“Ma’am.… Scratch that. Poppy. Here’s what it’s like. The governor of Texas is a figurehead. Our legislature meets four and half months every two years. During the other nineteen and a half months, the politicians do their politicking while they’re bellying up to the nearest bar. That’s where—”
“Hold up. They meet how often?”
“You heard right. The legislature carries out business off-season, and the governor isn’t invited. The virtual governor is the president of the state senate, elected, not appointed, who leaves the ribbon-cutting and ambition toward national politics to the figurehead. Then the senator knows he’ll be rewarded—maybe a cabinet position. His most important job is to make sure the governor looks good, dazzles in the klieg lights, and he also makes sure he doesn’t have enough information about laws and legislation to say anything wrong.”
“I find this astonishing.”
“We don’t blast the information from the rooftops.”
“Scraggs, the governor’s big thing is that condemned prisoners in his state have not been denied access to the courts. He always says that in the past tense because they only have thirty days after conviction for access.”
“And that loophole is closed tight. Try your dumplings.”
All right. I took a break. I ate a dumpling, best one I’ve had since I was in Munich. “What if I show him that her original access to the court was made null by corrupt evidence, make clear that I’m not looking for clemency, just a reprieve. To give us a chance to look more closely at justice denied her.”
“The man believes she’s a cold-blooded killer. She dies in … let’s see … nine days. He sees no point in listening to what you might have to say. He wants her dead, plain and simple.”
I ate another dumpling. I said, “Scraggs, how do you get rid of your garbage in Texas?”
“’S’cuse me?”
“Landfills?”
He laughed. “In Texas? Use our range to let garbage sit and rot? We incinerate it.”
“When I flew into Waco I wondered what the layer of brown was. Now I know. Anyway, I’m just going to have to threaten him, then.”
He stopped chewing, even though his mouth was full. I disconcerted him and now I leaned into his face.
“You can tell that governor of yours I will continue my investigation even if Rona Leigh is executed. And if I show actual innocence, that she was innocent of the crime she died for, then his political aspirations beyond the present biannual four-month leadership of the state of Texas will end up in the nearest incinerator.”
He chewed some more and he swallowed. He chose to hold his temper. He did allow himself to be a bit caustic, however. “Ma’am, even if I was your messenger boy, which I’m not, I couldn’t make such a threat on your behalf. Governor won’t see me either. He’s in seclusion at his ranch—until after the execution.”
The dumplings were gone. There were chunks of some kind of meat in front of me now. I stabbed one of them and put the whole thing in my mouth. I couldn’t taste it. I tried to hear Scraggs’s talk about the fine autumn weather. Neither of us enjoyed the following five courses.
He drove me back to Gatesville himself. He said, “You wanted my advice. Here it is. Pick another condemned killer. Governor’s got too much at stake here. He’s got political reasons for seeing to Rona Leigh Glueck’s death. You’re from DC. You know how it is. Politics rules.”
I said, “Only if you let it. You made your choice, I’m making mine.”
I guess I’d have to call our goodbyes icy.
* * *
The next morning I called my director for what I hoped would be better advice than what I’d gotten from Scraggs. I expressed my frustration. “Sir, how can the governor seclude himself? I mean, what if twenty witnesses suddenly turn up and say Rona Leigh didn’t do it?”
He said, “Politics. The governor’s washed his hands because he knows there won’t be any twenty witnesses turning up. There won’t be one. Last-minute phone calls from the governor as the prisoner is about to breathe his last only happen in the movies. Nobody’s going to hear from that guy unless the press gets wind of something juicy.”
“Got any ideas?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I’ve just heard from our office in Waco. Seems they’re having trouble with car tires.”
“Who told you?”
“My man in Waco called me because they wanted you to know that the two guys from your lab were not involuntary transfers. When things got crazy in DC they asked if they could return to their former stomping grounds, which happened to be Houston. I cleared that with Delby. She remembered that you actually liked the two guys but you could tell they were burnt out so you wished them well.
