Authors: James Grippando
“What if I simply decline to call your soldier as a witness?”
“I suggest you think very hard about that. Or it’s Lindsey Hart who suffers.”
“Maybe Lindsey is willing to take that chance.”
“Maybe. But perhaps there are others who do not have the luxury of choice.” He reached into his drawer and removed an eight-by-ten photograph. He laid it on the desktop.
Jack examined it. A group of people were standing on the sidewalk, watching as men in dark green uniforms hauled their belongings into the street. Clothes were strewn in the gutter. Furniture had been busted into pieces. “What is this?” Jack asked.
“Look closely,” said the colonel.
Jack tightened his gaze, and then he recognized it. Standing off to one side was Felicia Méndez, the Bejucal woman to whom Jack had spoken about his mother. She was sobbing into her husband’s shoulder. Others in the photograph were crying, too, including two young girls, perhaps six and eight.
“This is Casa Méndez,” said Jack.
The colonel sniffed his cigar, savoring the rich tobacco. “Yes. I’m sorry to report that they lost their leasehold. Just happened yesterday. Thirteen people, no place to live now. Such a shame.”
“You took their home away?”
“It’s not like they can’t get it back. Or should I say, it’s not like
you
can’t give it back to them.”
“You son of a bitch. Is that what your boy in Miami meant when he said you’d treat my family like
gusanos?
”
“Indirectly, yes. Of course, we know that the Méndez family is not your family. But this is a good starting point.”
“Are you implying that you have designs on actual blood relatives I may have here in Cuba?”
He nearly smiled, then his expression ran cold. “It wouldn’t be
much of an implication if I were to come right out and admit it. Would it, Mr. Swyteck?”
Jack didn’t answer.
The colonel rose and pushed a button near his telephone. The double doors immediately opened, and the two soldiers posted outside his library entered.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Swyteck. I’ll give you a few days to consider your response.”
“Colonel, I—”
Colonel Jiménez cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Talk to the dead captain’s wife.” He chuckled to himself and said, “
Aye
, would I love to be the fly on the wall for those conversations?”
Jack wanted to slug him, but he held his tongue. The more he kept talking, the more likely he was to say something about Jack’s half sibling, and despite all the threats, it wasn’t clear that the colonel knew anything about that. Jack didn’t want to be the one to tell him.
“You’ll hear from me. One way or another.” Jack left the colonel’s residence in the company of the two soldiers, saying not another word all the way to the airport.
J
ack had five hours to kill at Havana Airport. The first leg of his circuitous Miami-via-Cancun journey wasn’t scheduled to leave until dinnertime, so he found a seat at the restaurant and grabbed a demitasse of espresso, which made him only more restless. One more cup of this stuff, and he probably could swim home.
“More coffee?” the waitress asked.
“You don’t happen to have decaffeinated, do you?”
She laughed and walked away. Coffee without caffeine? That was apparently the Cuban equivalent of stopping in the middle of sex to do the laundry.
Stimulants or not, Jack’s anxiety level was up. Although Private Castillo had seemed truthful, Jack knew better than to accept at face value anything the Cuban government had to offer. His only shot at the whole truth was Lindsey herself. Was she having an affair with Lieutenant Johnson? Had they been together the night her husband was shot? It was up to Jack to get some straight answers out of his client. Or not. He’d defended plenty of accused murderers who had never told him the whole story. As a criminal defense lawyer, you dealt with it. The problem here, however, was that he wasn’t only a criminal defense lawyer. He was Brian’s biological father. And Jack wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of his own flesh and blood being raised by the woman who had murdered the boy’s adoptive father. As his friend Theo Knight had so aptly put it on day one, he was caught in his own zipper. Jack had to get the truth.
But first, he had to kill five hours.
He walked around the terminal, checked out the vending machines, and then found a bank of pay phones. In Cuba it was true that you never knew who was listening, but the risk of someone making any sense of Jack’s voicemail messages by eavesdropping on a pay phone seemed remote. Even so, he didn’t call his office. He checked only his personal messages at home, which usually consisted of Theo bitching about some bogus call the ref had made in last night’s Heat game or
Abuela
telling him about the nice Cuban checkout girl she’d met at Publix.
“You have one new message,” announced the robotic voice on the answering machine.
Jack got a pen and a scrap of paper to jot it down, then relaxed at the sound of
Abuela
’s recorded voice.
“
Hola, mi vida
.”
There was a long pause, but Jack was relieved to hear her start with a term of endearment. Before leaving Miami, he’d called and told her he was headed for Cuba, just so someone would know where he was. Of course, he couldn’t tell her why he was going to Cuba, which had only set her off all over again. She was sure that Jack was going back to Bejucal to stir up more scandal about his mother. She’d actually hung up on him.
