Act of Betrayal (26 page)

“I know he was there for several years. When I was in the first and second grade he used to send me postcards.”

“Anything else?”

“A lot of regrets. He would never even vacation there. He wanted no part of Miami.”

“Did he leave any files, records, journals?”

“No, when I got his stuff there was nothing. You wouldn't think he had a past.”

He should have met my mother, I thought, then I remembered: he had. “It is funny, though. Just before he was killed he mentioned something, just in passing. He'd come over for lunch with me and the baby. He was so happy he had a grandson. He mentioned that he'd seen somebody from the past that he hadn't seen for many years. I got the impression it was someone from Miami.”

“A friend?”

“No, no friend. He didn't seem upset, just depressed.”

“What happened?”

“Two nights later he was shot on the street outside a bar downtown. I was surprised at that. He hadn't been drinking anything stronger than iced tea for six months, as far as I knew. The police said it was probably a robbery. But they gave me his wallet. Had two hundred dollars in it. And his watch. They said the robber must have been scared off. I never bought it. I thought it had to be something out of his past. The detectives talked to somebody at the Agency, only after I insisted. But they never really looked into it.”

“Where was he shot?”

“Twice in the back of the head, just below the ear, as he was about to get into his car on a side street. Small-caliber. I think they said a twenty-two. Never knew what hit him, they told me.”

A chill rippled across my shoulders, raising goose bumps on my arms.

“Any witnesses? Anybody hear the shots, see the killer?”

“No. He'd been dead for a while when he was found. A taxi driver saw him lying there and called it in.”

“When did this happen?”

“Five years ago last May. May twenty-seventh. I really resented it,” she said. “I never knew him all those years growing up. I was finally getting to know my father, and then he was gone again. This rime, forever.”

“At least you had him for a while,” I said gently. “Some of us aren't that lucky.”

“You're right,” she said sadly. I could hear a child playing in the background. “How did your dad die?”

“Executed in Cuba, by a firing squad. Apparently he was on an anti-Castro mission.”

“At least he died for a cause and you know why. Good luck. Call me anytime. Aren't you having a hurricane down there? I thought I saw something on TV.”

“It's not here yet,” I said.

A crowd was clustered around the bulletin board reading the latest Hurricane Center advisory. The television monitors overhead were broadcasting infrared satellite pictures of the storm, giant counterclockwise spirals of angry red, the eye pulsating at the core like the beating heart of something alive.

Lottie strode by wearing a yellow slicker. She would be out in the teeth of the storm, shooting pictures. I was sorry I wouldn't be with her, in the middle of the action.

She paused by my desk. “Hell all Friday,'' she said. “It looks like this is it. The big baboomba!”

“Watch yourself. I hope this damn thing blows over before the Vera Verela concert,” I fretted. The benefit for the missing boys was only two days away.

I dialed the homicide detectives. They weren't in. I could try again from the ME office. My phone rang as I gathered up my things to leave.

“Montero?”

“Hola, Jorge.”

“You must leave that place, a storm is coming. A bigger storm is soon to follow.”

“What?”

“The same winds that swept across Cuba have brought us the truth. Antonio's
diario.
We have id”

“Oh puleeze.”

“Reyes's own hired
criminal came to us after he saw what Antonio had written there. Reyes was a Castro agent. He betrayed all of us.”

“I hate to interrupt your usual routine, Jorge, but did you know that Frank Winslow is dead? Murdered.”

“Muerto. Dios mio
, I did not know.”

“You didn't know he was blown away, up in Virginia, in a murder quite similar to that of Armando Gutierrez?”

“No, my word to you. Who killed him?”

“I thought you might know.”

“Reyes! Winslow knew the truth. So Reyes had him killed.”

“Sure, and Reyes shot J.R., put the cyanide in the Tylenol capsules, and blew up the Federal Budding in Oklahoma City.”

“¿Que?”

“I can't talk to you now, Jorge. I'm busy.”

“Si,”
he said quietly and hung up.

