Heaven Is High (2 page)

He released Binnie's hand, patted it, then said, “Show her the message.”

Binnie looked at Barbara, her big eyes questioning. When Barbara nodded, she reached into the bag at her feet and removed an envelope, extracted a folded paper, and handed it to Barbara.

“It was rolled up so small for years,” he said, “Mama flattened it with an iron. I had it Xeroxed on a regular-size paper and put the original away in a safe. That's the copy.”

The message was centered on the 8½ × 11–inch paper where it took less than half a page. The writing was very small and neat, almost schoolgirl neat, like a penmanship sample for a test. Barbara read it slowly.

My name is Shala Santos and Lavinia Santos is my daughter. My sister is Anaia. She married an American named Lawrence. I do not know his surname. We are citizens of Belize. I was a passenger on a freighter on my way to my fiancé's parents in Jamaica and we were attacked by pirates. Every man aboard was murdered, including my betrothed Juan Hernandez. He was Lavinia's father. Domonic Guteriez took me to Haiti where he held me captive. When he learned that my father was a businessman, he tried to ransom me back to my family. An emissary arrived, but when he discovered that I was pregnant, he declared that I was not the daughter of Augustus Santos, and that Shala Santos had perished at sea. I became a slave to Domonic. When Lavinia was born mute, he grew fearful and believed she was cursed, that a birthmark over her heart was a sign of the curse. I told him that if he harmed her, the curse would punish him severely and he never touched her, and ordered me to keep her hidden away. He never let my daughter leave the house with me for fear I would escape with her. Now I am ill and know I shall die. I write this in order for my daughter to have knowledge of her heritage. I have told her that she must escape alone.

Barbara reread the message even more slowly, then put the paper down on the futon. Both Martin Owens and Binnie were watching her intently. Binnie's hand was again in his.

“Your mother passed away? Then you swam out to the yacht?”

Binnie nodded, but Martin said in a mean tone he had not used before, “There's one other little bit to add to that. Domonic was negotiating the sale of my wife to a pimp. He had prostituted her mother and planned to turn Binnie over to a guy who would do the same thing to her. A day or two after her mother died, she heard them bickering over the price. That's when she ran away.” He kept his voice low, but it was more frightening than it would have been if he had shouted the words.

Binnie pulled her hand loose and touched his arm. When he turned his gaze to her, her hands moved rapidly in what Barbara thought must be American Sign Language. After a moment, he shook his head hard, and she made the same gestures even faster. Barbara had the impression that if her words had been spoken, she would have been shouting.

When he shook his head again, she reached for her bag, and this time pulled out a notebook and pen.

With an agonized expression he put his mammoth hand over hers and said to Barbara, “She wants me to tell you she'll kill herself before she'll go back to Haiti.”

2

“Exactly what did you hear from the immigration people?” Barbara asked.

“We have until next Friday to produce a certified birth certificate,” Martin said. “And we can't do it. As for an expert in immigration, a special lawyer, we tried that. After we left my mother's house, we went to Chicago to consult such a lawyer and he said our only choice was to go to INS, that sooner or later they'd catch up with us, and the longer we dodged them the harder they'd be on her. They'd deport her, Ms. Holloway, send her back to Haiti. He said that letter from her mother didn't mean a thing, it isn't a legal document, and that if that man, Domonic, claiming to be her father, accused the team of kidnapping a minor for immoral purposes, I could probably buy him off, but that would be a tacit admission of his claim. Catch-22.”

“Please excuse me for a minute,” Barbara said, rising from the futon. “I'll put on coffee and copy the names on that message from your mother, if I may.”

“Let me make the coffee while you get the names,” Martin Owens said, almost leaping to his feet, drawing Binnie up with him. “One more thing, Ms. Holloway. That lawyer said that by resigning, leaving the NFL like I did, I probably made them suspect that I was the one who kidnapped her.”

