by Mel McKinney
Watching the question in her eyes grow, he reached into the paper bag and drew out a pile of bills. Then another and another.
Grinning, he spilled the entire contents on the table. “Sixty thousand. Enough to rebuild the clinic, to buy medicine, supplies. For whatever is needed.”
He stopped and took a long draw on the cigar, reveling in her expression of disbelief.
“How … ? From where does this … ?”
Raul laughed. Never had he seen this woman of action, of strength, so speechless.
“It is a long, long story. One that we can tell our children and grandchildren someday.”
Her wide eyes searched his in silence.
“Yes, Rosa. I want to come home. I am again asking you to marry me. I, too, want to be a revolutionary.” He grinned. “Will you have me? Will Fidel?”
Her robe flew apart as she leaped to her feet. Laughing and crying at the same time, she threw her arms around him, sending the billowing terry cloth in a sweeping arc. It brushed her Don Salazario and sent it rolling. The cigar disappeared over the edge of the table.
“Raul, oh Raul, I am so happy. Yes, I will have you. I do not know about Fidel. Maybe he will be too jealous to allow such a handsome man on his island. But for me, yes, yes, and yes. Is it true? Can we finally be together forever?”
“Yes, my love, we can. Sit down. I will explain.”
He reached down to retrieve the Don Salazario from the tile floor. As his fingers touched the cigar, something caught his eye—something in the long ash that had powdered in its gentle collision with the tile, something that gleamed with a tantalizing brightness. He trapped the glittering object in his fingers and held it up against the luminous moon. There, bare and exposed, he saw what it was.
“Madre de Dios!” he whispered, the impact of his father’s terrible last words to him crashing through time.
“Look for some of your grandfather’s cigars … I will send them to our old friend, Paulo … Enjoy the cigars, and remember me.”
EIGHTEEN
“CONSTABLE, THE FAMILY is simply not interested in pursuing this. That’s all there is to it. As far as they are concerned, there were no break-ins, there was no theft—of cigars or anything else. The matter is closed. Under the circumstances, I am sure you understand.”
Hiram Thorpe held the telephone receiver away and stared at it in disbelief. The president had been assassinated. The country was ablaze with rumors and news probes of conspiracy. Within hours of the assassination, there had been at least one, perhaps two, break-ins and a theft at the Kennedy estate. On his watch! And this toad was now telling him the burglaries never happened. Slowly, Hiram brought the receiver back to his ear.
“Well, son, I’ll tell you. I’ve got two documented break-ins at the place within, oh, say, twelve hours. I’ve got four suspicious Latin types hanging around here a couple of weeks, two of ’em working at the place and a third breaking the heart of a sweet little chambermaid who didn’t know any better. Two days before the first break-in, she showed him the room that a week ago was full of cigars and now doesn’t have a one. And I’ve got a sighting of some goons speeding out of town after the second break-in.
“Now that’s a hell of a lot of criminal activity going on in my backyard. Your sayin’ it didn’t happen doesn’t change the fact that it did.”
Hiram began patting his pockets in search of a Muniemaker.
“I respect the Family’s need for privacy during this time; but, son, there’s a crime been committed up here. Hell, two or three crimes, maybe more. Who knows what it means? Sooner or later the big boys, the feds and all, are going to come snooping around wonderin’—like I’m doin’—how it all ties in with Dallas. I’m not about to tell ‘em nothin’ happened when it’s plain as Mary Jane that somethin’ did. Know what I mean?”
Hiram heard a sigh.
“Constable, I don’t quite know how to put this, but try and follow. All right?
“I am positive, repeat, positive, that there will be no, ah, higher official inquiry into the, ah, alleged intrusion at the family estate. Frankly, the Family is not particularly sure of the circumstances surrounding how and when Mr. Kennedy came by some of his cigars. As far as the government and the Family are concerned, this is a—a dead issue. I implore you to treat it in the same fashion.”
Hiram had never been “implored” before. Whatever it was, he didn’t think he liked it.
