“The fact is that Lourdes has to ask you something very privately.”
As the waiter got closer, they lowered their voices. They asked for three glasses of Chardonnay. It was as if they were speaking Chinese. They wound up accepting three Presidente beers.
In response to her inquisitive look, Lourdes began to speak slowly, as if pronouncing each syllable required an immense effort.
“I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up… I don’t think it’s anything… I don’t know… Probably… It’s just that it seems like…and maybe you…”
Maria was about to lose her patience and to tell her to get to the point, but she noticed a hint of pain in the woman’s eyes that made her hesitate and try to comprehend what she was saying beyond the actual words, the meaning behind her gestures and the modulation of her voice that was becoming fainter.
“And?” she succinctly asked while raising an eyebrow.
“Lourdes thinks that Ramon is cheating on her,” Yolanda blurted out.
Maria had to make an effort to stifle her laughter. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that the seventy-year-old man was up for an affair, even though it wasn’t out of the question at his age with Viagra. These days, even Vargas Llosa, who was pushing eighty, was making a fool of himself as a dirty old man in all those photos in Hola magazine. When the waiter came back with their food, the women hushed their conversation for a moment. Lourdes’s breaded cutlet draped over the plate, along with black beans and plantains. Yolanda had asked for vaca frita, that typical Cuban flank steak, with the same side dishes except that the plantains were sweet. As for Maria, she had limited herself to a tuna salad.
When they were alone again, she looked at Lourdes.
“Hang on, what makes you think that?” she asked with all seriousness, as if she were investigating one of the cases back at headquarters.
“Look, when he retired a year ago, he was happy enough watching films on Netflix, listening to the news, reading… He even bought a Kindle. You had to light a fire under him just to get him out of his recliner. A few months ago, he started eating lunch every Thursday with some friends…”
“That’s true, because Alicia’s husband, Oscar, goes too and they get together for lunch in a backroom at Casa Juancho…”
“Yeah, but now they’re also meeting at night one or two times a week, and he never tells me anything… It’s all a mystery… And he whispers on the phone.”
“Have you noticed any unfamiliar number or a text on his cell?” Maria asked, certain that her friend would have already checked it.
“Well, truthfully, no. The texts only come from the grandkids…occasionally from his sister, and no unknown telephone numbers.”
“And his emails?”
“No, but he could erase them.”
“A woman’s perfume, lipstick on his clothes, anything unusual about his underwear, socks inside out?”
“No.”
“Because you checked all these things, right?”
“Well, it’s just that I…”
“Yeah, that’s what any of us would do. Anything else?”
“I don’t know, he just doesn’t seem to be himself, like he’s not here, he’s got his mind on something else. I’m sure he’s hiding something from me.”
“Is it possible that some type of investment went wrong, and he doesn’t want to tell you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Any health problems?”
“I always go to the doctor with him…a bit of arthritis in his knee, medicine for his blood pressure…normal stuff for his age.”
Worrying about her husband’s possible infidelity had not made Lourdes lose her appetite. The waiter came and took away the empty plates. Maria had heroically managed to avoid Yolanda’s tempting offer to share her sweet plantains. Years ago, she had gone to Weight Watchers to lose some weight, and she remembered the instructor’s dramatic assertions about how Cuban food makes you gain weight. However, she couldn’t turn down the croquettes that came with her tuna salad.
They were already having their coffee when Maria asked:
“And so what do you want me to do?”
“I thought that maybe you could follow him.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I could pay you.”
“You’re stark raving mad! In the first place, he knows me… And besides…”
“He hasn’t seen you that much lately, and you’re an artist when it comes to disguises with all those wigs and other things you have…and you can take photos.”
She couldn’t help but grin. It was true. She had had to resort to altering her appearance many times when she worked undercover. There was even that time she had to pass for a prostitute!
“And you’ve already followed him once…”
“That was more than twenty years ago when you had a similar fit of jealousy and your poor husband was trying to overthrow Fidel…”
“Well, that was when the Soviet Union had just collapsed, and we all thought that Cuba was going to fall along with it. It just needed a little nudge. This time it’s different.”
“Look, Lourdes, back then I wasn’t on the police force and I was working as a private detective, but now as an officer of Miami-Dade County I can’t do those things. It’s against the law. I could lose my job.”
“No, mija, not that…”
“Lourdes, I’m absolutely convinced that these ideas of yours are baseless, but if you are still worried a month from now, I’ll put you in touch with a detective friend of mine…”
“Geez, I don’t know. It’s one thing for you to do it, but to employ a complete stranger. I’ll think about it. Thanks, Mariita. And please, don’t say a word about this to your father.”
