Джеймс Паттерсон - The 19th Christmas

Today was the twenty-second. Cindy figured that in some places in San Francisco, Las Posadas was in full swing, but it would be ending soon. She had to work fast if she was going to center her story on that. Research alone did not a story make.

Five days a week Cindy published a crime blog that was open to her readership for comments. She clicked on her crime-blog page and wondered how to ask for assistance from Latino immigrants without it looking like an ICE-inspired sting.

She wrote, “If you’re from South or Central America or Mexico and would like to share your Christmas tradition with our readers, please write to me. Your real name is not required.”

Within the hour she was looking through dozens of responses to her query, and one of them was tantalizing.

But it had nothing to do with Las Posadas. At all.

Chapter 14

The response that grabbed Cindy’s attention was from Maria, who wrote, “My husband is in jail for a murder he didn’t do. We are undocumented and he has been in jail for two years, no trial. I am lost. Please help.”

Cindy replied, “Thank you for your message, Maria. Can we meet?”

Maria wrote back in minutes. “Can you come to my apartment? I have to work at noon.”

Less than an hour later Cindy was driving through the Mission, a neighborhood heavily populated by Spanish-speaking immigrants from Latin America.

She checked off the landmarks Ms. Maria Varela had given her—the tattoo parlor on one corner, a mercado on the opposite one, vividly colored signage and murals on the sides of the three-story wood-frame building on Osage Street where Maria lived.

Cindy parked in front of a coin-op laundry, walked a block west to Osage, and buzzed the button marked VARELA. A return buzz unlocked the street-level door. With some trepidation, Cindy entered and climbed two flights of stairs.

Maria was waiting for her outside the apartment door.

“I love you for coming,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

Cindy thought Maria looked to be in her forties, average height and weight, hair pulled into a bun. She wore a loose-fitting flowered top over tights and flat shoes, pink lipstick, and a smile at odds with the sadness in her brown eyes.

The small apartment was tidy with a nice sectional facing the TV, a print of the Crucifixion over the faux fireplace, and Christmas lights strung along the wall above the windows. A small Christmas tree stood on the kitchen table, and there were framed family photos—everywhere.

Cindy declined an offer of coffee, took a seat on the sofa, and began to interview Ms. Varela, noticing that her English was excellent.

“Tell me about your husband,” Cindy said.

Maria lifted a photo from the lamp table and showed it to Cindy. It was a picture of herself and her husband, Eduardo Varela, taken some years before. Maria’s hair hung loose to below her shoulders, Eduardo wore a white linen shirt, and the two had their arms around each other, radiating love and hope.

Maria said, “We got married in Guadalajara when we were eighteen. Three little ones came the first five years. Then the farm where we worked burned down. We couldn’t get work. We had a cousin here. We tried to get visas for ourselves and our children so we could come to America. The papers never came.”

Maria told a harrowing story of the type that had become almost commonplace in the pages of the Chronicle and all over the country. She and Eduardo had paid a “coyote” everything they had, and he had arranged for them to be driven in a packed truck to the border and then smuggled over. In the process, they had been separated from their oldest child.

“But God answered our prayers. We found Roberto in a shelter four months later. He was six.”

The cousin got Eduardo a job in the tomato fields, and Maria did laundry. They scraped by.

“We were illegal. We couldn’t apply for green cards.

“Roberto, Elena, and Geraldo are now in high school. I work at the Trident Hotel. Cleaning. Eduardo had two, sometimes three, jobs to support us all—and then the nightmare happened.”

Maria seemed stuck in the memory of that nightmare until Cindy encouraged her to go on.

Maria looked grief-stricken. She told Cindy, “A boy was shot on the street. Some other boys said Eduardo did it. They knew him—knew his name and said that to the police. Ms. Thomas, Eduardo was in his car, sleeping. He doesn’t want to wake us up when he leaves for his night shift. He heard the shots but he had nothing, nothing, to do with the shooting. That night he was arrested for murder at his job, and he is being held for trial two years now.”

“Two years ? Can they do that?”

Maria nodded sadly. She told Cindy that her husband had prior arrests before the shooting. “He was stopped for speeding. And he had a fake driver license. He needed to work, drive from the auto-body store he cleaned during the day to the gas station where he did the overnight shift,” she said. “But he never hurt anyone in the world. He is the best husband and father. Sweet. Gentle. He has never shot any gun.”

“Maria, do you have a lawyer?”

“We did. He got all our money, and Eduardo is still in jail. Now I’m afraid if I fight, I’ll be deported, and then there is no one to protect our children.”

“I’d love to see more pictures of your family,” Cindy said.

Maria brought an album over and sat next to Cindy.

“The pictures are not so good but very valuable to us.”

She turned the pages slowly, saying who was who in photos of events, birthdays, and gatherings. There was even a picture taken at a parade along Osage Street of the family dressed as peasants and angels in the Christmas pageantry of Las Posadas.

“But we won’t be celebrating Las Posadas this year.”

“What can I do to help?” Cindy asked.

“When I saw what you wrote, I felt that God was saying that you are a lifeline. I have no place else to turn.”

“No promises,” Cindy said, reaching over to take Maria’s hands. “But I’ll talk to a friend who might be able to help.”

Chapter 15

Cindy drove back to the Chronicle, thinking about what she could do before she called Yuki and begged her to get involved. There were so many people like Maria, hopeless, living in fear. And there had to be many others who would feel this family’s pain. People who could easily think, There but for the grace of God go I.

As she drove, Cindy thought of Maria Varela’s sadness and desperation. In her mind she composed a pitch to Henry Tyler about Maria’s family and their tragic situation.

If Tyler approved, Cindy thought she could write a story about this family that would get attention. It might melt some bureaucrat’s heart or attract a legal pit bull who could take a bite out of the system. Suddenly she was feeling a lot of pressure to write an impassioned story about the Varelas as well as her assigned feature about Las Posadas in time for both pieces to appear in the Christmas edition.

She just needed to stay focused and keep her fingers on the keys. Research first.

Back at the Chronicle, Cindy found the coffee wagon, brought a cup of cocoa and a muffin, took both back to her desk, and began looking up resources about immigration law, which she knew to be complex and sometimes arbitrary. She pulled several articles from LexisNexis and read for hours. In regard to law enforcement, she learned that ICE could bring an unauthorized migrant to immigration court, where he or she would most likely be deported and barred from reentering the United States for ten years or more. Depending on the offense, the individual might also be prosecuted under the laws in his or her home country.