“You’re right about that, our investigations hardly ever have happy endings.”
They talked while Fernandez drove to Ybor City, not far from the hotel. They had some Cuban sandwiches for lunch: maybe not as tasty as those from the famous Versailles restaurant in Miami, but not bad. The ham, cheese, and roasted pork were good quality. There were plenty of pickles, butter and mustard, and above all, the bread was delicious, and it was perfectly pressed and golden brown.
“Did you know that Cuban bread didn’t come from Cuba but from here in Tampa?” Fernandez asked. Maria was no longer surprised by her colleague’s varied knowledge. Fernandez told her something about a Spanish-Italian guy who had started a bakery in the city at the end of the nineteenth century, but she wasn’t listening. She was enjoying lunch but kept thinking about how the meeting between the young woman and her family would go, because she was convinced that the DNA test was a formality and that the woman she had met yesterday was Gladys Elena Lazo’s missing child.
The detectives visited the spot where Marti gave his famous speech, and they took pictures of each other posing as flowery orators. Fernandez told her how Ybor City and West Tampa used to be known as tobacco capitals, not just in the nineteenth century but also at the beginning of the twentieth. He also told her how they played bolita, an illegal crapshoot. Maria wasn’t sure if that part was true or whether he was making it up just to amuse her, but, as her colleague sensed her doubts, he looked it up on his phone and showed it to her.
“See? I don’t tell lies…well, not that kind.”
They laughed, relieving the tension felt ever since they had read Soledad’s letter. When they were finally at the airport gate waiting to board, Maria asked Fernandez whether she ought to call Smith.
“No” he answered emphatically. “Give them time.”
She thought about how clever and useful her colleague had turned out to be in this case and how she would let the boss know. Maria arrived home after nine o’clock and immediately felt overcome with fatigue. She sent a message to her father, Patrick, and to David, telling them that she had gotten home but was exhausted so she would talk to them the following day.
At that moment, her phone rang and startled her.
“Forgive me, Duchess. You told me not to call you at this number unless it was an emergency, but…”
“Mercedes?”
“Yes, it’s Mercy, the grandmother.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Look, it isn’t an emergency, but I need to see you.”
“At this hour? I’ve just gotten home from a trip.”
“From Tampa?”
This woman must be a witch or a detective, Maria thought. Without waiting for her to reply, the grandmother kept talking.
“No, not tonight. I know that you’re tired right now. Whenever you can tomorrow.”
“I have to be in court at nine. I don’t know how long that will take. How about if I call you when it’s over and I come by your house, unless you prefer to come to the station?”
“If you can come here, even better. I’m not going to work tomorrow. Stop by at whatever time you’d like. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Maria was intrigued by the call and remembered the grandmother’s dream about the gray brick university, but she was so tired that she fell asleep the minute her head hit the pillow. The case for which she had to testify didn’t begin until ten o’clock but it was one of the first ones called and they let her go by a quarter to eleven.
She got in touch with the station and her father to ensure that everything was ok, and she told Mercedes she would come by the house.
The first thing that surprised her when she arrived was a huge statue of Saint Lazarus in the front patio, which she didn’t remember seeing before.
Mercy welcomed her with freshly brewed coffee and a warm hug.
“Come in, Duchess. Please sit down…over here so you’re more comfortable.”
Maria was already tired of correcting her that her last name was Duquesne and she had accepted the noble title that this quirky pinareña had bestowed upon her.
“Look, I’m going to get right to the point. I don’t know how much you’ve figured out yet. Maybe it’s a lot or maybe not that much, but regardless you can’t say anything yet or you would’ve already told my daughter. I’m only going to share this with you: I am certain that my granddaughter is alive and that we’re going to find her very soon. It is going to be a Saint Lazarus Day miracle.”
“I appreciate the divine help.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Duchess, because you aren’t like that. Look, I’m going to tell you what happened to me. You’ve certainly heard of Saint Lazarus, but I’m not sure if he’s the same one that Christ brought back to life. I don’t think so. In Cuba, his place of worship was near the leper colony. I’m sure you don’t know what leprosy is because it doesn’t exist anymore, but the sick would be all covered in sores, and it was very contagious. That’s why they sent them to faraway places—maybe that’s why they call the place with his altar ‘El Rincon’—and the people that took care of them were considered true saints. That’s also why the statue of Saint Lazarus is covered with sores. I never went to any of those processions, because I already told you that we were from Pinar del Rio and because in my house we were devotees of Cachita, Our Lady of El Cobre, who I know was the one who saved me and my children. But there’s more. I admit I didn’t know much about Saint Lazarus, but in Hialeah there’s a church not far from here on the corner of 4th and 12th. He’s a saint that belongs to a syncretic religion, or rather one that is worshipped by Blacks—or Afro-descendants as we say these days—even though here in Hialeah there aren’t a lot of them.”
Mercy took a break to get some water.
