Death Comes in Through the Kitchen

by Teresa Dovalpage

  Ten people appeared out of nowhere as soon as the lanchita arrived. They were all Cubans. Two of them loaded bicycles on the ferry. The toll taker tried to charge Matt one CUC—he even managed to say the amount in English—but Isabel complained and threatened to call “the administrator.”

  “Forty cents, national currency!” she yelled. “Twenty for him and twenty for me. That’s what it costs and that’s what you’re getting, carajo!”

  The toll taker relented. Matt didn’t dare to intervene. He followed Isabel on board, feeling embarrassed and cheap. He glanced at her a few times, trying to read her. But her face, stern and with two lines running straight downward from the corners of her mouth, was inscrutable.

  Of course, she is doing this for her son. She wants the santero to find out who killed Yarmi because he is probably a suspect and she is trying to save his ass. She can’t care less about me. Nobody does.

  During the short trip, the ferry passed near a monumental statue of Jesus. It was atop a hill, white and glowing under the sun.

  “That is El Cristo de La Habana,” Isabel said, crossing herself with reverence.

  “How does the government allow it?” Matt asked. “It seems strange, such a prominent religious symbol in an atheist country.”

  “It has been there forever. Batista’s wife had it built in 1958, before he was ousted. At first they ignored the statue and it began to deteriorate, but now that they are buddies with the Catholic Church, the Pope, the Vatican, and all the saints from the celestial court, they restored it and made it look good and spiffy again. After John Paul II came, they even allowed people to celebrate Christmas again, for the first time in almost thirty years.”

  “By ‘they,’ do you mean the government?”

  “Yes, chico, who else? The powers that be. Every time they go to the bathroom, they change their mind. No wonder everybody is crazy, myself included!”

  Matt waited a few seconds before asking, “Are you a Catholic, Isabel?”

  “I’m half and half. I believe in Santería and most santos have a Catholic counterpart. But I am not fond of priests. I get my advice from a guy’s guy, not a skirt-wearing one.”

  Crossing the bay had taken around fifteen minutes. Padrino’s home, Isabel informed Matt, wasn’t far away.

  “It’s a nice walk,” she said. “You’ll get to see the village. Regla is different from Havana, but very cute.”

  “Cute” wasn’t a word Matt would have chosen to describe the small industrial town. It had narrow streets, old houses, and a decidedly un-touristic vibe. He didn’t encounter any other foreign-looking person the whole time. There were no stores or paladares either. It was hot and humid and the air felt heavier than in Havana. A few minutes into the walk, Matt started to sweat profusely.

  They passed by the church of Our Lady of Regla, a square building with white walls, a red tile roof, and a bell tower. Isabel mentioned that la virgen de Regla was identified in Cuban Santería with Yemayá, the African goddess of the seas.

  “That’s what I was telling you about Catholic saints and orishas,” she said. “The virgin of Regla is the patron saint of Spanish sailors. This chapel was the first thing that greeted them when they approached Havana and the last thing they saw when they left. They asked Santa María de Regla for protection against pirates and storms just as I ask Yemayá for protection against thieves and state inspectors. You may want to ask for her blessing too.”

  Matt couldn’t find a good reason to refuse. He had agreed to seek advice from a santero so praying to a mixed-religion deity was very much in line with that.

  “I will!” he answered with fake enthusiasm.

  “You have a good chance to impress her,” Isabel smiled knowingly. “She’s into blonds like you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t blush.” She laughed and pinched his arm. “Yemayá, the orisha, is a woman. She digs men.”

  Whatever was left of Matt’s Methodist upbringing rebelled against the idea of Virgin Mary “digging” men.

  “How can you say that?”

  “The orishas are very much like us,” Isabel explained. “They fight over lovers, get jealous, bear children—they aren’t all holy-coly like the virgins and saints.”

  The church was cool and musty inside, though the air was heavy with the smell of incense and melted wax. Blue reigned supreme. The alcoves on the walls had indigo edges. The window frames were painted bright cobalt. There were plaster statues of saints everywhere and most of them had a splash of blue on their dresses.

  Isabel knelt down in front of the altar and lifted her arms.

  “My mother Yemayá, cover me with your precious cloak!” she demanded. “I’m here, virgen santísima, look at me!”

