A Blossom of Bright Light

by Suzanne Chazin

The sky was the color of cigarette ash and pregnant with rain that drifted on a damp current of cold air. Gonzalez’s request had nothing to do with the temperature, and they both knew it. Over the summer La Casa had lost its lease on its old building and relocated to a former fish market. On humid days like this, the place smelled like a wharf at low tide. Adele’s clients had done their best to make it nice. They’d cleared debris. They’d scrubbed the walls and floors with bleach. They’d painted it in cheerful colors. The smell was still there. Adele imagined it was better, but maybe she’d just gotten used to it. Steve Schulman would shake his head if he were here and remind her that this was why she needed to leave La Casa. She’d developed a tolerance for low expectations.

  “So,” said Katz, opening his briefcase and balancing it on his lap. There was nowhere else to put it. “The good news is that we’ve gotten the Board of Immigration Appeals to agree to consider a review of the case.”

  “Adam, that’s wonderful!” said Adele. The Board of Immigration Appeals was the highest federal body for immigration matters in the country and the one court that could halt Serrano’s order of removal.

  “Not so fast,” said Katz. “The bad news is that their first available review date is three weeks from now—which will do Serrano absolutely no good.”

  “But can’t you get a continuance on his upcoming court date this Thursday?”

  “Serrano has already had several continuances.” There was a loud crack on the other side of the wall as someone broke for a new game. The old center had insulation. This new one had nothing. It was like trying to concentrate inside a tin of marbles. Katz moved his chair closer to Adele’s desk and tried to ignore the noise. “I didn’t realize he’d had those continuances when I first looked at the file. The feds won’t delay him any longer—not unless some judge on the board of appeals intercedes on his behalf.”

  “Can we get someone to intercede?” Adele bounced a look from Gonzalez to Katz. They both shifted uncomfortably in their seats. They all knew what Adele was asking: can Steve Schulman call in some favors?

  Gonzalez put a thick-knuckled hand on the knee of his dress slacks. He was a broad, burly man, short in stature, with a weathered face and dark, hooded eyes. If not for his expensive-looking gold watch and the cut of his white dress shirt, he could have passed for one of his car wash employees.

  “This is not something Steve can do right before an election,” said Gonzalez. “He would be helping one man—maybe. But it might be at the expense of many.”

  “But Steve wouldn’t be asking for favors from politicians or supporters,” said Adele. “He’d just be talking to a few judges at the Board of Immigration Appeals. He wouldn’t even be asking them to rule in favor of Manuel, only to speed up a consideration of his case.”

  “Adele.” It was Katz’s turn to speak now. “If Steve goes shopping like that, it’s bound to get back to John Sawyer’s people. The Republicans would have a field day with this. It has all the appearances of pulling strings.”

  “A judge is going to tattle to Sawyer’s people?”

  “One sympathetic judge—maybe not,” said Katz. “But Steve would have to shop it around, and that could turn out badly.”

  Adele sat back in her chair and offered up a few more suggestions. One by one, Katz or Gonzalez shot them down. The men had done their homework. And Katz knew far more about immigration law than Adele did. After a few more attempts at a resolution, Adele gave up. “So it sounds as if there’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “Nothing is a big word.” It was Gonzalez who spoke now. He had a soft voice. Adele had to lean in over the noise from the pool tables to hear him.

  “The problem, as I see it, has two parts.” Gonzalez tended to speak slowly and consider his words—a good quality in business and politics, both of which he was very savvy in. But Adele couldn’t help looking at the clock. The meeting had gone on longer than she’d anticipated. Sophia would be furious if she were late to International Day. Sophia had volunteered her to represent Ecuador. Adele’s original idea had been to hand out chocolate, a major Ecuadorian export. Nobody told her until yesterday that Lake Holly Elementary was a “nut-free zone,” so nut-tainted foods like chocolate were forbidden on school grounds. Instead, Adele was up until two this morning putting together a PowerPoint presentation on the Galapagos Islands, the one place in Ecuador she knew nothing about. If Adele showed up late today after the chocolate fiasco, Sophia would probably disown her.

