Suspicion of Rage

by Barbara Parker

  24

  They sat in the back of a maroon 1950 Plymouth with bulbous fenders, a split windshield, and truck tires. The windows were cranked down to get rid of the diesel exhaust coming through the floorboard. Karen had changed into a fresh T-shirt and jeans. She sat in the middle with her backpack between her feet. She and Irene would find something to do before meeting Yolanda Cabrera at the Centro Comercial. Gail didn't know where that was but had no doubt Karen could find it.

  The driver said the ride would cost five dollars. Karen had argued with him, shaking her head, holding up three dollar bills until he finally snatched the money out of her hand and told them in fast Spanish to get in before the police saw them. Gail began to object, but Karen pushed her toward the open door and told her not to worry about it.

  Leaning over the seat, Gail showed the driver a piece of paper with an address on it and said to go there first.

  The address was Olga Saavedra's apartment. Gail understood that Olga dropped in several times a week at the Ministry—the publicity office, Olga called it—but she ran her party-planning operations out of a government building near El Palacio de las Convenciones, the convention center. She drove there every day, except when she had other things to do. She lived near the University. Sometimes she didn't get home until very late, as she was forced by the nature of her work to attend many cultural functions, musical events, and the like. She knew many important people.

  Olga had explained all this in very bad English, and Gail supposed she had missed some of it. What she hadn't missed was the woman's hand gripping her wrist, her darting eyes, her jittery insistence that she had to speak to Anthony, very important, but she couldn't get in touch with him, and if she explained everything to Gail, maybe Gail could help.

  Ordinarily she would have stayed out of Anthony's business, but she'd felt Abdel García's presence like cold fingers touching her neck, so she had smiled at Olga Saavedra and said all right, what time?

  Irene's guidebook was open on Karen's legs. Obrapia Street here, the perfume factory there. Karen had brought from Gail's law office a dispenser of transparent page tabs. She peeled one off, laid it on the map, and drew an arrow on it.

  Irene grabbed her digital camera out of its case. "Oh, tell him to slow down, Gail, I want to get a shot of that statue. It's José Martí. Señor, un foto! Lentamente, por favor." She took off the lens cap as the old car slowed to a crawl.

  "Mother, hurry up," Gail said. "I'm going to be late."

  "No file?" Irene stared at the blue screen of her camera. "What does that mean, 'no file'?"

  Karen glanced over. "Is the memory stick in it?"

  Irene clicked open a panel and looked inside. "Oh... drat."

  The driver shifted gears, and fresh fumes blew through the holes in the floor as he hit the accelerator. Karen leaned over and unzipped a pocket of her backpack. She took out her PDA and removed a slim blue piece of plastic. "Here, Gramma. This fits your camera. I downloaded some games, but it's still got loads of room on it. Just don't use a high-res setting."

  Irene said, "I am amazed. You're the smartest girl in the known world."

  "It's not that hard," Karen mumbled. She went back to the guidebook.

  Taking a route Gail had no hope of remembering, the driver eventually stopped his wheezing automobile on a street with a three-story apartment building on one side and a mildewed colonnade on the other, through which Gail could see shop windows with tape pasted over the cracks. The car behind them gave a few sharp toots of its horn.

  Gail scooted forward to ask the driver, "Where is it? ¿Dónde?"

  He pointed at the address written on the paper, then at the apartment building, which had no numbers on the front. With some difficulty, Gail pushed open the car door, then leaned in to tell Irene and Karen she would see them at Maria's place later on. Miraculously, she had arrived early by ten minutes.

  The Plymouth rattled away on the uneven pavement.

  Gail studied her destination. An arch of decorative ironwork extended across the entrance of the apartment building. The lower windows were framed by twisting, bas-relief columns; the upper windows had been retro-fitted with glass louvers, ugly in the late-nineteenth-century facade. A concrete walkway led into a courtyard, which contained a profusion of greenery. Olga lived in apartment three, which Gail assumed was on the ground floor. Air-conditioning units hung over the alleys that separated the building from its neighbors.

