Innocence (5 page)

After a few more moments of observation, Finn realized that his initial impressions were off. It wasn’t awkwardness in her he had noted; it was something else, something more defined. Her movements were cautious and narrow, and she seemed disconnected from everything around her except her father.

Finn frowned. “What’s wrong with her?”

Dobson looked Finn over carefully. Then he turned back to the table where three generations of the Salazar family sat in the one conversation they would have that month, caught in an awkward, synthetic, longing moment. Finn looked back also, and as he turned his attention to Salazar, the only thing that seemed clear about the man was the love and tenderness he expressed for his daughter in every movement he made.

Dobson let Finn watch for another moment before he answered. “She’s blind.”

z

“My wife, Maria, was the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Salazar spoke English better than most of the lawyers Finn dealt with on a regular basis. He carried only a slight accent, and it gave him an air more of continental sophistication than of second-language hesitation.

“When she smiled at me, or when I looked into her eyes, it felt as though everything made sense—as if my life had purpose and meaning, because she was in it.” He sat up in his chair, gathering himself back from the moment of introspection before continuing.

“Her family was part of the elite in El Salvador—the ruling oligarchy—that traced its lineage back to the first wave of Europeans who conquered the natives and settled on their land. Land has always been the central resource in my country. I was the son of a prominent merchant who had done well in the fifties and sixties, exporting coffee and timber. But my lineage traced back to the conquered. For all the education my parents were able to give me, I would never be accepted by Maria’s family or their peers, and our romance was a scandal for them. I was a doctor, and I thought that might help, but it didn’t. Still, she was stubborn and in love, and she agreed to marry me when I asked. Her father, one of the wealthiest landowners in the country, agreed reluctantly, only because he knew it was pointless to argue with his daughter. He threw us a fine wedding and even provided a dowry of sorts—a new house in a respectable neighborhood a comfortable distance from them—but made clear that we would be largely cut off from the family and its money thereafter.”

“Nice in-laws,” Finn commented.

Salazar shook his head. “It made sense,” he said. “And I expected nothing more. You wouldn’t understand, but El Salvador is still largely a segregated country at the highest levels, both socially and racially. Besides, it wasn’t a hardship. I was happy to be spared the whispers I would have been subjected to if I’d been allowed into her family’s clubs. I was a young doctor, and I was making a decent living. Maria and I were together, and she said that was all she cared about—that was enough for me.”

“If it was so good, why did you leave?” The question came from Kozlowski, and there was an air of challenge to it.

“In my country, all happiness is an illusion.”

“The war?” Finn asked.

“The war,” Salazar confirmed. “I was never political, but I was a doctor. I treated the sick. I treated the injured. I never asked my patients about their political affiliations. I thought I was uninvolved; I was naive.”

“You treated the wrong people?”

“I treated all people. There were no right or wrong people, as far as I was concerned.” Salazar’s gaze grew intense as he spoke, and Finn could feel, for the first time, a hint of anger in his tone. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the resentment was gone. “I never turned anyone away, and that meant I was treating partisans on both sides.” He looked at Finn. “How much do you know about the war in my country?”

Finn considered the question. “Not much, really,” he admitted. In fact, he realized as he thought about it, he knew very little. His head was filled with vague recollections of headlines but little actual information.

“In the eighties, the government was effectively controlled by a combination of the military and the wealthy elite. There were attempts at the time to prop up a government operating under the pretense of reform, but it was always a facade.”

“Another illusion?” Finn asked.

“Exactly so. The rebels were Marxist Communists, supported largely by the rural peasants and the small educated middle class. They lacked the resources to mount a coherent frontal attack, so they relied on kidnappings and sporadic brutal attacks, aimed largely at the elites in the urban areas like San Salvador to make their point.”

“Terrorism,” Kozlowski grunted derisively.

“Yes, terrorism,” Salazar readily concurred. He looked directly at Kozlowski for the first time. “I neither excuse nor condone the tactics employed by both sides in the war. I merely tried to save those who were injured.”

