Illegal

by Francisco X. Stork

  I placed the ball in the middle of the crescent line, took two steps backward, and kicked with the inner part of my right foot. I kicked the ball down and slightly on the side, so it would lift and spin. The ball floated up fast and hard and then swerved in midair, entering the goal a few inches from the top of the far goalpost.

  I heard the explosion of cheers. There was still clapping when I bent down to put my socks and boots back on. When I stood, Coach Gómez was beside me, shaking his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a goal scored from a corner. That was something to see. Thank you.”

  I looked for Aniela. She was walking to the sideline. Teammates were hugging her and patting her back. I had made her look good.

  “You’re welcome to come anytime. I could use your help. As you can see.”

  “Thank you.”

  Coach Gómez grabbed my arm softly. “Anything I can do. Let me know.” Then, “Aniela is our best player, as you saw. She’s also the smartest student in my physics class. She could have gone to a private school on a scholarship. The school is lucky to have her. We all are.”

  There seemed to be a hidden message behind Coach Gómez’s words. Was he trying to tell me that I was also lucky to be with Aniela? Did he think that we were boyfriend and girlfriend or that I liked Aniela that way? I wanted to tell him that Aniela was someone I had just met, someone who was helping me. But what was so bad that people thought we were a couple? Why did I feel flattered?

  We walked side by side out of the school grounds. When we reached Milwaukee Avenue, Aniela said, “I didn’t know you were such a show-off.”

  It took me a few seconds to translate show-off into Spanish and then to realize that Aniela was joking. “Your coach made me do it.”

  “Did you really intend to score a goal or did the ball just happen to go in?”

  “I intended. Absolutely. Of course.”

  “Mmm.”

  Then Aniela went quiet. Her forehead wrinkled in deep thought. I wondered if I should ask her something, just to make conversation, but Aniela looked comfortable walking in silence. Whatever was occupying her mind, it wasn’t me. Aniela, on the other hand, began to occupy mine. I knew I shouldn’t think about Aniela that way. But when I tried to determine what way was that way, I got confused. If I felt comfortable with her and liked talking to her and walking with her and if I thought she was super bright and if I admired her play on the field and if I felt butterflies in my stomach when our eyes met, was that the same as thinking about her that way?

  That whole line of thought was silly and … inappropriate. How could I be thinking about a girl when my sister’s life was in danger?

  “Stop!” I blurted out.

  “What?” Aniela gave me a look like I was crazy, which was the right look to give me at that moment.

  “I was … telling myself to stop worrying.”

  “It doesn’t work,” Aniela said. “You can’t order your mind to stop worrying. The only thing you can do is distract your mind. Give it something else to focus on.”

  “How old are you anyway?”

  “I’ll be seventeen next month. Why?”

  “It’s just that you seem older. Wiser.”

  “Wiser?”

  “It’s a good thing.”

  “And you? How old are you?”

  “I’ll be eighteen next January,” I said.

  Aniela furrowed her forehead and went back to thinking hard about something. I don’t know what it was, but I was still sure she wasn’t thinking about me. When we got to Pulaski Road, she said, “I got it.”

  “What?”

  Aniela looked excited. “It might just work. I’ve been worried about the possibility of the cell phone sending a signal. Big Shot could be out there waiting with tracking equipment. I’ve been racking my brains thinking about how to prevent that and it just came to me. What we need is the equivalent of a Faraday cage.”

  “Faraway cage?”

  “Faraday,” she corrected me, laughing. “It’s a principle in physics named after Michael Faraday …” She stopped and laughed again. Maybe it was the glassy look in my eyes that she found funny. “Look, that bag where you are keeping the cell phone is sometimes called a Faraday bag. What we need is a room that’s like that bag where we can open the cell phone. We wouldn’t need the room for very long. Just long enough to transfer whatever is in the cell phone into a laptop. I kept thinking all through practice about where we could find such a room. The first thing that came to mind was the walk-in freezer in my school’s cafeteria. I mean, it’s perfect in many ways. A stainless-steel box. But how would we get in there? Then just now, I got it.”

