Tod Goldberg: The Reformed

“Gentlemen,” Eduardo Santiago said, “please, come into my office. We have much to talk about.”

There are offices-like the one I sat in with my mother and Eduardo Santiago the previous day-that serve a specific purpose, as a place where one person can sit comfortably to work on a computer. And then there are offices like the one Eduardo Santiago kept for himself at Honrado Incorporated, which was as wide as my loft, contained two leather sofas, a flat-screen television mounted to the wall, a small glass-faced refrigerator filled with bottled water, a round table covered in blueprints and an entire wall dedicated to photos. Eduardo with various celebrities, politicians, athletes and entertainers, certainly, but most of the photos were actually of Eduardo with kids and with young men and women out in the community. There were also framed news stories and features from the Miami Herald, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and even a snappy little color thing from USA Today. I stopped and read a few lines in each. Everything my mother and Sam said was parroted in the pages of the nation’s most esteemed newspapers: Eduardo Santiago had done the impossible and now was using himself as a prime example for the kids coming out of Miami’s battle-hardened neighborhoods.

“You’ll have to pardon my ego,” Eduardo said when he saw me reading his wall.

“It looks like you’ve done some great things,” I said. “My mother didn’t lie.”

“Not this time,” Sam said.

“I’ve been very blessed.” Eduardo motioned to the round conference table. “Please, my friends, have a seat.”

It was very strange. When I had seen Eduardo the previous day, he spoke to me in a kind of refined street patois, but here he spoke as if he’d gone to private schools his entire life. Perhaps that was the surest sign Eduardo Santiago was a different person now-he knew how to change his persona for a given situation. That was a talent I could appreciate.

We sat down at the table, but Eduardo remained standing at first, as if he wasn’t sure this was, in fact, the course of action he wanted to take. How odd it must be to meet with the mayor of the city at one moment and then whatever, or whomever, Sam and I were the next.

The key to making someone comfortable, even in their own home or sanctuary, is to ask him questions about himself. People love to talk about themselves. This is why so many people admit to crimes when police interrogate them-they simply cannot help themselves from themselves.

I picked up one of the blueprints. “Are you expanding?”

“Oh, yes,” Eduardo said. He stood between Sam and me and looked at the blueprint. “That will be our greenhouse. We plan on having more sustainable gardens here in the future, so we can begin providing organic vegetables. Do you know that the average apple you eat contains over fifty trace chemicals in its skin?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“And look at yourself. You should know. You’re fit. You’re smart. Now think about these kids in these neighborhoods. You think any of them have any idea about pesticides in their food?”

“I’d guess that’s the least of their concerns,” Sam said.

“You would guess correctly,” Eduardo said. “Whoever you are.”

“Mikey didn’t tell you I was coming?” Sam said. He shook Eduardo’s hand. “Sam Axe at your service. You’ve got the full faith and credit of the United States government right here in my handshake.”

“That’s not an entity I trust, but I assume if you are with Mr. Westen that you are trustworthy.”

“That’s not a good assumption,” I said.

“Ah, but it is an educated guess,” he said. “Educating someone is different from making them concerned about something. Same with the kids and the organic food. People today, they do not know the difference between education and fear-making.” He sighed then and shook his head. He finally took a seat across from us. “This is precisely what I was talking to the mayor about. All of this money to teach children what to be afraid of, and no money to teach them music or art or, well, you know how it is. Do you know I learned how to play the violin in prison? It’s true.”

“Maybe more people should go to prison,” I said.

“Just because it is true doesn’t mean it isn’t a shame, Mr. Westen.”

I laughed.

“You find that funny?” he said.

“I find it funny you just called me Mr. Westen,” I said. “I was trying to remember the last time I saw you before yesterday. And you know what I remembered? You actually turned my brother, Nate, upside down and shook all of the change out of his pockets.”

“Mikey, that’s what kids do,” Sam said.

“He wasn’t a kid,” I said. “Do you remember this, Eduardo?”

“I’m afraid I do not. Not because it didn’t happen, but because I did it to so many people. How old was I?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “maybe seventeen? Maybe eighteen? Old enough and rich enough not to need a kid’s pocket change.”

“It was never need,” Eduardo said. “And where were you at this time?”

“I was coming up with a bat in my hand to crush over your head,” I said. “Unfortunately, a teacher saw me coming and wouldn’t let me.”

“Unfortunately?” he said.

“Could have saved you and a lot of other people a lot of grief,” I said.

“I get the sense you don’t believe I am a changed person,” Eduardo said.

“You sense correctly.”

“I need your help, Michael,” Eduardo said. “So I hope I can convince you that I am worthy of it.”

“How did you even know I exist?”

“You helped a friend of mine,” he said. “Ernie Paseo. He was having trouble with some gangsters.”

Can no one keep a secret anymore? Ernie Paseo had been one of the first people I’d helped in Miami. He had also been sworn to tell no one that I’d helped him, and had subsequently referred people to me like I was a Merry Maid.

Ernie was not the kind of person to engage with crooks, and the mere fact that he’d mentioned me to Eduardo was a good sign.

“Ernie’s been good for business,” Sam said.

“Remind me not to give him any secret launch codes,” I said.

“He told me I could trust you,” Eduardo said. “He told me you were a good and honest man and that you weren’t scared of anything. Your name sounded familiar, so I asked some of our old… associates… if you were the same person as I recalled from childhood.”

Associates. That could mean only that Eduardo made some phone calls to a few of the less desirables we’d both gone to school with and maybe he’d rolled with. “No one you knew from school knows I’m back,” I said.

“That’s funny,” he said. “You have a friend who sells guns?”

Fiona.

“No,” I said.

“A girl, maybe? Wears short skirts and always has automatic weapons?”

Fiona, for sure.

“Nope. Sam, you know anyone like that?”

“Can’t say I do, Mikey. Sounds like a very dangerous person. If I see her, I’ll call nine-one-one.”

We both gave Eduardo our most professional smiles.

“I don’t care, Mr. Westen, who you know. Just know people are aware of your presence in town. The right kind of people and the wrong kind of people. Just like you and me. The difference is that I have a path guided by the Lord, and that path tells me that at every turn I’ll need to make right the sins of my youth. I don’t think you feel the same way.”

“I’m not a criminal, Eduardo. I never was.”

“Maybe not in your eyes. But, Mr. Westen, you have killed, have you not?”

“I have,” I said.

“That’s against someone’s law,” he said.

He certainly had a way of evening the scales. And the truth is, I believed him. The evidence was all around, and his demeanor suggested a man who’d changed his life and was dedicated to helping others.