After the funeral she closeted herself in her office with Roberto Donati, her father’s consigliere.
“Roberto, I want you to analyze all the high-ranking soldati in the Family. Who am I going to have problems with?”
Donati leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers. A tiny smile unfolded across his face. “Your father asked me the same question a few weeks ago.”
Frankie arched her eyebrows. “He did?”
Donati’s smile broadened. “I will tell you what I told him. I see two threats.”
“Only two?” She tried to smile, but the corners of her lips wouldn’t move.
“One will be from Benito Albertini. You may be too young to remember, but his father tried to unseat yours years ago. He failed.” Donati flicked his hand. “Albertini thinks with other parts of his body, rather than his head.”
Frankie nodded. She didn’t know Albertini well, but he was a weaselly runt of a man, and she didn’t like him.
“And the other?”
“Gino Capece. Your sotto capo. He is a capable and ruthless man. But he is shrewd. An altogether different situation than Albertini.”
“What do you advise?”
Donati was quiet for a moment. Then, “Offer them their own squads, reporting only to you. Better to turn an enemy into an ally than the other way around.”
This time Frankie did smile. He sounded so much like her father. “Set up meetings with both.”
Albertini came in an hour later and declined her offer. “The Family rightfully belongs to me.” He flashed her a contemptuous smile. “A woman cannot do the job. Even your father agreed with me. As do most of my capos.”
Frankie knew he was lying but said she’d consider his advice carefully. When he left the room, she nodded at Roberto. Albertini wouldn’t make it home that night.
Gino was another matter. “Your father and his were friends. They respected each other,” Roberto said. “He will bide his time, but you will have to earn his respect. If not, he will stage a coup.”
“When?”
Donati shrugged. “That I do not know.”
Frankie told him to bring Gino in. He was a tall muscular man who’d seen so much action over the years that his natural expression was one of suspicion.
“Please sit, Gino,” she said. She explained that she wanted to offer him his own unit. “In fact, I want you to consider yourself my second in command.”
Gino cocked his head and narrowed his eyes—he was known as a man of few words—then nodded. Frankie could tell he knew what she was doing and that while he didn’t mind being bought, he would be watching her every move.
By the next day, for the first time in history, a woman was named the head of a major crime Family. Despite her grief Frankie couldn’t suppress her elation. This was the way it was supposed to be. She would take the Family’s businesses to new heights.
After everyone had left the Barrington house, she wondered if this was why the men she loved had been taken from her. Why she had suffered so much. Since she couldn’t have love, she would take power instead. And God forbid any man—or woman—tried to take it away from her. They would pay a price. She was finally free to make her own decisions. Do as she saw fit. Without interference.
There was only one issue in her way. Carmine DeLuca had been a distant husband and a worse father. Her father, calling in a few favors, had arranged the marriage to shield her from the stigma of bearing an illegitimate child. She couldn’t go back to Nick; she’d broken his heart once, and she knew he wouldn’t let her do it again. She had no choice. So she married Carmine and tried to be a dutiful wife, if only for Michael’s benefit. But now Michael was dead, and so was her father. There was no reason to keep Carmine around. He might even prove to be trouble. So around midnight she picked up the phone and made a call to a man known only to her father, and now, Frankie.
“Hello, my friend. I have a job for you.”
• • •
Miami — September
The sun broke through a swollen overcast, and weak light spilled across Carla’s one-room apartment. Efficiencies, they called them. Studio apartments. Why didn’t they call them what they were, she thought. A box inside a box for people with no money. Still, she spent as little time outside as possible. Even in September the oppressive Miami humidity left her gasping for air. Florida was only ninety miles from Cuba, but it was another world. No trade winds, no Malecón, no bay. Instead there was the inter-coastal, which was usually clogged with nausea-inducing exhaust from power boats. Although mired in poverty, Havana was more delicate and graceful. Everything in America was big, brash, and dirty.
Including her. Carla felt like a cow: all nipples, stomach, and cud. She never realized that being pregnant would be so uncomfortable. Like lugging around a twenty-pound sack of rice. She felt a pang of guilt for all the pregnant women she’d treated so cavalierly back in Cuba.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t think about home now. She had to get to work. She slowly lumbered down the stairs and out of the small building on NW Avenue Twelve. Sweat promptly beaded on her neck. She picked her way across a wide street that was more highway than road, dodging the cars that barreled past. She hoped they were on their way out of Little Havana forever. She waited for a bus that took her to her job at a Spanish-speaking drugstore. The irony was, she was earning minimum wage in the U.S., but she still took home more in a day than she had in a month in Havana.
Forty-five minutes later, she stepped off the bus and walked the two blocks to the pharmacy. The owner, a Cuban doctor originally from Pinar del Rio, was somewhere in his sixties, with thick salt and pepper hair. She’d met him at the Catholic Church six months earlier. He’d asked her a few questions, which she’d obviously answered to his liking, because he offered her a job. She would not be a doctor, he said. He could not practice medicine in America without returning to medical school, and neither could she. But she could work in his pharmacy. She was grateful. She had no papers, money, or ID.