Finn inserted himself back into the conversation, sensing the tension between Salazar and Kozlowski. “I assume the military was particularly brutal in putting down the insurgency?”

Salazar continued to stare at Kozlowski. “Somewhat,” he said at last. “Though the government tried to keep as low a profile as possible in going after the leftists. You see, the vast majority of the El Salvadoran population lived in poverty—over ninety percent—and many of them harbored sympathy for the rebellion. The government recognized that it was sitting on a powder keg, and it understood that it always ran a significant risk of lighting a match that would blow apart everything those with wealth and power were working to preserve. To avoid that, the government farmed out much of its dirty work.”

“To who?” Finn asked, genuinely interested now.

“To the death squads.”

“Death squads?”

Salazar nodded. “Small paramilitary groups—mercenaries, thugs, and common criminals—recruited for the grimmest tasks. They were directed by the military and funded by the wealthy landowners: the elites who wanted to keep the leftist insurgents from gaining a stronghold.”

“I remember reading something about them,” Finn commented.

“You would have. In 1980 they killed three American nuns who were working with relief efforts in the countryside. It caused a great deal of trouble for the American government, because the administration was supporting the government that everyone knew was allied with the death squads.”

“Nuns?” Finn was repulsed. “Why would they kill nuns?”

Salazar’s laugh was humorless. “You can’t be that sheltered, can you, Mr. Finn? War knows no decency, even in dealing with the devout. Besides, the Catholic Church in El Salvador supported the insurgents, or at least significant reform. Many of those who came to do missionary work recognized that reform—or even revolution—was the only way to raise the vast majority of the population out of squalor. Even the archbishop of San Salvador was an outspoken critic of the government, pushing for real reform—until he was assassinated.” Finn realized that his face must have betrayed his horror. “Yes, Mr. Finn; you see, this was El Salvador, and no one was beyond death.”

“So what happened to you?” Kozlowski asked, sounding unimpressed.

“One night there was a knock on my door. When I opened it, I found an old friend of mine, Alberto Duerte, leaning against my entryway. There was a stream of blood running from his shoulder. He said he’d been mugged and he needed help. I knew he was lying, but I asked no questions, as was my practice. I took him to my clinic, and I treated his wounds. He left that night, and I never saw him again.”

“And?” Finn prodded.

“I found out later he’d been injured in a bombing—a terrorist bombing, as I’m sure your friend will point out,” Salazar said, motioning to Kozlowski. “Alberto was the one who planted the bomb that killed a wealthy industrialist and his wife. He miscalculated, though, and was not far enough away from the blast to avoid catching some shrapnel. The death squads tracked him down within the week.”

“That couldn’t have been pleasant for him,” Kozlowski observed.

“No, Mr. Kozlowski, I’m sure it wasn’t.” Salazar turned back to Finn. “A few days later, my father-in-law appeared at my clinic. I hadn’t seen him in several months, so I knew something was wrong when I saw him. He told me to go home, get his daughter, pack a few things, and leave. He told me that Alberto had been tortured before he’d been killed, and he’d given up the names of many of the people he’d worked with. He’d also told them that I was the one who had treated his wounds. As a result, I had been targeted by the death squads—they were coming

that night.”

“What did you do?” Finn asked.

“First I tried to explain to my father-in-law that I knew nothing of Alberto’s activities—that I wasn’t interested in politics. I think he understood, but he told me he was powerless to intervene. To do so would put the rest of his family in danger. He told me that his only concern was for his daughter, and he had arranged for us to get out of the country.”

“How could he do that if the government knew that you were targeted?” Kozlowski pressed.