“I’m sorry.” She said it in English, then switched to Spanish, so Jack knew that she had something important to say, something from the heart.
“I am so very sorry. I can’t expect you to understand this, so all I can do is ask you to forgive me.”
She sniffled, and Jack wished he could say something to her, but all he could do was listen to the message.
“When I sent your mother to Miami, lots of parents were sending their children away. The Catholic Church had the evacuation program—Pedro Pan. We’ve talked about that. Parents could send their children to live in freedom, and if all went well the family would hopefully reunite later. The important thing was to get the children out of the country before Castro and his rebels made it impossible to leave. I know that’s why you think I sent your mother to Miami, but I—my situation was different. I sent your mother away because…”
His grip tightened on the phone, as he had the foreboding sense
that she was about to tell him something that she could say only to an answering machine, that she could never say in person.
Abuela
’s voice faded, but Jack heard her say, “Because I was ashamed of her. She met that boy and—” She stopped herself, as if unable to say the word
pregnant
even after all these years. “—and I was ashamed of her.”
Jack closed his eyes and absorbed the recorded sounds of her painful sobbing. He had never seen
Abuela
cry, except tears of joy. In his mind’s eye, he could see her agony, and it tore him up inside.
She was trying to compose herself, but her aged voice still quaked. “I sent Ana Maria away, and I told her I never wanted to see her again. I didn’t mean it. I
swear
I didn’t mean it. But I said it. Out of my own pride I said it right to her face. Pride can be such an awful thing. Out of pride, I sinned against God and my own daughter. And now…and for that, God has punished me. I never saw her again.”
He could hear her weeping, and Jack’s eyes welled with tears. Once again, his birth—his mother’s death—had caused untold pain to someone he loved.
“You see,
mi vida
, it is not your fault she died. It was my fault. It was all my fault.”
Jack wanted to hold her and shake her at the same time. It was no one’s fault.
Why must there always be someone to blame?
Abuela
gathered her composure and said, “So, there was something I wanted to tell you. You asked about a sibling.”
Jack put his emotions in check.
Abuela
had moved beyond the mea culpa. She had something more to tell him. She drew a breath and said, “You should do this now, while you are in Havana. Please, if you get this message, I want you to do it. Go to Zapata and Calle twelve. Look for L thirty-seven. Then, you will have all the answers you need. Good-bye,
mi vida
. I love you.”
Jack stood motionless, the pay phone still in hand. “I love you, too,” he said, though he knew she wasn’t there.
A
re you sure this is the place?” Jack asked the taxidriver.
“Yes,” he said, “Zapata and Calle twelve.”
Jack peered out the open car window. He didn’t doubt that the driver was correct, but he was having trouble processing the implications. They were parked on a street in the Vedado district, the commercial heart of Havana, not far from where Jack had spent the night as Colonel Jiménez’s guest. Directly in front of them was an iron gate. A stone wall ran the length of the entire block. An engraved sign hung over the entrance, an impressive arc of weathered brass letters. It read N
ECRóPOLIS
C
RISTóBAL
C
OLóN
.
“But this is a cemetery,” said Jack.
“
Sí.
Cementerio de Colón.”
“I’m looking for L thirty-seven, Zapata and Calle twelve. I presume that’s a building or an apartment.”
“There’s nothing else at this address. Check with the groundskeeper inside. Maybe he can help you.”
Jack paid the driver and stepped onto the sidewalk. The door slammed, and the taxi pulled away, merging into traffic. Jack turned and studied the entrance, his mind churning.
Abuela
had sent him to a cemetery. L-37. Perhaps it was a building designation. Maybe he had an older brother or sister who worked here, maybe even lived on the property. But he didn’t think so.
With heavy footsteps, he started toward the gate, pea gravel crunching beneath his feet. It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and Jack
was squinting until he reached the shade of the jagüeys, broad and leafy trees that lined the streets of Vedado, their long and tangled aerial roots dropping to the ground like Caribbean dreadlocks. He stopped at the main entrance. The distant sounds of Havana were still about him—an occasional horn blasting, the drone of urban traffic—but noise seemed to dissipate as he peered through the iron bars toward the peaceful side of the cemetery wall. Green space was not exactly plentiful, but still he was struck by the vastness of the grounds. Looking left, right, or straight ahead, he spotted scores of major mausoleums, chapels, family vaults, and above-ground tombs. This place was to cemeteries what Manhattan was to skylines. Most of the memorials appeared quite old, many dating back to the nineteenth century. Jack grabbed a map at the entrance, deposited a small monetary donation, and ventured inside.
