Sweet Mary Read online

  “We’re taking you, all right,” the third invader said. “Don’t worry about your son. He’s with child services out there. We’ll need names of his next of kin, anybody they should call.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m his next of kin. He’s staying with me.”

  “No, you need to come with us.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “You don’t listen, do you?” he said. “DEA.”

  “I don’t believe you. Show me your badge. Up close,” I said.

  He took off the badge and held it in front of my eyes.

  “Special Agent Dan Green, DEA,” he said, irked.

  I studied the shield—for what, I don’t know. For all I knew, it could have been a fake.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I told him. “I want a real cop in a real cop uniform to tell me what this is about. And I want to see my son.”

  But Agent Dan Green slapped handcuffs on me. One of the other agent invaders, who had ducked out the front door moments earlier, returned with shackles and a chain. He fastened the chain around my waist and the shackles on my feet and helped me up off the floor.

  “I have a warrant for your arrest. And let me suggest you come peacefully,” Agent Green said.

  “Arrest for what?”

  “Can’t tell you. It’s a sealed indictment,” he said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I demanded to know as the agents led me out of my house. But they didn’t answer.

  Frantic, I searched for a sign of Max. I saw him in the back of an unmarked sedan, crying, as a middle-aged woman in a floral-print blouse tried to console him and another, younger woman stood by the car, holding a clipboard. When she saw me, the younger woman rushed over to introduce herself as Tiffany Wells of the Florida Department of Children and Families.

  “Your son is gonna be okay. Is there a family member he can stay with?” said the young woman, a wavy-haired girl dressed in chinos and a peasant-style shirt.

  “Yeah. Me,” I said.

  “You’ll be with him real soon,” she said, “but I need someone else for right now.”

  I stumbled on the thought. My parents were headed for their cruise—were they still home? And as for Max’s father, I hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of weeks. Tony and I had agreed that I would have Max for an extended period in the summer, while he traveled overseas on vacation. But I was pretty sure he was back home. I thought about Fatty but then quickly dismissed the thought—a wannabe rapper on parole was not an option.

  So I gave the social worker every number I could think of for my parents and Tony.

  “You have to call them right now. If you can’t reach them, I have a close friend you can call,” I said, but she cut me off before I could give her Gina’s information.

  “Has to be a relative, sorry. Let me call your folks right now,” she said, racing off with her clipboard, then turning to call out, “Your son’s in good hands.”

  I held it together for Max’s sake. This couldn’t be happening, not to me. I closed my eyes and tried to retrace the sequences of that morning. Where did my life veer into chaos? I tried to grasp the image of my home as it was just moments earlier, the easy order of cream-toned furnishings, everything in its place, my plans tucked neatly into a leather-bound agenda, the clay-colored dishes stacked clean in the cabinets, the mound of perfect pears in the blue Murano bowl, my baby boy nestled beneath his Spider-Man sheets. But in the wreckage of my home, it all eluded me. A cruel geometry of objects now defined my landscape—sofas slashed, books strewn, my favorite kitchen plaque, the one that says HELP KEEP THE KITCHEN CLEAN—EAT OUT smashed on the floor.

  The home invaders took me out of 416 Hibiscus Lane in handcuffs and shackles. They took me out in front of my screaming son, my bathrobed neighbor, the school bus driver, and even the FedEx guy, who was now two doors away. Everybody was too stunned to speak. Only Buster, the bulldog, seemed lucid enough to express the appropriate rage. He barked and growled through the fence of his yard as the agents led me to their vehicle. The white Windstar van. The dog knew—he had tried to warn us all the previous night.

  The back seat of the van smelled of egg sandwiches and stale coffee. The agents had chained my shackles to a metal bar on the floor to make sure I didn’t escape. One of the invaders took the wheel. Another took the seat behind me. So-called Agent Green rode shotgun. I still had a hard time believing they were feds. Morbid thoughts raced through my mind: They’re going to kill me and then they’re going to dump my body. I craned for a look at the file folder open on Agent Green’s lap. I squinted to read the bold-lettered name on the inside label. Someone had scrawled it in a black marker: MARIA GUEVARA PORTILLA/AKA LA REINA.

