No Witness But the Moon

by Suzanne Chazin

  “Luis’s publicist passed these on to you and all the board members this morning. Luis is hosting a small party in Lake Holly this evening before he returns to Miami on Monday. He asked us to attend as a gesture of forgiveness and solidarity.”

  “We’re being used to scrub his image.”

  “Maybe so,” said Lindsey. “But he wrote La Casa a check for five thousand dollars this morning and issued a public letter of apology for his role in the shooting. It serves no purpose to alienate him.”

  “I can’t go,” said Adele. “That would be a slap in the face to Jimmy.”

  Lindsey gave her a pained look. “This is your job. You can’t just crawl under a rock when things get uncomfortable. The board doesn’t want to have to exercise its power here. But I’m sure you realize we can if we have to.”

  Adele went very still. “Are you actually pulling rank on me, Dave?”

  Although Adele was the founder of La Casa and ran its day-to-day operations, the budget, and ultimately the power to hire and fire, was controlled by Lindsey and the four other elected board members—all of them unpaid volunteers. For the board members, La Casa was a civic duty. For Adele, it was her livelihood.

  “Think about what I’m saying, okay?” said Lindsey. “You’ve known this guy—what? Eight months? Be certain you understand what you’re staking your career—your reputation—on before you go jumping off a cliff.”

  “And if I disagree with the board?”

  Lindsey pushed back from the table and rose, a clear sign the meeting was over. “Then perhaps you really aren’t in a position to do this job anymore, Adele. In that case, the board and I feel strongly that you should consider tendering your resignation, effective immediately.”

  Chapter 10

  Jimmy Vega had forgotten how crowded the Bronx could be, especially on a Saturday before Christmas. Cars and delivery trucks jammed the intersections, sloshing through potholes and sending icy sprays of black water to the curbs. People crowded the crosswalks, maneuvering strollers, shopping carts, and children through the crush.

  Joy wiped a sleeve of her skimpy black jacket across the passenger-side window of Vega’s truck to clear the condensation. She balanced a grave wreath of pine boughs on her lap and frowned at the noise and confusion. They each saw this place so differently. Vega came back as a long-lost native, here to find the things he’d lost. Joy tagged along as a tourist, fascinated and bewildered by the grime and the chaos, her father’s boyhood world as foreign to her as the Spanish he could roll off his tongue.

  “Did you actually like growing up here?”

  “At the time I did,” said Vega. “I was angry when Lita told me we were moving all the way up to Lake Holly.” He could still remember his first winter in the far northern suburbs. All that cold white land. All those cold white faces. “Of course if we’d stayed, I’d have probably never gone to college—or never finished, in any case.” It was possible he never would have become a police officer either but he didn’t want to dwell on those implications. “Your abuelita’s decision to leave really opened up my life in ways I couldn’t appreciate back then.”

  They turned a corner and Vega pointed to a storefront with a flashing red-and-yellow neon sign above a greasy plate-glass window. “See that place? Best little cuchifritos joint in the Bronx. Only place that could match your abuelita’s cooking. I’ll take you there after we go to the cemetery.”

  “Daaad, do you really think I’m going to be able to eat anything in a place that specializes in deep-fried pork fritters?”

  “Oh. Right.” He slammed his brakes for a jaywalker and leaned on the horn. “In that case, you might have to survive on a glass of New York City tap water and a packet of hot sauce until we leave the Bronx.”

  Joy stuck her tongue out playfully at him. Vega smiled. Her presence distracted him from his pain as only a child’s presence can. Vega lost himself in the moment. He delighted in pointing out the parochial school he used to attend, the one with wire mesh across the windows where all the nuns smelled like peppermint. He drove past Manny’s Bodega where they still sold El Diario in the rack out front. He pointed out his old tenement building where he and Henry Lopez liked to hang out on the fire escape and throw water balloons at the girls jumping rope on the sidewalk below.

  “How far away is Fordham?” asked Joy.

