Black Horizon

by James Grippando

  When the small talk was over, Olga brought out a handful of photographs and laid them on the table.

  “These are all I have,” she said.

  Jack went through them, one by one. Olga narrated and identified everyone by name. Bianca looked like a girl, barely a woman. Rafael didn’t look much older, and it saddened Jack to think of his life cut so short.

  “This one is what you want,” said Olga, saving the best for last.

  Jack felt a rush of adrenaline, the way any lawyer would upon hitting pay dirt. It was a photograph of Bianca and Rafael outdoors, standing on the fourth step of a wide stone staircase. Rafael was dressed in a gray suit, blue shirt, and striped tie. Bianca wore a simple white dress and was holding a wedding bouquet. Mounted on the blue stucco wall behind them was a large brass plaque.

  “Ministerio de Justicia,” said Jack, reading it aloud.

  “This was right after the ceremony, right outside el ministerio. See how happy they are?”

  Jack’s gaze locked onto the smiling newlyweds. It wasn’t a marriage certificate, but it was the next best thing.

  “May I take this to Bianca?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. All of them. She should have them.”

  Jack thanked her, then took the conversation in a slightly different direction. “Did you stay in touch with Rafael after Bianca left the island?”

  “Not really. Sometime he come by the market in Habana and say hello. He loved la salsa.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “It makes one month.”

  “After he started working on the rig?”

  “Sí. We talked about that. He work two weeks on the rig, two weeks off.” Her expression saddened. “He was on this two weeks. Que triste.”

  Jack gave her a moment, then followed up. “Do you know anything about Rafael and a woman named Josefina?”

  “How you mean?”

  Jack tried to be delicate. “There’s a rumor that Rafael was seeing a woman here in Havana named Josefina.”

  “No. Not Rafael. That’s crazy.”

  “But . . . how do you know? You said you hardly saw him since Bianca left.”

  “He loves Bianca.”

  Jack glanced at the wedding photograph. “I’m sure he did. But they were apart for a long time.”

  “He still loved her as much as before. Maybe more.”

  Jack and Theo exchanged glances. The former prison inmate was about as jaded as they come about long-distance relationships, and some of it was wearing off on Jack. “That’s a really nice sentiment,” said Jack. “But can you tell me why you believe it’s true?”

  “He told me.”

  “When you saw him last?”

  “Sí.”

  “Rafael said he still loved Bianca?”

  “Not in those words.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  She drew a breath, then let it out. She breathed deep a second time, and Jack sensed a bit of a digression coming on.

  “Did you know Rafael was student at la universidad? To be engineer?”

  “Yes, Bianca told me.”

  “And you know what job he worked on the oil rig?”

  “He was a derrick monkey.”

  “Sí. Such dangerous work for student of engineering. Is that not strange to you?”

  “I was told that the pay is good, and he wanted the money.”

  “No. Not about money.

  “How do you know that?”

  “We talked. Rafael explained.” She took another breath, as if the words were no longer coming with ease. “Have you ever been on an oil rig, Mr. Swyteck?”

  “No.”

  “Ni yo tampoco. But Rafael tell me it is the highest point on the rig. If you climb to top, you are hundred meters above water.”

  “I’m sure it’s pretty scary up there.”

  She shook her head. “Rafael not scared. He wanted to be up there.”

  “Why?”

  “He told me why. He say, on a clear day . . .” She paused again, a lump coming to her throat. She pushed through it. “He say, on a clear day he can see all the way to Key West, Florida.”

  Her words went straight to Jack’s heart, and her point became clear. “All the way to Bianca,” said Jack.

  She nodded slowly, sadly.

  There was silence in the room. Jack’s gaze returned to the wedding photograph on the table. He picked it up, gave it another good look, and then glanced at Olga. A tear ran down her cheek.

  “Gracias,” he said, more convinced than ever that his client had lost her husband.

  Chapter 19

  Jack woke at four o’clock. The sun was streaming through the hotel window and hitting him in the eyes.

