Cuba Straits

Figuerito cast a long shadow in the lighter’s flame. “There are nice mango trees on the way to the sea,” he said, “unless you have a better idea. I hope you do. At the house, I didn’t see the donkey, so it won’t be so easy this time.” He paused, staring down at Tomlinson. “Brother, I warned you about lighting matches around old film. You trying to get us in trouble?”

The Bic went out. Tomlinson got to his feet. He walked toward the body, which was hidden by distance and weeds. “You’re sure he’s dead?”

“Oh yeah. Anyone lose that much blood, they go

Tomlinson stopped. “Gourds?”

Figuerito’s mind was on something else. “Did you watch the film?”

“What do you mean, ‘gourds’? Oh. Well . . . I held it up to the light. Just a few dozen frames, but I know why your grandmother wants the footage protected.” On tiptoes, he got a glimpse of one dead hand. “Any idea who that person is?”

“It’s the bad Santero,” Figgy said. “I didn’t kill him, she did. But I took his phone and his money. His phone was next to the tree.” He patted his back pocket to confirm both were safe.

“The guy, his name’s Vernum, you said. Vernum attacked you, right? Self-defense. You had no choice in the matter. An open-and-shut case. I mean, no one in their right mind would . . . Well, you know what I mean.” Tomlinson felt faint.

“In Key West, sure, that was true. You don’t remember? His face is still a mess from my baseball shoe. Lots of stitches. It made me happy, seeing that. I wanted to kill him, but my abuela is still very quick for her age.” Figgy started toward an open space between the chimney and a crumbling brick wall. “Come on. You can help me look for her since you understand about the film.”

Tomlinson hurried after the little man. “You’re telling me your grandmother—she’s, what, seventy, eighty years old?—that she murdered the guy?”

“Either her or the spirits came out of the ground. That happens in this place sometimes. The Egun spirit, she can inhabit a human person to, you know, do her bidding. Have sex with a man, if she wants. Or steal his shit or even kill him. My abuela was a Santería novia in her youth. Ask her, but”—the shortstop turned to stress his point—“do not make her mad.”

Tomlinson thought, No shit, Sherlock, while his brain debated Are they both nuts? No jury in the world would believe the little Cuban’s spiel. But he also remembered hearing gunfire. “Oh . . . Oh! She shot him, you’re saying. Okay. It’s a little easier to picture a woman that age—”

“Brother,” Figgy interrupted, “what she did was cut off his rooster. I always wondered if she would do it. Now I know.” He turned left past the wall and angled down a hill shaped like a bunker. “The place I’m going to show you I promised I never would, but I’m worried because you’re right. Even three years ago, she had lost a few steps. Her bad leg, you know? They built it for her back when she could dance.”

“Built her . . . a prosthetic leg?”

“I don’t know what this is, prosthetic. I’m talking about the place I’m taking you. There were bombs in those days. Like a shelter, you know? This was before I was born and before my mother left for Moscow because I was so much trouble.”

“Whoa! amigo. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“If it’s true, why not? Stupid boys get what they deserve. The shelter, though, they built that back when there were bombs.”

They, Tomlinson translated, were the Castros. The cruelty of Imelda Casanova was equally apparent. “No child deserves to be called stupid. That was a shitty thing for her to say, Figgy.”

“My mother? She didn’t say anything. How could she? They don’t have telephones in Moscow where she lives.” Figuerito stopped. “Strike a match,” he said.

Tomlinson used the lighter and watched his friend descend into a trench lined with bricks that was more like a ramp, bushes all around. Beneath camouflage netting was a metal gate with a chain and padlock, the gate open. “Wait here,” he said, then looked back after opening a steel door. “If she comes out holding a knife, don’t ask questions, just run. You’re faster, but she might make me kill you anyway.”

•   •   •

FROM WHERE Tomlinson stood on the side of the hill, he couldn’t see a road, but he knew a road was there when he noticed headlights ricocheting between the trees and sky. A bad road with lots of bumps, for a car traveling so fast. Beyond, to the southeast, distant flames were a candle in the darkness. A peasant’s house on fire, it looked like.

Shit-oh-dear. The Russian came into his mind. The Santero’s Key West wingman in the black Mercedes. But what was he, or anyone else, doing out here in Fumbuck, Cuba, at this hour?

Tomlinson didn’t need a watch to feel the starry weight of midnight.

His logician brain shifted to the phone in Figgy’s pocket while his extrasensory powers probed the horizon. Not easy because, first, his receptors had to pierce a veil of agony; a century of pain lingered here. His lens soon broke free and there was contact: heavy . . . very heavy—a human presence out there. A gelid void: intelligence with a functioning heart.

Was it Ford? The biologist, in certain moods, transmitted a similarly scary vibe. Possible. The message Tomlinson had left with the hotel doorman read En route biggest house in Plobacho to return what was taken. Meet there or No Más anchored Cojimar. PS: Giant Russki chasing us. Float on and watch your ass.

Tomlinson concentrated on the road and fine-tuned his reception. No . . . it wasn’t Ford. The biologist drove like an old woman, even in a rental. Yet, Ford was out there somewhere—a green aura, blue-tinted—and seemed to be pressing closer.

The cell phone, his logician mind reminded him. That’s the problem, dumbass. The phone Figgy’s carrying has a GPS in it.

Something else he noticed: the odor of woodsmoke, sudden and fresh. Very close. He changed angles and saw a spark spiral out of the bushes not far from where he stood. The chamber within was vented, and someone had lit a fire. Once again: shit-oh-dear.

Tomlinson tapped at the steel door, then opened it a crack. “Figgy . . . ? Oh, Figuerito, I think we might have company.”

No response. He flicked the lighter and went through into a hall made of rebar and concrete, walls three feet thick, with a ceiling so low he had to duck. It actually was a bomb shelter. A second steel door was open. Down a ramp, along another hall, where a light allowed him to pocket the Bic before his thumb blistered.

“Figgy? Uhh . . . Miz Casanova? I’m not armed, just a decent man trying to help a shipmate.”

He exited into a room that was a small office. A steel desk, military green, maps on two walls, kerosene lamps on hooks in the ceiling, only one lit. On a table, a portable shortwave radio next to a battery-operated phone, the old kind with a crank. Wire snaked through a hole in the wall—ante

Damn. No wonder Figgy couldn’t hear him. This was more than a bomb shelter. It was headquarters for a few high-ranking survivalists. Only two names came to mind—or three, counting Imelda Casanova. But why, during a nuclear war, would the Castro brothers sequester themselves with only one mistress?

They wouldn’t. In a space this small, mayhem could be guaranteed.

He placed the film canister on a chair and sniffed. Faint odor of lavender, and woodsmoke from the fire that had to be in an adjoining room. It was quiet down here below ground. A good spot for a nervous man to breathe deeply while his heart slowed to normal. On the desk by the radio was a logbook, pages yellow with age. He removed a lantern from its hook and flipped through a few entries, then several more. Ham radio gibberish, mostly, but one grabbed his attention: