Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (19 page)

Today, 11:45 a.m.

he could be anywhere by now. She could be standing at
the next bus stop, or long gone out of my life.
I

I should listen to Nana and head back to work. But instead I drive around Santa Ana looking for a little girl in the
rain. The few who are out in this weather are huddled under
bus stops next to their mothers or grandmothers, looking like
pink and purple marshmallows in their puffy rain jackets.

Go back to work. Even though I'll put another month on
these boots, I need every cent of my pathetic paycheck as a
news assistant with the Orange County Tribune.

But I keep driving down East 1st Street toward the freeway as the rain and wind batter my car. Maybe the woman
who took Pricila is her aunt and they're on a grand adventure
to visit relatives in Mexico. Or Pricila is locked in the cold terror that she'll never see her own nana or mom again.

A few minutes later, I'm dripping water at the front desk
of Santa Ana PD.

"How may I help you?" a clerk asks without getting up
from her desk.

"I need to report a missing child."

I'm taken behind the counter with Officer Darrin Kravetz
into an interview room. His gray eyes are so kind that I can't
picture him cornering a suspect in an alley with his gun drawn.

We do fine until he asks for my name.

"Danielle Dawson."

He looks up. "How are you related to the Pricila Ruiz?"

"I'm not. I'm a reporter, I mean news assistant, and Pricila
and her grandmother-" I stop myself from saying hid with
us. Clearing my throat, I say, "They stayed with its last night
when ICE raided their home."

"Why didn't her grandmother come in with you?"

"She was arrested an hour ago. Pricila's mother is in jail
awaiting her arraignment."

"How do you know Pricila isn't with family or friends?"

"My na- My grandma saw her leave with a woman who
was paid to take her away."

He puts down his pen and gives me that look like I'm the
kind of person who has left a shopping cart full of her worldly
belongings out in front of the station.

"I'm not making this up," I say. "I just want to help a little
girl."

"Why?"
•

Because even at thirty-two, I'll never forget the helplessness of waiting for someone to pick me up from school or feed
me dinner. Because my mother left me when the sheriffs came
with her eviction notice and the court gave me to my nana
and grandpa. Because I might have had a little girl Pricila's
age if things had been different.

Officer Kravetz leans back in his seat. "I'm having a hard
time following you. Who's the dad? You talk to him?"

"Not really."

Officer Kravetz doesn't like where this is going. "Got a
name?"

"Jim Westfall. He's with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement."

The cop's eyebrows arch up and he shakes his head. "You
really want me to call an ICE agent and ask about a little girl
who an unauthorized immigrant claims is his?"

"He's the dad. Says so on Pricila's birth certificate." Now
I'm beginning to wish I'd gone back to work.

"All right." Officer Kravetz says it like I've just sealed a
very nasty fate. "Let me call this guy and get to the bottom of
it, okay?"

"Okay. Thank you."

"Want anything to drink? Coffee or some water?"

"No thank you."

"Be right back."

He leaves me in the room with the buzzing fluorescent light.

I sit back in my chair. My feet ache with cold and I
should've eaten something before I got myself into this. Six
months ago, my biggest dilemma was which floor plan to pick
for my new town home in Newport Beach. Now I'm sitting in
a police station, my boss has been calling my cell nonstop, and
I live with my grandmother.

I can't hear anything outside these walls; it's completely
soundproof.

Last night, 8:30 p.m.

In Santa Ana there are two types of neighborhoods: the historically significant neighborhoods with names like French Park
and Floral Park, and the other neighborhoods. My grandma
lives in one of the others.

I turn off North Bristol onto West 3rd and then make a
right on Hesperian. Except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and
Easter at Nana's house, the farthest I'd head up on Bristol
was the northernmost tip of Nordstrom at South Coast Plaza.
Now this is home. Again.

Nana's two-story bungalow stands on the corner. The
skeleton of last spring's sweet peas cling to her chain-link
fence, and even though she has the space, she still grows her
roses and calla lilies in buckets.

As a kid, I used to hide in the avocado tree from my cousins. When you're the only blond, half-white kid in a family
of small, brown Mexicans from Jalisco, you know you're a
grown-up the moment a white-person joke doesn't punch
your flight-or-fight button.

Nana walks out of the kitchen. She's still dressed in her
suit but she must have stopped for a pedicure after work.
Her toenails are now purple. When she sees it's me, she asks,
"Where you been?"

I open my mouth to begin a litany of grievances against
my boss when a sharp report shakes the floor. White light
bursts through the windows-the kind you see in alien invasion movies-and where there was a quiet street of parked
cars and dim porch lights, SUVs and cop cruisers now block
its in.

"Did you hear that?" Chachi shouts. My cousins run out
of the house to the yard.

Nana shouts at them to come back inside. "Do you want
to get shot?"

As a reporter, I should dash out with my press pass, cell
phone, and notepad. But the paper doesn't pay me enough
and the walls of Nana's aren't even half as thick as the last
Harry Potter book. I follow my nose into the kitchen where
a vat of posole simmers on the stove. I make myself a bowl,
heavy on the hominy. The oily broth scalds my hand. I've been
here almost a year and I'm still not accustomed to the almost
nightly visits from law enforcement that remind its we live in
the "bad" part of town.

Someone bangs on the back door. I turn, about to call
Chachi an asshole for scaring me. But a woman stares back at
me through the window. Her eyes are almost white with terror
and then I see the little girl standing next to her.

I instinctively know to let them in. Without a word, I lead
them out of the kitchen and up the stairs to my room. The
little girl asks in a voice thin with confusion where they're going and the old lady shushes her. Then the little girl cries out,
"Mommy! I want my mommy!"

