Act of Betrayal

by Edna Buchanan

  I stood to greet him.

  “!Asesina! he shouted. “Murderer!”

  I blinked.

  “You killed them!”

  Heads turned, jaws dropped. Newsroom busybodies were being entertained again, at my expense.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You are killing them again! ¡Asesina! All the brave men who died. You are killing them.” He shook his cane at me. “You are the asesina!”

  “Mr. Bravo,” I said coldly, “what are you talking about?”

  “You are murdering their memories!” He slapped the top of my desk resoundingly with a rough-hewn hand that was missing two fingers. Several papers sailed off onto the floor.

  “Stop shouting.” I stood my ground angrily. “People are trying to work here. If you have something to discuss, let’s discuss it rationally, like adults, but I refuse to be screamed at.”

  His lined and ruddy face grew redder, his voice louder. “¡Muerte!” He pointed a finger. “¡La camplice!”

  That did it. There was no way to reason with this man who, given his past history, might be armed. I turned to Ryan, who was wide-eyed, his hand on the telephone. “Call security,” I said crisply.

  “Reyes is a traitor!” Bravo shouted. “¡El es un monstruo! You blaspheme the memories of those he betrayed! The heroes. You! The daughter of a patriot! Tony Montero must be turning in his grave!”

  My patience was gone. For the first time I was relieved to see the two usually oafish News security guards appear with merciful speed.

  I feared Bravo would fight, but he shook them off and limped out of the newsroom on his own, spewing a tirade over his shoulder.

  “Write another story! Tell the truth, this time! You will hear from me.” His shouts echoed from the hallway as they herded him aboard an elevator.

  Trembling, I sat down. I’d been right, I told myself, furious and embarrassed. Writing just one story related in any way to Cuban politics is like stirring up a nest of yellow jackets with a stick. It makes them worse. Exile community fanatics will drag you kicking and screaming into their squabbles, schemes, and petty jealousies. No way would I become captive of my heritage and allow them to involve me in their battles with Fidel Castro and each other.

  Reyes’s secretary put me right through.

  “Britt,” he said warmly, as though delighted to hear my voice.

  “Mr. Reyes,” I said, speaking softly so my colleagues would not hear. “Thank you for the orchids. They are absolutely breathtaking, but you shouldn’t have.”

  “Oh, but I should have. They are not good enough, but the best I could find. How can I thank you? For the first time, your newspaper published my name without including distortions and innuendos. There were a few things I was not so pleased with, but,” he added quickly, “I am convinced they are no fault of yours. I know the people you work for.”

  “Have you found my father’s diary?” I asked, ignoring his comment.

  He sighed. “Did you remember me to the lovely Catalina, as I requested?”

  “I tried,” I confessed, “but she’s been busy and we haven’t talked.”

  He paused. “A pity. Family is so important. Ah, yes. I saw your story, also on Sunday, about the boys who ran away.”

  “I don’t think they’re all runaways,” I said shortly. Why did he persist in polite small talk? Hadn’t he heard my question? “It would be so exciting to read my father’s diary.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That they did not run away? The hearts of young men are bold, they yearn for adventure, to explore the world.”

  “Oh. I thought we were talking about my fathers diary.”

  “You seem so certain they did not rim away.”

  “Well, I may know more soon.” I fingered the sheaf of messages on my desk “There seems to have been a great deal of response to the story. I just haven’t had a chance to check into it yet.”

  “A busy woman. Do you ever take time for yourself? You must do so. Has there been response to your story about me?”

  Was he deliberately tormenting me by answering my question with unrelated questions of his own, or simply trying to prolong our conversation?

  “As a matter of fact, there was some reaction. Hostile. From Jorge Bravo. I was unaware you two were at odds.”

  “So be it,” Reyes said smoothly. “One is known by his enemies; therefore, I am flattered.”

  “I thought you were on the same side of the fight.”

