by Andrew Gross
In the station, I had several possibilities, but there was no time to think it through. There was a tunnel that led to the crosstown shuttle, and another to the F and Q trains to Queens and Brooklyn. My thought had been to get to the uptown Lexington line and make it to 125th Street, where I could catch the Metro-North train back to Rye, where I’d left my car.
I ran my card and pushed through an empty turnstile, just as Dokes made it down the stairs.
He looked around, unable to spot me at first. There was a maze of people rushing by. I ran along the upper platform, stopping behind a jewelry kiosk. I looked back and saw him scanning in all directions, not knowing where I was. He threw up his hands in exasperation.
I couldn’t wait. I was just so nervous hiding there. It was as if my breaths and the pounding of my chest were giving me away. I heard the rumble of a train coming into the station below me. I ran to one of the staircases to head down to the platform. As soon as I was in the open, Dokes caught sight of me. I ran down the stairs and saw him leap the turnstile and head after me.
Oh, Wendy, no . . .
I knew I had nowhere to go but onto a train, or else I’d be trapped on the platform. I figured he knew it as well. As I got to the platform, two trains arrived in the station simultaneously, an express and a local. There were dozens of people blocking my path, but I elbowed through them and hurried two or three cars down from where Dokes would be coming.
The trains hissed to a stop. The doors opened on both sides. Streams of passengers poured off. I was certain Dokes was on the platform heading toward me. I had to choose. I bolted onto the express train and pushed my way through the crowd, begging the doors to close, not knowing if Dokes had already jumped on. I stood away from his probable line of sight. If he did make it on, he could simply push his way through, car by car. Eventually, he’d find me. I didn’t know if I should stay on or get off. Run to the local or go back up the stairs to the upper platform. Or if he had other people following him. I heard the conductor’s announcement: “Fifty-Ninth Street, next stop.”
Close, damn it, close. I looked at the local across the platform. I had no idea which train Dokes might be on. Just close.
Finally I heard the warning buzzer. I had no idea where Dokes was. Then I saw him running back on the now empty platform, scanning through the windows of both trains. The buzzer sounded again. I peered through an opening in the bodies surrounding me and, to my relief, saw him jump onto the local train, just as the doors began to close.
My heart almost imploded in relief as we began to pull away.
Somehow having second thoughts, Dokes leaped off his train and crossed the platform. He peered through the window and slammed on the door of our departing train. He took out his badge and tried desperately to flash it at a conductor as the train began to move, picking up speed.
Then he slammed the side of the train in anger and frustration.
We zoomed by.
I knew he couldn’t radio to anyone ahead at the next stop, or get the NYPD involved. The police were the last people he wanted to find me.
I was safe. At least for the moment.
I dropped my head against a pole, my breaths heavy and fast. My mind flashed to Joe. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. I only knew I could no longer turn myself in. Not now.
The only way out now was to prove my innocence.
I reached into my pocket and came out with Curtis’s phone.
ROXANNE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It took a month for Harold and an immigration lawyer to prepare Lauritzia’s case. He had to familiarize himself with the records from the first trial in Texas, in which the immigration court denied the family’s petition for asylum. The split ruling seemed so inexplicably flawed.
Then he got the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Dallas to agree to hear them in an expedited manner.
In the meantime Lauritzia remained hidden in an apartment the firm rented for her in New Haven, Connecticut, watched over by private security. She kept up her classes on the Internet and drove back to Greenwich and Harold’s office a couple of times in secrecy to go over her testimony. During all this time she saw Roxanne only once, when Roxanne drove up to New Haven for the day to visit, bringing pictures and cards from the kids. Harold found a government witness willing to talk about Cano: Sabrina Stein, who had been head of the DEA’s office in El Paso as well as the government’s covert action unit there, known as EPIC, the El Paso Intelligence Center. Stein knew Cano to be a ruthless and remorseless killer, whose thirst for revenge was almost as strong as his shrewdness and his instinct for survival. It was Sabrina Stein’s agents who had been the targets of the hit in Culiacán, Mexico, that began this whole tragic affair.
