“What if it’s not just Zuma?” asked Vega. “What if all these people got removal letters signed by Dan Wilson—including Edgar Aviles.”
“Impossible.” Michelle typed Edgar Aviles’s name into the system and pulled up his removal letter. “You see?” Michelle pointed to the signature. “Marcus Tyler signed it last Monday. He and Lyle Donovan are the agents trying to apprehend Aviles now.”
“Does that mean Tyler’s the one who put Aviles into removal proceedings?”
“Not . . . usually,” she admitted. “Tyler and Donovan are enforcement agents. They act on directives generated from the database. Those directives tend to happen higher up the food chain.”
“So we’re back to not knowing who threw Zuma and Aviles into priority removal.”
“My boss will know,” Michelle assured him. “We can trace it. We just need time.”
“Time Aviles doesn’t have.”
* * *
Vega and Michelle typed up their statements from Billy Kelso and Lori Danvers. They included a brief summary of their findings from the ICE database, highlighting Deisy Ramos’s name and her connection to the wallet picture in Talia’s drawer. They sent one copy of their summary to Greco, one to Vega’s boss, Captain Waring, and one to Michelle’s boss, Wayne Bowman.
Vega dropped Michelle off at her car in the Lake Holly lot, then signed in the Taurus and texted Adele that he was on his way to her house. They had an hour to shower, change, eat, and pack his gear for his gig tonight. Vega was glad to be playing this evening. He needed the distraction—not only from the case, but from the unease that gnawed at him ever since Michelle showed him that childhood photo of himself and told him he got sent away.
He hadn’t told Adele about that photo. One of many things he hadn’t told her lately. He felt the weight of every one.
Adele stood on her porch in stockinged feet as Vega nosed his pickup into her driveway.
“You’ve heard, right?” she asked as he got out of his truck. “That Edgar Aviles is seeking sanctuary at Beth Shalom?”
“I heard.”
Vega walked up the porch steps and took Adele in his arms. Her blouse was untucked. Her black reading glasses rested low across the bridge of her nose. It felt good to feel the press of her flesh between his hands. “Heard you got ICE to back down too.”
“Hardly. All I’ve done, I fear, is bought him the weekend.”
Vega stepped inside. He smelled chicken and rice simmering on the stove. Reflexively, he looked up the stairs for Sophia, then remembered she was at her father’s for the rest of the weekend.
“Jimmy, I know we said we’d spend Sunday together. But I’m going to be snowed under tomorrow. I’ve got to help Edgar get the paperwork together to file a two-forty-six—a request to ICE for an administrative stay on humanitarian grounds.”
“Do you think they’ll grant it?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s a race against the clock at this point. The two agents who showed up at Beth Shalom only had an administrative warrant. They’ll probably go before a judge on Monday and get a real one. I have to get Edgar in front of someone at the ICE field office with all his paperwork in order before then or things could get ugly. I mean, ICE isn’t going to want to bust down the doors of a synagogue. But they could.”
Vega walked into Adele’s kitchen and washed his hands and face. Adele put a hand on his back. “Why don’t you take a shower and change, mi vida? I’ll put the salad and chicken together.”
“Are you sure? I can help.”
“You’ve still got to load your gear into the truck. We don’t have a lot of time. And besides, what’s a roadie for?” Adele loved helping the band set up for gigs. Vega even bought her a shirt that said #1 roadie.
Not that Armado had any others.
Vega showered quickly and changed into a plain black T-shirt and black jeans—the same outfit he wore for every gig. Adele was quiet over dinner, playing with her food more than eating it.
“You okay?” Vega asked her.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just worried about Edgar and his family. His niece is still missing.”
“I know,” said Vega. “We’re working on it. But the family won’t talk to the police. I have to think they know where she is.”
“They’re probably too scared to say. I mean, look at all they’ve been through.” Adele put down her fork. “What I can’t figure out, is how ICE knew Edgar would be at Beth Shalom. I mean, sure, he works there. But they seemed so—certain, somehow—that they’d find him there. It was like someone tipped them off. My money’s on one of the board members. According to Max, some of them were against this whole arrangement from the start.”
