Evelyn told them she hadn’t touched the body. She had gone to the drugstore to buy diapers and had opened the trunk with one hand while holding the shopping bag in the other. It was when she tried to push the bag in that she had noticed the trunk was full. She saw an object covered in a rug; when she pulled it aside she saw there was a curled-up body underneath. She was so scared she fell back onto the sidewalk but stifled the scream fighting to come out and slammed the trunk shut. She put the bag on the backseat and locked herself in the car for a good while—she wasn’t sure how long, at least twenty or thirty minutes—until she had calmed down enough to be able to drive back to the house. With a bit of luck her absence might have gone unnoticed, and no one would know she had used the car, but after the collision with Richard, with the trunk dented and half-open, that was impossible.
“We don’t even know whether that person is dead. He could be unconscious,” suggested Richard, wiping his brow with a dish towel.
“Not too likely, he’d be dead from hypothermia by now. But there’s one way to find out,” said Lucia.
“Good God, woman! You’re not suggesting we look inside the trunk on the street . . .”
“Do you have a better idea? There’s no one outside. It’s very early, it’s still dark, and it’s Sunday. Who’s going to see us?”
“No way. Count me out.”
“Okay, lend me a flashlight. Evelyn and I are going to take a look.”
Hearing this, the girl’s sobs increased in volume by several decibels. Lucia put her arm around her, feeling sorry for this young girl and all the suffering she had been through in the past few hours.
“This has nothing to do with me! My insurance will pay for the damage to the car, and that’s all I can do. I’m sorry, Evelyn, but you’ll have to leave,” said Richard in his broken Spanish.
“You’re going to throw her out, Richard? Are you crazy? As if you don’t know what it means to be undocumented in this country!” cried Lucia.
“I do know, Lucia. If not from my work at the center, I’d know from my father, who’s forever harping about it,” sighed Richard, caving in. “What do we know about this girl?”
“That she needs help. Do you have family here, Evelyn?”
A sepulchral silence: Richard went on scratching, thinking of what a tremendous mess he was in—the police, an investigation, the press, his reputation down the drain. And his father’s voice deep inside him reminding him of his duty to help the persecuted: “I wouldn’t be in this world, and you wouldn’t have been born, if some brave souls hadn’t hidden me from the Nazis,” he had told him over and over, about a million times.
“We have to find out if that person is still alive. There’s no time to lose,” Lucia repeated.
She picked up the car keys Evelyn Ortega had left on the kitchen table, handed her the Chihuahua as a precaution against the cats, put on her hat and gloves, and asked again for the flashlight.
“Oh shit, Lucia, you can’t go on your own! I’ll have to go with you,” said Richard resignedly. “We’ll need to defrost the trunk to open it.”
They filled a large pot with hot water and vinegar and between the two of them managed with great difficulty to carry it out, treading carefully on the slippery staircase and clinging on to the handrails to stay upright. Lucia’s contact lenses began to freeze, feeling like shards of glass in her eyes. Richard often went in winter to fish in the frozen lakes of the north and had experience with extreme cold, but he was not prepared for it in Brooklyn. The light from the streetlamps cast yellow, phosphorescent circles on the snow. The wind blew in gusts, rising and falling as if weary with the effort, then moments later stirring up swirls of loose snow. When it died down, complete silence reigned, a threatening stillness. Cars covered with varying amounts of snow were parked along the street; Evelyn’s white Lexus was nearly invisible. It was not directly outside his house as Richard had feared, but some fifteen yards away, which in fact made no difference. No one was around at that early hour. The snowplows had begun to clear the street the day before, and there were mounds of snow piled on the sidewalks.
Just as Evelyn had said, the trunk was tied with a yellow belt. They had a hard time untying it because of their gloves: Richard had become paranoid about fingerprints. They finally got the trunk open and saw a bundle partially covered with a bloodstained rug. When they pulled it back they found a woman dressed in workout clothes, her face hidden in her arms. She was curled up in a strange position and barely looked human, more like a disjointed doll. What little skin they could see was lavender. There was no doubt about it: she was dead. They stood for several minutes trying to work out what had happened: they could not see any blood on her but would have to turn her over to examine her properly. The poor creature was frozen as solid as a block of cement. However much Lucia pushed and pulled, she could not budge her. Richard shone the flashlight on her, almost sobbing with anxiety.
“I think she died yesterday,” said Lucia.
“Why do you think that?”
“Rigor mortis. A body becomes stiff about eight hours after death, and the rigor lasts for thirty-six hours or so.”
“So then it could have been the night before .”
“True. It could have been even earlier because the temperature is so low. Whoever put that woman in the trunk was counting on that, I’m sure. Maybe they couldn’t dispose of the body because of Friday’s blizzard. It’s obvious they were in no hurry.”
“It could be that the rigor mortis has finished and the body has simply frozen,” suggested Richard.
“A human being is not the same as a chicken, Richard. It takes a couple of days in an icebox for a body to freeze completely. Let’s say she could have died between the night before last and yesterday.”
“How come you know so much about this?”
“Don’t ask,” she said categorically.
“In any case, that’s up to the forensic pathologist and the police, not us,” Richard concluded.
As if summoned by magic, they saw the headlights of a vehicle slowly turning the corner. They succeeded in lowering the lid of the trunk just as a police patrol car pulled up alongside them. One of the policemen stuck his head out of the window.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“All okay, officer,” replied Lucia.
“What are you doing outside at this time of day?” the man asked.
“Looking for my mother’s diapers. We left them in the car,” Lucia said, pulling the big bag from the backseat.
“Good morning, officer,” said Richard, his voice reedy.
They waited until the car moved off and fastened the trunk again with the belt. Then they went back into the house, slipping on the ice on the stairs as they carried the diapers and the empty pot, and praying to the heavens that the patrolmen would not think of coming back to take a look at the Lexus.
THEY FOUND EVELYN, MARCELO, AND THE CATS in exactly the same position as they had left them. When they asked the girl about the diapers, she explained that Frankie, the boy she cared for, had cerebral palsy and needed them.
“How old is the boy?” asked Lucia.
“Thirteen.”
“And he wears adult diapers?”
Evelyn turned red with embarrassment and explained that Frankie was very advanced for his age and the diapers had to be loose because the “little bird” often woke him up. Lucia translated for Richard: erection.
“I left him on his own yesterday. He must be desperate. Who’s going to give him his insulin?” murmured Evelyn.
“He needs insulin?”
“If only we could call Se?ora Leroy . . . Frankie can’t be left on his own.”
“It’s risky to use the phone,” Richard said.