  She crossed herself and kissed her own hand in a dramatic fashion. Matt moved away discreetly. Six women were scattered around, two kneeling on pews and the others standing near a black Madonna. The virgin was enthroned on the main altar and held a mulatto baby Jesus with only one shoe on.

  Loud prayers carried over the church.

  “Help me, heavenly mother!”

  “Dear negrita, don’t desert me in this time of need . . .”

  “Make him come back to me.”

  Matt sat on a bench and wiped his forehead. He attempted to pray to the blue-clad image but the only words that came to him were from the Our Father. He dutifully recited it.

  After leaving the church, Matt and Isabel ran into an old man who sold pineapple juice from a cart. Puro y natural, read the sign nailed to a wood post. Un peso. Matt offered two dollars to the vendor. He handed them two cone-shaped brown paper containers filled with a bright yellow liquid. The juice was cold and tangy.

  “You didn’t need to do that.” Isabel scolded him. “Next time, ask me first.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You gave that guy two dollars! It said one peso per drink. Twenty American cents would have been more than enough. You have to be more vivo, my friend.”

  Isabel meant street-smart, but because vivo also means “alive,” Matt thought for a second that she implied he was dead.

  Geez, the things you think when you’re nervous. And tired.

  “Shouldn’t we take another cocotaxi?” he suggested.

  “There are no cocotaxis here.”

  “A taxi or an almendrón, then. Anything with wheels.”

  “This is Regla, Mateo. The only ‘things with wheels’ you will find are buses that pass every two hours. But we are almost there.”

  “Almost?”

  “Palante, man!” She lifted her breasts and looked at him with a mix of pity and contempt. “I have varicose veins but I don’t go around whining!”

  Matt didn’t complain again. They trudged for another half an hour before finding Padrino’s place, a dilapidated hut standing on a corner lot. The chain-link fence was modern and stood in marked contrast to the building. It wasn’t until they got closer that Matt realized there was also a big house behind a row of trees.

  Isabel opened the gate. Two German shepherds came running and growling up to them.

  “Ah, come on, Lazarito,” Isabel said, petting the biggest and fiercest-looking one. “You know me! Go get your daddy.”

  A young mulatta in a white dress similar to Isabel’s, but tighter and a lot more revealing, came out and yelled at the dogs.

  “So sorry, my husband is running behind,” she said to Matt, apologetically. “We had an emergency.”

  “With Padrino?” Isabel asked.

  “No, one of his goddaughters. A marital emergency, I should say.” She rolled her eyes. “She is with him now, but they will be done soon.”

  Padrino’s wife, who introduced herself as Gabriela, led them past the mango, orange and avocado trees that surrounded the house—a thriving jungle curtain planted there as a protecti
on from prying eyes. There was a vegetable garden where tomatoes, cauliflowers and herbs grew freely. A series of grunts and a not so sweet smell came from a pigpen. A fat sow and three piglets stared at the visitors with mischievous eyes. A dozen hens pecked at the ground, where corn kernels and grains of rice had been scattered. A green VW Beetle was parked under the shade of a big ceiba tree.

  The house had a covered porch that ran the length of the building. The main door was open.

  “Please, come in,” Gabriela said. “And excuse the mess.”

  Matt didn’t see any mess. The living room was wide and bright, with two large picture windows that brought the garden and a flaming red bougainvillea in. The wicker sofa looked old but well preserved, and there were three maple chairs polished by time and use. Gabriela turned on an electric fan.

  “Ah, thanks!” Isabel plopped down on a chair and took off her shoes. “I needed it!”

  Matt sat on the sofa, across from a statuette of the Virgin of Charity that had fine dark features, like la Virgen de Regla. Framed pictures, mostly black and white, covered the wall. A basket full of oranges, bananas and tangerines had been left on the floor. He remembered the pineapple juice vendor’s claim: pure and natural. He liked this place, the simplicity of it, way better than Román’s kitschy decor or the penthouse’s spartan interior.

  Gabriela joined them and small talk ensued. The two women tried at first to engage Matt, but he pretended not to understand their rapid-fire Spanish. In truth, he got most of it, except for some obscure colloquialisms like me tiene obstiná, that couldn’t mean, in the context it was used, “I am obstinate.” He got the impression it actually meant “I am sick and tired of it.” But as the chat went on, he got bored and irritated.