  There was an enlarged driver’s license photo depicting a rough-looking woman, late thirties, reddish brown hair, hideous collagen job. Bingo. There it was, proof they had the wrong woman.

  “That’s not me,” I blurted from the back seat. “That picture—I don’t know who that is. But if that’s who you’re looking for, then you’re arresting the wrong person.”

  Agent Green adjusted the rearview mirror and fired a look that ricocheted back to me.

  “Are you talking?”

  “Yes, I’m talking,” I said, defiant. “Why shouldn’t I talk? I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m going to tell you everything—my name, my birthday, my Social Security number. Everything. Dulce Maria Guevara de los Santos. People call me Mary. Dulce —that means “sweet” in Spanish. I don’t think there’s a Dulce in there, am I right?”

  Agent Green glanced down at the file.

  “Born seven sixteen sixty-nine?”

  “No, sir, I was born seven four seventy-six.”

  He thought about it for a second, then said, “Right.”

  “You think I’m lying? Unbelievable. My Social is two six four eight two zero zero zero six. I was born at Mercy Hospital. I went to Immaculate Conception Catholic grade school in Hialeah. Then Monsignor Pace High. Then FIU. Psych major. I’m a Realtor. I am a mother. I’m divorced. My ex-husband is a banker. I’ve lived in this house for three years. I moved here after the divorce. Before that I lived at 1025 Eagle Court in South Miami. Before that I lived at 1001 East Forty-fifth Street in Hialeah. That’s where I grew up. I learned to swim at Walker Park. I was on the gymnastics team at the youth center. That’s it. That’s my life. That’s it.”

  But Agent Green said nothing and there was nothing but silence between us as we wove through Miami’s seamy back streets. I looked out the window at a blur of urban scenes that grew more desolate as we came to a red light. A couple of thug types ambled by. A crack addict jabbered to herself under a tree. A very old woman stared at me from a chair on her porch. Her empty gaze reflected my own isolation.

  Moments later, I stood alone in a gray corridor at the federal detention center, still in my business clothes. Although they had removed the shackles from my feet, my hands were still cuffed and linked to the chain around my waist. I heard a steel door slam shut behind me, then a man’s amplified voice.

  “Walk to the end of the hall,” it said.

  When I reached the end of the corridor, another steel door opened to a clamor of raw voices.

  “Walk to the end,” the voice said again.

  But I hesitated. I realized I had to walk a gauntlet of male inmates in their cells.

  “Proceed to the end of the hall,” the voice repeated, now adamant.

  In my business attire, I walked amid hoots and catcalls and only brief patches of silence.

  “Who’d you kill, baby?” yelled one inmate.

  I kept walking. The next thing I remember is a searing flash of light. It is the flash that captured my pale, startled look in a federal mug shot.

  That flash would mark the very instant my soul sprang free of my body and became chief witness in the life of federal inmate number 12618.

  INTERROGATION ROOM—DAY 1

  Industrial, high-gloss walls. Spartan table. Mary, her ha
ndcuffs now removed, sits alone.

  I stared at the darkened, telltale double mirror, trying to detect a sign of life on the other side. After a long while, the door opened and in walked Agent Green. In the jarring fluorescent light of the interrogation room, he appeared more cocky than ever. He now wore a crisp, sage cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. Strong forearms. Clean nails. No wedding band. Spy Le Baron sunglasses clipped casually to the front of his shirt. Dan Green was central casting’s answer to a federal agent at the top of his game—not a hair out of place. I could just imagine he had run eight miles that morning, then hit the weights as ESPN droned on in the background. He probably did a few extra reps because he had allowed himself that glass or two of wine, undoubtedly chardonnay, the previous night at dinner with his girlfriend, a nice-looking but dry girl most likely named Brooke or Lindsay.

  “Maria Portilla…” Agent Green began, eyes fixed on an open file on the table before him.

