A Blossom of Bright Light

by Suzanne Chazin

  “I need one favor. Just one,” said Vega. “I need you to come with me to the medical examiner’s office to sign a form to test Charlie Gonzalez’s DNA. One signature. And then you can go.”

  “How the hell did you get Gonzalez’s—? No, scratch that. I don’t want to know. Either way, you’re off the case.”

  “That’s why you’re signing the form.”

  “It can’t wait till Monday?”

  “No.” Vega told him about Luna.

  “And what if you’re wrong?”

  “We test the envelope and Gonzalez’s DNA doesn’t match the father profile on Baby Mercy, I won’t bother you anymore.”

  “That’s almost worth losing a day of fishing for.”

  It took nearly forty-five minutes for Louis Greco to row his boat to shore, lock it up, and follow Vega in his car to the ME’s office. It took less than two minutes for Greco to sign the authorization form.

  “How quickly can you do the test?” Vega asked Dr. Chang.

  “I can run a full test in under ninety minutes. I can tell you whether it’s a likely match in about thirty.”

  Vega looked at his watch. It was almost four p.m. “You want me to call you with the results?” she offered.

  “Please. As soon as you can.”

  He walked Greco back to his car. The sky was bright but the land was already fuzzy and pockmarked with shadows. Vega felt the chill in his fingers and across his back.

  “Thanks for coming in for this,” he said to Greco.

  “Good thing I caught nothing worth keeping or I’d really be sore.” Greco zipped up his goose-down fishing vest over his flannel shirt. He looked like a Mafia hit man on vacation. “You do realize, Vega, that even if the DNA comes back a match, we still gotta build a case against the Gonzalezes. These are powerful people. Politically protected people.”

  “I realize that.”

  “We go in on just the DNA, Gonzalez could claim he had a quick fling with a prostitute and didn’t even know she was underage or carrying his child. See what I’m saying?”

  Vega nodded.

  “What we really need,” said Greco, “is that old-fashioned, pre-science thing that won more cases for me than DNA ever could.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A witness,” said Greco. “Somebody who could say they actually saw this dead teenager with Gonzalez or knew what he was doing—and don’t talk to me about Neto, Vega. That kid’s testimony would never hold up on a witness stand.”

  Everything leaves a mark. “The birth,” Vega murmured.

  “Huh?”

  “She was just a girl,” said Vega. “No way do I buy that she delivered her baby alone.”

  “Esme probably helped her.”

  Vega made a face. “Would you want to deliver the souvenir of your husband’s infidelity?”

  “I use the word ‘help’ loosely here, Vega. The mom died, so if Esme was the midwife, she did a crappy job.”

  “I think there was somebody else involved. Not Charlie. I get the impression he’s through with these girls once he deflowers them.”

  “Then who?” asked Greco.

  Someone who could be trusted to keep her mouth shut. Someone who’d been paid to keep it shut for decades already. Vega thought back to what Dominga had said about the midwife who’d delivered Emilio: She’s old. She started delivering babies years ago, beginning with her own family. Mostly, she just mixes herbs for clients now.

  “Dominga Flores’s baby was delivered by an unlicensed Spanish midwife,” said Vega. “I have a hunch the same woman was involved in the delivery of Baby Mercy as well.”

  “Did Dominga give you her name?”

  “No. But I have a hunch it was Claudia Aguilar.”

  “Claudia? The fruit and vegetable lady?”

  Vega’s cell phone buzzed with a text message from Dr. Chang: All markers are showing an exact match for paternity of Baby Mercy and DNA found on envelope. Full test likely to indicate same. Will send complete lab results later—Veronica Chang.

  Vega showed the text to Greco. “Are you up for a little grocery shopping?”

  Chapter 34

  “What are you doing going through my drawers and using my laptop?”

  Doña Esme’s voice was sharp and accusing. Luna tried to explain that she had to review for a science test and needed a computer and some scrap paper. Doña Esme ripped the flyer out of her hand.

  “From now on, when you want something, you ask, chica.” She crumpled up the flyer and tossed it into the kitchen garbage. “This is nothing.”

