Victims (14 page)

The Rollands stared at her.

“Tell me something,” Miranda whispered, leaning toward them, a confidante asking for information, to be enlightened. “Was it better when it was for real? Did it have more...more
punch
to it? Did it make it better for you, more exciting, when you knew, for sure, that what was going on out there was the
real
thing?”

No one said a word; they all stared at Miranda, who finally turned and walked to the window. She shoved the heavy drapes aside, and kept her back to the room.

And then, in a calm voice, speaking as though Miranda had never spoken, Mike Stein asked, “What did you do after you left the window?”

The Rollands followed Mike’s lead. They ignored Miranda. “Oh, we just went to bed,” Mr. Rolland said.

Mrs. Rolland pinched his arm very hard this time. “It was very hot and we’d let all that hot air into the apartment, so we closed the window down, and the blind. And the drapery. And we went to bed because the bedroom is kept nice and cool. What with the air conditioner and all.”

“And you never thought to call the police—to dial 911?”

Mrs. Rolland widened her magnified eyes. “About what, Mr. Stein? Far as we could tell, what those people were doing down there was a private matter.”

“What they were ‘doing down there’?
He was stabbing her, Mrs. Rolland! She was bleeding to death! Down there. Under your window.”

Mrs. Rolland shrugged her shoulders and crossed her arms over her body. “We’re not mindreaders, you know.”

A while later, maybe a half hour or so, they had heard all the commotion: police cars and ambulances and sirens and whatever. They got dressed and went downstairs, just like anyone else, to see what was going on.

“How did you feel about what had happened to that young woman, Mrs. Rolland? Mr. Rolland?”

Mrs. Rolland answered for both of them, and her voice was loud and clear. “I felt that it was their own business and we were right not to interfere.”

M
IRANDA INVITED HIM INTO
her apartment this time. “I don’t make good coffee,” she told him. “I’m a tea drinker, so if you’re interested, you’re on your own.”

“Fair enough. Would you like me to make a cup of tea for you? You look like you could use it.”

“Oh? No. Look, I’ll be right back. I want to change into something else. I feel clammy and...I’ll be right back.”

The pullman kitchen was in a recessed section of the living room, easy to conceal when the blind was let down. The living room was small, neat, cool, carefully composed. It reflected Miranda: precise and crisp and yet there was a quality of serenity, shadows and softness, an air of comfort, a good place to be. He studied her collection of books; the shelves lined the long wall of the room, from floor to ceiling. Heavy on nonfiction and textbooks: Miranda the student. It caught his eye, the bright garish color his publisher insisted would make his book a standout,
A Murder in Vietnam,
by Mike Stein. It was lying flat on top of some current books.

She was wearing an extra-large knee-length man-tailored light-blue shirt. It had an effect: a slender young female body lost inside a strong masculine garment. It conjured innocence and vulnerability. And a certain calculation. Or so Mike Stein read into it. She was barefoot, and he was aware of her long slender legs. She combed her fingers through her short thick dark hair, waved him toward the couch. She brought a plate of cheese and crackers and a bowl of fruit to the cocktail table. She seemed very tense.

“Mr. Stein, I want you to know something. I do not usually react to what people tell me during an interview. It was very stupid of me and very unprofessional.”

It was really bothering her.

“Miranda, what the hell. No big deal. These were very unpleasant people and—”

“No. No, you do
not
understand. I am ashamed of the way I behaved. It wasn’t really directed at them. What they do in the privacy of their own home, that is their business. But you see, I
am
bothered by what is happening, what always happens when a woman is murdered. The focus is so strongly on her, as a woman. Her behavior, her actions, her very presence at a certain location, at a certain time, become questionable. Suspicious. We start with the woman and we rob her of all privacy, all dignity. We go into areas of her life that have nothing to do with her murder. We are trying to connect her with her murderer—not just to find him. But to blame her, in some way, in any way we can, for her own murder.”

“We’re in pretty much the same business, Miranda. We both gather information. You use it one way, I use it another.”

“I am curious about something, Mr. Stein.” She gestured toward his book. “If this man, this son of Chief Cordovan,
was
involved in the drug trade, and all the other things going on, if you found it out, would you have written about it? Would you have been able to do that?”

