The Perfect Mother (15 page)

He didn’t answer, and she withdrew her hand. Her mouth felt so dry it was difficult to talk, so she walked to the sink, got a glass of water, drank it down in one long gulp, and returned.

“Lo siento, Jennifer,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know you are suffering too. But we will get your daughter back to you. I won’t rest until we do.”

“I know,” she said. “I believe you.”

He looked tired and uncharacteristically dispirited, but after an uncomfortable pause, he asked her to tell him what she had discovered about her own case while he was gone. She hesitated, feeling it was wrong to involve him in her problems when his own wound was so recently reopened. He saw her hesitation and assured her that he was ready to work. He claimed that trying to solve the problems of his clients would distract him from his own. He seemed sincere, and in fact his manner was slowly changing, she noticed with surprise. His posture became more erect as he returned to his habitual self-confident professionalism. So she told him about seeing Julia and her plan of going to Triana at midnight to meet someone who might have more information about Paco. He smiled wistfully. “That’s good detective work, Jennifer. You are a natural.” He stood up. “Muy bien. We will go together.”

He walked to the table on which he had left his briefcase and retrieved a notebook, leafing through it for a few pages until he found what was been looking for. “I have done some detective work myself,” he said, not looking up from his notes. “This village that I visited, the one to which he has been sending the money he made from selling drugs—probably the money he got from Emma as well—I went there, as you know.”

She nodded. He knew she knew. Why the buildup?

“I spoke to everyone I could who might have information—the mayor, the police chief, the unemployment organizations, the unions, the foundations.” He held up the notebook, full of scrawlings, in which he had meticulously recorded his questions and their replies. “There is no record of any person or any group receiving contributions either from him specifically or from anyone else anonymously.”

Jennifer was getting excited. “I knew it,” she said triumphantly. “I just felt it. Call it instinct.”

“But there is more,” Roberto said. “And this, I must admit, neither of us guessed.”

“Tell me,” she said impatiently.

“He is not from that village, Jennifer. He has no family there and has never had any roots there of any kind. It’s a complete invention.”

R
oberto said he would pick her up at her apartment at 11:00
P
.
M
. She had suggested they go out for dinner first, but he’d said he had too much work to catch up on. She thought he’d seemed a bit cold, as if he regretted the recent intimacy of their conversation and wanted to return to a more professional footing. She didn’t mind. She wanted that too. She liked him and respected him and she empathized with his pain, but that wasn’t going to help Emma.

She went out to buy some groceries and, after coming home to put them away, realized she didn’t feel like cooking and decided to take herself out for dinner. She wandered into a nearby restaurant and ordered some rioja and a light dinner of her favorite tapas: jamón, croquetas, and huevos. She was happy to be alone because she wanted to think things through. She was convinced that Emma’s salvation lay in telling the truth about that terrible night. Jennifer didn’t know what the truth was, but she accepted by now that Mark was right in at least one respect—that Emma was lying. She was pretty sure the story of the Algerian was an invention, probably thought up by Emma and Paco together. But she also knew, or thought she knew, that whatever had really happened, Emma wasn’t guilty. Not
really
guilty, she corrected herself, because guilt, she firmly believed, was relative. She understood that if Emma was conspiring to hide and protect the murderer, that was a form of guilt. But she knew in her heart that Emma’s guilt didn’t go beyond that. She hadn’t—she couldn’t have—planned to kill anyone or watched without trying to stop it.

She found herself obsessively going over likely scenarios. Maybe Paco was a violent man with a hair-trigger temper, she thought. Maybe he had snapped when he saw this boy trying to rape Emma.

Jennifer tried to puzzle it out, step by step. Emma loved him, or thought she did, Jennifer figured, and she’d have been grateful that he’d saved her. She was young and foolish, of course—she should never have lied to the police and made up that whole story about the Algerian. After all, if Paco had been trying to save her, maybe he would get off on a plea of self-defense. But Emma had said that Paco had already been in trouble with the police, and she’d implied they would throw the book at him. That forced her to lie to protect him.

