Raquel made Dr. Anil’s life easy. She never complained, she never resisted, she was never in denial. She never cried. She also made no arbitrary demands on Dr. Anil’s time or attention. She was respectful of the needs of other patients.
The doctor was a prompt, orderly, and efficient professional. When she delivered bad news, she didn’t sugarcoat it. When she had good news, she didn’t clap her hands. She was kind and orderly and even.
As soon as Raquel arrived and seated herself at the chair in front of Dr. Anil’s desk in her cramped office, Zain said, “I have good news, Raquel. What you have is Lyme disease, not a recurrence of cancer. You’re free of it. But you’re one of the dozens of people I’ve seen who have houses in the Hamptons. The area is overrun with deer. There must be millions, or billions, of deer-borne tics out there. You were bitten. The symptoms of the Lyme disease-soreness, body pain-sometimes mimic the feelings that cancer survivors have.”
“Thank you, Zain, thank you.”
“You’ve put yourself through hell for the last six weeks. You could have told us and we would have relieved your nightmare.”
“I was afraid, Zain,” Raquel said. “And I had work to do.”
“I know. You can rest now. You’re exhausted. Antibiotics will cure you.”
Raquel Rematti, thinking I’m cured, I get to live, put her hands over her face and cried.
She was still floating in that profound sense of relief when the call came in from Margaret Harding. She hadn’t spoken to Harding since the end of the trial. She had seen some of the television broadcasts in which Margaret, who looked even better on television than she did in person, claimed victory. She had appeared on many interviews; she was a guest on CBS, NBC, CNN and other stations. She was obviously in her element and wanted more, more. There was one level at which Raquel couldn’t blame her for this-Raquel was enough of a warrior in this business of warriors to understand that to the victor belong the spoils. There was another level at which she recoiled at the sight and sound of Margaret Harding.
Raquel said to Roger when he told her Margaret Harding was on the line, “Tell her I’m busy.”
Roger said, “It’s extremely important, or so she says.”
“Maybe she’s been nominated to the Supreme Court,” Raquel said.
“Or maybe she’s Miss New York in the next Miss America pageant.”
Raquel decided to take the call. She pressed the key for the speakerphone. Margaret Harding’s now too-familiar voice filled the office. She got right to the point. “Two weeks ago, two boys playing in a landfill in Sag Harbor found a poncho and machete. The poncho and the blade were rich with the DNA of Brad Richardson.”
Completely alert, Raquel had a sense of the direction this was taking. But, as she always did at the times when she wanted to learn things, she waited for more.
“We’ve determined,” Margaret Harding said, “that the only other DNA-and there is a rich amount of DNA-is the DNA of a guy named Jimmy Ortega. There is absolutely no DNA of Juan Suarez.”
Raquel stood up and walked to the wide windows overlooking Park Avenue. On the median strip dividing the uptown and downtown traffic, the faintest traces of green and other spring colors were starting to emerge in the flowerbeds. The median stretched in a straight line as far uptown as she could see. Again she said nothing.
As if reading from a script, Margaret Harding said, “The FBI labs and our own forensics experts have determined that it is the machete that killed Brad Richardson and the Borzois. The killer could not have been your client.”
Raquel was elated but controlled as she said, “Margaret, I appreciate your honesty in making this call.”
Margaret Harding interrupted: “Honesty has nothing to do with it.”
Raquel ignored the tone of her words. “If you can give me the DNA report, I’ll prepare a motion to vacate the verdict.”
“No need for that. In fifteen minutes our office and the United States Attorney’s Office are issuing a press release saying that your client has been exonerated. We’ve already notified Judge Conley. Later today she will sign an order vacating the conviction and dismissing the indictment. Your client will be taken to JFK and deported to Mexico.”
Raquel decided she didn’t need to speak. There was nothing to say. She hit the End button on her phone and, staring at the beautiful avenue, she cried again.
43.
The Metropolitan Detention Center was on the waterfront in Brooklyn. Raquel drove carefully under the elevated Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, through arches that created dark shadows even on a day as bright as this. Beyond the immense prison-the newest building along the waterfront-strikingly tall cranes stood against the crystalline sky. The air was as clear as on that Tuesday when the planes hit the towers of the World Trade Center. In the years when the towers were still standing they were visible, three miles away, from the open, windswept parking lot. Now the new tower, completed just months earlier and far more beautiful than the destroyed rectangular towers, soared above Manhattan’s sharp-edged skyline. To the left was the immense span of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
Raquel had made many trips to the MDC over the years. She and the other lawyers who regularly represented clients awaiting trial in the federal courts in Manhattan and Brooklyn often called the prison their “store,” the place where the clients were. Most of the prisoners in the maximum security facility were accused of drug-running. Many were street gang members. Some were Wall Street types charged with insider-trading and fraud; they were scared out of their skins by the other prisoners. And some of the prisoners-none of whom Raquel had yet represented, although she often thought that she would volunteer to do so-were called “Islamic terrorists.” This was Guantanamo Bay North.
Intricate procedures governed visits to prisoners at the MDC. Access to Juan Suarez at the far more lax state prison in Riverhead took less than fifteen minutes. Here, in this warehouse-like prison, Raquel had never been able to reach an inmate in less than an hour, often longer. Passing through the security was like peeling an onion; there were layers on layers of bars and guards, scanners and friskings.
For the first time in a year, Raquel had been living in a state of peaceful ecstasy brought on by her liberating meeting with Dr. Anil. She felt that she was reconstructing her life. Once a woman with many friends, she’d allowed those friends to drift away as she went into isolation at the moment a doctor had told her she had stage 2 breast cancer. She gave up clients and suspended her beloved teaching at Columbia. Only her secretary, Roger, knew all the details about the chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. When she lost her hair, she stayed in her apartment. Roger constantly sent her text messages about the dangers of isolation. But she saw herself as hunkering down, in battle mode, a dedicated soldier.
But it was different now. Raquel-taught by Theresa Bui about the happiness and feeling of community that friends could bring-was reaching out to people. She had joined a support group for cancer patients and survivors. She let the dean of the faculty at Columbia know she would return. She’d even had two television appearances on CBS for the first time in more than a year.
Raquel had done something else in the last five weeks. She had a small group of retired FBI agents now working in retirement as private investigators. Freed from the Bureau, they were also free to use techniques and means of access that as agents they couldn’t use. Raquel was never sure how they went about their business. She welcomed the results, not the process. Over the last several weeks she spent more than thirty thousand dollars to get the results.