“Mitch, Peppy! Stay!” I was gasping for breath, but the dogs for once paid attention and sat. “Get them inside before Lummox here loses his head completely and shoots them,” I said to Mr. Contreras. “And take my handbag before this cretin steals my wallet. Can you call Freeman for me? Also, will you get a message to Morrell? I’m supposed to meet him for a picnic tomorrow. In case I can’t get out on time, will you call and tell him? His number’s in my electronic diary, there in my bag.”
Mr. Contreras was looking so bewildered I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, although he did pick up my handbag from where Lemour had dropped it. I started to repeat myself, but Lemour, furiously trying to straighten his tie, grabbed my arm and jerked me down the walk. He tried to throw me into the back of the squad car, but he wasn’t big enough to get the right leverage. The Du Page sheriff’s deputy took my left arm and whispered something apologetic as he pushed me behind the cage.
“Uh, Doug, uh, can you give me the key? I need to lock her to the seat, and she can’t ride with her arms behind her.”
Lemour ignored him and climbed behind the unmarked car’s wheel. The sheriff’s deputy looked at me uncertainly, but as Lemour started the engine he quickly shut the door on me and got into the passenger seat. Lemour took off so fast that my head banged into the metal cage.
Rage was building in me. I knew I had to keep it down. I was helpless—physically and in the situation—and if I let my fury ride me I’d give Lemour the opening he wanted to pound me into the ground. When he stopped at the light on Addison, I maneuvered my body so that I was sitting sideways in the narrow space with my legs stretched out across the width of the backseat. My shoulders were beginning to ache horribly.
The day had started so well, too. When I got back from swimming with the dogs, young Robbie was up and willing to make timid overtures to Peppy. Mr. Contreras prepared his breakfast specialty, French toast, and Robbie relaxed visibly as the old man urged seconds on him: perhaps it was the first time in his life his every mouthful hadn’t been monitored and criticized.
I drove north to Morrell’s place in Evanston. In the theme of Spy–Counterspy, I wrote out a note explaining my visit to Coolis yesterday and how imperative it was that I talk to Se?ora Mercedes. Morrell frowned over my message, then finally decided—whether because of my dogged determination, my impeccable logic, or my nice–looking legs—to take me to see Nicola Aguinaldo’s mother. We rode the L, since that was the easiest way to check for tails, first in and out of the Loop and then over to Pilsen on the city’s near southwest side.
When I met Abuelita Mercedes I realized I’d been carrying the unconscious stereotype of her title of “granny”—I’d been expecting an old woman in a kerchief, with round red cheeks. Of course, a woman whose daughter was only twenty–seven was still young herself, in fact only a few years older than I. She was short, stocky, with black hair curling softly around her ears and forehead and a permanent worry crease worked between her brows.
Tagalog was her first language, but she could get by in Spanish, which Morrell spoke fluently—although his was the Central American version, not always in sync with Filipino Spanish, he explained. Abuelita Mercedes’s English was limited to a few social phrases, which she used upon his introducing us: Se?ora Mercedes, le presento a la Se?ora Victoria. He assured her that I was a friend worried about Nicola’s death, as well as a lawyer committed to justice for the poor.
Sherree, Nicola’s surviving child, greeted Morrell with an eager cry of “Tío!” but she chattered away in English to him. After a formal reception, with strong black coffee and little fried donuts, we began to broach the subject of Nicola’s death.
With Morrell translating Se?ora Mercedes’s Spanish and Sherree reluctantly assisting with a Tagalog phrase or two, Nicola’s mother made her halting way through Nicola’s story. She explained that she knew very little of what had happened to her daughter in prison. Se?ora Mercedes couldn’t afford a phone, so it wasn’t possible for her to talk to her daughter except at very wide intervals: she would get permission from a neighbor, often Se?ora Attar, to use her phone, so that Nicola could call collect on a prearranged day. But then it depended on whether she was able to get a letter in to Nicola or whether Nicola could get phone privileges on that day.
She had to write in Spanish, which neither she nor Nicola wrote well, since anything she wrote in Tagalog was automatically turned back. Even so, the Spanish letters were often sent back. Coolis, out in the rural white countryside, had only one or two Spanish–speaking guards, despite the large number of Hispanic inmates. They often refused to let Spanish–language mail in or out, with the excuse that Se?ora Mercedes could be providing gang information to her daughter.