The Killing of the Saints

by Alex Abella

  "Santeros? Here?"

  He scowled, the speed of his kaleidoscopic changes matched only by the weight of his insincerity-each attitude a pose, a mask to be tried on according to the effect desired.

  "We're everywhere, mi hermano. Where you least expect it, there's a santero, or someone who doesn't practice but believes, or thinks, Well, I better go along with it just in case. That's how we survive."

  I couldn't resist asking, "But Ramón, if there are so many of you and santería is so powerful, what are you doing in that chair?"

  He smiled, put his hand on mine.

  "Here's a lesson to be learned. One day Ochosí, the king of heaven, gathered around all the lesser gods and told them there was a field that needed planting, so that the fruits of the earth would spring forth. He asked who would break the field. So cocky Shangó, of the lightning bolt, threw down his bolts, but all they did was burn the field and nothing grew. Then Yemayá, the goddess of water, came and covered the field with water. But all the plants drowned and nothing grew. So finally Oggún, the blacksmith, went to his forge, shaped iron on his anvil and fashioned a plow. And with that plow he broke the field so Ochosí could scatter the seed, and a beautiful field of yams grew. You know what the plow is made out of? Swords and shields. Look at how Christianity spread, look at how the Muslims won-on horseback, with a cutting sword."

  "And you're the Christ of this new religion?"

  "I am not the new savior because we don't have to be saved. There is no original sin. There are many saints and many avenues to heaven. But I am bringing the message of the saints down to earth."

  I was exasperated. "Look, let's not fuck around anymore. You killed all these people for no fucking reason and now you're trying to come off as a messiah of some sort to save your ass. OK, now, tell that to the papers, tell that to the media, the judge, the jury, but don't give me this shit. I don't want to hear it."

  I got up, the chair falling backward to the floor. I was storming out of the booth when Ramón called out mockingly, "But what if I'm right, Charlie, what if I'm telling the truth?"

  I stopped at the door and turned. "What is the truth?"

  Ramón flashed his gap-toothed smile. On my way out, I saw Jim Ollin with his camera crew in the antechamber.

  "He's ready to roll," I said and left.

  When I got home, Lucinda was in bed, wearing my pajama top as she perused an old family picture album of mine. She had set a half-consumed glass of guava juice on the marble-topped nightstand, the edge of the glass smeared with her ruby red lipstick. The room was laden with moisture from the open bathroom door; I could see the tub still brimming with bubble bath. A scent of jasmine and verbena wafted in the air, Miles Davis's "Sketches of Spain" issued from the CD player.

  "You should have been a geisha," I said to her, putting my briefcase on the dresser.

  She smiled. "What's that?"

  "It's one of those Japanese ladies who always take care of their man."

  I crawled into bed with her and put my head on her lap. She rubbed my forehead with cool hands.

  "You don't have to be Japanese to be like that. But really, mi amor, I hardly do anything for you. All I do is hang around the house. I don't work, I don't do anything."

  She unknotted my tie, eased me out of my jacket.

  "That's not true. Just your being here is enough, just having you around."

  I opened the pajama top, sought out a breast, suckled on the brown nipple.

  "Oh, honey," she said, in English. "My life, my heart," she said, in Spanish.

  Afterward, when Lucinda was washing up in the bathroom, I leaned over the edge of the bed and craned my head down, leafing through the picture album. There was my grandfather, thin and dour, eschewing the white linen suit of the prosperous businessman of 1920s Cuba for the austere black of his Catalan forebears. My father, a little blond boy in a white sailor suit, stood in front of him, staring at the camera in the group shot of all the top tobacco merchants of Havana. Next to that picture, another of my father as a cadet in a military school, his adolescent hair darker, his odd heart-shaped birthmark clearly showing on his cheek. My mother, in a Schiaparelli ball gown during her debut at the Biltmore when she turned fifteen. Then there I was, naked and jubilant at the beach in Varadero, a stream of pee arching from my groin, like a putto in a Roman fountain. My sister, in her favorite lilac dress, blowing out the candles on her tenth birthday, surrounded by dozens of children and my mother wearing a party hat. Then the last two pictures of our family in the island, both taken at our cattle ranch in Camaguey-my father, a map on the hood of the Jeep, his trusted .45 in his side holster, posing as if he were some African explorer. In the last picture in the book I am riding my favorite horse, Pinto, an Appaloosa pony my father had bought in Kentucky. My straw hat sits high on the crown of my head and I smile peacefully at the photographer. It was January 1959, and the whole world was smiling at Cuba.

  I looked up from the picture, startled. An LAPD helicopter was cutting through the night, practically buzzing the apartment. The whirring of the blades sliced the air into ribbons of throbbing sound, filling the room with the urgency of the needs of history. A glimmering band of white, like a klieg light on a stage, swept outside my window. Down on the sidewalk, a small dark-skinned man ran thorough the bushes of our backyard, knocking over the pots of cyclamens and begonias, trying to hide from the light. "Don't move! You're under arrest!" boomed the helicopter a hundred feet above the building. The man ignored the warning and like a cat in a fenced-in yard, scrambled for a way out.

