“This fucking case,” he said. “It’s getting to me, Facundo.”
“You said Isabel was pleased.”
Pescatore had briefed Isabel by phone. She was getting ready to move. The first step was to hand off Chiclet to the embassy in Mexico City. The next would be to arrange for Tayane Pires to give a formal statement. Isabel wanted Pescatore to come to Washington and make plans. She had other hassles. Her politically sensitive white-collar-corruption case was getting media attention. Leo Méndez had shaken things up with an article, she said.
“Yeah, she’s pleased,” Pescatore said to Facundo. “Everything’s falling into place. We’ve got a confessed accomplice, a bona fide victim, and a lead on the other victim.”
“What’s the problem, then?”
Pescatore slouched, his muscular arms folded on his chest.
“That horror story we heard today. It’s bad enough Tayane lives in that shooting gallery of a neighborhood. She’s gonna have nightmares the rest of her life. And who knows what happened to Abrihet. Meanwhile, we’re sitting high on the hog in Copacabana.”
Bushy eyebrows raised, Facundo watched him drink.
“Not enjoying our good fortune will not improve their bad fortune,” Facundo said.
“It’s just fucked up, that’s all.”
Pescatore told himself to go easy on the booze in front of his boss. And in general. He sat up and asked, “What about that bizarre stuff the Eritrean lady told Tayane? The rip crew gunning for her, big-shot Americans wanting her dead?”
Facundo sipped his drink. “One could say it sounds preposterous. Delirious. We have to remember that these young women endured enormous psychological trauma. And we only know part of it. Noooo. The Eritreans are a desperate diaspora. Thousands drowning in the Mediterranean, thousands tortured for ransom by smugglers in the Sinai. A friend in the Israeli border police has told me things that made my hair stand on end.”
“You’re right. No wonder she started raving.”
“On the other hand…”
“What?”
“Eritreans are tough. They do military service. The women too, like the Israelis. This young lady Abrihet thought on her feet, one fast decision after another. Clearheaded.”
“And?”
“She didn’t necessarily act like someone suffering paranoid delusions.”
“Wait. You’re saying it could be true?”
“I’m just saying I hope we find the young lady. Alive and well.”
“Salud to that.”
“L’chaim. Let’s order some food with all this beverage, Valentín. We need to keep our wits about us.”
Chapter 8
It was a blessing and a curse: Méndez had become famous on the streets of Spanish-speaking New York.
A curse because he preferred anonymity. A blessing because it aided his search.
He was accustomed to public attention in Mexico and, to a lesser extent, in Southern California. On the East Coast, he felt invisible—or he had until Fulgencio Ayala’s report hit the news. Spanish-language television wasn’t just information and entertainment for Latin American immigrants. It was identity, community, a survival guide to their new world, a lifeline to their old one. Some people he encountered knew exactly who he was. Others treated him like some kind of real-life action hero. En route to the legal-aid office Thursday, he had walked out of a subway station into stares and greetings in Spanish Harlem. After he went from there to Flushing, the Ecuadoran tenants at the house he visited insisted on helping him canvass the neighbors.
And now, as he manned his stool at the window of the pizza place on First Avenue, the youthful Sinaloan counterman with the fledgling mustache brought him a Coke and a cannolo—on the house. He addressed Méndez with the friendly street abbreviation of the title licenciado.
“No, Leek, it’s my treat, please. I’m in charge on Sundays.” The kid’s lordly wave took in the empty tables around them. Patting Méndez on the back, he said, “I hope you have more success today, Leek.”
“Me too, hijo.”
Because if I’m not in San Diego tomorrow, he thought, I might not have a home to go home to.
By staying in New York, Méndez had missed Juan’s soccer game and enraged his wife. Yes, she had encouraged him to go on the trip in the first place. But she had no patience for broken promises. So fuck his excuses. And fuck him. Estela hadn’t sounded this angry in a long time. The wounds of their years of living dangerously had reopened.
