Hot Schemes (14 page)

A chill shot down Molly’s back. Michael, however, leaned forward and met Díaz-Nuñez’s gaze evenly. “If I learn that anyone involved with this so-called delicate operation has harmed one hair on my uncle’s head, or if anyone dares to threaten anyone close to me again, then hell will be a pleasant alternative to the fate I will inflict.”

Díaz-Nuñez visibly withered under the lethal intensity of Michael’s warning.

Michael stood up, his gaze leveled on the man who had remained seated. “I assume we understand each other, my
friend
,” he said in a way that could not be interpreted as friendly.

“Most definitely,” the newscaster said without meeting his gaze.

Molly figured the proof of that could be found in the way he continued to keep his eyes averted as they left his office. The kind of man to whom studying a woman’s tush was second nature, Díaz-Nuñez suddenly seemed totally absorbed in cleaning up the crushed cigar tobacco that littered his desk.

When Michael cut across town on Twenty-seventh Avenue toward Little Havana, Molly gathered they were going to see his family. She decided she needed sustenance before that happened. Her brain cells functioned more efficiently with a little protein and caffeine to charge them.

“You promised me breakfast,” she reminded him.

“McDonald’s?”

“Not on your life.”

“Cuban coffee and a cheese-and-guava pastry?”

“Better.”

“Good. Those you can get at Tía Pilar’s.”

“Too cheap to buy me breakfast,” she noted. “I’ll remember that.”

“Not cheap,
amiga
. Just in a hurry. Time is passing too quickly, and with each hour that passes, I grow more concerned for Miguel. The sooner I speak with Elena, the sooner perhaps I will have new leads.”

Molly’s teasing ended at once. “Of course. I’m sorry. How do you plan on getting your aunt to talk if everyone’s all together at Tía Pilar’s? She’ll never admit to anything with her husband and sister looking on.”

“I’ll manage. It’s possible Pedro may not even be there. He’s probably opening the restaurant again today.” He glanced at her worriedly. “You haven’t said a word about our meeting with Díaz-Nuñez. Usually you can’t wait to dissect every word, every nuance, of a conversation.”

“What do you expect me to say? That the guy gave me the creeps? Are you waiting for me to demand a device so I can check my car before I turn on the ignition?”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he said.

His tone was far more serious than Molly would have preferred. “Surely you don’t take his threat seriously?” she asked, hoping for a denial.

“Yes, I do.”

The blunt, matter-of-fact reply chilled her. “But I thought it was a standoff. You warned him what would happen if he or anyone else did anything.”

“You don’t understand,
amiga
. To a man like Díaz-Nuñez or to Paredes, the cause is more important than any individual’s life, even their own.”

“But he’s a newscaster, for God’s sake. A journalist.”

Michael shrugged. “That label does not mean the same thing to him that it does to you. He is as much an advocate of revolution as Paredes. He learned his attitudes at his father’s knee. When Raúl Díaz was killed during the Bay of Pigs, Luis made the cause his own. He and his friends would not hesitate to silence anyone perceived as a threat to their goals, and they would be prepared to suffer the consequences.”

“But that’s …” Molly fumbled for a suitable word. “Barbaric.”

“In their view, it is warfare.”

“I thought such extremist views had died out in the seventies and eighties, even among those most violently opposed to Castro.”

“Such passion seldom dissipates. If anything, it only grows stronger the longer the ultimate goal remains elusive. How many times have they had their hopes raised, only to see Castro’s strength overcome the odds? Too many by their count. If they again decide terrorist tactics are necessary …” He shrugged. “And make no mistake, the average Cuban may disapprove of the violence but will understand its cause.”

“You don’t.”

“Perhaps it is my Irish blood,” he said with a shrug. “Or perhaps I was too young when I left. Maybe it is just that as a policeman, I deplore violence of any kind and can make no excuses for it.”

Molly thought of Brian, who was currently safe with her ex-husband. Obviously this was one time when it would be not only foolish but irresponsible to bring him home as long as the threat of danger continued. Michael was not an alarmist. If he believed so strongly that she was in danger, then she had to take it seriously, even if the threat was beyond her comprehension.

