Chapter 31
In my family, we’re much more into soccer than we are into football. In fact, in the household we grew up in, what we call football is soccer. I haven’t been to a match in forever, though, and never to one that involves teams of teenage girls.
As Lex and I arrive at the bottom of the bleachers with our Cokes and hot dogs, I’m a little excited to be here.
Two dozen girls are running around on synthetic grass that has known better days, and their coaches are shouting instructions in both Spanish and English, spurring them on.
This isn’t how I’d choose to spend my Saturday afternoon, but it’s still nice.
We’re in New York, the sun is shining, and we’re incognito.
We tried not to overdo it, so we have sunglasses and caps, with the most average outfit we could come up with—jeans, light T-shirts, and dark jackets.
We scan the few people already seated, looking for the one face we might know. Lex spots her first, pushing his elbow into me. “There,” he says.
I look up at him to see the direction he’s staring in and follow it.
Yes! He’s right, that’s Paola, top right of the bleachers, somehow isolated.
Inconspicuously, we walk in her direction.
There aren’t that many spectators, so a lot of seats are empty.
Sitting right next to her would be suspicious, so we settle down on the two spots in front of her.
My heart is drumming, adrenaline burning through my veins.
This feels like some movie shit, not real life. We’re about to approach a woman and convince her to spy on her boss for us. To potentially steal for us, even.
My eyes are on the field, but my attention isn’t. It’s lost inward, in my thoughts, trying to figure out how the fuck we could spark a conversation with her.
The opportunity comes about twenty minutes after we’ve sat down, when a player tackles her daughter, who was about to score a goal.
Behind us, Paola stands up and shouts, calling for a red card in Spanish.
When nothing comes of it but a free kick, she protests some more, calling the referee an “?Incompetente de mierda!”
I twist around, grabbing my chance and say, “That was definitely a foul,” in Spanish as well. “That girl should have been carded.”
“Thank you! Yes!”
Lex tenses up next to me, but I ignore him to continue with, “Your daughter plays very well, by the way.”
“She’s the best on her team. Yours is playing, too?”
“Oh, no, my husband and I are only here out of curiosity,” I explain, resting a hand on Lex’s tense shoulder. We’ve been wearing the rings again for our cover. Lex twists around as well to offer Paola a nod.
“Out of curiosity?” she repeats suspiciously, wondering why two adults would attend a random teen match like this.
“We’re considering moving into this neighborhood,” I lie.
For the following moments, I maneuver the conversation in the direction that leads to me being able to ask what she does for a living.
Three minutes in, I even move up one row to sit next to her so we can chat and watch.
But to be honest, the football match becomes background noise as I sneak my way into Paola’s trust. When she tells me about her job as a maid, I ask if her salary is enough to live in New York.
“It’s not easy, but my husband and I make do.”
I nod, glance at Lex, whose focus is forward, and turn again to ask, “What would you do for ten thousand dollars?”
She frowns, troubled by my question. “What do you mean?”
“Would you be willing to share some information about your employer for that kind of cash?”
Her confusion turns into distrust, and she sits up in her seat, eyes going left and right as she tries to figure out what’s happening. “What is this? A test? Did he send you to test me?”
“No, Becker didn’t send us. We’re here of our own volition.”
“How do you know who I work for?”
“We know a lot of things, Paola. We know about your daughter, Elena, and your son, Pedro. And we know about your parents in Peru, to whom you send whatever money you can spare.”
Now, it’s worry that animates her. But she doesn’t move from her seat, stunned. “We’re not here to harm or threaten you,” I say before she can spiral any further. “All we want is to know a few things about Becker. And we’ll pay you a lot of money for it.”
She stares, still distrustful. After a quick glimpse at our surroundings, I bend forward to ask Lex, “Can I have the money?”
He pulls out three wads of cash, thirty thousand dollars in total, and hands them to me discreetly.
“How about this,” I suggest to Paola, “For every question you answer, I’ll give you five hundred dollars.
You can stop at any point. And if I run out of questions before this money is gone, then you get everything. ”
She stares at the money with visible envy, and I know I’ve won before she asks, “What do you want to know?”
