The clock read 6:37 a.m. when Andrés Herrera slammed the door of his small apartment in the working-class neighborhood.
His eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, and his hands trembled from endlessly replaying the situation.
He clutched a cheap briefcase that held his only hope:a USB drive with a video that, he believed, could change everything.
He had to be at the downtown courthouse by 7:30.
He couldn’t be late.
Not again.
His white Tsuru, now more tape than car, roared to life with a whine as it started.
He quickly crossed himself, as he did every morning, and headed south.
The traffic was heavy, as if the city knew it couldn’t let him down that day.
As he rounded a curve on a side street, Andrés saw a woman standing next to a gray sedan with its trunk open and a spare tire lying on the ground. Her back was to him.
Clearly frustrated, she waved her arms desperately, and her cell phone wasn’t working.
Andrés braked without hesitation.
His instinct was stronger than his anxiety.
“Do you need help, ma’am?” he asked, rolling down the window.
The woman turned around: dark-haired, slender, with her hair pulled back and eyes that held a mixture of firmness and a hint of anguish.
She didn’t look older than him, though she carried herself with the air of someone accustomed to being in control.
“Yes, please.
I got a flat tire and I don’t have the strength to change it.
I’m running terribly late.”
Andrés parked without hesitation, took his jack from the trunk, and crouched down beside the woman’s car.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be rolling again in 10 minutes.”
She didn’t say much while he worked, just watched him, almost studying him.
Andrés, for his part, avoided eye contact.
He felt time breathing down his neck, but there was something about helping her that brought him peace, as if the universe were offering him a reprieve.
“Do you have an important appointment?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“Yes, ma’am, very important.
And you?”
“Me too, first time in a new job and I’m already late.
How embarrassing!”
Andrés smiled without looking up.
“Sometimes days that start badly end well, or at least that’s what I want to believe.”
When he finished adjusting the tire, he wiped his hands with a dirty rag and looked back at her.
The woman stared at him for a second too long.
“Thank you.
What’s your name?”
“Andrés, Andrés Herrera.”
“Thank you, Andrés.
I don’t know what I would have done without you, since I was late, just like me.”
He laughed nervously.
“Go on, go now and good luck in your new job.”
The woman smiled at him, got into her car, and disappeared among the other vehicles.
Andrés got into his own without noticing that in his haste, his small USB drive had slipped out of his briefcase’s inside pocket and landed on the passenger seat of the other car.
It was 7:42 when Andrés rushed through the door of Civil Court Number Five.
His shirt was soaked with sweat, and his briefcase looked like it was about to fall apart from all the jostling.
A guard directed him to courtroom 2B.
The hallway seemed endless.
Each step was a heartbeat, each door a threat.
He entered the courtroom, and the first thing he noticed was the lawyer Salgado.
Expensive suit, venomous smile, and the look of someone who already feels like he’s won.
Beside him sat the clerk, Paula Aguilar, dressed simply, but with eyes as cold as ice.
And then he saw her sitting at the front in a black robe, her expression solemn: the judge, the same woman from the tire incident.