Salazar shrugged. “It wasn’t difficult. My father-in-law knew people who could help. In the early eighties, when the gangs in Los Angeles were at their height—the Crips and the Bloods—a new criminal organization was born in an East L.A. neighborhood populated largely by El Salvadoran refugees—many of them former members of the death squads. It was called Venganza del Salvadoran, and while it was smaller than some of the other gangs, it quickly developed a reputation as the most vicious of all the groups. Over time, some of the members were deported back to El Salvador, and once there, they formed an affiliate gang in my old country. They recruited new members and continued doing work for the death squads. As they became more sophisticated, they started branching out into other areas. Drug production and smuggling; weapons; extortion, both here and in other countries. They used their gang connections in the United States to establish a pipeline to run drugs from El Salvador and other countries through Central America and Mexico to America. My father-in-law knew these people, and he knew that they would do anything for money—their motivation was never politically based. He paid them well to get me and Maria out of the country and safely to America.”

“Illegally,” Kozlowski noted.

“Yes,” Salazar agreed. “Did I have a choice? What would you have done?”

“And once you got here, you figured you were safe,” Finn said.

“I did.” Salazar sat up and looked around. Then he hung his head and sighed heavily. “I was wrong.”

z

Josiah “Mac” Macintyre sat at his desk on the third floor of the Boston Police Headquarters building in Roxbury. The building, which had been completed in 1997, was a monument to modern police practices, with a computer infrastructure that put those of most police departments to shame, and offices for psychologists and sociologists to aid them in solving crimes and dealing with the impact.

Mac hated the place. He’d never found comfort in or use for modern police tactics; he was old-school through and through. He missed the days when cops were given free rein to get their job done.

And now look at me,
he thought. He was pushing fifty sitting behind his desk, his gut falling farther and farther over his belt every day. His hair, which he’d always kept at military length, was nearly gone on top. His barber still passed the clippers over his crown, but it was more a courtesy than a necessity, and Mac suspected the man would have dispensed with all pretense if he hadn’t been so afraid. Was this really what Mac had fought and clawed so hard to get?

“Sergeant?” a female voice called from across the roomful of desks. It was Detective Sarah Koontz, whose surname had thrilled Mac when she’d joined the squad because it allowed him to make clear his distaste for chick cops through a minor mispronunciation for which he’d never be reported. “You’ve got a call that was misdirected to my line,” she said. “I’m transferring it.” That was fine with Mac; handling incoming calls was the extent of what women should be doing for the police department anyway.

He pushed a button on his phone and hoisted the handset to his ear. “Mac here,” he said.

“Mac, it’s Dave Johnson.”

“Johnson,” Mac grunted. The two of them had worked together years ago. Mac had always regarded Johnson as soft, and they’d never been friends. “How’s retirement treating you?” Johnson had taken his pension at twenty years, a decision Mac considered a betrayal. He was pretty sure Johnson had taken another job, as most ex-cops did after finding that the pension wouldn’t support a man in his forties for long.

“Retirement.” Johnson laughed nervously. “Right. It’d be great if it wasn’t for my job. You still got a weekly poker game? I could use the cash.”

“More like every other week, but yeah.” Mac stopped short of inviting Johnson to join. As far as he was concerned, cop poker was for cops.

“Gimme a shout the next time you get together. It’d be good to see you guys, and like I said, I could use your money.”

“What d’you want, Johnson?” Mac didn’t even try to feign civility.

Johnson said nothing for a moment. Then he forced a laugh. “Same old Mac. Listen, you were one of the point people on the Madeline Steele shooting back in the nineties, right?”

Mac’s ears perked up. “It was before I made sergeant, so it wasn’t my case,” he said. “But yeah, I was involved in the investigation.”

“I thought so. That’s why I’m calling. I’m up here at Billerica. I’m an assistant supervisor of the corrections officers now.”

He said it as though Mac should be impressed. He wasn’t. But Johnson did have his full attention. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s not too bad. Beats the streets for me. At least it’s easier to tell who the bad guys are; they’re usually the ones wearing prison fatigues.”

“That’s a good one.” There was no laughter in Mac’s voice, only impatience. “I’ll have to remember that.”

“Anyways, listen, Vincente Salazar’s got some people up here visiting. Lawyers, looks like. Word on the block is he’s trying to get himself a new trial.”

“Every con wants a new trial,” Mac commented cautiously.