White Tombs (17 page)

“It was my fifteenth birthday,” Angelina Torres said to Santana. “My mother promised me that when we reached California and were reunited with my father, we would celebrate my
quinceañera
.”

Santana knew that fifteen was the most important age in a Mexican girl’s life. But instead of a beautiful dress and a big party with very special gifts, her mother had bought a one-way ticket to hell.

“I remember we were sitting in the moonlight near a tall saguaro cactus filled with white flowers,” she went on. “The flowers had blossomed in the darkness. It was so beautiful and so strange. I learned later that the flowers bloomed only for a single night before they withered and died the next afternoon.”

The one that was called Jesse was drinking from the bottle of tequila. Angelina watched as the beam of light from the flashlight he carried swayed back and forth like a scythe with each step that he took. He came up to her and squatted down beside her.

Momentarily blinded by a bright flash, she heard Ramón say, “
Idiota
.
Apaga esa linterna
.”

Jesse flicked off the flashlight. “Would you like a drink,
señorita?
It will keep you warm.”

He smelled as if he had not bathed in a week.

“
Estas borracho
,” her mother said.

“Maybe I am drunk,
señora
. But I could keep you warm. And your daughter, too.”

“
Vamos! Deja a mi hija sola.
”

Jesse laughed as he stood up and stumbled off into the darkness calling, “
Señorrrritas!
”

“I do not like that man,” Margarita said.

“Stay close to me,” Maria said. “He cannot be trusted.”

Ramón came around and gave them a drink from a jug. “
Es tiempo de irnos
.”

Angelina was happy that it was time to go. The water had refreshed her. She was ready to walk again, ready to walk forever if it would bring her to her father. She led her sister and mother to the cactus where they rejoined the others. Somewhere in the darkness, she heard the plaintive whistle of a train.

They walked through the night until the rising sun lit the clouds on the eastern horizon and heat began rising in waves off the desert floor. As they neared a sign that read U.S. 80, Angelina glimpsed a maroon and gray van parked in the tall grass near a set of railroad tracks that ran parallel to the highway.

“Get in and stay down,” Ramón said as he slid open the side doors and the group clambered into the back of the van whose rear seats had been removed.

Hot bodies pressed against Angelina as she lay down on her stomach under a blanket. The unwashed odor of fear and sweat was a living presence in the van. She grabbed Margarita’s hand and gave it a squeeze, letting her know that as long as they were together, her little sister would be safe.

“It took us four hours to get to the safe house in Phoenix,” Angelina said to Santana. “We had to stay off the highway to avoid the checkpoints.”

She drank the last of the wine in her glass. Filled it half full again.

Santana noted that her words were slightly slurred now. He didn’t mind. Maybe she needed the alcohol to continue her story, to deaden the pain.

“It was late when I awoke to the sound of loud voices coming from the blackness surrounding me,” she continued. “At first I thought I was in the bedroom that I shared with Margarita in Santa Rosa. But then I remembered I was in a safe house somewhere in Phoenix.”

She could not hear exactly what was being said, but it was clear that Ramón was arguing with the one called Jesse. She listened for a time, straining to hear, when suddenly the voices grew quiet and she knew that the two men were coming.

Her mother awoke now, too, though Margarita continued to sleep soundly beside them in the large bed. The bedroom door swung open and the lamp on the nightstand next to the bed lit up.

“What do you want?” her mother asked.

“
Señora
,” Ramón began with a nervous laugh, “there has been … a slight change in plans.”

“What do you mean? We paid you the money.”

“
Si, señora
. But you know there is much danger, much risk in what we do. The money you paid, it, ah, will not be enough to get all of you tickets at the airport.”

“We have no more money,
señor
. We have nothing.”

“
Señora
,” Jesse said. “You do have something of value.”

“No, you are mistaken,
señor
. We have nothing. We …” her mother’s voice trailed off. Then with a determination that Angelina had never heard before her mother said, “No! This is something you will never have,
señor
. Never!”

Margarita awoke with a start. “What is it?” she asked, her voice heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

“Shh,
chiquita
,” Angelina said, wrapping her sister in her arms. “We are fine.”

“
Señora
,” Jesse said, in a voice that was a hoarse whisper. “I know you and your daughters want to get to California so you can see your husband again.”

“Give us our money and we will find a way,” Maria said defiantly.

“I’m afraid that is not possible,
señora
.”

Maria glared at Ramón. “You!” she said with venom in her voice. “
Hijo de la chingada tienes dos caras
.”

Jesse gave a small laugh. “So, now you are a fucking two-face, Ramón.”

Angelina had never heard her mother use this language before and she told herself to stay calm. She did not know what Jesse wanted and fear began to crawl like a scorpion up her spine.

“Take me,
señor
,” Maria said. “But not Angelina,
por favor
. I will do whatever you want.”

“
Señora
, please,” Ramón said. “You must do what he wants. Let your daughter go with him. She is old enough and it will not take long and in the morning we will take you to the airport and you will soon be with your husband.”

“No!”

“I could always take the little one?” Jesse said.

Ramón gave him a hard look. “You will not do that,
amigo
.”

Jesse shrugged his shoulders.

“I will go with him,
mamíta
,” Angelina said.

“No! You will not!”

“It will be okay.”

“No, Angel,” her mother said with tears in her voice. “You do not understand what will happen.”

“But if we want to see father again.”

Angelina got out of bed and stood up, but her mother grabbed her by the wrist.

“No,
por favor
.”

Angelina suppressed the fear in her voice. “It is what I must do,” she said.

Ramón stepped between them. “
Señora
, please.”

He pried her mother’s fingers off Angelina’s wrist.

“What is wrong?” Margarita asked, beginning to cry. “Angel, what is wrong?”