  Sun? At four a.m.?

  He checked his phone. It was four p.m. Saturday afternoon. His flight to Miami was leaving in two hours.

  Idiot!

  He tried to lift his head from the pillow, but it was too heavy.

  Friday night had begun at La Zorra y el Cuervo (The Fox and the Crow). When the “fox” (Josefina) proved a no-show, Dr. Theo had prescribed all-night bar hopping. They made several stops in Old Havana, circled back to La Zorra, closed it down sometime after the live jazz stopped at three a.m., and then found more clubs. By the time they’d found their way back to the hotel, a new day had dawned on the diurnal half of Havana. Whether he was getting old was open to question, but Jack was admittedly too “mature” to be hitting local bars in foreign countries and drinking whatever firewater flowed from the well. The last thing Jack remembered was the sunrise over Havana Harbor. He’d slept through his last day in Cuba.

  Gotta get up.

  Jack sat up slowly in bed, massaged away the pain between his eyes, and moved to the edge of the mattress. The room spun for a moment as his toes brushed the carpet.

  “Oh, my head.”

  There was a pounding on the door. Jack forced himself up and answered. It was Theo, his backpack over one shoulder.

  “I’m on the six-thirty flight to Jamaica,” said Theo. “You want to share a taxi?”

  Jamaica? It took a second for Jack’s brain to catch up. Jack had a nonstop to Miami. Felonious Theo, embargo buster, needed a more circuitous route back to the States.

  “By ‘share a taxi,’ I assume you mean I pay and you ride.”

  “With no extra charge for the pleasure of my company.”

  “What a deal.”

  Jack switched on the TV to keep Theo occupied, found his overnight bag, and started packing. Cuba’s state-run television had nothing about the spill, which was just as well, since Jack was feeling more polluted than the waves that marked the grave of the Scarborough 8. As he stepped out of the tiny bathroom with his Dopp kit in hand, he suddenly remembered all that he had forgotten to do.

  “Shit! I was supposed to be at the Ministry of Justice this morning to look into Bianca’s marriage license. I can’t believe I slept in.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. They’re not open on weekends anyway.”

  Jack breathed a heavy sigh. He should have known that. Too much going on. “Then I have to stay till Monday.”

  “No, you don’t,” said Theo. He removed an envelope from his backpack and dropped it on the bed. Jack opened it. Inside was a copy of the license.

  It was in Spanish, so Jack went through it slowly, checking each entry against the information Bianca had given him: full name, date, and place of birth for el contrayente and la contrayente; parents’ names, location of the ceremony, and the name of the civil officer performing the ceremony. The only entry that gave Jack pause was Rafael’s fecha de nacimiento—not because his date of birth had been recorded incorrectly, but because of the sobering reminder that twenty-two years of age was way too young to die. All was in order, including the stamped certification of the Cuban registrado del estado civil.

  “Thank you,” said Jack. “But I’m curious. This trip was supposed to be step one in a process that I expected would take months,
if we ever got the license at all. How’d you get it so fast?”

  “Easy as egg pie.”

  Flan was more than “egg pie,” but a lesson in Cuban desserts was for another date. “So you just went to the Ministry of Justice and they gave you a copy?”

  “No, no, nooo,” said Theo. He tossed Jack’s wallet onto the bed.

  Jack patted down his empty pockets to confirm that it was his. “How did you get my wallet?”

  “You gave it to me last night.”

  “I didn’t give you—”

  “Give, take? It’s a fine line after four a.m. Anyway, you don’t want to know how much that marriage license cost you.”

  “Wonderful. So now the oil companies can add bribery to their list of reasons why the license should be kept out of evidence at trial.”

  “It’s not a fake. That’s a real certified copy. What difference does it make how we persuaded some Cuban paper pusher to do his job?”

  “I just like doing things the right way.”

  “But you can use it in your case, right?”