Vega felt like a white-hot spotlight was pointed directly at him. He closed his eyes. He had to tell her. He wasn’t a coward, despite what Michelle believed.
“Nena.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m the one who tipped ICE off.”
“You . . . ?” She yanked her hand away. “. . . Why?”
“It’s my duty as a police officer.”
“Your . . . duty?”
“I didn’t know he was there. Not for sure. But I can’t hold back information just because I don’t like the outcome. Aviles ran from law enforcement. His family refuses to cooperate with the police about his niece’s disappearance. It’s my duty—”
“Screw your duty.” Adele pushed her plate away. “What about something higher than duty? What about conscience? His little boy has cancer. The child’s got to go to the hospital next week and his father may be halfway to El Salvador by then—never to return. Where’s your duty in all of that?”
“I’m sorry,” said Vega. “Believe me, I am. I wish ICE had never tried to collar Aviles. But they did and we’re stuck with the results. I wanted to be totally honest with you.”
She gave him a sour look. “This is her doing, isn’t it? Your sister.”
“This is me, nena. My values. The same values I’ve had since you first met me. And second, she’s not my sister.”
“Okay, half.”
“I barely know the woman!” Vega threw up his hands. “I barely know myself anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Forget it.” He pushed himself up from the table and took his plate to the sink. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to help me at the gig tonight. I get that you have your code of ethics. But I have mine.”
He was aware of Adele’s eyes on him. When he turned to her, she was leaning in the doorway of the kitchen, arms folded across her chest, staring at him.
“This isn’t about ICE trying to arrest Edgar Aviles,” said Adele. “Or Talia Crowley. This is something else. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” He moved between the dining room and kitchen, carrying in plates and running them under hot soapy water. He needed somewhere to focus his attention.
“You want to be totally honest with me, Jimmy? Then be totally honest and tell me what’s on your mind. I’m coming with you tonight, one way or the other. So you might as well stop playing the wounded loner here.”
“It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I’m not going until you tell me what’s on your mind.”
“It’s nothing. Stupid stuff.”
“All the more reason to share it.”
Vega turned from the sink and dried his hands on a dish towel. He fished his wallet out of his back pocket and opened the billfold. He pulled out the dog-eared photo Michelle had given him and handed it to Adele.
“Michelle gave me an old picture of myself this morning.” He held it out to her as a peace offering, hoping to bridge the enormous distance right now between them.
She examined the glossy pre-digital-era snapshot, bouncing her head between Vega and the smallest boy in the picture. “I can definitely tell it’s you,” she said. “Where was it taken?”
“I have no idea.” Just showing Adele the photograph of him all dirty and unkempt i
n those oversized jeans made Vega feel naked and ashamed. He was a cop. He was used to exerting control over situations. Yet here, he felt as vulnerable as a child.
Adele turned the picture over and read the other two names. “Angel Dominguez . . . Johnny Ray Osorio . . . do you remember them?”
“No,” said Vega. “Not the faces or the names.”
“You look like you’re about five or six.” She handed back the photo. “It’s . . . a little on the depressing side.”
“Michelle says she thinks it was taken when I got”—Vega put his hands in quotes—“sent away.”
“Sent away where? For what?”
“I don’t know. Foster care? Behaving badly? I know I had these terrible rages in first grade,” Vega recalled. “I hit people. Threw things. Maybe I got sent away on account of that.”
“Nonsense.” Adele dismissed the claim. “I don’t believe it. How would Michelle know anyway? She’s three years younger. She’s just messing with your head. Don’t let her.”
Vega stared at the photo again, as if it had the power to suck him back to that time.
“She’s not wrong.” He looked up from the picture to Adele. “You know that feeling you get when you first wake up and sort of remember your dream? But the more you try, the more it slips away?”
“I’ve had that. Sure.”
