Elevator, The

by Hunt, Angela

  “A file.” Gina lifts her head like a cat scenting the breeze. “You said you came here to pick up a file.”

  “That’s right.” Michelle nods. “My office is on the thirty-sixth floor. But my boyfriend works on that floor, too, so I was going to tell him after I picked up that client file. He knew I was coming and he promised to wait. We were going to leave the building together. I was hoping we could ride out the hurricane at his place while we celebrated my news.”

  Gina’s eyes narrow slightly. “Are you sure your man isn’t married?”

  The remark is designed to sting, and it succeeds. Michelle’s lower lip trembles as she returns Gina’s stare. “I told you, he’s a widower. And even though he has three kids, I hope he’ll be excited about another baby.” She blinks as a sudden flood of tears stings her eyes. “If we don’t get out of here, he’ll never even know.”

  Gina tucks her hair behind her ear. “Does your mystery man work for the attorney general’s office? I know some of those guys from—”

  Isabel interrupts by breaking into loud sobs. Michelle turns, alarmed, as the housekeeper again covers her woebegone face with her hands. “What’s wrong now?”

  “They will arrest me!” the girl says, her words muffled. “I didn’t mean to get into trouble, but they will see my cart, they will blame everything on me. The attorney general is a powerful man, and he will know everything—”

  “Relax.” Gina catches Michelle’s eye and winks. “Dan Foster’s a pretty big wig, but he’s not as powerful as he thinks he is.”

  “She’s right,” Michelle adds. “They can’t blame you for getting caught in the elevator. And it’s not your fault we bullied our way in here.”

  “No, no.” Isabel shakes her head and wipes the tip of her red nose with the tissue that is now little more than clumped paper. “The general will put me on trial and my fotografía will be in the paper. People will talk, the news will spread. He is looking for me now. When he finds me, I am dead.”

  Michelle glances at Gina, an unspoken question in her eyes, but the redhead only shrugs.

  Michelle pats the cleaning woman’s knee. “I’m sure you are mistaken. Why would the attorney general want to kill you?”

  Isabel wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, then presses her trembling lips into a thin line. She stares at Michelle for a long moment, as if judging her ability to keep a secret.

  “We’re not going to turn you in, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Gina says, her voice flat. “Whatever you’ve done is of no interest to me.”

  The housekeeper peers out at them through tear-clotted lashes. “Two years ago, in México,” she says, her voice wavering, “mi novio—my boyfriend—was Ernesto Carillo Fuentes, one of the most important men in Monterrey. I became—how do you say it? Embarazada, like you. A baby.”

  Michelle supplies the word: “Pregnant.”

  Isabel nods through her tears. “Sí. I thought Ernesto would be happy, and he was, but not for why I thought. He wanted me to carry cocaína in my belly. He said it would be easy because the American guards will not X-ray a pregnant woman.”

  Gina, who is examining Isabel’s face with considerable absorption, gasps aloud. “You carried cocaine in your belly?”

  “I’ve heard about this,” Michelle says. She lowers her gaze and looks into Isabel’s eyes. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  As Isabel buries her face in her hands and goes quietly to pieces, Michelle lifts a brow and considers the cleaning woman from a new perspective. She’s always believed that success requires two things—hard work and a willingness to bend the rules when necessary. Judging from the way Isabel’s carrying on, she’s done more than bend the rules.

  So which rules, exactly, has she broken?

  “Will you please bring your seat backs and tray tables to their upright and locked positions?”

  As the flight attendant repeated her instructions in Spanish, Isabel leaned forward and looked across the aisle. Juana, another of Ernesto’s girls (though not, like Isabel, carrying his child), buckled her seat belt as casually as if she smuggled fifty thumb-size pellets of cocaine across the border every day.

  Isabel shivered as a sudden chill climbed the ladder of her vertebrae. Before she’d boarded the plane, Ernesto had warned her that the drugs in her belly were worth a great deal of money—enough that the men who waited in New York would kill her if she tried to escape. She would have to go with them, do exactly what they said, and cooperate until she passed every ounce of cocaine. To think about keeping even one of the pellets would invite disaster. When all the tightly compacted capsules had been counted and cleaned, the New York contacts would give her a good dinner and send her away with five hundred American dollars, a package for Ernesto and a return plane ticket.

