CHAPTER 12

WHEN SHE GOT TO HER OFFICE, THE FIRST CALL CASEY MADE was to Norman Case, the district counsel at the Department of Homeland Security. Casey knew of him from his days as an assistant in the attorney general's office. He had the reputation of being a fair and decent lawyer and had won several high-profile drug trials for the federal government.

Casey called the office, gave her name to the secretary, and spilled out Isodora's story as quickly as she could, hoping to elicit some sympathy.

The secretary answered her with disinterest, suggesting she send a letter to the office.

Casey cleared her throat and said, "I don't know if you caught my name, Casey Jordan? I run a women's law clinic downtown, the Marcia Sales Clinic? We've been in the news."

Silence greeted her. Humiliation swelled up inside Casey's stomach.

"My client," Casey said, "if you could see her, they took her little girl and it's all a mistake and I'm trying to help her."

After a moment of silence, the secretary sighed and said, "Hang on."

Casey opened her clenched fist and beat the side of her leg with an open palm.

"Ms. Jordan?" said a man. "Norman Case. How can I help you?"

Casey explained Isodora's situation and said, "I think someone in your office must have mistaken her for someone else. She's undocumented, but she has no record. Her husband was killed in a hunting accident. The thing at Senator Chase's ranch."

"Rough," Case said. "I don't really know Chase, but you had to feel bad for him."

Casey recalled the pathetic image of the wildly popular senator talking at a press conference about the tragedy, tears streaming down his face, his broken voice almost impossible to understand.

"Me, too," she said. "But I feel even worse for the dead man's wife. She's the one I'm talking about. They took her right off the senator's ranch. You'd think after all that-"

"I doubt the senator even knows," Case said. "Some of the ICE people run things without a lot of cross talk. We just process what they bring us. I'll look into it for you. You know how it goes with these illegals. There's what? Twelve million of them? You can't blame the left hand for not knowing what the right is doing these days."

"I'm hoping you can release her," Casey said.

"The hearing is Monday," Case said.

"If she goes into the hearing and they think she's someone else," Casey said, "the judge isn't going to do anything outside the lines. Even if we can't get her set free, at least let's get her identity right and we get her to Hutto so she can be with her little girl. I'm hoping we can get it done before the weekend. She's just a baby."

"Give me her name and I'll see what I can do," Case said.

She thanked him and gave him her cell phone number, asking for whoever worked on it to call her the minute they worked through the mistake.

It was four when she realized she hadn't heard from Norman Case or anyone in his office. She ushered a pregnant young woman out of her office and scooped up the phone. This time Case's secretary was short with her. She sounded offended and said that the DHS lawyer was unavailable and that all she could do was take a message.

"He's there?"

"Yes, but he's in a meeting," the secretary said.

"Will he call me when he's done?"

"Ms. Jordan, he told me to take a message. After that, you're on your own."

"Look, just help me here. Can you just ask him if he was able to straighten out Isodora's identity? Can you please do that?"

"Do you use that trick all the time?" the secretary asked.

"What trick?"

"About the poor mother and her kid and your do-good clinic."

"What trick?"

"You play me and I make a fool out of myself to my boss, telling him you're all this and all that. Fool me once, shame on you. You won't fool me twice."

"I didn't say anything that wasn't true."

"They pay in cash, right?" the secretary said. "These drug dealers?"

Casey snorted and half-laughed. "What are you talking about?"

"You'll have to talk to Mr. Case."

"Please," Casey said. "I really don't know what you're talking about."

"Your client?" the secretary said. "They got the right person. She and her husband? Organized crime. A big gang, one of the biggest. Murder. Extortion. Drugs."

"It's a mistake," Casey said.

"You're the mistake," the secretary said.

CHAPTER 13

TEUCH DREAMED OF A JAILHOUSE HAIRCUT. THE CLAMMY plastic cape tight on his neck. His hands pinned down on the armrests of the chair, weighted in concrete. And the buzzing as the hundred tiny blades snickered across his scalp. Tufts of dry black hair falling like fat snowflakes, sliding down the front of his face, depositing themselves in his open mouth. A mouth dry as desert dust and buzzing.

In the dream, he saw his sister-in-law, Isodora, as a child, pushing through the line of prisoners in a blaze orange jumpsuit of her own. He felt shame when her dark eyes found his. Her face crumpled and she began to shriek.

The sound woke Teuch and he saw a real child in a kid's rugby shirt, his face crumpled like Isodora's in the dream, and in his hand the pelt of a small butchered animal. Teuch moved his dry mouth. No sound came from it, but the movement sent a cloud of buzzing flies up from his face. As in the dream, his arms would not move, nor his legs, nor any part of him except the swollen silent lips. Still, he could listen from his bed in the deep brown weeds.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" The child stood frozen in terror, the pelt gripped tight, black hair woven through his fingers.

"Finish your business and get back here," a voice said. "If it's a bug, walk away. You want bologna or peanut butter?"

The father appeared, glasses fogging from the heat, plastic-wrapped sandwich in hand, mouth agog.

"Put that down!" he said, pointing at the bloody pelt. "Goddamn it!"

The boy's face spilled tears. The father reached for the pelt.

"What the hell?" he said, snatching the pelt and throwing it to the ground before he saw Teuch and the flies. "Oh my God."

The man and the boy disappeared and even though the flies returned, tickling Teuch's face, licking and feeding in the corners of his eyes and nose, he drifted back into another dream until something woke him suddenly. The man had come back without the boy, but with a cop who kicked at Teuch's foot. A dirty white cop. The long mustache on his face hid in the shadow of a tall felt hat.

"Jesus," the cop said, parting the weeds and kneeling down beside Teuch to touch his neck. "This man's alive."

CHAPTER 14

GET MARIA DELGADO IN HERE," CASEY SAID TO STACY, BANGING open the door between her office and where Stacy sat.

"What got under your skin?" Stacy asked.

"I just made an ass out of myself," she said.

Stacy raised her eyebrows.

"You said I had to see her? That I shouldn't be worrying about a lunch?" Casey said. "I could lose my lunch when I think of her sniveling face. Crocodile tears. Do you know the sister and her husband are gangbangers? Drugs. Murder. All of it. That's why they want her out."

"Oh, right," Stacy said, picking up the phone and dialing. "Our government couldn't be the ones making the mistake. Not the gang who gave us Iraq."

"Don't get political," Casey said.

"Maria?" Stacy said into the phone. "It's Stacy Berg. Can you come down to the clinic?"

Stacy looked at Casey from under half-lidded eyes.

"Yes, I know it's Friday afternoon," Stacy said into the phone. "I'm afraid it's very important. Right away. Yes. Good."

Stacy slammed the phone down and took out a nail file that she began to work at with great concentration.