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Esperanza Guadalupe di Chiara Valencia had made such a spectacle of herself by the car that after taking her statement, Jose Montoya sent her to her room and asked another officer to stand guard until Leon was ready to talk to her. She had used that time to put on makeup and false eyelashes, and squeeze herself into a pair of faux 7 For All Mankind jeans. When Leon knocked on her door, she opened wearing a pair of sling-backs with four-inch heels.

“I wear these at home,” she explained when she saw him looking at her shoes. “I can’t do work too well in higher heels.”

Esperanza was the kind of maid who engaged in housework only when all other options had been exhausted. She liked to inform people that she had her own “staff” in El Salvador, plus a car, a swimming pool, and two dogs, and that she was often told she resembled Jennifer Lopez­—“only I have larger eyes.” Sixty years old and pleasantly plump, she kept pictures of herself and J-Lo in her wallet. Her bedroom at the Soleyman residence was decorated entirely in peach and gold, and smelled of face powder and hair spray. She kept the curtains drawn and screwed a pink lightbulb into the ceiling light fixture so that her image, when she looked in the mirror, was forever cased in a pleasant, if eerily Blanche DuBois–esque, glow.

Esperanza told Leon she had worked for the Soleymans for three years and seven months. She previously had a rule of not working for immigrants, no matter what country they came from, because they were invariably more demanding and paid less than Americans, but she didn’t mind Neda because she wasn’t a nosy boss. Unlike other Iranians who employed many of Esperanza’s friends, Neda didn’t entertain seven nights a week, didn’t have sixty people over every Shabbat. She was quiet and minded her own business, barely leaving her room when she was in the house for fear, Esperanza guessed, of running into Mister. The only person Neda saw regularly was Nadereh—the therapist/life coach/yoga teacher who charged $300 an hour and didn’t make house calls.

Esperanza knew about Nadereh through the network of maids who worked for other Iranian families on the West Side and who made sure nothing that went on in any house ever remained private. That’s also how she knew that Neda’s marriage to Raphael’s Son had been the scandal of its time, prompted, some said, by an unfortunate pregnancy resulting in the birth of their first daughter, Nicole. Esperanza had seen for herself that the marriage had been a bad idea indeed. The only time the two didn’t fight was when they weren’t talking to each other.

“She cries and says, Aabehroo, aabehroo,” Esperanza summarized the interaction, “and he screams and says, Talaagh beguir.”

She was about to translate for Leon the meaning of that last phrase—get a divorce—when a uniform knocked on her door.

There might be a witness—of sorts—who claimed he had seen everything, but he wasn’t willing to say what “everything” meant. He wasn’t going to talk to “any Podunk street cop.” The only person he would give a statement to was “the chief.”