  Luna gripped the counter to keep her hands from trembling. She couldn’t stop thinking about the photographs she saw last night of this same girl in that blue room downstairs. And now she was dead. Who was she? What went on in this house?

  “I’m sorry,” Luna managed to croak out. “I didn’t know anyone was home.”

  “Yolanda took the children to the movies. I took a nap.” Doña Esme closed her laptop and turned to face Luna. Her mood had shifted once again. She smiled, for once not trying to camouflage that perfect row of white fence-post teeth. Their fakeness frightened Luna on a primal level. She lowered her gaze.

  “I have a wonderful surprise for you, Luna. We’re going to Pennsylvania to visit your papi.”

  Luna felt something like helium in her heart. She tried to tug it back to earth and remind herself that this was Doña Esme talking. Nothing was for certain. “When?”

  “Now, of course.”

  “But Dulce and Mateo are at the movies.”

  “Oh, mami,” said Doña Esme. “The jail won’t let little children in. They’re too young. It would only make them sad to travel such a long distance and have to wait outside. That’s why we’re going now. We can get there before visiting hours are over today, and I’ll have you back later this evening. You can tell Dulce and Mateo all about it then.”

  “Does Papi know?”

  “It will be a surprise.”

  Luna hesitated. Doña Esme regarded her with impatience. “Don’t you want to see your papi?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “Then we have to go right now or we’ll miss visiting hours.”

  “Can we call your cousin?” asked Luna.

  “Why?”

  “Well, shouldn’t Dulce and Mateo know I’m going to see Papi?”

  “Don’t be silly. They’re in the movie theater. Yolanda can’t answer her phone. And besides, it will only make them sad to know they can’t go too. Better to tell them nothing for now and leave it for when you’re back.”

  “But—”

  Doña Esme folded her arms across her chest and frowned. “Luna.” She finally addressed her by name. “I have no idea what tomorrow holds for your father. He could be halfway to Mexico by then. He’s in Pennsylvania right now. Less than two hours away by car. It’s after four p.m. Visiting hours at the facility are until seven. If you want to go, we need to go right now. This is your last chance.”

  Luna closed her eyes. It scared her that Papi’s face was beginning to lose its three-dimensionality. How far did his mustache extend past his upper lip? What color were his eyes in bright sunlight? Suddenly it was harder to picture him in their kitchen dicing onions or locate the pitch of his voice in her ears. He’d been gone only two days, and already it felt like a lifetime of separate experiences had passed between them. She knew that seeing him in that jail would fill them both with sadness. But what would not seeing him do? And besides, she needed his advice. She couldn’t tell him what was happening here. But perhaps she could ask, in a roundabout way, how they might go about moving to Alirio and Maria José’s apartment in Queens.

  “Okay,” she said to Doña Esme. “I just have to go to the bathroom, and then we can go.”

  Luna hid the pen she’d been using for her homework in the pocket of her jeans. On the way to the bathroom, she grabbed the book Doña Adele had given her. She scribbled a message to Dulce and Mateo inside the front cover: Going with Doñ
a Esme to see Papi. Back tonight. Love you, XXX Luna. They didn’t need any other surprise exits in their young lives.

  Chapter 35

  Vega and Greco left Greco’s car in the parking lot of the ME’s office and drove north to Lake Holly. It was just after four thirty p.m. Claudia’s bodega normally closed around five on Saturdays. Vega wanted to catch her while she was still at the store. The sun had set, and the sky went from bleached to the color of faded denim. Already the hillsides had gone inky as if blotting up the night and holding it in abeyance until the heavens could gather the will to do the same.

  “Assuming Schulman’s Teflon,” said Greco, “which I think he is—is Adele gonna follow him to D.C.?”

  “Looks like it,” said Vega, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “You can still see her though, right?”

  Vega shrugged. “It’s like you said—she’s been slumming. She’ll have better pickings down there.”

  “She say that?”

  “No—”

  “So why the hell are you listening to me?”

  “ ’Cause I don’t want to end up as collateral damage.”

