The Atlas Murders (41 page)

“Thank you Rafael. I love
your Cuban coffee and could become addicted to it very easily; it’s one of the
finest coffees I’ve ever tasted.”

 Rafael looked at the small
bag containing the remaining coffee before he placed it back into the cabinet.

“I apologize for being a
little curt when I met you first, but you see what my father is eating, that is
food I sometimes get from the hotel kitchen. It’s not every day I can get some,
it depends which chef is working, but when I saw the policeman nearby I had to
keep moving as he could stop and search me. If he found I was taking food from
the hotel I would be arrested and charged with theft against the state, and if found
guilty I could be jailed and also lose my job at the hotel.”

 Henry was flabbergasted at
such revelations and the seriousness of taking food which was probably surplus
to requirements.

“I seem to be a bit of a
nuisance to you. I’m so relieved I wasn’t the cause of getting you into trouble.”

 Enrique turned with his jaws
still working. “This is a delicious meal, much superior to the food we get at
the government co-op shops. Do you know, Henry, our whole system is full of
little quirks. The people in the cigar factories steal cigars and sell them on
the black market to the tourists. The rum makers do the same and you can buy
coffee if you know the right people; it’s all just about border-line legally.
The girls, especially the pretty ones, sell their services to the tourists to
buy their new clothes and little luxuries. This is also illegal but tolerated.
So Henry, we carry on from day-to-day hoping things will improve. We are
somehow happy, and as we say in Cuba, we have nothing but also we have
everything.”

 Henry was much in awe at their
resilience to a system they were hopeful of changing one day.

“You have a beautiful country
and I hope to see much more of it than when I was here on my last visit.”

 Enrique finished his meal.

“You know Rafael, I feel much
better now I’ve had my fill. Henry has a story to tell about his last visit
here. Would it bore you if I were to ask him to relate it to me now?”

 Rafael turned off the salsa
playing in the background.

“I would like nothing more
than to hear Henry’s story. I’m sure it is very interesting.”

 Henry smiled and shifted
himself in the big comfortable chair.

 “Right here goes, I’ll start
the boredom, he said with an impish grin.”

 He went on to tell them the
whole grim story of the last time he was in their land. He also recounted his
meeting with Alicia.

Enrique knew well the turmoil
and lawlessness that existed in Havana for some days after Batista and his
officials left. He was amazed at the capacity of Tukola to commit such brutal
crimes and was shocked to find out that in such a short time he had murdered
three people in Havana.

“If he ever comes back to
Cuba he could still be charged, although there was so much killing that time it
would be hard to get any records, but the Americans deaths would have been
recorded and also where they were buried.”

 “Yes Enrique, the records
could still be resurrected but he will never come back here again. I think he
is on some Caribbean island, living a life of luxury. He had so much money. He probably
has some business like a hotel or a large land holding.”

 Rafael who was born into
post-revolution Cuba was astounded by the stark revelations of the two older
men. He knew how many so-called anti-Castro Cubans were jailed and also the
hundreds who were executed. These statistics were proudly taught to school
children.

 “These people, do you intend
to look for their death certificates and burial places?”

 “No, I have no intention of
trying to find out anything about them. It’s Tukola I’m interested in. I would
like to know about the girl Alicia but I’m sure she has probably left her home
and gone away. I would like to thank her and apologize nearly forty years later
for not keeping our appointment on that fateful night. I’m sure it would be
ridiculous to try and find her.”

 Enrique smiled and sat
forward on his chair, bending over close to Henry.

“I will take you to the house
where you said she lived. Most of the residents of these houses never leave
them because housing is so scarce here in Havana. I’m sure her mother if she is
still alive, is living there.”

Rafael warned Henry to be
careful. He said if she was married, his visit might cause a jealous reaction
which would be the typical response of any hot-blooded Cuban male.

Then walking to the door
Rafael turned and said, “Father, I must go, I have to do two hours relief work
at the hospital. I will see you later.”

He smiled at the two mature
men chasing dreams.

 “Be careful the two of you
and don’t get into any bother.”

 Enrique, feeling happier and
more liberated than he had done for years, shouted after him. “We have some
young ladies to meet and entertain.”

 Henry smiled, pleased at the
prospect of finding out what had become of Alicia. It was a long time but life
is like a merry go round, where you get off is sometimes providential and happy
or wrought with sorrow and grief. With this tumbling of thoughts he opted for
the happy ones and believed something like a loose end was coming together.

 “It’s not far from here. I
will know the street when I see it although it was dark on the night I was
there.”

 Enrique turned right when they
left the apartment. It was dark now but the street lighting was moderately
good.

“You said the address was Compostela.
It is the next street to our left.”        

When they turned the corner
into Compostela, Henry recognized the street right away. One house in
particular he recognized; it was beautiful and stood out from the rest, its
façade needing some repair but it was still a magnificent example of Spanish colonial
architecture.

Enrique turned to Henry
inquiringly.

“You think you know the house
because there are not numbers on all them.”

 “Yes, it that one, he said,
pointing across the street.”

They stood looking up at the
four floored building with its once beautiful balconies now chipped and discolored,
clothes lines stretched across them. The plaster was cracked and showing large
patches of stone where it had fallen away. There were radios blaring music from
open windows and people standing out on balconies chatting to neighbors and
observing everything going on in the street below. The two men knew they were
being watched with an indifferent curiosity. Then a young girl came out of a blue
door and stood for a moment on the step turning her head to look up and down
the street. Enrique spoke to her in Spanish. She answered him then saw her
boyfriend appear and laughingly she skipped away waving to the pair.

