Hot Schemes (7 page)

When the reminiscences about the Bay of Pigs had run their course, Michael brought the conversation back to Miguel and the present. “Then he was still involved with that organization of the revolution or whatever it’s called?” he asked.

“Two, three nights a week he sat with them over coffee at this place or that, always moving as if Castro’s spies were following them,” Pedro said with an air of disbelief. “Saturdays he would wear these military fatigues and go to the Everglades. When I ask him for what, he tells me they are training for the revolution.”

“Didn’t he read the damned newspapers?” Michael said. “The Cuban soldiers are shooting down even those who go ashore in an attempt to rescue relatives. How could he think of going back?”

His uncle sighed. “He was heartsick,” Tío Pedro said. “He could not accept that the Cuba he left behind is no more. He dreamed of
café Cubano
and the white sand of Varadero beach. He saw Havana as it was when the wealthy, even from this country, came for the night life. He saw those who plotted these crazy missions as heroes of the next revolution.”

“The leader is still Orestes León Paredes?” Michael asked.

“Leader?” Pedro said with derision. “What kind of leader would play on the emotions of a bunch of old men? You do not see men of your generation joining the ranks of his organization, do you? No, it is only men like Miguel, whose souls live in torment for what was.”

Michael, usually so stoic and controlled, regarded his uncle with impatience. “He has been in America for more than thirty years. Why is he still clinging to the past?”

“Because he is Cuban,” Pedro replied as the old men surrounding him nodded in solemn agreement. “As are you and I and your mother and your aunts. We are exiles, not Americans. We have been blessed by this country, but it is not ours. We left ours not by choice, but from necessity.”

“Over thirty years,” Michael repeated angrily.

“A lifetime would not change the truth,” Pedro said with passion. “I might not believe that it is up to those of us here to force the changes that will make Cuba free again, but in my heart I am always Cuban.”

Molly listened to the exchange with the amazement of an Anglo who had wondered time and again at the exiles’ refusal to assimilate American ways. “When Castro is gone, will you go back?” she asked.

“On the first flight,” Pedro said with feeling. “And yet I know it will not be the same. Perhaps I won’t want to stay, but to see my homeland again? Like Miguel, I dream of it. There are cousins there I haven’t seen in all these years. My brothers are there and nieces and nephews.” His eyes took on a dreamy, faraway expression. “The breezes were cooler, the plantains sweeter, the
lechón
more tender.”

“Sí, sí,”
the others murmured. “That is so.”

Only the nephews did not join in the chorus. They exchanged the jaded looks of children who have heard it all before time and time again.

“But you can no longer find a plantain or a pig to roast,” Michael retorted.

“Sí
,” Pedro said wearily, ignoring the bitterness in his nephew’s voice. “It is the memories which are sweet, not the reality.”

“You’ve never been back to visit?” Molly asked.

“Never. It is a choice I made. Not one dollar of my money will go into that man’s pocket.” He shrugged ruefully. “Not that I would be allowed back. I am regarded as an enemy of the people because I fought Fidel, because I spoke out as a dissident. Had I not escaped, I would have spent the last years jailed as so many others have.”

“And Miguel?” Molly asked.

“He attempted to organize a coup. He was jailed, but made a daring escape. He was shot and left for dead. Another of the guerrillas rescued him and smuggled him aboard a boat that crossed the straits that same night. He arrived in Key West one month after my own arrival. I brought Elena with me. It was nearly a year before Pilar was able to join him. And many years after that before Michael’s mother came. As the youngest of the sisters, Rosa was reluctant to leave her mother. She came only after Paolina Huerta died.”

“But she sent Michael,” Molly said. Michael had once told Molly of the terror of his first days in a new country, sent to live with relatives he barely remembered without the mother he adored. He had been five years old, a baby, when he left Cuba aboard one of the famed Pedro Pan freedom flights. His aching sense of being abandoned had remained with him for years. Only after they were reunited did he begin to understand that his mother had sent him away out of love.

