Manhattan 62 (10 page)

After she shook my hand, she led me through the shop to a flight of stairs and up to her living room. Pictures of Mary and Jesus and a bunch of saints decorated the walls. I knew them well. My ma had most of them, including the Sacred Heart stuff with Jesus done up like a rock star, all that glowing light and neon-colored spokes coming out of his head.

“Please,” said Mrs Reyes, indicating a little sofa with a bright blue shawl tossed over the back, where we sat side by side. Around her shoulders—she wore a plain black dress— was a black lace scarf. I wondered if she was in mourning.

“Your lace is very beautiful.”

“Thank you. It is an old Cuban art; for some of us, all we were able to take when we fled was our craft. I should apologize for not seeing you when you came during the summer. Excuse me,” she said and disappeared into the kitchen and returned with tiny cups of black coffee and a plate of cookies. “I assume you're here because of the murder on the pier in the Hudson River Tuesday night. Is that right?”

“Yes. I think it's connected to the death of the young woman last summer on the High Line. Her picture was in the papers after he was murdered. Somebody left a phone number for me, but I could never get through. It was you, wasn't it? The two bodies bore the same tattoo.”

She felt in her pocket, and produced a drawing. “Like this.”

“Yes. How did you know that I was here before?”

“Does it matter?” She lit a cigarette. “Perhaps I saw your name in the newspaper, telephoned, then changed my mind.”

“It might matter.”

“I'm sorry, then,” she said but offered no further explanation.

“Can you help me now? Can you tell me about the tattoo?”

“Yes. You see Castro calls us—those of us who fight against him, whose property he stole, those who want a free country, who desire only to live among our families and friends on our land—he calls us, the real Cuban people,
gusano.
This means worm. You understand?”

I drank my coffee and ate two of the pink cookies. “Yes.”

“Somebody quite silly, an American official in Washington DC, one of those, what do you say, gung-ho ex-military men who feels he is a diplomat and understands a country after a few months, and he has indeed been supportive of many of us, he has odd ideas about Cuba. He thinks he can destroy Castro with an exploding cigar. He was involved in the expedition at the Bay of Pigs. He also imagined that it would be good for Cubans to take up the name ‘worm' to spread the idea of resistance. Only an American who knows nothing of our country could come up with such an idea, but I believe this is the same man with many impossible ideas when he was in Indochina. I am very fond of the United States, very grateful, Detective, but you are like children, you think you have only to visit a country for a few days, to impose your ideas on it, to know it, to understand. It doesn't matter. People just laughed at him. But a few of our young people, who are fighting against Castro, did take it up. They liked the irony. So they call themselves worms. We've seen this slogan scrawled on walls in Miami and here, as well.”

I lit a cigarette to hide my excitement. “You're saying the girl who died on the High Line was on your side? The young man on the pier, too? That you knew them?”

“Yes. They were on the side of good. We believe they were murdered by Castro's spies.”

“Fidel Castro has spies in New Jersey?”

She looked at me pityingly. “He has spies everywhere. He will do anything. If necessary he will fight even the United States. Do you know that Comrade Che, as he calls himself, has announced he would drop nuclear weapons on the US, if means the end of the great evil imperialists? Even if it means he takes all his own with him? They are crazy, Detective. But like a fox, you see. They have very good spies, but you Americans don't believe it. Everybody thinks, oh, the Cuban men they are lovers, they sing and dance, they are only good at the art of love, but not the arts of subterfuge and espionage.” She laughed bitterly. “There are many right here in the United States, double agents, tough people, who report only to Fidel Castro, and yet Americans, even in the CIA, ignore it, they feel we are idle people, romantic and undisciplined.” Inhaling deeply, she squashed the cigarette butt in a silver ashtray. “These people who report to Castro are brutal, so we must have our own. We ask only to go back to our country, to reclaim our houses and our land. Castro and his people know that for us this is a fight to the death. We will take our island back, or we will die.”

