“I remember him vividly, and the accident too. Those are difficult things to forget. Let’s see, where to begin…”
“Do you mind if I record our conversation and take notes?”
His blue eyes reflected a deep sadness.
“Go ahead and record. No one cares anymore about the life of an old codger like me, but to tell you about Alberto, I’ll have to tell you my story too.”
Maria made a note of the fact that Gladys referred to him as Ray, but Don Joaquin knew him as Alberto.
“I hope you have a lot of time because it’s a long story.”
“I have all the time in the world, and if you get tired I can come back another day.”
“So, as you have probably noticed, I’m a Spaniard. Well, an American citizen, but that’s just a formality… My father was the mayor of a small town near Zaragoza when the Civil War broke out. I was fourteen, and the war was horrendous. You can’t imagine. My father was a prisoner for two years, and, during that time, he was abused, suffered from starvation, cold, and beatings, saw his friends die, and, in the end, they shot him too. My mother, brother, and I had it hard during those years. I didn’t think she’d ever come out of it. Finally, at the beginning of the 1940s, an uncle of ours, who had taken off to Cuba some time before, managed to get us there. Once in Havana, my mother sewed…or rather, she made hats for high society women. My brother and I were in charge of delivery and collection. I worked more because my brother was a deaf-mute. He passed away some time ago…”
He paused for a second, and sighed before continuing on:
“Anyway, it was hard during those years, and my mother decided to try our luck in New York. My uncle thought we were crazy, but it turned it out well. My mother—who would have imagined it—got married again to a man with an important job, and we were able to get an education. I studied electrical engineering, but I didn’t pursue a career in it, rather I wound up working with technical translations. I got married, but Antonia and I didn’t have any children. The poor thing. That caused her so much pain. Within just a few years, from 1970 to 1979, I lost my mother, stepfather, brother, and Antonia…and I found myself alone. New York was full of memories… Besides, I hated the cold. I sold everything, and I came here to Miami by the end of 1979.”
Listening to his story, Maria was fascinated as she thought about how Cubans always spoke as if they were the only ones who had gone through a national calamity, and how this gentleman’s story was like so many others’.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to recount my whole life. You’re probably wondering what all of this has to do with Alberto, but it was a necessary introduction so that you can understand what happened later.”
Just then, some bells began to ring without stopping.
“It’s lunch time. Around here, Americans eat so early…at twelve. Would you like to stay? They allow me to have guests, but I’ll warn you, the food’s not that great.”
Maria wasn’t too sure. The invitation wasn’t too appealing but she was so interested in his story that she decided to stay. Don Joaquin wasn’t kidding. The fish with boiled potatoes and green beans couldn’t have been more bland. The best part was the bread, the salad, and Jell-O with whipped cream for dessert. Worse still, they shared the table with two old chatterboxes and Mr. del Roble couldn’t continue his story.
“I assume it’s getting close to nap time. If you prefer, I can come back after four o’clock.”
“Wonderful. I’ll meet you back at the same place at four fifteen if that’s ok,” he said as he once again elegantly kissed her hand.
Maria had three hours to kill. Once in the car she looked over her emails on her phone. None of them was important except the one from Dr. Erwin. She opened it anxiously. It said that he had been able to extract DNA from a brush that they had found among the items belonging to Lazo, but that it would take more than two weeks before they had a definitive result. She sent him a reply, thanking him.
She couldn’t decide whether to go over to the nearby shops at Dadeland or head back to the office… She decided instead to go see her father. On the way over, she stopped for a Cuban coffee to go… Papi’s coffee is terrible, she thought to herself affectionately.
Her parents had always lived in the Westchester area, in the southwestern part of the city. It was a middle-class suburb where many Cubans had settled. Recently, there were also a lot of Hispanics from other countries too, so much so that there were hardly any Americans any more.
“Wow, well what a wonderful surprise,” her father said as he greeted her with a sincere smile. She knew he was lonely, and she tried to take care of him the best she could.
The coffee had gotten cold, so her father warmed it up in the microwave, one of the few things in the kitchen he knew how to use. They sat there in silence, enjoying their coffee as well as each other’s company.
She told him a bit about the case, but, without realizing it, she fell asleep in the recliner that her mother always used to sit in, and which despite all the years that had gone by still seemed to smell like her.
She woke up startled, fearing that she had slept through her appointment, but it was ok. She hadn’t slept that long. She had just enough time touch up her hair and makeup and to hug her father goodbye.
Don Joaquin was waiting for her in the foyer. He was wearing a pullover sweater over the shirt he had been wearing that morning. Once they were settled back in the library, and she had turned on her tape recorder, he continued:
“As I was saying, I got to Miami at the end of 1979… I was getting to know the city, considering if I should buy a piece of property and where, deciding what to do with my life, when all that business at the Peruvian Embassy in Cuba took place in April 1980, followed by the Mariel Boatlift. Being Cuban, you no doubt remember it well…”
“Of course.”