“That’s what this feels like,” said Vega. “Not just the picture. That whole period in my life. Every now and then, I get these odd, freeze-frame images. Of a cop with squeaky black patent leather shoes. Or this big green wooden door with the handle removed and fingerprints all down the sides. Sometimes it’s not an image at all. It’s a smell. Wet towels. Coppertone suntan lotion.”
“Was that when your father walked out?”
“No,” said Vega. “He left when I was two. This happened a few years later. When I was about six. I have a vague memory of the time period because our neighbor’s cat scratched my eye badly a few months before. I remember wearing an eye patch and then getting it removed. I’d finally gone back to playing ball. The neighbor, by the way, was Michelle’s aunt. That’s where her mother was living when my father seduced her.”
“Ay, caray! Sounds like the plot of a telenovela,” said Adele.
“No kidding.” Vega shoved the photo back in his wallet. A part of him wanted to throw it out but couldn’t bring himself to.
“I’m sure Michelle could clear up the mystery by asking her mother,” said Adele. “Or your father.”
“When Michelle asked her mother about the photo today, her mother practically hung up on her. She told Michelle not to mention it to our father because it would upset him too much.”
“How about tracking down those other boys in the picture?” asked Adele. “You’re a cop. I’ll bet you could find them if you wanted to.”
“Don’t know that I want to.” Vega checked his watch.
“It’s getting late. I’d better load up the truck.” He was anxious to be on the road and have nothing in his head but his music.
Adele slipped her hand around Vega’s waist and gave it a squeeze, her tender feelings for him overcoming her frustrations earlier.
“Michelle’s wrong,” she assured him. “I never knew your mother or grandmother. But from everything you’ve told me, they sound like loving people. You were the center of their world. Whatever Michelle says, I refuse to believe they sent you away.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right.” Vega kissed the top of Adele’s head and didn’t say what he was thinking: Then I was taken.
That was worse.
It meant that his mother or grandmother had done something really bad to him. It had to be really bad because in Vega’s neighborhood, getting nailed by your mom or abuela with a chancla—a rubber sandal—was practically a rite of passage. Vega recalled both women taking swipes at him from time to time. But there was no real violence attached to their anger. These weren’t beatings. They were wake-up calls. Frowned on in today’s society, perhaps. But necessary for a single mother raising a boy in the Bronx back then. The streets were full of temptations. It didn’t hurt to know that your mother’s and grandmother’s wrath awaited at home.
But what if it was something more, Vega wondered? What if it was something truly evil? Just because Vega couldn’t remember the circumstances, didn’t erase the doubts. They grew like a cancer inside his brain. To kill them, he had to face them. Head-on. Without flinching.
At what cost to my family’s memory? he asked himself. At what cost to my own?
Chapter 22
Vega’s band was playing a wedding reception at the Grand Marquis, a catering hall in Broad Plains. It was off a stretch of four-lane, around the corner from Lori Danvers’s Paws and Claws. The outside was poured concrete and painted in flamingo pink. Two gold lampposts fronted the oval driveway. The inside had all the charm of a cut-rate hotel. Low ceilings. Carpets that felt like Astroturf. No windows—probably because there was nothing worth looking at. Only the wall of mirrors and chandeliers overhead gave any indication this was a party space.
“It’s not very romantic,” Adele whispered when they were unloading Vega’s amps and guitars.
“The bride and groom were in a hurry,” Vega explained. “He’s getting shipped out with the First Infantry next month. And she’s, shall we say, a teeny, tiny bit pregnant.”
“How teeny tiny?”
“Let’s just say, if they’d left it any longer, Katie and Mike Grande would be spending their honeymoon in the delivery room.”
“Ah.” Adele grinned. “Well then, you’d better do the ‘Macarena’ early.”
“I hate that song.”
Three of the band members and the sound engineer were already inside, setting up. Danny Molina, Armado’s keyboardist and founder, was doing mic checks with Tony Furci, their sound engineer. Brandon Cruz, their bassist, and Chris Feliz, their sax player, were setting up amps and running through their riffs.
