Hot Schemes (2 page)

Apparently he saw that arguing would simply waste more precious time. That was the only explanation she could think of for his quick, grudging nod. He changed directions so quickly, she almost lost her footing trying to keep up with him.

Halfway down the marina’s first dock, a middle-aged fisherman was just unloading his catch. He greeted Michael with a nod.
“Hola.”

Michael began talking to him in Spanish. The only thing Molly understood for certain was Tío Miguel’s name, but the man’s head bobbed in agreement.

“He’ll take us out,” Michael told her, already following the man onto the boat. He held out his hand to help Molly aboard. “He and my uncle are friends. Tí’s slip is just two down,” he said, gesturing toward the empty space. “He says my uncle went out as usual about dawn.”

“Does Tío Miguel usually fish in the same place?” Molly asked.

“More or less. We might have to do some cruising around though. I assume you don’t get seasick. The water looks a little choppy today.”

“Let’s just say it’s probably best if we don’t put the idea into my head,” she said just as the powerful engine started throbbing beneath them. Her stomach churned, then settled a bit as they eased away from the dock and into open water. Fresh air replaced gas fumes as they chugged out of the harbor. She tried to ignore the thick, dark clouds gathering in the west and the threat they represented.

“You okay?” Michael asked, removing his sunglasses to peer at her more closely. “You looked a little green there for a minute.”

“I’m fine now.”

“I want to get up front to help Raúl watch for the boat. You’ll be okay back here?”

Molly nodded. “What’s the name of the boat? I’ll watch from here.”

“The Niña Pilar.”

She reached out and touched his hand. “We’ll find him, Michael.”

“I hope so,” he said, and turned abruptly, but not before she’d noted the tense set of his jaw and the deepening worry in his eyes in that instant before he’d slipped his sunglasses back into place.

Not only was he Tío Miguel’s namesake, but the two shared a special bond because of Michael’s young age when his mother had sent him to America to live with his aunts and uncles. That, combined with the fact that Michael had never known his own Irish-American father, had cemented their relationship. The closeness was not something Michael ever spoke of, but she had learned over the last months to read the emotions in his eyes, even when his words revealed nothing. If something had happened to Tío Miguel, Michael would be devastated, as would the rest of the close-knit family.

Under the blinding glare of the early-afternoon summer sun, a fine mist of salty water dried on Molly’s skin almost as soon as it landed, leaving her skin gritty. As the boat chugged into deeper seas, the water turned from a glistening silver to a murky green, then purple, darkened from above by the bank of nearly black clouds rolling in, dumping sheets of rain in the distance and hiding the land from sight.

Whether it was due to the violence of the approaching storm or Michael’s anxiety, Molly grew increasingly uneasy as the boat rocked over the choppy waves. All the other boats were making for land, while they continued to head out to sea.

No longer able to stand being left alone, she made her way forward on the slippery deck, clinging to the metal railing as she climbed up to join Michael and Raúl. While the middle-aged Cuban man steered against the powerful northerly currents, a huge cigar clamped between his teeth, Michael kept a pair of borrowed binoculars trained on the horizon.

Molly clung to a railing as the wind ripped at her clothes and tangled her hair. “Any sign of him?”

“Nothing. Raúl’s heading south.”

Molly’s uneasiness mounted. “South? Toward Cuba?”

Michael nodded.

Suddenly dozens of stories flashed through her mind, stories about ill-fated missions against Castro by exiles fanatical in their patriotism and their determination to reclaim their homeland. “Michael?”

He slowly lowered the binoculars and turned toward her, his expression grim.

“You don’t believe he went fishing today, do you?”

“I hope to God I’m wrong, but no.”

“But surely he wouldn’t …”

“He would,” Michael said tersely. “The goddamned fool would. He’s been involved with some underground paramilitary group for years. I looked into them once for Tía Pilar. I decided they were harmless enough, not like Alpha Sixty-six or
Comandos L.
”

Molly recognized the names of two of the most active organizations reputed to carry out terrorist bombings and other clandestine operations against Castro and his supporters. She shuddered to think of the implications had he belonged to one of those. Another group she’d heard of, the one Michael hadn’t mentioned, was Brigade 2506, made up of men who had survived the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Revered by exiles, the Bay of Pigs veterans claimed to be no longer involved in commando raids, though one of its most prominent members continued to operate a training camp in the county.

