Suspicion of Rage (14 page)

"Mother of Christ, will you hurry?"

"Almost finished."

Backing toward the rear of the building, Nicolás motioned for him to follow. "That's enough."

Chachi was writing the T in Tyranny
when they heard the sound of running footsteps.

"Shit! Let's go!"

In the instant before he hurled himself into the darkness, Nicolás saw two men, tourist police in gray uniforms and black berets. The shriek of a whistle echoed along the street.

Chachi took off at an angle, zigzagging through the cars and into some trees at the back of the parking lot. The police yelled for them to halt. Nicolás went up and over a chain-link fence, cut behind a high-rise, and came out on a street heading south. He tried not to panic. Where was he? Near the University. He thought of climbing the wall, hiding among the buildings, but that would be the first place they'd look.

He decided to keep going. They hadn't seen him clearly, maybe not at all. Chachi had gotten away, a piece of luck because he ran like a girl. Nicolás thought if he could put a few more blocks between himself and the police, he could slow down. Moving at top speed, his feet barely touched the sidewalk. He leaped over a box that had spilled from a trash bin. At the next intersection he flattened himself behind a tree to get his bearings. Twenty-seventh Avenue. He took a few breaths, stepped into the light, and walked along like anybody else going home from the clubs. He could feel the blood slamming through his veins.

At the next crossing he glanced left and saw someone in a bright green jacket running on a parallel path. Chachi! A building at the corner took Chachi out of sight. The two officers appeared, batons drawn, then vanished behind the same building.

"Please, God, don't let this happen."

With fear churning his stomach, Nicolás kept pace, shadowing them one street over. He saw them run past at the next intersection. One man. A moment later, two more. San Lázaro would be ahead. Traffic. People on the sidewalks. Harder for the police. Nicolás thought of drawing them away from Chachi. Run right in front of them.
He had won the 1,000 meters in track. They wouldn't be able to keep up. He came out on San Lázaro and turned left.

They were nearly on top of Chachi, reaching for him.

Chachi ran into the street. A horn sounded, and a car swerved out of the way. The officers collided with the side of it.

Words screamed inside Nicolás's head.
Chachi, run. Run!

Chachi vanished between two houses. The cops went after him. One of them lifted a radio to his mouth.

A truck cut him off, and Nicolás lost sight of them. He dashed into the road ahead of a car and crossed into a residential district. He chose the street where he thought the police had gone. The street was heavily shaded with trees, and he ran down the middle of it, afraid to risk a fall on the sidewalk where tree roots could snake unexpectedly out of the concrete. A dog began to bark wildly behind a fence.

He saw no one, heard no shouts, no footsteps. He turned right, went down another block, came back, and stood at an intersection turning around and listening. Chachi appeared at the next corner. A streetlamp picked up his bleached hair, his green jacket, and his white shoes.

Nicolás called his name and ran toward him.

Chachi looked around, and even a block away, Nicolás could see the terror on his face. "This way!"

The sound of a car engine grew louder, and the branches overhead lit up. Nicolás stepped behind a parked truck just as a white patrol car from the
Policía Revolucionaria
roared by, leaves swirling, brakes screaming as it neared the corner. Chachi was pinned in the headlights. The first two cops came from the other direction.

Nicolás hesitated, then dived into the gutter beside the front wheel of the truck. He hid the whiteness of his hands in the sleeves of his black pullover and lowered his face to his arm until only his eyes peered out.

He heard an engine at high speed, another car coming, blue light flashing, the letters PRN on the side. It braked and slid. Doors opened, men jumped out. Chachi went one way, then the other, then back. He looked small, like a kid in a nightmare game of tag.

He tried to slip past them at right angles. One of the cops grabbed him by the neck of his jacket, slinging him around. Chachi raised his hands and bent over, shielding his head. Someone kicked his legs out from under him. He curled into a ball on the ground. The men surrounded him and kicked him, and the sticks rose and fell in the glare of the lights.

