by Paul Levine
“He did business with you,” I said evenly.
Soto took a moment to consider whether I had intended el insulto, or whether I was just clumsy at conversation. His eyes were placid. After what he had endured, he had all the time in the world. “As for Yagamata,” he said, “Lo hecho, hecho está. What’s done is done. I did not realize that the man’s only principles were in his wallet. Claro, I did business with him. We had, Lourdes, what was it, not a partnership, an adventure?”
“Joint venture,” she helped out.
“We shipped cargo for him from Helsinki to Miami. It was supposed to be Finnish wood products, textiles, furniture.”
“But it turned out to be smuggled Russian artifacts,” I chimed in.
Soto appraised me. Who was it who said I wasn’t as dumb as I looked?
“I do not make a habit of speaking of these things to strangers.” Severo Soto looked toward his daughter.
“It’s all right, Papi. My loyalty is to Mr. Lassiter.”
That was news to me, but I nodded my approval.
“I have spent years building the reputation of my firm,” Soto said. “My honor as a businessman is paramount. My relationship with Customs, all my import licenses, were jeopardized by Yagamata.”
“How?”
“You have to go back many years. Yagamata began his dealings while there was a Soviet Union. He prospered through Gorbachev’s perestroika and now continues with the Commonwealth, no matter who is in charge. Principles don’t matter. Not when the almighty dollar is your god. With a wrecked Russian economy and political turmoil, his business thrives. Chaos and conflict are honey and wine to Yagamata.”
I waited for him to continue. Sometimes silence is the best question. Overhead, a meadowlark was singing its spring song. I hoped Severo Soto would keep talking.
“He had an entire Russian network on his payroll,” Soto said finally. “Museum curators, bureaucrats, customs officials, members of various ministries and the Supreme Soviet. Hardliners, reformers, it didn’t seem to matter. For hard currency, his contacts would have dismantled the Kremlin and sold it by the brick.”
“And Smorodinsky?”
“His aprendiz de todo.”
“Jack of all trades,” Lourdes translated.
“Yagamata didn’t tell you Smorodinsky was just a laborer, did he?” Soto asked me.
“No. He said the Russian was a man of culture and a patriot.”
“Ah, so he left out smuggler.” Soto allowed himself a humorless laugh. “Smorodinsky and his brother ran Yagamata’s Leningrad operation. Artifacts would be gathered from all over the Soviet Union and stored in safe houses. Then somehow—and this was their genius—they managed to ship the goods in small boats from Leningrad across the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki. It is not, I assure you, like sailing from Miami to Bimini. How they were able to bribe enough officials to avoid capture by the police, the military, and the KGB is something that always baffled me. Even with Yagamata’s contacts, it was still an impressive feat.”
A wooden door creaked open and a short, swarthy woman in a colorful print dress appeared, carrying a tray that held a silver pot and three espresso glasses.
“Then why bring Smorodinsky here? What good could a Russian smuggler do at this end of the operation?”
Soto shrugged. “That is for you and my daughter to determine, though I don’t know what it has to do with your client killing . . . allegedly killing the man.”
“It might help explain why Yagamata seems willing to have an innocent man convicted of the murder,” I said.
The woman left her tray, and Lourdes poured the hot, syrupy drink for each of us.
“About that, I have no idea,” Soto said.
While the sugar and caffeine were jump-starting my dead batteries, Severo Soto told me about his business and his life. When they were both students, Soto and Fidel Castro were friends with similar ideals. Together, they plotted the doomed July 1953, attack on eastern Cuba’s Moncada Barracks. Soto spent two years in prison, but it did not shake his will. Again he joined Castro and they stood side by side during the revolution, until he became disenchanted with Castro’s brand of socialism. “I did not plan for my country to be the bastard child of the Russians,” he told me.