“Can I help you?” a man said in Spanish.
Jack stopped and looked up from his map. He was an older man, dressed in coveralls and a baseball cap. A thick mustache made it difficult to see his mouth, and crescents of sweat extended from the under-arms of his T-shirt. From the dirt on the man’s knees Jack assumed he was part of grounds maintenance.
“I’m looking for someone,” he said. “An address, actually.”
The man was clearly struggling with Jack’s Spanish, but English was apparently not an option. “An address?” he said.
“Yes. My grandmother told me to go to L thirty-seven.”
Jack offered his map. The man stepped closer, gave it a quick look, and said, “The cemetery is divided into many different rectangular blocks. The letter tells you the area. The number is the plot.”
Jack’s heart sank. L-37 was definitely not a building. So much for finding his half sibling alive. “Can you take me to it, please?”
“Sure,” the man said.
Jack followed him down a wider path of pea gravel. They passed countless tombs, many adorned with angels, griffins, or cherubs. A few graves were brightened by fresh-cut flowers, but the most impressive splashes of pink, orange, and other flaming colors came from bougainvillea vines and hibiscus bushes that had been planted many years earlier, probably by mourners who had since found permanent rest here. Finally, they came to a tomb that was blanketed with fresh flowers,
everything from begonias and orchids to African wild trumpet, scores of bouquets that had been laid neatly on top of the tomb and all around it. The man stopped, and Jack stood beside him. They watched in silence as a young woman laid a yellow bouquet of
corteza amarilla
near the headstone. Then she crossed herself, rose from her knees, and stepped away. She walked backward, which was odd, never turning her back on the tomb.
The man whispered, “This is
La Milagrosa
.”
Jack had to think about the man’s words for a moment, but he was pretty sure that they meant the Miraculous One. “Who is
La Milagrosa?
”
“She was a young woman who died in childbirth in 1901.”
Jack felt a chill. His mother had died in childbirth. “Why all the flowers?”
“Because of the legend,” the man said. “She was buried with her stillborn child at her feet. But many years later, when her tomb was opened, the baby was found cradled in her arms.”
Jack glanced at the young woman stepping backward from the tomb. “Who is that?”
“Another young woman. One without children, for sure. For years they have come here to pay their respects, and to pray in hopes of having children of their own. But you must never turn your back on
La Milagrosa
. So she walks backward.”
Jack watched a while longer, unable to feel anything but sorrow and pity. The woman seemed more pained than hopeful, but she continued to pray aloud as she put one foot behind the other in her reverent retreat. Finally, she disappeared behind a mausoleum.
“Is this L thirty-seven?” asked Jack.
“No, no. These graves are much older than the ones in Section L. Come.”
They walked along a shaded path until they came to a small clearing. The groundskeeper paused, as if to get his bearings, then continued to the east. The stone markers became less impressive, newer than the ones in the previous sections but hardly new. Most of the departed here had died before Jack was born.
“Here it is,” said the groundskeeper.
Jack stopped and looked down at the plain white headstone. It was
about the size of a child’s pillow, no carvings or embellishments of any kind. There was a first name but no last. No traditional born-on/died-on date, either. There was just one date. It read simply:
Ramón
17 Febrero 1961
It was a sobering moment. Jack read it over and over again, but there was only one way to read it. Slowly, almost without thinking about it, he got down on his knees. The coolness of green grass pressed through his trousers. His index finger ran along the grooves on the headstone, tracing the name and the date. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Mostly, he felt empty, drained of all emotion.
“Ramón,” he whispered. That was his name. He’d lived all of one day.
Jack tried to conjure up an image of the infant, but it wouldn’t come. He was powerless to envision this little person he had never known, but not because he didn’t care. He was suddenly consumed by his own feelings for the mother he had never known, and there simply wasn’t room in his heart for anything or anyone else. It was all so confusing. He knew her better now, having visited this place, but he didn’t feel any better. Ana Maria had given birth to two children. Her first son died on the day he was born, but the mother lived. Her second son lived, but the mother died on day of his birth.
Why?
was all he could ask.
Perhaps it was the skeptical lawyer in him, or maybe it was just the anger of a boy who had lost his mother. But Jack couldn’t decide if all this sadness was simply the cruelty of fate…or if something suspicious was at work.
“I will leave you alone now,” said the groundskeeper.
“Thank you,” said Jack, but that word hung in the air. Alone. At that painful hour, it seemed to be right where Jack belonged.
Forever, alone.