“I asked Waco why it was so important for you to know about the burnouts, and that’s when they told me about the nail in your tire. They’ve concluded that some guy in the lot meant to change the tire and got involved with something else. So here’s what I told Waco. If we so much as think someone is trying to stop you from looking into this matter, I’m going to the governor myself. But in the meantime, if you decide you have something to take to the man, here’s the number to call. Soon as you tell the fellow on the other end who you are, the governor will at least talk to you.”
What a guy.
“And Poppy?”
“Sir?”
“Had a chat with Cardinal de la Cruz. He wants to speak to you.”
“Don’t tell me someone else is dipping into the till.”
“I don’t know. He said it was a personal matter. Here’s his secretary’s number. Meanwhile, you watch your back.”
5
I’d found Cardinal de la Cruz to be an intriguing man. His lineage might have been the family-tree diagram on the first page of an epic historical novel. On his mother’s side, it traced back through Queen Isabella to the Moors; it was her branch that ended up in Cuba. The cardinal’s father had been Batista’s Minister of Culture, meaning he kept Havana’s casinos and sex shows up to snuff. The night Fidel took over, Batista saw to it that the de la Cruz family was on the first plane out, right after his own. In Miami, Signora de la Cruz continued the job she’d begun in Havana—praying for her son’s vocation. Her prayers were answered.
The cardinal’s secretary was very friendly, still grateful to me on behalf of the Archdiocese of New York. After a minute of general gushing, he said, “His Eminence would like to ask a favor of you.”
Did they think I was now at their beck and call? The priest read my mind.
“He doesn’t need you to investigate another matter. The favor has to do with the work you have undertaken on behalf of the condemned woman Rona Leigh Glueck.”
I wondered how many people my director had mentioned my work to. The priest read my mind yet again.
“Forgive me for not being more forthcoming, but all I can tell you is that we learned of your work via an angel. The cardinal, as it happens, is in Texas right now. He will celebrate the marriage of his niece at the cathedral in Laredo, the city where the girl’s family lives. A private matter no one will hear of until they read the society pages the next day.
“His Eminence wonders if it would be possible for you to meet him there. He regrets having to ask you to go out of your way for him, but he feels it is an urgent matter that he wants to discuss with you face-to-face.”
“Laredo. On the Mexican border, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It is a very personal matter that has been on his mind, and he is in a dilemma. He feels he could make a sound decision if he exposes his thoughts to you and would respect your opinion on the matter. He could go to others, but this same angel is telling him that you are the one he needs. He begs your indulgence, Miss Rice.”
I said, “Actually, talking to him might help me in a dilemma I find myself in.”
“I will pray then that both of you will benefit from such a respite from your physical labors.”
Then he blessed me in the name of the Father, Son, and H
oly Ghost.
I called Delby and told her I needed a handle on the cardinal’s Texas connections. She faxed me a bio.
Post-Cuba, the de la Cruz family spent a dozen years deciding exactly where to settle permanently. They tested out their European properties for a while, making their greatest effort in Madrid, but never felt at home there. After all, it hadn’t been home for three centuries. Then they’d spent several years in Mexico City but realized that what they missed was their countrymen and finally decided on the newly burgeoning metropolis formerly known as Miami, now Little Havana. But Beltrán’s oldest sister had started school in Mexico City and begged her parents to allow her to stay on. Since Señor de la Cruz still had business there, illegal but productive, he thought it might be a good idea for a member of the family to be retained across the U.S. southern border. Years later, when that segment of his enterprise petered out, Beltrán’s sister emigrated once again, this time to Texas—to Laredo—and married a man who was now the mayor. The approaching wedding of her daughter was in fact making the newspapers, not because the cardinal would officiate, which was being kept secret, but because his niece was marrying the first baseman for the Houston Astros, who happened to be a recent Cuban refugee. Cubans are a tight group.
