The crewmen had huddled at one end of the boat, as far from the dead as possible given the confined space. Estrada jabbed a huge finger and shouted, “What are you fearing, fantasmas, brujas? Ghosts? Foolish sailors! Superstitious shrimpers — you’ve got no brains, the lot of you!” He pointed to his own head. “God help us. All of you, go put your faces to the sea!” But even Estrada knew that his words fell on deaf ears, that he could not combat the old African gods and ancient religion that was the underpinning of so much of Cuban belief: Santeria and Abukua.
Qui admired how Luis managed to forego the superstitions common to many. He was a special sort, this man, one who made his own rules and openly complained of government ineptness and cultural mores and what he considered fairytales, despite the danger of doing so. However, Qui wondered how much of his bravado would be suppressed if he were not given protection as a snitch from her Colonel Gutierrez-a fact she’d only recently discovered. How much of his words were for show, as a cover, and how much was true dissent-impossible to say now. Still, his roguish reputation as a scoundrel of sorts, somehow above reproach remained intact. In every way, Luis resembled his independent and daring father. Having heard stories about his father since a child, Estrada now believed he must uphold the family’s honor against his father’s unfair image and infamy.
Qui looked back to the body she’d earlier focused on. Blond hair lay matted and layered with seaweed, and the blue eyes of this one looked similar to those of a German or American tourist. This victim was perhaps in his late twenties, early thirties. Definitely a foreigner.
The second male victim also seemed foreign born and of a similar age. Qui then turned her attention on the female victim, who also appeared in the same age range. However, bloating has a way of erasing age lines, and Qui decided that their true ages would be hard to estimate with any accuracy- better left to a forensics expert. A quick body scan showed one of the young woman’s hands had been crudely amputated. Additionally, all three victims showed signs of acid burns, an obvious attempt to destroy their fingerprints.
“Going to be hard to identify,” she commented. Someone should shed a tear for these dead, she thought. “Uncle, help me turn the woman.”
“Hey, hold on!” It was young Adondo, who’d inched closer. “I know this one. Sh-sh-she is Canadian.”
“How do you know?” Qui demanded, eager to discover how and to what extent Adondo knew the victim.
“I don’t really know…I mean…I saw her once in the museum.”
“What museum? There are twenty museums in Old City alone.”
“Museo Historica-”
“Nacional de Ciencias?”
“No, not Natural history? The other one.”
“Oh, yes, de las Ciencias!”
“Sciences, yes, that’s the one.”
Like everyone in Cuba, Qui knew that fishermen had no money for museums. “When? When did you see her inside?”
“I was not inside!” he protested the accusation. “I was just sitting on the steps in the sun. She tripped and I–I caught her fall.”
Quiana read his body language and voice. Her training said he was not telling the truth, not entirely anyway. Adondo knew more than he was saying. “Then you actually met her?” asked Qui.
“Yes, we… we had words.”
“About?”
“Her ankle bracelet…pretty sandals.”
“An anklet…sandals?”
“Yeah, I liked the way the straps went up her leg.”
Qui thought this line of questioning useless, when Adondo added, “A pendant from her ankle bracelet came off. It was a leaf.”
“A leaf? What sort of leaf?”
“Maple leaf. Said she was Canadian.”
She looked over her shoulder at Adondo and asked, “Did you learn her name?”
“Denise.”
“Denise? No last name?”
“She had Denise on her nametag. Her last name was long… and, ahhh…strange.”
“Nametag?”
“On her blouse.”
Qui pointed to the male victims. “Was she with these others?”
Adondo shrugged. “Maybe. She was with a group.”
“Did they all wear tags?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“And you have no idea of her last name?”
“No. Maybe started with a B…”
They were interrupted when Estrada gasped. When they looked, he pointed to a perfectly executed tattoo on one of the other bodies-a tattoo of the World Trade Center.
“Oh God…Americans,” Qui blurted out. “Why’d it have to be Americans?”
6
Still aboard Sanabela II, Qui called headquarters to report her initial findings, and to her surprise, she was quickly put through to a waiting Gutierrez, except that the background clatter was hardly the old stationhouse; she could hear the throbbing sounds of a Rumba band behind his voice. Her captain assured her in a polite voice, “I’ve called in the best medical examiner in all of Cuba. He will meet you at the dock.” With that, he’d abruptly hung up to the sound of animated voices and laughter.
Quiana knew that the colonel had been speaking of Dr. Arturo Benilo, Chief Medical Examiner of Cuba, who had seen everything in his forty-some years in medico-legal work. Trained in Europe-in Paris and later in Soviet Russia-there seemed little in Cuba’s post-Revolutionary history that he did not know something about. As a young man, Benilo had fought zealously alongside Che Guverra and Fidel Castro in the overthrow of Batista on New Year’s Eve 1958, when Havana had fallen to the revolutionaries. Since then, Arturo’s deep-seated cynicism proved infectious to those already flirting with pessimism. Doom and gloom naysayers had nothing on Benilo as no one so condemned the current climate and regime as did the old doctor when in the company of trusted friends, or so it was rumored. Anyone else would have had his head handed to him in a basket, but Benilo had shown himself to be in the ranks of the untouchables. Most who spoke out-especially those with a forum in an underground newspaper or pamphlet-met a quick disappearance explained away as “just another disaffected soul who tested the waters to Miami.” The ocean around Cuba covered many such sins.
While Gutierrez had been abrupt, he’d given her this golden nugget, the help of Benilo. Why? It was uncharacteristic of the colonel. Was Alfonso being polite or politic in calling in Cuba’s best ME? Calling in a man of his reputation on a capitol case made sense-but still… What game was he playing? She hated that her suspicion of his motives colored everything. She hated that her relationship with her superior had never been good, had never lived up to her expectation. And she felt ambivalent about Benilo’s coming in on her case. On the one hand, Benilo was the best and that could only help; on the other hand, there were others he could have called, why specifically Benilo?
Peering through the pilothouse window, Qui stared at the silhouetted skyline, the lights from the spiraling hotels of old Havana, built before 1958, like twinkling stars against the violet-colored sky. The sight proved almost as compelling and magical now as it had when her father had taken her out into the gulf for a nighttime birthday celebration when she was a child. It took her breath away to see the soft contours from this vantage point. How she loved Havana, her home, and Cuba, her country. But even as these calming thoughts filtered in, she smelled anew the diesel fuel and rot of the floating debris within Havana Bay, reminding her why she also hated Cuba. Its corruption and pollution reminding her of the wretched poverty and endemic problems that would only yield to ingenuity, patience, intelligent planning, and most importantly large influxes of cash. She sighed in frustration.
Qui’s momentary reverie was broken by the blaring horn of a police harbor boat. “Ahhh…the escort Tino’s arranged,” she said to Sergio beside her. The police boat blared its horn again, and her captain motioned for the Sanabela to follow. Sergio leaned out and waved in acknowledgment.