“As far as you know, your ex has always been Hector Torres?”

“Yes. But now that you raise the issue, if someone changes his name, it’s conceivable that he wouldn’t tell anyone. It all depends on the reason for the name change, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” said Jack, thinking. He could have probed more, but he didn’t want to get too far off the main point. “When you say your ex-husband had a thing for my mother, what do you mean?”

She sighed, as if not sure how to put it. “Let me start at the beginning. Hector and I met here in Miami in 1967, got married in 1968.”

“My mother was already dead.”

“Right. You were just a baby when Hector became friends with your father.”

“Why would he become friends with my father if he had a thing for my mother?”

“That’s what I wanted to know.”

“Did you ask him?”

“Yes. He told me why, but the answer was obvious. He still loved her.”

Jack shook his head, confused. “Wait a minute. He buddied up to my dad because he was still in love with my mother?”

“I can tell you for a fact that when Hector came to this country, even after he met me, he was determined to find your mother. When he learned that she was dead, he was devastated. Frankly, I think he became friends with your father for one reason. It was the only way he could find out what happened to the woman he really loved.”

“But he and my father have been friends all my life.”

“All I’m saying is that your mother was the reason they became friends in the first place. I didn’t say she was the reason they remained friends over the years. I’m quite certain that, to this day, your father knows nothing about that relationship.”

“So, what made you call me now, after all this time?”

“Like I said, it bugged me to see that hypocrite ex-husband of mine on television invoking his friendship with your father. Especially after the way he treated your client on the witness stand. After the way he treated me in our marriage. After the way I’m sure he treated your mother.”

“What do you mean, the way he treated my mother?”

“Hector was-” She stopped herself, measuring her words. “I was married to Hector for only four years, but I know him well. Trust me, he’s never had a healthy relationship with a woman in his life. He’s not capable of it.”

“Do you know something specific about my mother?”

“Only what I saw.”

Jack blinked hard, even more confused. “Wait. You and Hector met after my mother was dead. So what could you have seen?”

“I saw a man consumed by the memory of a woman he couldn’t live without.”

“Lots of people carry a torch.”

“I’d call it an obsession.”

“He’d probably call it sentimental.”

“There was nothing sentimental about it. The man scared the hell out of me. It’s why I divorced him. I followed him one day,” she said, her voice tightening.

“What?”

“He used to leave the house every Saturday, not tell me where he was going. So I followed him one day.”

“Where’d he go?”

“The cemetery. Flagler Memorial Park.”

“That’s where my mother is buried. He visited her grave?”

“Yes. Every Saturday.”

“Even after he was married to you?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s why you divorced him?”

“It wasn’t just the visiting that bothered me.”

“What was it?”

“It was-it was just strange.”

“I’d like to know.”

“Like I said, I followed him to the cemetery. I hid behind a mausoleum so he couldn’t see me. He looked around to make sure no one was watching. And then he…”

Jack felt his pulse quicken. “What?”

Her voice started to shake. “He lay down on top of her grave.”

Jack went cold.

“And then he…” Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t say the rest, and Jack didn’t want to hear it anyway. Her eyes were cast down toward her coffee cup. Jack was looking at her face, but the image was suddenly a blur.

“So you divorced him,” said Jack, his anger rising. “And he remained friends with my father all these years. Shook his hand, smiled to his face, went to his birthday parties, used him for whatever political capital my old man was worth.”

“I didn’t know that until I saw him on the news tonight. But when I heard that-well, I just had to call you. I’m sorry. This has to be a terrible thing to hear about your own mother.”

“No need to apologize. You did the right thing.”

They sat in silence, as if neither one knew exactly where to take the conversation from here. Maritza stirred her coffee, and the spoon shook in her hand. The outing of her ugly secret had only seemed to make things more awkward.

Jack checked his watch, then rose. “Trial tomorrow. I should be going.”

She seemed relieved by the suggestion. She saw him to the foyer and opened the front door.

“Thanks again,” said Jack.

She shook his hand, then a look of concern came over her. “Please don’t tell Hector that I said any of this. I’m happy now. I’ve remarried, I have a nice life.”

Jack looked into her eyes, and he could see beyond the concern. He saw traces of genuine fear-an old fear that had suddenly reared its head after all these years. For an instant, it was as if he were looking into his own mother’s eyes, and he wondered if it was that same kind of fear that had driven her from Bejucal, that had carried her across an ocean. And then it suddenly came clear to him: Abuela may have bought her daughter a ticket to Miami, but Ana Maria hadn’t boarded that Pedro Pan airplane because her mother told her to go. She hadn’t left Cuba out of shame. She was indeed running for freedom, the kind of freedom that only Torres’s ex-wife could understand.

“I won’t say a word,” he promised. He turned and started down the front steps, walking into the silence of night. As the door closed behind him, he turned for one last look, one final impression of the door too heavy on the house too big-and of the nervous woman inside, all too believable.

50

Whoever coined the phrase “There’s no second bite at the apple” had obviously never heard of rebuttal.

Jack took his seat in the central courtroom knowing that a criminal trial rarely ended with the words “The defense rests.” The prosecution always had the right to call witnesses to rebut the case presented by the defense, and Lieutenant Johnson had given Hector Torres no other choice. Jack was quite certain that the U.S. attorney would call at least one witness in rebuttal, and Jack didn’t have to tell Lindsey who that one witness would likely be.

“Your Honor,” said Torres in a voice that filled the courtroom, “the United States of America calls Brian Pintado.”

The big double doors opened in the rear of the courtroom. At once, the eyes of the judge, the jury, and several hundred spectators were locked like radar on a ten-year-old boy.

“The witness will please come forward,” said the judge.

Slowly, Brian made his way down the center aisle escorted by the bailiff. His eyes darted left and right, as if in search of a friendly face in the crowd. He appeared nervous, as anyone would, especially a child. But from a distance-if Jack squinted and ignored the difference in height between Brian and the bailiff-he seemed amazingly mature. Brian was a young man, not a boy, looking sharp in his dark blue suit and burgundy tie as he walked bravely down the aisle. Still, Jack’s perception was clouded by vague and confusing memories of the child in the photographs Lindsey had showed him, Jack’s first images of his biological son. He recalled that evening outside Alejandro Pintado’s house, the first time he’d laid eyes on Brian in the flesh. He was just a carefree kid riding a bicycle at the end of a cul-de-sac, and Jack found himself wanting to cling to that image and never let go. This was a courtroom, however, not a playground, and Jack was beginning to feel like the proverbial parent who had blinked twice and missed it all-the first steps, the first words, the soccer games, the graduations, the whole shebang. Brian was growing up without him, as it should have been with adoption; but Jack couldn’t help feeling that someone was being cheated, if not himself, then Lindsey-if not Lindsey, then Brian. Kids grew up too fast, even without a murdered parent, and putting Brian on the witness stand would surely bleed away the last remaining drops of innocence from a tattered childhood.