“I’ll have to leave Brian with Hal for a while longer, won’t I?”

He glanced over at her. “It would probably be best. And you will stay with me. No arguments, okay?”

Molly thought of the hard, cold expression in Díaz-Nuñez’s eyes when he had snapped that cigar in two and shivered. “No arguments.”

•   •   •

From what Molly could observe, Tía Elena was not nearly as forthcoming as Michael had anticipated her being. If anything, she was downright coy, denying that anyone had mentioned a word to her about what she referred to indifferently as “political matters.”

Michael regarded her with evident frustration. “You are not helping Miguel by staying silent.”

“If I knew something of consequence, do you not think I would tell you?” she retorted.

“Pedro has said nothing to you?”

“How many times must I tell you this?”

“Your own sister has not confided in you?”

“My sister is inconsolable with grief. She weeps for her husband. She does not waste time on foolish speculation.”

Molly watched Tía Elena’s round face as she spoke and listened to the rhythm of her words. There was an almost indiscernible hesitation that only someone listening so intently would have heard. Michael clearly was less attuned to the subtle change.

Molly placed her hand over the older woman’s. She had grown genuinely fond of Michael’s aunt, and she thought the feeling was reciprocated. Perhaps it was time for less bullying tactics and more woman-to-woman compassion. “But Pilar has speculated, hasn’t she?” she said softly.

Michael’s aunt met her gaze and her lips trembled slightly. She shot a worried glance at her nephew. “They were the words of a woman who is crazy with worry,” she finally admitted with obvious reluctance.

Molly persisted. “Perhaps so, but isn’t it possible that she knows something in her heart, even if Tío Miguel never confirmed it.”

“What did she tell you?” Michael asked, and this time his own tone was more gentle. The man was nothing if not adaptable.
“Por favor
, Elena? Please.”

Elena sighed heavily. “She heard things, in the night when Miguel thought she was asleep. There were men here, arguing, planning, whatever. She could not be sure. She had heard such talk before. Pipe dreams, that is all they were. Surely, no one would attempt such foolishness,” Elena said with more hope than conviction.

“An attack?” Michael said. “They were planning to invade Cuba?”

Maria sighed again and gazed toward the heavens, as if for guidance. At last she nodded. “That is what she thought.”

“Did she see these men? Was Paredes one of them?”

“She did not say, not to me anyway.” Michael’s jaw firmed. “She will tell me.” Elena touched his arm. “She will not, not if she believes it could mean endangering Miguel.”

“He is already in danger,” Michael snapped. He shoved his hand through his hair. “Dammit, I don’t understand this. I don’t understand him.”

It was the cry of a man one generation removed from the heartache of exile.

•   •   •

Tía Pilar regarded her nephew with a stoic expression. Not all of Michael’s gentle cajoling or impatient badgering had been able to shake a single word from her. Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash did she react when he said he knew that she had overheard something the night before Miguel’s disappearance.

“Why won’t you tell me?” he said yet again.

“No sé,”
she insisted as she had since the questions had begun. She knew nothing.

Molly touched Michael’s arm and shot him an imploring look. With a curt nod he allowed her to take over.

“Tía Pilar, do you have photographs from Cuba?”

The old woman listened carefully, her ability to translate the English words as halting now as it probably had been when she’d arrived more than thirty years before. Molly touched a framed picture of Miguel sitting on the table by her chair. “More pictures from Cuba?”

She nodded emphatically and her expression softened.
“Sí, sí.”

She stood up and went to a breakfront in the tiny dining room. When she returned, she carried an album. Molly moved to her side. Pilar motioned for Michael to join them. He looked as if he wanted to protest that they were wasting precious time, but he finally relented and hunkered down beside the chair.

Then with great ceremony Pilar opened the book to the first page. Molly felt as if she’d been transported back in time by the black-and-white snapshots and more formal portraits pasted so lovingly into the album, each with a description under it in precise handwriting.

“My parents,” Pilar said haltingly, pointing to the lovely dark-haired girl, who wore a cameo at the throat of her lace-trimmed, high-necked blouse, and the solemn man standing formally behind her. “At their wedding.”