  “The university?” Vega blew out a breath of air. “Geographically, it’s just a little north of here. Emotionally, it’s light-years away. Why?”

  “Danielle’s a freshman there.”

  “Who?”

  “You know—my friend Danielle Camino? She’s studying to be a teacher.”

  “Oh. You want to go see her today?”

  “No. But sometime,” said Joy. “I’d like to see the campus. Maybe apply there when I finish up at Valley Community.”

  “You want to go to school in the Bronx?” Vega pulled a face. “My mother killed herself to get me out of here—and her granddaughter wants to come back?”

  “Not—here.” Joy gestured to the gritty five-story brick buildings that rose like cell blocks on either side of the street. “The university.”

  “Have you checked out their premed program? You probably should before you start thinking in that direction.”

  Joy didn’t answer. She hunkered down in her seat and played with the red velvet ribbon on the grave wreath in her lap. Every time Vega mentioned her old dream of going to medical school, she got quiet these days. He didn’t understand it. Her grades were good, especially in math and science, so the problem wasn’t academic. He wanted to talk to her about it but today wasn’t the day. He could already feel himself deflating at the sight of the white marble cemetery arches. He could pretend Luisa Rosario-Vega was still alive when he wasn’t here. He could not pretend in the presence of so many reminders that she was really, truly gone.

  God, he missed his mother! Her backseat driving. The way she always fussed over him. In two languages. In public. She gave him so many things he needed before he ever knew he needed them: self-confidence. A genuine respect for women. The ability to dream. A love of nature. He’d never thanked her for any of it. Their time together was too short. It was like someone had ripped a book out of his hands a hundred pages before the ending. There was so much more he still wanted to know.

  Vega nosed his pickup onto a path inside the cemetery and drove past the tight columns of headstones all lined up like Marine recruits. His mother’s grave was tucked in a middle row. It was a smooth, thigh-high arch of gray granite with a cross etched into the center and a trail of ivy carved along one side.

  “Oh look,” said Joy. “Somebody remembered her birthday.” There were flowers next to the gravestone already. A huge pink and white bouquet wrapped in cellophane.

  Vega parked his truck on the side of the road. Joy smoothed the red velvet ribbon on the center of the grave wreath and handed it to him. A fierce wind stung their faces the moment they left the vehicle. A fire siren squealed somewhere in the distance over the steady whoosh of traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway.

  Joy slipped an arm through her father’s and together they walked to the grave.

  “Somebody left her lilies,” said Joy. “How beautiful.”

  Vega couldn’t tell one type of flower from another. All he knew was that they looked more inviting and cheerful than the grave wreath of pine boughs that he and Joy had bought up north.

  “I wonder who they’re from.” Joy bent down and fished out a tiny note card tucked inside the cellophane. She frowned. “It’s in Spanish.” She handed it to her father.

  Mi amada. Eres siempre mi ángel.

  “It says, ‘My beloved. You are always my angel,’” Vega translated.

  “Wow,” said Joy. “Sounds like a love note. Did Lita have a boyfriend?”

  “She never mentioned one.” Vega couldn’t recall anyone coming up to him at the funeral.

  “Maybe one of her friends would know.”

  “Martha Torres
would have—before the Alzheimer’s did her in. She was my mother’s best friend. But I’m not even sure if she’s alive anymore.”

  Vega began to tuck the note in a pocket of his jacket.

  “Dad! What are you doing? That’s not your note.”

  “What? You think Lita can read it? I don’t know who wrote this, Joy. For all I know, it could be someone with information about my mother’s murder. I’m not about to let it just rot at her grave.” Vega handed Joy the wreath. She laid it on the grave.

  “Want to say a few words?” she asked her father. “Maybe explain why you’re stealing her love note?”

  Vega shot Joy a dirty look. He was tired and spent. His daughter was shivering. “We’re here. She’s in our thoughts. That’s what matters.”

  When they were back in the truck, Joy checked her watch and pretended not to.