  “If all goes well,” Ernesto said, nuzzling her cheek, “you will be back with me before the weekend. But if you run—” he pulled away so she could see the threat in his eyes “—they will track you down and slit your throat. If you lose the package they give you, I will gut your mother…and then I will come after you.” A devilish smile spread across his thin lips. “No one crosses me and lives to tell about it, chiquita. No one.”

  Isabel felt a fresh scream rise in her throat and choked it off. How could someone who looked so appealing be so evil? Mamá had been right—deceit is a lie that wears a smile.

  The flight attendant at the front of the plane picked up a microphone. “We are now making our descent into New York’s JFK Airport. When you exit, be sure to have your customs card filled out and ready to hand to the officials.”

  Isabel grimaced, then pulled her I-94 card from the seat pocket. How was she supposed to know the address where they’d be staying? What had the others written?

  She looked at Juana and exhaled when the older girl held the card at an angle so Isabel could see what she’d printed: 625 East Sixty-eighth Street, New York.

  Isabel filled out the form, then caught Juana’s eye to smile her thanks. The older girl laughed. “Es el apartamento de Lucy y Ricky Ricardo,” she whispered, pointing to the address. “En el programa de televisión.”

  A dart of panic pierced Isabel’s heart, but Juana only giggled and raised the back of her seat. Isabel did the same, then held the arrival card between her damp palms until the roaring plane jolted to the runway.

  Ernesto had sent six girls on this flight—along with Isabel, Juana, Berta, Paloma, Rosa and Susana were traveling with bellies and intestines packed with cocaine capsules. Berta, Isabel noticed as she stood to pull her small suitcase from the overhead bin, did not look at all well. Pearls of perspiration dotted her forehead and upper lip, but perhaps she was nervous.

  Isabel didn’t want to consider the other possibility. If even one pellet burst inside a girl’s body, she would die. She might survive if she could make it to a hospital, but none of the men waiting for them in New York City would consider approaching a hospital if one of them became ill.

  Isabel fell into line behind Juana as they exited the aircraft, but she knew she was supposed to step away from the others as soon as they entered the gate area. Ernesto always sent several mules at once in order to deflect suspicion. If one girl got caught, he reasoned, the authorities would be so busy interrogating her that the others could slip through.

  With her suitcase in hand, Isabel followed Juana up the Jetway, then stepped to the right in the airport gate. She moved to an empty seat and unzipped her bag, pretending to look for her passport while the other girls mingled with the tourists, businessmen and grandparents on their way to visit family in the United States.

  When the last passenger had exited the Jetway, Isabel pulled a stick of gum from her bag, then zipped the case and walked toward the bustling hall where the others had disappeared. Though she had been perspiring all day, she felt suddenly slick with the clammy sweat of fear. So many people, and all of them in a hurry! How would she be able to tell the good people from the bad?

  Ernesto’s New Y
ork contacts would be watching from the customs exit. Though she had never seen them, a vivid picture rose in her mind—they would be a darkly handsome, narrow-eyed group standing with their arms crossed and their jaws tight while they silently counted heads. When they realized one of their sheep was missing, they would question the waiting girls. Juana and the others would be so intimidated, in a matter of minutes the men would have Isabel’s name and description. They would send someone into the airport, and they would search for her. They might even tell the customs officials to watch for Isabel Juanita Alvarado.

  They would not be happy.

  Though Isabel was so nervous her teeth clicked like castanets, she had decided not to join the other girls. Ernesto’s contacts would be furious, they would post a guard and watch the airport for days, but endless hours at the cotton mill had taught Isabel patience. She would wait them out, she would pray for her mamá, and she would keep her baby safe.

  Ernesto would not believe she had run. He had killed Rodrigo to frighten her into submission; he had been sure she would obey his commands and come shivering back to him.