I found I couldn’t get back to Waco the same night so I told the clerk at Best Western I’d be away till the next day but that I was keeping the room. She said, “Our cleaning staff does enjoy hearing news like that.”
The flight from Waco was two hours.
In the early evening, Cardinal de la Cruz met me in an anteroom off the lobby of La Posada, a hotel across the plaza from the Laredo cathedral. Like the cathedral, the hotel was old and dowdy, but it was festooned with flowers and lights in the Mexican tradition. He fit me in during the time the wedding party was dressing. I guessed it had taken only minutes for him to dress, as he was wearing the robes of the Franciscans, his order. That meant he looked like Friar Tuck rather than a prince of the Church. No miter or gold-embroidered vestments. Instead, he was covered in brown homespun tied with a rope and wore a pair of sandals on his feet. I told him I didn’t know cardinals could do that. He smiled at me and said in his cosmopolitan accent, “There is no one to question certain decisions of mine but the pope, and he is in Rome.”
There were two guards stationed at the open doorway of the anteroom, and they managed to keep everyone out except for five little flower girls in white tulle appliquéd with lace butterflies, their heads wreathed in hydrangea. They flitted in around the legs of the guards, who looked like a pair of colossi trying to rein in fairies. The cardinal encircled the children in his arms and his gaze, blessed them, and shooed them off toward their mortified parents, now standing in the doorway. He smiled and gestured to them, and the parents knew enough to come in, kneel, and kiss his ring. Once they’d slunk away, little girls in tow, he said, “It is divine that you and I start our discussion in a moment of innocent beauty and purity. Ironic, too.”
I waited.
“Miss Rice, I see myself as having been assigned an important mission, one completely unexpected but certainly fulfilling a long-held wish. In recent days, God has called upon me to demonstrate the strength of a morality that lies within the teaching of the Church, a morality swept to the side, out of sight, by many. My issue has to do with the Church’s stand on the death penalty. We are strongly, very strongly, opposed. We are opposed to the taking of life, any life, all life, whether it is the life of an innocent, such as an unborn child, or the guilty, such as a murderer incarcerated. Upon my investiture as cardinal, God bestowed upon me a clear duty to see that Catholics understand that in condoning the death penalty they commit an act of accessory to murder. And so I have been meditating over the past few days while in this lovely place.”
He looked into my eyes. But of course I had nothing to say. Not yet, anyway.
“Miss Rice, I need you to be my messenger.”
“Not to God, I hope.”
He laughed. “I have plenty of messengers for that purpose. No, to Rona Leigh Glueck.”
I didn’t understand.
“You have been speaking with her, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to ask her something on my behalf. I want you to ask her if she will agree to my acting as her spiritual counselor. I need you to explain to her that I am doing this not out of personal humility, I am ashamed to say, but rather at the command of the Lord.”
I got it. “You need a bully pulpit, Eminence. In addition to the pulpit on Fifth Avenue.”
“Exactly so. It seems an ideal way to remind Catholics that they must join those who are just now realizing it is wrong to support—even to show enthusiasm for—the death penalty. Catholics are required by doctrine to be in strong opposition rather than act as rooters. Catholics should not be the last to give voice to the truth that executing killers does not deter killing but adds to it, an unpopular opinion, which until recently seemed inviolate. Catholics should have been the first to voice this truth, but if they are the last … well, I’m sure you know what Jesus said about the strength the last might find in their laxity.”
He looked up to the Lord and then to me. “And also, I admit to curiosity. Miss Glueck says she has found Jesus. What those words mean to me is that she has done penance and Jesus has forgiven her. To Catholics, it is Jesus who finds us, not vice versa. The sentiment is the same, though.
“I want to examine what is required for God to bless a killer with His forgiveness. If that is what has happened, it would be an enormous privilege to ease this woman’s journey from this life to the next. And if she didn’t, as she puts it, find Jesus—if it is all an act of self-preservation—perhaps she will allow me to help her let Jesus find her as she faces the state’s retribution.