“Cubans built the church, even though it gets less publicity than the shrine. I have a friend who goes and sometimes I go with her. Basically all churches are the same because they all include the same God. Right? We go to mass on Sundays but yesterday there was a funeral mass because the little old man from the house on the corner died, right out front on the sidewalk. Look, I don’t know what came over me, whether it was a vision or I fell asleep and was dreaming, but I felt a presence that told me I needed to pray for someone who was already dead, who’d been ill, and who couldn’t rest in peace until Gladysita was back with us.”
Maria didn’t know what to think.
“So why did you ask me if I had gone to Tampa?”
“Because that’s what they told me when I called your office.”
Her answer reassured Maria and, although she never would believe in such things, she was more convinced than ever that the woman had some incomprehensible gift to see the future.
“And so what did you do?”
“I went straight to buy the statue of Saint Lazarus. Just yesterday my grandson helped me place it in the right spot. I would do anything to find my granddaughter. Don’t think that I like it much; it even scares me a little, may God and Saint Lazarus forgive me, but I always follow what my dreams say. They’ve never led me astray.”
“Have you said anything to your daughter?”
“No, no way…not to my grandson either. Not to anybody. Only you because nobody is going to believe me. Maybe not even you, but what do I know? Who knows, maybe something that I tell you might help you in the investigation.”
“True, you never know…”
“I also don’t want my daughter to get more nervous than she already is.”
Maria was interested in knowing whether Gladys Elena had fessed up to her husband about the girl’s paternity. She thought about stopping by to see if she was home, but she knew about mother’s intuition and was afraid of giving it away, and that the woman would realize that she had found her daughter.
Even though Maria was sure that she had found her, until Alexis consented to the test and t
hey had the results, it was best to keep quiet. For a moment she thought that maybe the grandmother knew more than she had told her, but she preferred not to push it. Mercy said goodbye with a kiss and a wink. When she raised her hand to wave goodbye, she announced: “We will see each other very soon, because it is almost Saint Lazarus Day, the 17th.”
Maria looked at her watch. It was December 10th.
She was about to take the Palmetto Parkway when her cell rang. It was Smith. Alexis had agreed to take the DNA test.
Chapter 33
Days 40–42—Friday through Sunday,
December 11 through 13, 2015
Maria couldn’t meet with Keppler until Friday morning. She had already asked the Tampa police to send someone to take a saliva simple from Alexis Smith and to process the DNA as quickly as possible. But she wasn’t sure that she had been effective in communicating the urgency of the case to them.
“Larry, maybe you can call and ask them to give it priority.”
“Maria, if they have waited twenty-three years, what do a few more days matter?”
She didn’t dare bring up Saint Lazarus or her own illusion that the families would spend Christmas together. She joked, “Now you’re showing your gringo colors… Precisely because they have suffered for so long, they deserve to know the truth… Be more compassionate.”
She knew that she could get away with those pokes at the boss as long as she did it in private and with a sweet tone.
“Ok, ok…get me in touch with the person you want me to talk to, and then later, take the rest of the week off.”
“Larry, it’s already Friday… I’ll get caught up on the paperwork and see if we can close the case quickly and cleanly, and, if there aren’t any emergencies, I’ll be free this weekend, like always.”
It was a privilege that she had earned through her years of service and her position as detective.
Maria began sifting through the file that was bulky by now. She remembered when she opened those two boxes, she saw the scarce information and the little baby seat they had pulled from the car that fell into the canal. She was replaying in her head her visits with Gladys Elena Lazo and her mother. She remembered the tip from Dr. John Erwin that the man could have been a murder victim. She rethought the moment she realized his identity was fake, how her friend Leo had guided her to the websites to figure out Alberto Raimundo Gonzalez Lazo’s identity. And she thought about the enormous help that Don Joaquin del Roble had been. However, the case began to produce concrete clues after the visit to the writer Manuel Larrea in Miami Beach. That day she had a migraine, and she didn’t feel like driving so far away, so she asked Fernandez to go with her. The young man had been a valuable assistant and a nice colleague, and even fun. Larrea was the first one to tell them about the couple who falsified documents and gave them the name and number of another writer, Jacinto Bengochea. She also remembered Rosa Blass in her elegant apartment in Surfside and the story of how her Jewish family had left Poland fleeing from poverty and how they had prospered in Cuba, just to lose everything all over again. Rosa was the one who had given them the information about the man they called El Oso. The interview with Bengochea in that café in Brooklyn had been decisive, above all when Fernandez persuaded him to go to the station and work with one of the artists to make a charcoal sketch of the counterfeiters’ faces.
The calls that came in when the drawings were circulated had lead them, step by step, to locate the girl. The clues received from Odalys Fuentes, Altagracia Pena, and the little girl’s teacher in Tampa accelerated things for them. The truth is that Fernandez’s efforts of combing through the faces of soccer players at universities required time, stamina, and a lot of faith. And then, by human error, they went to the wrong address in Tampa. That was the darkest moment of the investigation. But now the reunion of mother and daughter was coming soon. She knew how much both families wanted it and feared it at the same time and, curiously, so did she. She had gotten emotionally involved in the case, in spite of how much that went against all the unwritten yet essential rules of her profession.
