“I am a citizen now. I have a wife, and four daughters, all born here. All this they have: opportunity, education, freedom, the love of their family. An easy life. We made this chance for them, my father, my wife, and me. For love.”
Jeanie asked quietly, “Were you a plumber in Chile?”
“Engineer, six years university. Teresa is at Western Oregon University now. Margarita and Alicia are in high school still. Rosalie was my second daughter.”
“She is your second daughter,” Jeanie said, stressing the second word.
“To bring drugs and gangsters into my home? To bring danger to her mother, her sisters? No.”
“Rosalie is a engaging person,” said Jeanie, trying a different tack. “Has she always been that way? So open and friendly?”
“She has her secrets, that one. Don’t be fooled. But yes, always. From a little girl, always dancing, skipping, laughing. She was,” he said sadly, “a candle-flame in our lives. Always the little joke with Rosalie, the pretty picture. Sparkling like fireworks.”
“Dazzling light, glittering colors?”
“Yes, that. And as quickly gone again, leaving smoke and darkness behind her.”
“She seems fond of her Cousin Arturo.”
His eyes flashed. “She has no cousin named Arturo. Secrets. Always with Rosalie, the secrets, the lies.” He blocked her speech with the palm of his hand. “Please, no. No more.”
“Just one more thing? And please don’t get angry with me. You’re quite intimidating, you know.”
“So my wife tells me.” A hint of a smile touched his face.
“There’s the baby, Dominic.” Seeing the gathering thunder in his face, she plunged on hurriedly, “He has a foster mother who wants to adopt him. Rosalie won’t give him up, because he’s all she has left. Mr. Perea, what kind of life is he going to have with Rosalie as a mother, the way she is now? He’d be much better off with his foster mother. Couldn’t you talk to Rosalie and ask her to give him up?”
“No more.” Horacio Perea stood rigidly, rock-solid. “The child is nothing to me. Rosalie has chosen her life. She must live with it. Perhaps she will rise to the challenge.”
“Mr. Perea—”
“Good bye.” Mr. Perea slammed the rear door shut and strode to the cab. With a grinding of gears and a shudder, the truck took off, spitting pebbles from its tires.
The dust settled back into the gravel at Jeanie’s feet.
~*~
The Dandridge Residential Transition Facility for Boys was a world away from Esperanza. Its supervisor, Mr. Maldonado, scorned sofas and wallpaper, magazines, and practical lessons like using a microwave or tape measure. The resulting regimented “I am the boss” atmosphere resembled a cross between a boot camp and slave quarters.
Jeanie’s ID was insufficient, though she talked to staff members every week, and knew most of them by voice. Suspicious looks were directed at her, her purse, her thin pile of reading materials for Quinto, and last but not least, her cat carrier. Jeanie tired of the conversation, and embarked on the strategy her friend Annalisa had pegged as “vintage McCoy.”
“Perhaps you should put my cat through a metal detector,” she suggested helpfully, extracting the cat from the carrier. Rita hung limply over her hand, in boneless-cat mode.
The clerk looked at her sharply for signs of sarcasm. “That won’t be necessary, Mrs., er . . .”
“Wonderful, I’m glad this is over. Now, if you’d just let me in—”
“I can’t do that.”
Jeanie opened her eyes wide. “Oh dear, you poor thing. You mean to say they’ve locked you in here, without a key?”
“Well, no—”
“No, of course not, how silly of me. You could simply go out the front door, and climb over a wall, couldn’t you? Perhaps I could try that,” she said, with an air of vague consideration. “Only I’m afraid I’ll need you to come with me, to hand the cat over the fence. I could manage the chain link, I suppose, but I wouldn’t want to hurt my little cat.”
Variations on this gentle theme baffled the staff, apparent concessions on her part accidentally cornering people in locations of her choosing. The strategy worked as well with adults as on any batch of teenagers she’d taught. In theory, of course, she deplored such tactics, but there was a singular advantage to them: they worked. It was just too much work to eject the befuddled white-haired old lady, carrying a cat under one arm.