Now, he looked up from the vial of pills he was filling in the back of the store. “Buenas tardes, Carla. A man came here looking for you.”
Carla, who’d already started towards the cash register in front, jerked her head around. Her father had passed after she arrived. She hardly ventured out of the barrio except for an English class at the community college. She’d learned that, like Havana, it wasn’t wise to speak out in the U.S., but for the opposite reasons. No one in America wanted to hear how Cuba was more beautiful, egalitarian, and less materialistic than the States. Especially from someone who’d grown up under Fidel. She’d learned to be circumspect and to keep a low profile. In fact, she only knew two or three people in Miami, and, with the exception of her boss, none of them were men.
“Who was it?” she asked nervously.
“He was—perhaps—a bit younger than I. But fat. Not much hair. Olive skin. Red-faced.” The pharmacist shrugged. “The heat, you know.”
“What did he want?”
“He claimed he knew your husband.” Her boss motioned to her belly.
A sudden fear skittered around in her. She’d told no one about Michael. No one. In fact, she’d given people the impression that her pregnancy was “one of those things.” She hadn’t been careful. She didn’t think it was that time of month. She certainly never claimed to be married. She ran a hand through her ponytail. She’d let her hair grow long, but she mostly kept it pulled back in a band.
“What did you tell him?”
“That you had the afternoon shift and to come back.”
Her expression must have betrayed her apprehension because her boss extended his palms. “I am sorry. Did I make a mistake?”
She unlocked the register, thinking it through. She’d figured out by now that the documents Miguel had given her were related to his mission. She’d also figured out the mission had fallen apart and that both Luis and Miguel were killed because of it. But she still had no idea what the mission was, or why t
he map was important. Now, though, it didn’t matter. If someone had tracked her here, it wasn’t good.
As if to emphasize the point, the baby kicked.
The baby. Her landlord’s wife claimed to know a midwife. Carla herself knew enough to deliver a baby, and had bought all the supplies through the pharmacy. It would be born soon. Any day, thank god. But now a new danger was flashing as brightly as one of those huge American neon signs. Her survival, and that of her baby, might be at stake.
When would it end? The past nine months had been a nightmare: from the night Miguel had been shot and she’d begged Diaz to go back and he’d refused; to the crossing when a sudden squall had nearly capsized the boat; to the horror of being left on the shoals of American soil with no papers or money; to eking out a living while trying to stay healthy for the baby. She might have survived worse in Cuba, but that was her home. In the land of plenty, her life was harsh and difficult. Almost desperate.
She almost shed a tear but forced it back—it was merely the result of hormones. Still, part of her wanted to surrender. She was exhausted with the daily struggle to survive. She was, as they said in English, at the end of her rope. She needed help. Especially once the baby came. But now, she had to flee. Find a new safe haven. She didn’t know if she could. How much could one person stand?
She closed the register and told the pharmacy owner she needed to take a break.
“But you just came in.”
“I’ll be back in an hour,” she lied.
She took the bus back to her apartment. There wasn’t much to pack. It had come furnished, and she’d been frugal with her paychecks. She picked up a duffel bag and started back down the stairs. At the bottom of the steps a pain as sharp as a knife tore through her abdomen. She had run out of time.
• • •
Over the next twelve hours she swam through an ocean of pain. She had dim recollections of biting down on towels. The midwife making her walk around. The smell of blood—her own—worming its way up her nose. There was temporary relief, but only for a few seconds. Then the agonizing pain came back. She lay back down and slipped into a dream-like trance where everyone shouted for her to push. She did, but she couldn’t remember why. All she wanted was the pain to go away.
And then, finally, it did.
“You have a daughter, Carla,” a voice said through the dream. “A beautiful baby girl. With such rosy, chubby cheeks!”
PART THREE
THE PRESENT
CHICAGO
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Such rosy, chubby cheeks!” Francesca DeLuca sat on the edge of the bed and pinched her granddaughter’s face.
Although she was twenty-two, Luisa Michaela DeLuca scrunched up her nose like a little girl and raised her hand as if to ward off the devil. “Gran, you promised to stop that when I graduated.”
Francesca laughed. “So I did. I apologize, preciosa. I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not.”
“You’re right.” Her grandmother smiled in that hapless way people did when they admitted to guile. It didn’t matter whether they were Italian, French, Jewish, or Latino, Luisa thought. Every culture shared the same “je ne sais quoi.”
She stretched and threw the covers off the bed. She’d been staying with her grandmother in Barrington while her mother attended a medical conference in Cleveland. Technically Luisa was an adult, but her mother still insisted she stay with her grandmother when she was out of town. Overprotective was not the word for Carla Garcia. Strangulation was more like it.
Still, Luisa didn’t mind. Gran treated her like a princess. For five years when she was little and her mother was in medical school, they’d lived here, and her grandmother had turned one of the guest rooms into a pink and white castle for Luisa. It was a wonder Luisa wasn’t spoiled rotten, her mother would sniff.
“So, what are your plans today, Luisa Michaela?”