It seemed a positive sign that the court agreed to hear the case so quickly.
The decision two years ago to deny the Velez family asylum seemed more a result of the furor at the time over lack of immigration control along the Mexican border than proper jurisprudence or fairness. The United States government no longer needed Lauritzia’s father’s testimony after the case against Cano broke down, and thus there was certainly no need for his children to be granted asylum in the United States, simply because of their “unsubstantiated” claim of a vendetta against them back in Mexico. Therefore they ruled that the privileges of asylum that were extended to Mr. Velez as a government witness did not extend to his children. However, now, Harold would argue, the situation had tragically changed. Lauritzia’s three sisters and a brother had been killed; Cano had made no secret of his vendetta. Now Harold could show a clear pattern of “retaliation and threat” against the family, of which Lauritzia and her father were the only surviving members. He would argue that her situation was akin to any “persecuted refugee” in any political or ethnic “class.” That Lauritzia legitimately feared persecution and even death should she be returned home, as was ordered by the court. A situation only worsened, in fact, by the U.S. government’s decision not to pursue the prosecution of Eduardo Cano. Any test of reasonability had to find for her now.
Their court date, September 20, finally came around. Harold and his associate flew down to Dallas with Lauritzia. Roxanne came along too. It took place in the federal courthouse on Commerce Street downtown. The courtroom seemed strangely empty to Lauritzia, who had only seen trials in movies or on TV. There was no media attention; they didn’t want any. And no jury. Only three judges, a woman and two middle-aged men. Harold was optimistic. The night before, they’d gone over her testimony one last time. Her story was as compelling and tragic as any the court would have ever heard.
They had to win.
In his opening, Harold began by arguing that no one could possibly be brought before this court with a stronger case for asylum in the United States. Lauritzia’s father, while a criminal himself, had risked his life and freedom to testify against a notorious drug enforcer whose trail of blood included five American lives. That it was only due to the United States’s questionable decision not to pursue the prosecution against Mr. Cano that he was even freed and returned to Mexico to pursue this reign of terror against Velez’s family.
“Ms. Velez has faced a fate of terror and uncertainty. She has lost virtually every close member of her family due to Mr. Cano’s openly declared vow of revenge. In that sense alone she belongs to a ‘persecuted class,’ as legitimate as any political or ethnically motivated persecution. That class,” Harold argued, “being her own family.”
It came time for Lauritzia to take the stand. She was sworn in wearing a dark suit they had bought her for the occasion, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, both pretty and serious-looking.
“Ms. Velez, I’d like you to tell the court the last time you spoke to your brother Eustavio,” Harold said to her.
“Eustavio . . .” Lauritzia moistened her lips. “That was in 2009. Before he was found shot dead on the street in my hometown of Navolato in Mexico. His body was mutilated.”
“I know this is difficult, Ms. Velez . . .” H
arold approached the witness box. “But can you tell the court how the body was mutilated?”
Lauritzia glanced at up the black-robed justices and took a breath. The white-haired male judge seemed to nod for her to go on.
“His genitales,” she hesitated. “I think it is the same in English. They had been cut off and put in his mouth. Where I come from it is the sign of a traitor.”
Someone in the courtroom gasped.
“And Eustavio’s occupation?” Harold asked. “Your brother wasn’t in the drug business, was he, Ms. Velez?”
“No.” She shook her head. “He was a postal clerk, Mr. Bachman.”
“And your sister Nina? When was the last time you saw her?”
“That same year. In August. She was killed in the beauty parlor where she worked. Along with twelve others who were there when the men came in. They filled her body with sixty bullets.”
“And your sister Maria?”
“Two and a half years ago,” Lauritzia said. “She lived in Juárez. She was shot dead in her car. My little cousin Theresa was killed too.”
The female judge shifted uncomfortably in her seat and cleared her throat.
