Chapter 15 #2
The situation with Theresa was a perfect translation of that, though it was nothing new.
I still remembered Juan Miguel, a Mexican man who used to sell tamales on the streets of Silver River.
He was the most adorable person on the planet, a little sixty-five-year-old man who always had a smile for everyone.
Unfortunately, Senator Jones considered his humble tamale stand an illegal business and did everything she could to have him and his entire family deported, but not before hurling a torrent of racist insults at him, leaving the man sobbing like a child in the middle of the street.
God bless America, I guess...
“The senator is pressuring me to reopen a ten-year-old case with a sentence already handed down.”
I immediately turned my face toward Olivia. The room was completely dark, the movie hadn't started yet, but she was staring at the screen. Her voice coming out in whispers.
“Is that possible?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It depends on many factors. Not impossible, but not easy either.” She confessed. “The thing is, I don’t want to.”
I slowly shook my head, facing forward and absorbing the information. “It’s all my fault, Liv.”
Olivia chuckled softly. “If it weren't you, it would be someone else. The woman loves power way too much to be healthy,” she murmured. “This case she wants to reopen is just too... complicated.”
“In what sense?”
She snorted. “In the sense that involves the Italian mafia.”
That caught my attention and made me widen my eyes in her direction. To me, the mafia was something that only existed in 90s movies, like The Godfather. Nothing but fiction.
“Does that really exist?” I ended up asking, disbelief giving me a slight poke on the ribs. Even the word mafia sounded absurd.
Olivia laughed and rested her head on my shoulder. “C'mon, Daisy, of course it does!” I felt my face burning. “They're not going to leave a horse's head on your bed, at least, I don't think so! But these organizations deal with drug trafficking, gemstones, weapons...”
“People?” I asked with a note of repulsion. Human trafficking was a subject that made my skin crawl. Couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that some people were capable of selling other human beings like cattle.
“There are many sex trafficking rings, human trafficking, organ trafficking out there, but that’s not the case with this specific situation,” she clarified and sat up straight again.
I turned to look in her direction, finding her bathed in the blue lights of the movie that was starting, her gaze pinned on me.
There was a certain sparkle in Olivia’s eyes whenever she talked about work, as if it gave her some kind of pleasure. But that didn’t surprise me, after all, she had the job of her dreams.
“This case is about a criminal organization involved with the trafficking of gemstones, arms and cocaine.” She started to explain.
“About ten years ago, an assistant to the former District Attorney filed a request to investigate the businesses of an Italian family, and the authorities ended up linking several murders to those people. One was the murder of a businessman from Jackson. Apparently, the man was involved with the businesses of this family and decided it was a great idea to embezzle a shipment of gemstones. As you may guess, his Italian partners didn’t find it very funny, so they decided to make justice with their own hands. "
I raised my eyebrows. “I mean… fair enough, though.”
“Daisy, what the fuck? No!” Olivia chuckled, and I smiled awkwardly.
Sometimes I tended to be too practical and forget that, before being my friend, she was a prosecutor.
I suppose Liv and I always had that difference.
Our views of justice were almost opposites.
“We can’t just go around killing people just because they did us wrong. ”
“Can’t we, huh?”
“Daisy… The justice system exists for a reason.”
“Fine, fine. But why does the senator want you to reopen this case in particular?“
Olivia frowned thoughtfully. ”To be honest, I have no clue.
At the time the investigation was ongoing, there was a car chase that ended with an accident.
The main suspects died when the vehicle lost control and fell from a bridge.
Actually, as far as I’m aware, almost the entire family died in the accident.
Only three men survived, but even those three were put on trial and some are still serving their sentences. ”
“So… there’s no reason to reopen the case.” I pointed out. “Which makes the Senator’s interest kind of weird, no?”
“Yes... and no. It's common for politicians to use these cases to leverage their careers.”
“But if you say most of those mobsters died in the accident…”
“Well, their organization still exists and I’ve been told they’ve been quite active in these last five years.”
I raised one of my eyebrows, incapable of holding back a smirk. “You have been told? By who? Jesse?”