Thus, with only mild surprise, she found herself in Dandridge’s small study room with the doors closed and Quinto plopped in a chair. Rita refused to be a lap cat, feeling that a cat’s job was to be in as many places as possible, as rapidly as possible. She pounced on Quinto’s feet, leaped on the table, and skidded to the other end, executing 180-degree turns at the slightest rustle.
Despite the cat’s distraction, Quinto looked dreadful. He’d developed a tic under his right eye. His hands flailed restlessly, picked at his clothes, roamed through his hair, and rattled the tabletop. He talked convulsively, his hands moving independently of his conversation. Jeanie pushed a tablet and a pencil under his hand. His speech never paused, but his hand picked up the pencil, and jabbed it at the tablet, in lines of fire and jagged glass.
“Mr. Rivera, but he says he ain’t working now, and I understand it, ‘cause, on account of, the guy was his friend, Mr. Dunlap was. They use to do stuff together, work on cars, and like that, like homeys, you know? And now he’s dead. And right after Mr. Wogan was hurt, too. Two of his pals, it’s real hard on Mr. Rivera, I know it’s hard, like if somethin’ happened to one of my buds, you know? But what am I gonna do? Stay at this fuckin’ place for the rest of my life?” Under his hand, layer after layer of rough cinder block coated the paper, each one sharply edged. Each block carried the rapid-fire sketch of a face. She recognized Danny Rivera, Bryce Wogan from the newspaper photo, and the new foreman with the clipboard. A fourth face looked oddly familiar. Oh yes, it was Mackie’s friend, the security guard from the courthouse.
“Quinto, I’m sure Mackie will find you—”
“I don’t want no other job,” he exploded. “I don’t. I like this stuff, building things, Jeanie, I can’t tell you. It’s like, you know ...oh God, I can’t explain it.” He seemed lost in thought, as he began drawing bloody drips from the fourth face. Involuntarily, Jeanie put out a hand towards the paper. Quinto seemed to notice the tablet for the first time.
He started a fresh sheet, his face rapt. He sketched a rough piece of ground. “Like this, Jeanie, see? First there’s just dirt and trash and stuff, and then you dig, and the foundation goes in, and the footings.” As quickly as he spoke, the picture grew as a perfect reflection of his words. “And your rebar and stuff like that, all gotta be up to code. Then you throw up your braces.” As he spoke, he erased lines, and added others, dirt fading away, replaced by clean lines, square corners, and foundations, quickly hidden. He was crying, the tears coursing down his face like a river, plopping onto the paper.
“Quinto.” She put her hand between his eyes and the paper. “Quinto, I didn’t know. I thought—” She’d thought he loved the job because he liked Danny, because he wanted out of the House for a few precious hours a day. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was the frustrated need to create, to build, to see his creations blaze across the world. This was what graffiti had been for him, just the desire to create. Danny Rivera had shown him the way. “I’ll tell Mackie how important this is. Believe me, she’ll try hard to get you into another crew. But it’s going to be hard to replace someone like Mr. Rivera. You might wind up with someone not so understanding.”
“I don’t care.” Quinto’s breathing slowed. No one had listened to him when he’d gotten the news. They’d told him he wouldn’t be working at the site, that Mr. Rivera was quitting, to shut up and be grateful, to talk to the police, and for-God’s-sake to watch his step, take off his hat, and say-Sir-when-you-talk-to-me-boy. But no one had listened.
He looked her in the eye for the first
time. His fleeting smile was touched with panic and despair. “Ricardo, my brother, he was on at me yesterday, says maybe I should give it up, you know? Go on with the art, learn graphic arts, the computer stuff. He says I’d be real good, go into the store with him, advertising, you know.” He’d shifted back to the first drawing, placing Ricardo’s face on a fifth block. “He says I’d be good, I’d make the big bucks in advertising.”
“He might be right, Quinto. You have the most remarkable artistic gift I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Maybe,” Quinto said doubtfully. “Only, I’d have to go back to Portland, ‘cause that’s where them schools are. Ricardo can get me in, he says. He knows somebody.” Mackie Sandoval’s face went on block six.
“You’re so good at drawing faces, Quinto.”
