“Gregorio’s the chef.” He held the key up again. “I rent his car.”
The stern-faced cook watched us leave.
A ’54 Chevy Bel Air two-door was parked behind the hotel amidst potholes the size of artillery craters. I sat on the edge of the threadbare passenger seat, trying to decide what to tell Ivan. When he started the engine a plume of blue smoke enveloped a small bodega behind us. The smoke hanging in the air reminded me of Betty’s problems during our rescue mission. Maybe Ivan should check the air cleaner for stray fish.
“You interested in tourist places or jinteras?” he said.
“Neither. You know Cayo Hueso?”
He turned to look at me. “Key West?”
“Isn’t there a suburb here called Cayo Hueso?”
“Oh, in Centro?”
“Right. There’s a man there, a Sancho named Salvo—”
“The crazy-painted walls?” He spun his arm in a wide circle.
“I don’t—”
“Murals, all the buildings are painted with bright colors and pictures. Salvo paints them. The priest, he’s famous.” Stale nicotine permeated his breath.
“Santero priest?”
“Sí. Santeria.”
“Do you know where Salvo lives?”
“Of course, in Cayo Hueso.” He eased the fragile transmission into gear. The car lurched forward and the interior immediately filled with a stench of burnt oil.
Salvo was famous?
If Truck was missing, was Abuela’s connecting me to Ivan good luck, fate, destiny, or an Orisha’s spell drawing me into the enemy’s lair? It didn’t matter, I had to find him.
My head ached from fatigue. We passed through a maze of streets where four- and five-story buildings loomed close to the curb. Paint-chipped plaster façades were crumbling, succumbing to decades of neglect. Ivan told me the government provided free housing, jobs, subsidized food, medicine, and education, but the trade-off was maintenance and abundance. He had the ho-hum indifference of a man resigned to having no control over his life. The regime was lucky that Cuban people are proud, nationalistic, and patient, otherwise rafts would extend to Florida like stepping stones.
“People say the U.S. will invade Cuba. You think that’s true?”
“What does Cuba have that America needs?” I said.
He hesitated. “Cigars?”
“Raw materials and religion drive invasions, not Cohibas.”
I pointed to an old sign for Havana Club Rum dangling above the dark windows of an abandoned bar named Sloppy Joe’s. The saloon was sister to the one in Key West, and dated back to the 1930’s. Ivan offered to pick me up a bottle before I returned. Considering the circumstances, a shot of rum sounded like a good idea right about now.
Colorful murals began to appear intermittently on buildings. Ivan took a right, and the walls burst to life with strange organic shapes in myriad hues. The murals went down the block as far as I could see. How had Salvo gained permission for such a comprehensive tableau? The car slowed to a loud, brake-squealing stop.
“Bienvenido a Cayo Hueso.”
“Where can I find Salvo?”
He rolled his hand out toward the front of the car like a game show host gesturing toward a prize on stage. Through the windshield were bizarre crystal-shaped metallic sculptures in front of a two-story building. Every surface was painted in vivid colors and geometric symbols.
“I’ll wait up the block,” he said.
I held my breath from the shower of exhaust as he beat a hasty trail down the road, leaving me alone in a Klee-like world completely devoid of people on the streets. I turned in a full circle and saw no living creature. Not even a bird was flying by these buildings.
39
WAS TRUCK REALLY MISSING, drunk in some bar, or pursuing a lead he might have found here? If he’d barged in on Salvo, who knows what might have happened, especially if the Cayo Hueso Sancho did have something to do with the Carnival.
Amidst the strange architectural sculpture by the entry was a white candle burning. Romantic dinners would never be the same. A steady rhythmic drumbeat reverberated from inside, along with the smell of incense.