“And your sister Rosa?” Harold continued. “Your twin, I might add. And the person, I remind the court, who originally filed this motion for asylum.”
Lauritzia nodded. She glanced at the judges and then back at Harold, who was nodding gently at her, as hard as it was to go through this. “My sister Rosa was killed too. She was here in Texas. In her home. Illegally, I know. She was five months pregnant with her first child, her son, who she intended to name Eustavio, after our brother.”
“That tragically makes four—three sisters and your brother. Murdered. How many remaining siblings do you have, Ms. Velez?
“I have none.” Lauritzia shook her head.
She allowed herself a glance toward the judges. The other male judge, a heavyset black man, appeared to wince with emotion, which she assumed was a positive sign.
“And if you would tell the court what happened on July twenty-fourth of this year?” Harold changed the questioning.
“At the Westchester Mall?” Lauritzia asked, to be sure.
Harold nodded. “Yes. At the mall.”
“As I was leaving, with the children I take care of . . . your children, Mr. Bachman . . . the elevator I was riding in was shot up by a man with a semiautomatic weapon. Three people in front of us were killed. Others were wounded. The assassin was clearly sent by Eduardo Cano, because they were Los Zetas, which he commands. It was only by the grace of God that I, or either of the kids, was not killed as well.”
“And how do you know this killer was sent to harm you, Ms. Velez, and not one of the others?”
“I saw the shooter’s neck. His tattoo. The skeleton with the dragon’s tail. It is common back home, for members of the drug cartels. Especially that of Los Zetas. The length of the tail marks the time that person has spent in prison.”
“But you chose not to come forward at that time, didn’t you, Ms. Velez? That you suspected that what had happened there was directed at you personally?”
“No.” Lauritzia nodded. “I didn’t.” She bowed and shook her head.
“Can you tell the court why?”
“Because I was afraid. Afraid if I did, I would be found out and sent home. I just wanted to run. To not put your family in any more danger. And I did run.”
“And what fate would you face if you were deported back to Mexico?”
“The same fate my entire family has met.” She looked at the judges. “Eduardo Cano has vowed to kill us all. I would be no different.”
The hearing took just over three hours, including the testimony of Sabrina Stein, who stated that Eduardo Cano “was one of the two or three most ruthless killers operating in the higher echelons of the Mexican narcosphere right now,” and “what a short-sided mistake it had been for the government to have ever let him slip through our hands.”
“And you know this firsthand, don’t you, Agent Stein?” Harold asked her.
“Yes.” She nodded, looking down.
“Can you tell us how?”
“Because I lost two of my best agents. Rita Bienvienes and her husband, Dean, who both worked under me. They were the targets of the ambush that Ms. Velez’s father was prepared to testify on.”
“And you’re familiar with the dragon tattoo that Ms. Velez referred to, aren’t you? Which was on the body of the shooter at the Westchester Mall.”
“Yes.” The government witness nodded. “It’s a common mark of valor and loyalty in the Los Zetas drug cartel.”
The government prosecutor had his time. He argued that tragic as Ms. Velez’s story was, it did not merit the “stay of removal,” in that she was not a member of any accepted persecuted class, only that of her own family, and that Mr. Cano’s vendetta against them did not constitute the type of “ethnic or political” persecution that merited a reversal. He also argued that Ms. Velez had not legally complied with the court’s original ruling but, in fact, had secretly hidden out in the United States “in direct opposition of it.”
To which Harold objected that it would have been a death sentence if she had complied. “Ms. Velez was not hiding out,” he said to the court. “She had a steady job. She was enrolled in school. She has embarked on a path to better herself. Coupled with the obvious threat should she be forced to leave, there is no more compelling case of someone who deserves to remain here.”
The U.S. attorney dropped this and brought up another appeals ruling—some Albanian gangster, who had gone on a similar spree of terror against a family here, who had been denied asylum—which, he claimed, acted as a precedent.
