Havana Twist

by Lia Matera

  It was the kind of political high drama Mother claimed to find heartbreaking but actually adored. If nothing else, it had cemented her resolve to go to Cuba herself.

  Now I wondered about the timing of this particular call to arms. Had the convoy been organized in response to a particular event? A call for help from Cuba’s writers union, perhaps?

  “When did the union expel Gomez?”

  Diaz shrugged. “A matter of some days before. I believe the announcements were almost simultaneous: the troubles for Gomez, and the capture of an American woman drug dealer.”

  Marules nodded. “Yes. We ran the stories together on the same page, along with a companion piece written by Dennis on the general state of affairs in Cuba.”

  “The tunnels?”

  “That was part of the story, yes.”

  Diaz crossed to the computer, and with a quick, “Permiso?” began typing in commands.

  Within minutes, he had the information. “The Gomez story broke too late for previous day’s edition. We ran it March the nineteenth. St. Michael’s day.” He crossed himself.

  Marules hunched behind him, reading over his shoulder.

  March nineteenth. I would have to check my phone records to be sure, but I thought Mother had phoned around the end of March to say the computer convoy had been turned back. As a (former) star in the Cuban writers union, perhaps Gomez had helped organize the convoy—and perhaps she’d gone to the border to meet it.

  As “Myra Wilson,” she could hitch a ride “home” to San Diego on one of the trucks. Who would look for an escaped Cuban in a convoy of Americans who regarded Fidel as the personification of the Sermon on the Mount?

  And if her passport were checked, so much the better. She was Myra Wilson, a U.S. citizen returning home from a frustrated goodwill trip. She was just one more Southern Californian who spoke only Spanish.

  But if Mother had met this “Myra Wilson” on a convoy truck, what must she have thought when she toured a Cuban prison and was introduced to yet another woman with that name? My mother was a pathological blurter: She would surely have mentioned it, and that might have made someone very nervous.

  Agosto Diaz was saying, “We want to go to San Diego and talk to Wilson’s people. What do you say, Martin?”

  Marules sat back, obviously surprised. “You are a fact-checker, Agosto.” He looked at me. “He thinks he is Clark Kent, this one.”

  “Yes, I am a fact-checker. Fact number one: Dennis and Cindy are somewhere in Cuba without passports. Fact number two: You know as well as I do that they are there for some purpose, on some errand, secret to us. Unless you sent them?” He watched Marules carefully. “No, I didn’t think so. They could be in grave danger, Martin.” His voice dropped about an octave. “I won’t let you leave them there like that.”

  I wondered if they were as attached to their UPI and Reuters people. “They work for Associated Press, right? Not for your paper?”

  Martin cast Diaz an annoyed glance.

  “Yes, but they are our friends. They have become part of the family.” Martin’s voice was husky, but, I thought, not quite sincere.

  Maybe Cuba had burned out my trust-strangers circuitry.

  “If you don’t send me, I will go anyway,” Diaz declared. “Cindy and Dennis would do it for me.”

  Martin didn’t look convinced. But, with a sigh, he said, “If you must go, then go.” He began typing something into his computer. “But I warn you, chico, your expense account will get more scrutiny than the bikinis at Cabo.”

  16

  San Diego was what Cuba might be if it had the cash. It was sunny and breezy and bright, full of tropical plants and thin palms waving along the skyline. Broad boulevards traced white sand beaches, and this part of the city looked like those housing developments built around golf courses. The houses were big, the sea was blue, everything glowed with fresh paint. There was some variation in architecture, but not much. A few lawns were less green than others, but only a little. Probably anyone from Havana would have felt blessed to be here. But to a San Franciscan (now Santa Cruzan), it looked like a vast Republican cloning project, a place you might encounter Gerald and Betty Ford on any corner.

  Agosto Diaz could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the town. “The air is very clean, is it not?”

  “Today.” San Diego could also sit under a humid beige cloud like Mexico City on a good day.

  “And it is very elegant.”