I glanced around once more, and then peeked inside the door. A young woman was seated on the floor with her back to me. She faced a cluttered altar in one of the room’s corners. More candles, glasses with clear and amber liquid, a banana, and some photographs were scattered in a random pile. The sound of a phone rang somewhere within, but the woman didn’t seem to hear it. Her body swayed in cadence with each drumbeat, the sound coming from a tape recorder on the floor next to her.
The incessant ringing of the phone finally stopped. Maybe nobody else was here. I spotted a staircase on the opposite wall from the entranced woman.
I can’t believe I’m doing this….
The stairway was dark. It led to a landing lit by a naked bulb. I couldn’t hear anything beyond the drumbeat downstairs, and my pounding heart. The sun had descended below the buildings, and twilight struggled through a dusty window. I walked cautiously down the long corridor and into a larger room.
If I was expecting a place of worship, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The room was a large art studio, with sketches and partially completed paintings spread everywhere in a haphazard fashion. The palette and organic figures matched those outside.
Salvo’s work?
A roach scuttled across my foot. I flinched and took a calming breath. There was a small altar over the paint-splattered work bench. Similar contents to the one downstairs, but this one included a carved white bird with its wings spread in flight.
The room was filled with dusty furniture, easels, and half-finished canvasses. There was no sign that a struggle had taken place. If Truck had come here, maybe he’d found the place empty and left.
Santeria was supposed to be a peaceful religion. People feared their followers because they used spells and incantations in an attempt to influence events. The library book compared those same activities to Christian prayer. Seemed like apples and orangutans to me.
“Salvo?” A woman shouted up the stairs.
My heart seized.
“Salvo?”
Nothing. The drumbeat continued.
I took a deep breath and tiptoed over to where a burgundy curtain hung on the wall. I slowly peeled the corner back—and found a room as large as the studio, but dark. A group of wood crates piled one on top the other emerged in the darkness. On top was a large flat one with an address stenciled on its side.
#1 Obrapia – Florida
I felt as if my feet were sinking, then realized the room had a dirt floor. On the second level? A flicker of light in the far corner caught my eye. I tiptoed over and found a small fire burning beneath a huge bubbling cauldron. Sticks lined its interior. A larger altar surrounded the pot. There were nail-encrusted figurines similar to the one in my flight bag, along with paintings, a large horn from either a steer or ram, and several unlit candles placed haphazardly on shelves.
And then I looked inside the pot.
A human skull and other bones stuck out of the boiling water. I jumped back.
The thief with the Clinton mask kept threatening to boil me. Is this what he meant?
“Truck?”
I caught a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. A dark figure darted through the shadows, and vanished through the burgundy curtain. Was that a man? Had he seen me? Was it Salvo? Or Quasimodo tending his master’s business?
A scratching sound started from the darkness in the opposite corner. My feet felt sunken in the dirt floor. The sound continued with greater urgency. I followed the noise until I saw a large lump in the darkness. It was… a seated man?
“Truck?”
It was him! Gagged and bound to a chair. His eyes bulged with menace. I untied the rag from around his mouth.
“Get me the fuck out of here!”
“What the hell happened?”
“Untie me, man!”
While I wor
ked on the knots, he explained what had happened. “Salvo denied everything, said he could care less about some silly mission.”
“Then why are you—”
“I didn’t believe him, so I started to get a little rough, tried to get him to fess up. Somebody cracked me over the head from behind. Cheap shot, man. I woke up in this freaking dungeon.”
I untied the rope on his ankles. When he tried to stand, he stumbled. “Can’t feel my feet.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.”
The drumbeat from downstairs suddenly stopped.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
I helped Truck past the giant pot with human remains and into the studio. The sound of voices downstairs came up through the floor. Male voices. Although they spoke in Spanish, there was no mistaking their concern.
“The hell we gonna do now?” Truck said.
There were three windows in the room. I ran up to the closest one and tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. Plus it was a sheer drop, two stories down into an alley. The voices stopped.