  “Many years ago, we were all members of la causa. We spilled our blood and lost years of our lives in Cuban prisons. We endured the hunger strikes, the beatings, the threats. Adversity makes some men stronger. The weak are destroyed.”

  “The diary,” I persisted.

  “Ah yes, my assistant is conducting a diligent search but has yet to report back to me. I will inform him of your impatience and the urgency of this matter.”

  “Thank you,” I said, slightly flustered. “Since it’s been thirty years, I guess I can wait a few more days.”

  Gloria handed me a note. A detective, on another line. We said adios, but not before Reyes confided that he hoped to see me again soon, in a richly resonant voice that whispered of the dark and mysterious mountains of Cuba.

  Still caught up in Reyes’s lingering mystique, I failed to grasp the detective’s name or that of his department. “Miz Montero,” he drawled, “I’m wanting to talk to you about that article you did the other day on those missing boys. We’ve got us one that fits your profile to a T.”

  Another one? “What department are you with, detective? I’m sorry I didn’t hear your name.”

  “Frank Burgess, the Oglethorpe County Sheriffs office in Georgia. We got us a young man missing ‘bout eighteen months now, without a word.”

  Oh, Lord, would the trail of every missing teenager in the nation now lead to my doorstep? I wanted resolution, not more mystery. “What makes you think he could be connected to our disappearances down here?”

  “Miami. That’s where he was headed.”

  A cold feeling crept down my body, as though a stranger had just walked on my grave.

  Todd Sutter had run off from Sandy Cross, Georgia, destination Miami. He left a note telling his folks not to worry. He hitchhiked. They got a postcard from Macon, another from a motel on the Georgia-Florida line. The last one came from Ft. Lauderdale. “Almost there, told ya I’d make it!” He was tall, slender, blond, and blue-eyed. Age thirteen.

  That was nearly two years ago.

  “Now we doan’ know if he made it that far,” the detective drawled, “but his folks seen your story in one of the papers up here. He resembles those other youngsters and, given the similarities, I thought I’d call to see if you knew anythin’ more than what you put in your story.”

  I didn’t.

  By day’s end I had three more. Robert Donovan from Chicago, Danny Harding from Tallahassee, and a lad named Watson Kelly from Gary, Indiana.

  There was no proof any of them had vanished in Miami. There was no proof any of them had ever arrived in Miami, except for the Kelly boy. He had called his parents collect, said he was in Miami, and asked for money to come home. Mad as hell, they were practicing tough love at the time. “You managed to get there on your own,” they told him. “You can come home on your own.” They simply wanted to scare him, they said, and intended to wire the money next time he called. The call never came. That was three years ago.

  I took notes on all the cases, spoke to the parents, and asked them to send pictures.

  My count was ten and climbing.

  It is not an unusual rite of passage for a teenage boy to run away, go off on a lark, or take to the road seeking adventure. It is unusual, however, when he is never heard from again.

  I cleared my desk as I tried again without success to reach my mother. I hoped to surreptitiously smuggle out the orchids, which wasn’t e
asy. When I lifted the arrangement I could barely see over it. I lugged my purse, my notes, and the giant orchid basket out to the T-Bird.

  Dusk had settled across the parking lot with only streaks of crimson sunset still slashed across the western sky. Somewhere to the east a hurricane-hunting jet was in the air. A modified C-130, loaded with weather equipment, had been dispatched to check out the tropical storm. To anyone passing by I must have looked like a flowering bush on the move. I felt like something out of Macbeth, Birnam wood on the way to Dunsinane.

  Something startled me, a sound, as a shadow emerged from behind a van I was passing.

  I turned, trying to see between the bobbing white and yellow blooms.

  “Juan Carlos Reyes is a traitor!”

  The shadowy figure used a cane. Bravo.

  “¡Basta! Vamoose! Get away from me!” I snapped, angry at being accosted when vulnerable and unwilling to replay the newsroom scene alone and without backup in a darkening parking lot. “Leave me alone or I’ll call the police! They’ll revoke your bond!”