  Greco shook his head. “Pride fucks every man better than any woman ever could.”

  Vega didn’t answer. Greco stared out a side window and chuckled.

  “What?”

  “I never told anybody this, okay?” said Greco. “But when I was a teenager, I really liked this girl: Angelica Mariano. Spent my whole teens mooning over her. But I never asked her out. You wanna know why?”

  “Okay.”

  “Because I figured she was too good for me. So I moved on with my life, met my wife. And—I’m not saying anything against Joanna; we’ve had a pretty good run, all in all—but I never stopped thinking about Angelica. So anyways, I go back to my thirtieth high school reunion a few years ago. Angelica’s happily married with some grown kids, same as me. But guess what? She tells me she was waiting for me all those years ago to ask her out. I lost my chance with the girl of my dreams because I was afraid of getting rejected. I picked the worst outcome and turned it into the only outcome when all I had to do was let things happen.”

  “So you’re saying I should just see what happens?”

  “Why not? Look, Adele and I haven’t seen eye to eye on a lot of things over the years. But I get that she’s a really smart, attractive, and ambitious woman. She’s not some little parakeet you can lock in a cage. She’s like a peregrine falcon. She’s gotta fly at her own altitude. Doesn’t mean she won’t fly back to you. Stop making this so difficult. If I’d listened to my own advice, who knows what would have happened between me and Angelica Mariano?”

  They pulled up across the street from Claudia’s. The lights were on. It was still open.

  “Thanks, Grec.”

  “Do me a favor? Next time you plan some hot and heavy night with Adele? Do it in D.C. Any crap that happens will be the D.C. cops’ problem then, not mine.”

  When they walked into Claudia’s, there were a couple of men in mud-stained jeans and baseball caps buying small handfuls of items for dinner. A woman in a black felt coat was pinching every guava for the ripest one. Claudia was behind the counter, her white apron spotted with bits of grease, her bun of wire-brush hair coming loose at the edges. Inés was washing down the deli case and wrapping the luncheon meats to put in the refrigerator for the night. When she saw Vega and Greco, she stopped in her tracks and focused her attention on Greco.

  “Romeo’s been released?”

  “He’s out. We’ve got no beef with him.” Greco spread his hands in a way that made it seem like he’d personally worked an all-nighter to free the man. “Me and Detective Vega here just want to ask you and your mom some questions when you get a chance.”

  “About Romeo?”

  Greco shrugged. “And other things.”

  Vega and Greco wandered the aisles until all the customers were gone and Claudia could officially close up the store for the evening. Inés flipped the sign across the glass panel on the front door. The streetlights beyond gave the darkness a sickly glow. Vega had already decided that their strategy would be to divide and conquer. Greco gave the excuse that he wanted to talk to Inés privately in back when in reality it was Vega who wanted to talk to Claudia alone.

  Vega waited until Greco and Inés had gone into the stockroom. Then he casually walked over to a shelf of herbs and squinted at some of their labels. He picked up a brown glass vial with an eyedropper on its lid and held it up to the light.

  “I’m curious,” said Vega, speaking to Claudia in Spanish. “What do people use”—he read the label—“chaparral for?”

  “It’s a kind of cactus,” said Claudia. “It’s used to make a poultice for arthritis pain. It can also be stirred into tea for cramps.”

  “You know a lot about herbs, Doña Claudia.” He called her doña, not señora, to keep the conversation as personal as possible.

  Claudia shrugged. “I know some things.”

  Vega returned the vial to the shelf. “So you’re a curandera?”

  Claudia nodded. “I come from a long line of traditional healers. I like to help people.”

  “I can see that.” Vega looked at her squarely. He wasn’t used to standing next to her without a counter between them. Her skin was creased like old waxed paper. The harsh fluorescents picked up every ridge and valley.

  “And those people—do they include mothers in labor?”

  Claudia’s eyes grew dark as crude oil. “I don’t know what you mean, Detective.”

  “I’m asking, Doña Claudia, if they include people like Dominga Flores?”