Gran was the only one who called her by both her names. Luisa smiled. Her grandmother was somewhere in her seventies—she’d never confess her exact age—but she barely looked fifty. Trim and athletic, thanks to the personal trainer who came every morning, Gran was impeccably dressed, thanks to the personal assistant who came every afternoon. Her hair was also perfectly coiffed—with nary a strand of gray—thanks to the hairdresser who came three times a week. In that respect, Gran was the opposite of her mother, who couldn’t be bothered with make-up or expensive clothes and belittled the thought of someone coming to the house to help move her body through space.
Now Luisa threw her arm over her head. “I’m meeting with friends to go over a flyer for the demonstration next month.”
“You’re still—involved—in those activities?” Gran pursed her lips.
Luisa propped herself up in bed. “Of course I am. You should be too. We’re all on the same side.”
“What side is that?”
“The side that wants to stop poisoning the planet and purge the toxins we’ve spread in, around, and on top of it. We’ve got to stop reckless corporations from destroying what’s left of our air and water and land. They know they’re doing it, too. And then they try to whitewash it with the golden fleece of jobs and American self-sufficiency,” Luisa said. “Everybody knows all they’re after are profits.”
“Ahh, the idealism of youth,” Gran said.
“You were young once.”
“Thankfully, I grew out of it.”
Luisa expected Gran to smile when she said it, but she didn’t. Luisa let it go. “And then I have a meeting with my advisor to go over my summer plans.” She was studying for a Master’s Degree at Northwestern’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“I told you I could help.”
Luisa pretended she hadn’t heard. “And Mom’s coming home later, so I’ll go home afterwards.”
Gran cleared her throat. “That means you have nothing planned for this morning, correct?”
Luisa cocked her head. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing.” Gran’s tone was offhand, and she hunched her shoulders in another shrug.
Luisa tried to gauge her grandmother’s mood. Bland. Casual. But there was a catch in her eyes. Gran always had an agenda. “Gran…”
“All right,” Gran said. “You know I can’t lie. At least to you.” She paused. “Do you remember our discussion last night?”
Luisa’s pulse sped up. “About my father?”
Gran nodded. “I have work to do this morning, but then I want to show you something.” She hesitated. “The only problem is… it’s a secret. Between you and me. Okay?”
Luisa thought about it. Her mother and grandmother didn’t get along well. Her mother said it was because grandparents and grandchildren were natural allies against the parent. But Carla, Luisa’s mother, was blunt, honest, and prickly; she would admit to it occasionally. And her grandmother, despite her claims otherwise, was just this side of cunning. Luisa tried to keep her balance between the two, but it wasn’t easy. The one thing both women had in common was their stinginess with information about her father. But now, apparently, Gran was ready to open up. Luisa’s curiosity won out. Like Gran knew it would, Luisa thought.
“So what’s the secret? Does it have to do with my father?”
Gran nodded. “Something that belonged to him.”
Her father, Michael, had died before she was born, but she’d been told the stories. How Gran met her grandfather Luis in Havana, but had been snatched away from him by her father. How she’d been forced to marry Carmine because she was pregnant. How, thirty years later, their child, her father, was sent to Cuba. How he met her mother. How he’d been shot when they tried to escape.
“What is it?”
Gran’s expression turned conspiratorial. “It’s in my safe deposit box. Down at the bank.”
Luisa wondered what it could be. Jewelry? Stock certificates? A souvenir from his time in Iraq?
Her grandmother leaned over, stretched out her hand, and smoothed out the li
nes on Luisa’s forehead. “You go ahead and get dressed, Princess. There’s coffee in the kitchen. Armando will drive, but we’ll take three cars to the bank. Then you can go to your appointments.”
Luisa showered in her bathroom, which, like the bedroom, was pink and white. Over the years she’d come to agree with her mother. It was too much: the opulence, the luxury, the pink—it was suffocating. After toweling off, she threw on jeans, a thick sweater and work boots. It was early April in Chicago, but the temperature was only a few degrees warmer than winter. Spring in Chicago was brutal. And then it was summer.
She attempted to wrestle her hair into place. A rich brown, it was thick, long and curly, and rarely did what she wanted. Her bad hair genes came from both sides of the family: her mother’s hair was wavy in all the wrong places, and her grandmother’s tended to kink into tight curls. Although people told her she was attractive, Luisa considered herself average. Petite. Sturdy. Widely spaced hazel eyes. A patrician nose. OK features, except for the chubby cheeks her grandmother never let her forget.
• • •
An hour later, accompanied by their bodyguards, Gran and Luisa were greeted by Gran’s bank manager in Barrington, who insisted on personally ushering them down to the safe deposit vault. Gran went through the rituals of signing the cards and producing a key, which the manager matched with another. He opened a small metal door cut into a wall of similar doors, lifted out a box, and took it to an area curtained off from the rest of the room. Gran nodded at the bodyguards and the bank manager, and told them all to wait outside.
Once they were out of sight, Gran slid the box open. Inside were three small white boxes, several business envelopes, and several large manila envelopes. Gran lifted one of the manila envelopes out of the box, opened the clasp, and withdrew a sheet of paper. She handed it to Luisa.
[2012] Havana Lost Page 24