More and more enveloped in the sleepy aura that three glasses of wine brought to her, Raquel looked out through the sliding doors that opened to the deck over the dunes, the beach and the Atlantic. The doors were partially open. She could hear the hiss of the waves.
“Anibal Vaz, Juan Suarez,” Raquel said. “There are millions and millions of people out there who have no reason to carry through life the names they were born with. My grandfather was born Giacomo in Italy. At 17 he became Joe and died Joe at 85. That’s the name on his headstone. He was never Giacomo again. There always were people, and there are many more now, who have no reason to have permanent names or addresses, birth certificates, driver licenses, marriage licenses. In fact, there are so many people out there who have every reason not to have real names, Social Security numbers, documents. Under the radar screen, off-the-reservation, disappearing, showing up, reincarnating in place after place. And the longer they live the more unmoored and elusive they become.”
Theresa turned in her chair to look out at the deck, the dunes, and the sea. “The problem is this, I think. You know those instructions we give to juries at the end of a trial. If you believe a witness has lied on one issue, you are entitled to believe, if you wish, that he has lied about everything.”
“I never believed that instruction. No one lies all the time about everything, no one tells the truth all the time. We’re all vulnerable, superstitious, fearful, weak. And we are also brave, determined, optimistic against all odds.”
Theresa said, “I’d prefer to believe he wasn’t lying. And even if he is lying about many things he could still be innocent.”
“And isn’t it Hemingway who ended The Sun Also Rises with Jake Barnes or Lady Brett Ashley saying, Yes, wouldn’t it be nice to think so?”
At least a mile out on the Atlantic a freighter blew a very long, hoarse whistle. The freighter would soon let go of the last sight of America-the scattered lights lining the ocean beach until they abruptly ended at the old Montauk Lighthouse-and make its long voyage out into the world.
Three days later, as she sat in her office on Park Avenue with Theresa Bui, Raquel stared out at the black steel-and-glass Seagram Building-the prototype of many other office buildings in Manhattan since it was built in the 1950s but still classic and uniquely attractive-while waiting for the conference call with Margaret Harding to begin. Her secretary came on the line several times to say, “Ms. Harding is about to join the call.” Outside of the window the sunlight shining along Park Avenue was intense; there were days in New York when the winter sun filling the long avenue was as bright and pure as it was anywhere in the world.
Finally Margaret Harding’s voice rang out. “I’m here.”
“So am I. Theresa is with me. Who’s with you?”
“Dimitri Brown, a new lawyer in my office who will be working on the case.”
Raquel said, “Welcome, Dimitri.”
“Hello, Ms. Rematti.” Dimitri was a woman.
“Anyone else?” Raquel asked.
“Detective Halsey. I mentioned his name to you, remember?”
“Certainly, I met him in the courtroom. How are you, Detective?”
There was a mumbled, indistinct sound, a man’s grunt.
“Anyone else?” Raquel asked.
“Two other detectives working on the case, Dick Cerullo and Dave Cohen.”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Again there was no response.
Her voice resonating over the speakerphone, Margaret Harding said, “I assume this is a follow-up to the talk we had the other day.”
Raquel said, “One other question: are you recording this?”
There was a pause during which, Raquel sensed, Margaret was glancing around her room. “No,” she said. “What about you?”
“No.”
“So go ahead, Raquel, you asked for this conference.”
“I spoke to my client. He does know a man named Oscar.”
Margaret Harding was, as Raquel had come to recognize, a very experienced lawyer. She said after a pause, “There’s no surprise there. It’s a pretty common name. Give me more.”
“This is only a proffer, of course, as I’m sure the agents understand. It’s just me speaking about something that may or may not have been said, that may or may not be known, that may or may not have happened. I’m not the witness.”
“We all get that.”
“Your instinct about Oscar may be right, and my client may know who he is.”
“That’s really no surprise either, Raquel. We have the Starbucks tape, after all. More important, we have informants who know both of them. We need to know how often he has seen Oscar, what Oscar has done, who Oscar knows, where Oscar operates, who works for him, what happened at the Richardson home and in the run-up to the murder. It might be that your client knows only a little, in which case we don’t need him and he can go away for life. Fuck him. It may be that he knows enough, in which case maybe something can be worked out. I don’t know what that might be, but it might be better than life plus 200 years.”
Raquel recognized that Margaret Harding was putting on a little show for the boys in the room. But Margaret was also carefully playing out the script for these kinds of negotiations. “Before we go there, Mr. Suarez needs protection.”
“Protection? We’ve been all over this, haven’t we? With Richie Lupo? Your client’s in solitary confinement.”
“That didn’t stop some of Oscar’s helpers from getting to him. We need another prison. We need anonymity. We need guards who will genuinely protect him.”
“And, Raquel, before we go any further we need more information than you’re giving us. I don’t think your client really understands. Oscar, we are told, is no mere mid-level drug dealer operating with a few mules. He’s developing the Sinaloa cartel in the city and now, the DEA believes, out here in the Hamptons, too.”
“They can’t really believe, Margaret, that lowly Juan Suarez knows what Oscar’s plans are for the Sinaloa cartel. How can a guy like Juan Suarez know anything about the strategic planning of the Sinaloa cartel? They are the most dangerous people in Mexico.”
“Did you ever ask your client what he did for a living in Mexico?”
“What did he do there?”
“You know how this works, Raquel. You have to tell me.”
Raquel leaned toward Theresa and touched the mute key on her telephone. She could hear but not be heard. She said to Theresa, “Do you have any ideas? I think we’ve gone as far as we can go.”
Theresa shook her head.
After she released the mute key and reconnected, Raquel said, “Let’s keep the door open, Margaret. We may be able over time to get closer to where you want to be.”
“I know you won’t be offended, Raquel, to hear this, but the door is closing soon. Our trial starts in three weeks. Once the trial starts I won’t be interested in talking. Or as I used to hear older lawyers say when I started working here, ‘The boat is leaving the dock.’”
“Ah,” Raquel said. “That old dock somehow always manages to stop moving, or the boat gets delayed.”
“Don’t count on that.”
At midnight, Cerullo and Cohen were inside an unmarked police car at a dreary mall in Smithtown, thirty miles west of Southampton. A cold mist created white halos around the mall’s lights. The interior of the car was steamy. The heater was blowing dry, irritating air. Soon after they parked, a black Audi sedan slowly pulled to the side of their car, and Oscar Caliente, swift as a phantom, left the Audi and slipped into the seat behind them.
“So,” Oscar Caliente said, “what’s going on? I don’t necessarily enjoy driving out from Manhattan to see you gentlemen in the middle of the night.” His English was far more polished than Cohen’s and Cerullo’s.
“Suarez is talking,” Dave Cohen said.
“What is he saying?”
“Not much so far. But there is a chance that pretty soon he’ll talk more. His own lawyer keeps on lifting her skirt and then dropping it, suggesting she has information and then going quiet, teasing us. This is how these fucking lawyers make a deal. ‘Show me what you’ve got and I’ll show you what I’ve got.’ It’s a bullshit game.”