There was only one set of stairs. We were trapped. Truck grabbed a wooden chair, limped over next to the door, and held it over his head. There had to be something—
Standing next to the altar by the work bench, I spotted what I had thought was the carved bird but now realized wasn’t a bird at all. It was a crudely carved white plane with one green wheel and one red one. My plane!
“Buck, try that window.” Truck pointed to the one in the hall toward the staircase. As I ran over, I heard the sound of feet on the stairs below.
The window opened. A steep roof angled below it toward the ground.
“Come on!”
Just as Truck reached me, two men peered around the corner. They shouted in Spanish.
“Go!”
Truck dropped the chair and climbed through the opening, immediately sliding down the roof. The men ran toward me. The one in front wore a white robe and had a sharply pointed goatee, which gave him the look of a crazed conquistador. I took Truck’s chair, threw it at them, and dove through the window. I landed on the metal roof and tumbled down and over—
Everything spun as I dropped into darkness. My fall was broken by the shriek of metal collapsing, accompanied by a loud grunt.
“Damn!”
It was Truck. We collapsed onto the roof of a car, then bounced to the ground. We had crushed in the roof of a Russian Lada. “You all right?”
“Freaking great,” Truck said.
More shouting sounded above us. We took off down the road. Ivan should be waiting right around—
“I’m going this way!” Truck pointed down a side street. “Our apartment’s down there. Jimbo and Chucky gotta be freaking out.”
Someone dropped off the roof behind us. Without waiting for my response, Truck lit out down the road and disappeared quickly in the shadows. I ran into the night, surrounded by surreal paintings and images, their colors aglow in the darkness. Ivan was parked two blocks down. My lungs felt ready to explode by the time I reached him, but I didn’t see anyone behind me. Once I was in the car, Ivan stomped on the gas pedal.
Truck had been captured by Salvo. Was it because of his accusing the Sancho of attacking the missionaries, or in self defense? And who was that darting through the shadows in the back room? What freaked me out the most, though, was finding the rudimentary version of Betty on Salvo’s altar.
How had he known I was coming? Or what my plane looked like?
40
THE SMELL OF COFFEE wafted up through the open window in my fifth-floor room. Another restless night with vivid dreams of fleeing from adversaries cloaked in darkness had me up early. I’d had dreams of being chased my entire life. I’ve been told they were connected to my drive to pursue impossible tasks, together forming some kind of psychological ying and yang, a daisy chain of fear and aggression. The hunter being hunted, predator and prey wrapped into one. Psychobabble. But to some PhD the dissection of my life would make a compelling case study.
I checked my watch, then tried the phone. Truck answered his cell.
“Ghetto don’t describe this shithole.”
Spoken like a true missionary. “Havana in general, or—”
“The apartment we’re in? It’s ready to collapse. Overloaded with smelly people, everyone smoking shit and playing music all night long. My head’s killing me.”
“You could have been stew by now.” Boiled.
We rehashed what happened at Salvo’s studio. Truck couldn’t remember anything definitive that would link Salvo to the Carnival. I told him I’d read about the repetitive drumbeat in the book and that its purpose was to propel followers into trances so their gods could possess them.
“You saved my ass last night, bro.”
“We’ll laugh about it back in Key West.”
“What’s your stake in all this, Buck? Bounty hunting?”
“Willy hired me for search and rescue, but I’ve got my own reasons. Plus, the news about Rodney made it clear that whoever’s behind this is playing for keeps.”
“Be hell to pay when we find the bastards. We’re going out to that Marina Hemingway to look for the boat. Want to come?”
“I’ve got another idea to hunt down, but that’s a good plan. Let’s circle back later and compare notes.” Truck’s likely involvement with the shark tank assault came to mind. “Try a little diplomacy around the marina, okay?”
He told me that he was the captain of the Sea Lion, a century-old sailing ship now used for sunset cruises in Key West, and was used to being diplomatic with idiots. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t imagine him sucking up to the rum-punch crowd.