I can barely hold back a sigh of relief. When we discussed this, Lex and I agreed it would be better to start slowly, to ease her into the deeper questions. That’s why I simply go with, “How long have you worked for Becker?”
“Four years.”
Jesus. We really hit the jackpot. As promised, I take five bills out of one of the wads and give them to her. “In all those years, have you ever seen him get violent?”
“We’re supposed to be invisible. Whenever Mr. Becker or his family enters a room, we have to leave.”
“So, never?”
Her lips turn into a tight line, and she peers at the money. I give her another five hundred dollars and ask again, “So, you’ve never seen him get angry?”
“He has … moods. He almost destroyed everything in his office earlier this year. We had to clean it up, and there was almost nothing left intact.”
Five hundred dollars more, and I ask, “Was it around early April?”
She thinks about it for a moment and nods. That matches my cyber heist to get Lex out of jail. That must have pushed him over the edge. “And have you ever seen him violent with a woman?” I ask next.
“I’m not sure,” she says hesitantly.
“Tell me whatever you can.”
“I’ve always had a bad feeling about that man,” she confesses.
“About a year ago, we had a beautiful girl from Colombia, who came to work for the family. She said she was twenty-two, but I know she was barely older than my daughter. One day, she told me Mr. Becker looked at her a lot. And I started noticing it too, the way his eyes were on her. Once, I even found them together in a room, close. Then suddenly, she had a bracelet. The expensive kind. She wouldn’t tell me who it was from, but I knew. ”
“It was from him?”
She nods. “I think so. She didn’t like him like that. She played with him to get things. But she didn’t want to sleep with him. She had a boyfriend, you see.”
“What happened to her?”
“I noticed bruises on her arms one day. When I asked if her boyfriend did it, she said no. When I asked if it was Mr. Becker, she said nothing. She disappeared shortly after that. I never heard from her again.”
My stack of cash is getting thinner, but it’s alright. This is precious information, and we have enough for sixty questions. “What do you think happened to her?”
“There are rumors that Mr. Becker sends the bad employees back to their countries.”
“So, what I heard is true? He only works with undocumented immigrants?”
Paola goes quiet, wriggling on her chair uncomfortably. When I understand where her discomfort comes from, I say, “My grandparents came here from Mexico illegally. I would never send ICE after anyone,” I reassure her. “You’re safe with me, Paola. I promise.”
After a few more reluctant seconds, she says, “Some of the maids are documented. But they only hire people who don’t speak English. The housekeeper says it’s to preserve the family’s privacy.”
“That girl you told me about, though, she was undocumented, right?”
She nods. “She told me Mr. Becker would help her get a green card. That’s why she played her game with him. I guess he changed his mind.”
“What was her name?”
“Amalia. Amalia Camacho. Do you think you can find her?”
“We’ll look into it.”
I take a moment to think and get this interrogation on track. All this information might end up being valuable, but we needed to talk to Paola on more specific topics.”
“Do you know where the safe is in Becker’s home office?”
Her eyebrows twitch. “He doesn’t have one in his office.”
It’s my turn to frown. “Are you sure?”
She nods. “I’ve worked for Mr. Becker for four years.
And I’ve been assigned to the office for two.
I’m the only one allowed in there because he doesn’t like intruders in his office.
I would have noticed. There’s a safe in the living room, behind the family portrait.
And there’s one in the dressing room, behind the coat rack.
There’s even one in the floor of the master bedroom. But not in the office.”
Hmm … The plot thickens.
After hearing Lorelei’s story, Lex went back to watch the security footage, and a few minutes after her departure, we saw Becker come out of the bedroom with a laptop.
Lex had thought little of it then, but we got the image clear enough to confirm it wasn’t a Mac like all the other computers in that penthouse.
Then we followed him through the available footage and saw him head to the hallway that leads to his home office, to come back empty-handed.
From our understanding of the layout, it doesn’t lead to any of the rooms Paola mentioned.
Could Lorelei have misunderstood, or is there a very hidden safe in that office?
Hoping I can still get this somewhere, I pull my phone out and open a screenshot I saved just for this. “Have you ever seen this computer?” I ask Paola, showing her a still of the laptop we’re looking for, held by Becker’s hand.