He commandeered a Cuban patrol vessel and fled to Key West and then to Miami, where he became a major in Brigade 2506 and returned to Cuba, landing on the beach at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. The betrayal and cowardice of the United States had stranded him and his men without air support. His friends died around him, bleeding into the sand. He was wounded, captured, imprisoned, and tortured by Castro’s matones. “I did not see the sun for three years,” he said. “The only sound was a high-frequency wail broadcast into my cell twenty-four hours a day at a volume that broke both my eardrums. They gave me comunista propaganda, which I tore up and ate and gave back to them as mierda.”
Lourdes’s mother didn’t know if her husband was dead or alive. Then one day Severo Soto was picked up by a Coast Guard cutter, drifting north on a raft of inner tubes in the Gulf Stream due east of the Fontainebleau Hotel. It had taken four years to claw and chew through a limestone wall in his cell. His teeth were reduced to nubs, but he clambered through an eighteen-inch hole and made his way to the sea.
When Soto showed up again on Calle Ocho, Lourdes was five years old and did not know her father. Her mother worked as a seamstress. Before long, Soto was gone again, leading Alpha 66 on its fools’ mission to stir up an anti-Castro rebellion. Captured in the Escambray mountains with grenades and automatic weapons, he was again imprisoned, the most famous of the plantados, the political prisoners.
When he was finally released and joined his family a final time in Miami, Soto was a legendary hero in Little Havana. Cuban millionaires, burdened by their guilt and awed by Soto’s steely determination, set him up in the shipping industry. With business funneled his way, it did not take long for him to prosper.
“You know the stories of our exilados,” he told me. “The lawyers who spoke no English and began here pushing brooms in your banks . . .”
“Then ended up owning the banks,” I added.
He nodded. “The Cubans are an industrious people. But dreamers, too. We dream of a Cuba Libre.”
I didn’t think he meant a rum and Coke.
“Papi is president of the Cuban Freedom Foundation,” Lourdes said. I knew that from the newspaper. The Foundation was a middle-of-the-road organization, not as liberal as those diálogueros who would begin negotiations with Castro, not as fanatic as those Omega Sevens who would stick nitroglycerine in Fidel’s cigar if they could.
“If Castro falls . . .” Lourdes caught her father’s sharp glance. “When Castro falls, the Foundation will likely be installed as the first free government in Cuba. Since Papi is president of the Foundation …”
Soto dismissed the idea with a modest wave of his hand. “It will not be a position to be coveted, Mr. Lassiter. Cuba is in a state of complete economic collapse. The country faces what Fidel calls the zero option, now that the Russians can no longer furnish sufficient fuel and food. All consumer goods are rationed. So many of the industrious people have escaped the island, who is there left to rebuild? My friends all vow they will return. But will they? Like me, they are old men. And what of their children? Are they ready to forgo their shopping malls and their cable TV? I assure you, the president of a free Cuba will have his hands full.”
Soto sipped the rest of his café Cubano, then pushed his iron chair away from the iron table. When he stood, I figured it was time for me to go, but he didn’t seem in a hurry.
“I am proud of what I have accomplished here, Mr. Lassiter. And I will keep my vow to return to a free Cuba. But on my own terms and in my own way. The Cuba of my past is gone forever. The job of rebuilding will be a massive undertaking.”
“Our government will surely help,” I said.
He scowled. “We cannot base our recovery on American largesse. The politics are too
uncertain. Who is to say who will control the White House and the Congress when the time comes? Who can forget the treachery at the Bay of Pigs? The Americans can never be counted on. They have allowed the butcher to remain in power for more than thirty years. We must be self-sufficient and prepare for every eventuality.”
With that he motioned toward the loggia and we began circling the house once again, this time with Soto leading the way. Before we turned the corner, he stopped and pointed to a small freestanding building in the shade of two live oak trees. At one time it would have been maid’s quarters. “Would you like to see my study?” he asked.
“Papi,” Lourdes moaned. “Mr. Lassiter is a busy man.”
Papi didn’t care. “Indulge an old man. I want to show your friend something of beauty besides my only daughter.”
The building was a one-story wooden box with pink Bahama shutters. Soto fished in his pocket and produced a key ring. It took three keys to unlock the door and a three-number combination to turn off the panel alarm inside the door.