  But before she’d left for the apartment where she would have to swallow the cocaine capsules, she had placed a briefcase under her mother’s bed. Do not call the police, she’d written, but leave Monterrey at once. Do not look for me. Take this money—it is enough for travel, but not so much Ernesto will come after you—and go to a city where no one knows us.

  I am sorry for all the trouble I have caused.

  Te quiero, Mamá. Vaya con Dios.

  Mamá and Rodrigo had been right about Ernesto; she had been wrong. She had already lost her brother, but she would not lose her mother.

  If doing penance for her sin meant never seeing her mother again, she would sacrifice that love as an act of contrition. She would leave Monterrey and never return to México.

  A brave woman would stand up to the drug dealers; she would find someone who could be trusted, and she would tell him everything about the girls who were carrying cocaine into los Estados Unidos.

  She was not a brave woman. She did not deserve a new life in America, but her baby deserved more than a father like Ernesto.

  3:00 p.m.

  CHAPTER 19

  Unable to resist a wave of curiosity, Gina watches as Michelle leans toward Isabel, her face set in lines of concentration. “So…what did you do?”

  Isabel wipes her tears, then takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I swallowed the drugs and came to New York, but instead of meeting Ernesto’s men, I hid en el baño.”

  Gina looks at Michelle. “What did she say?”

  “The restroom, I think,” Michelle answers, her eyes soft with sympathy. She turns back to the maid. “Didn’t they think to check the restrooms?”

  The girl’s dark lashes shutter her eyes. “Too many people around for the men to come in. They sent one of the girls in to look for me, but I gave her money to say she did not see me. At night, when the cleaners came in, I would move to a gate and pretend to wait for a plane, but in the mornings I would get something to eat and go back to the restroom. When I thought it would be safe to leave, I covered my head with a sweater I found on a bench. I wanted to be sure Ernesto’s friends would not know me.”

  “What, um, happened to the cocaine?” Michelle asks.

  Isabel swallows hard as a flush mottles her neck. “Down the toilet.”

  Gina barks a laugh. “I’m surprised her thugs weren’t hanging out at the sewage treatment plants.”

  “They weren’t her thugs.” Michelle tosses the comment over her shoulder, then focuses again on the maid. “How long did you stay at the airport?”

  “Cinco días. Five days.”

  “After that, you came to Florida?”

  When Isabel grimaces, Gina wonders if the girl is struggling to remember…or wishing she could forget. “When I was ready to leave, I had only two thousand pesos. Some of it was Ernesto’s money, but most of it was mine.”

  Gina stretches her legs into the empty space at the center of the car. “You should have been fine, then.”

  Michelle scowls. “That’s not even two hundred dollars. You can’t get a decent hotel room for that in the city.”

  “I had one hundred eighty-eight dollars,” Isabel says. “I changed the money behind the security gates. When I thought the men might have stopped watching for me, I went through customs and took a cab to the estación—” She looks at Michelle, her face twisting. “You know the name? A big estación?”

  “Grand Central?”

  “No, Greyhound de autobús. I gave the man all the money I had, and he said it would be enough to get me to Charlotte. So I bought a ticket and got on the bus, but when I sat down and looked out the window, I saw—” A shudder shakes her.

  “What?” Michelle asks. “What’d you see?”

  “Ernesto.” Isabel’s voice thickens. “He had come from México, and he had someone watching for me at customs. That man couldn’t catch me before I got on the bus, but he called Ernesto so they could follow. Ernesto talked to the man at the bus station and knew when I would arrive to Charlotte. He knew everything.”

  The wind continues to moan in the shaft above them, but now Gina scarcely notices. Staring at Isabel, she realizes the Mexican girl would have been about seventeen when she landed in New York—the same age as Mandi. How would her daughter handle that situation? Mandi isn’t involved in any kind of drug abuse, thank goodness, but despite all the precautions a parent might take, one never knows who a teenager will encounter at a party or a friend’s house….

  Her daughter, she admits with great reluctance, might be just as susceptible to the charms of a handsome young man. But she’d never submit to emotional blackmail; if she found herself in a situation like the one Isabel faced, she’d come home, pour her troubles into Gina’s lap and wait for her mother to make the world right again.