She was happy to have gotten out of Lourdes’s absurd request, and it was true that the police regulations were very clear on the matter. Barring that, she wouldn’t have had any recourse but to accept her request. She really did love those two crazy, old women. When they diagnosed her mother with cancer six years ago, they had taken care of everything. They accompanied her to her chemotherapy sessions and brought food to her father. They had acted as nurses, housewives, cooks, psychiatrists, and, when her mother lost her battle and passed away, they adopted her as a daughter and Patrick as a grandson. They even went to his basketball games and yelled more loudly than anyone! When he graduated from high school a year ago and was admitted to the University of Florida in Gainesville, his adopted grandmothers took it upon themselves to buy him everything he needed, from a laptop to a first aid kit.
They said their goodbyes with a kiss, some comforting words, messages for the adopted grandson, and a promise to meet up again soon.
“You’re going to see that there’s nothing to worry about,” Maria told Lourdes to reassure her.
Chapter 3
Day 1—Monday, November 2, 2015
She followed the directions that the GPS gave her and arrived at the humble house in Hialeah without any trouble. She remembered back before the technological advances that help people get around these days, how she would always get lost when she went to “The City of Progress”—a concrete city known for its ubiquitous statues of Saint Lazarus and Saint Barbara in people’s yards and its diversity of Cubans from all backgrounds who shared one thing in common: they all clung to the culture of the Island. Even those born in the US like herself—those with college degrees, without a trace of an accent in English, and with a Spanish that left much to be desired—felt Cuban even if they had never set foot on the land of their parents and grandparents. She didn’t remember which writer had coined the phrase that being Cuban was an incurable disease, hereditary, and sometimes even contagious, but the author had a point. Her boss, Keppler, was one of the ones who had been contaminated. And she was one of those who had been born with “Cubanness” in her genes.
&nb
sp; Maria’s heart skipped a beat. The young girl who opened the door was almost identical to the one she had seen in the drawings that showed what the missing baby would look like today. Before she could say anything, the girl said:
“I’m Elena Lozano, Gladys Elena’s daughter… Gladys Mercedes’s half-sister… You’re the detective that called, right? Please come in. My mom will be right here. She was very nervous waiting for you and went to make coffee.”
Sure enough, Maria smelled right away the unmistakable aroma of coffee… A much younger woman than she expected entered the room, drying her hands and giving instructions to her daughter. The woman then turned to Maria and said.
“Thank you so much, Detective Duquesne… Come in, please.”
She took her to an office with a small desk, a computer, a bookcase, various metal filing cabinets, and a few family photos. Maria didn’t have much time to observe her surroundings because the young girl came back right away with two glasses of water and two cups of coffee on a tray.
“Wow, with foam and all. Thank you.”
“Sit down, please,” said the owner of the house, pointing to one of the two armchairs in front of the desk. She sat in the other.
She’s perceptive, Maria thought. She didn’t sit at the desk to avoid creating distance between us.
“Go ahead, please.”
“Would you mind if I take notes and record the conversation?”
“Of course not.”
“So, I’ve been assigned to reopen both of the cases, the accident involving your first husband and also the disappearance of your daughter. I’ve read what little information there is in the files, which is understandable given that it happened a few weeks after Hurricane Andrew, and I’ve seen everything on the Internet you’ve done to try to find your daughter, that you think she’s still alive, and that you thought you recognized her recently among the crowd at a Heat game. I want to take the case in a new direction without the influence of the prior investigation. To do so, I need you to be completely honest with me, tell me everything from the beginning, even though you might have already gone over it with other detectives, and that you answer my questions without leaving anything out. Are you willing to do so, even if it opens old wounds?”
“You have my word that I will tell you everything.”
“Then let’s start at the beginning. Where did you meet Lazo? What did he do? How long were you together for?”
Gladys Elena took a deep breath, as if to gather up the courage before she began to speak.
“Well, Detective, I was born in Pinar del Rio, not even in the city, just in the middle of nowhere. My parents were simple people, good and honorable country folks. If you’re Cuban, certainly you know that the worst times of the “Special Period” were in ’93 and ’94, but even as early as ’91 things were already bad. Some of our neighbors began pressuring my father to leave the country with them on a raft. My mother refused to. It frightened her, and she didn’t want to risk losing my brother and me. We were just children. My brother was only fifteen and I was seventeen, more or less the same age my children are now. On another occasion, when you have time, I can tell you about the preparations for the voyage and about the journey itself. It was something I’ll never forget. It scarred me for life because my father and neighbors died during the passage. Only Raulito and I survived, arriving here without anything and not knowing anyone. Fortunately, at the last minute, the thought of the sea at night terrified my mother, and she refused to get on the raft.”
The woman took a moment, perhaps searching for the strength to continue.
“At first, we got help from the government, from the Red Cross. Eventually we found some distant relatives who took us in for a while. My mother suffered so much by herself in Cuba that she braved the journey months later and got here safely. The three of us found work. Things were looking up. The laundromat where I worked—you can’t imagine how hot it was in there—is where I met Raimundo, who worked as an electrician. He was much older than me, but we were a lot alike. I had left my boyfriend back in Cuba and, although I’d heard rumors that he was seeing somebody else, I kept receiving letters from him and I still loved him…but the truth is I was falling in love with Ray. I became pregnant and we got married soon after. Our daughter was born prematurely, I don’t know why, but thank God she weighed enough and was healthy. I recovered the positive outlook on life I had before the trauma caused by my father’s death.”
