One Life. David Lida

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ “We have friends in common in los States. I have regards from Esperanza Morales.”

      “Let me see if he’s here,” she said, and walked inside.

      I turned around and smiled at the other women. They were Juventino’s sisters, or sisters-in-law. One had her eyes on the bowl of beans, while the other’s arm was wrapped around the child. Through enormous brown eyes the kid looked at me as if I were the Werewolf of London. “Hola, guapa,” I said, and waved. She buried her head in her mother’s pubis.

      He emerged from the adobe. Short, lean, muscular. A battered Dallas Cowboys cap. A thick black moustache like a hero of the Mexican Revolution, a three-day growth of beard. Watery black eyes. A gray T-shirt with multiple holes—who knows what color it had been when new? An emblem of the Virgin of Guadalupe around his neck. He nodded. I told him to call me Richard and shook his hand. “I’m here on behalf of Esperanza Morales,” I said. “Could we please talk for a few minutes?”

      “Sure,” he said.

      We were standing on the dirt path to his house. “Thanks,” I said. “Where can we talk?”

      “Here.”

      I looked down at my ankle. The blood was saturating the dirt and mud on my sneaker. “Could we sit down somewhere?” I said, adding, “I got bit by one of those dogs down the street. I’m bleeding.”

      Juventino looked around. “You can sit there,” he said, indicating a pile of rocks with his chin. I could have stayed in Ojeras for ten years and he never would have invited me inside. I squatted on the rocks and removed a stenographer’s notebook from my backpack, a pen from my pocket. Juventino stood over me like Zeus.

      “You know that Esperanza’s in jail, right?” I asked.

      He paused before answering, as if it had been a trick question. “I think I heard something about that.”

      “She’s in jail for murder in Louisiana, in el gabacho,” I said. “The prosecutor wants to give her the death penalty, Juventino.”

      “Ooff,” he said, pointing his chin and making an ambiguous moue. He might have felt sorry for her, or he may have been impressed with her achievement.

      What I had said about the death penalty simplified the story. She was charged with capital murder for killing a baby, which made her eligible for death. The prosecution had stated that they might seek the maximum penalty, but they always say that when the victim is less than seven years old. They could change their minds up to the last minute, even during the trial, even while the jury deliberated. Until the district attorney made up his mind to go for broke or to accept a plea bargain for a lesser charge, the state had to pay for my investigation.

      I let the idea of the death penalty sink in for a minute, before saying, “I work for her lawyer. I’m an investigator. My job is to put together the story of her life, to show the prosecutor that she’s a human being who deserves mercy. Who doesn’t deserve to die.” I spoke slowly and as quietly as possible. Juventino’s mother and sisters were only two or three yards away, pretending not to listen. “You were married to Marta, right?”

      “Yes.”

      “When was that?” He scrunched up his features, as if I’d asked him to solve a multivariable calculus problem. He didn’t answer. “When did you and Marta split up?”

      “A long time ago.”

      “Okay, but, like, how long?” No response. “A year ago? Five years ago? More?”

      He nodded. “Yes.”

      For Mexican villagers, chronology was at best vague. Sometimes you had to let issues of time roll out with the tide. I hoped that Marta would be more specific when I caught up with her in Morelia. “Tell me about her family,” I said.

      “They were buena gente,” he said. Good people.

      They were always “good people.” Most people who are facing death row come from families in whose bosoms there is systematic abuse, neglect, violence, and poverty to the point of malnutrition. If you hit the jackpot, you’ll get learning disabilities, brain damage, or mental illness as well—that’s good luck because according to the Supreme Court, you’re not supposed to execute someone who is mentally ill. But to hear the witnesses tell it, they were always “good people.”

      “Good in what way?” I asked.

      “Good people,” he repeated, looking at me quizzically.

      “Good how? Good, like hardworking? Good, like generous, like giving away their food and their money to people who needed it more than they did? Good, like petting dogs and cats?”

      A list of questions like that is what is known as leading the witness. You are not supposed to do it. You are supposed to stand there through silences so long that you could drive a convoy of trucks through them. You are supposed to wait for them to answer until your hair turns gray and your teeth fall out and an archaeologist discovers your fossil in the desert after the next ice age. In the real world, at least with someone like Juventino, at times you have to give them a menu of answers to choose from.

      “They worked very hard,” he said. He removed his cap and scratched his black hair, brushed away from his forehead. “Don Fernando”—that was Esperanza’s father—“he helped me to find work.”

      Reading between the lines: Don Fernando might have beat his wife and children with a skillet every Friday night after dinner, he might have stolen from his neighbors, raped his own grandchildren, and, on some Aztec nostalgia trip, cut out the hearts of his contemporaries and eaten them while they still beat four to the bar. But he helped Juventino find work spreading cement or picking beans. So he was “good people.”

      “And what about Esperanza? What was she like?”

      “Tranquila,” he said.

      How I grew to hate that word. Tranquila: Easygoing. Calm. Peaceful. Quiet. Every single Mexican in jail in the United States is, above all, tranquilo, at least according to their relatives and friends, colleagues and classmates, teachers and doctors.

      “Tranquila in what way, Juventino?” I asked. Now he looked at me as if I were a moron. How many ways were there to be tranquila? “Tranquila, as in she was quiet and didn’t say very much? Tranquila, like she was easygoing and helped other people? Tranquila, like if there was a difficult situation, she would try to solve the problem?”

      Juventino stopped to consider the choices on the menu, and then something happened to his face. His brow relaxed, and the pupils of his eyes acquired a sheen of glaze like that which envelopes a Krispy Kreme doughnut. He gave up; this was too complex for him. I tried to reel him back.

      “Remember, Juventino,” I said. “The state of Louisiana wants to kill Esperanza. I’m trying to help save her life.”

      I rolled down my sock to get another glimpse of the wound. The teeth marks and the blood and the dirt were starting to look like the preliminary sketch of an abstract painting. I would need to buy a bottle of iodine on the road to Puroaire, maybe even see a doctor. They would be reimbursable expenses. For the moment, I was hoping against hope that the sight of the wound would help Juventino remember some salient detail about Esperanza or her family.

      “She СКАЧАТЬ