  Bravo shrugged. “So be it,” he said dramatically, drawing himself up like a man facing a firing squad. “Summon them now. I have been to prison before.”

  Suddenly he looked small and old and harmless in the dying light.

  I sighed. “What exactly is it that you want to speak to me about?” I said quietly.

  “You must listen,” he said, voice calm for the first time. “We must talk.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, eager to get it over with.

  “Come.” He waved me toward a car. “We will drink cafe cubano.”

  Was he kidding? No way would I get in a car with him.

  “You can trust me,” he said, grinning.

  “I’ll meet you somewhere nearby.” Somehow I couldn’t picture Bravo hobnobbing at the 1800 Club, frequented by journalists and cops.

  “La Caficita?”

  I nodded. Brightly lit and always busy.

  “Follow me,” he commanded with the authority of a general.

  I had to smile at his machismo. He climbed painfully into his old clunker of a car. Follow me, indeed. He would be lucky if it started. A vintage Oldsmobile Toronado with a bumper sticker on the back. “En los Noventa, Fidel Revienta.” In the Nineties, Fidel Will Explode.

  I wondered how Bravo had accessed employee parking, attainable only by key card. A commando and guerrilla fighter, no matter how inept, I decided, would probably have no trouble circumventing the News’s parking lot security.

  His old car needed a muffler and a paint job. I parked behind it outside the cafe on Calle Ocho. We sat at a small table in the back and ordered coffee. Drinking from a tiny paper cup, I looked around the shabby coffee shop, remembering the exquisite porcelain from which Reyes and I had sipped.

  “You are Cuban too, you know the suffering … Bravo began.

  “Only half Cuban,” I quickly corrected.

  “Better than none,” he said, startled.

  “Actually, Jorge, I know very little about my father or my Cuban roots. I was only three years old when he died.”

  “He didn’t die. Never say he died!” He slammed his fist down on the table, eyes shooting fire. “He was executed! Murdered. You must never forget that.”

  Embarrassed, I glanced around. No one had noticed. Such passionate outbursts were not unusual here. His emotion, the smells, the music of Spanish spoken, and the Latin beat from a radio behind the counter awakened long-dormant memories of visits to my Cuban relatives during my early childhood. They were warm, volatile, and demonstrative, and I adored them. My mother cut off the visits when I was still small. She had a multitude of reasons. She did not like it when I came home speaking Spanish and talking about my father, and there were also the matters of my Aunt Odalys’s rites in the night and my Uncle Hector’s arrest.

  “… the tragedy we call Cuba,” Bravo was saying. “I am a stranger, an outcast, an exile. My country is one of the last places on earth where people are not free. That shame burns my heart.” He pressed his hand over his heart as men do when the flag passes. “We believed in a fiery young attorney who embodied the goals we believed in, or so we thought. We believed his loyalty had been pledged, like ours, to the ideals of José Martf, not to communism.

  “Fidel’s Twenty-sixth of July movement offered us hope for freedom and justice.” His eyes grew dreamy for a moment. “Then Castro revealed his true nature and the Twenty-sixth of July became a mockery”—his voice rose—” a symbol of hypocrisy and deceit, and we found ourselves fighting again for liberty and justice. We were soldiers, and those of us who are still alive continue to be soldiers.” His lined face sagged in the harsh light but his eyes and his words reflected passion and energy.

  We sat, quiet for a moment. “You have the eyes of your father,” Bravo said, studying my face.

  The exile community of freedom fighters was small then, so I assumed they were acquainted.

  “How well did you know him?”

  “How well did I know him?” He smiled, eyes cast down, almost shy. “We blew up a sugar refinery together and sabotaged the bridge at Almendares, a major pipeline. Fidel was furious, he ranted for days.

  “But you know all these stories.” He shrugged, turning his attention to the door and passing traffic.

  “No, I don’t. I know so little, but I hope to see his diary soon and learn more about him.”