Well, of course, Barbara thought, but she said nothing, and walked into the kitchen with both of them at her heels. She pointed to the coffeemaker and the cabinet. “Help yourself. I won't be long.”

In her office she sat for a minute before glancing at the words. Pirates! Slaves, curses, kidnapping charge, transporting a minor for sex not only across a state line but from one country to another! Belize! She didn't even know where Belize was. It was hopeless, too implausible to accept without a lot of proof. And they had none at all. Obviously Martin Owens was intelligent, and apparently Binnie was, too, and she was courageous, if their story was anywhere near the truth. They both understood the situation. But Barbara knew how unlikely it was for INS to show any leniency whatsoever. Young single women looking for a way out of their own country, looking for an American husband, were anathema to immigration officials. The fact that she had landed one would only confirm their suspicions. Marrying an American citizen conferred citizenship automatically for legal immigrants, but not for Binnie. Without a Social Security card, birth certificate, visa, or driver's license, without a scrap of paper to attest to her identity, she was an undocumented illegal immigrant, and she was subject to deportation. Impatiently Barbara stepped off the carousel that, no matter how fast it whirled about, always returned to that bleak starting point.

She knew there was nothing she could do for them beyond finding someone qualified to give good advice, possibly intercede on their behalf, on the chance that the attorney they had consulted had not been a real expert. She suspected that what he had told them would be repeated, however. She also knew she could not simply send them away, not after reading that letter. She shook her head. Not just that, but rather after seeing how Binnie had reached for his hand, how he had looked at her. His expression had been so soft, so loving it had been wrenching. She felt she had to give them some hope, a glimmer of hope, while she searched for the right attorney.

She copied the names, and when she left her office she took her legal pad with her along with the letter.

Martin Owens had put cups on the table and he said the coffee was nearly ready. He had brought back the chair she had taken out for Binnie. “If there's another chair I could bring in, maybe it would be better here.”

“In the office,” she said, pointing. “I'm afraid it won't be very comfortable.”

“I'll try not to break it,” he said, then grinned as if he knew exactly what she had meant.

For the next hour she asked questions and they answered without hesitation. They had stayed in Chicago for several months, but too many people recognized him, and he had become alarmed, afraid someone would pass the word to someone who would notify immigration. They went to Las Vegas, where they were married.

Barbara interrupted to ask how Binnie had learned ASL, if she had gone to school. Binnie shook her head and her hands spoke to him.

“No school,” he said. “Her mother got hold of a book and they learned it together. Binnie taught me. I'm not good at it the way she is, but she thinks there's hope for me.”

Binnie's smile at that was radiant, beautiful. Her hands moved rapidly, and he shook his head. She looked at Barbara and first pointed to him, then held up a thumbs-up sign of approval.

“Okay,” Barbara said, smiling. “After Las Vegas, what next?”

“New Orleans,” he said. “I got a job in a restaurant, cooking.”

She imagined that he meant flipping hamburgers, but he went on to say, “See, I got this scholarship to Georgia Tech, you know, for football. No one expects the players to do much in the way of classes, just patty-cake stuff, but I got into culinary arts. I always liked to cook and I had a knack for it. I didn't care if they thought it was just another easy way to get classtime credits. And a little restaurant management, courses like that. So in New Orleans, I got a job in a pretty good restaurant and learned a lot more and we stayed there for a year and a half, then headed up here to open a restaurant. I thought enough time had passed that we'd be off the hook, on the back burner, a buried file, something like that. I was wrong. Another mistake on my part.”

“When did you leave Haiti?” Barbara asked Binnie then.

She held up three fingers, and he said, “Three years ago, in April.”

When Barbara asked how old she was, Martin answered, “Twenty-one. She was eighteen when she swam out to the yacht.”

“It's important,” Barbara said. “It will give us a clue about when the piracy occurred, a possible starting place.”