Mike Stein picked up the copy of his book, gazed at it, then at her. “Miranda, I did not go to Vietnam to prove that the death of Art Cordovan’s son was murder. We had an understanding, Art and I.
Whatever
we uncovered as truth, that was what I would write. No matter what.”

“And would you have done that, written the truth, if his son had been involved? Could you have done that?”

Firmly, holding her by his intensity, he said, “I would write the truth. It was the whole point, Miranda. A search for the truth.”

“Yes. I believe that. I believe you would have written whatever you found. As you did.”

The mood changed; they relaxed, he enjoyed looking at her on her own ground. His voice went low and easy, his eyes moved slowly, taking pleasure in her. “So, Miranda. Tell me about yourself. Tell me about Miranda. I love to say your name. Miranda.”

“Here I am. As you see me. At my best. At my worst. Just here I am. Miranda.”

“Who do you love, Miranda? Right now, who?”

“Right now? Romantically?” She shook her head. “Right now, no one. And, no discussion, please. Of romantic matters.”

He picked up a framed photograph of a young boy. The resemblance was very strong. “This is your son? Handsome boy. But so serious. How old is he?”

“He is ten years old. Mannie. Very serious.” She pulled a mock-severe expression, then smiled.

“Where is he?”

“In Florida. Fort Lauderdale, with his father. And a whole big family. Even my mother is there. In Florida. Part of this whole big family.”

“Now, that is intriguing. Tell me, how old were you when you were married? How old when you had this little boy?”

Miranda settled down on a comfortable overstuffed chair that faced the couch. She swallowed some iced tea and told him, “I was married at sixteen. I had Mannie—Emmanuel Hernandez, Jr.—when I was seventeen. We divorced when I was nineteen.”

Miranda and her mother had lived together in a small South Bronx apartment inside the borders, not yet burned out, but considered a danger zone. Just the two of them; her father had died in a mugging; her two sisters had married and moved away; her brother had died of an overdose. There was a grandfather, who Miranda only recently realized was not more than fifty-five at the time of his death.

It was the second big occasion of a poor family’s life, the occasion worth going into debt for: a decent funeral. A big wedding was the other end of the scale, and a big funeral, nicely done, was a sign not only of respect but of stability. There wasn’t too much of that in the South Bronx. Miranda’s grandfather had a fine send-off.

A week after her grandfather’s funeral, her mother sat down with her in their small kitchen and told her about a date she had arranged for Miranda. Miranda was very angry but very curious: her mother had never before done such a thing.

Emmanuel Hernandez was the handsomest man Miranda had ever seen. He was tall and clean and so well groomed and soft-spoken and polite, like a prince from a storybook, and treated Miranda like a princess and her mother like a queen. They went to dinner and he drove a limousine: it was part of his family’s business, he said, an automobile service. He didn’t say much more. Emmanuel was ten years older than Miranda and he really didn’t have too much to say about anything, but he was a polite listener, dinner after dinner. And then he told her about Florida: the sunshine, the pleasant lifestyle.

“It all happened so quickly. One day, the South Bronx, Mama and me, and then, boom! Florida. A big house, a large family. Oh, many brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins. And children. So many, all so perfect. Nice clothes, nice manners, such quiet, well-educated, grown-up little children. And everybody, somehow or other, involved in this...this family ‘business.’”

Mike covered his eyes with his hand for a moment and shook his head. “You mean you married into a family of undertakers?”

Miranda stood up and shook her head. Her voice changed: she was good at imitations. “‘Oh, no, no. Not that ugly unprofessional word. Please.
Funeral directors.’”
Again in her own voice, “My husband’s father explained the whole thing. There are not many avenues open to bright Puerto Rican entrepreneurs in the States. Besides a bodega, a
farmacia,
a tourist office for cheap flight arrangements, bail bondsmen. So, what is left?” She drew back, let her voice go low again.
“Death.
‘Death, Miranda, dear child. Just a fact of life. Which provides us all, and will for all our generations, with all the good things we all deserve.’”

