“I know,” Sister Margaret Mary said, “and I did try checking again, but it’s as I told you. We just don’t know. Nobody knows. He just showed up at Our Lady of Peace one morning, sitting in the side chapel. That’s run by Maryknoll. They’ve set up a mission at the border to provide water and food and some facilities to migrants coming in. Anyway, the usual thing is that the people come in and some of them are what are called ‘unaccompanied minors.’ The Maryknolls separate them out and then see if they can do something for them so they don’t end up in a detention facility. But Javier wasn’t with any of those groups. He was just there one morning.”
“And he didn’t say anything about where he was from or what he was doing there?” Gregor asked.
Sister Margaret Mary shook her head. “When he talks, he mostly talks about the Holy Mother. That she’s the mother to all of us. That she will keep and protect us. From what he knows, I’d say he’d at least started religious instruction wherever he came from. But that doesn’t help, does it? We don’t even know if he’s actually undocumented.”
“You’re not worried he could have family somewhere who are looking for him?” Bennis asked.
“I don’t think so,” Sister Margaret Mary said. “We’ve asked him about family. He just says the Holy Mother is his mother and the mother of all of us. I’ve been wondering if he came north with family and saw them die along the way. Saw them killed. Except—”
“Except?” Gregor asked.
“Except when that happens, the coyotes always take the kids. And they don’t leave them alone. But among the other things the Maryknoll sisters did was to get him to a doctor for a complete examination, and there’s no sign that he’s been sexually molested in any way, and no sign of physical abuse. No scars. No broken bones. One day he was just there. And we don’t know anything about him.”
They all looked across the room again. Pickles and Javier were squirming around each other. Javier looked immensely less tense than he had when they first walked in.
“Well,” Sister Margaret Mary said. “We might as well get this started.”
6
It took Cary Alder a full hour to get in touch with Hernandez, and even then, it was like talking to a wall.
“You must have done something,” he said, listening to the sounds of children and women in the background. “You’re the only reason she ever comes down here.”
“I don’t ever do anything,” Hernandez said.
Cary was standing just inside his private office door. The door was mostly shut, but he had it open just a sliver, so that he could see out across the carpeted reception room to the frosted windows next to the front door. The reception room and his office were outfitted in tune with the public face of Alder Properties: upscale everything, probably too expensive for you to afford. His father had taught him that. Rich people didn’t want to believe they had anything to do with poor people. If the city made you put “affordable” units in your buildings, you very carefully made sure there was a separate entrance to them, so that Those People never appeared in the marble-floored lobbies.
And Cary Alder didn’t blame them. You worked all your life to make something of yourself—and then what? You were supposed to live practically in bed with the muck and the filth and the failure? Who had thought up this whole thing about cramming “affordable” units into premier properties? And why did anyone expect they’d get away with it?
She was out there, pacing back and forth in front of those frosted-glass windows. Cary could see her from where he stood at his office door.
If it had been up to him, he would have had nothing on his books but those premier properties. He’d have had high-rises full of duplexes and acres of McMansions in Bucks County and on the Main Line. Unfortunately, his father had taught him something else that turned out to be true.
Those apartment buildings downtown, the ones with nothing in them but “affordable” units, made money.
He’d have smoked a cigarette, but he’d quit them over a year ago. You couldn’t smoke around rich people anymore. You couldn’t eat a Big Mac, either. It was incredible how many people these days were turning out to be vegan.
“Listen,” he said. “You were the one who told me she never went out after dark.”
“To Mass,” Hernandez said. “She goes to Mass. There’s an English Mass at four o’clock.”
“This isn’t Mass. This isn’t even the same side of the city.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Forget the cigarette. Cary wanted a scotch. Laphroaig would be good. He didn’t have any.
“Let’s try this,” he said. “Did you talk to her today?”
“Only once. When she was coming back from Mass. She came back from Mass. She went into her apartment. I didn’t see her go out again.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Only for a couple of minutes.”
“What did you talk about?”
There was no real silence on the other end of the line, because there was all that noise in the background. How many people was Hernandez shoving into that super’s apartment? It was only supposed to hold four.
“Hernandez.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Hernandez said suddenly. “It’s the biggest apartment in the building. She’s there all by herself. She could take the one bedroom on the first floor.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cary said.
“I have a family that wants to move in. You could make a lot more money.”
“And I keep telling you, no I couldn’t. She’s been living in that apartment since before I was born. She pays her rent on time every single month. She brings it right down here and gets a receipt. You know why she does that, right? She thinks you won’t give it in so that we can get her in trouble.”
“I hand all the rent checks in. Every time.”
“She comes down here because of you. I have to have that—gargoyle—in these offices at least once a month because of you. When I’ve got serious clients here. Who are not used to that sort of thing.”
“It’s a three-bedroom apartment,” Hernandez said. “She’s a crazy woman.”
“She’s a crazy woman with paperwork. If you keep this up, she’s going to go straight to housing court. She’s already taken us to housing court. More than once. We don’t want to have it happen again.”
There was no response at all, this time.
“Listen to me,” Cary said. “The only reason you have a job at all is that you look legal enough on paper to give me plausible deniability. But you’re not really legal, and you and I know it. Nobody else knows it. Even Meera thinks you’ve got a legitimate green card. But you don’t, and I could do something about that if I wanted to.”
“I am a very good worker,” Hernandez said. “I give satisfaction for money.”
“You give me a pain in the neck. Now pay attention. I don’t want you talking to her again, not unless there’s some ordinary business. Fix the plumbing—and none of that crap you were pulling last year about taking forever to get around to it. Change lightbulbs. Keep the stairs clean. But don’t ever say a word to her about moving out of that apartment. Ever. Got that?”