  “You were thinking about all this while you were practicing?” I did a quick inventory of the stuff that I had been thinking about and felt immediately guilty.

  “Not all the time.” She paused. “I did take time to watch you dazzle my teammates.” I was on the verge of figuring out what she meant by that, when Aniela exclaimed, a look of triumph on her face, “The medical examiner’s office!”

  “What?” Did this girl understand that English was my second language? As in a distant second? “You’re going kind of fast. My head is spinning.” Or was the head-spinning more the case that I was beginning to think of her that way?

  Aniela started to walk again. She spoke slower this time. I tried not to feel like a big dummy. “When I was fourteen, Grandpa took me to the medical examiner’s office. It’s the place where they take dead people who are required by law to have an autopsy performed. You know, when the police suspect foul play. Grandpa took me because he thought it would knock some sense into me. He caught me smoking one day in the backyard. He thought seeing a corpse or two would set me straight. Anyway, the Office of the Medical Examiner of Cook County is this massive concrete structure and the rooms where they do the autopsies are down in the basement and when I was down there, people kept complaining about how the cell phones got no signal. So I’m thinking that when we are ready to open the phone, we get Grandpa to take us down there. He has so many friends everywhere that he won’t have any trouble getting us in. We go in, do the transfer, and then get out. Even if a signal manages to eke out of the building, we’ll be gone before anyone can get there.”

  Aniela was smiling to herself. I had the feeling she had once again forgotten I was even there. But then, she turned to me and asked: “I’m wise … and brilliant, don’t you think?”

  I rubbed my chin a few times. “I don’t know about brilliant, but you’re definitely smarter than you look.”

  She bopped me.

  “Ouch!” I rubbed my arm with pretend pain and then turned serious. “When do you think all this will happen? With the cell phone?”

  “We’ll read the memory card as soon as my mother gets home tonight and we can use her phone. If we don’t find anything, we’ll stop by my school tomorrow to develop the print we lift from the phone with the stuff Grandpa will bring. We’ll use the digital microscope and the laser printer in Mr. Gómez’s physics lab and then we’ll have Grandpa drive us to the medical examiner’s office to open the phone. That’s the plan. You like?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But what we hope for is for the memory card to be sufficient.”

  What we hope for.

  I noticed that whenever she said “we,” I felt less alone. I felt stronger from having her by my side working with me on the mission I had made my own. But wasn’t I putting her at risk? “Looking for Big Shot. It might be dangerous.”

  “We’ll be careful,” she said quietly. “Grandpa will be a huge help. He could have made detective, you know. Grandma made him take the test and he passed. But he preferred working the streets as a regular cop. He said detective work was mostly filling out reports. I think he enjoyed the people on his beat. It used to be that policemen worked in a particular neighborhood for long periods of time and everyone knew each other.”

  “Your grandma …”

  “She died five years ago. Mom and I moved in
with Grandpa a couple of years ago after she died and after my mom and dad’s divorce, but Mom and Grandpa fought all the time. They love each other to pieces, but they also disagree about everything, especially politics. Grandpa is a staunch conservative and Mom is about as liberal as they come.”

  “If Stanislaw is conservative, does that mean he doesn’t want people like me in this country?”

  “People like you?”

  “Illegal.”

  “Has he said anything to you?”

  “No. He’s been kind to me. He even gave me his clothes to wear.” I looked down at my legs.

  Aniela laughed. Then a serious look came over her face. “You’re real,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The people his politics want to keep out are just images in their heads or from a television screen or monsters created to scare people. You are flesh and blood. And … you’re the kind of person he likes.”

  “He does?”

  “Yes. He thinks you have principles. As in, you are doing what you believe is right even if it’s hard.”