The wind was already gusting as I drove to the medical examiner's office at Number One Bob Hope Road.

The Cuban capital had been devastated, the radio said, with hundreds of lives lost, buildings collapsed, mass destruction. The minor damage Bravo had inflicted with grenades and gunfire in his speedboat drive-bys was a trifling annoyance compared to the devastation wrought by Mother Nature.

Cuba, so close and yet so far away. I remembered my Aunt Odalys saying that Cuba is everywhere: in the food we eat, in our prayers, in our hearts, in our daydreams. Why does this small island no bigger than Pennsylvania forever obsess this sprawling and complex city of exiles and contradictions?

I parked and trudged past the fifteenth-century Spanish cannon up the stairs to the entrance, lugging my bag and a fistful of notebooks.

The lobby, with its raspberry-colored furniture and soft-patterned carpet, was empty. The chief was not in, but there was “a skeleton crew,” according to Miriam, the motherly chief investigator, who emerged from her office cracking one of her usual morbid jokes. She seeded me in a small conference room near the morgue.

“Anybody attributable to the storm come in yet?”

“One dead, two wounded, in a family fight over whether to evacuate, one electrocution.” She ticked them off on her fingers like a housewife with a shopping list. “Homeowner was trying to knock the coconuts off his trees. He touched a hot wire with the metal pole he was using.”

Ouch. People were already dying, and the storm hadn't even arrived. Miamians cannot seem to do anything without killing off themselves or each other.

“And I hear we have two traffic cases on the way. Oh”—she brightened—” here are the detectives on the electrocution.”

Hanks and Wogan appeared in the doorway and did a double take when they saw me. They wore boots, their hair windblown. “Hey, guys. Just who I wanted to see.”

They rolled their eyes.

“Did you get my messages?” I asked.

“Mucho messages, Britt. Don't you ever give up?” Hanks said.

“No.”

“That's what I thought.”

“I wanted to ask you about Armando Gutierrez. What kind of silencer was used?” The detectives exchanged glances as Billy sat down at the conference table to write the report on the electrocution.

“Who you been talking to?” Hanks demanded.

“Nobody,” I said quickly. “He was shot execution style, two right behind the ear in the middle of the day. Nobody heard a thing. You don't have to be a genius to think it was a professional hit, with a silencer…”

“You're not gonna print that?”

“Not until you say it's okay.”

I had not seen raw potato chunks around the body, ruling out the cheapest, most popular silencer. Firing a pistol through a potato is messy but effective. They may be bulky to carry around, but they have their advantages. Possession of a potato is not a federal offense. Yet.

“Okay, so there was a silencer,” he conceded, “but I don't want to read about it in the newspaper.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“He had a contact wound. There was so much blood in his hair that we couldn't see it at the scene. But when the ME cleaned off the wounds the muzzle mark was bigger, larger in diameter, than the barrel of any weapon that caliber. Had to be a silencer, probably a reworked lawnmower muffler with a few extra baffles. Turns the sound down to what sounds like the thud of a car door. Takes the crack right out of it.”

“The gun was a twenty-two?”

“Listen to me now, Britt.” Hanks took a seat at the conference table and began to pry the plastic lid off the Styrofoam coffee cup he'd been carrying. “You can't be printing this.”

“You know better.”

“Yeah, a twenty-two. Smaller caliber has less noise to start with, and the barrel can be easily machined to screw on a silencer.”

Billy looked up from his paperwork. “You got the name of that cousin, the next of kin?”

“Uncle,” Hanks said. He put down his coffee, opened his small black notebook, and spelled out the name.

“What did Gutierrez have in his pockets?”

“Nothing much,” he said, closing the book.

“What?”

“One thing you might find interesting. I know we did.” Billy grinned.

“What?” I looked from one to the other. “I can't stand it. Tell me. I'll trade you some information I guarantee you don't have. Tell me.”

“You first,” Hanks said. He was grinning now, too.

I told them about Frank Winslow. Neither changed expression. “So?” Hanks said.

“Same MO, same connections.”

