White Tombs (16 page)

But instead he said, “I’m good at my job. It gives me a purpose in life. A mission.”

It sounded noble as hell. And maybe there was actually some truth to it.

After they finished dinner and the dishes were cleared away, Santana took a glass of wine into the living room and sat down on a couch that was as stiff as his back. Probably a hide-a-bed. On a bookshelf there was a collection of coffee cups from different places that maybe she had visited, as well as framed photos of her family. Like all good Latinas, she treasured her family photos.

A statue of St. Anthony, the saint of lost things, stood on an end table. Santana wondered if she had always had the statue in her apartment, or if she had purchased it after her breakup with Córdova. Maybe hoping for some divine intervention to salvage the relationship.

A beaded rosary was draped over the statue. The strong scent of rose petals crushed and formed into beads carried him back to when he was twelve years old and had seen a similar Spanish Rosary entwined in his father’s lifeless hands.

Santana had gone with his mother and younger sister, Natalia, to a private room at Aparicio’s Funeral Home, the most elegant in Manizales, Colombia. There, his mother had opened the window of the casket to say her final, tearful goodbye to her husband. Time had dulled the sharp pain of that moment but not the memory of it. Ever since that day in the mortuary Santana had never appreciated the beauty of a rose, for he always associated its fragrance with sadness and death.

The wine and the meal had relaxed him, and the tension of the day began melting away. He took out his notebook and a pen, figuring that taking notes would give him something to do besides fall asleep.

Angelina Torres came into the living room carrying her wine glass and the half-empty bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. She struck a match and lit a thick white candle resting in a three-legged metal stand on the coffee table in front of the couch. A burst of phosphorus filled Santana’s nostrils followed shortly by the pleasant scent of vanilla.

As she sat down in an armchair across from him, he said, “I’d like to talk to you further about your relationship with Córdova.”

She looked at him for a time, as if deciding something, before she said, “You can call me Angelina.
Por favor
.”

She said it softly but with feeling. He could have sworn there was something more in her request.

Santana knew that getting too close to a suspect could cloud his judgment, but again a feeling of déja vu came over him, that he had known her before. This time the feeling was stronger, floating closer to the surface of his memory like a familiar name he could not quite recall.

“All right … Angelina.”

Her eyes remained fixed on his.

Then she said, “I knew Rubén for a long time. We were … close once. I can assure you that he did not kill anyone.”

“If that’s true, then I still have to prove someone else did. You could help by answering a few more questions.”

Santana assumed the dinner and wine and lack of sleep would have dulled his senses rather than heightening them, yet the short distance between the two of them suddenly felt as charged as the air before a thunderstorm.

She brushed a strand of her thick hair away from her face and gave him a hesitant smile. He knew then that she felt something, too.

“So tell me,” he said, clearing his throat, “how did you end up in Minnesota?”

He detected a split second of disappointment as her eyes held his gaze for a moment longer before it was replaced by confusion.

“I thought you wanted to know more about Rubén?”

“I think knowing more about you will help me learn more about him.”

“I see. How much do you want to know about me, Detective Santana?”

“Anything that will help me better understand this case. What happened in the past might have contributed to Córdova’s death.”

Santana knew from his own experiences that revisiting memories, particularly if they were traumatic, was like asking her to strip naked in front of strangers. Still, he could never erase the past any more than she could. A part of him would always be the tall, skinny Colombian kid who was born Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Arángo. The sixteen-year old who had changed his name because he naïvely believed it would protect him.

His adoptive parents were the only people he had trusted enough to reveal the dark secrets of his past. Both of the O’Tooles had provided a safe, loving environment. But it was Phil who had charted a clear course for him and given him a renewed sense of purpose.

Phil had taken him to headquarters on many occasions, introduced him to his fellow detectives and convinced him to become a homicide detective. Every murderer Santana put behind bars — or happened to kill in the line of duty — would be one less scumbag terrorizing society. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

“Talking about the past is difficult,” she said. “But I will tell you if it will help.”

Chapter 13

W
HEN SHE BEGAN SPEAKING
, Angelina Torres’ eyes searched Santana’s face, as though looking for some kind of map that might make her journey back in time less difficult. He hoped that the trust and understanding he tried to project would assure her that she was not traveling this difficult road alone.

“I was with my mother, Maria, and younger sister, Margarita. We rode a bus from our small village of Santa Rosa to Agua Prieta on the Arizona border. The bus had a sign on its side that read
Bienvenidos a su Futuro
. I remember thinking as I stood behind the bus terminal with only my jeans, T-shirt and the denim jacket on my back, that our future was very much in doubt. My mother had arranged to meet a man named Ramón who would help the three of us cross.”

Thick smog from the
maquiladoras
made Angelina cough as Ramón led the three of them along a dusty street past the factories, whitewashed adobe homes and churches, and the concrete shells of buildings under construction. Ramón was tall and light skinned like many Mexicans along the border. He had helped her father cross safely three years before. He promised to do the same for the rest of the family for three thousand American dollars, one thousand dollars apiece.

Angelina used a hand to shield her eyes from the dry, warm wind that whirled around her while hustlers trailed along beside them like rats looking for food.

The air smelled of dust, garbage and meat roasting at the stands. Men with new clothes and gold jewelry stood at street corners beside expensive cars with booming stereos calling,
“Hay muchas rocas aquí.”

She wondered why anyone would want to buy a rock of anything, yet some of the filthy, gaunt men who were clustered around the plaza and park benches walked over to the cars and gave the men money.

“They were buying crack,” Santana said.

“I know that now. But at the time I was so naïve. I remember seeing pictures of white crosses, shoes and clothes hanging on the metal wall in Tijuana. I did not know until my mother told me that each cross stood for someone who had died in the desert. I prayed to
La virgen de Guadalupe
that we would not end our lives that way. That night we stayed in a safe house.”

