“Silence! How am I to think with your babbling? Quiet!” Benilo’s face went from consternation to concentration. “Jesus, no one’s got authority to take bodies from here-or evidence of any kind!”
“Yes, sir.”
“This office…my office is supposed to be above reproach, above political nonsense, above the secret police, and even above Fidel-at least in theory. God damn them!”
“I’m sorry, Doctor.”
“I assume they had guns and wore army fatigues?”
“Yes, guns…army fatigues. Said it was by order of some major general.”
“But you saw no reason to demand a copy of the orders?”
“They insisted I didn’t need one; said that you knew all about the transfer.”
“They said all that?” Benilo paced in a small circle of thought. Then he asked, “One man big, husky, did all the talking, right?”
“Yes, yes.”
“And the other fellow, was he huge, like a bull?” asked Benilo, his mind churning over these developments.
“Yes, exactly.”
“And the big man, he showed you-”
“-the papers, yes. He didn’t really show me the papers, but he waved them, yes.”
“And the paperwork? It looked like-”
“Like…like regular hospital transfer papers, nothing special.”
Even as Jesus answered this last question, the ME’s mind was already elsewhere. Secret police. Just as I feared…the same instinct as the lowliest crewman aboard the Sanabela.
“Why does a man have to be so damn right?” Benilo stalked into the building and down the hall toward his office, an uneasy Jesus following him. “And Quiana? What of our pact to work closely together? She’ll think I am part of this.”
“Sir?” asked Jesus. “Is there anything I can do? Should I inform Dr. Vasquez she can go home now.”
“Yes! Damn…yes! Tell her the autopsies are off for now.”
His body language clearly saying he was relieved, Jesus rushed off.
Alone in his dimly lit office, the full weight of this night’s events settled on the doctor’s shoulders. “Now the game begins in a dark evil. Quiana is in far more danger than she knows. Her cunning and skills will be tested, perhaps to the death by bastards afraid to face me.”
Their lovemaking ended as it usually did with Estaban completely spent and snoring while Qui wondered if there’d ever be a time when she came first.
To further complicate her night, she’d only slept a few hours when she awoke with the case on her mind, her clock showing 2:48AM. She rolled over finding Montoya gone. Early day at the clinic she guessed. She turned over and attempted a return to sleep but failed. Climbing from bed, she threw on a robe, smiling at the negligee and gown on the floor. She hung them in her closet before going in search of a snack.
Walking quietly down the hallway, she hoped not to run into her father. She loved him, but she couldn’t take him at three in the morning. It was not an unwarranted concern, as her father’s insomnia often had him roaming. Sometimes she’d see him in the veranda; sometimes, in the lobby where a huge portrait of her mother hung. When he thought no one about, Tomaso talked to the picture; something he’d been doing as long as Qui could recall.
She thought her father lonely, a man who’d never healed from the loss of his wife, his beloved Rafaela-her mother. He’d never dated and while he had an active social life, there was no special woman in his life. Whenever she questioned him, he’d smile sadly and say he loved her mother too much, that it wouldn’t be fair to another woman as he would always compare her to Rafaela. Qui had often wondered what her mother had been like to inspire such devotion, from her father and now too, it seemed, from Benilo. But that devotion over time had deepened into an inner isolation her father thought well hidden but painful for Qui to watch. By steady increments, she’d distanced herself from him, leading her own life and living in her own quarters within the bed and breakfast. They were still close, and she worried about him as he’d grown older, as he’d slowed down at every activity, save conversing with her mother’s portrait and maintaining her garden.
She opened one refrigerator and found it stuffed full; thirsty, she grabbed a cold can of coconut water and popped the lid.
Her father’s sudden words startled her. “I want you to drop this case they’ve assigned you, Qui.”
His voice came at her from the gloom of darkness in a corner shadow where he’d been sitting in the dark. She almost dropped the can.
“Damn, you scared hell outta me! Why not give a warning?”
“I mean it, Qui. This is some sick vendetta, putting you on a triple homicide. You’re not ready for this.”
“First Montoya and now you!”
“I tell you it is insidious!”
“I’m not a child anymore, and this is my big chance, Papa.”
“It’s a scheme to harm the both of us, this family, this place!”
“I’ll go to hell and back before I give it up!” she countered. “So save your breath.”
“I tell you, there’re people in government who’ve for years wanted my property, and my reputation disgraced.”
She’d heard this for years. “This is not about you or this old house!”
“I still have enemies who-”
“Papa, please!”
“-enemies who harbor evil thoughts about me. This case places all of us in jeopardy-you, me, Maria Elena, Yuri, possibly even Montoya. You must turn this over to…to someone like Pena.”
“Pena, that pea-brained clock-watching rum-sucking ass-kissing suckup? Papa, have you gone senile?”
“You’re so stubborn, just like your mother!”
“Papa, if I find out you’ve interfered, I swear I’ll move out completely! Now not another word. I’m going back to bed. I have to get up early to see what your old friend Benilo has uncovered.” She started back toward her apartment.
“You’re making a bad choice, Qui.” He’d taken a step toward her, then stopped, shaking his head, his voice softer, he added. “Just know this, if you need help, I am here and so is Yuri. With his background, he could be a good ally.”
At his comment, she turned and walked back to him. “I know you mean well, Papa, but you have to let me succeed or fail on my own. You’re right about Yuri, thanks for the reminder.” She gave a thought to Yuri, a Soviet ex-patriot who’d arrived in Cuba along with Soviet missiles, now a family friend, working for her father. She hugged him saying, “Good night, go to bed, and stop worrying about me.”
Watching her leave, Tomaso wondered how bad the mess was that she had been handed. “No good will come of this,” he muttered to a shadow in the darkened corner. Yuri leaned forward, his face coming into the light. “Quiana’s no one’s fool. She may surprise us all.”
13
The following morning…
Having gone in early to work on her case, Qui anticipated leaving soon for the morgue. However, Gutierrez found her first and called her into his office, and with Pena sitting in a corner, the colonel insisted on a time-consuming verbal report of the facts she’d already detailed on paper. Then, he asked for her personal observations. She gave him a play-by-play of what she and Benilo had found on the boat, her words sounding like a tale of horror out of a gothic novel. But curiously enough, the colonel proved more interested in the problem that had gotten back to him from an irate dockmaster. He wanted to know more about the complaints of this petty tyrant than he did about the murder victims. He claimed that Qui had no people skills whatsoever, and she should take a lesson by studying detective Pena.
Qui left in sheer frustration with the man’s incompetence and dislike of her; she hadn’t even spoken to the dockmaster, Tino had, but she was the lead investigator, so no use protesting. She pictured the colonel’s negative attitude as a cloud of flies floating above rotting flesh-the image so apt and so ridiculous she had to smile in spite of her mood.
Breathing the clean mid-morning air, after escaping the oppressive atmosphere of the Capitol Police Headquarters, Qui’s sour humors dissipated-her frustration replaced by a sense of expectation of what she’d find at the newly built, thoroughly sleek, high-tech medical complex where Benilo’s morgue made up two thirds of the basement.