“Tell me more about these young people. Please.” I was on the edge of the sofa, eating more of those pink cookies— I'd had nothing to eat all day—and smoking, nervous she would change her mind, anxious about how to keep her talking. It was the first decent lead I'd had, but the doorbell rang. “Are you expecting somebody?”

Rising, Mrs Reyes left the room. With her when she returned were three men in suits. They removed their hats. The two young men stood near the door. The third man was older, maybe fifty-five, with a weary face.

Mrs Reyes made more coffee. She produced sandwiches made of Spanish ham and cheese, and there was beer for the men. I gobbled a sandwich. The older man who wore a well-tailored navy blue suit, with a black armband, sat next to me. The conversation was in Spanish, and Mrs Reyes translated.

“Detective Wynne, this gentleman's name is Roberto.”

“Roberto what?”

“He believes the young woman you found on the High Line may be his daughter, Susana. She wore this tattoo of the worm, and the words, as protest. God help me, she went into New York to join a demonstration at the United Nations. She was here with us, and she insisted on going into New York, where she was murdered. I let her go.” A small sound of intense pain escaped from Mrs Reyes, and she turned away from me briefly to hide her face.

“She lived with you?”

“She lived in Havana, and here.”

“Do you have a picture of Susana?”

Reaching behind her to a low table, among the cluster of framed photographs, Mrs Reyes picked one of the girl, the girl I had found dead, hanging from the High Line. With her was a young man but his back was to the camera. They were standing together on a beach somewhere.

I looked at the photograph, and at Mrs Reyes. “She was your daughter.”

“Yes.”

“But last summer, you didn't say anything.”

“I was speechless,” she said.

“Somebody claimed the body in August.”

“A friend,” she said.

“Roberto is Mr Reyes, is that right?”

“Yes. He is my husband.”

There was something wrong. Why didn't she introduce him as her husband right away? Why not tell me the girl was her daughter? I got the feeling she was lying, but I didn't know why or about what, unless she was also involved in espionage, in the effort to destroy the Castro regime. There were layers I couldn't dig through, couldn't even guess at; more than ever I felt I was just a city cop, out of my depth, unable to play at these spy games.

“Why didn't he come to us?” I looked at the man named Roberto, whose long face was sunk into his chin. He spoke no English. He murmured in Spanish and Mrs Reyes translated.

“He was afraid. We have made our own investigation,” she said while the father, weeping now, excused himself and left the room. A few minutes later, he returned, composed, his face blank with grief.

“I don't understand.”

“Some people in your police department wanted money. He was afraid. He was afraid of the police, and also the Mafia.”

“I thought the Mafia were on your side. They hate Castro.”

“They are on the side of people who pay them. They kill anyone who gets in their way. Perhaps it is somebody who wants it to look like the Mafia.”

Mr Reyes turned in order to look me in the face, as if to beseech me. “Please, help us,” he said in English and began to weep again. “My daughter.”

“What about the young man? I can't see his face in this picture.”

“He was her boyfriend. Susana was very young and impressionable, and she had believed wholeheartedly in the Revolution like so many of the young, and left us when she was seventeen to support it. And then more recently, she began to change. She saw what Castro was doing. She fell in with some people who felt the same, and one of them was this young man. He had fought with Castro in the mountains, he had almost given his life, and then something changed him. He saw their system. He learned to hate Castro. I should forgive him because he was a good man, but he pulled my daughter into it. They were to meet in New York. She was a romantic. He and Susana swore to fight against Castro until death. And they did, in the end.”

“Have you got a photograph of the young man where I can see his face?”

Mrs Reyes left the living room and returned with a snapshot that showed the two of them, Susana and the dead man from the pier and they were fooling around at a park; they looked like teenagers.

“What was his name?”

“Rica. All he would say was that he was Rica. I assumed Riccardo was his real name. Thank you. Excuse me, I'll accompany you downstairs, Detective.”

