Sweet Mary

by Liz Balmaseda

  As I buckled my seat belt and checked the back seat one last time, I noticed my handbag had fallen to the floor and some of its contents had scattered on the back rug. I unbuckled myself and gathered them up. But before I put them back in my purse, I stopped to examine one of the items that had spilled. It was a scrap of paper attached to one of the bank statement envelopes from the bead box. I unfolded the paper and saw it was a note, written by Maria Portilla/Sofia Villanueva to parties unknown. As I read the letter, I knew exactly where I had to go. I folded it up and returned it to my handbag. I turned on the ignition and gave Gina a sign through the window: Follow me.

  SIXTEEN

  FLORIDA ROAD—DAY 31

  Mary’s car travels on an open highway in the haze of another sweltering day.

  We rode in silence across a drab landscape of parched grass, stretches of land not yet gobbled up by developers, not yet deemed worthy of stamped concrete, waves of gabled roofs, or miles of granite countertops. No, this was not yet a place where anyone might hide.

  Natalie gazed out the front-seat window, noting the types of trees and birds along our route. We were going to visit Max, I had told her, and she perked up at the thought.

  “I think I saw a turtle,” she said. She pressed a finger on the window and traced the crooked path of a canal we were passing.

  “Was it big?” I said.

  “Not as big as a sea turtle. And not as old. Sea turtles can live like eighty years,” she said with some authority.

  “That long?”

  “Really amazing, I know,” she said. “You know the mothers are the only ones who can swim to the shore? Fathers don’t do that, just the mothers.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “And they’re also really smart. The mothers go back to lay their eggs in the same exact beach where they were born,” said the girl, her eyes dimmed slightly now. “I wonder how they can even find it.”

  The girl’s observation hung in the air as her gypsy mother continued to sleep.

  Two hours later, I pulled off the road into a rest stop and signaled to Gina to do the same.

  “Go on to the bathroom with Gina,” I said. “I’ll wait for you here.”

  When she was gone, I opened the back door and tried to nudge Bad Mary awake. She half opened her eyes and yawned.

  “Maria, I have to talk to you. Wake up,” I said.

  She blinked and looked around, disoriented.

  “Why are you taking me like this?” she said, rolling over on her side, still groggy.

  “I didn’t know you had a little girl,” I said.

  “Natalie. Where is she?” she said as if she had just remembered the girl’s name.

  “She’s in the bathroom,” I said. “She’ll be right back.”

  “I have to see her,” she said. She scrambled to the edge of the seat.

  “You will in a second. But you and I have to have a conversation now,” I said.

  “What about?”

  “I read your letter, the one you wrote about Natalie, the one you kept with your bank statements.”

  “What about it?” she said.

  “I need to know if you really mean it,” I said.

  “Why would I write it if I didn’t mean it?” she said.

  “Then I want you to tell her,” I said.

  “No.”

  “You have to tell her.”

  “She’s too young to know any of that,” she said. She brought her cuffed hands to her face to wipe away tears.

  “Then I’ll tell her,” I said.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said. She stared at me for a long, angry pause, as if that one look would break me.

  “You tell her, or I will. Your choice,” I said.

  Bad Mary thought about it for a moment. She looked off toward the restroom area. In the distance, she could see Gina and Natalie had started walking back to the car.

  “Take these off,” she said, holding up her handcuffs.

  I reached into my handbag and pulled out the small key that unlocked the handcuffs. I leaned over to grab Bad Mary’s wrists.

  “I’m going to say this once: I have a gun. If you even attempt to run, or do anything stupid, I’ll use it,” I said. I gave her a glimpse of the Glock in my purse. I tried to keep my threat vague yet credible. “I will not think twice about it.”

  I unlocked the cuffs and tossed them into my purse just as Natalie bounced back to the car.

  “Mommy!” she said, running into Bad Mary’s arms. “Are you feeling better?”

  My stomach turned with a nagging thought that Bad Mary had duped me—after all, a woman of her background might not blink before using her own daughter as a shield. But if that was the case, I was determined to shoot her in the leg, at the very least.

  “Your mom has something she’d like to tell you,” I said to the girl as I handed the letter to her mother.

  Bad Mary took the letter and closed her eyes as if in prayer.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?” said Natalie.

  “I want you to listen to something I wrote. It’s important,” she said. She blinked back a tear as she prepared to read from the well-creased sheet.

  “ I write this letter as a mother who has had to make a most painful choice. I had to take my child away from her father, from her friends and her country of birth. I did it for her good. I had no choice. My husband is an abusive man who has threatened to kill me.

  “ If anything should happen to me, I want my daughter, Natalie, to know the truth about her father, so that she may seek safety. And I want her to know that, like every human being, I made my mistakes…but that I loved her more than anything in the world. I want her and everyone else to understand why I have been living a secret for most of her life. When you have something so precious, so completely yours, you do what you have to do to make sure nobody takes it away from you.

