Torreno flipped through the document quickly, then held it up, testing its weight in his hand. It
felt
substantial, promising everything that its language professed. He scanned the title page, noticed the official seal embossed in the lower corner: an eagle, a clutch of arrows in one talon, the familiar Latin inscribed across the ribbon in its hooked beak. That’s what it was, he decided, rubbing the cover sheet between his thumb and forefinger:
money
. The document felt like money in his hands.
“Articles Pursuant to the Orderly Transition of Power,” he said, reading some of the typescript aloud. Besides Coco, who sat in a distant corner, apparently intent upon a tiny television wired into his ear, there were two men in the office with him. One was one of the agricultural officials who had met with him at the restaurant in Belle Vista. The other was a heavyset man whose status had not been clearly defined.
Torreno noticed, however, that the man he knew was clearly deferential to the stranger. “Show him the paperwork, Claude,” the big man had said, with scarcely a pleasantry beforehand, and Claude had practically torn the snaps off his briefcase to get the document out.
“A lot of what you’ll see in there is boilerplate,” the big man said now. “We’ve had to set up contingency plans in a number of areas: casinos, banking, utilities. We can’t trust that any of the existing infrastructure will be operational once we get that bearded asshole out of the palace, excuse my French.” He gave Torreno a wisp of a smile.
“Because of the tariff and treaty implications, yours is a bit more complex, of course, but…” There was a dull thump from outside and he broke off then, glancing out the window that gave on to a view over the rear of Torreno’s South Dade estate.
“What the fuck is that?” the big man said. Claude too stared over Torreno’s shoulder, his face reflecting shock.
Torreno turned, saw what they were staring at. The creature had escaped from the fenced compound and made its way up to the house. It had leapt up onto the outer window ledge and now stood there on its haunches, pawing at the glass, its whiskered snout twitching inquisitively.
“Agouti,” Torreno said, smiling as he swung his chair back to face them. “They are quite harmless.”
“That’s the biggest goddamned rat I ever saw,” the big man said. Claude remained silent, but his face seemed pale.
Torreno shoved his chair backward, rapped sharply on the glass with his knuckles. The agouti sprang off the window ledge and scuttled away.
Torreno waved his hand toward the lake and the surrounding expanse of land in the distance. “It is a passion of mine, to collect certain species—many of them hunted and trapped to extinction in my country,” he said. “I intend to reintroduce them to our island.”
The big man lifted an eyebrow. “I was your island, I’d be happy to leave well enough alone on that score.”
Torreno shrugged, reappraising this man. He was almost certainly an attorney, wore an expensive suit, had his hair expertly cut, his hands carefully manicured, and yet he spoke like a longshoreman. An unusual representative from the halls of power, to be sure.
“There are many more striking creatures on the grounds,” Torreno said, nodding. He waved a hand at Coco, who stood up from his television watching, instantly alert. “I would be glad to show you about.”
Claude’s face showed alarm. The big man waved his hand. “Some other time, Mr. Torreno. We’ve got to get on back up north.”
Torreno nodded. He made a gesture and Coco sank back into his chair. The sun was going down now, and the light in the room was dim. Coco’s gaunt face reflected the flickering of the screen.
“So,” the big man said, turning his attention back to the document, “what you’ll find in there is more or less what you and Claude hammered out.”
“More or less?” Torreno said.
The big man smiled again. “Don’t worry, Mr. Torreno. You’ve got what amounts to a five-year monopoly on sugar production in Cuba and a guaranteed favored-nation status for your dealings with the U.S. and the European markets we control. As it makes clear in the document, this is to ensure an orderly transition to a free economy. We don’t want any goddamned free-for-all down there once Castro’s gone. We want to make sure we have a nice, well-managed, capitalistic country. After the five years is up, you’ll be faced with a free-market system, of course.”
“Of course,” Torreno said.
“Though you’ll certainly have a decided competitive advantage,” Claude added.
The big man turned and stared at Claude. “I think the man can understand that for himself, Claude.”