One of the male judges asked the government if Lauritzia’s father was still under U.S. protection, and the lawyer answered no. The female judge asked whether, if the government had known the tragic repercussions the Velez family would face, they would have argued against a stay.
Everything seemed to be going well.
“We made the right case,” Harold said in the hall outside the courtroom. “Two of the judges showed clear sensitivity to your story. That’s all we need. They’ll have to reverse it. It’s the only reasonable thing. Even the prosecutor wasn’t objecting strenuously.”
“Now what do we do?” Lauritzia asked as they were transported into the basement garage and into a black SUV.
“Now we just wait.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
She waited three weeks. Three more weeks of hiding, of not knowing her fate. Everyone seemed to think the chances were good. Certainly Mr. B felt that way. Lauritzia trusted him when he said that only a heartless person could not see what Cano had in store for her if she was denied. At least two of the judges had smiled at her and thanked her for her testimony. She deserved to be here. This was America, not Mexico. Sending her home would be sending her to her grave.
Lauritzia was reading one of her retail books when her cell phone rang. “It’s Harold,” said Mr. B. She got nervous. “The ruling is in. We need to talk with you.”
“Do you want me to come down to your office?”
“No. Roxanne and I are on our way. We’ll be there in an hour.”
An hour. Her blood raced for most of it, with alternating anticipation and excitement. But when she heard the knock at the door and ran to open it, she could see immediately in the lines of their downcast faces that it had not gone her way.
“How?” Her hand went to her mouth.
“I’m sorry, Lauritzia. The court found two to one against our stay,” Harold said, giving her a bolstering hug.
They all sat at the kitchen table as Harold read from a printed-off ruling that had been posted on the Internet. “They claimed ‘the threat against Ms. Velez, sympathetic as it is, is nonetheless not due to her membership in “a persecuted class,” but to no more than Mr. Cano’s anger against her father for a personal transgression. Therefore it does not rise to the kind of threat that makes one eligibl
e for protection under federal law.’ They cited this Demiraj case as precedent.”
She looked at him blankly. “So what does this mean?”
“It means the government is saying that whatever protection had been afforded your father for his testimony against Cano does not extend to you. The original ruling is intact. We’re ordered to turn you over to a court-appointed immigration agent in the next thirty days.”
A downcast silence settled over the room. For a while, no one spoke.
“Thirty days?” Lauritzia muttered. She looked at them, worry in her eyes.
Harold leaned against the kitchen counter. “Pending appeal.”
“Which means it’s not over,” Roxanne said, taking Lauritzia’s hand. “This was an appeals court, Lauritzia. It means we take this higher up, to the Supreme Court.”
“If they’ll agree to take it.” Harold shrugged. “Their ruling is a completely narrow reading of the asylum law. It totally ignores whatever is human about it. It’s like the government is somehow siding with this son of a bitch Cano. What they’ve come back with goes against the very spirit of the law it was designed to protect.”
“Thirty days . . .” Lauritzia sat down. “This is not right.” She felt numb. She had allowed herself to believe, and now once again it was clear who had won and who had lost. Harold was right, it was as if the government was siding with this monster. Why? In thirty days she could be sent back and—
“Lauritzia, we’re not done yet,” Roxanne said, bracing her by the shoulders. “I don’t want you to give up on this fight. And I don’t want you to give up on us either. Harold’s already agreed to go on.”
“I’m going to try to put together what they call amicus briefs from various law professors and immigration advocates—”
“Go on?” Lauritzia looked at them in confusion. “How can we go on? I can’t stay here forever. With you continuing to hide me and pay for me and—”
“We have another plan we’d like to propose.” Roxanne leaned forward, her blue eyes brimming with resolve. “We’re going to fly you out to our house in Edwards, Colorado. No one will know you’re there. You can stay there until we can determine the right legal move.” Lauritzia’s hand was trembling and Roxanne squeezed it tightly. “I know you want to give up . . . I know you don’t want to burden us. But the last thing we’re going to do is hand you over to the immigration department. That’s not going to happen.”