  “ You do what you have to do. And that’s what I did.

  “ Sincerely, Maria Portilla.’”

  Natalie choked up and buried her head into her mother’s shoulder.

  “Why did you write that, Mommy?” she said.

  “Because it’s true. Because I love you.”

  “But why do you have to tell me like that?” the girl said.

  “Because we have to go live someplace else for a while,” the mother said.

  “Again?”

  “I promise you that we are going to be okay. Please believe me,” said the mother.

  “I don’t know,” said Natalie. The girl then looked up at me with lost, reddened eyes. “I can’t leave my friends.”

  She seemed to direct her words at me.

  “You’ll always have friends. And you’ll always have new friends,” I said to her.

  “You mean like Max?” she said.

  I glanced at her mother—she sat stone-faced in the back seat.

  “Yeah, like Max,” I said.

  “Am I going to meet him?” said the girl.

  Her words gave me the entry point I thought I’d never find.

  “Of course you are, if your mom says it’s okay,” I said.

  The mother gave me a hard look, one that told me she was as protective of her girl as I was of my boy. She looked at me as she directed her words at her daughter: “Yes, it’s okay,” she said. “I asked Mary if she would take care of you while I go to a meeting.”

  I let her words hang in the air between mother and daughter as I tried to grasp the enormity of what she had just said. I started up the car and signaled to Gina. Moments later, we were back on the road.

  We traveled for about a half hour, saying nothing to one another. Natalie turned on the radio and clicked between the stations. She stopped at one song, a cover of an old Mexican bolero, one of those fatalistic standards. It was sung by a clear-voiced young woman who bent the ends of each line in a way that suggested her first language was Spanish. Natalie seemed to recognize the song.

  Yesterday I heard the rain whispering your name, asking where y
ou’d gone…

  I knew the melody well. It was my mother’s favorite Manzanero song, “Esta Tarde Ví Llover,” one I hadn’t heard in ages. I let my mind wander with each verse as I tried to remember the words in Spanish. But just as the song was ending, a jarring noise brought me back to the moment. A siren. I looked in the rearview mirror to find the flashing light of a Florida state trooper. My hands turned clammy as I clutched the steering wheel. I didn’t know what to do next, but the amplified voice coming from the trooper’s car gave me a good hint.

  “Pull your vehicle to the right side of the road,” it said.

  I slowed down and pulled over as Gina, whose car was behind the trooper’s car, continued ahead at a moderate pace.

  “Are we in trouble?” said Natalie. She grabbed the strap of her seat belt and slid down a few inches.

  “No. We’re okay. There won’t be any trouble,” I said. I pitched my voice to the back seat, where I hoped her mother took my words as a warning. Maria Portilla met my glance in the rearview mirror and looked away.

  Seconds later, Florida Trooper Wes Baggett, a man in his late fifties, was leaning down to peer in my window.

  “License and registration, please,” he said.

  “License is in my wallet,” I said.

  “Will you get it, please?” he said.

  I reached into my purse and felt around for my wallet. I could feel the cold metal of the gun on the back of my pinkie, but I tried to remain as composed as possible. I managed to extract the wallet without fishing out any of the other contents, and I handed the trooper my license.

  “The registration and insurance papers are in the glove compartment,” I said.

  “Get them, please,” he said.

  I leaned over Natalie as I clicked open the glove compartment. I had the urge to look back and see what Maria Portilla was doing, but instead I straightened up and gave the trooper the papers.

  “Here you go,” I said.

  “You were going pretty fast there, Maria,” he said.

  “I didn’t realize it,” I said.

  “I clocked you at seventy-six in a sixty-five-mile zone,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  The trooper was about to say something else, but he stopped when he saw Natalie leaning toward the window to get a closer look at him.

  “Are you in trouble, Aunt Mary?” she said.

  The girl’s tiny voice spilled out the window and, it seemed, hit the trooper somewhere near his badge. He dropped his shoulders a bit.

  “You must be about eight years old,” he told the girl.

  “Seven and a half,” she said.

  “How’d I know you were about that age?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” said Natalie.

  “That’s my granddaughter’s age,” he said. “That’s how I know.”

  Natalie let out a chuckle and I glanced back for a look at her mother. She sat upright, a polite smile pasted on her face.

  The trooper handed the papers back to me.

  “Just giving you a verbal warning this time,” he said. “Mind the speed limit. You’ve got precious cargo over there.”

  “I do,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I watched the trooper pull back onto the road, then make a U-turn into the northbound lanes. I continued my drive south, calling Gina on the cell to check her whereabouts. She had stopped up the road a bit. I passed her and she joined in behind me, and we rode all the way to Miami at the speed limit.