  “What about you—what do you think about illegals—people like me and my sister?”

  “Oh, God. Please don’t ask me to try to articulate what I feel about immigration.”

  “Come on! It would be good for you to articulate.”

  “Articulating is not my strongest point.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  She stopped walking and sighed. “Okay. I am totally but totally confused about what our immigration policy should be. If it were up to my mom, we would not have borders. Everyone from anywhere that wants to come in could come in. Does that make sense to you?”

  “It doesn’t seem realistic.”

  “Right? There would come a point where everyone would suffer. Those who are here and those coming in.”

  “But that point is a long way away.”

  “Yes. So, in the meantime, there should be a way for this country, for every country that has resources, to be as helpful, as compassionate, and as kind as they can possibly be to those countries that don’t.”

  “That’s good, Aniela.”

  “No, it’s not. Not really. It’s easy for me and people like my mom to talk about being compassionate. My mom goes to marches, she sends money to places that care for immigrant children, she blasts the president’s policies on her Facebook page, but when I asked her if we could sponsor a Central American refugee family by letting them live with us in our apartment, she hemmed and hawed and said we couldn’t do it, as much as she wanted to. We have two extra bedrooms. Our apartment is too big for us. But you know what she said when I asked why we couldn’t do it?”

  “No.”

  “She said just what you said a few seconds ago. It’s not realistic. Of course it’s realistic. It can be done. What she meant is that our lives would totally change. Our lives as we know them would get inconvenient, more uncomfortable. And she’s right. Even if we sponsored one family, there would still be hundreds, thousands who need help. So I don’t know. And then, there is all this hatred everywhere. No one listens to each other. Each side has good ideas, but they’re just interested in calling each other names. It’s just hatred. My mother thinks her hatred is justified because her cause is the right one, but it is still hatred, isn’t it? How is liberal hatred different from conservative hatred? I hate living with so much hatred.” She laughed and then I laughed. She started walking again. “That’s my articulation of immigration, such as it is. You asked for it.”

  “I did. I asked for it.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you like the United States? If you could stay, would you stay? I mean, assuming that Mexico wasn’t dangerous for you, would you go back?”

  “Oh. Those are hard questions. Let me see. I think that in Mexico I feel like I belong all the time. I never feel not wanted like I do here sometimes. Here I’m always looking over my shoulder even when no one is there. Even at night.” I chuckled. Then, “There are so many problems in Mexico, and it can be very difficult to be … who you were meant to be, you know? You could be super smart, but it is hard, and you need a lot of luck, to find a job that uses your smarts. But still, knowing that you belong and are wanted is major. So, would I go back? I have something I need to do here, and after that? I honestly don’t know how to answer your question.”

  “You don’t feel wanted here?”

  “My father’s wife did not want me in her house. She said it was only because I was violating the law. She said that she liked me as a person. Her father, Abe Gropper, wanted me out of the country. He said it was nothing personal. But the truth is that I felt it was personal. Regardless of the reason, the feeling of not being wanted, how can it not be personal? But I have … at times felt wanted here in the United States. Not so much because of the places as because of the people. I felt at home with Gustaf Larsson, the man who rescued me in the desert. I felt like I belonged when I was with my father’s stepson, Trevor. I felt wanted when I was with him. There was this lady I worked for, Mrs. C, Mrs. Costelo. I felt like she accepted me. I feel that way with your grandfather, believe it or not, even though he is a staunch conservative, as you say.”

  “You didn’t feel wanted when you were with your father?”

  A lump instantaneously formed in my throat, and liquid rushed to my eyes. It took me a while before I could speak. “Not always,” I finally said.

  Aniela’s eyes watered as well. There was a long silence between us that did not feel awkward. Then, Aniela said, “After the divorce, after my father moved out. He would tell me that he still loved me. That I shouldn’t take the divorce personally. But how could I not take it personally? The divorce was a rejection of me as well. That’s the truth. The truth can hurt, but it is always good.”

