Sweet Mary

by Liz Balmaseda

  “Listen, bitch,” she told Gina with a haughty sniff, “what I can do and what I will do are two different things.”

  Gina and I traded a knowing look—she would back off the captive for a while, and I would resume my line of questioning.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You want the money after all.”

  “That’s not what I said,” Bad Mary replied.

  “But it is what you want. You want him to come after you, don’t you?” I said.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said.

  “But it’s true,” I said. “You just can’t give up that connection, can you? You say he was controlling. You say he was abusive. You say you ran for your life. But the truth is, you never had any desire to cut him off completely.”

  “I left him—don’t you understand that?” she said, standing her ground.

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “You must be stupid, then,” she said, her remark prompting a smack on the arm and a rebuke from Gina.

  “Watch yourself, sister,” Gina said.

  “Here’s my problem, Maria,” I went on. “I’m trying to help you out and you’re not listening.”

  “You’re trying to send me to jail,” she said, uttering the most perceptive line she had said all night.

  I was, indeed. But from the looks of it, I would have to do a better job at convincing her otherwise.

  “I’m trying to save your life,” I said. “You know he’s going to kill you. It’s just a matter of hours or days. But it doesn’t have to be like that. You can save yourself—and you can bring him down.”

  “How so?” she said, leaning forward in her seat.

  At last, I had her attention, and I knew I had to use it wisely.

  “The only reason the feds are after you is because they think Cardenal is dead. I saw the federal documents. They think you’re the new boss. If you can lead them to Cardenal, I guarantee you they’ll make a deal,” I said, twisting the facts I had seen in the documents to serve the moment.

  “You really think so?” she said, intrigued.

  “Of course. They can probably even put you in some kind of witness protection program,” I said. “They’ll give you a new name, send you to a new city. You’ll get to live in a new house. No Cardenal. No Flaco.”

  Bad Mary’s eyes flickered with grand new thoughts.

  “Grand Cayman International Bank. That’s where the money is,” she said. “I’ve got the documents somewhere in the house. I could go look for them.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, glancing at Gina in surprise.

  We followed Bad Mary down the hall and into the midsize room where she indulged her Martha Stewart inclinations. Gina watched in astonishment as the woman floated through the craft room as if it were an enchanted place. She seemed to be a different person in there, lighter and more chipper.

  For the next hour or so, we stood by as Bad Mary opened box after box, bag after bag, file after file in search of her offshore bank papers. It was only then that I could appreciate the magnitude of her Home Shopping compulsion. The woman not only needed jail time, she needed rehab.

  “Think, Maria. Just visualize the bank statement on its way to you,” I said, hoping to jog her memory. “The mailman arrives. He puts the envelope in your mailbox. You pick it up. You bring it inside. Where do you put it?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said, eyes closed in compliance.

  “What color is the statement?” I said.

  “Green,” she said, eyes still closed.

  “Do you see it?” I said.

  “I see it. I do,” she said, her eyes popping open. “It’s in the bead box.”

  “What’s a bead box?” said Gina.

  “I’ll show you,” said Bad Mary.

  She walked over to a shelf stacked with clear plastic, snap-together storage boxes, the kind with the stackable trays and removable dividers, the kind every bead-stringing fanatic collects by the truckload and fills with beads, clasps, wire, crimping tools, glue, and string. There were eight such boxes on Bad Mary’s shelf, and she began to count them, bottom to top. When she reached the fifth box from the bottom, she stopped and pulled it off the shelf. Carefully, she unfastened the snap enclosures and flipped open the box. There, amid fragments of turquoise, coral, and Swarovski glass, she spotted a batch of envelopes and some stray scraps of paper bundled together with a thick rubber band. She fished out the top envelope and unfolded the document inside.

  “Here,” she said, handing the document over to me. “I don’t want any of it. I want a new life. I want peace. I’ll sign it over, whatever I have to do to keep this money out of Juan Cardenal’s hands.”

  When I glanced down at the bank statement, the most recent one she had received, I nearly fell back. It confirmed that she—Sofia Villanueva, that is—was the only signatory on an account containing a balance of forty-two million dollars. I let Gina glimpse the balance. She took one look at it, and out of Bad Mary’s sight, she reached for the vial of Xanax.

