Cuba Blue (24 page)

Tomaso stood and stretched, yawning. “It’s late. We can discuss this notion of trekking off to Santiago in the morning,” suggested Tomaso.

“It
is
late,” agreed JZ. “And I need to get some sleep.” He knew arrangements must be made in order to join a PNR officer on her trek to Santiago. It’d have to be explained as part of his investigation into the disappearance of the missing Americans. The American Interest Section head must know of his movements outside Havana.

“I’m sorry, JZ!” Qui replied. “I kept you late last night, and now this. Stay here tonight, I know we have extra room.”

“Yes, stay,” Tomaso added. “Time we turned in. Benilo, you too, stay the night. Too late to drive home on that treacherous road, old man.”

“Given current events and the condition of the roads, it’s safer to stay.” Benilo smiled and added, “You may have just saved my life.”

“Saved your life?” Tomaso pointed to the photo of the lock and said, “None of us is safe anymore. This thing somehow brought down Montoya. Not until we know what’s behind the reappearance of that lock, will any of us be safe again.”

Predawn darkness the following day aboard the Sanabela

Captain Luis Estrada breathed deeply of the sea air, enjoying its salty tang as much as his morning coffee and his beloved Mirta’s smooth caramel-colored skin and hair so black it glowed indigo. To Estrada, the sea was a woman. He’d lecture his crew on her virtues and vices, how one moment she comforted, like a cocoon, providing bounty and succor, and the next moment she destroyed, luring you to disaster, even death. After a third Bucanero Fuerte beer at the harbor café, Estrada would hold court on the topic, often saying, “What man can resist the dangerous call of the ocean or that of a beautiful woman? It is the way of nature.”

Luis now yawned and sipped at his coffee. At the same time, Giraldo—his body below deck and his head above—bellowed, “Captain, engine’s purring like a hungry cat with a jack fish.”

Adondo sang out and beat a syncopated rhythm on a washtub counterpoint to his words. “
Where blue sky meets blue sea, it’s the place for me. Come little shrimp, come make us rich
.”

Luis shouted, drowning out the young crewman’s spontaneous song, “Now we can get back to the nets!”

“Any time now,” added Giraldo his smile as wide as his shoulders.

At the same instant, cheers erupted from the crew.
The police impound had cost them three day’s catch. Along with his crew, Luis enjoyed high spirits this beautiful dawn, the promise of a sparkling day ahead. His boat had been returned. The engine was cooperating. As icing on the cake, Gutierrez had paid him under the table for ‘continued cooperation’.

The crew began preparing for sea, when Luis spied something unusual tucked deep below the pilot’s wheel. Curious, he knelt and reached in to pull forth a small bag, something ungainly inside. For a moment, he feared what he might find. Curiosity overcoming reticence, he opened the bag. His breath caught as he stared uncomprehendingly at the lock from last Friday’s nightmare. “Mother of God! This cannot be, they took the lock. I saw it go!” Luis realized immediately that not only did he need to report the re-appearance of the lock to his ‘connection’ smack in the middle of the six levels of the police hierarchy—Alfonso. Luis dared not use the Sanabela’s radio to try to reach Gutierrez; it may well be bugged and in need of de-lousing. Luis must take no risks. The lock
here
again this way…a magician’s trick—like an ill-wind out of Jamaica—
not good
. Not a superstitious man, Luis shuddered as he quickly shoved the ancient lock back into its dark sleeve. He dared not let his crew in on this strange development. He pushed the black bag deep into his coffee cabinet placing items in front of it.

“Adondo, come up. I need you,” he called to the young man.

Adondo, who loved talking, had a cell phone, an expensive luxury as far as Luis was concerned. But now, that luxury might be the only safe way to reach Alfonso Gutierrez.

When the colonel failed to answer Luis’s call, without hesitation, he called the next logical person, Quiana Aguilera, lead investigator on the case.

24

With the full horror of Montoya’s death and images of his brutal demise interwoven throughout her dreams, Qui Aguilera’s sleep had been fitful and hardly refreshing. Startled by her cell phone, she grabbed for it hoping against hope that reality was less disturbing than her nightmares. It seemed at this moment, a toss up as to which was worse.

She sighed. “I’m on my way from Miramar. Do
not
leave the marina slip.”

She leapt from bed, grabbed a robe, and rushed to JZ’s room, where she pounded on the door. When he did not immediately answer, Qui stormed in, shouting for him to get up
.
She snatched the pillow from beneath his head and pummeled him with it, saying, “Wake up! Gotta get to the Sanabela! Right now! It’s the lock!”