As if all of this rhapsodic talk of a land he’d all but forgotten irritated him, Michael stood up abruptly and crossed the room to his aunt’s side. Tía Pilar clasped his hand in hers and regarded him with a tear-streaked face. “Find him,” she pleaded.

“I will,” he promised.

His mother again stood on tiptoe and kissed him on both cheeks. “Do not take chances.”

“I cannot do my job without taking chances,” he told her, though a smile seemed to tug at his mouth at the start of an apparently familiar argument.

“And I cannot be a mother without warning you not to,” she replied.

She walked with him back to Molly. “Thank you for coming,” she said, her English precise and still reflecting her uneasiness with her second language.

“I’ll be praying for Tío Miguel’s safe return,” Molly told her. “Please tell Tía Pilar that.”

“She will be grateful. We all will.”

Outside the tiny pink stucco house with its neat white trim, the street was quiet. Bright splashes of fuchsia and purple Bougainvillaea gave the simple homes a needed touch of jaunty color. Only blocks away on
Calle Ocho
, Southwest Eighth Street, the Little Havana restaurants would be opening their doors for midday meals of grilled Cuban sandwiches, chunks of pork, black beans and rice,
arroz con pollo
and sweet, fried plantains. The sidewalk stands selling
café Cubano
would already be doing a brisk business. Only Tío Pedro’s restaurant would remain closed because of the family emergency.

“I’d like to make another stop before I take you home,” Michael said. “Do you mind?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Will Brian be okay?” he asked as an afterthought. Suddenly his expression turned worried. “Good Lord, Molly, I haven’t even thought about him. Where is he?”

“He’s okay. He’s with his father. I called Hal from Sundays last night and asked him to keep Brian a few more days.”

Michael regarded her with surprise. “You don’t usually give your ex-husband that kind of concession.”

She returned his gaze evenly. “I wanted to be free to help you and your family, if you’ll let me. Brian will be fine with his dad for a few days. And I called Vince from your aunt’s,” she said. “I’m taking the week off.”

She saw the trouble brewing in Michael’s expressive eyes and sought to forestall it. “This isn’t open for debate.”

He hesitated, then finally slid his mirrored sunglasses into place and turned his attention back to the road. “Nobody’s arguing,
amiga.”

Molly was wise enough not to reach for the ever-present calendar in her purse to note the date on which macho detective Michael O’Hara finally behaved in a perfectly reasonable manner.

The old men playing dominoes in Máximo Gómez Park on the corner of
Calle Ocho
and Fifteenth Avenue barely glanced up when Michael and Molly approached with the thimble-size paper cups of potent, sweet
café Cubano
they’d bought across the street. Molly watched as the tiles clicked with the precision of years of play. She listened intently to the rapid-fire Spanish to see if she could detect whether the morning’s topic of conversation was the bombing of Miguel García’s boat or the more general and constant theme of Castro’s imminent downfall.

A portable radio blared the latest news from the most vitriolic of the Spanish-language stations. Molly recognized the histrionics of Luis Díaz-Nuñez. She couldn’t interpret half of what he said. This wasn’t proper, clearly enunciated Castilian Spanish. Rather, it all ran together in a way that only someone with a trained ear could separate into distinct words. Occasionally she was able to distinguish a name or an organization, but in general she caught only the fact that whatever he was reporting made him angry and probably ought to make anyone who wasn’t a traitor to the exile cause angry as well. Unfortunately for the newscaster, on this particular morning with this particular group of men, the outcome of their dominoes games took precedence over politics. Aside from an occasional halfhearted murmur of agreement, their attention was focused elsewhere.

The palm trees provided almost no breeze to stir the muggy, midsummer air. The red-tiled roofs over the tables offered minimal shade. Heat radiated from the sidewalk in shimmering waves. The aroma of cigar smoke from thick, handmade Cuban cigars made in nearby factories swirled around them. In moments their clothes were sticking to them. Still Michael stood patiently watching the play and sipping his coffee, his expression enigmatic.

Eventually, when the game he was observing most closely concluded amid cheers and back-slapping, he nodded to one of the players. “Señor López?”