She took a sip of water and continued:
“Then Hurricane Andrew came. We hadn’t even been here for a year. Little Gladys was a newborn. She cried constantly. She was colicky. Then we lost power. You wouldn’t believe how hard that was with a newborn. Our neighbors, who had a generator, let us keep the baby bottles in their refrigerator. I couldn’t nurse her because my milk dried up. It must have been nerves. The heat was unbearable. I don’t know how long I went without sleeping. I was exhausted. A few days later, we got a message from my mother that her phone was out but at least she had electricity, and that we should go over there. I didn’t have enough energy. That’s when the lights came back on. Ray suggested that he take the baby to my mother’s so that I could rest. I packed the diaper bag with bottles, formula, diapers, the dirty laundry that needed washed, and whatever clean clothes I had for the baby… Finally, he put her in the car seat and drove off; I laid down and slept for ten hours.”
“When did you learn of the accident?”
“Since neither my mother nor I had a phone, she thought that we had a change of plans, and I thought that she had the baby and that Ray was out working. The next morning, a police officer knocked on the door. Someone had seen the car in the canal and when they recovered it they found Ray.”
“But not the baby?”
“No…never.”
“Do you think that the current could’ve dragged her off?”
“That’s what I thought for a while. It drove me crazy. You have no idea how depressed I became afterwards.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Detective Duquesne, because two years later they found human remains and thought they were hers.”
“Yes, I read that.”
“Since the police contacted me again, I asked to see the photos of the accident for the first time.”
“And?”
“The photos were a bit blurry, but I could see clearly that Gladys’s seatbelt was unfastened. All the windows were closed when they took the car out of the water. Only the passenger-side window was cracked open a bit. Where could the baby have gone? And they didn’t even find the diaper bag that was placed beside her. Someone took my baby out of the car before it crashed into the canal.”
She calmly placed her hand on her chest to emphasize her conviction.
“I know that she’s still alive. I know it in my heart.”
Chapter 4
Day 2—Tuesday, November 3, 2015
There’s nothing like a hot cup of Cuban coffee from any local café to start the day. The coffee she made at home just wasn’t the same. Additionally, she liked how the waiters would call her “mi amor” and “mi vida.” And to think that when I was a kid that affectionate treatment annoyed me! You’ve become soft in your old age, she said to herself while enjoying the last sip of her strong, sweet coffee.
The night before she had gone to her dad’s house for a beer on her way home, had exchanged texts with Patrick who assured her that the semester was off to a good start, and had put together a salad for dinner. She really couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was that worried her, but she couldn’t fall asleep. Even when she felt like she was sleeping, she kept thinking about the case.
The previous afternoon, she had finished the conversation in the house in Hialeah when she noticed Gladys Elena looking at her watch constantly. Finally, she said:
“It’s just that my husband and son ar
e supposed to get in. Elena understands but they, being men, think that I need to accept what happened and that I’m in denial…”
There were things that now I regret not having asked her, but there will be another time to talk with her.
When she got to her office, the atmosphere was more somber than the day before, but this time she immediately knew the cause. Robert Parker, ex-director of the Miami-Dade County Police, who had been retired for six years, had been found dead in his house at age sixty-two. There was talk of suicide but no one was convinced. There was no rationale for it, and he hadn’t left a note. She immediately called her father, who had already heard.
“He was a career man with more than thirty years of service. The first African American to occupy the position. He had a beautiful family. It’s impossible that he could’ve committed suicide.”
“Take it easy Papi. I’ll keep you updated and come over later, but right now I need to get back to work.”
The first thing she did was look for everything she could about Raimundo Alberto Lazo. She didn’t find anything: no criminal record, no credit score, no tax returns for the ten years prior to the accident. It took her a couple of hours, but she finally discovered that his social security number really belonged to one Ray Bow who had died in January 1980.
So, Raimundo had stolen the identity of a dead man… Ray Bow. Raimundo Lazo. Without a doubt, it was a false name too. But why? What was he hiding? What was he running from? Who was the man who crashed in the canal in 1992? Was it really an accident or was there another cause of death?
Maria put the files in her briefcase and headed for the morgue. She knew it would be odd not to find Dr. John Erwin there. They knew her well in the building on 10th Avenue, and they let her come and go as she pleased. Early on in her career, she learned the importance of making friends all over the place. She cultivated her contacts. She remembered the names of their family members, from time to time brought them Cuban coffee or a box of donuts, went to all the birthday parties she was invited to, and attended the funerals of their relatives. She attempted to maintain a balance that let her establish a personal relationship without coming off as a suck-up, or, as her dad would say, a “kiss-ass.”
The Miracle of Saint Lazarus Page 2
