“Except to make friends of the worst sort.”
“I know, Tomaso. He’s going down a bad road.”
“He’s been going down that road for some time.”
“I know he’s done bad things for money. But my heart, I can’t control that I still care.”
“He’s so foolish. He thinks he can somehow live well and do no real work.”
A warm breeze found its way into the courtyard and played about them. Small birds chased one another in the underbrush.
“I will tell you as I would tell my Qui if she were with such a man. You must end it…as long as you hang on, he can hurt you again and again.”
“Qui’s lucky to have such a steady, good man-a doctor.”
“So? You’re still young enough to find someone worthy of you. Someone who’ll not crush your soul.”
She dabbed at her tears and quietly nodded. “You’re right. I know you are right.”
“Of course, now, I–I’d be lost without you here. How would I run the place? Who’d feed and keep the guests happy? As for love…you’ll see. Love will come again, I promise.” He pulled her hand up and kissed it, an oddly old world affectionate gesture. “Now go dry those pretty eyes, and let me finish before our guests arrive.”
He moved back into the sun and was immediately plunged into his memories.
Palo returned from his food dish to again lie at his feet as Tomaso resumed hanging plants. He liked the feel of the fine basket weave against his hands. His nose filled with the fresh odor of the flowers. Comforting Sunday morning rituals.
“Palo, my boy, is it fair that Maria works hard and Santos takes all she has?”
A military plane disturbed the peace, making him again look skyward. Palo’s ears alerted, and he looked for some change in the landscape-eyeing Tomaso’s old Mercedes as if someone might actually be interested in tampering with it. In fact, Yuri, a Russian emigre who’d stayed on in Cuba after the Soviets left-converted by Cuba’s beauty and the lifestyle-tinkered with the engine now. But for Palo, Yuri was like the rest of the landscape here, and so, finding nothing amiss in the familiar surroundings, the dog settled back.
“Arturo Benilo now, there was a fire-breathing revolutionary, Palo, like Che Guevara himself. The young shout the slogan-‘Be like Che!’ But they know nothing of the man. Now there was a true freedom fighter. Captured and executed while carrying on the revolution in Bolivia.”
Tomaso fell into silent thought as his hands worked. He had a plan: to line the entire courtyard with hanging plants.
“Benilo almost went to Bolivia with Guevara, you know. God, how Arturo ranted in those days. A flaming-what do they call ’em now-radical? Yes, but we were friends.”
Palo only snored now.
“Our shared ideas about freedom and justice ran wild like a rain-swollen river-so young we were. Each trip outside Havana taught us something new about Cuban life…and Cuban death.”
During the revolution, a Leica was in Tomaso’s hands, and from it, he learned how to take pictures of the land, of the women-all the glorious women-as well as the poverty and misery around them. Images that spoke to the heart and mind even today. Tomaso smiled at his pride in those old photos as much as the memory of his and Benilo’s youthful escapades. Full of the black and white thinking that characterizes teenage idealism, he and Benilo were such easy, innocent targets for recruitment into a revolution.
Having pretty much left his family, Benilo, always angry, decided to join the revolutionaries and began a campaign to convince Tomaso to join. By this time, Tomaso had become disenchanted with his own family, the proverbial black sheep for his anti-Batista talk. He joined Che Guevara and Fidel Castro’s movement as their special photojournalist. As a result, his mother had come to think of his photography as having become the family curse.
Tomaso again turned to Palo and said, “Smuggled to the foreign press, my photos made a big difference in the revolution. Made for me friends among the leaders-an uneasy relationship to this day.”
Sighing heavily, Tomaso shrugged and stood, gazing at the abundant blossoms of Mariposa, so beautiful to look at, so like his beloved Rafaela. She’d left so much of herself here in their Miramar home, not the least being Quiana. She has your fierce persistence and goes her own way, untamable, such spirit, like your own. You’d be proud of her. But this…three bodies… this situation… I am afraid for her.
He took as much care with Rafaela’s Mariposa garden as he did his cameras. “Pray for her, Rafaela, and watch out for her. Our daughter is in some terrible danger. I must find a way to persuade her to turn this ugly business over to someone else.”
Qui’s voice kept rising, “What does an old man who tends flowers and talks to the dead know of Cuba today? You forfeited a place in Cuba’s highest circles, and now you tell me what to do? Always with what is best and what is too dangerous! Papa, I am a police woman now, not a little girl.”
“Careful, daughter!” Tomaso gave only a moment’s thought to the governmental position offered him after the revolution, a position he’d walked away from.
“Instead of being proud of me, you treat me like a child, like I’m play-acting!”
“But this is dangerous territory.”
“Dangerous territory is what I do now. This is who I am.”
He just looked at this now angry daughter of his, saying nothing, again reminded of how much like her mother she was: impetuous, headstrong, passionate, and stubborn. Tomaso chuckled aloud at the thought, shaking his head. “Ahh… stubborn child.”
“How dare you interfere in my professional life?” she persisted, pacing the courtyard where a trade wind swept through, bringing with it the clean scent of the sea.
He tried to keep pace. “Calm down. We can talk like adults.”
She stopped and turned back to him. “Oh, that’d be a pleasant change.”
“I’ve never under any circumstances wanted to belittle or insult you.” He paused, taking a breath. “Now, what is all this ranting about, because I have no idea what-”
“I wanna know why Gutierrez is suddenly all sweet and polite and fake toward me.”
“Oh, this is about Alfonso Gutierrez?”
“Yes! That wormy pig is all of a sudden being professional toward me. Why?”
Tomaso laughed uproariously at her characterization of her colonel.
She didn’t skip a beat. “I can’t stand that plastic smile he’s suddenly wearing. You called him, didn’t you!”
“Sweetheart, I’ve had no contact with the man since-”
“You did more than just call him. You scared him, didn’t you! And you told him to take me off this case.”
“No! I’ve not spoken to him since your promotion. But I tell you-”
“You might’ve given me a fair chance. But you…you couldn’t be satisfied with that, could you? Could you?"
Tomaso stepped away from her, located his favorite courtyard seat, climbed into it, calmly crossed his legs, and said, “Quiana, perhaps someone called Gutierrez, but I didn’t. Now come sit, and we’ll talk about this.”
Taken aback, she calmed down. His sudden relaxed demeanor invited her to sit alongside him. When she did so, their eyes met in a truce.
“What?” she asked.
“Some detective you are! Think! You know I’d do nothing to sabotage you. Have I ever betrayed you?”
“This is different, and we both know it. This isn’t a recital or a school grade or an entrance exam you can fix for me. God, this is a triple murder! And how I hate it when you interfere, making me appear stupid and childish. I hate it!”
Her anger reignited, Qui stood and rushed from the courtyard.
“Wait a minute,” he called after her. “We still don’t know who called Gutierrez! Sheeze…” His words fell on empty air, she was no longer in the courtyard.
Qui felt a pang of anger for losing her temper on her father’s birthday. Passing through the kitchen, she realized only now that Maria Elena had overheard their squabbling. This brought on a dose of discomfort. “You can’t leave him like this,” the other woman pleaded, “not on his birthday. Besides, I know your father. He no longer interferes like you think. We talked about it, Qui, and I swear, he didn’t make any calls.”