Still, Méndez was swept up in the rush of reporting. He kept telling himself it would all be worth it in the end.
The legal-aid lawyer in Harlem said he had received a call in July from a Guatemalan immigrant named Zoraida Padilla. She had been the supervisor of the night janitorial crew at the corporate headquarters of the Blake Acquisitions Group. The crew were a mix of Latino and African immigrants. They had lost their jobs when the Blake Group abruptly dismissed the firm. Padilla said it was the result of an “incident” involving an executive and a cleaning woman.
“Zoraida sounded scared,” the lawyer told Méndez. “She said there was a lot to tell, but not on the phone. I said we could talk in person. But that was it. I’ve tried to reach her a couple of times. No luck.”
The tip appealed to Méndez for several reasons. Four days after his exclusive, things were clearer. The Justice Department had confirmed, on background, that the federal case was about suspected violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Investigators believed the Blake Group had used systematic bribery to expand in Mexico (Shocking, Méndez thought) and lay the groundwork for the merger. The prosecutors weren’t sure they had enough evidence for indictments, though. U.S. newspapers had reported that developments were not imminent or even likely.
Meanwhile, Zoraida Padilla offered a story for which Méndez had a rare competitive advantage over the U.S. press, linguistically and culturally—a story with a human face.
If he found her. If she was telling the truth.
Méndez ate the cannolo slowly. It tasted like cardboard. His view consisted of an Irish bar, a laundromat, and a fruit-and-vegetable market across the street. Sparse midday traffic flowed north on the avenue.
Padilla had moved from Queens to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, an area Méndez thought of as wealthy. Her building, though, was an old walk-up, faded brick and rusting fire escapes above a pet store. He had managed to slip inside behind a mailman. The hallways were gloomy. The residents looked indigent, elderly, damaged, or some combination of the three. A fourth-floor one-bedroom here was not ideal for a single mother and three children who, until recently, had been living in a rented bungalow with berry trees in the yard.
The neighbors in Flushing said Padilla’s move had been hurried. She hadn’t told them where she was going. The neighbors gave Méndez a cell phone number, an e-mail address, and a photo of Padilla. He wrote to her and left text and voice messages. On Friday, he returned to Flushing and, after a long stakeout, coaxed Padilla’s new address out of a neighbor who hadn’t wanted to talk in front of the others. On Saturday, he went to the Manhattan apartment, buzzed from downstairs, knocked on the apartment door after following the mailman in, and slid a note and a business card beneath it. He hung around for hours. If she lived here, Padilla was staying low profile.
For the stakeout today, he again chose the pizza place next door. It was a shotgun space with a row of tables against one wall. He kept watch from the counter at the front window. A mirror on his right enabled him to see the sidewalk on his left in front of her vestibule and down to the corner.
He checked the time. He had to leave for the airport in a few hours. He had reserved the last flight of the night. If he missed it, he wouldn’t be home in time to take Renata to her first day of nursery school. And there would be hell to pay.
In the mirror, Méndez saw a boy come around the corner. The boy was Latino, a year or two younger than Juan, with wet-combed hair. He resembled a miniature provincial gentleman in his oversiz
e suit.
Méndez toyed with his phone, tempted to call his son. Last night, Juan had sounded sad that his father had missed the game and worried that his mother was furious. Yet he had given Méndez a breathless play-by-play of the goal he had scored with a back-heel shot off a corner kick, a move they had practiced together. Méndez had teared up when he heard that. Now he was tearing up again, like a maudlin fool.
Then he saw that the boy in the suit had stopped a few feet away. A woman and two small girls rounded the corner.
Méndez stumbled off his stool toward the door.
It’s her. She has a nine-year-old son and twins. It’s Zoraida Padilla.
