realized that. But see how life refuses to leave us in peace? Sooner or later it catches up with us.”
“The girl will have to take her dead body elsewhere.”
“You tell her,” said Lucia, pointing to Evelyn, who was sobbing silently.
“What are you thinking of doing?” Richard asked the girl.
Evelyn shrugged sorrowfully, mumbling excuses for having gotten them into trouble.
“You have to do something,” Richard insisted, without great conviction.
Lucia tugged at his sleeve and led him over to the piano, away from Evelyn.
“The first thing is to dispose of the evidence,” she said in a low voice. “Before we do anything else.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’ve got to get rid of the car and the body.”
“You’re mad!” he exclaimed.
“You’re involved in this too, Richard.”
“I am?”
“Yes, from the moment you opened the door to Evelyn last night and then called me. We have to decide where we’re going to dump the body.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. How can you even think of such a crazy idea?”
“Look, Richard: Evelyn can’t go back to her employers’ house, and she can’t go to the police either. Do you want her to drive around everywhere with a dead body in somebody else’s car? For how long?”
“I’m sure all this can be sorted out.”
“With the police? No way.”
“Let’s drive the car to another neighborhood, and that’ll be that.”
“It would be found at once, Richard. Evelyn needs time to get to somewhere safe. I suppose you’ve realized how terrified she is. She knows more than she’s telling us. I think she has a very specific fear of her employer, that Mr. Leroy. She suspects he killed that woman and is coming after her. He knows she took the Lexus and won’t let her escape.”
“If that’s so, we’re in danger too.”
“No one suspects she is with us. Let’s drive the car as far away as possible.”
“That would make us accomplices!”
“We already are, but if we do things properly no one will know. They can’t connect us to any of this, not even to Evelyn. The snow is a blessing, and we have to take advantage of it while it lasts. We have to leave today.”
In the Midst of Winter Page 10