  FIFTEEN

  AS TORMENTED AS she appeared to be, Bad Mary seemed as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. But I wasn’t too sure she was any closer to jumping in the car willingly for the ride to Miami.

  We hadn’t discussed specific logistics. And, for some reason, she seemed to be under the impression that she didn’t have to go anywhere in the immediate future. She thought some federal agent would drive up to The Retreat at Malabar and interview her in the comfort of her living room. She would offer a statement regarding Juan Cardenal and sign a few papers under oath. She would peruse brochures of potential new cities and then select the ideal place to begin her new life. Ah, yes, and she would get compensated handsomely for all the above.

  Somehow, this is what she had concluded from our interrogation session. I know this because she kept talking about what her new life was going to be like as “a government informant on salary.” And this was before the Xanax.

  There was no way she was going to come to Miami voluntarily and turn herself in to be handcuffed and shackled and sent to cell block Bravo. No way in hell. So, on to plan B it was.

  “I think this calls for a celebration,” I said, nodding at Gina. She disappeared into the kitchen in search of drinks and glasses.

  “You can celebrate without me,” said Bad Mary. “I have a big headache. Too much drama today.”

  “Then you definitely need a drink,” I said.

  She thought about it for a minute, her face haggard from the exhaustion. Absent the anger, sneering, and self-importance, she now seemed to be a shell of a woman, a fragile being with distorted features and vacant eyes.

  “Actually,” she said, “I would love a drink.”

  Gina came back with three glasses of champagne, one of them containing a particularly tart sample. Bad Mary gulped the wine so fast she didn’t notice its unusually sharp taste. And, within minutes, she was groggy.

  “How much did you give her?” I whispered to Gina as I snatched Bad Mary’s empty glass from her hand.

  “Not enough to kill her. Don’t worry,” Gina said.

  Outside, the sky began to take on that pale gray tone that transitions to dawn. Gina waited for Bad Mary to fully pass out on the sofa before bringing out the handcuffs she had packed in her munitions satchel. As she snapped them on her, I searched the bedroom drawers one more time to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I stuffed a few changes of clothes for her in a weekend bag, and I put them in the car, while Gina watched her sleep.

  When it came time to leave, we rustled the woman so she was awake just enough to be coaxed to the car without causing a scene. Luckily, there wasn’t a soul around, not even the newspaper delivery man—he had made his rounds a half hour earlier.

  “Come on, sleeping beauty,” Gina said as we nearly carried Bad Mary to my car.

  “Where are we going?” she said, too groggy to open her eyes all the way.

  “To the Magic Kingdom,” said Gina,
“that’s where we’re going.”

  After some maneuvering, Gina and I managed to get the woman into the back seat of my car. I propped a pillow beneath her head and covered her with a soft beige throw I had found in the living room. I closed up the house and went to huddle with Gina by my car.

  “So what route are we taking back?” said Gina.

  “Let’s go down 95 to Indiantown, then cut over to the turnpike,” I said.

  “Sounds good. I’ll be right behind you,” she said as she buckled up for the ride home.

  “We did it, G,” I said, stopping to take in the moment. I reached out and gave her arm a squeeze. “Thanks.”

  But Gina’s mood darkened when she spotted something unusual on the street. I turned to see what had distracted her, and when I saw it for myself, my heart skipped a few beats: A black sedan with tinted windows crept along Sunset Terrace at an ominous pace. There was some kind of marking on its side, but I couldn’t make it out from where I was sitting. But once the black car stopped in front of Bad Mary’s house, I didn’t want to wait around to read its sign. Whoever it was, they had picked the wrong time to show up.

  “Quick, get in your car,” I told Gina, throwing my car into reverse. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She jumped into her convertible and screeched out of the driveway, but she hit the brakes as soon she saw what I saw. What I saw was a vision that caused the world to tilt ever so slightly: A young girl, about eight years old, emerged from the sedan with a pink backpack and scampered along the manicured hedge to the front door, where she rang the doorbell a few times. Then she turned to wave good-bye to the sedan driver. For his part, the driver must have believed everything was okay, because he waved at me as he drove off. It was as if he knew me, as if he believed me to be trustworthy, as if he’d never suspect me to be a person who could drug and abduct the lady of the house.