Twelve, thirty-one, fifty-eight.
I don’t know why I watched him do that and immediately committed it to memory. Maybe it was something about the number. Fifty-eight was my jersey number when I played linebacker. But that wasn’t it. Maybe I was a cat burglar or safe cracker in another life.
It was just one room, dark and cool. An old window air conditioner wheezed in the corner. A brown leather chair, its hide cracked, sat at a mahogany desk. A crystal decanter of cigars was perched on a matching credenza. The desk was cluttered with papers and photographs in brass frames. One was in black and white, a much younger Severo Soto and a slender, pale woman with full lips who had been kind enough to bequeath her complexion to her daughter. Next to it was a color shot of a teenage Lourdes in what looked like a prom dress. Her hair was longer, her smile innocent and hopeful.
“My quince party,” she said, catching me spying.
“Over here,” Soto said. He flipped on a light switch and pointed toward the wall facing the desk.
It was an oil painting of a nude man, practically featureless, bent over a nude woman on all fours, who was trying to crawl away. The man’s hands were large and grasping, the woman’s head bent in shame. The colors were vivid, the grass a deep green that seemed to stain the woman’s bare feet, the sea a rich blue. “Do you know much about art?”
I shook my head.
“What does the painting say to you?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s very powerful. Almost frightening in a way. I just don’t know enough to judge its quality.”
“It is a very well-known work, Mr. Lassiter. One of my favorites, in fact, by—”
“Papi!” Lourdes practically stomped her foot. “It is not like you presumir.”
“Forgive me. I am indiscreto, and I embarrass my daughter.” Severo Soto stared hard into the canvas. “What is important is the art itself, what it says, what we can learn from it. To me, the man in the painting is Russia. The woman is Cuba. And every day of my life, Mr. Lassiter, I force myself to watch what he is about to do.”
9
I HATE BUDWEISER
It was an out-of-the-way place for a meeting with Francisco Crespo.
The ramshackle building sagged in the middle and slouched on weathered pilings in the soft earth alongside an Everglades canal. An aging frump without makeup or girdle, Mississippi Jack’s was jammed with workers from the limestone pits, an Anglo-Hispanic-black crew that may have lived in segregated neighborhoods but drank more or less together in a place where you could feel, and occasionally hear, the dynamite blasts from the nearby rock pit.
I had pulled my ancient but amiable convertible into the muddy parking lot and found a spot next to an oversize Dodge Ram that was hauling an airboat. I wore old jeans, boots, and a tee-shirt that celebrated the joys of eating oysters raw.
The “L” in the neon Schlitz sign was dark and had been for as long as anyone could remember. Faded photos of the winners of a long-ago turkey shoot hung haphazardly inside the door. The jukebox rumbled with “Honky Tonk Woman.”
Fishing corks plugged bullet holes in one wall and the hide of a sixteen-foot alligator decorated another. There was one pool table, the green felt stained from decades of spilled beer. The waitresses were sturdy sedans no longer on warranty and wore jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts tied around ample waists. The bartender paid off winners of a stud poker video game with two six-packs of beer, and if the boys from the state beverage commission didn’t like it, screw them.
The clangs of a pinball machine competed with the twang from the jukebox. The voices were husky southern drawls, but pockets of the room erupted in occasional bursts of rapid-fire Spanish and inner-city jive. A gray haze of cigarette smoke drifted toward a ceiling of unpainted two-by-fours and kept the termite population to manageable levels. On the men’s room wall, above a machine that dispensed condoms for a quarter, a poet had scrawled, “Encase your porker before you dork her.”
There were no ferns. Or guys with white-on-white shirts, power ties, and red suspenders. Or talk of Aspen, tax-free municipals, or selling short.
Mississippi Jack’s was not the Harvard Club.
The waitress wiped our table with a wet towel, then stood, head cocked, hip shot, and smiling. She had a round face and a headful of bleached yellow curls that made her look like a happy poodle. “Ya’all here for the catfish fry or the gator hunt?”
