Marcela followed Alma down a short, overheated hallway with framed photographs of Aaron and Felix on the walls. There were no photos of Marcela, her two dead brothers or her sister who now lived with her husband and children in Costa Rica. It was as if none of them had ever existed.
The basement apartment had two bedrooms at the end of the hall. Felix and Aaron’s bunk beds were in a room on the right. On the left was a bedroom that looked out on a concrete retaining wall. The only light came from the harsh ceiling fixture overhead. The room had barely enough space for a queen-sized bed and a chest of drawers. Alma closed the door and sat on the bed. She began speaking as soon as she sat down.
“Why are you here? The wake and funeral, I understand. But that has not been arranged yet.”
“My father told me a while back that he left an envelope for me in his bedroom. With some old family pictures and mementos inside. He wanted me to have them if something happened to him.”
“Mementos? What kind of mementos?”
Marcela gathered her words carefully. “I really don’t know. I’m just wondering if you’ve seen the envelope?”
Alma narrowed her gaze. “Did that man call you today? The one who was asking for money?”
“No,” Marcela lied. Besides, it wasn’t money he wanted anymore. He had his eye on something more valuable—at least to him.
Alma frowned. “He seemed pretty insistent about getting his money.”
“Maybe he changed his mind.” Or circumstances changed it for him. Marcela tried to keep her voice as even as possible. “Perhaps my father tucked this envelope in a drawer?”
“Everything in this apartment belongs to me!” Alma said sharply. “There is nothing here that concerns you.”
Marcela leaned against the dresser drawers. There was barely any floor space left in the bedroom. She nodded to the hallway. “Those lawyers out there? What would they say if I told them you aren’t Hector Ponce’s legal wife?”
“I am the mother of his two sons!”
“Yes. That’s true. But you aren’t my father’s legal wife. I’m his blood relative. Maybe you aren’t entitled to any money at all.” Marcela didn’t know if that was true, but she knew it would scare Alma—scare her enough to make her think twice about chasing Marcela out of the apartment when it would be easy enough to hand her a bunch of old pictures and mementos that Alma would just throw out anyway.
Alma reached into the cleavage of her blouse and pulled out a hanky. It was hot in the bedroom, the old steam radiators hissing and clanking. Slowly she got up from the bed and opened one of the chest drawers. She poked around underneath some of her father’s clothes. They smelled of his spicy aftershave. She pulled out a book. It was Ricardo Luis’s recently published memoir: La Canción de Mi Cora-zón. Song of My Heart, the Spanish-language edition. On the cover was a picture of the sexy Mexican pop star in a black unbuttoned shirt.
Marcela frowned at the book. “What was my father doing with Luis’s autobiography?”
“I don’t know,” said Alma. “But whatever it was, he was up to no good. Your father had no interest in Luis’s music.”
“He wasn’t stealing.”
“Well, he was doing something illegal. That ID he was carrying in his wallet when he was shot? I’ve never seen it before. Your father’s middle name is Mauricio. Why would he have fake ID in the name of Antonio—ID from Georgia, a state he’s never even been to—unless he was doing something illegal?”
“Have you shown the book to anyone?”
“Of course not,” said Alma. “The police came this morning asking for his comb and toothbrush and a few other things. I gave them what they asked for but I’m not giving them an excuse to wash the blood off their hands. Maybe your father did some things he shouldn’t have. Maybe he borrowed money from someone he shouldn’t have. But he didn’t deserve to die.”
Alma opened the book now. Inside was a manila envelope addressed to Marcela. It had been torn open. Alma handed it to her.
“You—opened this?”
“I didn’t know what was inside.”
You wanted to make sure there was no money, thought Marcela. But it served no purpose to say what each of them knew. Marcela reached into the envelope and examined the contents. She saw a jumble of grainy and yellowed photos of her and her sister hugging, of Miguel posing with Reimundo by a corrugated fence, Reimundo smiling through two lost baby teeth. She pulled out the photo she’d seen on the news of her father, his brother Edgar, and Miguel posing by a fruit stand as they began their journey north.
So there were two copies of that photo the police confiscated. Of course. It made sense.