“In goddamn Virginia, five freaking years ago.” Hanks looked skeptical.

“That's not all that unusual an MO, Britt,” Billy said.

“It wouldn't hurt to check it out.”

“A pro probably wouldn't keep a piece that long,” Billy said.

I shrugged. “I thought it was interesting.”

“Maybe it's worth a call or two,” Hanks said.

“Now you tell me.”

“I dunno,” he teased. “You think that was good enough for a trade, Billy?”

“Give the girl a break.”

“You promise you won't…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“Tucked in his shirt pocket, close to his heart,” he said, speaking deliberately, excruciatingly slowly, “the late, unfortunate Mr. Armando Gutierrez was carrying the late, unfortunate Mr. Alex Aguirre's business card with his home number and his beeper number written on it.”

I stared, mind racing. Could Bravo have told me the truth? No way. Maybe. “So you think they're related?”

“Now
that
is something worth checking into.” He pointed his index finger at me. “That's exactly what we plan to do once this freaking storm blows over.” He pushed his chair back. “Come on, Billy, we've gotta get back out there.”

“Was the card new, like he got it here? Or did it look like it came with him from Cuba?”

“Dirty, dog-eared, had been wet and dried off.” Hanks looked to Billy, who nodded in affirmation as they went out the door.

How can I reach Bravo? I wondered. I called Reyes. He answered his home phone himself.

“Mr. Reyes…”

“Juan Carlos,” he corrected. “I tried to reach you, Britt. First and foremost, I am deeply concerned. WQBA radio news reported that you and Jorge Bravo were present, together, when a murder took place in a hotel downtown.”

Drat, I thought, now the FBI will know for sure, unless they're too busy boarding up to listen to Spanish-language radio.

“I cannot emphasize enough my grave concern,” Reyes was saying, “for your safety, for your reputation. Bravo is a madman. Dangerous. He will stop at nothing. I strongly suspect that he is a Castro agent.”

Hell, was everybody in Miami a Castro agent?

“Why would you say that?”

“Many reasons, among them his constant efforts to malign and slander me and my organization. You are aware that I am a threat to Fidel as his economy and his leadership falter and weaken. Fidel knows this. Of course you understand all that. The other reason I attempted to contact you was that Wilfredo, my aide, did as promised and I now have the diary of your father.”

“You have it?” I blurted out. “Jorge Bravo claims he has it.”

“You see, he is a madman. I am looking at it at this very moment. Here at my desk. Holding it in my hand. Fragile, dusty, but definitely intact. At this moment, I am preparing to leave. The island neighborhoods must evacuate, as you know. But when the storm has passed I will personally deliver it to you and Catalina.”

Now that would be a scene.

“No, I'll come right now. I'm on the way.”

“Impossible.” he said. “I'm sure the police will no longer allow traffic onto the island. Out of the question. I will be in touch with you later.”

The connection broke.

I upended my purse onto the polished conference table, pawing frantically through the contents. Did I have it? What had I done with it? It had to be here.

A scrap of paper fluttered to the floor from the inner lining. I snatched it up. The contact number Bravo had given me for
especialista
Luisa.

Nothing else seemed to matter. Other goals had come first all my life. I followed through on every story, always put my job first, but had never done for myself what I had so often done for others. This one was for me. This time I would follow through, for my father, for myself. The storm was nothing. I had lived in the eye of a storm all my life. Nothing could stop me.

I grabbed my bag, punching the number into the cell phone as I ran up the stairs to the lobby.

“Britt?” said Miriam. “You're not going out there?”

“I'll be back,” I said. “Something I have to do.

“Answer, answer,” I muttered at the phone. I had trouble pushing open the front door, surprised by the force of the wind that buffeted me as I stepped out. It nearly knocked me off my feet. Head down I fought my way to the car.

“Hola
.” Someone answered at the other end of the phone as I slammed the driver's side door.

“Luisa! Is that you?”

“Si.”

“I must talk to Jorge Bravo, right away,” I said, identifying myself, turning the key in the ignition.