Claude ducked his head behind the lid of his briefcase and began fumbling with some papers. The big man turned back to Torreno. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how sensitive these arrangements are, Mr. Torreno. It’s not that much different from conducting biological weapons research. We all know it’s necessary, but it’s not the kind of thing we like to put in the public eye.
“Besides,” he added with his phantom smile, “there are quite a few people in the sugar industry in this country would love to be in your shoes. If word on this issue were to get out, we’d have a mess on our hands. We don’t need a lot of haggling. We’re just trying to provide for a smooth process.”
Torreno returned his smile, placing the document on his desk. The phrase did have a solid, reassuring ring to it. He would return to his country in a position he could scarcely have dreamed of only months before, before a certain friendly senator had explained these matters to him in exchange for an astronomical campaign contribution—the largest in the history of congressional politics, if his sources were to be believed. “We’d dearly love to involve a Spaniard in all this,” the senator had drawled. “’Course they’d have to have an oar in the sugar industry in
this
country already,” he’d added with a wink.
And now Torreno had his oars in, all right. He laid his palm flat across the papers and leaned toward the big man in a display of sincerity. “I am not only the holder of the largest block of sugar-producing land in this country, but I am also one of the few Hispanics involved in the industry. I find our agreement a testament to the political sensitivity of our leaders. You can trust my discretion.”
The big man nodded. “I’ll pass your sentiments along,” he said. “Now you go ahead and give us your John Hancock, we’ll get the papers back to Washington.”
Torreno stared at him, uncertain, then glanced down at the document before him. “You’ll provide me with a copy?” he asked.
The big man made a snorting sound at that. “Not just yet,” he said, his affability wearing thin. “Once you indicate your agreement, everything is reviewed and countersigned at the top. You’ll hear from us by and by.”
Torreno shook his head, held up the document. “But I thought that was the purpose of this meeting, to confirm the arrangement.”
The big man gave Claude his bemused look, glanced out the window again. When he turned back to Torreno, his smile had grown into something approaching true amusement. “It’s confirmed, all right. It’s just going to stay off the record. What did you think, Mr. Torreno? That the President was going to come down here and play with your agouti?”
Torreno felt himself flush. His gaze flickered away to Coco, whose face glittered and shifted in the light from his tiny set. If the man before him was not crucial to the fortune of a lifetime, they would go play with the agouti, all right.…
He flipped the document open, found the signature page, and withdrew his pen. When he had finished, he stared at the page for a moment, fixing the reality of it in his mind: his own name in bold script beside a blank line that would soon bear that of the President. One simple signature that would eventually catapult him to the very top.
He looked up at the big man then, closed the document, and slid it across the burnished surface of his desk, smiling. He would allow nothing to disturb him, to alter this course of events. Absolutely nothing.
The big man barely seemed to touch the document before Claude was tucking it into his briefcase. “There now,” the big man said, nodding at the briefcase. “This’ll all be taken care of inside a couple of weeks. Then all you’ll have to do is wait for Uncle Fee-dell to come to his senses and step down.”
Torreno lifted his eyebrows. “As you say, everything is just a matter of time.”
The big man chuckled at that. He rose and motioned to Claude. “Let’s get that chopper revved up.”
As Claude made for the door, followed by Coco, the big man leaned forward and extended his hand. Torreno rose and took it.
The big man spoke quickly, in a voice too low for anyone else to hear. “You’ve got yourself a sweet, sweet deal, my friend.” Torreno felt the pressure of the man’s grip increase and he looked up into the intensity of his gaze. “Now don’t you go and fuck it up.”
***
Torreno stood with Coco at the fringe of the helicopter pad, watching the machine lift off into the darkening sky. The air was crystalline, the evening star already bright. He waited until the roar of the props had faded, until the warning lights of the craft were tiny dots beneath the star, then turned to take Coco’s arm. “We have arrived at a most sensitive time, Coco.”
Coco looked down at him, his eyes inquisitive, his gaunt face otherwise impassive. “We have unfinished business,” Torreno continued. “Matters that, left untended, might disturb these most delicate negotiations.”
He waved his hand in the direction of the departing helicopter. Coco nodded, following his gesture.