  “Got a date tonight?” asked Vega.

  “I can cancel.”

  “You don’t have to babysit me, you know.”

  “I want to spend the afternoon with you.”

  “In that case, can we make one stopover before we head back north?”

  “You shouldn’t eat all that fried food either.”

  “I’m not talking about the cuchifritos joint. I want to go to St. Raymond’s and visit Father Delgado.”

  Joy looked surprised. “I thought you weren’t religious.”

  “I’m not.”

  On the drive over to the church, Vega told Joy what he’d found earlier going through the paperwork on his mother’s murder investigation.

  “You’re not seriously thinking the man you shot had something to do with Lita’s death, are you?”

  “It can’t hurt to talk to Father Delgado about it.”

  “Look, Dad, I know you want to find some way to justify what you did—”

  “I don’t need to justify it. I didn’t do anything wrong—”

  “Honestly? You believe that?”

  He didn’t answer. The car was warming up. Joy shrugged off her jacket. It caught on the neckline of her ribbed sweater beneath, revealing for just a moment the bare bronzed skin of her left shoulder. Vega saw something he didn’t expect to see when he glanced over. Something red. Bright red.

  “What’s that?”

  Joy pulled the neckline up quickly. “What?”

  “On your shoulder. I saw something.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Vega jerked the wheel toward the curb and double-parked alongside a row of cars. Drivers honked and gestured through their windows. Vega ignored them. He was a Bronx native. He was immune to expressions of frustration.

  “Show me your shoulder.”

  “No, Dad. Leave me alone.”

  “I’m not moving until you show me your shoulder.”

  She pulled the neckline down and up quickly. “There. Satisfied?”

  On her left shoulder was a red rose tattoo about the size of a shot glass rim, permanently etched into her flawless skin. The skin he used to bathe when she was a baby. The skin he rubbed sunscreen on when she was a little girl so that she wouldn’t get cancer one day. And now she’d let some stranger stick a needle into it and inject permanent dye?

  “You got a tattoo? When did you do that?”

  “About a month ago.”

  “Does Mom know?”

  “I didn’t tell her until after I got it.”

  Vega hit the steering wheel and cursed back at the drivers who were honking and giving him the finger. He was probably the only male of his generation who was uninked and he intended to stay that way. All his musician friends had tattoos. A lot of cops did, too. Dolan had a great big Harley-Davidson eagle tattoo on his forearm.

  Not Vega. He was squeamish about needles. He had a piercing in his left ear that he got back in his early twenties when he still thought he was going to make it as a guitarist. He’d nearly fainted from that. But even if he weren’t squeamish, he didn’t want his daughter marking up her body that way. A tattoo felt incompatible with her intellect and ambitions. How could anyone take her seriously as a doctor with that thing on her shoulder? Maybe it was simple prejudice on Vega’s part. But he suspected a lot of other people felt the same way, if not about their own bodies, then certainly about their children’s.

  “How could you do that, chispita? Without asking either of us?”

  “I’m eighteen. It’s my body!”

  “And you’re my daughter!”

  She turned to him. The light had left her eyes. “Yes, I’m your daughter,” she said in a soft, steely voice. “The daughter you practically drove out of your house this morning. The daughter who’s trying to take care of you when everyone else has turned away. I never judged you for shooting an unarmed man. And yet you judge me for getting a tattoo?”

  “I’m just trying to make sure every door in life is open for you. Like Lita did for me.”

  “One little rose on my shoulder isn’t going to close any doors,” said Joy. “The problem isn’t with the tattoo, Dad. It’s with the way you see me.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I want to be a doctor anymore.”

  “Oh.” Vega tried to mask his disappointment but it sat there between them like a deflated balloon. Joy had wanted to be a doctor since she was twelve years old. Her dream had become his. He didn’t want to let it go.

  “Can I ask what you do want to be?”

  Joy rubbed a hand along the black fuzz of her jacket, stroking it like a kitten.

