30

“I didn’t realize you had that effect on women,” Mooney said, raising an eyebrow in my direction.

“Shut up,” I responded automatically. Then I turned to Green Blouse and murmured, “It’s okay, come on, sit down.” To the gawking cop who’d brought her, I said, “Get her some Kleenex or something, for chrissake.” I turned back to the woman and muttered in halting Spanish that everything was going to be all right.

She cried harder. Close up, she looked even younger, her matronly clothes and plump body lending her a maturity her smooth circle of a face denied. I patted her shoulder awkwardly. Someone slammed a Kleenex box down on Mooney’s desk. I thrust a wad of tissues into the girl’s hand. She dammed her eyes with them and subsided into snuffles and gulps.

“They won’t hurt you,” I said. Mooney gave me a sharp glance on the they. He caught on quickly. I was on her side, protecting her from the police. It was going to be the two of us against the big bad men. Hell, it might work.

Her hand closed on mine with a surprisingly firm grip. “No salga,” she pleaded, staring at me from under long lashes. Don’t leave.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, as much for Mooney’s benefit as for hers. I wasn’t sure she understood anything I said in English. “I think we ought to get a translator in here.”

“A lawyer?”

I shrugged. “If the conversation seems to point that way, we can back off and get one.”

“Dave,” Mooney barked, “Mendez at his desk?”

“Is there a woman?” I asked. Mooney gave me the eye and I said, “Well, I just thought she’d be more comfortable.”

“Check,” Mooney ordered tersely, and the cop named Dave disappeared.

“How do you know her?” Mooney spoke as soon as the door closed. He’d been dying to ask but hadn’t wanted to in front of Dave. The lieutenant’s always supposed to know what’s going on. I grinned at him to show I knew his tricks as well as he knew mine.

“This is my tipster. At least I think she is. She ran like a scared rabbit when I tried to find out. You must have gone to Westland Avenue right after you got away from me in Woolworth’s.” I addressed the last sentence to the woman. I might as well have saved my breath. Her eyes darted around the small room as if she were searching for a secret exit.

A thin cop with a wispy mustache followed Dave through the door. Five was a crowd for Mooney’s office, but I didn’t think a switch to an interrogation room would improve things. The mustached cop shot off a quick Spanish volley at our guest, shook her hand formally, nodded at each of us as he made introductions. I could follow him pretty well. I don’t think Mooney caught more than his own name.

“Her name is Ana Uribe Palma. She’s scared,” the cop said.

Why not, I thought.

Then Mooney announced, “Since Ms. Carlyle already knows Señorita Uribe, she’ll start things off.” Mooney’s a master at stuff like that. I mean, look at that one sentence. Dumps the work on me and at the same time lets the other guys know he’s in charge.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask that for a moment my mind went blank. I decided to start at ground zero.

“Señorita Uribe—¿La puedo llama Ana?” May I call you Ana?

“Sí.”

“Ana,” I said gently, “¿Quién es Manuela Estefan?” Who is Manuela Estefan?

She must have expected it, but the name startled her all the same. Her eyes made the circuit of the tiny room again, came up with the same answer: no way out.

“Una mujer,” she answered cautiously. “A woman like me works at the factory.”

Mooney sat up straighten. Someone who actually knew Manuela Estefan.

I said, “You could find her for us at the factory. Point her out to us.” I spoke English now and waited for Mendez to translate. I didn’t want to make a mistake.

“No. No, she no work there anymore.”

“Where did she go?”

“No sé.” I don’t know. Her chin quivered and tears formed standing pools in her eyes.

“Mooney, do you have Manuela’s green card?” I asked, signaling to Mendez not to translate the aside.

“Yeah.”

“Give it to me.”

I asked Mooney if I could remove it from the evidence bag and he nodded. I passed it over to Ana, and she took it solemnly, stared at it, and pressed it to her breast. The tears welled up and started to fall.

“Please, have you seen her?” she asked eagerly.

“Is this a picture of Manuela?” I asked.

“Sí.”

“Was Manuela your friend?”

“Sí.” Oh, yes. Manuela was her good friend.

Her cheerful burst of words made my throat dry. “Ana, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I believe the woman who had this card is dead. No one can hurt her. Nothing you tell me can hurt her anymore.” Manuela Estefan had to be one of the dead women. Why cut off the hands unless the killer was afraid of identification? What identification did we have except the lone green card?

“No,” Ana said, her dark eyes narrowing with suspicion, “you try to trick me.”

“No tricks.”

“I no betray my friend,” she insisted, gulping, glancing from Mooney to Dave as if she expected them to haul out the rubber hoses.