  “Right here.” The older sections, with the Spanish-speaking population crowded into small bungalows, looked more like hilly versions of Compton. He shot me a glance, and I conceded, “It is a pretty town.” Spoiled for me, maybe, by being so close to L.A., where I’d recently spent a very long miserable year.

  He turned in the passenger seat to look out the side window. I though he might hang his head out like a happy dog.

  I drove the rental car, hating every minute of it. I’d spent most of my life on streetcars and buses. Some things, I think, are learned young or not at all. Changing lanes, parallel parking, merging onto and off freeways—they don’t come easily after thirty.

  But I was in a bad mood anyway. I’d finally reached my father and had my faint remaining hope dashed. My mother hadn’t come home. She hadn’t been in touch. My father started crying on the phone. And I hadn’t been able to offer any news, much less any cheer.

  I’d asked him to fax me Mother’s phone bill for March. Other than that, the call accomplished nothing except to further depress us both.

  Agosto tore his attention from the scenery long enough to consult the map. “Soon you must turn to the right.” He held the map up so I could cast a quick glance. “Then we are only a few blocks away.”

  Unless the neighborhood was about to undergo a huge change, Myra Wilson had lived in a pleasant enough suburb. The ocean wasn’t in sight, but you could smell it in the wind. The houses here weren’t huge, but they were on ample lots. The front yards sloped up to boxy bungalows that predated the ranch-style sprawl of newer, but now tackier, neighborhoods.

  Agosto observed, “I have lived in apartments my entire life.”

  I didn’t think it would take him long to miss the splendor of Mexico City, the palaces made of Aztec stones, the thirty-foot statues, the cobblestone plazas, the pillared buildings with marble eagles on their eaves.

  I recognized the name of Wilson’s street, and turned onto it, slowing to check addresses. We were still several blocks shy.

  The neighborhood grew a little less pricey, a little more working class, with kiddie pools in front yards, half-dismantled cars in driveways, and the chatter of televisions through open doors.

  A block short of the address, I slowed, murmuring, “No way.”

  Agosto was leaning forward, his forehead close to the windshield. I heard him whistle. Up ahead, two police cars blocked the street, lights swirling. An unmarked cruiser had a cherry light on its roof. An ambulance pulled away from the curb, probably empty, since it was taking its time, its lights and sirens off. A big white truck—a coroner’s van?— was backing into a driveway.

  I continued on, hoping the congregation just so happened to be visiting Wilson’s neighbor. When we reached the unmarked car, a plainclothes cop motioned us to drive past in the parking lane.

  Instead, I stopped. To Agosto, I said, “Let me have the snapshot.” I rolled down my window.

  The cop, a well-tanned man with sun-bleached hair and a light summer suit, bent closer. “Drive on, please.”

  “We’re here to see a woman we think lives there.” I pointed to the house, definitely Myra Wilson’s address.

  Through the open door, I could see men milling around. It didn’t look like good news. But that didn’t mean Lidia Gomez was inside. For all we knew, she’d never left Mexico City.

  But if this crime scene had nothing to do with our booking tickets
to Wilson’s hometown, it was a hell of a coincidence.

  Agosto handed me the Instamatic of Gomez, and I showed it to the cop. “We’ve never met her, but we have mutual friends. One of them suggested we stop by. Was there a break-in or something?” But I could see the coroner’s logo on the truck. Someone inside was dead.

  The cop squinted at the photograph, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Can I see some identification?”

  I dug my driver’s license out of my bag, motioning for Agosto to hand me his.

  The cop’s brows rose when he saw the Mexican ID.

  “He’s here for the weekend,” I told him. “His English isn’t great. We flew in together this morning. On Monday, he’s going home, and I’m going back up to Santa Cruz.”

  I was overexplaining, and the cop seemed aware of it. “Do you have your plane tickets?”

  I pulled mine out of my handbag, translating for Agosto. He removed his from the glove compartment. The cop looked them over, comparing the names to those on our IDs.