  "Cazzo di Dio, cosa fa questo stronzol" shouted Enzo, slamming his shutters open.

  The man looked up in my direction at that moment. Our eyes locked. I did not recognize him, although he could have been any of the thousands I had worked with; in his lean, sharp features there was a glimmer of recognition, a half measure of acknowledgment, but he didn't make a sound. Then, with a leap, he vaulted over the far wall of the yard and vanished into the dark. The helicopter pursued him, still booming, and still the man ran, obviously with no intention of surrendering just because he'd been sighted. I moved back inside the room.

  "What was all that noise outside?" asked Lucinda, her face still shiny from the water she'd splashed on. It was then I realized the entire scene could only have lasted a few seconds, just moments when I realized that he and I were one and the same. But who was the enemy and what was the crime-and would there really be a way out? Stop it, I told myself, stop this nonsense right now. You can't let go, you must hold on.

  "Nothing," I told Lucinda, "just the cops chasing somebody. He was probably trying to break into somebody's house."

  This seemed to reassure her; she sauntered back to the bath- room.

  "It's really gotten terrible lately," she said from inside the bath, "there's so much crime everywhere nowadays. You can never be sure that the little you have isn't going to be taken away from you. It's really not fair, you work so hard and then someone comes and just because he likes it, takes it like that. What kind of world is this? They should get a job, is what they should do. These vaquetas, these good for nothings."

  She peeked out the door to see me sitting on the edge of the bed.

  "It's the fault of the Socialist government, you know. They're all used to getting something for nothing."

  "Most thieves are not Cuban, or even Marielitos."

  "No, but they set a bad example and that's why the others do it. Anyway, no decent Cuban should be involved in crime, don't you think?"

  "I thought all decent Cubans were dead or in prison for political crimes."

  "Oh, you!"

  The happy eyes of the boy in the picture stared back at me from across decades of oblivion. Was that really me, did I ever have so much trust in things, in the world, in God?

  Lucinda came out and pulled her things out from drawers, her lace panties, her silk undershirt, a thick blue sweater.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To see my girlfrie
nd Martha. Remember I told you the other day. She's visiting with her mom from Miami."

  "I don't remember."

  Lucinda put her hands on her hips. "Now, Carlos, don't start with me. I told you if you wanted to come and you said no, you were busy. You can still come if you want."

  "I must have forgotten. You won't be long, will you?"

  She came up to me, kissed me. "No, baby, you know I can't stand to be away from you for long. We're having dinner at Candilejas. You can still come if you want."

  "No, that's OK. I'm tired. I think I may be catching a cold. You go ahead. I'll go to bed."

  She kissed me on the forehead. "You take care of yourself. You know that I couldn't live without you."

  "Liar."

  "It's true. It's written in the stars, you see. Lucinda and Carlos will love forever, until death, for all eternity. Amen."

  I woke up panting, an oppressive feeling on my chest, a knowledge that somehow I had committed a grievous fault, that my being alive was an abomination which cried out for correction. The pillow was drenched with sweat, and through the humming in my ears I could still hear the last few words of my dream, "Beware the red tide." I shivered from a sudden chill. Getting up, I washed up, changed into fresh pajamas and returned to bed, flicking on the TV.

  Eleven o'clock. I was switching channels when a familiar face flickered on the set. I returned to the channel-Ollin was interviewing Ramón. It was a well-prepared shot, backlit with the uniform flat illumination of Spielberg movies.

  Ramón's features took up the entire screen, the camera picking out the gap of his missing tooth, his flaring nostrils, the sparkling hazel eyes, which acted as semaphores for the relative importance of each point he made. For the first time, through the filter of the camera, he was convincing; for the first time he became something other than a loudmouth braggart or a cold-hearted killer-someone informed, lucid, who saw his place in the context of American history.

  Ollin did not ask him directly about the charges and Ramón certainly did not offer to discuss them, focusing instead on what might have driven a man with Ramón's background and situation into a life of crime.

  "Oh, it's very easy, sir," purred Ramón. "The temptation is all round us and it is very easy to fall. Look at my own case. I am an educated man but after coming here, I was reduced to doing things I would have never dreamed of doing just to keep myself alive."

  "What kind of things, Ramón?"

  Ramón shook his head, the shame almost more than he could bear. "Bad things, things I'd rather not talk about."

  "Were they against the law?"

  "How could they not be against the law, when everything is stacked up against people like me?" Ramón stared directly at the camera. "We come here, trying to work hard, and all we find is people who cheat us and abuse us, who steal our money and seduce us, then throw us in jail for living up to the image they made of us. You know, you made us out to be the dark mirrors of yourselves and then you punish us for being like that. This country has got to realize that this continent was taken from people like us, and that projecting their fears and anxieties at us is not going to make this land any safer. We're a rising tide, mister, a rising tide that carries all boats to sea and we will not be denied."

  But here Ollin did something totally unexpected; he showed some intelligence. "Ramón, that's not true. This society is the most open society in the world. People of all colors and origins get to rise and prosper here. Besides, not everybody is discriminated against-and there are laws against that, too-and not everyone who's the victim of discrimination turns around and gets into a life of crime. You're just making excuses."

