Anatomy of Fear

60

He’s with a client.”

I walked past Julio’s secretary, into his office. He looked up, then at his client, a man in a chalk-striped suit.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“Not now.” Julio smiled at his client and frowned at me.

“Now,” I said. “It’s important.”

The suit left and I handed Julio the results of the DNA test.

“Hey, that was an important client. This is my job, Nate. Are you out of your mind?”

“Read it.” I tapped the report. “It’s a DNA test. Twenty years old. Your DNA, Julio. On the gun that killed my father.”

I was back in El Barrio twenty years ago, remembering how Julio had been stoned by the time I’d met up with him, edgy, and hardly talking. After I’d left, he’d taken the ill-fated joy ride that had landed him in Spofford, wrapped a stolen car around a lamppost, high as a kite, weed in his pocket. He’d called me from the station, used up his one call. He had something to tell me, he said, but I wouldn’t let him. My father had just died, and I’d killed him; it was all I could think about. Julio was sent to Spofford, and I wished it were me, a way to pay for what I’d done. I couldn’t face my mother, or my life. For a year I lost myself in drugs: stoned on grass, high on meth; anything to mask the pain and guilt. I was trying to kill myself and might have succeeded had it not been for Julio, who came out of Spofford a new person and helped me get clean. He stayed by my side when I was jumping out of my skin, and held my head when I was sick. We never spoke again about the night my father died. I knew what I’d done and I thought Julio was sharing my secret. I didn’t know he had one too.

I stared at Julio, waiting. He didn’t say anything, but his face did, surprise mixing with sadness and pain. “You have to believe me, pana, I was trying to stop it.” He sighed and sagged into a chair.

Then he told me how he’d been with the dealer, Willie Pedriera, when my father showed up; how my father had threatened Pedreira, who produced a gun; how he and Pedriera had struggled and fought; and then how he’d watched, helpless, as Pedriera shot my father. Pedreira threatened to kill him, and me, if he ever told anyone what had gone down.

“Pedreira’s cousin was with me in Spofford,” he said. “He told me Willie was watching, that he would always be watching, and that he would kill me.”

“And you believed him?”

“Nato, I saw him shoot your father. I knew what he was capable of.” Julio pinched the bridge of his nose. “He would call me every few months and remind me. “And then…” He took a deep breath. “…time passed. And I just, I just couldn’t tell you. It had been too long.”

“Pedriera’s in prison,” I said. “And they’re going to arrest you because your DNA was on the gun.”

“We fought, like I said. My hand was on the gun, my sweat; it’s possible.”

“More than possible, Julio.”

He nodded. “I wondered if this would ever happen. I used to have nightmares about it, but now…You believe me, don’t you?”

My friend looked up at me, his features clear, no ambiguity in the muscles of his face. I could see he was telling the truth.

“Yes, I believe you. But they know I’m here, Julio, the cops. And I have to call them. I have to bring you in.”

He nodded, resigned. “I’ll go to them.”

I called Terri, told her Julio would turn himself in, and asked if she would personally meet him. Then I asked him if I could borrow his car again.

“Hey, pana…” Julio managed a smile. “You might end up keeping it.”

“No,” I said. “Confia en mil. Trust me.”

I called in every favor I had, even got Perez to do one for me, then got directions, borrowed an NYPD magnetic beacon, planted it on the hood of Julio’s Mercedes, and raced up the Taconic State Parkway.

The Green Haven Correctional Facility was in upstate New York’s Dutchess County, in a town called Stormville, eighty miles from the city. I made it there in just over an hour.

I parked the car in the lot and stared up at the thirty-foot-high wall and guard towers. It was like something out of Birdman of Alcatraz or The Shawshank Redemption.

Green Haven was a maximum-security prison, most of the inmates serving long stretches, all of them for violent crimes.

I showed my ID and a guard sent me through. They were expecting me, thanks to Perez, who had called the warden, a long-time buddy.

I went through three checkpoints before a guard named Marshall, which struck me as ironic, met me. “Inmate you want is in UPD.”

“UPD?”

“Unit for the Physically Disabled. It’s over in C-Block, ground floor, ’cause of the wheelchairs.” Marshall was a large black man, affable, who kept up a running monologue as we headed over. He was proud of the jail, the dairy that was managed by the prisoners, and the profitable upholstery shop. He was full of information.

“Green Haven is New York’s only execution facility. Used to have the electric chair, but they exchanged it for lethal injection. Lot better, if you ask me.”

Neither option sounded good to me, but I nodded.

