One Life. David Lida

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СКАЧАТЬ of cushions that began to slump before they got home from the store. Still, by the standards of a town like Puroaire, Joaquín was doing well. We got to the last room. Through a screen door, I glimpsed an overgrown patio, a deflated soccer ball, a tricycle on its side as if it were napping.

      “Take a seat, licenciado,” he said, pointing to a sofa covered with an old blanket. He sat in a wooden chair, his hands on his knees. That he called me licenciado meant that he thought I was a lawyer. During my investigations, Mexicans called me licenciado all the time. At first I tried to disabuse them of that notion, insisting that I wasn’t a lawyer, merely an investigator who worked for lawyers. Yet even after the explanation, they continued to call me licenciado. Finally I realized that they wanted to believe I was a lawyer. Who was I to spoil their illusion?

      He wore a checked shirt with snaps for buttons, untucked and with the sleeves rolled up, jeans and snakeskin boots. While he exuded masculinity, he was not your garden-variety macho. He was quieter, more introspective.

      “This is a nice house,” I said.

      “Thank you.”

      He’d hardly uttered a sound. I hoped small talk might warm him up. “What do you do in Puroaire?”

      He let the question sink in before he answered. “What do I do? Nothing,” he said. “I sit around the house.”

      “Okay.” I smiled. “Nice work if you can get it.”

      His gaze was penetrating. “This house comes from Montgomery, Alabama,” he said, “where I washed dishes and cooked at Marcello’s Italian Restaurant. This house comes from Millersville, North Carolina, where I picked tobacco, and Tar Heel, where I worked twelve-hour shifts killing pigs in a slaughterhouse. This house comes from planting and picking cotton in Mississippi, sorghum in Missouri, and corn in Kansas. I was a cabinetmaker in Iowa. I built doors and bookshelves. I worked for Fleetline in Nebraska, moving houses with trailers.” He made the speech in a flat monotone. “This house is twenty years of my life, away from my family in el gabacho.”

      “I understand,” I said, and took a deep breath. “Look, Joaquín. I am what is called, in English, a mitigation specialist. There is no reason for you to know what that is because you come from a civilized country where there is no death penalty.” Those bags under his dark eyes and the lines around them made him seem exhausted, or ineffably sad. “You know that the prosecutor’s office in Louisiana is seeking the death penalty for Esperanza?” I asked.

      He said nothing, but there was a slight intake of breath that assured me he’d had no idea.

      “My job is to put a human face on Esperanza. I put together the story of her life and of her family. Whenever the prosecutor arrests someone in the U.S., he makes up a story that he has captured a monster—Hitler, Jack the Ripper, and Hannibal Lecter rolled up in one. I try to show him that Esperanza is a human being who may have made mistakes but who nevertheless deserves mercy and consideration. I try to help convince him to take the death penalty off the table.” I paused to see if Joaquín had any questions. “If that doesn’t work, and in the worst of cases there is a trial and she’s found guilty, we tell the story to the jury. To convince them that Esperanza’s life is worth saving. Do you understand?”

      After a moment, he nodded. It’s a terrible lot of information to absorb in a couple of minutes, particularly when it pertains to someone you love. I’m not trying to get them to understand the gringo justice system. I’m just trying to get them to trust me.

      “All I ask is that you tell me the truth, Joaquín. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Todo se vale. Okay?”

      Once again, he nodded.

      “I’m going to ask you to go back to the days when you were a little boy. Maybe six or seven years old. Tell me about Puroaire back then. What was it like here?”

      He looked at me, then up at the ceiling, and then back at me. He inhaled deeply through his nose. Putting the palms of his huge hands together, he brought his fingertips to his mouth. He tried to say something but there were no words. Tears came to his eyes. “It was hard, man,” he said finally, his voice cracking. “It was hard.”

      In my heart I thanked him a thousand times. He had conjured a memory from before I was born. More than forty-five years later, it still broke his heart. Now we were getting somewhere.

       MORE ERRANT THAN KNIGHT

      Seated in a tiny booth, a smudged window separates Esperanza from her lawyer. She looks at Catherine’s straight brown bangs, her watery blue eyes, her bee-stung lips. Squeezed into her side of the booth, Catherine has brought a man with her. Esperanza imagines he is some other licenciado. Lawyers, cops, detectives, interpreters, investigators, consular officials, and their respective assistants have all come to visit Esperanza in the months since her arrest. The meetings are brief and intense and then they disappear. She has seen few of them more than once.

      “How you making out, Esperanza?” Catherine asks, in a voice honed by tequila and Tareytons into a commanding musical rasp. “Everything okay up here?” Esperanza gets the gist of the lawyer’s questions and nods in assent. “This is Richard,” says Catherine. “He’s on our team. He’s one of the good guys.”

      Esperanza looks at the man’s egg-shaped face—the unruly curls spilling onto his forehead, the heavy-lidded eyes, the square chin. He has a generous lower lip but almost no upper lip at all. A crooked, jumbo spade-shaped nose spares him from notable beauty. He looks at Esperanza and smiles as if apologizing. In Spanish, he says, “Catherine told me to tell you I’m one of the good guys. I will be working on your case with her. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He speaks Esperanza’s language well, even if his accent is jarringly, comically thick.

      “You haven’t had any more problems or troubles in here, have you?” asks Catherine.

      Richard makes the inquiry both more specific and more general, asking if any guards or inmates have “interfered” with her. “No,” she says quickly. No good can come from answering “yes.” What are they going to do, join her in the cell and protect her?

      “I know things are moving slowly,” says the lawyer. She speaks loudly, as if with that tactic she could break the language barrier. “But that’s the way things work in Louisiana. And it’s actually a good thing, honey—if nothing is happening, then nothing bad is happening, you know what I mean? It gives us more time to maneuver.” Catherine smiles sweetly, and Esperanza takes some comfort from the voice. The lawyer stands and smoothes the skirt of her gray suit.

      After Richard translates, Esperanza says, “Muchas gracias.”

      “I put twenty dollars into your commissary, Esperanza,” says the lawyer. “I bet that’s okay with you, isn’t it?”

      The prisoner thanks her again. This will buy her a couple of bars of soap, a stick of deodorant, some Styrofoam cups of, once hot water is added to their contents, noodle soup.

      “I’ve got to be going now, dear,” says Catherine. “Richard is going to ask you some questions. Please tell him everything he needs to know. Remember, he’s one of us.”

      He looks at Esperanza through the window, lurching awkwardly in the tiny stool. Catherine smiles at Richard. “Do your magic, buddy,” she says. “See you soon, dear,” she tells Esperanza, who watches the attorney leave, taking long strides in the СКАЧАТЬ