“The beer,” I said. “Pitcher. Whatever’s on tap.”
“How ‘bout some swamp cabbage to go with that? Got a vat simmering in the back.”
So that’s what I smelled. “Plain or fried?”
She raised an eyebrow. I didn’t mean to sound like Chef Paul, just wanted to know what I was getting into.
“Any way you want it. We cook it with salt pork and milk, a dash of pepper. Personally, I like it plain in a cup, but you want it fried up with fritters, you got it. You want it another way, go talk to the cook after he sobers up.”
I turned to my drinking buddy. “Francisco?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe we’ll just stick to the beer,” I told her.
I have nothing against eating the boot of the sabal palm tree. In a little bottle at the French grocery, soaking in vinegar, they call it heart of palm. It’s not as elegant hereabouts, but it’s the same raw ingredient.
She brought Budweiser. American beer is weak and watery, and like network television, is calculated to appeal to the most folks while offending the fewest. It’s the lowest common denominator of brew.
Today, talk was more important than taste. When I had called to set up the meeting, I told him that Socolow had offered a plea deal.
Crespo drained his first glass without taking a breath. “Diez años? Ten years?”
“That’s the offer now. A plea to manslaughter. You’ll be out in five.”
He poured himself another beer from the chipped pitcher. Budweiser was fine with him. I fished some boiled peanuts from a bowl. You were supposed to scatter the shells on the floor. I did what I was supposed to. “Of course, you’d have to cooperate, Francisco.”
Crespo looked at me with wary eyes. His face had healed nicely with only traces of scars on his leathery skin. He still managed to look dangerous. You wouldn’t be surprised to see him pull a switchblade from an ankle sheath.
“You’d have to tell them who killed the Russian,” I continued.
He shook his head. “I can do the time. No problema. But I’d have to live that long. And if I talk…”
He just let it hang there.
Over at the jukebox, “If It Don’t Come Easy” was playing. At the next table, a guy in a University of Florida cap was telling a pal how much money he would make snaring alligators during the thirty-day hunt.
I moved closer to my client. I wanted Crespo to trust his faithful mouthpiece, somebody who had known him a long time, but maybe didn’t know him at all. “Francisco, you want to tell me about it. Who’s threa
tening you?”
His eyes darted across the room and back to me. But the mouth stayed closed.
“Is it Yagamata? Because if it is, I’ve got a real problem here. I don’t care if he’s a big client of my firm. I can’t let him manipulate you.”
“I am grateful to Señor Yagamata for looking after me.”
“That’s my job!” I banged my beer glass on the table, slopping some of the anemic brew. “Look, I promised your mother I’d take care of you, and I promised myself, too. This is a murder charge, Francisco.”
That made him smile, just a little. “I’ve gotten away with worse.”
He had stopped me cold. “That wasn’t murder, Francisco. Justifiable homicide all the way. Even I could have gotten you off.”
“No, you couldn’t. You would have been a witness.” He smiled again. Two in one day was a new world record. “Except you couldn’t identify the killer, so I was never arrested.”
“I thought the physical description I gave was pretty creative. You remember what I told the homicide detective?”
“Sí. A tall, husky Anglo with red hair in a brush cut and a tattoo of the American flag on his forearm.”
“I’d nearly forgotten about the tattoo. A nice touch, wasn’t it? Specifics always add a touch of reality.”
We both sat there thinking about it, the link between us that spanned the years, the spilled blood that made us the unlikeliest of brothers. My debt to him could never be repaid, so he wanted to cancel it. I couldn’t let it go.
“The coaches always told us to stay out of bars,” I said. “There’s always someone wanting to prove how tough they are. And when they aren’t tough enough, they come up with a gun or a knife.”
Crespo shrugged. He was finished talking about it. He could banish the thoughts. I couldn’t. I always asked what I could have done differently. I could have listened to the coaches, for one thing.
Now I sat looking at Francisco Crespo in another bar ten years later. Now, it was his life on the line. “Your mother’s worried to death, and so am I.”