Twenty meters away, Nicolás buried his face in the crook of his elbow and bit down on the fabric to keep from screaming aloud. When he next lifted his eyes, the men had Chachi under the arms, taking him toward the open door of the patrol car. His head rolled on his shoulders, and his feet dragged. Nicolás wanted a bomb, a pistol, a machine gun—

"Here! Look here! There's a man in front of my house!" The shrill cry came from the steps.

Nicolás looked around and saw an old woman on the porch in a nightgown. She was screaming, pointing at him, one finger extended.

"Thief! Murderer!"

One of the men shouted, and they started running toward the truck. Nicolás struggled to get out of the narrow space between the wheel and the curb.

A car door slammed shut, and tires spun on the pavement as one of the patrol cars took off and accelerated. Headlights raked the street and shone in his eyes.

Nicolás turned toward the shadows and ran.

 

The sun would not come up for an hour, but already the rooster in the courtyard was calling the night a liar. Perched on the back of a broken chair, the bird extended his neck and screamed that morning was here.

Mario Cabrera tilted a wooden slat in the window to look out. A single bulb by the stairs did little to relieve the gloom of the courtyard. Water dripped into an algae-slick wash tub from a spigot wired to the wall. Tomatoes and onions grew in a patch of earth where concrete had been taken out for this purpose. Above the patched tile roof of the second floor, darkness pressed down like a heavy black curtain. The rooster fluttered away to find another perch, and into the empty night came the low rumble and clank of a train.

The apartment was in Cerro, not far from the railroad tracks that went south from the city along the west side of the harbor. Raúl had rented it from the cousin of a man who had died several years ago. The death had never been reported, and the cousin had made some money on the place. To keep the neighbors happy, Raúl had brought them a pig in the back of his Fiat. It lived in a pen in a corner of the courtyard eating scraps, unaware that soon it would be stretched over coals, oiled, and basted with garlic.

The people here needed the food more than they needed to report strangers in the building. When the sun rose on this street, the men might set up little tables and earn a few pesos refilling cigarette lighters with hair spray; the women would walk to Vedado or Centro to sell the fruit they had bought on the black market. Criminals, all of them. No jobs, no licenses. They had to live. Nobody sent them dollars from outside.

"Mario, what are you doing?" Raúl asked.

"I thought I heard something."

Raul's teeth flashed in his dark face when he grinned. "It's just the whores coming home from work." He turned off the gas stove and poured hot milk into the cups. He had already made the coffee, and Tomás had bought some loaves of fresh bread from the back door of a bakery. Mario went to the table to break off another piece for himself and spread it with butter.

The table had been dragged into the center of the room. An extension cord from the apartment next door allowed them to turn on a lamp. It shone on a row of photographs that Olga Saavedra had brought with her. The diagram she had made of General Vega's house, interior and exterior, lay in the pool of light on the table. Brushing away bread crumbs, Mario studied the layout of rooms, upstairs and down. The general's office. The bedrooms. The garage.

Olga sat on one end of the sofa with her eyes closed and her cheek in her palm. She looked like she wanted very badly to go home. She opened her eyes when Raúl waved a cup of coffee back and forth under her nose. With a shake of her head, she sank farther into the sofa. Raúl gave the cup to Tomás.

There were five of them here from the Movement. Mario did not include Olga Saavedra in that number. Aside from himself, Raúl, and Tomás, the others were friends of Nico's who knew electronics. Their job was to find some two-way radios or build them if they couldn't be found. This would be necessary if Mario wanted to get cleanly away after he shot General Vega.

Nico and Chachi hadn't showed up. It was possible they had been delayed, but with no telephone here, it was hard to guess what had happened.

Tomás said, "There are only eight photographs. Where are the others on the roll?"

Olga Saavedra said, "That's all I took. I couldn't get any more. His wife hates me. She has her eye on me all the time, so you make do with what I brought you."

Raúl grinned and sat heavily beside her, making the sofa creak. "If I were Vega's wife, I would hate you too."

Shoving him away, she wrinkled her nose. "Don't you take baths? You stink."

"You like it." He waggled his tongue at her.

"Disgusting." She got up and walked to the window. Her blond hair swung on her shoulders when she turned to look at Tomás. "Can I go?"

