by Nina Darnton
“Ah, it means ‘Jewish quarter,’” he said pleasantly. He laughed. “You will be comfortable there. You are Jewish, are you not?”
She was shocked. “Do you mean there is still a special section of town for Jews here?” she asked.
Now he laughed louder. “Oh, no, senora, of course not,” he said. He explained that the area, which was now the Barrio de Santa Cruz and the chief tourist section of the city, had indeed been a Jewish ghetto in the fifteenth century, cut off from the rest of the city by a wall. “You can still see what is left of that wall today,” he said. He encouraged her to read about it and recommended an article in English she could find online. It recounted, he said, that in a much lauded historical restoration, the Duke of Segorbe had spent the past thirty years trying to return parts of the quarter to its original architecture.
“Las Casas de la Judería is the duke’s special project,” José continued. “A massive renovation of a former mansion into a hotel that is like a small village of connecting houses, patios, and gardens, each with its own personality. You will like it; you will see. Tourists find it very appealing.” He told her that the apartment he had found was modern and comfortable, while the neighborhood retained the feel of an old European city.
“But you mentioned that I am Jewish. Is this area mostly settled by Jews?”
“No, no,” he said. “Forgive me. I was making a joke. Perhaps a bad one. There are, sadly, very few Jews in Seville now and certainly not congregated in any area.”
She thanked him and said she’d certainly like to see the apartment. Could she visit it before committing herself? He assured her that she could and arranged for his secretary to meet her in an hour at the address, 54 Calle de la Madre de Dios. She smiled at the name. “Madre de Dios—Mother of God.” Well, it certainly had shed its Jewish origins.
She showered and dressed, wondering in passing how José knew she was Jewish. Not that it mattered, she thought. She’d been to the Barrio de Santa Cruz, she realized, not knowing its history. She’d visited those sites with Emma—she remembered the Alcázar, the royal palace that used to be a Moorish fort, and the cathedral with the Giralda looking like the top of a wedding cake. She had noted the beautiful labyrinthian narrow stone streets, shielded from the hot sun by the facades of the white and mustard-colored houses that lined them, many decorated with flower boxes overflowing with fragrant blooms.
She stopped at the hotel restaurant for breakfast and then took the elevator up to the lobby. She approached the exit warily but was relieved to see that the crush of reporters had diminished. She exited carefully, her head down, and was able to leave unaccosted, slipping into a waiting taxi and giving the address of what she hoped would be her new apartment. She arrived early and so had time to wander the alleyways and look in shop windows. Passing by, she peered into the stone courtyard of the Casas de la Judería. It was charming, with its white columns supporting an arcade of graceful arches that surrounded a blue-and-white-tiled fountain. Continuing her explorations, she saw a café near the Plaza de Santa Cruz that beckoned her, and she stopped to order a coffee, even though she had just had one at breakfast. It was so pleasant to sit there, shaded from the sun while enjoying its light.
Checking her watch, she saw it was time to walk to the meeting place, and having paid her bill, she made her way there. She recognized José’s secretary, Rosa, even though she hadn’t met her before, by her agitated look as she scanned the passing women to see if the American had arrived. Rosa seemed to know her as soon as she laid eyes on her; she bustled over enthusiastically, a broad-hipped middle-aged woman in a blue-and-white business suit, with bright red lacquered nails and matching lipstick. “Senora Lewis?” she asked. “I am Rosa. I am very happy to see you,” she said in heavily accented English. “Let us go quickly. The landlord, he waits already.”
Jennifer apologized for being late, even though her watch told her she was exactly on time, and followed Rosa into the building.
The apartment was perfect—modern, comfortable, and simple at less than half the price she’d been paying at the hotel. She took it quickly, leaving the paperwork to be handled by José. The landlord handed over the keys and she told him she planned to move in later that day.
After thanking Rosa, she walked briskly in the direction of the hotel. It was, as usual, a beautiful day. She tried Roberto’s number again, but when she still heard only his voice mail greeting, she didn’t bother to leave another message. The heaviness, the sense of dread that had accompanied her since she arrived in Seville and had lifted so briefly as she wandered the barrio and rented the apartment, settled in again, and she stopped at a taxi stand and wearily climbed into a waiting cab.
Passing the manager in the lobby at the hotel, she asked him to prepare her bill in advance of her imminent departure, and to ensure that her messages were forwarded. Then she went to her room to pack.
When she was ready, before leaving the room, she sat at the desk and called the prison. This time, Emma came to the phone. Jennifer could tell from the moment her daughter greeted her that something was wrong. “Emma, what happened? Are you okay? I’ve tried to call you many times, but you never took the call.”
Emma’s answer was soft and slow. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been kind of out of it.”
“What do you mean? What’s happened?”
“I’ve just been kind of anxious, I guess. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. They gave me something.”
“What did they give you?”
“I don’t know. A tranquilizer. It makes me sleepy.” Her voice changed to a sad plea. “Mom, why don’t you come?”