“Well, one day I get this call from this young man and he asks me if I’m from Villanueva de Jiloca… I thought it was strange that he knew what town I was from. He also asked about my brother, using his nickname Juancho—which is what we always called Juan—and I could tell he was upset when I told him that he had passed away. He told me his name was Alberto Gonzalez, that he had just arrived from Mariel, and that he needed to see me. He didn’t tell me why. Since I’m usually a bit cautious, I didn’t want to give him my address. I told him I’d meet him at a restaurant, some place where we could have a big lunch. Since he seemed reluctant, I told him I’d treat. He finally told me that he was staying at the camp in Tamiami Park, and he didn’t have a penny to his name and didn’t know how to get around. Even though I wasn’t able to get it out of him why precisely he had called me, and I even imagined the worst, I went over to see him. You can’t imagine my surprise when he told me that he was my brother’s grandson… He told me that Juancho had had a daughter in Cuba and that for a while he used to send some money when he lived up in New York, but they hadn’t heard from Juancho since the sixties. Alberto’s mother was thirty-nine at the time, and he was nineteen. Alberto had taken off because he couldn’t take it any longer. She had given him his grandfather’s name as well as mine. Someone in the camp had helped him look up the numbers in the phone book and, on the third try calling one of the Robles, he came across mine.”
“The truth is the whole thing seemed like a soap opera, but there was something about his features that reminded me of my brother. I also remembered a photo of a young girl that Juancho had in his wallet when he died, and tying up the loose ends and judging by the ages and dates, the whole story seemed to be more and more possible. Besides, the young man had good manners. He seemed sincere. So I made the necessary arrangements, which weren’t many, and I got him out of there and took him to live with me. He turned out to be a godsend until…well…I don’t want to get ahead of myself.”
Don Joaquin kept coughing while he was talking and then explained that he had put on the sweater becaus
e he had a bit of a cold and they kept the air conditioning set very cold. After a while he had such a fit of coughing, he couldn’t stop and he turned red. He couldn’t breathe. Maria didn’t know what to do. He took out a piece of candy, clumsily removed the wrapper and, once he started sucking on it, the cough went away little by little.
“Maybe you’ve overdone it today. I’m really interested in your story, a whole lot, but you have to take care of yourself… Maybe I should leave. Do you want me to call someone? Would you like me to accompany you to your room?”
Once he had recovered, he got up and looked at Maria with a mischievous smile.
“How about a drink? That’s the best cure for a cough.”
She was surprised by the English pub-style bar and the elegant music that was coming from the piano. A woman with a pronounced mouth moved her agile fingers over the keys from which one could hear notes from an ample repertoire, ranging from jazz to old boleros.
“She’s really good. I’ll introduce you later on,” Don Joaquin promised, as he noticed Maria watching her intently.
“I always have a Scotch at this time of the day. I take mine neat. What you would like?”
“The same, but on the rocks.”
They sipped their drinks in silence. This “old codger”—as Don Joaquin had referred to himself—stirred up Detective Duquesne’s curiosity, admiration, and a certain sadness that she hoped wasn’t going to turn into pity. It was a feeling that she preferred to reserve for innocent victims of so many crimes.
“So where were we?”
“You had agreed to be the sponsor for Alberto Gonzalez, and you had gotten him out of Tamiami…”
“Oh yes. Well, that led me to buy a small house, but one in a nice neighborhood…they call it West Gables…on Tangier Street. Are you familiar with the area?”
“Of course I am. It’s very nice.”
“While Alberto was studying English, I made arrangements to get a license and start a company selling alarms. In those days there were some incidents involving the boatlift people, or the ‘Marielitos’ as people called them. There weren’t a lot. The majority turned out to be decent people, but simply put, people were scared and there was a lot of demand for alarms. The business took off. Alberto learned very quickly. I thought we should find a lawyer that could help take care of his status in the United States, but that was the only thing that he was never very clear about… He kept telling me that a friend of his had a lawyer who was going to fix everything, and that he had already taken care of the paperwork. The truth is that I should have been more on top of things. I’ve always respected the law. He gave me his social security number. I paid him through the payroll, and I seldom thought about it.”
“Excuse me. The name on the social security, it was Alberto Gonzalez?”
“No. It was Raimundo Lazo. He explained that Raimundo Alberto was his given name and Lazo his maternal name, and that in filling out the forms the Alberto and the Gonzalez names had both somehow been deleted. These things happen in the United States all the time, so I didn’t pay much attention to it.”
Maria felt that her cellphone kept vibrating nonstop. She peeked at it and saw that it was Bill, her ex-husband. Fearful that something might have happened to Patrick, she excused herself and went to the bathroom where it was quieter and she could talk. She was relieved to find out that her son was fine. Bill had called just to complain about the expenses that had piled up with the beginning of Patrick’s second year in college. She let him know abruptly that she was working and that they’d talk later.
When she returned, Don Joaquin was standing and waiting for her.
“They just called for dinner. I would invite you, but eating here twice in one day would be too much of a sacrifice for such a beautiful young woman as you…”
Maria could feel herself blush. Despite his years, Don Joaquin had not forgotten how to flirt with women.
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.
The Miracle of Saint Lazarus Page 4
