Garcia's Heart (23 page)

“I moved on,” Patrick added.

“You sued your department.”

“I had to. To be able to pursue my own research.”

McKenzie smiled in a way that reminded Patrick of nature programs. Stalking calm. “They were preventing you in some way?”

“Departmental politics can be complicated.”

“Is that why you were suspended?”

“That was appealed and overturned.”

“I'm aware of that.”

“Then why did you ask why I was suspended?”

“I know the details, but the context can be different.” There was a pause as McKenzie surveyed him. “Has Mr. di Costini spoken with you?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask about what?”

“Don't you have to disclose evidence to each other?”

“If the contents of those discussions aren't going to be used as evidence, no. And Mr. di Costini hasn't declared.”

“Well, I guess it doesn't matter.”

Lindbergh stepped into the fray. “Please, this is informal. Not a deposition, even. So please, I suggest we all relax. I should give you some background information, some context, as you say. Mr. McKenzie and I have worked on this dossier for more than four years, and in that time I've spoken to many people who've known Mr. García de la Cruz, from his time in Honduras and after. I asked you here because I think it is valuable to hear the entire story. It was my understanding that you were not in contact with the Garcías for years, so you can imagine my surprise when you arrived at the proceedings, unannounced. Here is an opportunity I cannot pass up, I said to myself. I must speak with this young man who knew García.”

“I don't know what I can tell you. I knew him after Honduras.” Patrick frowned. He could have used a glass of water. “I was a teenager. I worked with him for a couple of years. I dated his daughter.”

“And you have a high opinion of him.”

“Hernan is a good man.”

“Yes. Yes. The verb tense is much appreciated. More specifically though, he made an impact on you.”

“I'm sorry, I don't follow you.”

“It's not unusual for such a man to be a role model for an impressionable youngster,” Lindbergh said, never making eye contact, the weight of his gaze like a finger on Patrick's Adam's apple. “That's my point, Dr. Lazerenko, you didn't become a greengrocer, now, did you? No, you became a physician. And if he mentored you in this way, if he confided in you, admitted certain things, well, those are details the tribunal would naturally be interested in.”

“Hernan never spoke about Honduras, if that's what you're asking.”

The fingers on Lindbergh's right hand made a flicking movement, cleaning invisible crumbs off his desk. “Let us for a moment put aside the facts of the case. I would like to know your opinion. When you worked with him, did you think of him as a doctor?”

“Not really. I knew he'd been a doctor before, though.”

“How did you know that?”

“I heard. I heard things around the store.”

Lindbergh lifted his index finger. “Dr. Lazerenko, we know about the people who came to see him. I suspect you thought of him as a doctor because he thought of himself as a doctor.
Doctors are like that
,” Lindbergh stage-whispered. “They hold on to that identity. I understand that. That's ego. He had ego enough to think he could practise medicine. He offered medical counsel, he saw patients in the back room of his
store
,” Lindbergh said in mock horror. “That isn't the urge to help. That is more than simple ego. That is a doctor revelling in his
power, above all things. We thought you would have some insights into that.”

Not for the first time, Patrick wondered about Aguirre, if the man was still alive, twenty years after that day in the fields. Maybe he'd seen him already and not recognized him among the other witnesses at the tribunal. It occurred to Patrick that Aguirre could have not only witnessed everything that happened that day, but perhaps even seen Patrick watching events unfold. Belatedly, he thought having a lawyer present would have been a good idea. It was seven in the morning in Boston. He looked at his watch and wondered whether someone from the firm Neuronaut retained was available to help him through the nuances of international subpoenas. Marcello had been less than helpful.

“I don't think I can help you,” Patrick said, summoning what he hoped was a look of helpless disappointment. Patrick felt Lindbergh examining him. He wanted Lindbergh to say something. But instead of words, Lindbergh smiled, his face smooth save for a vertical crease forming on the lower part of his forehead, the smallest fault line on a visage of lawyerly equanimity. It disappeared. Patrick stood up: “If you don't have anything more to ask me, I'd like to go.”

McKenzie and Lindbergh offered their hands. McKenzie softened his grip, and Lindbergh bared his tiny Scandinavian teeth into what Patrick understood to be a smile. The goodbyes were perfectly pleasant and indefinite.

 

ELEVEN

Patrick left the building again, well aware that his pass to the administrative floors conflicted with his pass to the public galleries of Courtroom One. The guards were amused, and one of them gave him a half-wave as he ceremonially exited and turned around to once again present his passport.

On one of the benches outside the courtroom, Celia and Roberto sat eating sandwiches half-wrapped in foil. The approach to the foyer in front of Courtroom One was from the side, and they didn't see Patrick as he arrived. Patrick stopped and hung close to the wall and watched them eat for a moment. It was oddly intimate and was beginning to feel a touch voyeuristic when he noticed a third person standing with them, someone he didn't recognize. The man was dressed in a suit, looking immune to the fatigue that branded family and friends of the trial's participants. Was he a crank who had recognized the Garcías, insinuating himself with small talk until he had a chance to become a bigger nuisance? Their conversation appeared to be amicable. It occurred to
Patrick that this was Celia's husband, freshly flown in from wherever to lend support. The inevitable comparison to himself ensued; the man was thankfully shorter. He was better dressed and looked confident in his suit. A man for whom wearing an expensive suit was not a special occasion. He was Celia's husband, though there was nothing intimate about the scene. Seeing them all together made Patrick feel alone. But the man bent to shake Celia's hand and Roberto's after that, a series of gestures that seemed to reset all possibilities and gave Patrick a pulse of undiluted glee. The man was an acquaintance. A well-wisher. Patrick waited until the man walked past and down the stairs to the building's lobby before approaching the Garcías.