  Gonzalez held up a finger, oblivious to Adele’s clock-watching. Being a man, he would never understand the tyranny a nine-year-old could exert on her divorced, guilt-ridden mother. “One, Serrano is afraid that if he leaves the U.S., he will never be able to return. That is a risk, yes. But if Steve wins the election, we may be able to solve that in time.”

  “Okay,” said Adele.

  “His other problem,” said Gonzalez, “is his three children. If Serrano is deported, the children are going to have to move into his cousins’ apartment in Queens. I understand it’s a small two-bedroom apartment and the cousin already lives there with his wife and three small children, so there is very little room.”

  “Yes,” said Adele. “I’ve asked around Lake Holly, and no one is able to take in all three children for an indefinite period of time, especially since Manuel may not be able to support them adequately from that distance.”

  “That is no longer a problem,” said Gonzalez. “I have found a family in Lake Holly who is willing to take in all three children for as long as is necessary and support them until Serrano can return.”

  “You have? Oh my goodness, that’s wonderful,” said Adele. “I’m forever in your debt. Who’s the family?”

  Gonzalez tented his fingers beneath his square chin and shook his head. “I cannot reveal their name until I’ve spoken with Serrano about the offer and he has accepted. It would be wrong to presume before asking, no?”

  “Of course,” Adele agreed. “You should ask Manuel first. And maybe it won’t come to that.”

  Katz and Gonzalez traded glances. Today was Tuesday. Serrano was going before a judge in less than forty-eight hours. Adele was sticking her head in the sand if she thought Serrano had a prayer of staying.

  Katz gathered up his papers and rose from his chair. Gonzalez followed suit. The men had other business to attend to. Adele knew in her heart that nothing more could be done. And besides, she would be late to Sophia’s school if she delayed any longer.

  “Thank you both so much,” she said. She grabbed her purse and offered to walk the men out. If she left with them, she might still be able to make it to Sophia’s school on schedule. For once, things were falling into place.

  She’d spoken too soon.

  By the tiny front office stood two Latinas, both in their mid-twenties. One was totally Americanized: blond streaks in her dark hair, eyeliner, a knit skirt, and leggings stuffed into high leather boots. Adele recognized her from the few times they’d met at conferences and symposiums. She was a social worker for the Sisters of Mercy over in Adele’s hometown of Port Carroll in the southern part of the county. Jenny something.

  The woman next to her appeared to be a client. She was cradling a newborn and was dressed far more down-market: a pair of pink sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Off-brand sneakers. No makeup. Her hair pulled back carelessly into a ponytail. By her feet sat a lumpy diaper bag with Winnie the Pooh emblazoned across it. Her eyes followed Adele as Adele walked toward the front door. There was a silent plea in them.

  Oh God. Not now.

  “Hola, Adele! Cómo estás?” Jenny smiled as if Adele had been expecting her. Gonzalez and Katz nodded but kept walking. Adele saw her chances of escape narrowing by the minute. But she couldn’t ignore the woman. Jenny—

  Rojas. The name came to her in the same minute the baby began to fuss.

  “I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time?” asked Jenny in Spanish.

  “Could we do it tomorrow perhaps? I have to be at my dau
ghter’s school.”

  The baby fussed more loudly. “My client really needs your help now, Adele. You’re the only one who can give it to her.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  Jenny switched to English, probably to limit the number of eavesdroppers. “She lived in Lake Holly until six weeks ago. Since then, she’s undergone a pretty serious trauma. A criminal trauma. The police rescued her and her baby last night and assigned her care to my agency down in Port Carroll. But all her connections are here in Lake Holly. I felt I should see you personally about this. I thought maybe you could help. But if you can’t right now—”

  The baby began to holler, clearly hungry. The mother began to sob. Ay caray! This wasn’t happening. Adele checked her watch. She was now officially late.

  “Okay. Look. How about we do this?” Adele nodded to the mother and switched to Spanish. “What is your name, señora?”

