“Consider it done,” Dr. Morgan said cheerfully. “Dr. Escobedo, you’ll make the arrangements to send Bianca over?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent,” Dr. Morgan said. He seemed pleased and cheerful, as if he woke up every morning of his life and got slapped around by a U.S. Senator. “Now, is there anything else on the agenda?”
“God,” Eleanor said, an hour later, over breakfast with Ray, “I really overdid it. I’m so embarrassed.”
Ray shrugged. Significantly, he didn’t try to disagree with her. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You got what we wanted.”
After she had dropped Escobedo off at the county hospital, it had come to their attention that neither one of them had had any breakfast. So now they were at a little family place not far from the Alamo. Eleanor was having huevos rancheros. Ray was licking his lips over a huge steaming bowl of tripe.
“I tend to forget how powerful a senator is,” Eleanor said. “I probably could have just made a phone call and gotten the same result. Instead I came in like Rambo. Used a flamethrower where I could have flicked a Bic.”
“Hey, if nothing else it was great theater,” Ray said. “That’s your genius, you know.”
“Huh?”
Ray was studying her face interestedly. “You don’t know, do you?” he said. “You just do it on instinct.”
“Do what on instinct?”
Ray shook his head flirtatiously. “I don’t want to make you self-conscious and ruin it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I really admire what you did to Earl Strong, you know,” he said, changing the subject none too subtly.
“Yeah, you tell me that every time we see each other.”
“Now what we need to do is get that flamethrower aimed at the right target.”
“Aha,” she said. “The hidden agenda comes out.”
“I told you I was paying for breakfast. What did you think?”
“And an excellent breakfast it is,” she mumbled, chewing her first mouthful. They ate in silence for a minute. Both of them were ravenous. Emotion burns calories.
“I talked to Jane Osborne,” Ray said. “I was all ready to be pissed at her, but she’s nice.”
“Here’s the part where I ask who Jane Osborne is.”
“She’s a forest ranger out in La Junta.”
“A forest ranger? In the prairie?”
“Funny, that’s exactly what she said when she was assigned there,” Ray said. “She likes forests. She went into the Forest Service hoping she would end up in one.”
“Logical enough.”
“She didn’t count on the fact that the Forest Service owns a lot of grassland. Including the piece of land where the Ramirez family was living until yesterday. And they need people to look after that land. These people are called forest rangers. They wear Smokey Bear hats and everything. So Jane Osborne is stuck out there, not a single tree, much less a forest, for a hundred miles, in this shitty, dead-end GS-12 position, driving around in a pickup truck chasing dirt bikers and replacing signs that have been shotgun-blasted by the local intellectuals.”
“Must be disappointing.”
“Yeah. But it’s not as bad as what comes next.”
“And what’s that?”
“She’s about ready to turn in for the evening when she gets a call from On High and she is ordered to personally evict about a hundred migrant workers from this patch of grazing land.”
“How does a single woman do that?”
“She called in a few other rangers and brought in some federal marshalls too, as a show of force.”
“Who gave the order?”
“Her boss. Who got it from Denver. And they got it from Washington, I’m sure.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Eleanor said, “but I’m sure that this wasn’t the only patch of federal land in Colorado that was housing squatters.”
Ray smiled. “You got that right.”
“Have any other such communities been evicted?”
Ray shook his head.
“Just this one,” Eleanor said.
“Just this one.”
“So this wasn’t a blanket order from Washington. It was targeted at this one piece of land.”
“Sure looks that way.”
“And why,” Eleanor said, “do you suppose that some bureaucrat in D.C. would suddenly take an interest in this one parcel?”
Ray shrugged. “I can only speculate.”
“Please do.”
“This bureaucrat probably went to law school with one of Senator Marshall’s aides. Or was his college roommate. Or their kids go to the same day care. Something like that.”
Eleanor waggled a finger at Ray. “There you go making assumptions. How do you know there’s a connection to Caleb Roosevelt Marshall?”