  “Who’s the person you’re wanting to visit?” he asked.

  “Her name is Lidia Gomez.” I didn’t want to lie about her identity—if she was dead, we’d need to reveal a great deal more. But for now, I felt safe in assuming the cop wasn’t a poetry buff, that the name wouldn’t mean anything to him. “We’ve never met her. Like I said, a friend suggested we look her up.”

  I translated for Agosto, who nodded.

  The cop suddenly switched to heavily accented, unidiomatic Spanish. “She was expecting you?”

  “No, no,” Agosto assured him. “I have never before met her. She does not know me at all.”

  “Is she okay? Is all this”—I waved my arm at the police cars and coroner’s van—”is it about her?”

  The cop squinted at the snapshot. The skin around his eyes was cross-hatched with sunbaked crow’s feet. He asked Agosto, again in bad Spanish, “This is a picture of her?”

  “Yes. She was traveling then—perhaps she does not always look so tired.”

  She looked more than just tired. She looked scared and haunted, like a Cuban with an altered passport about to have her baggage searched.

  The cop motioned to a woman in a police sergeant’s uniform. She trotted over, heavy and pigeon-toed, looking flustered. He handed her our IDs and plane tickets. “Check these out. Make sure they were on this flight.”

  As she returned to her cruiser, he scowled at her hips as if they were an affront to him.

  Then he bent closer to the car window. “I’m afraid your friend’s dead.”

  Agosto sighed, his olive skin going suddenly pale. He shook his head slightly.

  “Dead how?” I asked.

  “We really can’t talk about it, not at this point.” He glanced over his shoulder at two uniformed officers stringing crime scene tape.

  Neighbors stood on their lawns watching. Some took the opportunity to water their grass.

  “It’s definitely the woman in this picture?”

  “Well, she looks older now.”

  “This was taken in March.” How much older could she look?

  “Must be a good picture,” he suggested. But instant photos are rarely flattering. “Although, from what we can see, she doesn’t live here, she works here. Housekeeping. So I’m not saying this is for sure.”

  Lidia Gomez worked in Myra Wilson’s house? I translated for Agosto.

  He shook his head. “A maid? For— Can it be?”

  “Tell you what,” the cop said. “Take the picture with you to the police station at this address.” He pulled a business card from his jacket pocket. “You’ll need to give a statement, anyway. And take the plane tickets, too.”

  Gomez must have been killed while we were en route. Otherwise, we’d have been detained here. Or, at the very least, escorted to the station.

  Inside the police cruiser, the uniformed cop was making a phone call.

  I took the proffered business card. “So she only worked here? Whose house is it?”

  He raised his brows. Wouldn’t I like to know?

  “You won’t tell us how she died?” I persisted. “Did it happen very recently?”

  “Just wait here,” he advised. He walked over to the cruiser, talking to the uniformed woman.

  A few minutes later, she returned with our IDs and plane tickets.

  “I gather it was pretty bloody,” I said.

  She made a sound that told me that was an understatement.

  “Was it quick, at least? Did she suffer much?”

  “No, don’t worry.” She had doe eyes and a high-pitched voice, Shari Lewis in uniform. “When the carotid’s sliced, they pass out quick.”

  Agosto understood enough to turn away.

  Lidia Gomez was dead, her throat slit. And, barring a wild coincidence, it must have happened because we’d booked a flight here to see her.

  “The owner of the house,” I continued. “Wilson?”

  “No, Doctor—” She stopped herself.

  “He’s away on that trip,” I guessed.

  “Scuba diving. I do it myself when I can.” She was looking past me at Agosto.

  He was staring down at Gomez’s picture.

  “That’s not her,” the cop said. “You’re not thinking that’s the woman in the house?”

  I could only gawk.

  “Oh God, you did think—! No, unh-uh, it’s a different woman.”

  “Are you sure? The other officer said …” I fumbled for the snapshot, handing it to her.