UPD looked more like a hospital than a prison: nurses’ station, doctors walking the hallways with clipboards.

Marshall stopped in front of a door, knocked, unlocked it, and waved me in.

“I’ll be right outside.” He closed the door behind me.

There was a man sitting in a wheelchair by a barred window; cheeks hollow, eyes sunken into sockets, skull visible beneath pale skin. I had seen Pedriera’s arrest sheet; he was only a few years older than me. But this guy looked about eighty. I thought Marshall must have made a mistake, but when I asked if he was Willie Pedriera he managed a nod. There was an IV in his arm, bruised and purplish welts on his skin. I recognized the illness.

“I’m Nate Rodriguez,” I said.

He turned his head toward me like a lazy lizard. “So…you’re the son.” His Barrio accent was strong. His eyes were rheumy and slightly unfocused; he was obviously doped on pain meds. “They told me you was coming.” He took a long, hard look at me. “You don’t look familiar.”

Now I remembered him. Julio had always bought the drugs, but there was one time I’d been with him. I reminded Pedriera, and he shrugged. “That why you’re here? To buy some weed?” He laughed and coughed, the veins in his forehead swelling. He wiped spit off his chin, and reached for a small one-legged figurine he had propped beside a wooden cross on the windowsill.

“You know Aroni, the midget healer?” he asked. “Has his work cut out for him with me, eh?”

“You should have Inle too, for healing,” I said. “And Babalu-Aye, who governs the sphere of illness. And Lubbe Bara Lubbe, who will take care of your past-and your future too.”

“I have no future,” he said, then squinted at me. “So, you are a believer?”

I didn’t have time to consider my answer. “Yes,” I said, and it seemed right to me.

He nodded, and closed his eyes, a faint smile on his lips.

“My friend, Julio Sanchez, you remember him?” I asked.

He took a minute. “Yeah…I remember.”

“He was with you that night.”

Pedriera sharpened. “Which night was that?”

“The night you killed my father.”

He shook his head slowly. “Not me.”

Even with his facial muscles in decline I could see he was lying, the corners of his mouth ticking up one second, down the next, zygomatic muscles tugging at his flaccid cheeks, but failing, the contradictions playing out on his face.

“That’s what I told those cops. I. Wasn’t. There. You hear me? Now…leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m dying?”

“Yes, I see that,” I said. “So why lie?”

“You think I should help those bastards?” His lip curled up in disgust. “I was eighteen the first time they locked me up. I sold some drugs, so what? They put me in with rapists and murderers.”

Because you are one.

“You see what they do to me?” He flicked a bony finger at his IV. “Why should I help them?”

“It’s not about helping them.”

He waved a hand and it seemed to exhaust him. “Why should I help anyone? No one ever helped me. Never! Nunca!” He laid his head back against the wheelchair and took a strangled breath, the chords in his neck like thick ropes.

“But this is your chance, Willie. Your last chance. To save your soul, your ori.”

He closed his eyes and turned away, but I kept going.

“If you believe in Iku, then you know this is fate,” I said, and realized that I believed it too. “This is what was prescribed, the number of days you had written. My father’s number was cut short. You did that. You offended Ellegua and Chango and Oshun. All of them. Do you want your ori searching for a resting place forever? Don’t you want the gods to forgive you?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute and I didn’t either. I watched him struggle for breath and with something less tangible, perhaps his past. Then he leaned forward, reached out and gripped my hand. “Will you do something for me?”

I nodded, waiting.

“Bring me a madrina or a padrino.” He drew in a breath and swallowed hard. “No, an espiritista, one with real powers, no fakes.” He locked his eyes on mine. “You can do that?”

“Yes.”

“Prometeme,” he said, his bony fingers tightening around mine.

I promised. I would drive Maria Guerrero here myself. I would pay her whatever she asked. I hoped the warden was as good a friend as Perez said he was and would allow it. I didn’t think they would deny a dying man his last wish, particularly in exchange for his testimony.

Then I got the guard, Marshall, to be a witness. He stood and listened while Pedriera told his story: how he’d sold drugs to the neighborhood kids, me and Julio included; and how my father had come to find him that night. It took a long time for him to get it out, coughing fits and gasps for breath interrupting him, and once, even tears. I transcribed every word, leading up to him firing the fatal shots that had killed my father.

“And what about Julio Sanchez?” I asked.

“He tried to stop me,” Pedriera said. “Mas nada. He didn’t do nothing to your father.”

I made him say it again, and when he was finished he signed it and Marshall did too.

I promised again that I would bring the espiritista, and he told me to hurry.