  “Dominga.”

  “Dominga? How about you and Jenny head back to my office. It’s past the pool tables on the right. You can breastfeed your baby there. The shades are drawn. You’ll have total privacy. I’ll send my assistant, Ramona, to get the basics about your situation, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Gracias,” both women replied.

  Adele turned toward the front door. She was going to have to walk a tightrope this afternoon to balance all her obligations. Why hadn’t the police just sent this woman to her in the first place? Everyone in Lake Holly and the surrounding towns knew Adele was the go-to person for this kind of thing.

  “Hey Jenny?” asked Adele. “Who referred Dominga to you? It wasn’t a Lake Holly police officer, was it?”

  “No. It was the detective who rescued her last night. He’s from the county police, I believe.”

  Adele stood very still. She felt as if she were watching herself from a great distance. “You don’t happen to remember his name, do you?”

  “I have his card somewhere. He’s Puerto Rican. Nice build. Good-looking—”

  “Vega? James Vega?”

  “Yeah. That’s him. He didn’t call you on this?”

  He didn’t call her on anything anymore, it seemed.

  Chapter 13

  “So, you guys—you’re like CSI? The TV show?”

  Jimmy Vega tried to look interested in the student standing before him with a North Face backpack slung over one shoulder. He was all of nineteen, bored and entitled-looking, with a pierced nose, orange-dyed hair, and a skateboard under one arm. He was interchangeable with half the community college’s student body milling about the campus on Career Day.

  “I’m a homicide detective,” Vega explained to the kid. “I personally don’t handle the processing of evidence like the people in CSI. But we have an excellent forensics unit that does. We also have one of the leading digital evidence labs in the country.”

  Vega eased himself into a folding chair behind a table with county police recruitment flyers and refrigerator magnets fanned across it and tried not to look as pissed as he felt about Captain Waring volunteering him for this assignment. Vega wondered if it had anything to do with that time back in September when a couple of the uniforms put up the new Picture Yourself Here county recruitment posters above the men’s room urinals and Vega laughed about it at the morning meeting. Well, he wasn’t laughing anymore.

  The kid before him scratched at a straggle of chin hairs that were probably meant to pass for a beard. His backpack looked big enough to transport a bong. Vega was being unfair, he knew. But with Joy here now, he saw the campus through a father’s eyes.

  “Your department examines digital evidence?” asked the kid.

  “That’s right.”

  “So you guys—you, like, snoop on people’s computers and stuff?”

  “We only snoop on the bad guys.”

  “So, like, how do you know if someone’s a bad guy?”

  “The police have to show probable cause and then go before a judge to get a warrant.”

  “But you have to snoop to, like, know all that, don’t you? So it’s, like, you’re invading someone’s privacy to prove you have the right to invade their privacy.”

  Carajo! Vega didn’t need this kind of grief this afternoon. His left calf throbbed from the five stitches he’d had to get last night in the emergency room after that damn dog bit him. He was tired from all the paperwork he’d had to do this morning, from writing up Dominga Flores’s statement to filing forms to increase the size of the DNA dragnet for the mother of Baby Mercy. They were no closer to finding her or Zambo. He hadn’t even seen Joy yet today and she went to this school.

  He grabbed a promotional magnet off the table and held it out to the kid. “Why don’t you take one of these and go visit the Greenpeace booth, huh?”

  The magnet read: Stay alive! Don’t text and drive! The exclamation points were a little over the top in Vega’s opinion. Like being yelled at before you did anything. He knew from experience that this was not a good position to take with teenagers.

  The kid turned up his lip and reared back like Vega was proffering a pair of used athletic socks. “Don’t need a magnet. Keep it.” He dropped his skateboard to the sidewalk and flipped it right side up with his sneaker. Then he pushed off. “Fascist,” he mumbled as he rolled into the crowd.