“Isn’t it wonderful to be
young carefree and in love?  She told me that there’s an old lady who lives on
the top floor; hardly your Alicia, but maybe her mother. Come on, we will see
what the she has to say.”

 They reached the top floor
and knocked on the dark paneled door. The lady opened the door wide and took in
the sight of the two men with welcoming, warm hazel eyes. Enrique spoke in a hushed
tone, before she invited them in and gestured to them to sit down.

Enrique introduced Henry, and
the old woman shook his hand.

 “I am Martha.”

She took Enrique’s hand
holding it while she spoke with her clear diction and precise pronunciation.
Enrique apologized to Henry as he would now have to speak mostly in Spanish,
but to his surprise the octogenarian straightened her skirt and brushed her
silver silken shoulder length hair back from her face and said, “I can speak
good English. I haven’t spoken very much since the big change when all the
Americans and foreigners left and the hotels remained closed for years. I
worked as a hostess in the big gambling casinos and I met all the wealthy influential
Americans. I think they were called Mafia people. It was a wonderful life. I
also had a serious boyfriend; he was German and owned a tannery business in
Camaguey. He was a fine man, his name was Richard Hamm. He had a wife back home
in Germany and she would not come to Cuba.”

 Henry was astounded at her
perfect spoken English and could visualize the world of glamour and affluence
that was reflected in her bright eyes and beaming countenance as she lived
again in her beautiful world.

“Martha, firstly I must thank
you for welcoming us into your home, especially me a foreigner and stranger. I
was here in Havana on the eve of the revolution, the last days of December 1958,
working on a ship waiting to load a cargo of sugar. I had more important business
than just being a crew member. I was an undercover detective and I was trying
to catch a serial killer who was also a crew member. As you no doubt remember,
the Cuban police force at that crucial time was in disarray, so I could not
have this man arrested. I wanted to get a letter to the British Ambassador here
in Havana to ask for his help but I had no way of getting enough time off to do
that. I met a beautiful girl named Alicia and we went for a drink.”

Henry stopped speaking and
glanced at Enrique. Martha shifted nervously in her chair and brushed back the
silver tresses from her face, she stared at Henry in anxious anticipation of
some revelation to piece together a huge void in her family’s life. She spoke
and her voice was strained with emotion.

“I have a daughter named
Alicia.”

 “Alicia took a letter to the
ambassador for me and brought back a reply. I walked her home to this house on
the night we met. I made a time to meet her again but circumstances changed and
the murderer jumped ship and I had to follow him. Is it too late to apologize
for a broken appointment and to thank her again for what she did for me?”

 Martha stood up.

“I have some photographs to
show you.”

 Henry looked at Enrique and
neither spoke but puzzlement crossed their faces as they waited for Martha to
seat herself.

“Here is my Alicia.”

She handed Henry a framed
photo of a girl of exceptional beauty and Henry’s heart skipped a beat. He
stared for what seemed an eternity but was only about a minute.

 “This is the Alicia I knew,
she is so beautiful.”

 “She is the daughter of my
German man. She is my only child and I suppose her beauty and light skin came
from her father.”

Then she handed around the
pictures of herself when she was in her early twenties; there was one of her in
a bathing costume with a handsome man in swim suit with an arm around her.

 “This one is of me and
Richard. I had just discovered I was pregnant, and this one is Alicia when she
was just walking.”

She showed her photos and
smiled with dancing eyes and laughed, her life of love and happiness cascading
around her.

“Alicia’s doting father lived
until she was three years old, but was lost in the war after he returned to
Germany. I never wanted for money; he left me shares in his business but that
all changed when our Fidel and his revolutionaries took over. Alicia had a good
life growing up, she was well educated, spoke French and English, but could not
find any work after the revolution. You see Henry, I was on the wrong side of the
rail tracks because of my affair with Richard.”

Enrique handed her back the photos.
“You are like me Martha. I lost everything. I had a fine tobacco growing farm but
soon I also could not get a job.”

 She turned to Henry.

 “Alicia had a son.”

She pulled out a colored photograph
of a boy of about six years old with his mother. He had blonde hair and blue
eyes.

Henry stared, his hands
trembling as though he was looking at his own family album. Martha noticed
every move and twitch in the muscles of his face. He held the picture in a stare
of awesome wonder.

Enrique looked over at the
picture now resting on Henry’s knees.

“He’s a handsome boy.” Then,
looking into Henry’s eyes, he added, “the image of his father.”

 “His name is Juan, and he
was born on the twenty seventh of September 1959.”

 Visibly shaken, Henry handed
back the picture of the child he thought could only be his son.

“Are they living in Havana
now?”

 Martha put back the photo in
its right place in the album and sorted some letters and photos laying them on
the table.

“Alicia and Juan lived with
me here. Alicia always wanted to go to the U.S. so she made plans to try and go
on one of the yachts that visit here. She met some people who were willing to
smuggle her out when they were returning to Florida. All went well and she was
going to make plenty dollars and try and get me a visa to visit her. My heart
broke the night she left with Juan and my whole world fell asunder, but I
thought she is a strong girl and will do well in America. The next day we had
very strong winds from the tail end of a hurricane. I watched for news but
there was nothing, then after a month I got a letter. This letter had been
censored by the government, so I didn’t know where it came from; the envelope
was changed and any mention of where she was had been blacked out. She wrote
that the yacht sank in the storm and they were in a life raft for two days when
a ship picked them up. They were landed on some Caribbean island, but where I
just don’t know. Look, I have this photo she sent me years later. You see Juan
is older, about twenty. There’s a hotel in the background. I think you could
just make out the name if you got it made bigger.”