Have You Seen Luis Velez?(69)

“I paid for the sandwich.”

“But you didn’t pay for the plate, and the tray. And the silverware. Sorry. You have to sit in here.”

“Sit?” he asked, his voice making a point about the likelihood of that. “Where do you see a place to sit?”

“You can ask to share somebody’s table if it’s not full.”

“But they all are.”

“No. That one’s not.”

He pointed to a table for four, currently only occupied by two people. Unfortunately the two people were Peter and Mary Jane, the son and daughter of the woman who had just nearly obliterated his appetite.

Raymond sighed, and walked to their table.

If Mrs. G can do this, so can I.

They looked up. Nodded. Looked quickly away.

If Raymond had been called upon to write thought bubbles above their heads, as in a cartoon, he would have had them saying, “Oh. Hi. It’s you. Good to see you. Go away now.”

Raymond did not go away.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But there’s literally no place else to sit. Not one other place.”

Peter made his neck long like a giraffe and peered around the room, as if hoping to prove Raymond wrong.

“Well,” he said. “Then . . . sit here, I guess.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Raymond sat down and focused every ounce of energy he had onto that turkey sandwich. He never took his eyes off it. The silence was onerous. It seemed to vibrate on the table between them.

Raymond did not break it.

They ate for a good five minutes in that awkward silence.

“There are a lot of good things about my mother,” Peter said suddenly.

“I’m sure there are,” Raymond said without taking his eyes off the sandwich. Though he wasn’t sure at all.

“She just has trouble with that one thing. Well, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean everything else about her is perfect. I guess I mean everything else about her is reasonable. But she’s just not one of those people who says she’s wrong. I think it’s a generational thing. But otherwise she’s a good woman.”

“Why are you saying that about her?” Mary Jane asked. She was clearly upset. It made Raymond want to abandon his food and run. “It’s not just Mom. It’s her attorney. He told her not to say she was wrong.”

“Who told you that?” Peter asked his sister. “Do you know that for a fact? Did she tell you that?”

“No. She didn’t have to. It’s just common sense. You don’t get up on the stand and admit you did the wrong thing. She’s looking at jail time.”

“It’s a risky strategy,” Peter said.

Another silence reigned. Even more awkward than the first.

Raymond thought maybe he should say something. Then a moment later he figured he shouldn’t. He went back and forth about it several times. When he finally spoke, it was mostly because the back and forth was making him crazy.

“I’ve heard the court goes easier on you if you show remorse.”

Mary Jane pushed away from the table and stomped off. Straight out of the cafeteria without pausing. Or looking back.

Raymond pulled a deep breath and tried to sigh out his tension. It didn’t sigh out.

“Well, say what you want about strategy,” Peter said. “I’ve known that woman for thirty-four years. She’s my mother and I love her. But I’ve never heard her say the three words ‘I was wrong.’ And I’m worried about the way that’s characterizing her now, especially for people who don’t know her at all.”

Raymond chewed a mouthful of turkey sandwich and tried to swallow it. It had been dry to begin with. Now it felt like swallowing a mouthful of cotton. And he hadn’t even gotten a beverage he could use to wash it down.

“What did you and Mrs. Gutermann talk about yesterday?” Raymond asked when he was able.

“Oh, a little bit of everything. She’s an amazing lady. Why?”

“I was just wondering how she managed to make a thing like this work. And I so . . . couldn’t.”

“Not your fault. It was my sister’s and my fault. We brought it up. We shouldn’t have. It was just hard to sit there all morning and listen to her testimony and wonder what the people who heard it were thinking about her. It’s hard not to want to tell people to please try to have a higher opinion of her. But we don’t get to talk to the jury, so . . .”

“Right. Doesn’t matter what I think.”

“I should go find my sister.”

He rose from the table and walked away, leaving half of his spaghetti lunch uneaten. Raymond leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. Squeezed his eyes closed.

I’ll have to ask her how she does a thing like that. Like yesterday’s lunch with the Hatfields. There must be a secret to it.

Then he decided the secret was probably ninety-two years of experience, and that it probably wouldn’t help to ask.



The prosecutor dug into the defendant again after lunch.

“I’d like to go a little deeper into the nuts and bolts of the shooting,” he said.

The Hatfield woman flopped against the back of her chair in obvious disgust. “I can’t imagine what there is to say about it that hasn’t been said a hundred times already.”