  “I like working with young children a lot. Maybe a kindergarten teacher—”

  “What? You want to waste your talents on—on—wip-ing snotty noses and teaching kids to crayon their ABCs?”

  “Oh, that’s rich.” Joy rolled her eyes. “Coming from a man who shoots people for a living.”

  Vega turned away without saying anything. Then he shifted the truck into gear and nosed back into traffic.

  “Sorry, Dad,” she said after a minute. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “If you want to talk—”

  “I’m okay.”

  Vega drove around St. Raymond’s Church looking for parking. He couldn’t find anything nearby so he parked about eight blocks away, around the corner from his mother’s old building. They’d have to walk back to the church. Vega grabbed his aviator sunglasses and Yankees baseball cap from his glove compartment and slipped them on.

  “It’s not sunny out,” said Joy.

  “That’s not why I’m wearing them,” said Vega. “I don’t want to chance getting recognized.”

  “Is that why you haven’t shaved since you got home?”

  Vega hadn’t really thought about it. But yeah. Maybe. He wanted to hide from the world. A beard was one way to do it. If he stayed on administrative leave long enough, maybe he’d grow out his hair, too.

  St. Raymond’s was an imposing sandstone-colored church with filigreed stained-glass windows and twin spires that looked like cake decorations. The inside smelled of incense and lemon oil. There were no services going on so they were the only people in the nave with the exception of a janitor sweeping the pews, an older, heavyset Hispanic-looking man with a broad weathered face. Vega asked if Father Delgado was around.

  “I’m not sure if he’s in the rectory, señor. He was out making rounds at the hospital earlier. He will be here for Saturday evening Mass.”

  “Is there any way you could find out if he’s in the rectory right now? It’s important that I speak to him.”

  The janitor’s dark, sad eyes settled on Vega’s. He brushed a hand across his gray mustache. Vega sensed the man knew who he was. Was there no place any longer where his reputation didn’t precede him?

  “I will see if I can find him.”

  “Is there a bathroom around here?” asked Joy.

  “I will show you, señorita.”

  Joy followed the janitor out of the nave and into a side hallway that presumably led to the rectory. Vega knelt at the edge of one of the p
ews and made the sign of the cross. Old habits died hard, he supposed. He slid himself onto the smooth wooden bench and folded his hands on the pew in front of him. Not in prayer. He’d been an altar boy long enough to know all the words. But they conjured no faith inside of him. He looked up to the ornate peaked rafters and stained-glass windows of saints and wished that all the glory and majesty of this place could quiet the hollow echo in his soul. He felt lost. So terribly, terribly lost.

  I’ve killed a man. I’ve killed an unarmed man. For the first time, the full weight of those words fell upon him. He’d been looking for ways to relieve the burden. But Greco was right. If he ever wanted to make something good happen, he first had to come to grips with the unalterable nature of what he’d done.

  “I was hoping you’d come.”

  The words startled Vega. He turned to see Father Delgado striding up the aisle toward him. For a man pushing seventy, he had a brisk way of moving. Vega could see why he was everybody’s favorite priest. He had soft, deep-set eyes that never wandered when he was listening to you and a sort of Zen-like calmness that made you feel instantly like you were in safe hands. But he wasn’t all prayer and mumbo jumbo, either. He was a die-hard Yankees fan, an excellent poker player, and a lover of all things spicy and fried. He was not above making priest jokes either—one of the reasons Vega supposed his mother loved him so much. They both shared an irreverent sense of humor.

  Father Delgado bent down and crossed himself, then scooted into the pew next to Vega.

  “I guess you’ve seen the news,” said Vega. “I realize I’m not the most popular person to be seen talking to right now.”

  “Nonsense. Your mother would have been glad you reached out.” Delgado pulled down the kneeling bench and clasped his hands in front of him. “Shall we pray together?”

  “I’m not here for spiritual guidance, Father,” Vega said sheepishly.

  “Sometimes the thing we need most, we can’t bring ourselves to look for.”