  But then I realized that this driver, like Agent Green and Lieutenant Earl Winrock before him, thought I was the lady of the house. And even more remarkable, the little girl thought I was the lady of the house.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” she screamed as she spotted me in the car, her soft curls bouncing at her cheeks as she ran to me.

  I turned to read the sign on the side of the sedan as it drove away.

  BUTTERFLY GIRLS SUMMER CAMP, it said. The girl, it seems, was coming home from a weekend camping trip.

  I got out of the car to go talk to her. But when she got a good look at me, she suddenly stopped.

  “Hi there,” I said, coming a little closer to her. “What’s your name?”

  “Natalie,” said the girl, now on the verge of tears. “Do you know where my mommy is?”

  “Who’s your mommy?” I said.

  “Sofia.”

  The girl, with her beautiful hair and tiny voice, a girl just a little older than Max, brought my life to a veritable standstill. I glanced over to find Gina—she had parked and walked over to my car to keep an eye on the slumbering passenger. Silently, I grappled with a thousand questions: How did I not know about this child? Why hadn’t her mother peeped a word of her to me? Why hadn’t I checked those last two rooms of the house? If only I had done so, I might have discovered she existed. I might have understood the deeper reasons why Maria Portilla left her husband. Why hadn’t I read those letters, the ones addressed to “Señor Juan” on Calle Luna in Cali? Surely they would have offered a clue to all of this. But now it was too late. Now the child was there, staring at me with fierce saucer eyes, asking about her mother. What was I going to do with her?

  “Come on, Natalie. Let’s go sit on the doorstep for a minute,” I said, taking her hand and leading her along the hedged path.

  We sat side by side on the stoop for a moment before I could think of anything to say.

  “You don’t know me, but I’m an old friend of your mom,” I began.

  “What’s your name?” the girl said.

  “Mary,” I said. “If you’d like, you can call me Aunt Mary.”

  “Are you related to me?” she said.

  “Yeah. In a way, I am,” I said. “Your mommy’s not feeling so well. We have to get her some fresh air.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” the girl said. Her lip quivered the way Max’s does when he’s hurt.

  “Nothing bad. I think she just ate something that made her a little sick,” I said.

  “Where is she? I want to see her,” the girl said.

  “She’s sleeping in the car. My friend over there is taking care of her,” I said, nodding to where Gina was standing. Gina waved at the girl, and the girl lifted her hand in a halfhearted wave.

  “Is she related to me, too?” she said.

  “No, she’s not. She’s my friend from Miami.”

  “Where are you taking Mommy?” she said. She seemed to be on the verge of tears.

  “I don’t know yet—what about the beach? Would you like to go to the beach?” I said, blurting out the first thing that popped into my head. I suppose I thought of it because it was Max’s favorite excursion. But this was not Max—this was a child who had no reason to trust me.

  “If my mommy goes, I’ll go,” she said. She got up from the stoop. “I want to go see her now.”

  As we walked to my car, I worried that the throw had slipped, exposing the handcuffs. I didn’t want the girl to see her mother in handcuffs.

  “Is she cold?” I hollered to Gina with a nod that meant she should check the throw.

  Gina glanced into the car and nodded.

  “Mommy!” the girl squealed. “Wake up! I made you a present at camp.”

  But, thankfully, Bad Mary kept sleeping.

  “Wake her up. I want you to wake her up,” cried the girl, knocking on the car window. She was beginning to work herself toward a tantrum, something I wanted to avoid at all cost.

  “Come on, let’s go inside a minute. Your mom told me to give you something to eat when you got home,” I said, reaching for the girl’s hand. From my pocket I fished out the house key I had grabbed on the way out. I opened the door and let the girl in. “Why don’t you go change into comfy clothes and I’ll make some breakfast.”

  The girl ran off, seeming to have brightened a bit.