Seeing Méndez appear on the sidewalk, she came to a stop. She clutched the hands of the adorably identical girls, who were about five and wore matching skirts and bows in their hair. Méndez slowed himself down. He approached with a soothing smile. Padilla was diminutive with hunched shoulders. She wore makeup, a violet dress, and a necklace with a golden Saint Anthony medallion. Her hair had dyed blondish streaks and was carefully brushed and arranged.
“Señora Padilla,” he said. “Please forgive me for bothering you. I am Leo Méndez, the journalist who has been trying to reach you.”
Recognition rearranged her features, then relief.
“I saw you on television,” she said.
They ate sandwiches in a booth at the Irish tavern.
Beneath big screens showing baseball, football, and soccer, a few grizzled regulars huddled at the bar as if it were a ship in stormy seas.
Zoraida Padilla had a habit of ducking her head as she talked, looking up at him out of the heavily painted corners of wary eyes.
“Thank you very much for lunch, Licenciado Méndez,” she said gravely.
“My pleasure. I hope I am not delaying the children’s meal.”
“No, I took them for pancakes after Mass. I always do.”
She had polished off the sandwich, though. He suspected that she hadn’t eaten any pancakes herself because she had to watch every penny. She hadn’t invited him up to the apartment when she left the children there, probably because it embarrassed her. Her fragile dignity heightened his discomfort about having stalked her. He disliked the way many reporters treated people, especially working-class people, bellowing questions in public, browbeating, bullshitting. He always told young reporters that being a journalist didn’t excuse you from the human race. You had the power to invade lives, walk through walls. It came with an obligation to behave with manners and decency.
“How about dessert?” he said. “A drink? Something Irish?”
She glanced around. An unfamiliar, intimidating setting for her. She had said he was the most famous person she had ever met.
“I drank Baileys Irish Cream once,” she said timidly. “It was sweet.”
“Good idea,” he said. “I take mine with ice. It’s a hot day.”
“Me too, please. Thanks very much.”
As he ordered at the bar, he checked the time. She had told him about herself, her life in Guatemala, her new job as a barista in a coffee shop. She said she was living in fear. She had avoided Méndez because she thought it might be a trap, someone posing as him. He let her talk, hoping she would circle around to the real topic on her own. But she had barely touched on it.
Back in his seat with the drinks, he said, “Señora Padilla. In order to help you and the others, I really need to know about this ‘incident.’”
Ducking her head, she said, “What does ‘off the record’ mean, exactly?”
“I don’t mention your name. I don’t quote you, even anonymously.”
“So what do you do?”
“It’s up to me to find sources who confirm your story. Then I can write it based on their accounts.”
She sipped her drink, took a deep breath, and nodded.
“What was the name of your colleague who was the victim?” he asked.
“Abrihet Anbessa.”
“From Eritrea, you said?”
“Yes.”
“Where did she live?”
“Queens. Not far from me.”
“She was a supervisor as well?”
“Not officially. She didn’t have papers. I was the only supervisor. I have a green card. But I persuaded the boss to give Abrihet extra responsibility and pay. She was such a good worker. She had gone to the university in her country. She worked at night and studied during the day at community college to be a nurse.”
“Impressive.”
The executive floor caused a lot of hassles. Perry Blake and his staff worked late, often overnight, requiring the crew to maneuver around them. The executives were demanding and impatient. They complained about cleaners who got in the way, made noise, didn’t speak English. Padilla assigned Abrihet Anbessa to handle that floor because she was poised and professional.
“She did a good job. No more complaints. But it was a strange environment there at night. Sometimes the executives were working hard; other times it was more like a party. Drinking, maybe drugs. Abrihet felt uncomfortable around Mr. Blake. He was a night owl, that one, always there.”
“Perry Blake?”
“Yes. The younger one.”
“When did the incident happen?”
“In July.” Head and voice low, Padilla scanned the room. She said, “The shift ended at five in the morning. I was leaving for the subway. Abrihet ran up to me in the lobby, very upset. She said something happened.”
