Have You Seen Luis Velez?(21)

“He told me her name. Not who she was to Luis or anything. So you tell me, and hurry up, please, because this is freaking me out. Who is this Millie person to my Luis?”

The dogs shifted slightly on their haunches, picking up the woman’s fear. Raymond took an instinctive step back.

“She’s . . . she’s this older lady who lives in my building. Over on the west side. Very old,” he added, thinking he might know how to put the woman at ease. “Like . . . ninety.” He saw her take a deep breath and let it out. He plunged on. “She’s blind, and she can’t go out by herself. So Luis used to come and walk with her to the store and the bank. To help her, you know? But I don’t know if it was Luis your husband. You know. Or some other Luis Velez. Because there are twenty-one of them in the city. Or near it. And even that is only if I’m spelling it right.”

The woman pressed her eyes closed. Tipped her head back. Raymond watched her make the sign of the cross against herself.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, dropping her head and looking directly into Raymond’s face. “I thought you were here to tell me he was seeing some other woman.”

“No,” Raymond said. “Nothing like that.”

“I don’t know if he’s the right Luis or not,” she said, utterly transformed. Her face had softened. Her voice sounded deeper and more relaxed. “Probably not, because I think he would’ve told me. Although . . . I don’t know. He does this thing sometimes where he drops money on people, kind of just because he thinks they deserve it. He never lets them know who gave it to them. And he never used to tell me about it. But then one day I sort of caught him doing it, and I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were doing that?’ He gave me this whole long thing about how it’s only really giving if nobody knows. If it’s anonymous. He said if you let everybody know you did it, then you’re just doing it for the glory. So people will think you’re a great guy. Then it’s just selfish.”

“I don’t know,” Raymond said, still watching the dogs. “Seems to me then the person gets something nice, and you get to feel good. Two wins instead of one.”

“See, I’m with you on that,” she said. “But I’m being rude. Making you stand out in the hall like some poor relation. Come in. I’ll call Luis at the office and ask if he’s the one.”

Raymond didn’t move. Just kept his eyes on the dogs.

“Oh, they won’t hurt you,” she said. “They like people. But they’re trained attack dogs. But they would never do anything I didn’t tell them to do.”

“You sure?”

“Honey, it’s fine. Come in.”

She reached one hand out. As if she could take hold of Raymond and pull him inside. He looked at the hand and backed up another step.

“So this thing you say to them when you want them to attack someone . . . you sure it’s not a word you could accidentally use in a sentence or anything?”

She laughed. “They’re fine. I promise. Come in. Luis is in a client meeting. I’ll have to leave a message for him. He might not get back to me until after the meeting’s over. You don’t want to stand out in the hall that whole time. Do you?”

“I guess not,” he said.

But it was sounding like a pretty good idea.

She turned and addressed the dogs. “Bed!” she barked.

The dogs’ ears flattened. First out to the sides, then back along their necks. They turned and slithered away, eyes full of the pain of rejection.

Against his better judgment, Raymond stepped in.

“I was just making breakfast,” she said as he followed her into the kitchen. It was huge, high-ceilinged. Painted a light lavender. It had an amazing view of Central Park. “Sit down. You want anything? Did you eat?”

While she spoke she rummaged around in her purse and came up with a cell phone.

“I had a granola bar,” he said. And sat.

“That’s not breakfast.”

“It’s what I usually have.”

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

“There’s nobody around to cook at that hour. And I don’t really cook. So I just grab one.”

“It’s not good enough,” she said. As though she could make the final pronouncement on such things, and her word was unassailable. She had the phone to her face now. “Yeah, hi, love. Me. So there’s this kid here. This nice young guy. He’s asking if you know a ninety-year-old woman over on the west side. Blind woman. Millie. I figure probably not, or you would’ve told me. But I never know with you. You have that anonymity thing going on. So I’m just going to feed this guy some breakfast. Apparently nobody feeds him. When you get out of your meeting, call me and let me know, okay? Because he came all the way over here. I figure the least we can do is get him an answer.”

She clicked off the call and leveled him with a direct gaze. Right into his eyes.

“You drink coffee?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Tea?”

“Sometimes I drink tea with milk and sugar.”

“Coming right up.”



Raymond stared out over the park as she cooked. Sipped his cambric tea and watched the world go by twenty-two floors below. The smells were making him hungry. The smells were making the dogs hungry, too. They slithered into the kitchen and lay prone at the woman’s feet, staring up at the stove. Wagging their tails.