Читать книгу The Miracle of Saint Lazarus - Uva de Aragón - Страница 11

Chapter 6

Day 3—Wednesday, November 4, 2015

The conversation with Bill couldn’t have been more unpleasant. He had a good job as a company executive and made a lucrative salary, but he was an incredible cheapskate when it came to her and their son. All she had asked for was half the house in the divorce, and he had only agreed to pay the minimum court-ordered child support for Patrick until he finished high school, exactly one week after he turned eighteen. Nevertheless, their son’s expenses continued… Fortunately, his grandfather had prepaid his tuition for any public university in Florida, and Patrick had worked a few hours a week to cover his personal expenses: phone bill, gas, gym membership, and dating. Maria didn’t want him to graduate with the burden of student loans and insisted that she and Bill pay his rent and his car insurance and that they send him money for books and food. Once in a while, he had additional expenses like some car repairs or when he needed his wisdom teeth out—which were impacted—and, even worse, the health insurance didn’t cover all the costs. Bill wound up paying half, but not without kicking and screaming. Each conversation between the two of them was always the same. Undoubtedly, as an American, his concept of family was different from the Hispanic one.

Although these conversations put her in a bad mood, Maria took comfort in the fact that at least she had the strength to go through with the divorce and, as time went by, she had to deal with him less often. At times, she couldn’t understand how she’d been able to fall in love with a man like that. Had she just been blind or had Bill changed?

She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody, so she decided to put on an old Orson Wells movie and was in bed by eleven o’clock.

Day 4—Thursday, November 5, 2015

She didn’t sleep well. She had a nightmare in which she saw a man drowning in the sea whose remains then split into two identical parts that floated in the water.

As soon as she got to the office, she called Leo Adams to ask for an appointment to see him. Leo was a Cuban American lawyer who specialized in immigration cases. He was always busy but tended to see her immediately whenever she called. In exchange, she would cut through any red tape he might need in the Police Department.

Leo’s office was on Flagler just in front of the courthouse, commonly called Cielito Lindo. According to her father, everyone referred to it by its nickname because there was a jail on the twenty-fourth floor and from there the prisoners could see the sky. She arrived an hour late. Traffic was getting worse all the time. She thought that the highest point on the Highway 836 bridge offered one of the prettiest views of the Miami. It was too bad she couldn’t stop and enjoy it.

Leo didn’t make her wait long, but he did interrupt their meeting a few times to answer the phone. His desk was covered with folders, papers, yellow sticky notes, and cigarette butts. Maria had already given up trying to convince him to quit smoking. Adams’s secret for keeping so many clients with so few resources was to work on four or five things at a time with only one assistant.

Maria got him up to speed on the case:

“Supposedly, Alberto Gonzalez came on the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. He said he was from Cardenas, but I haven’t confirmed that. He stole the identity of an American, named Ray Bow, who died that same year. He worked until 1992 as Raimundo Lazo using Bow’s social security number. He died in ’92. The car that he was driving fell into a canal. They never found the body of his young daughter, who was just a few weeks old. New evidence suggests that the subject might’ve been murdered. For starters, I don’t know who he was. Can you help me?”

Leo lifted his eyes from his papers and looked at her.

“Do you know the exact date when he arrived, if he was in some kind of refugee camp, and if so who was his sponsor? Do you have a picture?”

“I don’t know the exact date when he arrived, but maybe I can find out. I know that he was in Tamiami Park, and Joaquin de Roble was his sponsor. Here’s Roble’s past address and his current one. And here’s a picture of the subject.”

“You know, El Nuevo Herald has a database that can be accessed online, although if you don’t know the exact name it can be tricky. I don’t have enough staff to help you, but maybe someone in your department can do the search for you. However, if you want to sit down at that computer over there and try it yourself, I can help you if you run into trouble. It would be a lot faster…”

Since she didn’t have anything urgent to do until she was supposed to go see the missing baby’s grandmother that night, Maria spent the next two hours following Leo’s instructions and going through the databases in order to find Alberto Gonzalez. She entered the birthdate on his license and the name Don Joaquin as the sponsor. She searched for Cardenas as his place of birth. She checked the names listed under Tamiami Park. Nothing.

At four o’clock, she waved goodbye and whispered thanks to Leo, who was on the phone, and she took off before the rush hour traffic got worse.

She had just enough time for a shower—she felt like her clothes wreaked of cigarette smoke from Leo’s office—and to make herself a quick smoothie of almond milk, yogurt, strawberries, and some protein powder that Patrick had given her. She drank it in front of the TV while she watched the ABC Evening News and then the beginning of Wheel of Fortune. She brushed her teeth, retouched her makeup, and set out for Hialeah.

She thought about her own grandmother and how she used to say that the pain endured by grandparents was twofold: they felt sorry for the problems of their grandchildren as well as their own children. She asked herself how a woman whose oldest granddaughter had disappeared at such a young age might feel, not knowing if the girl was dead or alive. Her first thought when she opened the door was that grandmothers these days were so different from those of years past.

Standing before her was a blonde woman (bleached, yes, but blonde nonetheless). She was dressed fashionably with a smart haircut and tasteful makeup. One could tell that she wasn’t just a poor country person from Pinar del Rio. Although her face showed signs of age, it was obvious that she had been a beautiful young woman.