“The piece of land in question adjoins the Lazy Z Ranch,” Ray said, “and the cattle grazing on it now all wear the Lazy Z brand.”
“Say no more.” Eleanor sighed. “You win.”
The Lazy Z Ranch was owned by Sam Wyatt. Sam Wyatt was Caleb Roosevelt Marshall’s biggest private contributor. And the president of Senator Marshall’s PAC. Sam Wyatt was one of a dozen or so constituents who could get through to the Senator on the phone whenever he wanted to.
But in this case, he probably hadn’t. This was too much of a dirty detail for the Senator to mess around with personally. He had probably just called one of the Senator’s aides. He had probably called Shad Harper, that underaged son of a bitch who had the office across the hallway from Eleanor’s.
Ray was watching her in fascination. “You have this look on your face like you’re plotting an assassination,” he joked.
“Something like that,” she said.
thirty
WHEN LITTLE Bianca Ramirez was finally released from Arapahoe Highlands Medical Center after one week of hyperbaric oxygen treatment, a dozen television camera crews, four satellite uplink trucks, one Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker, thirty print reporters, a hundred supportive protesters, the Mayor of Denver, staffers from all of the local senators’ and representatives’ offices, and a few lean and hungry lawyers were waiting for her. The only question was whether or not her parents, Carlos and Anna Ramirez, would actually show up to collect her.
Her progress from nameless refugee to media star could be tracked by checking the headlines on a local newspaper, which had been sliding in the direction of out-and-out tabloid journalism for a number of years, and which had been driven completely beyond the pale by the Bianca Ramirez story.
“TRUCK OF DEATH”
had been the first headline concerning the Ramirez family. Slightly less hysterical coverage of the tragedy had actually made it on to a couple of national network newscasts, which was unusual to say the least; plenty of Chicano kids had suffocated in the backs of trucks without even being mentioned in local newspapers. But this time around, several national Hispanic organizations got into the act and managed to stir up some interest on a national level. The case of the Ramirez family was a good one for TV. The truck of death per se was sitting in a driveway in Denver and anyone could go and videotape it. There had been one survivor, who happened to be an adorable little girl, and although this didn’t get reported right away, there was, as the saying goes, more to the story: a failure of responsibility by a major, rich, private hospital, and hints of potential scandal involving one Sam Wyatt, wealthy cattleman, golf partner of senators and CEOs.
“LET HER DIE!”
was the headline on Day 2. The story about Highlands’ refusal to treat Bianca had been leaked to the press by Ray del Valle. Leaked was a deceptive term. A leak was a tiny seeping crevice. In this case, blowout might have been more accurate. Ray made sure that everyone with a minicam, laptop, pen, or pencil knew about the story. More sober journalists just viewed it as another example of “dumping,” the refusal of some hospitals to treat indigent patients. If they knew their business at all, it
was an issue that they had already covered. Much more melodramatic examples of it had happened in other cities.
“HANG ON, BIANCA!”
was the headline for Day 3. This was somewhat meaningless. Day 3 was a Sunday and not much was going on. And Bianca’s ability to hang on had never really been in question. The fact that she was still breathing when she was pulled from the Truck of Death, and when the ambulance crew had taken her to Highlands, where they had been told Let Her Die, meant that the parts of her brain that controlled breathing and heartbeat still worked. She was, in other words, stable, albeit in a coma. There was nothing to hang on to. But it made for a great headline, and it gave the tabloid (and the television journalists who functioned at the same journalistic level) a bit of breathing room. For a couple of days they had been accumulating a great mass of basically irrelevant human-interest material: pictures of the big-eyed Bianca, testimonials from family and playmates, descriptions of her favorite foods and toys. Sunday gave them a chance to unload all of that stuff on the public. If nothing else, Sunday was the day that Bianca became an official public figure, someone who could be referred to by her first name in a tabloid or on a TV broadcast, like Madonna or Di. As such, she represented a money factory to the tabloid; for at least the next couple of weeks, whenever they needed to goose their circulation figures they just printed any headline containing the name Bianca.