  Her eye was momentarily captured by an enormous sign on the blank wall of the adjacent building: the flag of Cuba above the words EN CADA BARRIO, ¡REVOLUCION! Revolution in every neighborhood.

  An old black Mercedes was parked about halfway down on the left side of the alley. Gail recognized it: Olga Saavedra's car. How many of those could there be in Havana? With a few minutes to spare, Gail stepped under the colonnade. She had dressed in a plain black pullover and jeans, but as people walked around her, she felt their eyes. With her leather shoulder bag and expensive walking shoes, she looked like what she was: a foreigner.

  She walked to the end of the colonnade and back again, passing a state-run pharmacy and a hair salon with a sign taped to the window. Moderno, eficiente y siempre socialista. Gail wondered what a socialist haircut looked like. The doors of a lunchroom were open to the street, revealing stools at a long counter but not much in the display cases.

  Finally, checking her watch, she walked across the sidewalk and waited for traffic to clear. She was about to go across when she saw a slender young man in a blue shirt. He was coming in her direction, walking alongside the row of cars in the alley. He wore sunglasses, which seemed odd, given the heavy cloud cover.

  Mario Cabrera.

  Gail moved quickly behind a utility pole. She waited for him to walk through and turn one way or the other, but instead he suddenly went between the parked cars and disappeared. There had to be a side entrance into the building.

  Perplexed, Gail wondered if Mario knew Olga Saavedra. This morning at Maria's house, when he and Olga had been standing within ten feet of each other, neither had given any sign of recognition. But he had to know her, Gail thought. His father had worked with Olga Saavedra at a television station, and Olga had let José Leiva take the blame for the documentary that had sent him to prison.

  Gail thought of confronting him. Why are you here? Who are you? Yes, who are you, Mario? Tell me about your alleged father, the soldier who went to Angola and died there.

  As she debated with herself what to do, Mario reappeared in the alley and went back in the direction he had come. The alley intersected with another that went behind a building on the next street. He turned right and was gone. Gail hesitated, then ran across and got to the end of the alley in time to see Mario turn at a building whose windows were mostly sealed up with sheets of metal or plywood. She hurried to catch up, then stopped and looked around the corner. This passage led to a wider, busier street. Mario paused at the sidewalk, glanced each way, then turned right. He walked half a block, took some keys from his pocket, and got into his small green car. He pulled away from the curb in a haze of exhaust fumes.

  Why she had let him go, Gail couldn't say. It would have been so easy to catch up. How do you know Olga Saavedra?

  She retraced her steps, stopping at the line of cars in the alley and the opening through which Mario had vanished and reappeared five minutes ago. A rusty iron gate, no longer functional, leaned against the wall.

  A dim passageway led her to the courtyard, a pretty area with palm trees, some plastic chairs, and a fountain. But no water. She looked at the numbers on the plain white doors and found number three back where she had started, in the passageway near the side entrance. The windows were closed, and no light or noise came from within.

  She knocked. Waited. Knocked again.

  "Damn it." Gail opened her shoulder bag for a notepad and pen. I was here at 2:05. Call this number. She flipped through her notebook until she found the number for Anthony's cell phone. She folded the paper and w
edged it in the crack between the door and the frame.

  She heard the noise of traffic. The muffled beat of a salsa tune from one of the other apartments. The rain. It had come at last. Rain whispered on the dry grass of the courtyard and slanted onto the sidewalk. It ticked on the long black hood of the Mercedes at the end of the passageway and dripped off the fenders.

  For a full minute Gail stared at the door before deciding to give the knob a turn.

  Later on, she would say she had a feeling. A presentiment. The police detective, a man named Alvaro Sánchez, who had studied English and had spent a year posted at the Cuban embassy in London, did not have that word—presentiment—in his vocabulary, so Gail would explain that she didn't like knocking on doors and getting no answer when she knew that someone was inside waiting for her.

  The knob turned, and Gail pushed the door inward.