  Claudia grabbed a rag from a pocket in her grease-stained apron and began wiping down a shelf. She kept her back to Vega. “The boy came out fine and healthy. I could not help her situation beyond that.”

  Claudia obviously thought Vega just wanted to question why she hadn’t reported Dominga’s abusive employer to the police. Good. He’d play on that.

  “I understand completely, Doña Claudia. Sometimes, there is nothing you can do when you’re at the mercy of a rich and powerful man.”

  Claudia wiped down the shelves in silence. Vega heard only the scrape of cans and jars punctuated by the intermittent hum of the refrigerated ice-cream chest. During the day, the place was so busy, Vega never heard any of these noises.

  “Neto’s delivery,” he said softly. “That must have been very hard on you.” Dominga had mentioned that her midwife delivered babies in her own family. Vega was gambling that Neto was one of them.

  Claudia’s hand paused on her rag. The silence grew like a stretched rubber band between them. Vega pushed a little harder.

  “I understand that Inés was only fifteen.”

  “Why does that matter?” the old woman asked sharply.

  “I know you’ve had a hard life, Doña Claudia. I know you’ve had to make some hard choices. Really, what could you do?” Vega was making it up as he went along, hoping that each silence would confirm he was on the right track. “How could you know that Neto would have complications?”

  The old woman dabbed a corner of her apron to her eyes. “Every day I ask God to forgive me for not taking Inés to the hospital.” Her voice was thick and nasal. “They could have performed a cesarean. They could have unwrapped the umbilical cord from around Neto’s neck, But then they would have asked about her age. They would have asked about the baby’s father. Who would have believed us against the word of—of—”

  “Of Charlie Gonzalez.” Vega watched Gonzalez’s name work its way across the muscles of Claudia’s face. Her jaw shrank inward. Her lips grew pinched and tight. “So you made a deal with him in return for keeping his secret.”

  “You think I could have gotten justice?” Claudia snapped. “This store—” Claudia lifted her hands and gestured to the roof above where plantains on ropes shared space with flypaper strips. “—This is my justice. It’s not perfect. But it’s the best justice a poor woman like me was ever going to get.�
��

  “And how about the dead girl I showed you a picture of the other day?” asked Vega. “Where’s her justice?”

  “No.” Claudia shook her head. “I can’t go there. I can’t.”

  “Who was she, Doña Claudia?”

  Silence.

  “Neto said her name was Mia.”

  “I don’t know how Neto knew that,” said Claudia. “Maybe Don Charlie took the girl to the car-wash office and Neto saw them. I don’t know. In any case, I never asked the girl’s name, and Esme never said.”

  “You delivered her baby—”

  “No! The girl was already in labor when Esme called me in a panic and said she was bleeding a lot. When I got there, I knew right away I couldn’t help her. I told Esme to call 911. She wouldn’t listen. She threw me out.”

  “Why didn’t you call 911?”

  “Esme told me if I ever said a word, the señor would cut me off financially. My business would go under. That girl? She was nobody, Detective. I have my own family to worry about!”

  In one breath, Claudia Aguilar had gone from innocent to witness to accomplice. Claudia seemed to realize it too.

  “I want a lawyer,” she told Vega.

  The backroom door opened, and Inés and Greco came out. Inés’s eyes were swollen. Greco must have been trying to corroborate their theory. She looked at her mother. “Did you know, Mami?”

  Claudia stiffened. She looked from her daughter to Vega. “Inés has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Mrs. Aguilar?” said Greco. “We’d like you to come down to the station for a statement.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “We’d prefer you come down voluntarily.” Greco and Vega had already decided that Claudia’s prime value might be as a witness. Arresting her too early might shut her up. The longer they held off charging her, the more bargaining power they’d have to induce her to testify against the Gonzalezes.

  “And if I refuse?” asked Claudia.

  “Doña Claudia,” said Vega. “The Serrano children are still in that house. We’re concerned about their welfare, particularly fifteen-year-old Luna. We know they go to your church and you care about them too. If you stop talking to us except through a lawyer, that girl remains at risk.”