“That man,” Coco said thoughtfully. “He is an important one, no?”
Torreno nodded.
“Still,” Coco said. “I would like to have him.”
Torreno patted him on the shoulder. “Forget that man,” he said. “We have other things to deal with.”
Coco nodded. The tiny earphones that connected him to his set bobbed at his neck like strange jewelry. Though his expression had not changed, Torreno saw the readiness in his pose. He would be happy to go back to work. Television and murder. It was surely a simpler life, having only two passions, Torreno thought.
The sound of the helicopter was gone now, replaced by the sounds of the nocturnal menagerie that surrounded them. The two of them stood that way for a while, listening as the howling grew.
Deal let Driscoll guide him across the hospital parking lot to the white Ford, which was parked, ticketless, on the grass beside the pickup. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?” he said.
“It’s a long story,” Driscoll said, motioning for him to get inside the car. He wiped at his brow with a handkerchief. Although the sun had fallen below the trees, the heat seemed to have only intensified. “Let’s get in the air conditioning.”
Deal got in and managed to get his seat belt fastened as Driscoll took them straight across the grass and over the curb onto the street.
“Is this an emergency?” Deal said, holding on to the door handle as they swerved onto Le Jeune Road.
Driscoll shrugged. “You go out the right way, you have to pay your parking tab.”
Deal stared at him.
“Hey, I’m living on a pension now,” Driscoll said. “I got to watch my cash flow.”
“Maybe you need a wealthier client,” Deal said.
“Hah. This is pro bono work, son. All for the public interest.” He’d turned his attention to his driving.
Deal studied him for a moment. “You really must be desperate.”
Driscoll didn’t look at him. He blew his horn at an old woman about to shove a shopping cart across the intersection in front of them. “Old bat,” Driscoll said as they sped past her. “Jaywalking, stealing a Publix cart.” He glanced over finally, gave Deal a smile. “Crime rampant on the streets. How do you figure I’m desperate?”
“Where are we going, Vernon?”
“Answer a question with a question. This is a classic evasive technique. You trying to confuse me or something?”
“I’m trying to make a point. Tell me where we’re going.”
Driscoll sighed. “I talked to that Marquez woman. The one who ran the museum that got blown up.”
Deal nodded. “I figured it would be something like that.”
Driscoll shook his head, puzzled. “She checked out of the hospital against her doctor’s advice, got herself a half-assed hideaway up in Little Haiti. She’s so scared she’s taking voodoo treatments rather than take care of herself properly.”
“What’s the bottom line here, Vernon?”
“She had an interesting theory about why they bombed her place.”
“Let me guess,” Deal said. “Castro did it himself, to discredit his enemies. Either him or little green men.”
Driscoll pulled at the wheel suddenly, swerved over to the curb. He turned to Deal, ignoring the chorus of horns behind them. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s eating your butt?”
Deal stared back at him. “I appreciate your trying to help, Vernon. I really do. But I’m just not a conspiracy-theory type of guy. We had a bad accident, that’s all. You’ve got me involved in Cuban politics somehow. What I know about Castro is this: that’s the name on the daybed in your apartment—Castro Convertibles. Now if that ties me into your theory, I’d be glad to hear about it. Otherwise, I think it’s time for me to stop brooding on what’s past and get on with my life. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, Vernon. You spend a certain amount of time brooding and grieving, and then you have to go on with your life.”
Driscoll took it all in, nodded calmly. They were still idling, blocking the right one-third of the busiest thoroughfare in Coral Gables. Someone in a Cadillac was behind them, leaning on a horn that played a four-note tune.
Driscoll motioned for the guy to pull around with his thumb, then turned back to Deal. “Interesting you should mention conspiracy theory, because the one I got for you is a lulu. Now I could either try to explain it to you myself or I could take you right to the source.”
“The source,” Deal repeated. He felt weary, as if no matter how much time he spent explaining things to Driscoll, it would come to the same end.