  “Probably. But the truth is, the license and the wedding photos only go so far. They prove Bianca got married, which logically should be enough. But Candela has raised enough of a stink to make our judge demand some form of additional proof that Bianca was still married to Rafael when he died.”

  “You need Josefina to testify,” said Theo.

  “We’re not going to get Josefina.”

  “I’ll work on her next time we come.”

  “Next time? Dude, I’m not bringing you to Cuba on business. Do you want to get us both indicted?”

  “Hmmm. Let me think about that. No, just you.”

  Jack ignored him and tucked the license into his bag. “Let’s hit the road before we miss our planes.”

  Checkout was reasonably quick, and there was no wait for a taxi at the valet stand. This time the ride was in a 1956 metallic-blue Buick with bright yellow bumpers. They left the hotel with time to spare, which was a good thing, because traffic was moving slowly out of central Havana. The driver tried a side street, but it was no better. He tried another route, but that didn’t help, either. At each turn, Theo glanced out the rear window. Finally, they were back where they had started, in front of their hotel.

  “We’re being followed,” Theo said to Jack.

  “Very funny.”

  “We circled around the block, and that car behind us copied every move we made.”

  Jack glanced out the rear window. It was a vintage eighties Toyota with a big man behind the wheel and an even bigger guy in the passenger seat.

  “They probably think our driver knows his way out of this jam,” said Jack.

  The gridlock broke, traffic was suddenly moving, and their taxi was approaching a confusing intersection of six separate streets.

  “Make a sleft!” Theo told the driver.

  “Cómo?”

  “A sleft!” Theo shouted.

  “Cómo?”

  “A left,” Jack said.

  “No, a sleft!” said Theo. “Slight left.”

  “Havana is not the place to make up words in English, you moron.”

  Jack directed in Spanish, and at the last moment the driver managed to make a soft left turn. Jack checked behind them. Even with five choices at one intersection, the Toyota followed.

  “Okay, now this is getting weird,” said Jack.

  “Change cabs right here,” said Theo. “See if the Toyota stays with us.”

  Jack liked the idea. “Stop!” he told the driver.

  The brakes screeched, and even with the driver practically standing on the pedal, the best a sixty-year-old taxi could do was coast to a stop. Jack paid the fare as Theo flagged another cab that was headed in the opposite direction. They jumped in the backseat, and the taxi started back toward the six-point intersection. The Toyota pulled a U-turn and caught up with them.

  “Told you, dude,” said Theo.

  Jack handed up a fifty-peso note to the driver. “Lose that Toyota,” he said in Spanish.

  The taxi screeched to a halt so abruptly that Jack and Theo slammed into the front seat. The driver threw up his hands, refusing even to touch the wheel, let alone take the money.

  “No, señor. Son Rusos.”

  Jack translated: “He says that—”

  “I heard,” said Theo. “They’re Russian mob, and he just shit his pants.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly what he—”

  Theo yanked him by the elbow and flung open the door, barely giving Jack time to grab his carry-on. They flew from the taxi as if it were on fire and raced down the sidewalk. The Toyota was in pursuit, but on such a narrow and crowded street, it was an advantage to be on foot.

  “Keep running!” Jack shouted.

  It was an all-out sprint, bags flailing, as they dodged down an alley between two old apartment buildings. The opening was far too narrow for the Toyota to follow them, but Jack refused to slow down long enough to find out if the Russians were interested in a footrace. Theo was breathing loudly but managed to puff out a few words.

  “Dude, I . . . got a . . . confession.”

  “What?” asked Jack, matching Theo stride for stride.

  “Didn’t get . . . the license . . . from no Ministry of Justice.”

  Jack would have strangled him if they weren’t running for their lives. Instead, he pushed forward, throwing an occasional glance over his shoulder for anything Russian as they approached the new Cuban record for the fifty-meter dash.

  Chapter 20

  They found a crowded restaurant in Habana Centro and lay low for an hour. They sat Mafia style, which Jack had learned from multiple viewings of The Godfather: rear table, back to the wall, so that no one could sneak up from behind, a side door nearby in case of emergency. Theo ordered chicken and rice. Jack was unable to eat, too much on his mind.