  We stood facing each other. I wanted to speak, to say something about Sara and how she had always fought for the truth. The truth is why she had to come and why she wanted to come to the United States. And here in front of me was someone else who felt the same way. I wanted to say so many things but could not think of a single word.

  Aniela grabbed my hand and squeezed it quickly. She pointed to her right. “We live that way about three long blocks. It’s the street just after the place where they sell flowers. On Kildare Street. 333 Kildare. It’s an ugly three-story building. Just in case you get tired of watching Stanislaw’s fishing shows.”

  “I don’t mind them. They’re … relaxing.”

  “Relaxing is a kind word.”

  “I think I can find my way from here,” I said. “Straight until I get to the park and then turn left. Look for the house with the flag.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you tonight. I’ll come over with Mom as soon as she gets home.”

  Before I could say anything, she had taken off at a run. I watched her for a few minutes and waited for her to turn. I knew she would turn. She had to.

  When she turned and waved, I stretched out my hand toward her. Then I ran to Stanislaw’s house.

  I was out of breath and sweating when I entered Stanislaw’s house. Stanislaw and a short, heavy bald man with the face of a pouting baby were sitting at the kitchen table. They had a pot of coffee between them. Both of them had “bad news” written all over their faces.

  “This is Frank Jaworski, Detective Jaworski, my ex-partner,” Stanislaw said, barely looking at me.

  Frank Jaworski pushed his chair back and stretched his hand across the table.

  “Sit,” Stanislaw said softly.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, pulling out a chair.

  Detective Jaworski looked at Stanislaw, and Stanislaw nodded. Whatever it was, it would be better if Detective Jaworski told me about it.

  “It’s Irene Costelo,” Detective Jaworski said. “Aurora police found her dead this afternoon. They think it was a burglary gone wrong.”

  A burglary gone wrong? Where had I heard that before? That’s what Yoya’s friend said
about the killing of Wes Morgan. I lowered my head and rested my chin on my chest. Then a wave of anger filled me. I banged the table with my fist. “It wasn’t a burglary,” I said. Stanislaw and I looked at each other. “That’s the message you said they were going to send me, isn’t it?”

  Stanislaw shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  “What’s the message?” Detective Jaworski said, mystified.

  “Give them the phone or people will keep dying. My sister too.”

  “I see,” Detective Jaworski said.

  Stanislaw said to me, “I know what’s going through your mind. But you’re wrong. It’s not your fault, boy. Irene is not blaming you for her death, you can be certain of that. She just wants you, us, to find her killers.”

  I looked away from him. At that moment I wasn’t sure whether keeping the phone was worth all the death and suffering. I had received Big Shot’s message loud and clear. If he could kill Mrs. C, who had nothing to do with anything, how hard would it be for him to kill Sara?

  Stanislaw gripped my forearm. “Listen to me. This is no time for drama and no time to lose your resolve. Your best shot at keeping your sister safe is to bring this criminal down. We made some good progress today.”

  “What if I’m putting you in danger? What if Aniela is in danger? What if they tortured Mrs. C and she told them where I was?”

  “Stop that. That’s crazy talk. Irene Costelo wouldn’t do that. And she did not die in vain. I’m not going to let her death be for nothing. Now, are you going to be the man Irene sent to my door or not?”

  I thought of Sara. She wanted me to fight no matter what. I knew that. Mrs. C would want me to as well. I nodded to Stanislaw that I was ready to go on.

  “Good,” he said.

  “So,” Detective Jaworski said, “like Stanislaw said, we got most of the puzzle put together. We’ll talk you through it. Let’s start with the license plate of the Mercedes. It’s from a rented car. The man who rented it is Al Moss. He works for a big-time lawyer in Washington, DC, named Mathew Rupert. Guess who Abe Gropper talked to when he was in Washington, DC.”

  “He said he had been with a deputy director of the Labor Department.”