“Our driver’s waiting,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”
“One question first. Was Shaniqua Peebles into Santeria?”
His laugh was without mirth. “She’s a freak, man, but if I find the motherfucker who answered her phone? Take a lot more than poultry to protect their ass.”
“Is that a yes?”
He hung up, leaving me to ponder his non-response.
41
AFTER LAST NIGHT’S ESCAPE from Cayo Hueso, Ivan had reluctantly agreed to meet me this morning. With time to kill I made a list of five-letter anagrams from the Finca Vigia out of the thirty-three letter cipher in my father’s note.
Then, I took Karen’s manuscript from my backpack. Bad luck, huh? A handwritten note fell from the typed pages:
“K, Love it. The first thirty pages establish a ruthless protagonist, and the idea of a down and out salvage hunter who exploits Key West’s many potential victims is brilliant. You might soften some of his rough edges, but great so far…”
Ruthless salvage hunter?
After thirty minutes I had read enough. The story was about a renegade who used a boat rather than a plane, had black hair instead of blond, and was generally a cold-hearted loner. A handsome yet insensitive man, who although resourceful and well intentioned, was unwilling or unable to show his feelings, and when faced to make moral choices always defaulted to greed. He’d come to Key West in the wake of his failed marriage, and while Karen painted him as compelling, he was also his own worst enemy.
Had she been talking to my ex-wife?
The writing was quite good, her prose crisp and commanding. Had I not known otherwise, I might even have mistaken it for Elmore Leonard. The story would have been enjoyable were it not for the mirror-effect of seeing myself through Karen’s eyes, which was as flattering as being recognized in a police line-up. If her opinion of me was this bad, the moment I thought we’d shared at Seven Fish was pure fantasy.
I paced the room like a tethered dog while I awaited the rendezvous with Ivan. The book on codes offered the only distraction. Most of the examples contained letters and numbers, and others had circular, wheel, and disk ciphers that were far more sophisticated then what my father had used. I struggled to conjure an image of him constructing his word puzzles. All I could remember was a sea of letters.
Some ciphers use
d geometric symbols, some only numbers, and fewer still contained “nulls,” which was often an ampersand utilized to confuse code breakers. Most, though, were made up simply of letters.
My father felt the use of ciphers was the tradition of great diplomats, or secretaries of state, which he had yearned to become. That memory gave me an idea. I scanned the book’s index. A name jumped out at me: Franklin, Ben.
Franklin’s shuttle diplomacy with England and France before, during, and after the Revolutionary War was legendary. My father had several volumes of biographies on…another memory clicked. The French accent Dad tortured us with. “The language of diplomacy,” he called it. Was Franklin America’s first diplomat to France?
The book chronicled Franklin as a secret emissary to France in 1781. He’d assigned consecutive numbers to each of 682 letters in a long French passage, whereby he concocted a homophonic substitute cipher. The passage used an example, but his use of numbers diluted my adrenalin. Dad stuck to letters. The connection to Franklin, France, and diplomacy had struck a chord. Memories of my father’s passion for cryptology were still embedded in my mind, but could they be recovered?
My stomach rumbled like plate tectonics. Last night’s liquid dinner of daiquiris in the lobby bar with Ivan calmed my nerves but did little for my hunger. We had debated both sides of why either his government or Santeros would care about the missionaries. Due to his obvious fear of Santeria, I didn’t mention the huge cauldron and its contents, or my rescue of Truck.
I still had yet to find a rationale, political or otherwise, for killing seven people and risking an international incident or holy war. There had to be something more, but damn if I knew what.
I filled my backpack with the camera, note pad, and the book on Havana. I hesitated, looked at the one on Santeria, then stuffed it in too. There had been no mention of giant pots, cannibalism, or kidnapping in the book. The elevator carried me to the rooftop bar, where the view of Havana Vieja was incredible. I could see all the way to the harbor in the East.
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