  This was an apartment of some luxury, as Havana apartments go. A functioning air conditioner; a sofa and armchair upholstered in leather; a black laminate cabinet holding pieces of ceramic and pottery; a new 36-inch Sony television with DVD player; a brown-and-cream area rug of Scandinavian design; walls without cracks in them.

  Gail had no eyes for any of that, no immediate notice of the overturned armchair or the patterns on the walls and ceiling, the streaks of red flung across the white surfaces like paint from a paint brush. She was focused on Olga Saavedra, in her black pants and red jacket, lying crumpled on the floor as if someone had thrown her there. The left side of her forehead was misshapen, and strands of blond hair, matted and sticky red, stretched across her face. Her mouth was smashed, and her nose, and there was blood, so much blood, a great pool of it, bleeding into the rug, running along the cracks between the tiles, everywhere.

  Gail had completely forgotten about the note. When she came in, it fell, and her shoe pushed it across the threshold. Sánchez, who missed very little, saw the paper on the floor. He picked it up and unfolded it. He used his cell phone to call the number, and a man answered.

  25

  Heavy clouds blotted out the sun. The rain had stopped, but water dripped from the roof and echoed in the dim passageway. The hour seemed much later than four o'clock.

  Standing just outside Olga Saavedra's apartment, Anthony could see his wife on the opposite side of the courtyard. They had put her in a chair, and a policeman was with her, a reminder that she remain where she was until permitted to move. The residents and the curious were being kept away from the activity at the rear of the building. They watched from windows and gathered at the entrance near the street.

  The detective, who had introduced himself as Alvaro Sánchez, was a tall, fair-haired man in the gray uniform of the PNR. Behind his glasses, his eyes were patient and probing. He was the senior officer sent for when the municipal police realized what they had on their hands.

  Not knowing what Gail had already told the detective, Anthony gave him the truth: "I was not aware that Miss Saavedra contacted my wife or that my wife agreed to come here. Gail probably tried to call me, but I had my phone turned off most of the afternoon. As for Miss Saavedra's purposes ... I haven't the least idea. Detective, my family must be wondering where we are. My sister lives in Havana. She is married to General Ramiro Vega."

  The name produced a nod. "Your wife told me. Because of your relationship to General Vega, I was compelled by procedures to report this case to my superiors."

  "May I make a phone call? It won't take long." Anthony held up his cell phone.

  "I am sorry. Telephone calls must wait until after we are finished."

  "It's your job," Anthony said.

  "Exactly so," Sánchez said. "Why do you think Olga Saavedra wanted to see you?"

  "I told you, I don't know."

  "You must have a theory, at least."

  "I can give you a guess. I believe that Olga wanted to see me because she thought I could get her out of Cuba."

  "Could you have done it?"

  "It can be done," Anthony said.

  "Would you have, if she had asked?"

  "No. It isn't legal."

  The detective made a brief smile. His teeth were dark from nicotine. "Did Miss Saavedra tell you that she wanted to leave?"

  "Not specifically."

  "Then in what way?"

  "In the way that most people express it, by telling me that life is not easy in Cuba."

  With a slight shrug, Sánchez said, "How long had you known Miss Saavedra?"

  "We met about eight years ago at a reception for the director of the Cuban National Orchestra. I went as the guest of my sister and General Vega. Miss Saavedra was working in television at the time. She knew a great many people in the arts."

  "And what was the nature of your relationship with her?"

  "We were acquainted."

  "Friends?"

  "No, I wouldn't say so."

  "There was nothing between you but... an acquaintance?"

  "This is correct."

  "Have you ever been in her apartment?"

  "Never."

  The detective crossed his arms and rested his chin in his fingers, then said, "I don't understand why she would ask you to help her leave. You are a relative of a high-ranking officer in the armed forces. Wouldn't she be afraid that you would inform him of her request?"

  "I don't know what she intended to ask me."