Celia reacted first; caught in mid-bite, she raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement. Roberto lifted a hand and kept eating. She turned to her brother and said something that drew a curt response. The only word Patrick heard from her was “Now.” Roberto stood abruptly, extended his hand and mumbled “Sorry” through a mouthful of food. Patrick had shaken quite a few hands already today but he didn't mind another. It was worth it just to see the family dynamic in action.

“He apologized already,” Patrick said to Celia.

“I heard. A phone message. Very commendable,” Celia said, not hiding her sarcasm from Roberto.

“Did you speak with di Costini?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“We talked about different approaches,” Patrick said, hoping that would be enough. But Celia wanted more. Watching her made him remember the stress of having to speak to the families of seriously ill patients, how they would parse whatever
was said for any hint of hope. Hope was then amplified into certainty, which was the weapon they would beat you with when things went wrong. “I don't think it's going to help. The work I do is all experimental. I don't think the court would accept using it even if we could apply it to the case in some way.” Patrick sat down. “It's just that he's not saying anything. I mean, all the technology in the world isn't going to exonerate someone who refuses to defend himself.”

“We can't make him talk,” Celia said, and at this Roberto snorted in disgust. Celia fixed her brother with a withering glance, a clear warning about breaking rank. Roberto accepted her wordless rebuke without further reaction. More evidence of the apparent re-ordering of authority in the García family, it made Patrick want to change the subject.

“So who was that guy you were talking to?” Patrick asked. Roberto looked away and started eating his sandwich again, apparently happy to cede this duty to Celia.

“Just someone we know.”

Roberto kept his eyes averted. Patrick could hear Celia breathing heavily through her nose.

“That was Caesar Oliveira from the Democratic Voice. They're a group who've been helping us.”

Patrick turned his head to scan the foyer, trying to affect a tone of neutrality. “Di Costini told me about them. I knew they were here, but I didn't know they were
here
.”

“Oh, they're everywhere, Mopito,” Roberto said, just loud enough to be heard. Celia acted as if he'd said nothing.

A few of the tribunal's regulars congregated in front of Courtroom One's gallery doors. Though the gallery was never full, they jockeyed to get nearer to the door as the security officer produced his key. The urge built to say something nasty
to them, tell them to get a life, but Patrick thought better of it. Celia packed up what was left of lunch and noticed Patrick eyeing the uneaten sandwiches.

“Are you hungry?”

“I haven't eaten today.”

“Here,” she said, unwrapping one and handing it to him. Roberto got up, saying he was going to find seats.

The sandwich was made with one of those heavy flat “brodts” that did nothing to dispel the rumours that baking with yeast was illegal in some parts of Europe. Trying to chew the bread was like enduring another beating. Patrick passed on the second half.

“Where's Nina and Paul? Do they ever come to the trial?” Patrick asked, flipping megaton crumbs off his lap.

“They're at the park,” she said. “There's no way I'd let Paul see any of this and Nina's too pissed off to sit through it.”

He wondered again about Paul's father, where the man was as Celia ate her sandwich and Paul played somewhere in a Dutch city park with his aunt. The father would be here if he was still with her, whoever he was. He'd be here, Patrick thought.
I'm here.

Celia stowed the leftovers in a plastic bag. She hadn't changed in that way, had never been the sort of person to put up a fuss about where she was eating. A proper meal meant only that you sat and ate what you liked with people you liked. A restaurant, a picnic table, a bench somewhere, these were all simply changes in venue. She had been just as undiscerning about the food they'd eaten together. None of it had mattered, which he remembered thinking was unusual at the time, as in other parts of her life–her art or the way she organized the physical space of their apartment–
she had definite opinions and was exacting in their pursuit.

They'd eaten hundreds of meals together, surrounded by family or strangers in a cafeteria somewhere. Others, alone. The meals weren't memorable, and other than the fact that he'd shared them with Celia, he could only remember the physical spaces–the Garcías' kitchen, the back porch of his mother's house on Hingston, a balcony over Lorne Crescent. He'd choked once, and remembered the small punch in his throat when a peanut had gone down the wrong way. Celia saved his life with the Heimlich manoeuvre that time, wrapping her arms around him and hoisting with a vigour and effectiveness that impressed him almost as much as the return of oxygen to his lungs. Yes. Of all the food he'd eaten with her, he remembered the peanut. And he didn't even get to swallow it.

She was gathering the rest of her belongings and getting ready to head inside to a seat with Roberto, a place where Patrick figured he'd not be welcomed by either. But standing there, he felt rumbles of emotion like distant geophysical events. It must have been the concussion and its effects: dis-inhibition, emotional incontinence, lack of self-reference. Don't cry for christsake. The sight of her putting away the uneaten sandwiches and stuffing her sweater into a bag made him want to tell her to stay. In this nondescript foyer he felt an infantile need to grab her and sit down again.
We don't need to say anything
, he thought,
just stay here with me
. But she readied herself to move. She was going, and every gesture of departure set off tripwires of memory.

 

It was Hernan and Marta's twentieth anniversary, and they had decided to take a rare night off, leaving for dinner earlier that evening. Neither Madame Lefebvre nor Jimmy Padopoulos
could work that night, so prior to setting off, the Garcías had convened with the children in the store and gone through what amounted to a briefing session about how the evening would go: Roberto was in charge, and a babysitter had been arranged for Nina. After closing the store, Celia and Roberto would go home and relieve the babysitter, Mrs. Robitaille from down the street. After that Roberto was free. Celia crossed her arms and groaned at the implication. The phone number of the restaurant was tacked to the board behind the counter. With that, the Garcías had escaped, smiling madly at the thought of their liberation.