  The name grated on me, but I sucked it up.

  “That’s not my name. But I’ll be happy to wait here while you go check my driver’s license records or whatever other records you need to check. Once and for all, I want to clarify these issues you seem to be having with my identity,” I said in a tone I tried to keep low and level.

  When he didn’t answer, I went on.

  “Listen, I know everybody makes mistakes. Even the feds make mistakes. Fine. As big of a mistake as this one is, I’m willing to let it go for a handshake and a brief apology.”

  Agent Green gave a half smile.

  “You think I’m some kind of moron,” he said.

  In another time and place, I might have found him handsome, intriguing, dateable. But not that day. That day I did think he was some kind of moron.

  “I don’t know what you want from me, but this is getting old,” I said. “I need to know where my son is. Now.”

  “What do I want from you? The truth,” he said.

  “I have told you more than you’ll ever need to know about me,” I said. “If this isn’t a mistake, then it’s got to be some kind of joke.”

  “Nobody’s laughing here,” Agent Green said in a smug manner that set me off.

  I slapped a hand on the table and stood up to tower over him.

  “Get your facts right and stop wasting my time,” I said.

  He leaped up in my face.

  “Sit the hell down,” he said. He was angry but impeccably composed.

  I obliged. Rattled, I glanced up at the wall. I could see faint silhouettes moving in the mirrored glass. Agent Green tapped once on the table to pull me back in.

  “Let’s talk about New Mexico,” he said, terse.

  “I’ve never been there.”

  “You haven’t?”

  He took a photograph out of the open file and slid it across the table. It was a black and white picture of a Red Roof Inn motel, snapped at night from the side of a road.

  “What does this have to do with me?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he peeled off another photo. This one featured a tall, lanky man smoking what appeared to be a joint in a budget motel room. Agent Green nodded at the image, then looked at me as if waiting for an explanation.

  “I don’t know that guy.”

  “Right. And you were born on the Fourth of July in the year of the Bicentennial.”

  “So what about it?” I said.

  He shoved the picture closer to me.

  “Where’s El Flaco?”

  “El Flaco who?”

  He shoved another photo at me—a poor snapshot of a woman counting a wad of bills in the same motel room. On a table next to her there was a mound of small bags filled with what looked like a white powder substance. Then came another photo—a grainy picture of the same woman talking to the lanky man.

  “Still don’t know him?”

  I studied the woman in the photo. She had thick, wavy hair. Her face was a catalog of cosmetic surgery—the trout mouth; the suspiciously large, perfectly arranged boobs.

  “No. And I don’t know her, either. Who is she?”

  Agent Green narrowed his eyes on me.

  “Conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Possession with intent to distribute. Large amounts, Maria. Unfathomable amounts.”

  Just then I realized he wasn’t talking about the woman in the photo—he was talking about me. In his mind, I was the woman in the photo. I picked up the photo and took a closer look at the woman in question. The reddish hair, the oddly plumped mouth, the mammoth boobs. How dare he?

  I gave the woman’s photo back to Agent Green and met his stare.

  “Mine are real.”

  Agent Green got up, placed his hands on the table, and took a deep breath.

  “On November four, 2002, you made a bank deposit in the amount of one hundred seventeen thousand five hundred ninety dollars,” he said.

  “I don’t know if that was exactly the day or exactly the amount, but that could be right. It could have been from the sale of the house after my divorce.”

  “So, where’s the rest of the money?”

  “There is no rest of the money.”

  “Where’s the drug money?”

  “I don’t sell cocaine. I sell condominiums.”

  Agent Green stormed out. But it wasn’t long before the door swung open again. This time, it was a different agent, a bookish, forty-something guy in tan Dockers, notepad in hand.

  He introduced himself as Agent Gonzalez.

  “I need to ask you a few more questions. Is that okay?” he asked in an almost delicate tone.

  I nodded.

  “Can someone account for your daily whereabouts in early 1999?”

  “Daily whereabouts?”