Abrihet told her the story on the subway ride out to Flushing. They sat close together in the corner of a near-empty car, the elevated train clattering past cemeteries at dawn.
Perry Blake had sexually assaulted her, Abrihet said. They’d struggled. She escaped.
“She said he was staggering, acting crazy. Like an animal.”
“My God.”
“They were fighting, wrestling around, for several minutes. She finally got away.”
“Did he rape her?”
“She said he didn’t. She fought him off.”
“Was she hurt?”
“Yes. When we got to my house and I made her coffee, she showed me. She had a bump on her head, under her hair. Her jaw was scraped. And she had a big bruise on her left side, the ribs, where he kicked her.”
“Did you take pictures of the injuries?”
“Yes, with her phone. She has them.”
Méndez did not have a physical memory of putting his notebook on the table, but he was scribbling away, trying to record every word. He was picturing the victim telling the story, imagining the crime itself, assembling the narrative, examining it for gaps and flaws.
Elbows on the table, Padilla clasped her hands and rested her chin against them. There were mottled circles under her eyes.
Her life was hard enough already, he thought. Someone else’s misfortune had wrecked her job and home, piling on another burden. Nonetheless, she had done her duty. She urged Abrihet to go to the police and offered to accompany her. The Eritrean didn’t want to. She was an illegal immigrant, she was poor, no one would believe her.
“I told Abrihet that wasn’t true. Here it’s not like in our countries, I said. Reporting it might actually help her immigration status. I’ve heard of the American government giving green cards to victims of rape or abuse. Remember that French politician and the maid in the hotel? The New York police arrested him, pulled him off a plane. The maid got a lot of money in court. Now she owns a restaurant. She was African too.”
Abrihet had reminded her that the hotel maid in that case had been humiliated, her life exposed, her reputation trashed. What’s more, Abrihet said, Perry Blake hadn’t actually raped her. The attack would be even more difficult to prove.
“Abrihet was a sweet girl—bright-eyed, always with a smile, a laugh. But when I insisted about the police, she got a tough, bitter look on her face, a look I had never seen. She said that man was a monster and he was going to destroy her.”
Abrihet said she was going to run, leave the co
untry via California to Mexico and Europe.
“She couldn’t fly out of the United States without papers. She thought she could find smugglers in Mexico to help her. You see, she came here originally by traveling through South America and crossing from Tijuana. Your hometown, Licenciado.”
Padilla allowed herself a faint smile. Méndez smiled back. She said, “She didn’t have any family here. Few friends. She was so busy all the time. Her plan was to go to Italy, where her brother lives. He migrated to Italy on a boat, like you see on television—the Africans who drown?”
“Yes. They land on the island of Lampedusa. And Sicily.”
Abrihet left Padilla’s house. Later that morning, Padilla got a visit from Louis Krystak, the chief of corporate security.
“The big bald bodyguard,” Méndez said.
“He and another. They were angry. They said Abrihet had stolen valuable property. From the security cameras, they knew she had left the building with me. They asked about one of those little computer sticks, you know.”
“A pen drive. Did Abrihet mention anything about that?”
“No.”
The security men searched Padilla’s house. They grilled her. She told them about the Eritrean’s accusations against Perry Blake. They said Abrihet had lied because she had been caught stealing. Krystak warned Padilla not to talk to the police and ordered her to call him immediately if Abrihet or others contacted her about the matter.
“The next day, we all got fired. The company we worked for were subcontractors of subcontractors, and the building got rid of them. I called the legal-aid lawyer, but I was scared. I changed my mind.”
Jobless and frightened, Padilla was forced to move. She lived for a while with a friend on the Lower East Side, jammed with her children into a tiny spare bedroom. The children were devastated; they missed their house, their yard, their friends. Moreover, Padilla was convinced that Blake security officers were doing surveillance on her.
“Two men—one white, one black—and a woman. They take turns. Sometimes on foot, sometimes in cars. I see them here, at work, at the playground.”
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