JZ awoke to the urgency in her voice and her excitement; with her robe open and revealing, the sight of her body slowed his words as his eyes played over her.

“What are you staring at! Move! Move it, JZ.” Qui colored, only now realizing that her robe had come undone, exhibiting more than appropriate.

With a grin at her discomfort, he said, “Ahhh…sure…but my trousers are behind you, Qui.” He sat in his black silk boxers on the edge of the bed.

“OK,” Qui tossed his trousers at his grin. “I’ll just get myself dressed. Five minutes at your car!”

In a matter of minutes, they were racing toward Havana and the seaport. “Along the way,” Qui said, “we’ll make a stop at Tino’s. This time of morning, he’ll be home.”

“From what I hear of your Secret Police, he mayn’t’ve had much choice. Is it true they threaten a man’s family for leverage?” he rhetorically asked.

“Yeah…just like your FBI and CIA.”

“Touché.”

The area through which they now drove had seen better days; the government housing did little to help the blight—and in fact, only added to it. The featureless lines of the government homes and apartments, devoid of artistic sensitivity, or any humanity, looked like military bunkers so far as Qui was concerned. Even the trees here did little to soften the hard lines. Certainly, the architects had exercised little creative imagination in designing
these cookie-cutter, boxy homes, lacking any sense of aesthetic.

She directed him onward to Tino’s place.

Here in Old Havana, shadows stretched with the rising sun cutting sharp swaths of light through the dark city streets. The old recessed Spanish doorways were a black pearl necklace of shadow and sunlight, each playing counterpoint to the other. Within these indigo entrances, the occasional movement of a door opening, a cigarette being lit, a caress between parting lovers could barely be seen.

“Your cop friend Hilito lives here?” asked JZ.

“Government assigned housing. Little choice.”

Heading toward the building Qui had pointed to, JZ drove on. The flashy T-bird, now the focus of early morning eyes made Qui wish they’d come in her Peugeot. As a neighborhood used to seeing Tino’s car parked here, they’d’ve attracted less attention. JZ pulled in next to it.

They made their way up the walk to front the door. In the street, several children played stickball, hide-and-seek, dashing about like so many nervous birds chasing one another, laughing, enjoying the early morning air.

Qui knocked and they awaited an answer that didn’t come. “Strange. It’s so early and no one’s answering. Not his wife, not his son, no one.”

She tried the door, and it relented at her touch, swinging open. She immediately drew her blue gun from its holster, stepping in ahead of JZ. JZ followed her in, pulling forth his well-hidden gun from a shoulder holster. The two of them, weapons extended, eased from darkened room to darkened room. Each area spoke of hasty departure and abandonment. Closets half empty, drawers pulled out, rifled through, and even the space in a corner set aside as a nursery—the crib emptied of bed clothes, stuffed animals, and play toys.
Deserted. Forsaken. Forlorn. U
noccupied, Qui thought, except for an alarming odor of blood wafting overall.

JZ added, “Feels like something outta the Twilight Zone.”

“Hilito? Tino!” she shouted several times to no avail.

They located a back room, a curtain torn from a window rod, allowing morning light to filter in, creating an oddly shaped silhouette of an upturned chair and its contents—the remains of Tino Hilito. It appeared he’d shot himself through the mouth with his own service revolver—a Makarov. Tino had encircled his head with the curtain as if concerned he not make too great a mess. The scene screamed of suicide; in fact, it looked patently so. Perhaps too pat.

“Christ…oh, Tino, no!” she moaned. “What’ve you done?”

JZ, putting away his weapon, studied the scene with more detachment than she could possibly muster. “Any reason you know of…I mean why he’d kill himself?”

“And expensive, I should think. Free medical care aside, I’m sure there’s gotta be costs that subsidies don’t cover. Lotta stress there.”

“But Tino lived with that stress for eight years. Why do this awful thing now?”

“Smells to me, whole thing.”

“Me too. First Montoya…now Tino? Like dominoes falling.” She burst into tears and threw herself into JZ’s arms and sobbed on his shoulder. All of her pent-up grief surfaced at once.

“Does seem people around you are having a bad time of it, lately,” he murmured, holding her gently. “Qui…you’ve gotta call this in.”

She straightened and accepted a handkerchief from him, and with a final heave and sniff, Qui wiped the last tear away. A look of resolve replaced her tears. A call to headquarters and dispatch put her through to Peña.

“Stay with the body until I get there with a medical examiner.”

“No way am I staying here, Peña.”

“You gotta! ‘Til it’s cleared, it’s gotta be treated as a homicide. And you’re the first on scene. I gotta question you…
again
.”