"Nina, shush!" Her grandma covers her mouth as if the
cops outside might hear them. "Esta bien. Esta bien."

The flashing lights from the police cars dance on the walls
and I hear their radios. A dog barks and I think of Jews hiding
in attics. My body rocks from the force of my heartbeat.

As they move into my bedroom, I look down on the little girl's head. I hold back from brushing my hand over her
French braid because she's not mine to do so.

"Mommy, what's wrong? What's happening?" Pricila asked as her
mother pulled her away from the kitchen sink.

"You have to go. Now!"

Nana's hands were wet from washing the dishes. Pricila looked
down at the drops they made on the floor.

Mommy pulled her close and held her tight. Then she pushed
Pricila away. For a moment, her mother stared into her eyes. Her
voice shook when she said, "Go, baby. Go with Nana, okay? I'll
catch up with you."

And then that terrible bang happened and Nana pulled Pricila
into the yard and they ran in the dark.

They made it to the house next door. Pricila sat at the table,
pressed as tightly as she could against her nana. She tried not
to look at anyone or wonder where her mommy had gone. She thought about Sleeping Beauty dancing with the animals dressed
in the prince's clothes. She thought about her friend Heaven, who
brought blue glitter nail polish to school. She wondered if Mommy
would still rent her a movie for getting 100s on her spelling tests
last month.

"Senora Duran-"

"Por favor, senora, please call me Bettina," Pricila's nana
said.

"Bettina," the old lady continued, "are you sure you won't
have some posole?"

"No thank you. Coffee is fine."

"Do you have anyplace to go?" the pretty blond lady asked.

Pricila peeked out. The blond lady didn't talk like a princess
but she looked like one with curly hair and big brown eyes. She had
a deep, serious voice and when she caught Pricila looking at her,
she smiled crookedly.

"He'll find us," Nana croaked. "He's the one who did this. To
get Pricila. He don't want her. He want to punish my Gina."

Pricila's chest froze with fear as Nana started to cry. The old
lady reached out and took her hand.

"Who will find you?" the pretty lady asked.

"El padre de la nina."

The pretty lady frowned. The old lady, who Pricila guessed
was her nana, then asked, "He called la migra on you?"

Pricila knew Nana was talking about her daddy. She hadn't
seen him in a long time. Mommy said she and Daddy were mad at
each other. Even though she said Pricila hadn't done anything, she
knew they fought because of her.

"No, no," Nana sniffled. "He is la migra."

"Danielle, take Pricila to watch TV" the old lady said.

Pricila held onto her nana tighter.

"We have some good movies," the pretty lady said.

Pricila breathed in her nana's smell but her nana started to
push her away.

"Go, nina," Nana said. "Let me talk to Senora Melendez,
okay?"

Pricila shook her head, fighting to stay close to her nana. Her
throat burned as she bit down to keep from crying. Another hand
touched her back but then pulled away. Pricila could feel it hovering close.

The pretty lady named Danielle leaned in and whispered, "My
nana doesn't know this but . . . " She paused and Pricila couldn't
help but look into her brown eyes. "I have some chocolate ice cream
hidden in the freezer. Would you like some?"

Mommy never let her have ice cream on a school night and
only when they could afford it.

"Go on, nina," Nana said. "I'll be right here."

Pressing her chin to her chest, Pricila slid off the chair. Danielle
offered her hand and Pricila took it.

Today, 7:45 a.m.

My body tells me I've reached an age where I'll be stiff after a
night tossing and turning on my nana's ancient couch. I kept
thinking about nine-year-old Pricila Ruiz sleeping in my room.

Before I left for work, Nana gave me the rundown on
the raid next door. Even though it was awkward-I've never
really spent much time around kids-I was glad to have taken
Pricila into the TV room last night so she didn't have to relive
the feds breaking down her front door.

My friend Jake, who got me this job, now sits next to me
in Warren Ramsey's office. I can see the empty lots that the
city bought along Santa Ana Boulevard for a "gateway" to
downtown. My Aunt Eloisa's little craftsman bungalow was
sold two years ago and then leveled, only to be fenced off. I see the ghost of that house when I drive by it and remember
how she'd walk me to the depot to watch the trains.

Warren is the news editor and the one I have to convince
to let me branch out from entering calendar items into the
system and writing briefs published under my team leader's
byline. A story about last night's raid might be a front-page
clip and make this whole reporting thing worth it. I've never
hustled so hard for so little money, but advertising got hit hard
by the economy and this job is better than nothing.

ICE agents arrested Pricila Ruiz's mother, Gina. The little
girl's nana, Bettina, claimed the arrest was set up by ICE agent
Jim Westfall after Gina threatened to fax a copy of Pricila's
birth certificate to his wife's office if he didn't help her get a
green card.

Gina had come to the U.S. on a student visa in 1996 to
attend USC. Bettina came to the U.S. on a visitor's visa to see
Gina graduate magna cum laude and together they stayed.
She was doing pretty well with an accounting job at Arthur
Andersen that sponsored her work visa. But the company
laid her off in 2001 and Gina couldn't get another job with a
company that would sponsor her green card. Pricila had just
turned a year old.

Bettina said Westfall and his wife couldn't have kids, but I
didn't tell Warren that. Westfall promised to marry Gina and
streamline her citizenship process so they could be a family.
But the divorce and the papers never came to pass and Gina
ended it, making threats to force Westfall to at least fix her
legal status. He disappeared from Pricila's life and then Gina
received a court order to leave the country. She texted Westfall his wife's office fax number, as a reminder of what would
happen if he didn't help her. But then ICE agents busted
down her door.

I try to catch my breath when I finish my pitch. Jake nods
her head at me with approval. She says that my losing my
advertising job is good for my karma. I think she likes it now
that she makes more money than I do.