“Son, there was nothing ‘alleged’ about those torn-up doors. And someone just implored the shit out of that big brass lock with a hacksaw. I call that burglary and theft. ‘Cording to sweet young Felicia, she helped you and some movie star carry thirty or forty boxes of cigars into that wine room back in July. Not a sign of ’em there now. You tellin’ me your ex-boss smoked ’em all? Don’t think so. Nope, I just don’t think so.”
Hiram located a Muniemaker and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, anticipating an end to the conversation and the beginning of the smoke he was going to enjoy driving out to the Gem o’ the Sea.
“I suppose,” he continued, “that you’re cleanin’ out your desk to make room for whoever LBJ plans to put there. So tomorrow—if not already—you’re history. But me, I’m going to be right here doin’ my job, and I plan to keep doin’ it till the voters of this county find someone who can do it better, which isn’t very likely.”
Hiram shot a look at Luther in the outer office, his face buried in a model airplane magazine.
“I’ve got an investigation to finish, and that’s just what I intend to do. Be seein’ you. Maybe.” Hiram hung up and slipped on his jacket.
“Now, Nestor,” Hiram began slowly. “You called me, remember? I could stand here and tell you things that have been going on in the village, which ain’t been much, or you could just get to the point. Maybe then, we could have a smoke and play a few hands of gin rummy. I’ll make the time this morning. What do you say?”
Hiram extracted a package of Swisher Sweets from his jacket pocket and laid them on the counter. Time to get down and dirty, he thought, relying on Nestor Pinwood’s two greatest passions as persuasion.
He left two hours later, his breath heavy with the syrup of the Swishers and his pocket $1.90 lighter. But Nestor had shown him the inside of the third cottage. Now he had a plan.
As he pulled onto the roadway, Hiram Thorpe considered whether he would put the $1.90 on his expense report.
NINETEEN
AT SIXTY-ONE, PAULO Enriquez had settled into a resigned depression that his days would end in Miami and he would never see Cuba again. The combined corruption of Batista and the Mafia had so sickened Paulo that he had reluctantly left Victor Salazar and Noches Cubanas a year before the Bonafaccios murdered his former employer. When Raul had shown up in Miami, seeking to start a small restaurant bearing the name of his father’s Havana establishment, Paulo had been reborn. Greeting the world at Victor’s Noches Cubanas as its chief maître d’ had been his whole life.
By the time Castro had swept away the pleasure palaces and scrubbed his homeland clean of the Mafia, Paulo had another life, in Miami’s Little Havana—with Raul and his restaurant. But Miami was not Havana.
Yes, he would return home with Raul. Cuba needed him and many more like him. The revolutionary wind, for now a frenetic hurricane of change, would spend itself in time. Then the real work would begin: the work of rebuilding and living instead of dreaming.
To Paulo, all governments suffered a common flaw. Inevitably, they forgot about the people they were supposed to serve and protect. A scant three years after Cuba was shed of her dictator, her savior was busy quelling the voices he did not want to hear. Maybe, in years to come, these growing pains would ease and the irrepressible Cuban people would again emerge, cleansed of the corruption and excess of the Batista years and seasoned by Castro’s revolutionary stew. If so, Paulo wanted to be there for that glorious reawakening.
He slid from the stool and smiled at himself in the mirror behind the bar as
he smoothed his peppered mustache, straightened his tie, and prepared to open the restaurant. Ah, such lofty thoughts! But we will see, he mused. Raul and his Rosa; Paulo and … Who knows? Maybe Rosa has a cousin or even an aunt. At his age, he could not be too choosy.
The phone rang. A reservation, he hoped. There were only four on the book that night.
“Good afternoon, Noches Cubanas,” he spoke, the richly modulated greeting flowing automatically.
“Paulo! A miracle has happened! Not only will we return to Cuba as partners, we will be covered with the glory of matadors! The gangsters may have murdered my father, but his treasure is alive, ready to serve our people. I am returning to Miami in the morning. My plane leaves here at nine and arrives there at ten.
“Now, listen carefully and do exactly as I say. Others who would keep Victor’s treasure from us may discover what I have found. We must act quickly to protect it.”