  Bravo drew back, as though stunned. “You know about Antonio’s diario?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised at his reaction. “I learned about it just recently, from Juan Carlos Reyes.” I hoped mere mention of the name would not spark another tirade. “He’s looking for it among his things. He suggested my mother might have it.”

  “Of course she does not.” Bravo’s expression was incredulous. “How would she?”

  “How do you know? Have you seen it?” I stared at him.

  He looked serious. “Reyes,” he muttered, lowering his voice. “He is worse than Castro. Castro makes no secret of who he is. This man does his evil in secret.”

  “What do you mean?” Do not let them draw you into their feuds, I warned myself.

  “We cannot discuss the diario here.” Bravo glanced around as though we were being watched. “Too many ears. We will go to my home.” He tossed down some money and sprang to his feet, or at least tried to do so, balancing precariously with his cane, his good hand grasping the table for leverage.

  Ignoring the warning voices, I followed him to the clunker, leaving my T-Bird foil of orchids parked on the street.

  The interior of his car was in no better condition than the exterior. I tried to ask about the diary as we drove, but he placed a stubby finger to his lips to silence me, mouthing the letters FBI. The FBI wouldn’t bug his car, I thought. Then I remembered the charges he faced. Would they?

  I watched Bravo, his eyes alert, like those of the savvy street cops I have ridden with, checking the mirrors, roving the storefronts we passed, aware of everything around us.

  His house was a small pillbox with peeling paint on a barren lot in Little Havana’s heart. Some men played dominoes at a table under a harsh light in a side yard. Several stood and saluted as Bravo stepped from his car. He returned their salute, standing straight, trying to hide his limp.

  His wife, Nerida, a tiny, small-boned woman, served us Iron Beer and disappeared quietly into the kitchen. A statue of the Virgin stood on the mantel in front of a Cuban flag and a blown-up photo of a much younger Bravo and about a dozen other men in military gear clustered in and around a jeep. Probably shot in the sixties. “Is that…?” Another face caught my eye.

  “Si. There am I, and there is Antonio, and the others.” He reached out, extending his good arm, as though introducing us.

  I stared into my fathers face.

  He stared back boldly, chin tilted, one booted foot up on the running board of the jeep, what looked like an M14 rifle cradled in the crook of his
arm.

  “So many are gone now.” Bravo sighed. “Antonio, Rolando, Angel.”

  “I never saw this picture before,” I said, thrilled, unable to take my eyes off it. “Would it be possible for me to have a copy?”

  “Si, si.” He sank heavily into a chair and frowned. “I don’t know where is the negative, but…”

  “I have a friend, a photographer, who could come over now, tonight, to take a picture of it.” Something told me not to miss the chance while I had it.

  He shrugged. “Of course.”

  “I can page her.”

  While using the telephone I noticed something bulky under a canvas tarp in the corner. Machine guns? Grenade launchers?

  Damn, I thought. Illegal weapons. Bravo was already free on bond on similar federal charges. With my luck the FBI would raid this place tonight. They’d seize everything, including me. How would I explain to the city desk? I hoped Lottie would answer her page promptly. The hour was late, she was having dinner with the Prince. She might not answer at all.

  “Antonio and me,” Bravo reminisced, “we were plantados, the political prisoners who stood firm. We refused to wear prison uniforms, refused to enter the government’s rehabilitation program. In retaliation, we were brutalized, forced to labor in a rock quarry at the Isle of Pines. But we never stopped opposing the government, we organized secret resistance groups in Havana and Cienfuegos from our cells. Your father was a patriot, a noble man. His courage inspires me still. Like him I am prepared to do whatever I must to see Cuba free.”

  The phone rang and I heard the murmur of Nerida’s voice. She came into the room. Yes! It was Lottie.

  “Sorry to interrupt your date,” I told her, “but can you come shoot a picture for me?”

  “Sheet, you didn’t interrupt nothing. Wait till you hear—”

  “Now, Lottie,” I said urgently and gave her the address.

  “Whatcha working on?”

  “No story,” I muttered into the phone. “This is personal.”