Daughter's Keeper (39 page)

“Jesus,” he had said when she was done. “And there's no one else?”

“No,” she had said.

Olivia had expected him to use this information in his argument, but it still came as something of a cold shock, now, to hear the dangers she and Luna faced expressed so clearly.

“If she puts the baby in foster care, she will lose it,” Izaya said, and then described the intricacies of the California adoption policy. “Her mother is unable to care for the child.” The judge glanced up sharply, looking at Elaine. Olivia wasn't sure if the expression that flitted across his face was one of puzzlement or disgust. Elaine seemed not to notice his look. “Thus, poor Olivia's only option is to send the baby to Luna's other grandparents, the parents of the boyfriend who got her into this mess, the man who testified against her. Honestly, your honor, what do you think the chances of them giving the baby back are? What if Mr. Rodriguez gets released before Olivia? He could take Luna, and Olivia would never see her again.”

Olivia swayed. Had she not been sitting, she might have fallen. She pressed her hands into her thighs, firming the muscles of her legs and arms, willing herself not to topple off her seat.

“I believe I sentenced Mr. Rodriguez last month, counsel,” the judge said. He turned to Amanda Steele. “What did I give him?”

She opened a file and leafed through it. “Approximately three years, your honor.” Olivia looked over at Izaya. His face was red; he was clearly embarrassed at having failed to find this information out before today.

“You see, your honor, he will be released before her. Olivia has no choice but to take the terrible risk that she might lose her baby to the man who involved her in this drug deal to begin with. Unless you do something else. Something dramatic. The only way you can keep this young mother and infant together, the only way you can guarantee that Luna will grow up here in the United States with the people who love her, is if you depart far below the range and sentence Olivia to home detention.”

During Izaya's speech, the judge had not once looked at his watch. He stared from Izaya to Olivia, and Olivia tried to convince herself that in his eyes she recognized the softness of compassion.

Amanda Steele got to her feet. She was obviously pregnant now, her belly a tiny round ball under the black silk of her dress. She told the judge that Olivia's refusal to plead guilty and her persistent denial of her own responsibility for the offense warranted a sentence of four years, the most allowable by the statute. She denied that Olivia was a minimal participant and told the judge that even if he considered her role to be minor, a four-year sentence was still what the guidelines required. She also reminded the judge that Olivia had at the time of the offense been “harboring an illegal alien.”

When it was Olivia's turn to speak, she rose and made her way to the podium, clutching the statement she'd prepared over the course of the previous weeks. Izaya had been satisfied that they'd achieved the precise tone of supplication and apology to which he felt the judge would respond. He had been pleased with the final draft, which begged the pardon not only of the judge, but of the prosecutor, of the police, of Olivia's family and friends, even of the theoretical users of the methamphetamine she had never actually seen.

Olivia cleared her throat and began to read. “Before I say anything else, I want to apologize. I want to apologize to my mother, to my friends, and most of all to my daughter for what I did, and even more importantly, for what I didn't do. I'm ashamed and sorry that my actions have caused them pain.

“This whole experience has been a terrible lesson in the price of staying silent, of going along with things I knew were wrong. When I got the very first phone call from Gabriel Contreras, I should have insisted that Jorge go to the police. I should have gone to the police myself. I shouldn't have watched as things moved forward. When I heard Gabriel's voice on the telephone the second time, then, too, I should have gone to the police. I now understand that passing on that telephone message was a crime. I should never have done it. I should never have gotten into the car with Jorge. I should never have gone along for the ride. I should never have allowed it all to continue.”

Olivia paused and looked up at the judge. When he looked back, his expression one of mild, detached interest, suddenly she realized that he had already made his decision, had made it even before he stepped up to the bench. Nothing she said today was going to make the slightest bit of difference. She looked down at the paper in her hand and then crumpled it up. Izaya inhaled sharply and her mother gasped. She ignored them both and looked up at Judge Horowitz. “But I did all those things, and I never called the police, and I never turned in my boyfriend and his friends. If I had, I wouldn't be here today. But the truth is, your honor, I still don't believe that I deserve to be here today. My judgment was bad, and maybe I deserve to be punished, but I still don't accept that this is the right punishment.”

Olivia felt Izaya's hand on her arm.

“Your honor,” he said. “Can I have a word with my client?”

She turned to him, and, gently but firmly, shook her head. “No, Izaya,” she said, and turned back to the judge. “What kind of a justice system is this, where because I was the only member of a conspiracy who didn't know anybody else, who didn't even sit down with the members of the conspiracy, I was the only one who ended up facing trial? What kind of a system rewards those who are
more
culpable with downward departures for assisting the government and punishes those whose very lack of culpability prevents them from having information to exchange? I don't think this is justice, your honor.

“I know if I just do what my lawyer wants and look pathetic, you might be willing to sentence me to what my lawyer asks, to home detention. But, honestly, I think you're going to abide by the guidelines and apply them as they're written, no matter what I say. That's what you're
supposed
to do, isn't it? But this is my only opportunity to make my voice heard and I want…I
need
…to do it.