That satisfied her for a bit, but then another thought occurred to her. If the police had checked up on him, which by now they must have done, they would know that he didn’t come from the place he’d claimed. Had they told Emma that? Had they told José? Didn’t they have to share any evidence they had with the defense team? Jennifer’s knowledge of police procedures came exclusively from
Law & Order
on American television, and she was pretty sure she remembered that sharing evidence was compulsory. She knew they hadn’t shared anything, however, because José and Roberto had had no idea that Paco wasn’t from that village until Roberto checked it out himself.

Her head began to throb, so she reached into her bag and took out the bottle of Advil she had taken to carrying for just such moments. She shook out three pills and washed them down with a big swig of wine. Then she paid her bill and walked back to her apartment to wait for Roberto.

He came a few minutes early and rang the bell. Instead of pressing the buzzer to let him in, she took the stairs and met him in front of the building. She was relieved to see that he seemed refreshed, all traces of his recent vulnerability buried. It was a beautiful night, and he suggested that since they were early, they should go on foot, about a fifteen- or twenty-minute walk. She fell into step with him and they discussed their plan. She explained that Julia seemed very wary of Paco’s friend, even a little frightened, and very much didn’t want anyone to know she had identified him. Roberto quickly agreed to protect her anonymity.

They passed small groups of people on their way to dinner, overhearing snippets of conversation, a shrill complaint or a burst of raucous laughter echoing down an alleyway. At one point, Jennifer heard the soulful strains of a flamenco guitar even before she saw the musician, an elderly Gypsy with long black hair and deeply lined leathery skin wearing a blue shirt and a beat-up leather vest. He was sitting on a wooden box, a paper cup set in front of him. She stopped to put some money in while Roberto waited. The Gypsy smiled at her, flashing two gold teeth. They kept walking, and as they turned the corner and crossed the street, she could still hear the haunting chords of the guitar, getting softer and softer.

When they reached the bridge and crossed over to the Triana steps, Jennifer spotted Julia right away. She was sitting in the center of a group of four other young women, laughing and talking, a bottle of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other. When she saw Jennifer, she looked surprised, as though she wasn’t expecting her yet, but then caught herself, stubbed out her cigarette, and walked toward her. Jennifer started to introduce her to Roberto, but, uncharacteristically impolite, Julia cut her off.

“He’s here,” she whispered nervously. “He’s behind me, on the top of the staircase, standing alone to the right. He’s the guy with the shaved head and a black T-shirt. Please don’t go to him right now. Wait till I’m back with my friends so he doesn’t know I pointed him out.”

“What’s his name?” Roberto asked.

“Everyone calls him Raul. I don’t know his last name.”

Jennifer and Roberto looked up as casually as they could manage and studied him. He looked much older than the others, probably in his midthirties. His forearms were covered with tattoos, the nature of which Jennifer couldn’t make out from that distance, but she could see that they were multicolored and seemed to include several geometric designs that looked like symbols. He wore three gold hoops in one ear and a gold necklace. He was talking to a very blond Scandinavian-looking man in jeans and a Real Madrid T-shirt, and after a minute or so, the blond man nodded and walked away.

“He’s selling drugs,” Roberto said softly. “He just passed a packet to the blond kid.”

Jennifer checked Julia’s group and saw them getting up and beginning to walk away together toward the line of bars and restaurants at the top of the stairs.

“Stay here,” Roberto ordered, and moved toward the man in the black T-shirt. But Jennifer ignored his instruction and walked up to join him. He looked annoyed but said nothing. As soon as Raul noticed two well-dressed adults walking in his direction he bent his head to obscure his face and started to walk away, but Roberto caught up with him, greeted him by name, and said he’d had business with Paco.

“Cómo se llama?” the man asked. “What is your name?”

Roberto told him, placing his hand in a restraining gesture on his arm.

“Are you a cop?” Raul mumbled suspiciously, switching to English as if he were a foreigner and pulling his arm free.

Roberto shook his head. “I am worse than a cop as far as you’re concerned,
chulo
,”
he said in a voice so hard that Jennifer barely recognized it. “I’m a dissatisfied customer.”

Raul looked around nervously, but seeing no one else who looked threatening, he jerked his head in the direction of Jennifer. “And her?”

“We’re together,” Roberto said, reverting to Spanish. “I am doing business with Paco for friends in Madrid. A big order for people
muy importante
, you understand? We were supposed to meet here. But he has not arrived. I need to find his partner in his village. Where is it?”

