As soon as the back door slammed shut, Adele opened the kitchen gate and began sweeping the mess into several huge plastic trash bags. Cereal and mashed cookies crunched under her feet. Wet urine-scented bits of paper towel stuck to her broom. Damn this dog! Damn the client who stuck him with me! And damn me most of all for my unforgiving little heart!
Her insides felt like they were being torn in two directions at once. A part of her wanted more than anything to give Vega the comfort and reassurance he desperately needed. But the other part couldn’t staunch the rage and grief over the fact that he’d shot an unarmed man. And not just any man: the father of a woman Adele knew and loved. A woman who had helped raise Sophia.
Marcela Salinez was more than her nine-year-old daughter’s babysitter. She’d been with Adele through her early years as an insecure new mother. She’d lived through the fledgling years of La Casa when it was still struggling for a place in the community. She’d quietly endured the rockiest patches of Adele’s former marriage. And Adele in turn had witnessed the blossoming of Marcela’s life. Marcela met her husband, Byron, when he came over with a friend to paint Adele’s garage. Adele was at their wedding. She was at the christening of their adorable little boy, Damon. And although Marcela no longer babysat full-time, she was still very much a fixture in Sophia’s life. Now, with a single moment of callous indiscretion, Vega had destroyed everything. For Adele and Sophia, even if the child didn’t know it yet. Adele couldn’t imagine ever breaching this divide.
Worse still, Adele was now at the mercy of police protocol—and this angered her, too. As soon as Adele realized who the dead man might be, Vega called Detective Dolan from her car and gave him Marcela’s cell phone number. Adele wanted to call Marcela herself but Dolan and Vega asked her not to. There was a procedure for such things. In police work, there was always a procedure. An officer—in this case, Dolan—had to deliver the news in person. Marcela had to be escorted to the medical examiner’s office to make a positive identification. Adele was limited to offering up any information on other family members who might need to be contacted.
“I think he has a second wife and a couple of children in the Bronx,” Adele told Dolan. She didn’t have an address, phone number, or even the second wife’s name—if she was indeed a wife at all. It was not uncommon for immigrant men to leave families back in their home countries and start new ones here. The years of separation and loneliness often became too much to maintain ties. Adele had no idea whether Marcela’s father was such a man but given that Marcela spoke so rarely about him, it was a strong possibility.
Adele wrestled the garbage bags into the trash can out back. It felt good to put all her anger into something physical. Who are you angry at? she asked herself. Jimmy? You knew he was a police officer when you started dating him. You knew this could happen. Besides, as much as Adele loved Marcela, it certainly appeared that her father had committed a serious crime.
Yet no matter how hard Adele tried to accept that logic, she couldn’t wrap her heart around the situation. If any other cop had been involved in the same scenario, as head of La Casa, Adele would be demanding a meeting with the county police to review the matter and putting pressure on the district attorney’s office to convene a grand jury. Yet she couldn’t do any of that here. In a few days—maybe less—everyone in the community would know that her lover was the cop who’d shot and killed an unarmed undocumented local dishwasher. Adele would look like a hypocrite if she sided with Vega. She’d look like a heartless careerist if she didn’t. So she held her tongue—which was unfortunately attached to her heart—while they both stumbled about in their separate prisons of guilt and grief. His over what he’d done. Hers over what she could not do.
She ran a mop twice over the kitchen floor until she was sure she’d gotten rid of the smell. Vega and Diablo had been gone forty-five minutes. Adele decided to give him another fifteen before she called his cell. Maybe the walk was helping him clear his head.
She went upstairs to take a quick shower and slip into her nightgown. She drifted off to sleep briefly and then jumped up and blinked at the clock. Two A.M. Was Vega still out? The lights were off downstairs, all except for a dim glow coming from the kitchen. Adele grabbed her robe and padded softly down the stairs.
“Jimmy?”
“In the flesh,” he answered hoarsely.
She found him seated on the step separating the mudroom from the kitchen. His blue button-down dress shirt was untucked from his pants and open to his white T-shirt beneath. His sleeves were rolled up. Diablo’s head lay across his lap. There were three empty Corona bottles from her fridge by his side. He was staring at a picture on his cell phone screen, the faint light bleaching out the warm bronze of his face. He caught her looking at him and clicked off the photo. Even with only the fluorescent lamp above the stove for light, she could see that his eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.