But Sunday was not a day of rest for everyone. A bleary-eyed Ray del Valle led a caravan of half a dozen journalist-laden vehicles on a drive across the prairie, headed for the patch of Forest Service grazing land where the Ramirez children had played their last game of soccer. The reason that Ray was bleary-eyed, even though the caravan departed at the civilized hour of ten A.M., was that he had spent the entire night driving from Denver to the site and back. On his drive out to the site, his car had been full of used toys and housewares, which he had purchased for a few dollars at Goodwill. On his drive back to Denver, his car had been empty.
When the caravan of journalists arrived at the site in mid-afternoon they were treated to the blindingly photogenic sight of cattle grazing over the remains of a hastily evacuated migrant settlement. Remains of the human tragedy were strewn everywhere: Raggedy Andy dolls, overturned cooking pots, baby clothes, a battered, well-loved Malibu Barbie or two.
None of it had been there the day before; the migrant workers had had plenty of time to pick up their things before they’d evacuated the site, and were not so wasteful as to leave perfectly good pots and toys strewn around. But it looked great, especially when the handsome, pony-tailed Ray del Valle squatted down in the grass to ponder an abandoned soccer ball as fat cattle emblazoned with the Lazy Z brand grazed contentedly nearby. So it was no big surprise when a photograph along those lines took up most of the front page of the next morning’s tabloid, accompanied by the headline:
“WYATT: ‘THROW ’EM OUT!’ ”
It would be an understatement to say that Sam Wyatt, his very close friends in Senator Marshall’s offices, and most of the Denver medical establishment were, so far, not amused by the way the Ramirez situation had been covered in the media. And although Ray del Valle had begun the new week with a crushing sucker punch, afterward it became the Week of the Backlash. The
“THROW ’EM OUT!”
headline had been on the newsstands for less than six hours when two cars full of INS agents pulled up in front of the home of Pilar de la Cruz, née Ramirez, and came to the door with the intention of arresting Carlos and Anna Ramirez, who both happened to be illegal aliens. If these agents had been reading their tabloids, they would not even have stopped; they would have known that Carlos and Anna were not there by the fact that the TRUCK OF DEATH was not parked in the driveway. But they made the mistake of going to the door anyway. Pilar, alerted to the fact that Immigration was after her sister and brother-in-law, telephoned Arapahoe Highlands Medical Center, where they were visiting Bianca, and warned them. They cut their visit short, jumped into the Truck of Death, and vanished from the face of the earth.
“MOMMY HAS TO GO, BIANCA!”
graced the newsstands the next morning, accompanied by a photo of the tearful Anna bidding farewell to her daughter, who was bottled up inside the giant pressurized chamber where she had been receiving her treatment. A photographer had been present in the room when Anna and Carlos received the warning from Pilar and had snapped pictures of them bidding a hasty farewell.
None of which made the Powers That Be look especially good to the public. Which is why social workers from Health and Human Services started paying very close attention to Bianca at about the same time, and a motion was filed in court for the state of Colorado to become Bianca’s legal guardian. The gist of this legal document was that Carlos and Anna Ramirez, by driving their kids around in a truck full of lethal gases and killing three of them, had clearly demonstrated their unfitness as parents and should not be allowed to take care of Bianca anymore. The district attorney let it be known that his staff was actually investigating the possibility of filing charges against the Ramirezes and that, with every fiber of his being, he was refraining himself from issuing an arrest warrant for Carlos and Anna. It was all well and good to put public service announcements on TV begging people not to drive their kids around in the back of pickup trucks, but what would really put a stop to this sort of thing was punitive legal action against parents who did it. So the headline for Wednesday morning was
“STATE: BIANCA IS OURS!”