  Another run to the airport would have been foolish. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out that Jack and Theo—bags packed, leaving their hotel in a taxi—were on the way to the airport. If those thugs were as scary as the cabdriver had let on, they were surely staking out the terminal, just waiting for Jack and Theo to show up for the one and only evening flight from José Martí International to Miami. Calling the police was also out of the question. Theo was in Cuba illegally, and Jack was pretty sure that Bianca’s lawsuit against the oil consortium had knocked her lawyer right off the short list for Comrade of the Year.

  “You pissed at me?” It was the third time Theo had asked, but for the first time Jack chose to respond.

  “It was stupid of you to shop the black market.”

  “Dude, the only way to get the marriage license was to grease someone’s palm. Even I don’t have the balls to fly over here illegally, walk into the Ministry of Justice, and buy off the registrador. The only sensible thing was to hire a facilitator. How was I to know that the one I found was Russian Mafiya?”

  “Russians have deep roots in Cuba.”

  “The man named a price and I paid him. Cash. It’s the way everything gets done in this country. Why should I even think that would blow up in my face?”

  Jack took the edge off his tone, cutting him slack. “I’ll give you this much: you would have to put two and two together to see it coming.”

  “I suck at math,” said Theo. “Who do you think these guys are?”

  “Probably not Mafiya. My guess is bodyguards for high-level Russian oil executives.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “One of the companies in the oil consortium is Russian. The whole lot of them are trying to stop me from proving that Bianca was Rafael’s wife. Luis Candela makes his arguments in court, but technically his only client is the Venezuelan company. I guess the Russians have their own style.”

  “Kind of extreme, don’t ya think? A Russian oil company sending out a couple of goons to kill us just to get a marriage certificate back?”

  “More likely they were just trying to sca
re us by following us to the airport. But who knows? Did you get a good look at them?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “Even if they’re not Mafiya, they’re thugs. Just for grins, they’d grab us by the ankles and hang us off the roof of an apartment building until the marriage certificate falls out of our pockets. Their job is to keep us from leaving the island with the documentation we need. Whatever it takes.”

  “So the guy who sold me a copy of the marriage certificate works for the oil consortium?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” said Jack. “Bianca’s lawsuit is getting press worldwide. My guess is that he follows the news outside Cuba enough to know that Bianca’s marriage status is a hot-button issue in the case. He sold you the license, but he was also smart enough to figure out that the consortium would appreciate a heads-up about a guy from Miami who just bought a copy of the license on the black market. He made a few phone calls, and the oil consortium probably rewarded him handsomely for his efforts.”

  Theo swallowed another mouthful of rice. “How was I supposed to see that coming?”

  Jack was hard-pressed to fault him. “It doesn’t matter. The question now is: What do we do?”

  “We’re less than three blocks from the boxing gym. I say we go there.”

  “Forget Josefina.”

  “She’s our best angle. We can’t go to the airport, we can’t go back to the hotel, we can’t call the cops. We need to hide the way only a local can hide us.”

  There was some logic to that, but Jack needed to be persuaded. “Okay, make your case: What makes you think Josefina will help us?”

  “The Russian connection is a game changer.”

  “It doesn’t change anything from Josefina’s perspective. She has no interest in sticking her neck out for an American lawyer and putting her boxing career at risk.”

  “Asking her to testify in court against the oil consortium is too much. But all we’re asking for is a place to hide until it’s safe to make another run to the airport.”

  “I still don’t see an upside for her.”

  “Then you’re blind. Josefina wants to know the truth about what happened to Rafael. And if two Russian thugs tailed us to the airport, then someone wants Bianca’s lawsuit to go away really bad. And if they want it bad enough to threaten and intimidate us, it isn’t just about money. Someone has a secret to hide about what happened on that rig. They don’t want an American lawyer poking around trying to find the real cause of the explosion.”