“Where’s Richie?” Vega asked Molina.
“On his way, I hope. What can I say?” Molina paused a beat. “Timing has never been his strong suit.”
Vega snorted. Every band piles grief on their drummer—most of it deserved.
Adele walked off to help Brandon Cruz and Chris Feliz unfurl amp cables and microphone wires. Vega pulled out his pedal board and began attaching the pedals to create different sound effects. He owned a total of sixteen pedals but never brought more than eight to a gig. Tonight, he’d brought his favorites—the wah-wah and the reverb and the overdrive, which created a clean, warm tone.
Molina grabbed a roll of black duct tape and began taping down Vega’s sound cables and amps. “Where the hell would we be without the invention of duct tape?”
“Unemployed,” said Vega. They could deal with a broken string or missed cue, but if somebody accidentally kicked out a power cord, their whole set was sunk.
Molina eyed the back doors, searching for Solero. “Richie will be here,” Vega assured him. “I saw him this morning at his precinct. He knows we have a gig.”
“You helping Warburton with a case?”
“No. Lake Holly,” said Vega. “But Warburton may figure into it. And Port Carroll too, come to think of it.”
“Yeah?” Molina was born and bred in Port Carroll and now walked a beat there. “What’s the case?”
Vega pulled out his phone and scrolled to the picture of the two Hispanic girls taken from Talia’s drawer. He showed it to Molina.
“You ever seen either of these girls around Port Carroll? The one on the right is Deisy Ramos-Sandoval. The picture’s old. She’s sixteen now.”
Molina pinched his meaty fingers together to magnify the girls’ faces on the screen. He was a talented keyboardist, but you wouldn’t know it from his thick fingers. He had the hands of a butcher.
“That’s Deisy all right,” said Molina. “Her mom’s a waitress at the Port Carroll Diner.” He handed Vega back his phone. “Do you know where she is?”
“
I was going to ask you that,” said Vega. “Doesn’t she live in Port Carroll?”
“She ran away from her mother’s apartment a couple of weeks ago.” Molina’s eyes screwed tight in their sockets. He paled. “Please tell me you haven’t found a body.”
“No. Nothing like that,” said Vega. “The girl’s a missing link in a case of mine and I’d just like to speak to her. Her name appears on a list found in the pocket of an MS-13 gang member who was murdered in Warburton about a month ago.”
“What’s the mutt’s name?”
“Elmer ‘Cheetos’ Ortega.”
“Cheetos.” Molina nodded. “I’ve heard of him. He used to work with the Ramirez brothers. Carlos and Ramon. Small-time hoods. Mostly into burglary, car theft, and prostitution. They owned a chop shop in Port Carroll until we closed it down a few years ago.”
“What happened to them?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” Molina called over to Cruz to toss him another roll of duct tape. “The brothers went dark. They could’ve moved operations to Long Island or up to Buffalo. I’d like to think they hightailed it back to El Salvador. But if Ortega’s been murdered, you have to wonder.”
Molina fiddled with the positioning of a speaker. Vega thought it was in a good place already, but he knew that Molina, as the band’s manager, got the grief if the speakers blasted the audience. It was always a struggle to keep the music loud enough to be lively and soft enough so people could talk over it.
“Do you know if Deisy was the sort of girl to get mixed up with a guy like Cheetos?” asked Vega.
“She had a rough adjustment when she came here three years ago as an unaccompanied minor,” said Molina. “All these kids do. The crossings are brutal. So many of the girls are sexually assaulted. By the time they reunite with their families, they’re a ball of anxiety, depression, and rage.”
“So you’re saying, she fell apart.”
“For a while,” said Molina. “Hilda, her mom, came to me and I got the girl into therapy. It seemed to be doing the trick. She was going to classes. Getting good grades. She even made the high school’s varsity volleyball team. And then, a couple of weeks before she ran away, her mother said she got real quiet and secretive. She missed curfew a couple of nights. Then she lost her phone—”
Voice with No Echo Page 15