“I want to. I’ve tried. They won’t let me. They say they are restricting your visits until you cooperate.”
Emma’s voice hardened. “They mean until I tell them what they want to hear.”
“Can’t you do that, honey? Can’t you try?”
“Never mind that,” she said curtly and dismissively, the softness gone from her voice. “I’m sorry I brought it up. But maybe you can do something for me.”
“Of course. Anything. What?”
“They won’t tell me anything. Have you heard anything about Paco? Is he still in jail? Is he okay? Can you find out?”
Jennifer felt a wave of disappointment, but it was mixed strangely with a perverse touch of pride: They hadn’t broken her. “I’ll try, okay? And I’ll come to see you soon. José said he might be able to legally force them to allow visitors. They can’t keep you isolated because they don’t believe you. Not without proof.”
“Thanks, Mom. But remember to ask José about Paco.” She paused and Jennifer could hear some angry women’s voices in the background. She could tell that Emma was muffling the sound, but she could hear her shouting back something angry in Spanish. Her voice sounded odd—more strident and aggressive than usual. “I gotta go. Someone needs the phone,” Emma said into the receiver and hung up.
Jennifer held the phone to her ear a minute or so more, then slowly put it back in its cradle. She thought fleetingly and sadly that Emma had become in so many ways a stranger to her. She called the front desk to ask for some help with her bags and went downstairs to pay her bill. She noticed a few more reporters hanging out in front of the door, so she asked the doorman to have a taxi waiting when she exited so she could slip into it as quickly as possible.
As she exited the hotel followed by the porter who carried her luggage, she practically bumped into Roberto, who was on his way in. Before she could stop herself, overwhelmed with relief, she ran to him, threw her arms around him, and tried to plant a kiss on his cheek.
“No, senora,” he whispered, stiffening and holding her at arm’s length. But it was too late. Two cameras clicked as reporters caught the moment.
He ushered her into the waiting cab and helped load her bags, ignoring the reporters’ questions. “Any new developments?” “Is Emma still claiming she was attacked?” “Why hasn’t her mother visited her?” “Looks like your job description has change
d,” a reporter from London’s Daily Mail shouted in English, referring to Jennifer’s hug. The others laughed knowingly. Roberto climbed in next to her and the cab sped away. No one followed.
Jennifer was mortified. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. I was just so relieved to see you. Where have you been? I was so worried.”
“I know. I apologize, and I’ll explain. But not here. Why are you leaving the hotel?”
She explained what had happened and where they were going. When they arrived, he paid the taxi driver and helped her carry her bags up the two flights of stairs to her new apartment. The rental agency had left a bottle of wine and a corkscrew on the kitchen table in welcome, and Roberto opened it, found two glasses, and carried them into the living room. He sat down on the couch and Jennifer took a chair across from him.
“I found my daughter,” he said. The words hung there for only a second, barely giving Jennifer time to exult with him. And then he said, “But I lost her again. Maybe this time forever.”
She was stunned. He explained that he had hired several private detectives who had been trying to find his ex-wife and child for years, but they had eluded every method he had employed to find them. It was as if they had simply vanished . . . or died, he said after a pause. While he was driving back to Seville, one of the detectives called him and said he thought he might have located Roberto’s ex-wife in Gerona. He’d found a woman in a mental institution, where she had been committed two years ago after being charged with abuse and neglect of her young daughter. The child, who was now thirteen years old, had gone to foster care. Roberto had rushed there, forgetting all else.
“But how did you know it was really her?” Jennifer asked.
“They had taken pictures of my wife and, although she was much changed—her hair was unkempt and completely gray, for example, and she had lost at least thirty pounds from when I’d last seen her—I knew it was her.”
“How did you find your daughter?”
“She has a name,” he said reproachfully.
“I’m sorry. Of course she does. I don’t know it. What is her name?”
“Isabel,” he murmured. “It was not hard to find where she was sent. She had been assigned by the court to a family in a small village on the outskirts of Gerona.”
He returned to his narration, his voice flat. He related that he couldn’t reach the family by phone, so, wildly excited, he drove there without an appointment. His dread grew when he saw the house and mounted even higher when he went inside. It was small, dark, and messy. Dirty dishes filled the sink and empty beer bottles littered the floor and tables. Only one man was at home. He was unemployed and a little drunk, although it was early in the day. Roberto asked him about Isabel, but instead of answering, the man complained bitterly about his poverty, his lack of a job, the indifference of the government.
“He smelled money,” Roberto said. “He sickened me, but I handed him fifty euros and asked again about Isabel.” He poured himself another glass of wine, staring at it disconsolately before tipping it to his lips.
“Well?” Jennifer said. “What did he say?”
He shrugged helplessly. “He said she was a heroin addict and had run away six months ago. He claimed he hadn’t reported it because he didn’t want to get her in trouble, but of course the real reason was he wanted to continue getting the government support checks.”