“Dammit,” Michael swore. “I thought that eventually he would see that there are better ways to end Castro’s dictatorship, especially with the fall of communism in the rest of the world.”

“But why now, after all this time?” Molly said, unable to imagine the sheer folly of what Michael was suggesting. “You must be wrong. I’m sure he just got caught in a squall or something. He wouldn’t try to invade Cuba on his own, for heaven’s sakes.”

“You don’t understand what it’s been like for him. You can’t. Not even I fully understand it. Cuba—the Cuba he remembers, anyway—is in his soul. It’s as if some vital part of him has been carved away. Whenever new exiles come, he always meets with them, soaking up their news of Cuba like a sponge. For days afterward, his melancholy deepens.”

The sadness, Molly thought. That explained the sorrow that perpetually shadowed Tío Miguel’s eyes. And Michael was right. His heartache was something she had no way of fully comprehending. She had always lived in her homeland, and even though she no longer lived in Virginia where she’d grown up, she could go back anytime she wished.

“Would he have gone alone, though?” she asked. “Wouldn’t there have been others?”

“More than likely, though Raúl says he has heard nothing of such plans. Such men operate in secret, but there is almost always gossip.”

As the boat churned through the choppy waters, they emerged beneath bluer skies. The wind settled into little more than a breeze that barely stirred the humid tropical air. But even with the improved weather, the tension didn’t lessen as the afternoon wore on.

The one question Molly didn’t dare to ask was whether Raúl would risk carrying them all the way into Cuban waters. Nor was she sure she wanted to know whether Michael would allow him to do any less. Fortunately, with nothing but open water in all directions, Molly had no real sense of how close she might be to having both questions answered. Cuba was ninety-six miles from Key West, a hundred and fifty miles from Miami. Unused to nautical speed, she couldn’t even be sure how long it would take them to cover that distance.

For all she knew there was little purpose to the zigzagging course they seemed to be on as the summer sun slipped below the horizon in a blaze of orange.

“There!” Michael said eventually, gesturing to Raúl as he kept his binoculars pinned on some tiny speck in the dimming light of a July sunset.

To Molly the boat in the distance was indistinguishable from dozens of others they had seen since leaving the marina. Only as they drew closer did she realize that the boat’s engine was still, that its movement was propelled by no more than the drifting currents.

“Tío! Tío Miguel!”

Michael’s shouts carried across the water as they pulled alongside the boat.
Niña Pilar
had been painted on the boat’s bow in neat, bright-blue letters, a jaunty tribute to a woman Molly couldn’t imagine Tío Miguel leaving behind.

“Can you get any closer?” Michael asked Raúl.

“S
í
,” he said, maneuvering until the boats were touching.

Michael threw a rope across, then looped it through the railing of his uncle’s boat until the two were pontooned together. Only then did he leap from Raúl’s boat to the deck of his uncle’s.

Molly’s breath caught in her throat as he made his way carefully from bow to stern. She nearly panicked when he disappeared inside the cabin and failed to return. She had one hand on the railing and was preparing to leap herself, when she heard the boat’s engine chug to life, then sputter off again. So, then, Molly thought in dismay, it hadn’t been a breakdown. Dear heaven, where was he?

Finally Michael reappeared.

“Michael?” she said softly, her heart hammering as she tried to read the expression on his face.

He swallowed hard before he finally lifted his gaze to meet hers.

“He’s gone,” he said bleakly. “The inflatable raft is missing, too. I can’t tell about life vests, because I’m not certain how many he carried.”

“You’re sure he’s gone back to Cuba, though? Maybe the boat ran out of gas and he took the dinghy to get help,” she said, searching desperately for another explanation, even one that flew in the face of the sound she’d just heard of the engine running perfectly smoothly. “Maybe another fisherman picked him up.”

“The boat’s fine. Besides, he would never have left it behind,” Michael replied with certainty. “We are in Cuban waters, or at least what they view as Cuban waters.” He looked to Raúl for confirmation. The fisherman nodded.