  I rushed in to tidy up the kitchen. By the time she appeared, dressed in peach cotton shorts and a yellow tank top, she found a bowl of Froot Loops and a glass of milk. I sat with her at the country-style table and watched her take sips from her glass. Her eyes were red from crying.

  “How was camp?” I said, trying to break the ice.

  “Super fun,” she said. “We had a race.”

  “What kind of race?”

  “A race around the lake. It’s a big lake in the woods. I loved it. I love to be outside,” she said.

  “Being outside is healthy for you,” I said.

  “Is that why you took Mommy outside?” she said.

  “Yes, it is,” I said, and I wasn’t lying.

  “The beach will be good for her,” she said.

  I left the girl to finish her cereal and I went to her room to pack a bag of clothes for her. When she asked why I brought it along, I said her mother had asked me to do so.

  Twenty minutes later, I was driving across the deserted sand on a patch of Melbourne Beach as Natalie peered out the front window from the passenger’s seat. Her mother continued to sleep soundly in the back.

  “She must be really tired,” said the girl.

  “She is,” I said, “but she’s going to be okay.”

  The girl and I climbed out of the car and walked along the shoreline while Gina, who had followed us in her car, stood guard by the woman. I let Natalie tell me about summer camp, about the nature walks, talent shows, and popcorn movie nights. She told me about her best friend, Lauren, the one who wants to be a ballerina when she grows up.

  “Does Lauren ever stay over at your house for a slumber party?” I asked her.

  “No. Mommy doesn’t let anyone stay over,” said the girl in a level tone of acc
eptance.

  “I have a little boy your age,” I said.

  “What’s his name?” the girl said.

  “Max.”

  “Where is he?” she said.

  “He’s at his dad’s house,” I said.

  “Is he with his dad all the time?” she said.

  “No, he’s with me,” I said, “and sometimes he’s with his grandparents.”

  “Wow. He’s so lucky. He can see his dad, his grandparents, and his mom. His whole family,” said the girl, stooping to pick up a starfish. It glistened as if it had been dusted with white glitter.

  We stayed on the beach for a little while longer, collecting odd-shaped seashells. The morning was particularly sunny, not burning hot like it might have been at another time of the day. No, the sun felt wonderfully and perfectly warm. I sat on the sand to watch the girl play in the surf. A dove swooped across the waves and it seemed to hover above her, a phenomenon that delighted both her and me. As I watched her, this beautiful child on the beach, I could not reconcile her vibrant and trusting spirit with the train wreck that was her mother. As carefully as I observed the girl, I could not find one thing that connected her with the Maria Portilla who caused such upheaval in my life. All the tension I had built up in the dark hours with her mother melted in the company of this child. I should have been in frantic mode or paralyzed with anxiety. But instead I felt calm and in the moment.

  The girl ran back across the sand to show me her finds, a glimmering assortment of coquinas and cowries and cockles and zigzag scallops that put her mother’s plastic bead collection to shame.

  “They’re beautiful,” I said. I helped her scoop the shells into an empty cup I found on the sand.

  “Does Max like seashells?” she said.

  “Loves them,” I said.

  “Maybe you can take some home for him,” she said, squinting in the sun.

  We washed the sand off our feet and went back to the car, where Natalie gazed at her sleeping mother. The girl buckled her seat belt, ready to go. She seemed so calm and so assured of her safety that I prayed she wouldn’t notice that I had no clue where I was going next. I gripped the steering wheel firmly as if to give it all my decision-making powers, relinquish my navigational responsibilities, allow it to set our route along the most wisely chosen path. For all my rugged-individualist traits, I didn’t want to map this journey. Not this journey. I didn’t want to be responsible for separating a mother from her child, especially when I knew the depths of that pain firsthand. I had come here to get my life back. That’s what I had told myself. Yet I knew that was no longer possible, for too much had happened. Too much had changed inside me. So why not simply return mother and child to their home, safe and whole, and cut my losses? I’d go home and try to work out my custody issues with Tony, find some kind of work, and be the best mother I could be. But then what would happen to Natalie? What if her father showed up? What if her mother was murdered? What if she was taken by force to Colombia?