  I knew things would happen quickly upon our arrival in Miami, although I never could have predicted the succession of developments that occurred. Still today, I wonder how it is that a handcuffed fugitive wound up drugged in the back seat of my car while her young, innocent daughter chattered about turtles. Four hours after having left Melbourne Beach, I pulled into the driveway of my house. I let Natalie play in Max’s room, in the care of Gina, while her mother and I huddled in the den. Bad Mary napped on the sofa while I pieced together a report of everything I had learned. Just before we headed to our destination, leaving the girl with Gina, the mother gave the girl a long, tearful hug. Then she straightened herself and sent Natalie back upstairs to watch TV.

  “I’m ready. Let’s go,” she told me once she saw the girl disappear into Max’s room.

  I drove through the neglected backstreets leading to the center of Miami as she stared out the window at nothing in particular. We didn’t speak because there was nothing left to say. What remained to be done was the painful but necessary act we both dreaded. When we arrived, I reached into my purse and pulled out the handcuffs. Maria Portilla lifted a wrist in surrender.

  DEA FIELD OFFICE—DAY 31

  Agent Green pours a mug of coffee. A bustle of activity surrounds him. A secretary approaches. Beneath the office din, she tells him something nobody else hears—something major. Agent Green puts down his mug and races out.

  I reached the reception area just as Agent Green came running out from his office. He must have been astonished to watch those elevator doors open and find me standing there, handcuffed to a fugitive drug trafficker. Maria Portilla wept and slumped against the elevator wall in exhaustion and defeat. She had arrived at DEA headquarters without a single scratch, something I was happy to take credit for—and something I personally believed she should be thankful for.

  I stepped out of the elevator, tethered to my nemesis, and I met Agent Green’s disbelieving stare.

  “Brought you a present, Agent Green,” I said, lifting my hand to display my captive and, thanks to the handcuffs, also lifting hers. “Don’t worry, Dan. Neither one of us is armed.”

  I went to unlock the handcuffs with my key, but Agent Green stopped me.

  “Let me do this,” he said, taking the key and unlocking our handcuffs. He directed us to a small waiting room tucked next to the elevator. “We’ll have to interrogate you both, you know.”

  “I’m fine with that,” I said, glancing at Bad Mary. She said nothing, only stared ahead.

  Moments later, a second agent appeared.

  “Which one of you is Maria Portilla?” said the agent, a salt-and-pepper-haired, business-like guy in nice gray slacks and a well-pressed white shirt.

  Agent Green went to speak up, but he was cut off.

  “I am, sir. My name is Maria Portilla,” said the woman I call Bad Mary. “This woman here, she has nothing to do with whatever criminal charges you have against me. She is a good, decent person. She is innocent.”

  Agent Green glanced over at his colleague.

  “Go ahead and take her over to room C,” he told the second agent, instructing him to escort Maria Portilla to an interrogation room. “I’ll take this one.”

  As the salt-and-pepper agent directed Bad Mary toward the corridor, I felt a need to call out to him.

  “Be nice to her,” I said, “she has a child.”

  Bad Mary glanced back, and for the first time she smiled at me. It wasn’t the kind of smile that could be perfected by cosmetic injectables, a surgeon’s touch, or the right shade of red lipstick. It was a smile that relaxed her entire body. It was real.

  For the next three hours or so, I sat in a quiet conference room and told Agent Green everything I had learned about the Cardenal cartel, while the second agent questioned Maria Portilla in a room very similar to the one where they had interrogated me on the day of the raid. I gave Dan Green the bank documents and the note I had found attached to them. I gave him the passports I had found in the black cat pillow and Natalie’s unsent letters to her father. Out of concern that they might cast an unnecessary light on the child, I had debated over whether to turn them over. But in the end, I figured they would serve as proof that she was the daughter of a wanted, dangerous man and that she was worthy of the utmost care and protection by U.S. authorities.

  I gave Agent Green the report I had put together, detailing the whereabouts of all the principals of the Cardenal drug cartel. And I gave him a written affidavit signed by Natalie’s mother
requesting that the child be placed with me until she was released from jail. I had no idea if such an affidavit would be considered a viable document or whether it would stand up under scrutiny in court. But the facts it listed were true, and they were easy enough to verify, so I drew it up as an additional layer of protection for the child with whom I had bonded in such a short period of time.

  Despite all the above, I fully expected to get arrested that day. As someone who prided herself on living so cleanly within the boundaries of the law, I knew the things I had done in the previous week were anything but legal. It was more than simple subterfuge. Weapons were involved, as was coercion. I knew this.

  But Agent Green didn’t know it. He only knew that I had found and turned over Maria Portilla. And, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think he wanted to know much more than that. And after gathering his own facts from the fugitive later, he concluded that she had come of her own accord.

  At the end of a very long day, Agent Green emerged from his internal huddles and found me in the waiting room. Without too many words, he extended a handshake. This time I was happy to accept it.