David had agreed to come by to pick her up at seven thirty for dinner. She left the office early to give herself extra time to go see her father. The old man received her as if he hadn’t seen her in a month. Truth is, his hugs and smile were always a safe haven.
He poured her a beer without even asking. They talked about trivial things, like the weather, if Patrick was about to come home, and how they would celebrate the Christmas season. Her father didn’t ask her about the case, but, as she was about to leave, he placed his large hands on each of her arms and looked her in the eye.
“Look, mija, you know what you’re feeling. It’s that adrenaline crash when we’ve been working a case for a long time, and it’s about to end. I haven’t wanted to ask you because I know there are confidential things that you shouldn’t tell me, but I suspect that there are some loose ends to be tied up and that the case is practically solved and now you feel some type of void. But don’t worry, new cases and life itself will fill it.”
It never ceased to surprise her how well her father knew her. She kissed him goodbye and as she moved away, she teased:
“Good cops never lose their sense of smell. Don Patricio, I promise that I’ll return soon with some news.”
Maria realized that she was happily going to great trouble to get ready for David. There was a difference in wanting to look good for just any occasion as opposed to doing it to look good for a man. She really didn’t know how to explain it, but it was different. Was she falling in love with David? She didn’t want love complications in this phase of her life nor did she want to rack her brain figuring out emotions.
Apparently, David had also gone the extra mile so that it would be a special evening. He arrived with bouquet of flowers and an exquisite aroma of expensive cologne.
“I made reservations at Caffe Abbracci, if that sounds good to you… We can cancel them and go wherever you’d like.”
“You know I love it…”
They dined at a secluded table and shared an appetizer and a bottle of good wine. She ordered risotto and he, lasagna. At dessert time, they couldn’t decide between guava flan or creampuffs, so they settled on the cream and vanilla ice cream-filled pastries, topped with Grand Marnier and a bitter chocolate syrup.
“We can always eat guava flan at Versailles…” David argued.
They slowly relished that exquisite combination of flavors while looking into each other’s eyes, as if anticipating the pleasures still awaiting them that night.
Over the weekend she paid bills, washed clothes, answered personal emails, looked at friends’ Facebook pages, went to Publix to get groceries, and she even went to Miami International Mall to start some Christmas shopping.
But her subconscious betrayed her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the case. She visualized Soledad rescuing the baby from the car as it was about to fall into the water. She thought about the life of a woman always in fear of being found out and also about the other one who had not stopped searching for her daughter for more than two decades. As much as she always judged severely those who violated laws, Soledad’s letter had left her with a strange impression, one that couldn’t allow her to have a completely negative view of the woman. She thought that it was good they’d found the young woman when the mother who had raised her had already died and that there wouldn’t be any prosecution and trial for kidnapping, which would have been devastating for Alexis.
Maria also thought about how she would find the right words to speak with mother and daughter. Without a doubt, she had never faced anything like this in her entire career. To think how indifferent she had been when she opened those boxes that Larry had left her in the conference room! Now she remembered how nervous her coworkers were that morning because nobody wanted to be stuck reopening an unresolved case. It had only been a month and a half, but to her it fe
lt like she had lived with the subjects of this saga for a long time.
On Sunday, Patrick called her. Classes had ended two days ago but he had worked over the weekend. Starting the next day, he was free.
“Mami, do you mind if I go to New York for a few days first?”
“To New York?”
“Yes, but I promise that I’ll be there for roast pork on Christmas Eve.”
“Do you have money?”
“I can stretch it…”
“Are you driving alone?”
“No, I’m going with Mathilda to meet her family.”
Her son never ceased to surprise her.
“Mami, don’t worry, it isn’t serious, it’s not like we’re going to get married tomorrow.”
Maria laughed and surprised herself saying:
“If you want, invite her to come with you for Christmas, if her family doesn’t mind.”
Patrick became very happy, and she promised to send him some money to help with the trip.
“Don’t worry, Mami. Abuelo already gave me some. Hang onto it for me for Christmas Eve.”
“Have a good trip, hijo. Drive carefully…”
“You’re the best mom in the world! Ciao… ciaito… Love you,” he said with joy in his voice.
“Love you too…”
Chapter 34
Days 46–53—Thursday through Thursday,
December 17 through 24, 2015
Maria had gotten up early and had gone to great lengths to get ready, as if indeed she were expecting Saint Lazarus to perform a miracle that day. She wasn’t surprised when Dr. Erwin called her at ten o’clock that morning. He had just received the results from Alexis’s DNA tests, and he was going to compare them to the ones he already had, the one he had finally extracted from the infant’s hairbrush that the mother had saved and those of Alberto Gonzalez Lazo, Gladys Elena Lazo, and her husband Mauricio Lozano.
“If you head on over now, I’ll be through by the time you get here, and you can take the report with you,” the forensic doctor told her, knowing that she wouldn’t proceed unless she had everything down in writing.
The Miracle of Saint Lazarus Page 18