He looked at Binnie, who looked down at her hands, then nodded slightly. “She isn't sure,” he said. “Her mother told her at one time it was her tenth birthday, but she never said exactly when her birth date was. She thinks her mother lost track of the time, the date. She had no way to keep up with it. Ms. Holloway, she was really a slave, no clock, no current newspapers. She picked one up now and then, and she taught Binnie to read using newspapers, but they usually were out-of-date. She lost track.”

Then surprisingly he spoke to his wife with his hands. To Barbara's eyes he appeared to be as adept as Binnie was. They held a silent conversation while she waited.

“I asked her if she would be willing to show you the things she wrote down for me before I could understand ASL,” he said. “She wants to let you read her notes.”

Not me, Barbara thought. Someone should read them but not me. She nodded however. Soon after that she said, “Let's leave it for now. I need a little time to make some inquiries. As I said, I'm not an expert in this field. Tell me how to get in touch with you. I'll try to make it by tomorrow afternoon. Saturday at the latest.”

He gave her two telephone numbers and mentioned the restaurant. “We'll be open tonight and tomorrow night, then I'm closing until this is over. We'll be there tomorrow from about ten in the morning until about ten thirty or a little later. We don't take new customers after nine.”

When she went to the door with them, he took her hand in both of his and said, “Ms. Holloway, thank you. More than I can say, thank you.”

She watched them walk out into the rain, with him holding the umbrella over Binnie. She wanted to shout after them, “Don't thank me! I don't have answers for you!”

In her kitchen again she refilled her coffee cup and took it to her office to make a few notes. First call someone. First, she amended, find out who would know about immigration law. She leaned back, thinking, sipping the coffee. It was very good, the best she'd had in her own house, she realized. How had he done that? Her coffee, her coffeemaker, and excellent coffee, proving something that she didn't like to admit. A lousy cook, she couldn't even make a decent cup of coffee.

Herman Krugman, she thought suddenly. Of course. He had lectured her class on immigration law a couple of times. It was twelve thirty, three thirty in New York, not a bad time to call, if he was still at Columbia, if he was still teaching, if he had the faintest memory of her and would take her call.

After going through two different offices, she got his number and an answering machine. She left a message. She would call again at five thirty.

Looking at the names she had copied, another thought surged. If Martin Owens really was suspected of kidnapping a minor, why hadn't the FBI come for him long before now? Why hadn't there been a big splash in the newspapers about it? A player in the National Football League suspected of kidnapping a minor, even she would have heard something about it. If Domonic Guteriez claimed her as his daughter, was that the name he had given for her, Lavinia Guteriez? Certainly she would not have used that name anywhere, at any time. She would have used her mother's name, Santos. Had she called herself Binnie Santos on the marriage license? If yes, then why had the Chicago attorney leaped to the kidnapping charge? Martin Owens must have brought it up, and she had not thought to tell him not to talk about it, not to talk about any of this again with anyone. Next time, she ordered herself. Tell him next time.

If she had decided to take them on as clients, she would have kept them much longer, asked many more questions, demanded answers, but she had kept it superficial, knowing she had to turn them over to someone else. She knew too damn little even to do that much, she thought in irritation.

She needed more information, she decided. How much of that story was pure fantasy, how much real? Her decision about the library had been made for her, she realized, leaving her office to put on a poncho and pick up the books to be returned. She needed the library and the archives of
The New York Times.

She hurried now. In two hours she wanted to be back at her house to try Krugman again.

*   *   *

It was twenty-five minutes after two when she entered her house later. She left the library books on the end table in the living room, that night's reading material, two books on Belize. She also had a dozen or so articles she had photocopied that she took to her desk. Her shoes were wet, and her poncho was dripping. No umbrella was quite big enough to keep the rain all the way off. In her office a minute later, wearing warm house slippers, and after leaving her poncho on the shower curtain rod, where as many drips hit the floor as hit the tub, she placed another call to Krugman's office at Columbia. This time he picked up the phone.

“Ms. Holloway, it's always a pleasure to hear from former students,” he assured her when she apologized for disturbing him with the long-distance call. “How can I be of assistance?”