  "That's because you're white, educated, from the middle class. You have no idea what it's like to be brown or black and be treated like an idiot just because you are not fluent in the language. You don't know what it is like to know that this country was yours and that it was taken away from you. You don't know how it feels to be afraid of Immigration all the time, to be lost in a place where all you can hope is forty dollars a day if you can find the work. You don't know how it feels to know that you're not even second class, you're third class, that even American blacks are better than you are, that there's a Beverly Hills out there and that you're living here, in Echo Park and South Central, while others get rich."

  "But what about the judges, the police, the many businessmen and government officials who are Latinos?"

  "They're the puppets of the Anglo masters."

  Ollin shook his head, exasperated. "OK, let's assume what you say is true-and you sound just like the black radicals of the 1960s-"

  "The Panthers were good people."

  "That has nothing to do with the law and with the killings at the Jewelry Mart. Two wrongs do not make a right."

  "It has everything to do with it. I'm beyond your right and wrong."

  10

  judge Reynolds never wasted time getting to the basics. As a legacy of his military background, he believed in straight arguments and plain interpretations of law. With him you knew exactly where you stood, or sat.

  Ramón had prepared a brief requesting that the judge recuse himself for bias. As I turned it in to Curtis, the clerk, I knew that from that point on the trial would ring with legal fusillades, one unprincipled tactic after another in an unceasing attempt to win the longest shot in the judicial records of Los Angeles County. Curtis took a look at the motion, block printed on lined yellow legal paper, and chuckled.

  "Is he for real?"

  "Ask him yourself."

  "I'll take your word."

  Curtis strolled out of his cubicle by the side of the judge's bench and entered chambers. I heard a muffled curse, the thumping of a book, a glass broken. The clerk returned ashen faced, took his seat, lit a cigarette with trembling hands.

  "I hate this job," he said. "If it wasn't for my kids ... "

  "I know, Curtis."

  The courtroom was packed to capacity again, with more than a sprinkling of off-duty clerks, public defenders and D.A.'s taking in the show. The court fleas, a quartet of red-faced, shabbily dressed retirees who haunted the courthouse for entertainment, had secured a corner of the middle front row, right next to the dozens of reporters from newspapers, wire services and television stations. In the back a group of santeros, with bracelets and necklaces of cowrie shells, nervously fingered colored rosaries. I heard the whirring of cameras as I returned to the counsel table and sat next to Ramón. He had acquired a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses like the judge's, which, with my suit and tie, gave him the look of a black academic out of Howard University.

  He gave me a full-toothed smile.

  "It was a cap, the jail dentist put it back on," he said in Spanish. "I've had fake teeth since I was a kid, chico. From living on sugarcane after the Bay of Pigs invasion."

  "I don't get it."

  "The G-2 arrested my folks," he whispered unemotionally.

  "They shot my old man for counterrevolutionary activities and sent my mom to a prison camp for five years. I ran away and lived in the countryside for a year. Lost most of my teeth from malnutrition. Eventually some militia people found me and sent me to the political orphanage. But that's another story. How did the old shithead take it?"

  "You're playing with fire."

  "Why the fuck not. They've already prepared the stake. Might as well have some fun. You don't deserve to live if you can't laugh at death's beard."

  "Spare me the florid Spanish."

  He reverted to English. "Charlie, Charlie, this is a stage and we're all going through motions, get it?"

  The spectators broke into a mild hubbub behind us. We turned and saw Claudia Weil, the chief correspondent for one of the TV networks, dressed in a blue silk shantung Chanel, her crew in back of her. She smiled at Ramón. He waved.

  "Hey," growled the bailiff.

  "OK, man, OK," answered Ramón promptly. He leaned over to me.

  "Tell her I'll talk to her this weekend. I want to see how the tria
l goes."

  "You intend to try your case in the media?"

  "Something like that."

  Just at that moment Lucinda walked into the courtroom, looking lost and searching. She spotted me, smiled, and took the seat one of the court fleas offered her.

  "This is really drawing them out," said Ramón. "I haven't seen her since-"

  "All rise!"

  The entire courtroom rose as the bailiff intoned the customary announcement of the judge's arrival. I stole a glance at Lucinda. Then I felt as though someone had stabbed me in the heart. In the last row, standing among the curious audience, stood a man with my father's face, staring at me as though saying No, it is not a dream. Then he walked out of the courtroom. I wanted to run after him, embrace him, beseech him to stop, to talk, to bless me, to tell me plainly I was forgiven.

  It's not true, I thought as I sat down. It's not real, it's not him, it can't be him, no, not him. Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention.

  "Good morning," said the judge flatly.

  "Good morning," came the chorus of players and spectators, except for Ramón.

  "Before proceeding with the case of the People versus Valdez and Pimienta, there're some housekeeping matters I want to take care of. Mr. Valdez, yesterday you refused to rise when addressing the court, citing some lack of legal precedent-"

  "Your Honor, if you allow me-"

  Reynolds banged his gavel. "No, sir, hear me out or I will have you placed in the lockup again."