“Well, the next thing to the source,” Driscoll continued. “It seems that Ms. Marquez had a publishing venture tied into her other operations. She’d put out fancy catalogues for her shows, commission some academic to write a book on Latin American art, that kind of thing. She never expected to make any money off of it, but then that whole shebang was nothing but a money pit. She did it all out of the love of art.” He waved his hand again, and the Cadillac finally pulled around them with a squeal of tires. Its windows were heavily smoked, its license plate and undercarriage outlined in glowing neon light.
Driscoll shook his head, watching the car speed away. “I remember a time you couldn’t drive through the Gables in a car like that.”
“I’m sure it was a better era,” Deal said.
Driscoll turned back to him, his face bland. “You’re upset, so I’m going to forgive you a lot of things,” he said, continuing before Deal could respond. “Anyways, as things got busier down there at the gallery, she hired a guy to handle the publishing matters, which were mostly matters of course, so she could travel around, recruit new artists and all that.”
Deal glanced out, trying to read the name of the cross street on the tombstonelike street marker nearby. Maybe he could just walk home from here. How long could it take? Forty-five minutes?
“Then one day she comes back from Brazil or wherever to find her new editor in her office hopping straight up and down, a big thick manuscript in his hands.”
“I know this is going to come to something, Vernon.”
“You’re damn straight it is,” he said. “It turns out this book is not the kind of thing they’re used to publishing at all. But it’s so hot, it’s so tied into the very thing that motivates her to do the things she does, she feels like she’s got to take the opportunity.”
There was a screeching of brakes then, and Deal glanced back to see a step-van sliding to a halt behind them. “Jesus, Vernon. Can’t we move?”
“In a second.” He had pulled a little pad from his shirt pocket, was flipping through the pages. He held it up to the glaring lights of the step-van to see something, then went on, excited.
“This book, see, in addition to being a general diatribe against the politics of the expatriate Cuban community, has got some extremely incriminating stuff in it about the activities of the Patriots’ Freedom Foundation and one of its honchos, Vicente Luis Torreno. According to the stuff in the book, Torreno is tied directly to most of the terrorist activity down here the past few years—which comes under the heading of things we always suspected. But what’s new is, he’s been skimming from the foundation coffers for years, trading on the fervor of his compadres to make himself a rich man. If that came out, we wouldn’t have to prove he was guilty of murder; his own people would tear him to shreds.”
“Who wrote this book?” Deal asked. He was watching out the windows over Driscoll’s shoulder as a guy in a khaki uniform got down out of the step-van and approached the driver’s side of the car.
“A guy name of Valles,” Driscoll said. “He used to be a professor out at the state university until he got a bit too noisy about his ideas. They bumped him from the faculty a couple years ago, and he turned to writing his book.”
The guy in the uniform was rapping on Driscoll’s window with his knuckles. “What’s wrong with you jerks?” the guy’s voice drifted faintly through the glass. “You can’t park here.”
Driscoll gave a wry laugh. “How many times we heard that today?”
Deal shook his head. “Valles?” Why did the name sound familiar?
Driscoll nodded, satisfied that Deal was finally getting with the program. “He was one of the guys blown to smithereens at the museum that day…along with the editor, supposedly.”
“Supposedly?”
“They found pieces of Valles. All they found of the editor was articles of clothing, some jewelry. The bomb squad figures that’s because the publishing office was ground zero. The two of them—this Valles and the editor—were supposedly up there having a pow-wow when the thing went off.”
Deal considered it. “Even so, all you have is the word of some dead crackpot who lost his job because of his theories, Vernon.”
The guy from the step-van rammed the window with the palm of his hand hard enough to rock the car. Driscoll turned, cranked the window open a couple inches. “Go around me, asswipe. I have to come out there, I’ll tear your arms off.”
The guy stood staring openmouthed as Driscoll closed the window and turned back to Deal. “Ms. Marquez was worried about the same thing, but he showed her solid evidence.”
“Such as?”
“Such as Valles’s brother used to work as the accountant for the Patriots’ Foundation.”
“The crackpot’s brother,” Deal said.
“I’m supposed to be the hard-nosed cop,” Driscoll said, waving him off. “The brother had plenty of records in his possession, according to Ms. Marquez. She had a chance to look at them before she gave her editor the go-ahead.”