On the sidewalk outside the lace shop, Mrs Reyes offered her hand, small as bird bones, so I took hold of it and kept it in mine. “There was more, wasn't there? There was something they told you, wasn't there? Something that can help us find her killer, and that of her friend, of course? Find out why they were killed?”

She nodded, and looked at me hard. “Susana told me that Riccardo had some information. He told her certain things, but he said there was someone else, and he lacked all the pieces of information, but they would meet in New York. He promised me he would not let anyone harm her. I did not like him, to be honest. He was older. He had been close to Castro. I was not sure what he believed. I don't think Susana ever saw him in New York. She telephoned me one last time to say she was waiting for him. That's all I know. They all wore the tattoo. Susana was proud of it when she was here, she would say, ‘Mama, look, this is for our country.' But he, he wore a shirt with long sleeves, he covered it up.”

“Were they planning something, do you think?”

“You mean an attack? I believe they were going to New York to stop something. Susana kept saying this, even in her sleep. ‘We must stop it, Mama,' and then she left. ‘Stop.' I would hear her saying over and over. ‘Stop.' ”

“I'm so sorry for your troubles,” I said.

“Riccardo was not a bad man, but he was a zealot,” she said. “He felt betrayed by the revolution. He thought of nothing else.”

“I'll be in touch.”

“Yes, of course.”

“One more thing.”

“What is it?”

“Why didn't you tell me about your daughter earlier? What's the truth? There must be a reason. I know you were in mourning, terrible grief, of course, but I knocked on doors all summer long, I can't believe you didn't answer just because you worried the cops were on the take.”

“I didn't trust you.”

“I see. Why?”

“Riccardo, my daughter's friend, he was a peasant, a man of no family, but he spoke perfect English, and several times I heard him on the phone speaking in Russian, and I wondered why. He had been very well educated, and I asked myself, by whom? You have Russian friends, is that not so, Detective?”

“I know a few of them. They're not my friends.”

“We knew about your part in the investigation from the newspapers that reported our daughter's murder. But one of our friends also saw an article in what is it called, the
Village Voice?
This past summer? About a Soviet student, a certain Mr Maxim Ostalsky, isn't that right, Detective? It mentioned that you were his friend. Surely this Mr Ostalsky must be a Soviet agent if they allow him to study in the United States. I wondered why a New York etective, perhaps an Irish Catholic from your name, why does he have such a close friend who is a Communist? You saw the article, I imagine, and will forgive my little bit of detective work.”

“I saw it, sure,” I said. “When it came out.”

“Yes,” she said and reached into the pocket of her black skirt. “I kept a copy.”

“I see.”

“Then you understand. I must go upstairs now. You are ill,” said Mrs Reyes. “You should go home. It's cold. Winter is coming,” she said sadly, as if mourning the season as well as her daughter.

“Let me ask you one more thing.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know a Captain Logan? Did he ever contact you?”

Quickly, she shook her head, then walked too quickly back to her door.

CHAPTER SIX

October 18, '62

S
OMEBODY HAD BROKEN INTO
my place. I usually left a pin in the doorjamb so I could tell if somebody
had bust in while I was away. If the pin fell out, someone had been by, and this time, soon as I got home from Jersey, I saw it: the pin was on the floor. I got out my gun and my keys at the same time. I unlocked the door carefully, then shoved it in fast as I could, still holding the weapon.

The apartment was empty. I looked it over. Nothing was missing as far as I could see. Maybe a certain fear, some kind of paranoia was on me, had been since I found the dead man on the pier earlier in the week. Riccardo. His name was Riccardo, according to Mrs Reyes.

After I checked on Tommy, who was at home in his apartment upstairs and confessed he had been into my place looking for a smoke, I went home, sat at the kitchen table, typed out everything Mrs Alicia Reyes had told me that morning and tried to make some sense of it, then I dug out the file I had kept on the High Line case—on the girl who was murdered, who turned out to be Susana Reyes. But what caught my eye was a copy of the
Village Voice
with Ostalsky's profile.