I said, “Listen to me. If Manuela was your friend, you betray her with your silence. Please, for her sake and yours, talk about her. Talk about the women at the factory, the apartment on Westland, the—”

“You know, then.”

“Some I know.”

She murmured, “Manuela, she is the strong one, the one who decides, the one who speaks well and acts brave. I must go to church and light a candle for her.”

I thought she might start to weep again, so I slipped another question in quickly. “How long since you’ve seen Manuela?”

“Many months. With her green card she is like a North American. She can work anywhere, go anywhere—to California, even, where it is always warm like home. She is a free woman, like you.”

“How did Manuela get her green card?”

“You say she is dead, not in jail, not in El Salvador? I would not tell you if—”

“She’s dead.” God forgive me if I’m wrong, I thought.

Ana hung her head. “Then I, too, am dead.”

“Ana.” I took her hand and squeezed her plump fingers. “Help us and we can make you safe.”

For a minute I thought she would spill everything. Her eyes wavered. She stared at the green card as if the image of Manuela Estefan could speak to her. “But I know nothing,” she said finally, her voice close to a moan. She avoided my eyes, ducking her head and staring at the desktop.

“Tell me about the apartment, about the factory,” I insisted, keeping my voice low and even.

“There is nothing to tell. Nada I live at the apartment with other women. We work at the factory.”

“What women? What are their names? Can we talk to them?”

The tears started to fall again. “They are gone. They go away. The women at the factory, when they get their papers, they go away.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. The boss at the factory says they get papers, they get green cards, they go.”

“What’s the name of this factory?” Dave asked. Mooney frowned at him.

“Go on, Ana,” I prompted.

“Maybe they all go to California. We talk about California. Maybe they get jobs selling pretty dresses at fine stores, or better, selling clothes to rich men who look for girls to marry.”

Mendez repeated everything. His words became a regular echo, background noise. His droning voice hardly interrupted the flow.

Ana’s fantasies sounded singsong-rehearsed, as if she’d repeated them to herself a thousand times. While she spoke, she stared at Manuela’s green card, grasping it so tightly that her thumb and forefingers whitened.

“Why did you leave the message at the newspaper office?” I asked.

“Someone reads me the words from the newspaper. I think maybe Manuela tries to reach me, or one of the others—I think after so long there is no harm in it, but then I am frightened.”

“But you recognized me.”

She stared at the card for inspiration. “No, señorita,” she said dully. “You are mistaken. Please, what will they do with me now? ¿La policía? I have no papers.”

I ignored her query. “But you did work with Manuela Estefan, and you lived at Westland Avenue—also with Manuela?”

“Sí.”

“And how many others?”

“Maybe three other women.”

“And why did you leave Westland Avenue?”

“The boss says La Migra knows about the apartment. We must go.”

“You packed up your clothes?”

“No, one of the men from the factory goes and does that while we work. It happens too fast.”

“Which man?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why did you decide to go back to the apartment today?”

She consulted the image of Manuela. “I, uh, I think maybe I leave something there.”

Sure. Something that was worth taking a risk with La Migra. Whatever she saw in the depths of that green card was telling her to lie.

“Do you drive a car?”

“I have no license, señorita.”

“How long have you been in this country?”

“Four months only.”

“Did Manuela bring you here? Was she your coyote, your guide?”

She seemed puzzled by my question. “No, señorita.”

“How did you get here, how did you come to Boston?”

“I walk many miles. I take the bus.”

“Who helped you?”

“I walk and take the bus. That is all.”

I breathed in and out, staring at Mooney. I realized who Ana was starting to remind me of. Marta. Marta in one of her stubborn moods. I changed direction, hoping to surprise the woman into a truthful response. “What are the names of the women who lived with you at the apartment?”

She hesitated. “Manuela you know. The others are Aurelia—”

“Aurelia Gaitan?” Mooney interrupted.

“Yes, I think. And then there is Delores and Amalia and me.”

“Last names? Family names?”

“No sé. Please, señorita, what will happen to me?”

Dave said, “Maybe she can clear up the IDs on the stiffs.”

Mooney glanced at him sharply. He seemed to be remembering what the dead women looked like with their butchered hands and mauled faces. He said, “First we’ll have her look at their personal effects. See if you can get them up here.”

I wondered if Ana, quietly sobbing at the table, would identify the silver filigree ring as belonging to Manuela or Aurelia or Delores or Amalia.

The words of an old Woody Guthrie song came unbidden to my mind. He wrote it in the fifties after a plane crash in California, over Los Gatos Canyon.

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita,

Adiós, mis amigos, Jesús y María,

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane,

All they will call you will be deportees.

When the plane crashed and everyone died, nobody knew who the passengers were. Nobody knew how many died. They were just illegal aliens, just deportees.