It was a dilapidated clapboard
taqueria
with bunk beds in small rooms and
cucarachas
that skittered across the floor when candles were lit. Patches of cement hung like loose skin peeled away from bone, revealing the skeleton of pine beams that held up the fragile frame.

“We will cross at eleven tonight when the border patrol changes shifts,” Ramón said. “It has been done many times before. Do not worry. This is how your father, Juan Miguel, crossed safely.”

Ramón’s smile seemed to be genuine, though it revealed one missing front tooth and gaps between many of the others.

“There is a full moon tonight,” he said. “But we must avoid the
judiciales
. The Mexican police will want us to pay the
la mordida
to let us cross.”

The house had no heat, and as the shadows along the horizon extinguished the last rays of sunlight, Angelina wrapped herself in a
serape
and sat on an old mattress on a small bunk in the room and slowly ate a cold
tortilla.
Through the thin door she could hear whispered voices and occasional footsteps in the hallway.

She thought of her father and how much she missed him. He had not written because he did not know how, but he always sent a picture with the money he had earned. In the last picture he had sent he looked very thin and very pale. She worried that the work in the grape fields in California with the
braceros
had not been good for him. If he was sending all his money to them, what was he living on she wondered? When they were all together again, she would help him get strong once more. As the oldest child in the family, she had a responsibility to help. She had to be strong for all of them.

“Drink plenty of water,” her mother advised them. “The night will be long.”

Angelina Torres paused for a moment in the story and sipped her wine. The candles burning on the coffee table had filled her apartment with a rich, vanilla scent.

Santana held her gaze for a time, but then her eyes drifted away from him and focused on some distant point beyond the room.

“It was ten thirty when Ramón drove us along Pan American Avenue and past the searchlights to the outskirts of town,” she continued.

The wall had not been completed between Agua Prieto and Douglas, Arizona, and barbed wire was still the only barrier along the border. Another coyote had joined them. Ramón called him Jesse. He sat up front in the Ford Bronco with his back against the passenger door, half-turned, an arm resting on the back of the seat.

“
Buenas noches, pollitos
,” he said with a hard laugh.

Angelina did not know why Jesse called them chickens and she did not ask.
El cara cortada
, as she would remember him, had a long scar on the left side of his face. A wiry, dark Zapoteca Indian from Huaxaca, she thought he was about thirty-two, the same age as her father.

Ramón parked the Ford Bronco in a restaurant lot and got out. Angelina saw other trucks and vans unloading groups of people.

“
Ándale!
” Ramón said.

She took one of Margarita’s hands and her mother took the other as Ramón hurried them across the highway and down a steep embankment toward the border road. Her heart pounded as she ran, and she tried to calm the fear that rushed like blood through her body. In the light of the full moon she could see that the desert floor was littered with empty water jugs and discarded clothing as she fell in line behind her mother and sister. Others had joined them now, and she counted ten shadows in the group.

When they approached the border road, Ramón stopped suddenly and said, “
Agáchate!
”

Angelina crouched in the darkness in a ditch and watched as a border patrol car passed by, dragging a tire along the soft dirt road, smoothing it out. Her mother and sister were on either side of her and she grabbed each of their hands and held them tight.

“They will come back every half hour looking for footprints,” Ramón said when the car had passed. “Tie these around your shoes.”

Out of a burlap bag, he took pieces of carpet and rope.

Angelina helped her mother and sister before tying the carpet around her own shoes.

“We must cross through the barbed wire now,” Ramón said. “Be careful of the camera.”

He pointed to his right. “It moves like magic and has the eyes of an owl.”

About a hundred yards away, Angelina could see the tall pole where a camera was mounted.

“When it is time,” she whispered to her sister, “stay low.”

“
Vamos
,” Ramón said in a hard whisper.

Bent double at the waist, she led her family to the barbed wire fence. The one called Jesse put his foot on the lower strand of barbed wire and lifted the upper strand with a hand.

“
Cuidado, señorita
,” he said to her.

She smelled the tequila in the open bottle he held in one hand as she passed carefully under the wire and stepped into the United States. Jesse cut the rope holding the carpet on her shoes with a large knife while she waited for her sister and mother to cross.

Then Ramón said, “
Ándale, ándale
. We have many miles to go.”

Stumbling along, trying to find the ground that seemed to drop away from her with every step, Angelina occasionally heard the low whirring noise of a helicopter in the distance.

“Remember,” Ramón warned, “lie down in the bushes and do not look up at the helicopter if it comes. Your eyes will reflect in the searchlight, and they will know we are here.”

Thorns from the
mesquite
and
creosote
bushes snagged her jeans. A branch of lightening lit the belly of dark clouds that crested the mountains to the northeast. Finally, at the top of a hill, she saw the lights of a city in the distance.

“Are we in California?” Margarita asked loudly enough that others in the group heard her and broke out in laughter.

“That is only the town of Douglas, Arizona,” Ramón said. “We have come only three miles. There is a van waiting for us, but it is another eighteen miles. You will see. We must circle the city first to avoid the vigilante patrols. We will rest later.”

Angelina’s legs began to ache as they continued walking for hours through riverbeds and barbed wire fences and up and down sloping foothills, though she refused to complain.

“I am tired,” Margarita said.

“Are you planning to have us walk all the way to Phoenix,
señor?
” Maria asked.

“No, no,
señora
. We can rest here for a short time.”

The desert sand felt cool to the touch as Angelina sat down beside her mother and sister. Though it was May, her breath floated like smoke around her, and the three of them huddled together trying to protect themselves from the night air that was as cold as ice water against the skin.