Paulo stood at the bar, tense with expectation. “Yes, Raul, go ahead. I am listening.”
The old Cuban’s eyes widened as he absorbed his employer’s words. So, he would be a revolutionary hero after all.
Paulo returned four hours later. It was eight-thirty and four men were just entering the restaurant. His heart skipped when he saw them and he was scarcely able to conceal the alarm of recognition behind the façade of his greeting.
“Good evening, gentlemen. A table for four? Right this way.”
He slid four menus and a wine list from the maître d’s pedestal and began to lead them into the dining room. A painful clamp on his upper arm arrested him.
“Hold on there, Mr. P. Where’s the boss?”
Paulo spun around and flashed a weak smile at the wolfish grin of Joseph Bonafaccio Jr., the only person who had ever called him “Mr. P.”
“Señor Bonafaccio! And Señor Romelli. What a great pleasure to see you again.”
Mierda, he thought, trembling as Romelli released his vice grip. Raul was right to have called ahead. These hombres are not here for dinner.
“So, Mr. P., you didn’t recognize me.” Bonafaccio patted his stomach. “I haven’t gained that much in eight years, have I?”
Paulo looked down.
“Yeah, better you don’t answer that one.” Bonafaccio laughed. “Look, it’s good to see you. You look great. Now I’d really like to have a little talk with Raul Salazar. Where is he?”
Paulo was grateful he had something to answer honestly. He was certain there would be more to come that would require all the guile he could manage.
“Señor Salazar is out of the country. Away on a short vacation—with a lovely señorita, I think.” Paulo smiled and winked.
“Well, that’s good for him, bad for us. Sorry to have missed him. I brought Mr. Romelli and our associates all the way down here to meet him and have a smoke together. I hear he still has some really fine Cubans, even some pre-Castros. I was hoping to add to my collection.”
Paulo smoothed his sleeve, a pretext to rub his arm and restore the circulation cut off by Romelli’s clasp. He set the menus and wine list back on the shelf, hoping to discourage Bonafaccio from staying.
“As I said, he is not here, Señor.”
“No,” said Bonafaccio, his voice now thick and malevolent. “But you are. Tell you what. In light of our past relationship, I’m sure your boss would want us to see his cigar collection. Suppose you just take us to it.” He poked his head around the draped entrance into the sparsely populated dining room and shook his head. “Not much for you to do in there anyway.”
The grip again, gentler this time, more a guide than a threat. “Bet we’re going downstairs, right?” Romelli asked softly.
TWENTY
OFFSHORE CLOUDS, DARK with the promise of storm, muscled themselves into a ragged, low formation all along the coast. Cornelius Gessleman watched the brooding sky build through the chauffeured sedan’s rear window.
“Takes something pretty damned important to get me up here this time of year,” he said to his son-in-law, seated next to him. The congressman had tried to beg off, claiming important business back home in his district. Gessleman wouldn’t hear of it. “You wanted these cigars so bad, you can goddamn well help me pick them up,” he had said. “Who knows what that Cuban extortionist might have cooked up. Better there are two of us.”
Gessleman winced as lightning flashed in the distance. “I suppose these cigars are worth it, in some crazy, historical kind of way,” he said. “Now that you got the president killed over them, it would be a waste to just leave them for Salazar. Don’t kid yourself though. That one hundred thousand dollars is just the beginning.”
Gessleman paused, reflecting on his conversation with Dominick Romelli. That there would be no further payments to Raul Salazar he was now certain. And the other task he had discussed with Romelli …
“What the hell, my boy, it’s an adventure.” He laughed, slapping Wesley’s leg. Hell, Cornelius thought, it’s easy to be nice to him now. I’ll almost miss him—almost.
The sandy hillocks of Barnstable County rolled by as they bore down the expressway toward South Yarmouth.
“Wake up, Luther. Company’s coming.” Hiram Thorpe nudged the sleeping deputy and set the half-smoked Muniemaker in the ashtray of his Dodge Dart. For this evening’s work, Hiram had filled the tank of his personal car, leaving the cruiser at the office.