  She held it close to her face. “There’s a similarity, they’re both Hispanic. But this woman’s younger, thinner.” She glanced at the house, looking a little cranky. “He really thought this was her?” She looked again at the photograph. “I’ll go talk to him. Let me take this with me. But I can tell you right now— No, let me talk to him first.”

  Her gait was quick and determined. She shook her head as if planning what she meant to say.

  I looked over to find Agosto with his jaw dropped and his eyes wide. He raised his hands in a shrug that said, What could possibly be going on?

  I shrugged back.

  A few minutes later, the woman loped back to our car.

  “Sorry for the scare,” she said. “The good news is, it’s not your friend.”

  And the bad news was, the killer hadn’t known the difference.

  17

  My worst job ever was, ironically, also my best-paying. I’d spent a year with the megafirm of Wailes, Roth, Fotheringham & Beck. I started out in its San Francisco office, earning about four times what I’d made as a frustrated labor lawyer, but working virtually around the clock for it. A particularly vile circumstance then forced me to move to the Los Angeles office. I’d barely lasted a year there before overdosing on chat about the new glass artist or what to look for in a BMW. I knew I was in trouble when I started longing for the conversation of my parents’ friends.

  From my present perspective, however, there was one very good thing about Wailes, Roth, Fotheringham & Beck. It had a satellite office here in San Diego. And right now I needed a computer with good snooping software. I needed to access property tax records so I could learn the name of the doctor who now owned Myra Wilson’s house.

  Even so, I hesitated. I knew it would mean a series of those what-are-you-doing-now conversations. And there was little status in being a sole practitioner in a funky little beach town. Nor were my clothes cute enough to deflect the pity my former associates would make sure I heard in their voices.

  Nevertheless, I went and I endured. I was quickly updated on who’d joined which county commission (hard to make partner without proof of “social involvement”), how many languages their toddlers spoke, which Yuppie Adventures had become de rigueur—cross-country skiing, it seemed, was giving way to parasailing, though kayaking w
as still important to the corporate Eskimo. Agosto remained by my side, my hint of multicultural bad-girlism. Judging from the looks I got, younger men were quite the fashion accessory this year.

  Finally, I borrowed a computer and pulled up county property tax records. I found the name of the doctor who’d purchased Wilson’s house. Maybe I should have guessed. It was (I’m not kidding) Ernest B. Hemingway. He bought the place on April 27, paying cash. I had no idea who signed the deed or who banked the money for Wilson.

  And all I knew about Hemingway was that Myra Wilson told me she’d cooked for him. And that he was, according to the policewoman at his house this morning, off on a scuba diving excursion.

  I spent over an hour in Wailes, Roth’s conference room, going methodically through Yellow Pages listings of scuba shops, asking if they knew of any in-progress scuba trips. Every shop knew of at least one. I was beginning to think most of the county’s citizens were currently underwater. But Hemingway’s name had the advantage of being memorable, and the clerks were sure they hadn’t signed him on.

  One of Wailes, Roth’s partners wandered into the conference room to ask me some pointed questions about Agosto. She noticed the Yellow Pages ads.

  “Are you looking to rent some gear?”

  “I’m trying to reach a friend who’s on a scuba trip.”

  “Maybe he popped up to Santa Barbara, do some boat diving off the Channel Islands. That’s where I always go.” She looked pretty smug about it.

  Hoping Wailes, Roth wouldn’t begrudge me a few long-distance calls, I phoned Santa Barbara information for the numbers of dive shops there.

  One of them had indeed signed Ernest Hemingway onto an excursion. The boat would return to Santa Barbara tonight. I checked my wristwatch. With rush-hour traffic through L.A.—and there was no other kind—it would take us about four hours to get there. We’d barely make it, if we were lucky.

  I extricated my handsome Mexican friend from two female associates and a gay male partner, and, with a minimum of thanking and yanking, hustled us back out to the car. I pointed us toward Los Angeles, and prepared to do some aerobic steering wheel gripping. For me, a drive through L.A. was always followed by a day of aching biceps.