Pilar glanced at Michael for a reaction. Molly caught the suspicious sheen of tears in his eyes. “You remember them, don’t you?” she asked.

He nodded. “I never saw them again after I was sent to this country. My grandfather died right after that. And then, two years later, my grandmother,” he said in a voice thick with emotion. “My grandmother was always laughing. That’s what I remember when I think of Cuba, not the beauty of the countryside or the way of life, but the sound of her laughter.”

Pilar carefully turned the page to her own wedding portrait. She had her mother’s classic bone structure and the same luxuriant halo of black hair. Back then it had not been tamed as it was now, and it had framed her face in a way that emphasized her incredible dark eyes. Miguel had been matinee-idol handsome, and the sparkle in his eyes as he regarded his new wife was a stark contrast to the melancholy look with which Molly was familiar.

After that there were mostly snapshots. The three sisters on the beach at Varadero. Two couples—Pilarand Miguel, Elena and Pedro—seated in a dazzling nightclub in Havana. And to Molly’s surprise, there was one of Rosa, Michael’s mother, on stage, standing at the microphone, a big band behind her.

Then there were the children—building sand castles on the beach, lined up in their finest clothes on an Easter Sunday, at someone’s first communion. And finally there was Rosa with her baby—Michael. Even though Rosa and the American soldier with the Irish name had not married, the family had not rejected her or her illegitimate son.

“No pictures of your father?” Molly asked quietly.

“None. If my mother ever had one, she destroyed it. I’ve never seen him.”

“Have you ever considered looking for him?”

“For what?” He gestured around the room. “This is my family. Miguel and Pedro, they were my fathers.”

When Pilar had turned the last page of the album, a handful of photos tumbled loose. Mostly there were more family snapshots, taken when the children were perhaps a year or two older than they had been in the pictures in the album. But among the candid family photos, there was one of a group of men wearing military fatigues. They were standing at the edge of a field of sugarcane under a brilliant sun. Molly immediately recognized Miguel and Pedro. She wasn’t absolutely certain, but she thought the youngest man might have been Orestes León Paredes himself, his expression cocky, his stance arrogant. She glanced up at Michael.

“Paredes?”

It was Pilar who answered.
“Sí, es
Paredes.”

Michael pointed to the fourth man in the snapshot. “That’s José López, isn’t it?”

Molly studied it more closely, looking for some sign of a resemblance to the shrunken, injured old man she had seen playing dominoes in the park. The man pictured was powerfully built and exuded vitality. Because she couldn’t see it, she looked to Pilar for confirmation.

“Sí,”
she said with an unmistakable trace of bitterness.
“Es José.”

Molly exchanged a look with Michael. Obviously, he had caught the odd note in his aunt’s voice as well. He asked her a question in Spanish. Rather than answering, she shoved the photos back into the album and snapped it shut. But when she started to stand, Michael gently held her in place.

“Tía Pilar,” he said firmly and repeated the question.

Molly understood only Lopez’s name and
aquí
. Apparently Michael was asking if the old man had been the one Miguel had seen the night before his disappearance. Had José López been
aquí
, here in this house?

Pilar’s jaw set stubbornly, but a tear she couldn’t control so easily escaped and tracked down her cheek. It was answer enough.

Michael squeezed her hand. “
Te quiero mucho
, Tía,” he said. “I love you.”

When they left, Pilar was rocking silently back and forth, the album clutched to her bosom.

“Are you going to see Señor López about his meeting with Miguel?” Molly asked as they once again turned right on
Calle Ocho
off Twenty-seventh Avenue and headed west.

Michael shook his head. “Not yet. We’re going to stop by La Carreta for lunch.”

Molly regarded him in astonishment. “Isn’t that some sort of betrayal, going to a restaurant other than Pedro’s?”

“We’re not going for the food. We’re going for the conversation. I’m hoping we’ll spot some of the same people who turned out for last night’s protest. I’m sure that will be the hot topic of conversation over their
café Cubano
and
media noche
sandwiches. Maybe they’ll be more forthcoming in the bright light of day.”

Molly figured the odds of that were about equal to the odds of her understanding half of the mostly Spanish conversation—slim. She wasn’t sure she wanted to witness Michael’s mounting frustration.