  Fascist? He was a fascist? He wished the stoners in his old garage band, Straight Money, could hear that. Or his corillo—his childhood friends—back in the South Bronx. When did he become a poster boy for all the things he used to distrust? Eighteen months ago, he was still walking around undercover with a diamond chip in his ear, a five o’clock shadow, and the nervous hustle of a narc who just hoped his fellow officers knew enough not to fire on him. Now he wore sports jackets with dark blue polo shirts and laughed too loud in the presence of other cops. Inside, he felt the same.

  Some things he got right—like putting that creep Neil Davies out of commission last night and getting Dominga Flores and her baby the help they needed.

  Some things he didn’t. He could no longer close his eyes without seeing that patch of bright yellow maple leaves and feeling the leaden weight of what he’d done. He still had those pictures of Mercy on his iPhone. He couldn’t bring himself to delete them even though his guys in crime scene had taken more evidence photos than any of them would need.

  Vega texted Joy again. He wondered if she’d gotten hung up at a tutoring gig. He’d been here for over an hour and hadn’t seen her yet. She hadn’t even returned any of his texts. In forty-five minutes, all the companies and agencies would be closing down the fair. And not a minute too soon. The forecast called for rain. It had held off most of the afternoon, but the sky now looked like it had been shaded in with a pencil. A strong breeze billowed the pop-up tents lining the quad. Vega massaged his calf. He wanted to go home and put his feet up.

  He propped his leg as best he could and stared out at the throngs of students milling about the quad. He’d been to this campus many times over the years as a police officer for training and routine callouts. It was part of the county police’s response area. He wished it were prettier. It backed up to a low-rent shopping center off a four-lane highway. Even now, surrounded by a curtain of orange and gold trees that hid the shopping center, the Band-Aid-colored buildings looked like giant shoe boxes. Their glass entrance doors were pockmarked with dozens of faded flyers for concerts and fund-raisers, chemistry tutors and roommates. A sculpture in the middle of the quad looked like a collision between a shopping cart and the innards of a ’57 Chevy. Add in the collective tattoo markings and piercings of the student body and the whole scene rivaled a Burning Man Festival. Vega had hoped for a more prestigious start for Joy—something better than the commuter experience he’d had—but she seemed happy here at least. All things considered, Vega couldn’t complain.

  The career fair attracted plenty of employers at least, from major corporations to various government agencies and nonprofits. The booth organized by the New York State Police in parti
cular had attracted a pretty big crowd all afternoon. Vega could see why. A female trooper had brought along a big tawny German shepherd to show off the dog’s search-and-rescue skills. Here was Vega, trying to get students interested in the joys of forensic accounting and the state police had brought a dog. Game over.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  Vega had been so focused on finding Joy that he didn’t see Adele until she was standing in front of him.

  “What are you doing here?” His words came out sharper than he’d intended. He could never be neutral with her. He just hoped she wouldn’t pull that “let’s be friends” crap when she ditched him. His heart was too bound up with hers not to be scarred by any attempt to cut it away.

  “I called your office. They said you were instructing coeds on the joys of police work.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Teddy Dolan. Actually he said you were on punishment detail for illegal possession of a sense of humor.”

  “Huh. You got that right.”

  He wished some student would come by right now and ask a bunch of dopey questions. He’d even settle for Mr. Fascist again. Anything to divert his attention. He supposed that’s what happened when two people built up a layer of unspoken resentment between them. It had been the same with him and Wendy at the end. He jerked a thumb across the quad at the female trooper and the shepherd. The dog had sad puppy eyes and a tongue like bubble gum that lolled to one side. It looked as eager as a new cadet.

  “Goddamn ham,” said Vega. “Now everybody’s gonna want to work K-9.”

  “You should bring horses next time.”

  “I would—if we had ’em. The department sold them off four years ago in the budget cutbacks. Only the state police have dog and pony shows now.”

  “You don’t have anything fun.”

  “I’ll bring that up at the next meeting. Should be good for another punishment detail.”

  Adele played with one of the magnets on the table. Vega had managed to give very few away. They were black and white with exclamation points. What did his department expect?