Jennifer got up and joined him on the couch. She reached out to touch his hand, but he removed it to take another sip of wine. “Oh, Roberto, I’m so sorry. Did you go to the police?”
“Of course. We searched the known gathering places, the bars, the street corners. We talked to everyone we could. How do you think a thirteen-year-old girl who is a heroin addict supports her habit? She becomes a prostitute, and we went to the street corners where they work. The most recent picture we had was when she first went to foster care two years ago, and no one recognized her. Or no one admitted to it. Of course they are still looking. I’ve got a good man working on it, and he won’t stop. But I don’t know if I can find her, and it may already be too late to save her.”
Jennifer asked if he had seen his ex-wife.
He said he had. He had gone to the institution. He was filled with rage, but when he saw her he found a defeated, confused woman who was heavily medicated and barely knew him. The doctors said she was schizophrenic, and while the medicine stopped her hallucinations, it also flattened her emotions and blurred her consciousness.
Roberto was filled with self-loathing. He was, he said, supposed to be the best detective around, but he had been unable to find his ex-wife or help his daughter. He didn’t know her and now he probably never would. There was no point being angry at his wife, and while others might be angry at God, Roberto was an atheist; his frustration was that he had nowhere to direct his hatred. He felt he would explode.
Jennifer listened in silence. When he finished, she reached again for his hand. “I know how you feel,” she said. “It’s not the same, but I know, in my own way, what it is to lose a child, even to lose a fantasy of that child.”
He didn’t answer, and she withdrew her hand. Her mouth felt so dry it was difficult to talk, so she walked to the sink, got a glass of water, drank it down in one long gulp, and returned.
“Lo siento, Jennifer,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know you are suffering too. But we will get your daughter back to you. I won’t rest until we do.”
“I know,” she said. “I believe you.”
He looked tired and uncharacteristically dispirited, but after an uncomfortable pause, he asked her to tell him what she had discovered about her own case while he was gone. She hesitated, feeling it was wrong to involve him in her problems when his own wound was so recently reopened. He saw her hesitation and assured her that he was ready to work. He claimed that trying to solve the problems of his clients would distract him from his own. He seemed sincere, and in fact his manner was slowly changing, she noticed with surprise. His posture became more erect as he returned to his habitual self-confident professionalism. So she told him about seeing Julia and her plan of going to Triana at midnight to meet someone who might have more information about Paco. He smiled wistfully. “That’s good detective work, Jennifer. You are a natural.” He stood up. “Muy bien. We will go together.”
He walked to the table on which he had left his briefcase and retrieved a notebook, leafing through it for a few pages until he found what was been looking for. “I have done some detective work myself,” he said, not looking up from his notes. “This village that I visited, the one to which he has been sending the money he made from selling drugs—probably the money he got from Emma as well—I went there, as you know.”
She nodded. He knew she knew. Why the buildup?
“I spoke to everyone I could who might have information—the mayor, the police chief, the unemployment organizations, the unions, the foundations.” He held up the notebook, full of scrawlings, in which he had meticulously recorded his questions and their replies. “There is no record of any person or any group receiving contributions either from him specifically or from anyone else anonymously.”
Jennifer was getting excited. “I knew it,” she said triumphantly. “I just felt it. Call it instinct.”
“But there is more,” Roberto said. “And this, I must admit, neither of us guessed.”
“Tell me,” she said impatiently.
“He is not from that village, Jennifer. He has no family there and has never had any roots there of any kind. It’s a complete invention.”
CHAPTER 21
Roberto said he would pick her up at her apartment at 11:00 P.M. She had suggested they go out for dinner first, but he’d said he had too much work to catch up on. She thought he’d seemed a bit cold, as if he regretted the recent intimacy of their conversation and wanted to return to a more professional footing. She didn’t mind. She wanted that too. She liked him and respected him and she empathized with his pain, but that wasn’t going to help Emma.
She found herself obsessively going over likely scenarios. Maybe Paco was a violent man with a hair-trigger temper, she thought. Maybe he had snapped when he saw this boy trying to rape Emma.
Jennifer tried to puzzle it out, step by step. Emma loved him, or thought she did, Jennifer figured, and she’d have been grateful that he’d saved her. She was young and foolish, of course—she should never have lied to the police and made up that whole story about the Algerian. After all, if Paco had been trying to save her, maybe he would get off on a plea of self-defense. But Emma had said that Paco had already been in trouble with the police, and she’d implied they would throw the book at him. That forced her to lie to protect him.
That satisfied her for a bit, but then another thought occurred to her. If the police had checked up on him, which by now they must have done, they would know that he didn’t come from the place he’d claimed. Had they told Emma that? Had they told José? Didn’t they have to share any evidence they had with the defense team? Jennifer’s knowledge of police procedures came exclusively from Law & Order on American television, and she was pretty sure she remembered that sharing evidence was compulsory. She knew they hadn’t shared anything, however, because José and Roberto had had no idea that Paco wasn’t from that village until Roberto checked it out himself.