“Let him go!”
The voice travels across the green, sharp and resonant, authority in the tone. Booker?
What is Booker doing here? He strides up, a little out of breath. And behind him—Mariana? She’s parked her car on the street and is running across the grass in her bare feet.
“Let him go!” She echoes Booker’s words and I get a sick feeling.
Burke has risen, backing off Neon who rolls over, spit in his eyes. And by the way Booker glares at me, I know I’m going to have some explaining to do. I’m still sitting on the grass, however, catching my breath.
“This is Ramses Vega—Mariana’s son,” Booker says and extends a hand to the man. “You okay?”
Ramses looks at me as if he’d like to have another go at me, and barring Booker, (and maybe Burke) he would.
Let’s go, buddy, I say with my eyes as I climb to my feet. My shirt is torn, grass stains my suit pants. I don’t even try to brush them off. This is why I stopped wearing dress clothes to work.
“I have my reasons, boss,” I say to Booker and he considers me for a moment even as Mariana runs up and throws her arms around Ramses. He embraces her, dark eyes glued on me.
“What is your problem?” Mariana shrieks, and there go my chances of getting that garage addition.
“He was at yesterday’s bombing,” I say quietly.
Ramses presses his thumb to the corner of his mouth, and he’s sporting a doozy of a goose-egg under his eye. I’m sure I have my own war wounds, but you don’t see me whining.
“And today’s.”
Only now do I realize that Mariana has turned to him and is translating for him.
No wonder he looked so confused.
He responds in Portuguese, a deduction I make when it pings in my brain that Mariana is Brazilian.
“He was there yesterday,” she says, her voice a little shaky. “He was going to class. He attends English class at the Calvary Baptist Building, at the immigrant school there. The coffee shop is a block away from the school.”
My memory can’t confirm that, but it doesn’t matter because Booker is apologizing to Mariana, taking her hand, wearing apology on his face.
Listen, don’t go that easy on her, I want to say, but Booker is a nicer guy than me.
Ramses and his mother head back to the car as Booker rounds on me. “Another instinct?”
“He was at both places,” I say. “C’mon, boss.”
Booker’s looking at me again as if trying to see through me. “You can do better than this,” he says finally and turns, heading back to the scene.
Burke however, lifts a shoulder, gives a half-grin. “He nearly took you.”
I shake my head, not ready to let this go. Because it’s a little weird to me that that Mariana ran an entire election campaign, her face plastered on signs and leaflets around my neighborhood for the better part of a year and not once did I see—or hear mention of—her immigrant son.
As if he simply didn’t exist.
That question is a burr under my skin all the way back to the scene. The crowd is dispersing, the fire trucks packing up, the fire fighters walking through the now charred, smoking house.
I spot Eve taping off the scene, and I want to go over to her, but maybe I don’t have time to smooth things over.
Because—I feel it in my gut, along with the realization that I’m in way over my head—this is real.
And I’m running out of time.
Chapter 13