Luther roused and the two of them watched, shielded by the forested slope behind the Gem o’ the Sea.
A red Bonneville stopped at the office and two men stepped out. The driver stretched his legs as the passenger went into the office.
Come on now, Nestor, Hiram thought. Don’t go getting babbly on me. Just give him the key.
A few seconds later, the passenger emerged from the office, looked around, and walked toward the cottage. He motioned over his shoulder and the Pontiac crept along behind him, its tires lightly crunching along the carpet of dead leaves. It stopped in front of the cottage, and the driver again appeared. He opened the trunk and stood talking a moment with the other.
Through his binoculars, Hiram made out the dark-complected features of the two men. The driver, tall and muscular, with angular good looks, had to be Felicia’s Pedro. The other, shorter and thin, had to be the one Nestor called “Hor-hay,” though, by now Hiram knew from the fingerprint check that his name was “Jorgé Nunez.” Of the four sets of prints left in the cottages, only Jorgé’s had led to a criminal record, a misdemeanor conviction in Florida for racetrack touting.
The low storm clouds swallowed the scene in shadow. No matter, thought Hiram. I can see all I need to. He watched the two men go inside and reappear, carrying tiers of small boxes. After several trips they were done.
“What you suppose they’re doin, Hiram?” asked Luther. “We going to take ’em in now?”
Hiram shook his head. “Nope. That’s why I filled this thing with gas. We’re just going to follow these boys. All the way to Miami if we have to. Don’t think it’s likely to come to that, though. If they had wanted to take those cigars to Miami, they could have done that the night they stole ‘em. More likely, this was some kind of temporary storage. We’ll just let ’em lead us to wherever those cigars are goin’. Should be kind of interesting, though no one seems to care ’cept me.”
Hiram waited as the Bonneville moved slowly back to the office. Then he let his car coast down the back road and braked to a stop at the highway intersection a few yards from Gem o’ the Sea. He waited ten seconds after the Bonneville pulled onto the highway before starting his engine and falling in behind it.
Twenty minutes later, the Bonneville slowed as though the driver were searching for an address. But there were no addresses, simply wrought iron gates guarding the grounds of a series of discreetly shielded estates.
“That figures,” Hiram muttered, passing the Pontiac and keeping it in his rearview mirror.
“They’re going to visit one of the summer residents,” he said to Luther, referring to the handful of p
eople who occupied the Cape’s lavish spreads for a month or two each summer, then chased the sun on to the Bahamas or the south of France.
Hiram let the distance widen, then fill with two other cars that had also passed the Bonneville, which was now crawling along the shoulder. Just as he considered doubling back, the Pontiac turned in.
“The Gessleman place,” he said. “Of course.”
Hiram now recalled the article in the local paper five years earlier, just after Cornelius Gessleman had purchased the place from the heirs of an automobile tycoon. What had caught his eye at the time was the fact that he, Hiram Thorpe, a constable in rural New England, shared a passion with someone like Cornelius Gessleman, reported to be one of the five hundred wealthiest men in the country.
Though Hiram’s tastes, constricted by his wallet, favored Swisher Sweets, Muniemakers, and an occasional White Owl New Yorker, he had bonded at an elemental level with this rich man he did not know, whose collection of vintage Cuban cigars had been the centerpiece of the article. To Hiram, a cigar was a cigar. Whether it cost twenty cents or twenty dollars, the moments of pleasure, contentment, and escape it furnished must be basically the same. Still, he had thought, it would be nice to try one of those Cubans, just once. See what all the fuss is about. When the embargo came, he forgot about it.
“Look alive, Luther, we’re goin’ in,” Hiram said. He made a U-turn across the opposite lanes and headed back.
Hiram knew the place well. During the off-season he made it a point to swing into the grounds of the various homes on a random basis as a visual deterrent to anyone who might consider a little private excursion. The Kennedy place had been the exception. Once the senator had been elected president, the feds had made it clear the local constable was neither needed nor wanted. One reason for his current obsession with the break-ins was his certainty that they would not have occurred had his sporadic patrols been permitted to continue.