With a scream, Maria sprang from the bed and threw herself at Ramón. Tried to rake his face with her fingernails.

Angelina instinctively moved toward her mother to help, but Jesse came up behind her quickly and locked her in a chokehold. The pressure of his forearm against her throat kept her from moving or speaking.

“Stop,
señora
,” Jesse yelled, “or I will break your daughter’s neck!”

Ramón had her mother’s wrists and back pinned against the wall. He kept a hip pressed against her legs, so that she could not kick him. Margarita was sitting on her knees in the bed, crying loudly as she watched what was happening to her mother and sister. Maria made one last attempt to free herself, but Ramón was too strong. She let out another scream, but this one was a scream of anguish.

Angelina saw the tears running down her mother’s cheeks. She knew that in order to protect her mother and younger sister, she had to do what the men wanted. As Jesse led her out into the hallway, she could hear her mother weeping and her sister’s cries of “Angel, where are you going?”

Under the glare of the ceiling light in another bedroom, Angelina stood facing the one called Jesse. She watched as his eyes fondled her body and a half-grin of expectation played across his wet, thin lips. There was a musty, feathered mattress with yellow stains on the bed, and as he pushed her down upon it, she had a feeling that what was about to happen to her had happened here before, that this was not the first time a family crossing the border with him had suddenly been short of money.

He was breathing heavily as he pulled off her jeans. Yanked her white T-shirt up over her head. His breath smelled as though something had died and was rotting inside him.

“I will never forget the smell of his awful breath,” she said, looking at Santana.

Angelina Torres had spoken dispassionately about all of it, as if it were a bad dream she had once had. But Santana could see the lingering pain in her eyes.

She said, “Ramón took us to the airport in the morning.”

“And the one called Jesse?”

She gave a weak, little shrug.

“He didn’t go to the airport with you?”

She shook her head slowly.

Santana studied her eyes. Tried to read them to see if she was lying.

“Tell me what happened,” Santana said.

The color drained from her complexion. Angelina Torres looked down at her hands and then at the darkness outside the window. When she looked at him again, tears glistened in her eyes.

“You are a very perceptive man, Detective Santana. I am sure this skill helps you in your job.”

“Sometimes it helps,” he said.

“Do you think I killed the coyote after he raped me?”

“Why don’t you tell me about it?”

She reached for a Kleenex in a box on the coffee table and wiped away the tears that ran down her cheeks. Then she fixed her eyes on his before she spoke again.

“When I came back to the room after I had been with the coyote, my mother saw my blood. I thought I could do anything to see my father again, to make sure we all arrived safely. I did not realize at the time what I had lost. But my mother did. I saw darkness in her that night I had never seen before.”

She drew in a shaky breath and let it out before she continued. “The next morning when Ramón took us to the airport and
el cara cortada
was not with us, I suspected something had happened to him.”

Santana waited for her to continue.

“Are you going to contact the Phoenix police?”

Santana thought about his own mother’s death. He wondered what he would do if someone came out of the shadows and wanted to look into his past, wondered about right and wrong and truth and lies and justice.

He said, “What happened after you left the safe house?”

Her eyes lingered on his, as though trying to read his thoughts. Finally, she said, “We were in California that afternoon with my father. For a long time I could only write of my experiences in my journal. A teacher in my high school read what I had written. She had my journal published as a book. I won an award. Some important people in California got me my citizenship and a scholarship to the University of Southern California.”

“That’s where you met Rubén?”

“He was a journalism student. He was already writing stories about the
braceros
and the pesticides that were killing them. My mother and father were both sick by then. My mother never spoke of the incident in Phoenix until the day she died. Her last words to me were ‘
Lo siento’.
But I never blamed her for what happened. She was only trying to better our lives. This is why I help the illegals whenever I can.”

“Help them how?”

“Through the Church of the Guardian Angels. We get them clothes, food, housing.”

“Father Hidalgo helped as well?”

“Of course.”

“What about jobs? You ever get illegals jobs or papers?”

“Jobs if I can, yes. Papers, no. Many of the fast food places hire them without papers.”

“Did Córdova help the illegals, too, before he died?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Did he ever get them papers?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I am sure.”

“How about Rafael Mendoza?”

“Mr. Mendoza helped many of the immigrants get jobs and citizenship. He helped Father Hidalgo, too.”

“Córdova had an appointment with Mendoza at the time that Mendoza died.”

She stared at him for a time, apparently trying to get her mind around the idea. “If I had not given Rubén the gun,” she said with regret. “He would never have been a murder suspect. He would not be dead.”

Santana could not argue with her logic, so he changed the subject.

“What happened to your younger sister, Margarita?”

“She is studying to be a doctor in California. We talk often.”

Santana could hear the pride in her voice.

Angelina Torres went quiet for a time, seemingly lost in the fog of a distant memory. Then she said, “We have never spoken about
el cara cortada
.”

Santana noted how she lowered her head and let her shoulders slump. He knew from victim reports that the psychological damage of rape was often worse than the physical injury. Victims usually felt shame, especially in a machismo culture where Hispanic women often paid a high price for losing their virginity before marriage.

“You need to understand,” she said, looking at him again. “The coyote, Jesse, used my body, but he never touched my soul.”

Aren’t they one and the same?”

“You did not always believe that.” She said it softly and without any recrimination.

“You seem awfully certain.”

She hesitated a moment before answering, as if embarrassed by what she was about to say. “I’m afraid there is much anger in you, Detective Santana. Though some might mistake the anger for emptiness.”

“But you don’t?”

“No. What they see is not really who you are. Or who you once were. You have a soul”, she said with a firm nod. “A very good soul.”

“Not everyone would agree with you.”

“They would be the same people who saw only anger or emptiness in you. Perhaps it is only what you see in yourself.”