The guy in the khaki uniform was still standing in the street, his fists clenched, trying to decide what to do. A Coral Gables police cruiser passed by, heading the other way up Le Jeune. Deal saw its brake lights flare up, its flashers go on.
“And there was one other independent source of confirmation,” Driscoll continued. “Valles had found some kind of spook—a guy from some version of the CIA—who’d been assigned to assist Torreno with his train-the-troops, let’s-invade-Cuba projects. The government knew these incursions weren’t going to amount to anything, but they’d thrown the Patriots’ Foundation this spook as a kind of a sop—go help them shoot their guns in the Everglades, that sort of thing.
“But according to Valles, the guy was a burnout case. He figured out what Torreno was up to and realized he was in danger. He came to Valles with the story: Torreno’s whole operation the last several years has turned into a sham, designed to keep the pot simmering between the U.S. and Cuba so Torreno can stay in place and profit off the proceeds to the cause of liberty.
“The last thing Torreno wants is normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. But it doesn’t have anything to do with politics, because he doesn’t want Castro to fall either. That’s the beauty of it, you see.” Driscoll’s face was glowing in the reflection of the dash lights.
The cruiser had found a break in the median and pulled up behind the step-van, its flashers whirling. A uniformed officer was getting out, heavy flashlight tucked under his arm like a baton. The guy in the khaki uniform looked relieved now that justice was about to prevail.
“Don’t you see?” Driscoll went on, oblivious to the scene outside. “Torreno’s like all the guys at the Pentagon were when they found out the Soviet Union was really in disarray. Once the rest of the world figures out the Cold War threat is empty, then they’re out of a job, so they were busting their butts trying to convince us that we should still be scared to death. That’s Torreno’s scam. He comes on like Castro’s worst nightmare, sends these boatloads of amateurs off to ‘invade,’ then tips the Cuban government off so nothing can get out of hand.”
“That’s crazy,” Deal said.
“That’s not what the CIA guy says.”
“Who is he?” Deal said. “
Where
is he?”
Driscoll shrugged. “That I
don’t
know.” He threw up his hands.
The uniformed officer was approaching their car now. The guy in the khaki uniform was jabbering excitedly in his ear, but the cop was holding up his hand, waving him off. “Just hold on a second,” Driscoll said. He turned and got out of the car, closing the door behind him. He flipped open his wallet, showed the cop something, then pointed at the guy in the khaki uniform and back at the Ford.
The cop nodded, unhinged his flashlight, and used it as a pointer for the guy in the khaki uniform, directing him back to his step-van. The guy made some protest, but the cop’s jaw hardened, and the guy went along.
Driscoll turned and got back in the Ford, stopping to wave his thanks to the officer.
“I could call a tow truck if you want, Detective,” the cop said.
“Thanks anyway,” Driscoll said. “Just a vapor lock. She’s all right now.” He got in, slammed the door.
“The thing is, Valles is dead, the government spook is who knows where…“—Driscoll paused, grinning at him—”…but I
do
know where Valles’s brother is. And that’s where I’m headed. You interested in coming, or not?”
Deal sighed. “I still don’t see what all of this has to do with me, Driscoll.”
Driscoll paused. “That’s the part we’re working on, Johnny.” He put his meaty hand on Deal’s arm. “It was the same people did your place and that art gallery. I get my hands on them, we’ll find out the
why
of it.”
Deal hesitated. He remembered Janice’s hand on his cheek, her tired voice. She was right, wasn’t she? What good would all this do, what purpose would be served, other than to cater to the whims of a retired cop who never got the bad guy he had traced for the last half of his career? So let Driscoll go off on his wild-goose chase. If something really came of it, Deal would find out. Meantime, he had to get up in the morning, he had jobs to resume. And still, something held him. That faint possibility, that slimmest of chances, if Driscoll was right, if he was on to something, if someone, never mind who, had done what had been done to Janice, to his family, to him, intentionally…
He turned to Driscoll then, nodding his head, as he had somehow known he would all along. “Let’s go see this brother,” he said, and felt his head rock back as Driscoll grinned and floored his Ford.