“I need to tell you all,” she looked around the room, “I need to ask you all, and particularly you, Ms. Steele, if this is what you think is
right
. Is locking me up for four years serving some greater purpose? Is taking my baby girl's mother away from her going to win a battle in the war on drugs? As far as I can tell, you all keep putting people like me in jail, and drugs are still out there. This group my mother is involved with, FAMM, they have all this research that shows that the price of cocaine and heroin has gone down every single year for the past ten. And the drugs are getting purer. I don't know much about economics, but it seems to me that if you were winning this war, drugs would be getting more expensive and harder to find instead of cheaper and more plentiful.

“You know what? I think this war you're fighting isn't against drugs at all. I think it's a war against
people
. People like me and people like Jorge and all the other people in jail for ten or twenty years or however long. And your soldiers are people like Gabriel Contreras.

“Your honor, I hope you sentence me to what my lawyer asked for because I want to stay home and be a mother to my baby. But, I'm sorry. I won't stand here and tell you I think I deserve the punishment in order to get you to give me a lower sentence. All my life I've demonstrated and spoken against injustice. This is the first time the injustice has been at my own expense. I won't be silent now. I can't.”

There was no sound in the room except for Elaine's jagged breathing. Olivia turned to her mother. They looked into each other's eyes, and then, after a long pause, Elaine nodded, once. Olivia smiled gratefully and turned back to the judge.

Judge Horowitz was leaning forward in his chair, his fingers drumming silently on the smooth expanse of polished wood in front of him. “Ms. Goodman, this may surprise you, and it is certain to surprise your lawyer, Mr. Politically Correct, but it is my considered opinion, based on my twenty years of experience on the bench, that to a very great extent, your doubts about the fairness of the federal sentencing guidelines and the mandatory minimums are justified. In fact, over the years, I have come to share the opinion of many other judges that they do not serve the objectives of deterrence, rehabilitation, and just punishment that are the goals of our judicial system. I find myself, now more than ever, concerned that my role in meting out fair and reasonable sentences has been usurped by, forgive me Ms. Steele, young, naïve, and ambitious prosecutors concerned less with ultimate justice than with winning their cases and improving the records of their offices.

“Nonetheless, I must do the job for which I have been appointed. It is my belief that this case warrants a four level adjustment due to minimal role. The appropriate sentencing range is, thus, forty-one to fifty-one months, limited to forty-eight months by statute. I hereby sentence you to forty-one months of detention to be followed by a two-year period of supervised release.”

Olivia stood still, unable to speak or even to move. She had expected this—in fact she'd feared worse. However, hearing the words still stunned her. Forty-one months of her daughter's life—lost to her.

Izaya, who had not so much as flinched at Horowitz's insulting nickname, thanked the judge. Then, he said, “Your honor, I'd like to ask that Ms. Goodman be allowed to self-surrender, and that this self-surrender not take place for a few months, to give her more time with her newborn daughter, whom she is breast-feeding.”

Judge Horowitz said, “Mr. Feingold-Upchurch, is there really any reason to postpone the inevitable?”

“Your honor?” Amanda Steele's voice was as cool and calm as ever. Olivia turned to the prosecutor, who had risen to her feet. Amanda Steele did not return Olivia's gaze. Her eyes on the judge and no one else, she said, “The government would not object to a sixty-day delay.”

***

“What was that line from the boyfriend's letter?” Ruth Feingold asked. She was leaning back on her overstuffed Victorian sofa, her bare feet stretched out in front of her. She rubbed the arch of one foot with the toes of the other. She had been listening to her son's agonizing postmortem of his most recent trial for almost two hours. Izaya was obsessively, even compulsively, describing to his mother every way he imagined he had failed. He had just launched into a diatribe about Jorge's duplicity when Ruth interrupted him.

“What line?” he asked. He had recited to her from memory the letter Jorge sent to Olivia. Neither he nor his mother was surprised that he remembered it. As Ruth often said, that was just the way Izaya's mind worked.

“The last one. The postscript.”

“Love is so short and oblivion so long,”
he said.

“I know that line. It's from a poem. Hold on a sec.” She got up off the sofa and went over to the wall of books separating the living room from the rest of the house. She scanned the shelves and then pulled out a thin paperback volume. She flipped through the pages, then said, “Pablo Neruda. It's called ‘The Saddest Poem.' Here, look.” She handed Izaya the book. He read aloud, slumping lower and lower in his chair.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: “the night is full of stars,

And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.”

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.

I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.

How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.

And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.

The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away someone sings. Far away.

My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.

My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.

We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.

My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once

belonged to my kisses.

Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.

Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms, my

soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,

and this may be the last poem I write for her.

He put the slim book down on the leather ottoman at his mother's feet.

“It's beautiful, don't you think?” she said.

“Yeah, it is.” But he didn't think so. Or rather, the beauty of the words was entirely irrelevant. What Jorge meant by quoting them and what Olivia would think when she read them, if she hadn't already, was all he cared about.

“I imagine he was trying to tell her that despite everything, he remembered their love.”

“Bull
shit!
” Izaya exclaimed, and leapt to his feet.

“Izaya?” his mother asked, unruffled by his outburst. “What's going on here? Are you jealous? Are you sleeping with this girl?”

“Man, you and Ervin. Is that all the two of you think of me?”

“What does your father have to do with this?”

“He asked me if I was fucking her, too.”