  "Ah, yes. So you said." Sánchez glanced across the courtyard. Gail was intently watching their conversation without being able to hear it. "Your wife says that you and Olga Saavedra have talked recently, within the past few days."

  Anthony was compelled to admit, "We saw each other at my sister's house on Saturday, the day after my family and I arrived in Cuba. Miss Saavedra was there to talk to my sister, Marta, about the fifteenth birthday party for her daughter."

  "What was the subject of your conversation with Miss Saavedra?"

  "Nothing in particular. She said hello. I said hello. She congratulated me on my marriage. That was about it. She may have kept my name in her head as someone she could use, if the need arose."

  Sánchez considered the response, then said, "Do you know any of her friends?"

  "No, I don't."

  "Do you know, or have you heard, of anyone who would have wanted to harm her? Someone who may have been jealous? Someone seeking revenge?"

  "I am not aware of anyone."

  "Did she have a lover?"

  "I do not know," Anthony said.

  As if suddenly remembering, Sánchez said, "A woman in the CDR for this zone has told us that Miss Saavedra has traveled several times to Europe. If she was free to travel, why would she ask for your help in leaving Cuba?"

  Anthony shook his head. "It was only a guess, detective. I couldn't read her mind."

  "Of course not." He lifted his head to look at Anthony directly, and his glasses reflected the fading gray light from the courtyard. "Where were you at noon today?"

  "In Vedado. I had lunch with my father, Luis Quintana. He lives in a home for veterans on B Street."

  "When did you arrive there?"

  "Around eleven o'clock."

  "And you left at... ?"

  "I was with my father until one-thirty. Call the veterans' home if you like. I drove back to my sister's house in Miramar and arrived about a quarter before two. My wife wasn't there, and my sister said she had gone downtown to do some shopping. I was with my sister until shortly after four, when you called."

  "We will have to confirm it, of course." Sánchez clasped his hands briefly in thought, then extended an arm toward the open door of the apartment. "Would you like to come inside? Your wife told me that in Miami, you're a renowned criminal defense lawyer. She says you have handled many cases of murder. Perhaps you could look at the scene and give me your impressions."

  "I'm a lawyer, not a detective."

  "It doesn't matter. Come."

  Anthony had the thought that this man wanted to hear from someone outside his own world. He followed Sánchez, and they s
topped a few feet past the door. Men in plainclothes were taking photographs, opening drawers, coming out of the bedroom with a box. One was at the desk going through an appointment book. The men stopped, glanced at each other, then returned to their work.

  He knew nothing about Cuban crime scene procedures, but he had heard that officers from the Department of Technical Investigation had a double role. They also acted as secret police, reporting directly to State Security.

  Anthony looked quickly around the room and finally forced his eyes to the body on the floor. He could not recognize Olga Saavedra. The bones of her face had been smashed. She lay with her head toward him, her twisted legs beside an overturned chair. A large amount of blood had pooled around her, drying to purplish brown at the edges. With his teeth clamped together, Anthony followed the spatters of blood that went up one wall and across the ceiling. He felt a heaviness in his chest and at the same time a burn of anger.

  "A terrible death."

  "It was," said the detective.

  "How long do you think she has been dead?"

  "Between three and five hours. Your wife arrived at two o'clock. One of the neighbors saw Miss Saavedra go into her apartment at noon." Sánchez gestured to the ruined face. "There was anger in the attack. Do you not have that impression?"

  "Anger or thoroughness," Anthony said.

  An oddly shaped piece of wood lay on the leather sofa. It was perhaps two feet in length with curves extending from a heavy base. Anthony took a step toward it, and the curves resolved into the elongated, nude figures of a man and woman carved from mahogany. "That wooden statue. Was it the murder weapon?"

  "Probably. We haven't moved it. The base appears to match an indentation in her skull. There, above her left eye. The amount of force required for a fatal blow would not be great if the point of the base struck at the correct angle. The other blows appear to have been made after she fell, but we'll know more when the coroner arrives. There will be an autopsy tomorrow at the Institute of Legal Medicine."