"Not yet." The light shone on his white shirt, his thin arms. "When was the last time you slept with the general?"

"I'm not sleeping with him."

"So you told us. When was the last time?"

She shrugged. "A couple of weeks ago. Why do you ask me that?"

"He has a wife, and wives are suspicious. You should stay away from him. Tell him you're busy."

From across the room Mario said, "Where do you usually go with Vega?"

"Go? A hotel. The house of a friend. Why?"

Mario looked at the others, the solution to their problems having become obvious. "If she meets him, we can be waiting, or she will let us in. He comes to us. That would be simpler, wouldn't it, than trying to go to him?"

"I won't do that," Olga said. She cut off the idea with a quick slash of her hand. "I can't. We aren't alone. The general has a driver who waits for him. He watches the street. I took the pictures, and that's all I do, no more."

Raúl started laughing. Mario glanced at him, then asked Olga, "Do you know this man, the driver? Can he be bought?"

"No."

"She knows him," Raúl said. "She used to screw him. A generous guy to share her with the boss."

"That was fifteen years ago! He's nothing to me, or I to him."

"Are you sure Vega's wife doesn't suspect you?" Tomás asked. "You said she hates you."

"She doesn't know, I tell you. She never said anything to me, not like that. Marta Quintana hates me because I wear good clothes, and I like perfume. You should hear what she says to me. I suck the juice from the Revolution and give back nothing. Such stupid things she says. Stop interrogating me, Tomás. I'm tired."

Peering through his glasses at the photographs on the table, he said, "Mario, what do you think? Can you work with only these?"

Mario moved the photographs onto the diagram of the house so they corresponded with the rooms. "I believe I can get inside the house at least once before the operation. I need some pictures of the neighborhood. I want to know the fences, the intersections. Where is the. CDR located?"

Tomás nodded. "I'll see to it."

Sprawled on the sofa, Raúl put his hands behind his head. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt, and the muscles bunched in his arms. "Tell us more about this girl from Miami. Is she going to let you in her panties? If not, maybe you can put it to Vega's wife."

Mario remembered the girl's soft pink sweater, her flawless white skin, the small gold crucifix on the curve of her breast. "Shut up before I break your jaw."

"Ooooh! Do we like this little beauty?"

Tomás pointed at Raúl. "Enough. We are one heart, one mind. Remember that. All of you."

When the others began to argue how to take pictures of Vega's neighborhood in Miramar, Mario said he was going outside for a smoke. He went through the courtyard and pulled open the sheet-metal door to the street, careful not to let it squeak on the hinges. He sat on one of the plastic crates on the sidewalk, took out his cigarettes, and remembered he'd left his matches inside.

Raking his braids off his face, he leaned against the wall, tired to his bones. Tonight his mother expected him for dinner at her house. The people from Miami would be there. Anthony Quintana and his family. His daughter. Mario needed to sleep for a few hours. To take a bath and put on some good clothes.

But first he had to see about Nico and Chachi. It wasn't like them not to show up. Tomás had suggested that somebody go around to their apartment and check on them. Mario had said he would do it.

Footsteps sounded, and two men dressed completely in white came across the narrow street. White shoes, coats, pants. They would wear white for a year as initiates in santería. Walking down Infanta a couple of hours ago, Mario had heard drumbeats and chanting. He had come nearer, and from the sidewalk had looked directly into a living room blazing with lights and color. A woman twirled in the center of the room, and the people shook gourds and shouted and sang.
Olofi-onise, on-ishe ko
— God grant us all good things—

The poor had to believe in something. Mario's parents believed in the Catholic God, or said that they did. Mario believed that this street and this dawn existed. Where they came from, no one could know. This dawn, and this day, and the next, would flow like a river. The people on this street would continue in their poverty. Whether the actions of one man would change anything, Mario didn't know. He expected no reward on this side or the other, but a man who saw and did nothing was already dead.

The door squeaked and moved inward. Olga Saavedra waited until the men had walked around the corner to come out. Her Mercedes was half a block away, visible under a dim streetlight. She reached into her fake Louis Vuitton bag for her car keys. "This place is terrible. I hate coming here."