“Yeah, well,” he muttered. Jeanie herself was on block seven. “I don’t know what to do, no more. Maybe Ricky’s right, huh?”
“I must have seen you draw dozens of people,” she said, feeling her way. “But I’ve never seen you draw yourself.”
“Me?”
“Your own face. Can you?”
Quinto’s hand poised in midair. Jeanie turned the tablet to a new page.
“Draw your own face Quinto, when it’s happy. When you’re as happy as you can possibly be.”
Slowly, indefinite lines formed a face, hesitant watery lines. Quinto frowned. “I don’t know. I never done that.”
“But you know what you look like, you know how you feel. Close your eyes, and draw.”
Eyes closed, he sat there utterly still. Suddenly, his hand flew, and splashed his own face across the page, eyes alight with joy. He looked at it wonderingly. “Is that what I look like, for real?”
“Exactly. Every detail.” There’d been a breakthrough of some kind. She wasn’t sure what it was. “I’ve seen you look just that way. Now tell me, what are your hands doing when you look like this?”
“I’m making things,” he said. Around the face went small pictures of houses, cars, and paintings. And then, in large sweeping strokes, he was drawing houses, large and beautiful, people walking up the steps, ready to open a door with dreams alive behind it. “That’s it, Jeanie!” He dropped the pencil, threw his arms around her, and then jumped to his feet. “I’m building houses, and then I’m drawing them. I can do both, Jeanie! There ain’t nothing in the world says I can’t do both.”
His grin nearly split his face in two. He dropped into his seat, grabbed her hand, and shook it. “So you tell Mackie, okay? You’ll tell her. Get me on a job, I’ll work my butt off, I’ll get that math down, and learn all about construction.”
“I’ll tell her.” He needed a little space to himself. Jeanie set about gathering Rita, a matter that took a certain amount of attention. Cats had more tentacles than an octopus when it was time to go in a carrier. She latched the door shut, and found Quinto regarding the picture of Ricardo ruefully.
“He’s gonna be some mad at me, Ricky is. He really wanted me to go into the store with him, but it ain’t right for me. He’ll understand, won’t he?”
“I’m sure he will. He only wants what’s best for you.” Quinto was back to drawing drip marks under the picture of Mackie’s friend. “Why are you putting blood on his face?”
Quinto looked at her, startled. “On account of he’s dead, Jeanie. Mr. Rivera’s friend, Mr. Dunlap? He’s the one what got killed by the bomb.”
“At the construction site?”
“Yeah. What’s up? You knew about that, I know you did.”
“I didn’t realize,” she said numbly, “who he was.” Vic Dunlap, Mackie’s friend at the courthouse, was the security guard who’d triggered the pipe bomb at Danny Rivera’s site. No one had set the courthouse bomb for Judge Hodges. Vic Dunlap was the true target. When it missed, another had awaited him. And that one worked.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Do you miss Bright Futures?”
Jeanie parked Estelle’s wheelchair in front of the sunroom’s window. The sparse furnishings left ample room for wheelchairs and gurneys. From the presence of a dusty jigsaw puzzle open on the table, Jeanie deduced that it served patients who were sick of their own rooms. No one demurred as Jeanie pushed Estelle into it, and closed the door. There was no way to lock it. With a mental shrug, she opened the cat carrier.
“This is Rita. She’s tired of being in the carrier. I don’t know what she’ll make of your wheelchair.” Rita had never met a wheelchair before. Walkers and canes, yes, but not wheelchairs. Oriole’s Nest only tended people who were ambulatory.
The nurses didn’t seem to have noticed the cat. They didn’t, in fact, seem to have noticed Estelle in quite some time. Jeanie had found Estelle in a wheelchair, parked in front of a blank television in her room. In the past week, Estelle had spared no effort to reject the nurses’ help, intentions, and professional skills. Her hostility spoke through every move, sniff, and cutting remark. Jeanie couldn’t blame the nurses for giving Estelle the privacy she so vehemently defended.
Estelle looked into the silver-gray ruffles of cotton wool that clouded the skies in one of Oregon’s more subtle beauties. Wisps of silver played through a break in the clouds. She registered Jeanie’s presence with only the flicker of a dismissing eye. She had not spoken a word in the ten minutes since Jeanie’s arrival.