“You mean, you didn’t
know?
That Emmanuel was an under—funeral director?”

“I was a
very
young sixteen. Not a street girl. Parochial school; very careful girl. I thought he was a chauffeur for some wonderful, rich family who allowed him to use their beautiful car. Then I thought his whole family were in some sort of limousine business. It wasn’t until I was pregnant that I
really
started asking questions; about a month after our wedding. Specific questions, after his father told me what they all did. ‘But what,
exactly,
is it that
you
do, Mannie, besides drive the cars, and wear the handsome dark suits, and help the old ladies so they do not collapse? What do you
do
besides these things?’” Miranda sighed, shrugged, held her hands out. “So he told me. Specifically. And then I could not stop looking at his hands. I could not free myself from the chemical smell of his body. I could not bear to have him...It was unfair to him. This I know. Mannie was, is, a very nice man. Very beautiful and gentle and kind. But this is his destiny and it pleases him.”

“So you were sixteen and pregnant. What about your mother? Why is she still in Florida? With them?”

“Ah. Mama is a wonderful woman. She knows how to adjust, how to accept what life—or death—has to offer. She stayed with me, it was to be until the baby was born. But she fell in love with the last remaining bachelor uncle and they got married. And Mama works in the receiving room, greets the mourners, and she is wonderful at it. Her voice is low and soothing; she says all kind things. And she wears good dark dresses and looks so beautiful. And when I said to her, ‘But, Mama, how can you
bear
to be around all this? And when your husband touches you and...”

Miranda shook her head, shrugged, then looked directly into Mike’s eyes, surprised by the sympathy and concern that confronted her. “My mother said, ‘This sure beats the hell out of working in the garment center on that cheap polyester garbage they make specifically for Puerto Ricans, Miranda.’”

Miranda started to laugh. The sound was hard and gasping, as though she hadn’t expected it. The effect was a sudden loss of control, and she hugged her body, hands on opposite elbows. “That’s my mother and I love and respect her. But I had to leave that place. Even she realized that. Mannie was very generous. He helped me to get started, until I got a job. He helped so I could get my degree. But I paid. My son. They were right, of course—alone I could not raise him with the advantages of family and place, the security of a strong sense of belonging.” She shrugged. “They were right. I suppose they were right.”

It seemed as though she was talking to herself, rearguing old battles, looking for confirmation, for some sense that she had done the right thing.

Mike studied the photograph of her son. “And so this very serious young man of ten years old, he is being groomed...”

Miranda narrowed her eyes and leaned forward, her voice shifting again, imitating. “‘Someday, all of this, everything’”—her arm swept the room—“‘will belong to Mannie and his cousins.’ Just think, a whole family of little boys being made ready to carry on a family tradition of...” Again, the strange laughter, stopped abruptly by a gagging sound as she turned away.

His impulse was to go to her, to embrace her, comfort her, tell her to let it out. Go with it. Instinct told him not to try to control her timing. He had a sense that this, to Miranda, this act of confiding, was a loss of self-control, a falling down of her mask. He realized she was trying to stop herself and he felt an ache of sympathy, but let her go her own way. Within moments, he knew he had been right and stored away some new knowledge of Miranda. The timing, in everything, should be hers.

She sat down across from him, and her voice was soft and calm. “I want to tell you something. I love my son. I see him often, every month at least, and at vacation time and special school occasions. But he has become so...so
old.
Last month I was down to Lauderdale and we were alone in the garden, Mannie and I, and he studied my face, very gravely studied me, and I said, ‘What? What is it, my darling? Why are you looking at me so hard?’ My heart stopped. I waited, something inside of me swelled, maybe he’d say, ‘Mommy, I want to come home with you, Mommy, get me out of here.’”

Mike leaned forward and quietly asked her, “What did your son say to you?”

Miranda’s head went down, and when she faced him again it was with a serene, unknowable expression. “He said, ‘Mama, you are so beautiful, why don’t you wear a little more makeup? Just a little, here, on the lids, and to highlight the cheeks and then’...He was...he was...my ten-year-old son was talking about makeup he was learning to apply to faces of corpses!”