But all of this legal squalor was obscuring an interesting medical story. When Bianca arrived in the hyperbaric chamber she had been in a deep coma and totally unresponsive. But in the photo accompanying the
“BIANCA IS OURS”
story, a state social worker stood outside the hyperbaric chamber, smiling and waving through its thick pressure-proof window at the unseen Bianca inside. And there wasn’t much point in smiling and waving to a vegetable. It seemed that Bianca had staged a miraculous recovery. She was far from being back to normal, but she was awake, alert, responsive to verbal communication, and mumbling a few words.
This gave Arapahoe Highlands Medical Center’s new PR director the ammunition he needed to thunder into the media fray. His predecessor and former boss had been sacked with astonishing dispatch as soon as “LET HER DIE!” had hit the streets. The new man had spent the first few days just trying to get on his feet. By the time Wednesday rolled around, he was ready. He brought in a select troop of journalists to videotape and photograph Bianca through the window of the chamber; she obliged by smiling and waving to them. Since she had all but been written off as a vegetable a few days earlier, this was certainly going to have an electrifying effect on the public.
There followed a news conference in a hospital meeting room, where all of Bianca’s doctors, nurses, therapists, and court-appointed guardians stepped up to the microphone to deliver a few bright, upbeat sound bites praising Bianca’s plucky nature and emphasizing the incredible nature of her recovery. A few cynical journalists tried to spoil the day by asking difficult questions, e.g.: “Does Bianca know that the INS is trying to deport her parents?” But the new PR director was standing by the mike at all times, trying to anticipate any line of questioning that might lead to another headline along the lines of
“LET HER DIE!”
and whenever these issues came up he would mumble something about protecting the patient’s privacy and then point to some other journalist with a less acute critical faculty. In general, the PR director was finding that bald, middle-aged print journalists with nicotine stains on their fingers were troublesome, and beautiful twenty-five-year-old TV journalists who had arrived at the hospital carrying stuffed bunnies for Bianca were good people to call on. So the headline for Thursday morning was:
“BIANCA: MIRACLE GIRL!”
accompanied by a picture of her smiling her gap-toothed kid’s grin through the window of the chamber, cuddling a bunny to her chest.
Anyone who bothered to r
ead a complete news story about Bianca, all the way to the end, could find out that her treatment in the chamber was essentially complete, and that Arapahoe Highlands was going to release her the following day, on Friday.
Which meant that by the time the
“MIRACLE GIRL”
headline began to circulate on Thursday morning, all of the participants in the Ramirez Affair, from Denver to the Lazy Z Ranch to Washington, D.C., were gearing up for the endgame.
Most of Friday would be taken up with logistics: getting all the players to the hospital on time and keeping in touch with everyone on the phone. So Thursday was the last day for actually making moves. Ray del Valle kicked off the final round by arranging a press conference, in a “safe house” somewhere in greater Denver, in which Carlos and Anna Ramirez stepped before the Court of Public Opinion to defend themselves from charges that they were illegal aliens and bad parents.
The illegal alien part was difficult, because they were, in fact, illegal aliens. But in America, no issue was so clear-cut that it could not be obfuscated beyond recognition by a talented lawyer. The Ramirezes now had one: a nationally famous hell-raising San Francisco lawyer who liked to do pro bono work if lots of TV cameras were present; he insisted that he was going to get these people green cards real soon.
The part about being bad parents was different. The Ramirezes were actually known in their community as very good parents. Carlos was a teetotaler who spent every minute of his free time with his children, and Anna was a domestic saint. Ray had arranged for character witnesses to show up at the safe house and say as much.
Eleanor Richmond’s part in the endgame was a different matter. She snuck into, and ransacked, the office of her young colleague Shad Harper. This was easily enough to get her fired and possibly enough to get her thrown into jail. She understood this clearly and had already typed up a letter of resignation to Senator Marshall. She had been working at this job for exactly one month and had received exactly one paycheck.