She greeted her kindly, invited her to have a seat, and offered her a cup of coffee.

Maria sat down but passed on the coffee. She preferred not to drink it at night. She started the same way she had with Gladys Elena, asking her if she was inclined to tell her the whole story again and to answer her questions honestly, even though she had done so a thousand times before. The woman agreed. Maria turned on her recorder and pulled out her notepad, then told her:

“Whenever you’re ready, Mercedes.”

“Mercy, call me Mercy, and don’t be so formal, you’ll make me feel old… Have you ever been to Pinar del Rio?”

“No, I’m sorry to say I was born here.” The woman looked at her as though not being born in Cuba was a sin.

“It’s beautiful…and it continues to be because the countryside is something that can’t be stolen. The Valle de Viñales looks like no other place in the world. The whole province is beautiful and has a rich history ever since the War of Independence. Oh, sorry, I tend to prattle on… I was Spanish on my father’s side. We were Asturian, so our life consisted of a small farm where we grew rice, tomatoes, potatoes, and I don’t know how many other things. Most people who live in that area were tobacco farmers, or vegueros as they’re called there. They also grew henequen, which yields a lot but theirs was modest… My mother’s family was of French descent. In Pinar del Rio, there are people from all over. Our neighbors were Lebanese… Mamá was a rural schoolteacher. You can’t imagine all the jobs that came her way, but the truth is she didn’t need the money. She only did it because it was her calling. In the province, education was important. Mamá showed me old photos of herself in a classroom with her students. She had to go on horseback… We lived in a house with a beautiful central patio, which is typical in those parts. Pinar del Rio is full of legends and music from songbirds.”

“When did you get married?” Maria interrupted, hoping that the woman would start talking about things relevant to the case.

“Oh, sorry, it’s just that no one wants to know about these stories, not even my children. I married very young, maybe when I was nineteen… I was born in ’54. I was only five years old when the Revolution started. My family told me everything changed, but I believe that some things stayed the same… What I mean is that where there was once a pharmacy, there’s still one; it’s just that now it’s falling down… When the agrarian reform came along, they tried to take the farm from my father, but we managed to keep a small part of it and stood up for ourselves. Supposedly, they made things somewhat better at my mom’s school. Yeah right! They told her what she had to teach, but she fought back in the beginning since she had principles. So, by the time I came along, the teachers looked down on me. They called us gusanos, or worms, and even more so when my Uncle Jacinto left for the United States. In spite of that, I participated in all of the revolutionaries’ activities. I went off to cut cane when I was only sixteen, and when I was eighteen I moved to Havana to go to school. I ran into even bigger problems when I was in college, mostly for making stupid remarks, because my cousin Jacinto Jose had been killed in Vietnam, fighting with the Americans. Someone said something about it, and since I am—or at least used to be—a loudmouth, I couldn’t stand it and I told them off. So, I returned to Pinar del Rio because I was expelled from college… That’s when I met Hilario. He was a decent guajirote from the country, polite, and considerably refined for being a farmer. We fell in love, got married… Gladys was born in ’74, when I was twenty, and Raulito in ’76. My husband worked the land, I tended the house and raised the children, and helped my mother at the school, where she still taught.”

Mercy paused to offer her some mango juice. Maria accepted and the woman came back with two glasses of the tropical nectar. They drank in silence for a while until she started her story again.

“Now, where did I leave off? Ah, things began to get worse… Some of the neighbors told Hilario to get on a raft and get out of Cuba. I always thought that was crazy. Besides, I didn’t want to leave my parents…but when that guajiro got an idea into his head, he was more stubborn than a mule. Finding materials and constructing the raft in secret was a real undertaking, as you know. You have to understand that I love my children, but I just couldn’t get on that raft with them. I had a panic attack when I saw the blackness of the sea…there was no moon…it was an imposing darkness. I didn’t believe that Hilario would do it, but our neighbors were pressuring him to leave. The thing is, they got onto the raft, pushed off, and I stayed on the shore as still as a statue. The ten days I waited without hearing from them were the longest of my life. At last, Gladys called me crying a river to tell me that her father had drowned, and our neighbor and his wife too. My children were the only ones who made it. The Virgin had protected them because of all of my prayers.”

She appeared exhausted after retelling this part of her story. She looked for a Kleenex and wiped her nose.

“I nearly went crazy thinking about my children, all alone. I haven’t even told this to my children, but it’s the only time in my life that I have borrowed money. I called my Uncle Jacinto in New York. He really came through. I had to pay eight thousand dollars to get there in a boat, because there’s was no way I could do it on a raft. But don’t think that the boat was an easy trip. It went quickly. Seated in the bottom of the boat with the other passengers, you could feel the waves from the bottom all the way up to the top of your head. I didn’t get seasick or vomit like the others did. Maybe because I was focused on praying… But sometimes I thought that I couldn’t put up with it anymore. It was daylight when we came ashore on an island. Then the coast guard picked us up. In the end, it was quite a journey. They detained me in Key West for a few days, but when I finally got to embrace my children, I knew that it had all been worth it.”

“And what can you tell me about Raimundo Lazo?”