Have You Seen Luis Velez?(38)

The woman shifted on her feet slightly. Uncomfortably. First one direction, then the other.

“She gave me the number. In case there was some kind of emergency at the apartment. But I don’t see as I have a right to hand it out to anybody.”

“But you could give her a note. Couldn’t you? You could give her my number. And if she wants to call me, she will. Right?”

He quickly scribbled his phone number at the end of his note. Tore the sheet out of the notebook.

“Yeah,” the woman said, her voice sinking down into balance and comfort again. “Yeah. That I can do.”



When Raymond arrived home, his mother was setting the table for dinner. She raised her left hand, turned her wrist over, and made a big show of looking at her watch.

“You just made it,” she said. “But not with much time to spare.”

“Right. You got my message?”

“I did. Thank you for that.”

“I’m going to be in my room,” he said. “I have to look something up online. You’ll call me for dinner?”

“Once,” she said. “So keep the door to your room open. Also your ears.”

He walked away without comment. He had too much on his mind to want to engage with her.

He sat down in his room, in front of his desk. Woke up his laptop computer. Did a search for the New York Times. Entered the term “Luis M. Velez.” And there it was. Just like that. Everything he’d been searching for but hadn’t seemed to be there at the time. Right in front of him to read. To print. To share. It sank hard into his belly again that he was about to have to tell her.

He clicked on the headline link. It said, “Woman Charged with Voluntary Manslaughter in Fatal Shooting of Fellow Pedestrian.”

When the story came up, Raymond couldn’t bring himself to read it. Because there on his screen, front and center, was a photo of Luis M. Velez. Raymond just couldn’t seem to get any farther than that photo.

He was younger than the man Raymond had pictured. And so alive. He was so alive in the photo that it seemed impossible to think he could be dead. His smile was so infectious that it almost made Raymond smile just to look at it. And there was nothing for Raymond to smile about in that moment. Luis’s eyes shone. His hair was dark and a little bit shaggy, his eyes dark. Eyebrows neat and thin. But it was hard to focus on those details, because Luis’s smile just kept stealing the show.

The caption under the photo read, “Luis M. Velez, 33, of Manhattan, leaves behind a wife and two children: Maria Elena, 11, and Esteban, 7. His widow, Isabella, is pregnant with their third child.”

Raymond’s door flew open, and his mother stuck her head into the room.

“I thought you were going to keep your ears open.”

“Sorry. Did you call dinner? I didn’t hear.”

“No, I called in and said someone was on the phone for you. You didn’t hear the phone ring?”

“Oh. Sorry. I was busy paying attention, I guess.”

His heart pounded, wondering if it was Isabel. He figured it must be, because nobody else ever called him. Mrs. G had memorized his number, but she always waited for him to come by her apartment of his own volition.

He clicked his computer back into sleep mode and rose from his chair. As he walked through the open bedroom doorway, his mother punched him on the shoulder, surprisingly hard.

“It’s a young lady,” she said, her voice all full of happy conspiracy. “Thought you said you didn’t have a girlfriend.”

“I don’t,” he said, and ran to take the phone.

Unfortunately, the phone in the kitchen was the only phone they owned.

“Hello?” he said, sounding breathless from the fear.

“Raymond Jaffe?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s Isabel. Luis’s wife.”

“Thank you so much for calling me,” he said on a desperate rush of breath. He heard a movement. Turned his head to see his mother standing in the kitchen doorway behind him. He covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with one palm. “Excuse me,” he said. “A little privacy, please?”

“Fine. But dinner has started. So come straight to the table when you’re done. Special dispensation for special circumstances.”

She spun away and left him alone.

He took his hand off the receiver and addressed Isabel again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Something just distracted me. I was saying how much I appreciate your calling.”

“I was so glad to hear from you. A friend of Millie’s! That’s what your note said. My neighbor read it to me on the phone. I was so happy because I thought Millie didn’t have anyone except Luis.”

“She didn’t. I didn’t meet her until after Luis . . .”

A silence fell. It was perhaps a second or two. Or three. But it stretched out painfully in Raymond’s mind and gut and heart, like a bad week you might live through that just never seems to end.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said.

“Thank you.” He couldn’t tell if she was crying or not. Her voice was heavy and dense with emotion, and that emotion seemed to bend the words at their edges. But he wasn’t sure about tears. How could he be? They were only on the phone. “So, tell me,” she said. “Are you helping her now? Taking her to the store for groceries, and to the bank to deposit her checks?”