  And Gina would. No matter where they lived, she’d grab a rifle and go hunting for drug lords before she would let her daughter serve as human camouflage for some snakeskin-booted lowlife.

  She would also arrange a quiet abortion for her daughter. She would do anything to erase the situation from Mandi’s memories, to pretend none of it ever happened.

  And yet…all of it happened to Isabel. The girl has lost everything, been driven from her country and borne her tormentor’s child. Mandi would crumple under such pressure, maybe even consider suicide.

  Gina has to admit the Mexican girl has courage.

  “Ernesto stood outside the bus and stared at me,” Isabel says, her body rigid, her fists clenched. “He couldn’t get on, but I knew he would follow.”

  “You could have slipped off the bus at any stop,” Gina says, folding her arms. “You could have left that miscreant behind.”

  “I didn’t know what to do.” Isabel’s soft voice is tinged with terror. “I felt trapped, so I sat in the seat and cried. That’s when Carlos saw me. He sat beside me and by the time we reached Raleigh, I had told him everything.”

  When Isabel lifts her head, the clear light of devotion shines from her dark eyes. “In Raleigh, Carlos got off the bus, walked into the office, and called la policía. Ernesto and three of his men had been following in a car, waiting for me to come off the bus, but they drove away when la policía came. While they were gone, Carlos bought me another ticket and walked me to another bus. We came to Tampa and got married before Rafael was born.”

  “Do you ever worry?” Michelle asks. “About Ernesto finding you?”

  The maid’s answering smile is frayed around the edges. “Every day.”

  Gina clears her throat. “Sounds to me like you might be here illegally. Did you get a green card?”

  Michelle turns and gives her a black look. “Cut the girl some slack. She was running for her life.”

  “I don’t have anything against her personally, but it’s a legitimate question,” Gina insists. “Our borders are being overrun with these people—they’re taking jobs from Amer
icans—”

  “I work the graveyard shift, emptying trash cans, dusting shelves and washing windows,” Isabel interrupts. “Nobody else wants this job. And Carlos is an American citizen. We did not marry for a green card—we married because Carlos loves me. I don’t know why, but he does.”

  Gina nods, less interested in the woman’s employment situation than in the loving look that lights her eyes whenever she whispers her husband’s name. Did Sonny ever love her like that? Would he have married her if she had been penniless, on the run and pregnant with another man’s child?

  Not likely. Gina has given up everything for him, yet the biggest sacrifice Sonny’s ever made for her was forfeiting his golf game on the Saturday she gave birth to Samantha.

  Shifting to sit on her bent legs, Gina moves closer, tightening the circle of conversation. “Your situation was rough, but you escaped that danger and now you’re happy with your husband. I can see how much you love him, and I’m happy for you. Now…imagine how you’d feel if you discovered that your beloved Carlos has been having an affair.”

  Her secret hangs in the air—revealed, spoken, pent up no longer. The maid acknowledges Gina’s confession with a grim nod, and the look in Michelle’s eyes shifts from irritation to sympathy.

  Gina lowers her gaze as the shell of her bravado cracks under the pressure of their eyes. “After twenty-one years of faithful marriage, what do I have? A cheating spouse who steals from me and my children. A man who has opened offshore bank accounts because he hopes to hide most of his assets before he visits a divorce lawyer. A man who wouldn’t know poetry from a platitude. Some reward, huh?”

  Lines of concentration deepen in Michelle’s forehead as she groans. “That is truly awful. I’m so sorry.”

  Gina smiles a silent touché. “I don’t want pity—I deserve a medal. Let me tell you, being married to Sonny is no picnic. I helped him start his business on our kitchen table, did I tell you that? I worked my rear off helping him make a name for himself. He’s a bigwig, powerful and well-known in Tampa. We’re invited to all the right parties, we live in a good neighborhood and drive nice cars, but all I ever cared about was our kids. Well, yesterday a private investigator delivered proof—my husband’s been spending a fortune on some sweet tart of the month instead of investing for our children’s future. When he didn’t come home last night, I decided to do something about his philandering.”