Eyes the color of walnuts squinted at Michael through thick lenses. The wiry old man, his hands gnarled, his shoulders bent, finally nodded. “S
í
. I am José López.”

Michael explained in Spanish that he was Miguel García’s nephew. Several men, dressed in their khaki shorts and
guayaberas
, or jeans and plain white T-shirts, backed away, looking thoroughly uneasy, as if they expected a gunfight to break out Western style. Only Señor López seemed pleased by the introduction.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing to a place that was immediately vacated by his opponent in the hotly contested game of dominoes. He glanced distrustfully at Molly and waited until Michael explained who she was.

“You are wondering if I know what has happened to your uncle,” he said finally, using his halting English for Molly’s benefit.

Michael nodded.

“I spoke to your family last night to tell them of my concern.”

“Last night? You had heard the news last night?” Michael asked skeptically. “I cannot imagine that my uncle’s disappearance was on an evening newscast. One old man lost at sea for a few hours? What is the news?”

“Word travels quickly among friends. I knew of Miguel’s disappearance by nightfall. Only this morning did I learn of the explosion.”

“And how did you learn of that? Also from friends?”

“No, from the radio. I have heard nothing except what was on the
noticias
, the news reports. Díaz-Nuñez has talked of little except the explosion this morning.”

“And has he offered an explanation?”

“Nothing.”

“He is not calling my uncle a hero?”

Señor López began to look faintly uneasy. “No, those were not his words.”

“A traitor, then?”

The old man’s gaze sharpened. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“It is possible, is it not? If one does not support the cause wholeheartedly, if one perhaps makes a mistake in trusting the wrong people, then there are those who would be quick to label this person a traitor. We have seen this with something as simple as the condemnation of a singer who had dared to perform in Cuba,
si
?”

“Es posible
, yes,” Señor López admitted. “But you are speaking of your uncle. I ask again, why would you say such things?”

“Tell me about him,” Michael suggested. “As you know him.”

“No comprendo.”

“I know that you were boyhood friends in Havana. I know that he considers José López to be like a brother. I also know that you used to go with him to meetings of the Organization of the Revolution. He told me that.”

A stream of Spanish greeted Michael’s statement, then in English, “He should not have said that. That is Miguel’s problem. He does not know how to be discreet.”

“You do not take pride in your membership?”

“That is not the point. Obviously you comprehend that no better than Miguel.”

If Michael was irritated by the criticism, Molly couldn’t tell it. He was displaying far more patience with this irritable old man than he ever displayed in an interrogation or even with Molly. Clearly, he expected to wheedle something important from Señor López, but Molly couldn’t help wondering how long his restraint would last.

“Would that problem have caused him difficulty with Paredes?” he asked bluntly.

Molly watched Señor Lopez’s eyes at the mention of Paredes. They betrayed nothing.

He shrugged and conceded, “It is necessary to know the value of silence within a group such as ours.”

“Where can I find Paredes?”

This time there was no mistaking the flicker of unease in his eyes. López avoided Michael’s gaze. “I cannot say.”

Michael’s hands clenched and Molly guessed that his patience was at an end. He looked as if he wanted badly to reach across to shake the old man.

“Someone put a bomb on my uncle’s boat yesterday,” he said softly, though there was no mistaking his carefully contained fury. “I want to know who and I want to know why. I believe Paredes can provide the information I need.”

The old man’s expression shut down completely. He struggled up, and Molly realized with a sense of shock that one leg was missing below the knee. His pant leg was folded up and sewn together. She wondered when and under what circumstances his injury had occurred.

As he balanced himself carefully, one of his friends handed him a pair of crutches. “I must be going now,” he said. “My daughter will be expecting me.”

“You do not care what has happened to your old friend?” Michael snapped at him. “He could be dead and it does not matter to you?”

Tears brimmed in the old man’s eyes before he could blink them away, and he sank back down on the concrete bench.
“Por favor,”
he whispered. “Do not do this. Leave me in peace.”

“I will go,” Michael said, his expression as hard and forbidding as Molly had ever seen it. “When you tell me how to find Paredes.”