Rita wandered onto Jeanie’s lap, and considered exploratory moves onto the wheelchair. Jeanie placed her on Estelle’s lap, lifted one of the lifeless hands, and moved it on top. Rita readily settled into a purring ball, content to take a nap. Jeanie drew Estelle’s hand over the bright fur.
“Estelle, you didn’t answer me. Do you miss going to work?”
Estelle’s carved face stirred. Hoarse words emerged from the frozen lips. “Is that all you can find to say, Mrs. McCoy? Is your imagination really so lacking?”
“What would you have me say?” Damn her anyway. Jeanie was so sick of walking on eggs. Estelle wouldn’t want pity, even if she offered it. “Gee, Estelle, I’m sorry they had to cut your leg off below the knee? How are you going to manage with only one foot, and just half of that? Is that blunt enough for you?”
The chin quivered. Estelle was resolutely silent.
“How about this? It could have been worse. You could have been plastered into unrecognizable pieces on the pavement yesterday morning, like Vic Dunlap. His wife adored him. She called him her Pillsbury Doughboy. He was earning extra money to take her to Hawaii.” There was no reaction. “It may not matter to you, but it mattered to Debbie, and Mackie Sandoval, and me, and Danny Rivera.”
Estelle’s head jerked. “Danny Rivera? Was he hurt?”
“Not Danny. Vic was the night guard.” Jeanie watched the color come back into Estelle’s face. “Why? Do you know Danny Rivera?” Everybody knew Danny Rivera. It was unreal. But then again, they all lived and worked in the same sector of society.
Estelle turned away. “I met him a time or two. In the course of business.”
“A nice man,” said Jeanie.
“He’s twenty years my junior, Mrs. McCoy. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Ah, that’s nice. That’s the Estelle I’ve learned to know and love.”
The rigid face twitched and tightened again.
“I asked if you missed going to work. Are you planning a return in the near future? Or,” she added, “in the distant future?”
“They did this to me.” Estelle sat in profile, her face unforgiving.
“All of them?” Jeanie found a perverse pleasure in the rudeness. Talking with Estelle might be as tense as a Cold War, but it was a relief from the rules to which she’d bound herself for her entire life. “All twenty-odd girls hid in collusion, and built a pipe bomb in the Bright Futures’ back shed, and then crept to your apartment across town in the dead of night to booby trap your car. Fluffy thinking, Estelle.”
Estelle turned on her, with wolf-like ferocity. “Absolutely rational thinking, my naïve Mrs. McCoy. Criminals, all
of them, not one with a decent background. Whom else would you accuse? The grocery clerk? One of my neighbors at the apartment complex? I don’t even know their names, not one.”
“I’ll bet your neighbors know yours, though.” Jeanie bit her lip on the acid tone.
“Violence is their nature!” Estelle screamed. “They’re evil, disease-ridden drug addicts, thieves, and hookers.”
“Who have no appreciation for the effort you’ve put into their rehabilitation.”
“No!” The shout bounced off the walls, circled Jeanie’s head, and fell.
A timid knock sounded on the door. A young nurse peered inside, hesitation written in every line of her face. “Er—?”
“We’re just fine, thanks,” caroled Jeanie with her most teacherly smile. “Close the door please. We don’t want the cat to get out, now do we?”
“Er, no, of course not.” After a moment, the nurse decided to put herself on the outside of the door instead of the inside.
Estelle pressed the backs of her hands to her cheeks, trying to push back the high color.
“But which one, Estelle? Which one do you think did this? And which twenty didn’t? And why would she bother? She’d know every girl in the place would be suspected.”
Estelle lowered her hands, and wiped them quickly on her gown. Dampness spotted the cloth, telling its own tale. Without thought, she dropped a hand on Rita.
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking, and thinking, all day, ever since—” She looked at the stump of her leg sticking out in front of her wheelchair, and flinched away. “Ever since they forced me out of bed into this wheelchair. I hadn’t thought it through before then. They all—”
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