“What does that mean?” Molly asked.

“It means the Cuban government extends their territorial rights a couple of miles farther into the waters than international law usually dictates.” He sighed with obvious frustration. “Dammit, what has he done? Did he think he could get away with slipping into Cuba? The soldiers will shoot him on sight, either mistaking him for a rafter trying to escape or, if he is armed, seeing him for what he is, an enemy of Castro.”

Raúl greeted Michael’s announcement with a barrage of Spanish. He hurriedly sketched a cross over his chest, his gaze flashing toward heaven. Though she could understand only about one word in ten, something in the fisherman’s voice told Molly he disagreed with Michael’s interpretation.

Michael questioned him in impatient, rapid-fire Spanish.

“What?” Molly said. “Michael, what is he saying?”

“Estás loco,”
Michael said derisively to the other man.
“No es posible.”

“Sí
,” Raúl said just as adamantly.

“What, dammit?” Molly said, shouting over the pair of them.

Michael finally looked at her. “Raúl seems to think it is not possible that my uncle went back to Cuba. He says he would have taken his boat all the way to shore if that had been his intention. He would have tried to land on the beach, not taken a chance crossing the strong currents between here and there in a tiny inflatable raft.”

Molly found herself agreeing with Raúl’s logic. “Then what does he think happened?”

“He thinks he was murdered,” he said in a clipped tone.

“Murdered?” Molly repeated, unable to keep the shock from her voice.

Michael waved a hand dismissively. “You see why I say he is crazy. Who would want to murder an old man who has never done anything to hurt anyone in his life?”

To Molly the passionate disagreements of the exiles had always seemed incomprehensible, but she knew that emotions ran high. Murder was not out of the question, given the right circumstances.

“Can you dismiss what he is saying so easily?” she asked gently, though she didn’t want to believe Raúl’s theory any more than Michael did. “You’re a homicide detective, Michael. You of all people know how important it is to look beyond the obvious. You know that people can be driven to kill for reasons that make no sense to anyone else.”

He glared at her. “Maybe just this once I don’t want to think like a detective,” he snapped. “Maybe just this once I don’t want to know anything about someone who might be sick enough to hurt an old man.”

She understood his desperation, felt something akin to it herself, and yet clinging to an illusion wouldn’t help them to find answers. “I know you, Michael. You won’t rest until you know the truth. Not about something as important as this.”

A sigh shuddered through him then. He slid his sunglasses back into place, shading his eyes, though it was long past any need for them. Without another word he secured Tío Miguel’s boat to be towed back to Miami, then gestured to Raúl.

“Wait,” Molly said. “Couldn’t we take the boat back?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to chance destroying any evidence that might be on board.” He again gestured for Raúl to begin heading home.

The fishing boat turned to the north and began chugging through the swift currents of the Florida straits. Molly could no longer read Michael’s expression in the darkness closing in around them, but he stood facing south—toward his homeland. Toward Cuba.

Hours later, by the time the silent trio reached the marina again, Metro-Dade evidence technicians were waiting at the dock, summoned by Michael over Raúl’s ship-to-shore radio. Once again Michael leapt aboard his uncle’s boat, started the engine, and guided it the last hundred yards into its slip. As soon as the fishing boat was secured, the sleepy, out-of-uniform evidence techs—Ken Marshall and Felipe Domínguez—joined Michael on deck. When Molly made a move to join them, Michael waved her back.

“I want them treating this like a crime scene,” he said grimly. “There’s no point in adding another set of prints or messing up what’s already here. If you’ll wait at the restaurant, I’ll call a cab for you in a minute.”

Molly shook her head. “I’m going to make a phone call, but I’m not leaving.”

He opened his mouth, clearly intending to argue, then shrugged. “Fine. I’ll give you a lift when we’re through.”

At the pay phone inside the restaurant, she called her ex-husband. He was not going to appreciate the fact that she was calling at what he would consider the middle of the night or that she hadn’t called much earlier. She shrugged off his displeasure. Hal never approved of much she did anyway. He could just add this to the list.