“Still,” he muttered, “it could all blow up in my face when she fails. Fingers may point to me for assigning her this case. A minefield if not properly handled.”
He blew smoke toward the ceiling where the fresh acrid curls added to the dark smudge, residue of countless cigars burned while plotting strategy and anticipating success. He did not taste the cigar; it’d become a prop in his delaying tactic: smoke just one more Fuentes, after running out of excuses to avoid going home to his wife, Angelique, whom he’d long since stopped loving.
A knock came at Gutierrez’s door, and he expected Flora, his timid secretary to be standing there, but it was Detective Jorge Pena instead-his favorite in the department. Pena also disliked the feminizing of the old police station and its ranks, but even more, he disliked Aguilera’s besting him on occasion.
“Hey, boss!” shouted Pena.
“Ahhh, my best man! Come in! A welcome intrusion.”
“Some of us are going to San Souci…drinks, dancing, like that. Join us?”
“Not a bad thought. Maybe.”
“And a visit with Roberta or Teresa?”
They laughed, remembering their last party with these two.
“Yeah, OK…guess I will join you. Can catch up to my wife-the fat cow-no doubt at her father’s. Going on about her latest knitting or quilting project.”
“That’s no way to talk about your wife, Colonel. She’s not fat. Show a little respect.”
“What respect does she or that old man have for me? Even today on her birthday?”
“But…won’t they miss you if it’s her birthday?”
Gutierrez shook his head, stood and paced to the window overlooking the darkest corners and blackest edges of Old Havana. “Ahhh, they won’t miss me so much, and she always has the ready excuse that a big case has fallen into my lap, and this time it’s true.”
“A man in your position, sir, you’ve got to be careful. Appear the family man…the loving husband,” cautioned Pena. “Did you get her a gift?”
Alfonso’s frown deepened, an unconscious response to Pena’s question. “Cono,” he muttered while jotting a note to buy a present. “Yes, it wouldn’t do to anger her father, but…still…it’s a waste of money. She won’t appreciate it, and her father, the bastard, will buy her something I could never match on my miserable salary.”
“Hey, her old man can’t live forever,” Pena reminded him.
“Maybe not…but more likely I’ll go first.”
“Not a chance, boss.”
“Yes, when this merciless ulcer bleeds me dry,” he bitterly replied, patting his cadaverous stomach. “My brother, Diego, now there is a prophet. Right all along.”
“Right, sir?”
“Yes, when he predicted that one day I’d have poisonous thoughts toward Angelique.”
“But you did love her, right?”
“You kidding? She was beautiful before she got old. And damn, the excitement of dating the daughter of the wealthiest man in our district.”
Both men had the same unspoken thought: Only by marrying her had Gutierrez achieved his appointment in Havana.
“So what’s been the result?” asked Alfonso. “Dead-ends; a dead end marriage in a city full of dead ends, and the proud husband in a dead end job. No promotion in years, and now stuck with Aguilera’s brat.” His stomach shuddered, contracted, seized up, and he cringed again, a reminder of the ulcer that just wouldn’t heal. He opened his drawer, pulled out a bottle, and gulped some of the vile liquid the doctors recommended. He puffed a few more times to rid his mouth of its noxious taste before turning again to engineer Quiana’s failure.
He confided his concerns over the matter with Detective Pena, who appeared sympathetic. “Come on, boss. Let’s talk on our way to the cabaret. Earlier we get there, the likelier we’ll run into the women.”
Alfonso gathered up his spotless white coat and wide-brimmed fedora. A pencil-thin man with sharp angles and high cheekbones, he still cut a good figure for a man soon facing fifty. They used his personal car, a 1958 cinnamon-colored Windsor with blindingly shiny chrome, kept in mint condition.
Along the way, Gutierrez unburdened himself, explaining, “About this triple-murder case, Pena. I was ordered to turn the case over to Aguilera, bypassing you. I worry that this’ll come back to haunt the department. She’s hardly ready for a case like this.”
Pena suggested, “Perhaps if old Arturo Benilo were assigned the case as well? Then…then-”
“Then at the very least it’d have the veneer of respectability.”
Pena added, “Despite what anyone thinks of him, the man’s reputation is impervious to assault.”
“True. As the Chief Medical Examiner of Cuba, his name could indeed lend credence to the investigation.”
“Exactly, anyone wanting to attack you, can go see Benilo!”
“Ahhh…you make a lot of sense, Pena. You’re a good man.”
“You can have Aguilera exactly where you want her- far away.”
Gutierrez visibly relaxed behind the wheel. He loved driving this car, and he loved winning. Pena recognized an old and familiar glint in Alfonso’s eye. It was a look that said, ‘I’ve outfoxed my enemy’.
5
As the trawler began its journey to shore, the crew became increasingly restless, anxious at the prospect of these horrifying deaths becoming common knowledge-with them at the center of it. It was a kind of notoriety that turned an unwanted spotlight on a man. The kind of spotlight that scrutinized every aspect of his life. Qui, too, felt a pulsating fear of what would come of this once they reached the marina, once officials and civilians alike spread the word of the ugly business aboard the Sanabela II. Qui imagined that her working methods and her judgment would be examined and questioned no matter what course she chose to take. She mentally braced for harsh criticism.
Surely, rumors would spread that Luis Estrada’s ill-named and cursed boat had now fulfilled all prophecy concerning it. The first Sanabela had been ripped apart during an ill-timed, ill-conceived plot to carry six Cuban families to Florida in a bid for sanctuary under cover of a tropical storm.
Luis’s father, Miguel Estrada, had been convinced to challenge nature and the Florida Straits in a bid for ninety nautical miles. But his gamble had ended in death for all aboard-every man, woman, and child gone to the deep. When the younger Estrada named his boat in memory of his father’s vessel, people talked of his tempting fate, and now this. Was the entire Estrada family and all who associated with it cursed?
Now as they neared the world of Havana, Qui kneeled near the bodies, doing a preliminary examination with gloved hands. The wind had shifted, and her nostrils filled anew with the stench of what was left of the three relatively young-looking, pale-skinned victims. The smell of decaying flesh made it hard to concentrate on processing the scene, setting the ‘grid’ as she’d learned to call it.
A few breaths, just a few more breaths, and the scent will be less noticeable.
With both hands, she worked one body loose from the heap and turned it over. With the movement, came an audible poof — an escape of gas-followed by an even louder collective gasp from the crew, many of them crossing themselves. This response sent old Estrada into a minor tirade, shouting at his men. “ Los estupidos! I must work with imbecils! This is the dead! They have no power over you! They cannot harm you! Have you never been with the dead, you fools?”
“I know what my mother and my father taught me,” countered one crewman.
“The man who goes too near the dead,” began another, “he can be next.”
“Go with God, ” muttered a third, hurriedly crossing himself.