  “Where you lived, where you worked, where you shopped, banked, dined, all that.”

  “My family. Friends. My ex-husband. Take your pick.”

  “Ex-husband?” he said, intrigued. “You mean Juan Cardenal?”

  “No, his name is Tony. Antoine Ramonet. And I’d like to call him now. I need to find out where my son is,” I said.

  “They’re checking with child services as we speak,” Agent Gonzalez said, nodding to the mirrored glass. “Ramonet? Is that a Colombian name?”

  “No. French. His number is seven six zero nine eight zero one.”

  “Okay. I’ll give him a call.”

  So this was the good cop, I concluded as the mild-mannered Agent Gonzalez directed my attention to a nearby TV monitor.

  “I want you to look closely,” he said, clicking a remote. “There’s no sound on this, but it should be self-explanatory.”

  On the TV screen, the woman in the photo came to motion in a dark, grainy video. She wore large, black aviator sunglasses and a clingy, mauve-toned blouse, her hair falling on her shoulders in soft waves. She seemed far less rough around the edges than she had in the still pictures. She gestured with her hands as she spoke, but not in the trashy way you might expect from a brassy redhead with cheek implants. Her hands drew graceful swirls that mirrored the smoke of her cigarette.

  I have to say that for a few moments I was riveted. I had never seen a real-life drug trafficker—not that I knew of anyway. I would have imagined her to be some jagged-haired female with the angular mannerisms of a low-rent thug. But there she was, La Reina, a mysterious woman with almost feline movements. There she was in some roadside motel, captured on surveillance tape. She was all over the place—in the case files, in stakeout photographs, on video. Everywhere except where she needed to be: facing the feds in a hot northwest Miami interrogation room. No, I was there instead.

  “You had her,” I said.

  “Pardon me?” said Agent Gonzalez.

  “You had this woman. You had her and you didn’t take her down. You had her on at least two different occasions, from what I can see. You had everything you needed to make your case: the suspect, the accomplice, the money, the drugs. You had it all. You had her,” I said.

  Agent G
onzalez glanced off.

  “Tell me something,” I said, “what crack investigator did you assign to this stakeout?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Play the video again,” I said. “I want to see it one more time, frame by frame.”

  The agent gave me a “go ahead” nod. I took the TV remote from the table and stood up to get a better look at the monitor. I cued up the video and began to watch it again, freezing it every few seconds to study the details. A round pendant dangled on a chain around the woman’s neck. It looked like a coin of some sort, but I couldn’t be sure. A cigarette box sat on the nightstand—but what brand was it? I couldn’t tell. An overstuffed camouflage duffel bag lay on the bed. The lanky man entered the frame, grabbed the duffel, and scolded La Reina. She got up and screamed something back. Whatever she said, it was enough to make him drop the duffel. Clearly, she was the alpha bitch of the operation.

  In a strange way, I was engrossed by the silent story playing out in that roadside motel. I would have kept watching if Agent Green hadn’t come in and yanked the remote from my hand.

  “You’re done,” he said, clicking off the video. “Go sit down.”

  He pulled Agent Gonzalez aside and engaged him in a hushed but heated argument. Agent Gonzalez left the interrogation room. Agent Green leaned across the table and zeroed in on me.

  “How long have you been running drugs for the Cardenal organization?”

  “I won’t even dignify that question.”

  “You’re wasting my time, Maria,” he said.

  “And you’re wasting mine. I’ve told you everything about my life already.”

  “If you’re gonna lie, then do me a favor: Don’t talk.”

  “Where is my son?”

  “He’s with DCF,” he said.

  “Didn’t they reach my parents?” I said. “What about his father?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I want to make a phone call.”

  “When I say so.”

  “Then I have nothing else to say.”

  This triggered a standoff, a long one. In that time, Agent Green scribbled notes, copious notes. It was as if he was taking down a ten-page confession. I have to say I was more than a little perplexed. Every so often he’d look up, knot his brow, then scribble more notes. I tried to read what he was writing. Great penmanship he had, even upside down.