“Finally, Miss Rice, so that you understand my strongest attraction to this mission, I am simply continuing the Lord’s directive to visit the infirm and the imprisoned, which I do regularly in my own parish.”
He slipped his hands comfortably into the folds of the brown homespun. He was through.
I said, “Your Eminence, I will be happy to give your request to Rona Leigh, along with your reasons. I assume that’s why you told me what they were. You want her to understand them.”
“Yes. Again, I am grateful for your clear-sightedness. And since you are so clear-sighted, I know you will wonder why I did not choose to say all this to you on the telephone. It is my lack of humility. I thought you would perhaps be more successful in your own mission as well as mine if you permitted me to personally bestow upon you the blessings of Jesus Christ our Lord so that you may succeed in your own efforts.”
He took his hands out of the folds. He put his right hand on my head and blessed me: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost called into action yet again in the space of a very short time. And then he said, “Go in peace,” and offered me his ring. I kissed it, and when I lifted my head, he said, “I have complete faith that you will find the necessary path to pave my way and your own as well.”
That meant he was giving me permission to carry out whatever manipulating I’d have to do in order for him to use Rona Leigh to his own purposes. Realizing that, lights began to flash in my head.
“Your Eminence, if Rona Leigh agrees to your request, would you give me the opportunity to tell the governor of your plan? Before you let anyone know about it? If he hears it from me rather than from an aide reading the news to him from the morning headlines, I will have the advantage I am looking for in convincing him that Rona Leigh’s case should be reexamined.”
It was hard to tell what went on behind Beltrán Cardinal María de la Cruz y García’s eyes. They were pitch. He asked me, “What is the advantage you hope for?”
“His agreeing to grant me a meeting with him.”
“A meeting on Rona Leigh Glueck’s behalf?”
“Yes.”
He smiled. The black eyes twinkled. “We both know the weight a face-to-face appeal provides. Once, I
said to you that I hoped I could do a favor for you as you had done for me. I believe I can grant you what you ask. We are on the same wave, are we not?”
“Wavelength.”
He laughed. “I acknowledge and appreciate the correction. I wish more people had the—now there is a better word than the one I was about to use—the chutzpah to correct some of my mangling of my second language.”
And then he stood, thanked me, and went off to preside at his niece’s wedding.
Well.
I was ready for a drink. The bar at the hotel had been taken over by ballplayers. I let one of them buy me a margarita. I considered scouting them, but they’d all be off to the wedding shortly. As they knocked down their drinks, a few told me to come along, they’d find room for me, but crashing weddings was not appealing, so when they had to leave I went up to my room instead.
My view was the Rio Grande and the walking bridge to Nuevo Laredo. In the last light of evening, the border guards were changing shifts. The new ones were bringing fresh German shepherds out of their kennels. I watched as a dozen or so Mexicans on the other side shed their clothes, hung them on branches, and waded into the water. I waited for the whistles and bells and barking to start. But the border guards ignored them.
They were not crossing the border illegally, they were bathing after a day’s work in the United States.
There were no fences, no barbed wire, no anything. In fact, beyond the hotel was a little playground on our side. There were probably so many illegal immigrants keeping La Posada and all the rest of Texas running that any effort to keep the Mexicans out was a show. The sun had set. I was bored.
I went outside to the plaza, bought a guava ice-cream cone, and sat on a bench with two maids from the hotel. The night was warm and humid. We watched the wedding party come out of the hotel entrance serenaded by a mariachi band, the little flower girls fireflies now, darting about in the glow from the hundreds of strands of lights hanging from the trees. The bride on her father’s arm had on a Mexican wedding gown, flower-bedecked, flounced, and banded, her long mantilla no doubt passed down from Isabella herself. The mayor’s tuxedo was impeccably tailored, elegant in contrast.
Love Her Madly Page 8