“What makes you think I know him?” Raul said, turning to go.

Roberto blocked him and moved closer. He talked softly but with great intensity. “I think you won’t want to get involved in this any more than you have to,
niño
,” he said, continuing in Spanish. “I know you know him. Tell me where he is or my people will come for you instead of him. I don’t think you want to cross them.”

“Look, I don’t know the guy well. I’ve done business with him from time to time, that’s all. But he’s been arrested. I heard he was involved in the murder of that rich kid at the university. Don’t you read the papers?”

“Where does he come from?”

“I don’t know. Some village.”

“Where?” Roberto’s face looked frightening. He had moved so close to Raul, their faces were practically touching.

“I don’t know. I swear.”

Roberto pressed on. “The next guy who questions you won’t ask so nicely. So I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is he from?”

Raul shrugged and stepped back to create more space between them.

“If I tell you, will that be the end of it?”

“That depends on whether what you say is true.” Roberto stepped closer to him again.

“Granada. He’s from the outskirts of Granada,” Raul mumbled.

“What is his family name? Is it Romero?”

“No, it’s Frias. Paco Rodriguez Frias.”

Roberto nodded and moved back, making room for Raul to pass. Raul took advantage of it and slithered away as quickly as he could.

Jennifer had understood very little of their conversation, but she’d heard the name. After Raul left, she questioned Roberto. “Did he say Paco Romero? Is that Paco’s real name?”

“I don’t know if it’s his real name, but it’s clearly another name he uses,” Roberto said. His voice had returned to its familiar smooth timbre.

“You sounded like a different person when you spoke to him.”

“Ah, that is because I am speaking Spanish. You’re used to my bad English.”

“No. Your English is perfect, and I’ve heard you speak Spanish. It was different. Hard. Ruthless. It frightened me.”

He laughed and put his hand under her elbow to steer her back over the bridge toward her apartment. “Well, it seems to have frightened him too—enough to get him to give us some information, so it’s useful, no?”

She smiled tentatively. “I guess so.”

They agreed during the walk back that Roberto would go to Granada to find out more about Paco and his family. He wanted to learn why he had changed his name and lied about where he came from. He doubted it, but now that he knew where Paco’s family was, he wanted to know if he was really giving them and others who were struggling any money.

“We need to prove two things,” Roberto said. “I think you only are aware of one of them.”

“What are they?” she asked. “I mean, I know we need to prove to Emma that Paco is using her and that she need feel no loyalty to him.”

“Yes. That’s what we need to prove to Emma. But we also need to prove something to the police,” he said. “And also to me,” he murmured almost inaudibly.

Jennifer felt a rush of anxiety. “What is it? What are you talking about?”

“We need to prove that Emma never knew or had any relationship with the murdered boy until he threatened her at the door of her apartment that night. We are pretty sure she lied about the Algerian, but we must not let anyone believe she lied about the attempted rape.”

Jennifer stopped short and turned to face him. “She wouldn’t do that, Roberto,” she said earnestly. “Look, I know she’s been acting strangely. You never knew her before, so you don’t know what she’s really like. I wish you did. I have to ask you to trust me and take my word for it about her. She’s gotten herself involved in something she doesn’t understand, and I know her behavior is haywire. One day she needs me, another she wants to be completely independent, another time she wants to show off how much she’s learned and how sophisticated she’s become, and yet another she wants to tell me how spoiled and privileged and unworthy I am. She goes from hot to cold to hot again. Sometimes I feel like she’s been invaded, like in that film,
The Exorcist.
But not by the devil—by Paco, and the ideas he’s filled her head with. It’s confusing, and it’s been painful to me to see how quickly something like this could happen and reverse twenty years of living with us and sharing our values. But she’s my child and I know her. I know her deep down. And she’s a good person. She wouldn’t accuse a dead boy whose family is grieving of something so terrible if he hadn’t done it. Not even to protect Paco. You have to believe me.”

Roberto started to walk again and Jennifer caught up with him. “I told you once I believe in evidence,” he said, “not in faith.” He paused and, seeing her worried face, he added, “But I hope you are right.”