Luckily, the evidence tech groaned. He then turned, gathered his people and left me alone on a cold, creaking riverboat that smelled strongly of chemicals.
“The smell is probably the stuff someone used to cut the coke,” Maggie said when I called her again. “We’re gonna put up a knowledge defense,” she continued. “We’ll argue that although the Cortaderos had some ownership in the riverboat, they possessed no information that the thing was about to be used for any packaging or transport of drugs.”
It was wild how much Maggie knew about the big, bad world of hard-core drug running and Mexican drug lords.
I made a couple of rounds through the creaking, freezing-cold boat, looking for anything I might have missed. Maggie and I discussed a few more details of our proposed defense, then said our goodbyes. I took pictures of various parts of the boat with my cell phone, but there was little to capture other than a ballroom with a wood bar, the stairwells, the decks and the captains’ lair.
As shadows fell across the city, they bathed the empty boat with a sinister icy feeling. I left and walked toward the Merchandise Mart. Climbing the stairs to the “L” train, I shivered in the late-afternoon gray mist that had rolled in around the river.
I got on the Brown Line and headed north toward my place. As I leaned my head against the window, I watched vaguely as the train left the Loop and passed over Chicago Avenue. I wasn’t really seeing anything, though. The more I thought about it, the more the Cortadero case made me uncomfortable. Did I really want to represent a large Mexican family who potentially—allegedly—had been storing millions worth of drugs on a boat?
But I had to remind myself that I was no longer the rainmaker I used to be. Maggie and Martin worked hard to pull in cases, and as their associate I had to focus on whatever case they wanted.
There was solace in being a soldier, too. In my former job at Baltimore & Brown, I was responsible for shepherding nearly all the legal work of a large media conglomerate, and after a while the responsibility had overwhelmed me.
My phone buzzed. It was Theo. “Can you go house-hunting with me tonight?” he asked.
I felt a warm flush of flattery. Theo’s lease was up, and he had decided it was time to buy a house and leave behind the rented apartment he’d occupied since quitting college. But so far, he’d been doing this mostly on his own.
“I’d love to.”
“Meet me in Bucktown in an hour?” He named an address in a neighborhood that had been gentrified in years of late but still kept its youthful edge. It sounded perfect. Theo, after all, was a big, gorgeous and decidedly edgy young man with ribbons of tattoos that snaked up his arms and seemed to brush at the tips of his hair, which hung to his shoulders.
“I’ll be there.”
The Bucktown condo was huge—four bedrooms with a modern kitchen stocked with top-of-the-line appliances, three balconies, two fireplaces and a tub in the master bath that could fit a family of five. But Theo kept pursing his lips as we followed the real-estate agent around the place, narrowing his eyes in the way that he did when he was thinking hard about something.
“It’s not right,” he said.
At the next home, I thought we had it. The floors were wide-planked, the feel was casual but cool. It had a game room, which Theo and his friends would love. I could see Theo’s shoes in the hallway, his jeans on the bedroom floor.
But then we saw the “outside space,” which was a metal balcony overlooking the Kennedy Expressway. “Nope,” he said.
The next place, near the Museum of Contemporary Art, had a striking view of Lake Michigan, its perimeter newly frozen like white crust. Theo shook his head again. “It’s just not right for us.”
I blinked a few times. Us? The word was thrilling. “It doesn’t matter if it’s right for me. What matters is if it feels good to you.”
He turned to me. His hand brushed my collarbone, my curls, then briefly touched my cheek. “It has to be good for you, too.”
Theo was discouraged going into the fourth stop, a three-bedroom condo near the Green Door Tavern that had once been a warehouse. But then we walked through the door and saw the raw, wood floors just like Theo wanted. Then we moved farther inside, gasping at the two-story vaulted ceiling, growing more and more excited. The bedrooms were spacious. The bathroom, with its intricately tiled circle tub, made me sigh. The real-estate agent excused herself, ostensibly to take a phone call, but I knew she’d seen our enthusiasm. She was giving us time to stroll some more, to think, to discuss.
I want you to fall in love with me.
I want you to fall in love with me.
I want you to fall in love with me.
That was my internal chant, my mantra, that night. I couldn’t believe I’d found myself here—in love again. It’s not that I didn’t think it would ever happen. I just thought (and I mean I really thought I knew) that my heart needed a while before it could bear weight again. Before it could hold someone there. But now, I wanted Theo. I wanted him there.
And I was scared. He’d said things, lots of things, like, Everyone who knows us tells me we should date for a long time…. You’re like my best friend…. You’re one of the most wonderful people I know…. And he would kiss me with that lush, greedy mouth. After some time, he would slow, then pull back to look into my eyes and it felt, in those moments, like he could see into every cell of me, into everything thought, hidden or not. He had me in those moments. He owned me.
I want you to fall in love with me.
We went into the kitchen, which bore taupe-and-white granite that gleamed, and brand-new appliances. I sat on the kitchen counter. “What do you think?” I asked Theo.
He walked over to me, nudged my legs apart and placed himself between them, his face close to mine. “I think this is it, gorgeous.”
We stared at each other.
Even though I’d been muttering “love you” to him when he couldn’t hear, I was only rehearsing the words. There was hesitation about getting the sentiment returned, and there was also the fact that I wasn’t sure it was a correct statement. I wasn’t sure I recalled what it felt like to fall in love, to be certain.
But at that moment, I remembered.
“I think it is, too,” I said.
Even though I didn’t say anything more, I was sure then of our place in the world. I thought that life could only keep moving one way—upward, and in the direction of good.
4
His office behind the restaurant was much nicer than the restaurant itself. Back here, in his managerial quarters, he had brocade couches and tufted leather chairs. The desk was from the 1800s and it was built to last. Just like him. That’s what his father had always told him, and unlike his younger brother, Vincente, he’d always believed their padre. Still, it pleased him to look around, to see what he’d created, what he was entitled to.
José Ramon sat at the desk now and took in his office. With its carved pocket doors, collection of Mexican art (including one Diego Rivera), and high-tech audio and visual equipment, the luxurious room was second only to his private residences. He hoarded such places, because if one showed too much luxury, he’d learned, people started asking questions. His competition, for example. The government, certainly. The only people to whom he could show the luxury he required, and had acquired, were the few women he took home. He liked best those women who could handle it—who could step into that luxury and not be impressed by it. Or at least not show it—but who could appreciate it. That was the type of women he wanted. They were hard to find.
But