Olivia cleared her throat immediately and I noticed a slight twitch at the corners of her mouth. She dated an FBI agent a few years ago and let’s say they kept a quite beneficial friendship to this day.
“You know I don’t reveal my methods.” She pointed out. “But as I was saying. Not only the organization is quite active, there’s still the three survivors. And two of them are still in jail.”
“Huh. And the Senator wants what by reopening the case? To kill them?” Seeing how serious Olivia’s face got, a shiver ran through my spine. “Damn. She really does want that.”
“Babe, you should feel lucky that what happened twelve years ago can’t be framed as a crime, because I’m convinced our dear Senator has recurrent wet dreams with the death row.”
I gulped. Yes, I should indeed feel lucky.
“Listen, if that’s the case and those men really are murderers…
wouldn't it be better to just give her what she wants?
You know, let her have her way with those criminals, just so she'll leave you alone.” I sighed, knowing perfectly well that Senator Jones wouldn't stop until she got what she wanted from Olivia.
“Not even for all the money in the world…” She whispered and suddenly nudged my arm.
I looked in the direction her finger was now pointing and saw a group of teenagers occupying some seats further ahead, immediately realizing that we would have to be careful with what we said.
Olivia confided a lot about her work to me, but truth be told, she wasn't authorized to reveal a single word.
“My predecessor had a fatal accident as soon as she decided to give in to the Senator's demands.
Besides, I'm not going to go after those poor bastards anymore, Daisy. They lost their families, two of them still have many years ahead in jail. Let them be.”
The conversation ended there.
During the movie, I thought about what had happened about a week ago with the man who showed up at the diner, Camillo, and wondered if the FBI investigation was related to the pressure the senator was putting on to reopen the case.
I itched to ask Olivia about that, but I didn’t want to put her in any trouble.
The agent was clear; nobody could know anything about our conversation.
And now I was starting to believe that there was more to it than met the eye.
I shook off those thoughts.
I'd rather leave those matters to professionals, or fiction. My life already had enough complications for me to stick my nose into the mobster world. No, thank you.
After the movie, Olivia and I went to her house and devoured two pizzas that would’ve been enough to feed a family of ten. We talked for several hours, accompanied by an unhealthy amount of beer and I ended up learning that her parents and siblings no longer acknowledged her in public.
“Thank fuck.” She said with a mouth full of pizza and I laughed, realizing how relieved that made her feel. “I hope the next time they call me, is to attend my parents’ funerals.”
I raised my can of beer, stretching my body against the soft back of the sofa. “Cheers to the eternal spite!”
She raised her slice of pizza. “And to fucking awful mothers!”
After what had happened years ago, she never forgave her parents for forcing her to terminate the pregnancy, and they were unable to get past what they considered, even to that day, a flaw in their daughter's character.
Olivia put up with them until she finished her degree and had her studies paid for, then she completely cut ties, and I would never blame her for that. Especially since I had done the same thing with my own mother.
Slowly sipping my beer, I nodded in answer to something she was telling about a guy she hooked up with a few nights ago, in some nightclub. However, my mind was traveling back in time.
My mother tried to contact me. Two years after kicking me out of the house, she showed up at the door of Aunt Lizzie's old apartment, wanting to talk to me.
I remembered how my wounded heart had clung to a thread of hope the instant I saw her again, thinking that maybe, after all, I had a mother that loved me.
Only the Lord knew how wrong I was.
My half-sister, Savannah, had some kind of health issue.
I never quite figured out what it was, nor did I care much about it.
But I knew she needed a kidney transplant at the time.
Of course, that was the only reason my mother visited me.
Not because she missed her eldest daughter, not because she was sorry and wanted to ask for forgiveness.
No. My mother came looking for me to demand that I took the tests and donate one of my kidneys to Savannah.
I kicked her out of Aunt Lizzie's apartment, yelling how much I hated her and how I never wanted to see her again.
Few months later, I found out that Savannah had received the transplant. The donor? Our mother, who knew from the beginning that she was a match, but tried to put my life at risk instead of hers.