A Matter of Conviction

“Yeah,” Frankie agreed, “you’d do real good.” He turned to face Hank. His eyes were still invisible behind the dark glasses, but suddenly he was no longer the Picasso-lover with the proud Spanish blood. His face seemed to go suddenly hard, and his voice, though issuing from his mouth in a monotone, was menacing. “You’d do real good, Mr. Bell.”

“It wouldn’t be nice for them to get away with this,” Gargantua said.

“No,” Frankie said. “A lot of people might not like it.”

They sat in silence for a moment. The two boys stared at him, as if trying to make their meaning clear without the necessity of further words.

Finally Hank rose. “Well,” he said, “thanks for all the information,” and he reached into his back pocket for his wallet.

“The beers are on me,” Frankie said.

“No, let me—”

“I said the beers are on me,” he said, more firmly this time.

“Well, thank you, then,” Hank said, and he left the bar.

The mother of Rafael Morrez did not arrive home from work until 6 P.M. She was a seamstress in the garment district. She had come to Harlem from a town in Puerto Rico called Vega Baja, where she had worked in a one-room factory that made children’s shirts. From the outside of the building, the place where she had worked had not resembled a factory at all. There was a grilled iron railing, and then a pastel-colored building set back from a small courtyard where wild orchids grew. Violeta Morrez would begin work at eight in the morning, and she worked through until six o’clock in the evening. She had better working conditions and higher wages in New York, that was true. But in Puerto Rico, at the end of the working day, she would go home to her son Rafael. In New York she could no longer do that. Her son Rafael was dead.

She had come to New York at the request of her husband, who had been a dishwasher in a restaurant on Forty-second Street. He had preceded her to the mainland by a year, living with some cousins of his and saving enough money finally to rent his own apartment and to send for his wife and his son. She had joined him reluctantly. For whereas she knew that New York was a city of opportunities, she was very fond of Puerto Rico and dreaded leaving familiar safe surroundings. Six months after she arrived in the city, her husband took up with another woman, leaving her and the boy to find their own way in the city.

Now, at thirty-seven — two years older than Hank’s wife Karin — Violeta Morrez looked like a woman of sixty. Her body was thin and her face was gaunt, only a slight hint of beauty lingering about the eyes and the mouth. She wore no make-up. Her black hair was pulled back severely into a tight bun.

They sat in the “parlor” of her fourth-floor walk-up, and there was a stillness to the room as they faced each other. Her eyes, wide and brown in the hollow face, stared at Hank with a frankness that made him uneasy. It was like looking into the eyes of immense sorrow, he realized, a sorrow too great for empathy, a sorrow that demanded solitude and resented solicitude.

“What can you do?” she asked. “What can you possibly do?”

She spoke English well, with only a trace of an accent. She had told Hank earlier that she’d studied the language for a year before joining her husband in New York. She had gone to school at night in Puerto Rico.

“I can see that justice is done, Mrs. Morrez,” Hank said.

“Justice? In this city? Do not make me laugh. There is justice here only if you are born here. For the others, there is nothing but hatred.” He listened to her voice, and he thought, There is no bitterness in her words, even though the words themselves are bitter. There is only an unutterable sadness, a despair, a surrender to sorrow.

“This is a city of hatred, señor. There is hatred in this city’s heart, and it is a bad thing to feel.”

“I’m here to help your son’s case, Mrs. Morrez. Anything you can tell me about—”

“To help his case, yes. But to help him, no. You can never help Rafael again. It is too late to help him. My son is dead, and the ones who killed him are still alive. And if they continue to stay alive, there will be more killings because these are not human beings, these are animals. These are animals full of hatred.” She paused. Her eyes held his. Like a child asking her father why the sky was blue, she said, “Why does this city hate, señor?”

“Mrs. Morrez, I...”