  This is surreal. I’m waiting to ask an ex-cop turned santero, who could also be a police informant, for help. Wouldn’t it make more sense to contact the consular officer, or whoever is in charge of the American Interest Section, and find a legal way out of it? I shouldn’t have let Isabel con me into coming here.

  Then Gabriela insisted they try what she was cooking—a bright green vegetable soup. She brought them two full cups. Matt eyed their content with suspicion. It looked unappetizing, but tasted surprisingly good.

  “I’m also making guava jam,” Gabriela said. “But I am not sure I got el punto right. Sometimes it turns out too tart.”

  “Let me see to that,” Isabel answered. “If someone in Havana has the punto for guava jam, that is me.”

  Matt excused himself and walked out, despite Gabriela’s worried expression and Isabel’s disapproving look. Maybe it wasn’t good manners in Havana, or Regla, to desert your hostess in the middle of a conversation. But he could blame his linguistic skills, or lack thereof. He was also annoyed at the waste of time. Isabel had made the appointment for eleven o’clock and it was twelve fifteen.

  Not that I have anything more constructive to do today, but still—

  When Matt passed near the hut, he couldn’t help but glance inside. Padrino was sitting on the floor, facing a woman who had her back to the door. She wore a white kerchief wound around her head like a turban. Between the woman and Padrino lay a red tablecloth. A cane had been placed over it. There were three small chunks of coconut on Padrino’s side.

  The santero held them, shook them in his right hand and threw them over the tablecloth. The woman spoke, Padrino nodded, and the procedure was repeated. Matt couldn’t hear their voices but the interaction was clear enough. She was asking and Padrino was dispensing answers with the help of the coconut pieces.

  The whole thing looked silly to Matt, who wondered if the santero used the same approach to solve his cases.

  A pig grunted in the pen. Two hens walked by and one pecked at his shoes. Matt refrained from kicking it.

  Padrino stood up. His face was contorted and his head bobbed up and down. His body shivered as if he were having a seizure. After the spasms subsided, he started going in circles, leaning on the cane and talking fast while the woman listened and bowed down. Then he stepped over the tablecloth and sent the coconut pieces flying with the tip of his cane.

  Matt stared as Padrino changed, in a matter of seconds, from a middle-aged man into a real viejo: shaky hands, feeble legs and curved spine. His movements became slow and infirm.

  If he is putting on a show, he is the best. Better than Taty as Donna Summer.

  Padrino fell down. His head thumped against the floor. Matt expected the woman to run outside asking for help, but she knelt next to the santero and began to stroke his forehead until he sat straight, blinked, and looked around.

  Matt tiptoed back to the house.

  Spirit possession or performance? Or both?

  Padrino met with Matt in a regular office with bookshelves, art posters from the eighties, and a framed diploma issued by the Havana Police Academy. The walls were painted white and the black and white tile floor was spotless. Matt sat on a wooden chair with a wicker seat. Padrino was across from him, behind a mahogany pedestal desk. It had been topped with a piece of glass, but the surface beneath was scratched and stained. All the drawers had crude metal locks that had replaced the original ones. There were pencil sketches and drawings all over the desk. While he talked, Padrino doodled distractedly on a notepad in front of him.

  The santero looked completely recovered from whatever had happened to him before. He looked composed, healthy and fit. Vestiges of his former self were detectable under the all-white attire and the beaded necklaces. It could have been the buzz cut, the square shoulders, the erect posture, or a vague military rigidity in his demeanor, but Matt sensed the cop’s presence inside the santero, as if the clothes were just a disguise. That reassured him.

  First, they discussed his compensation. Padrino charged fifty dollars for an hour of work, which included consulting his sources—he didn’t say if they were earth-bound or supernatural. They could agree on a budget and he would make sure not to go over it.

  “I appreciate that,” Matt said. “I only have the money I brought because I can’t pay you with a credit card, I assume.”

  “No credit cards, no checks,” Padrino answered. “Just cash, amigo. But I will give you a special discount since you came recommended by one of my goddaughters.”

  “Thanks.”

  Matt set his budget at six hundred dollars and gave Padrino three hundred to start. Padrino took the bills and placed them inside a drawer without counting them. Then he disclosed what he had already found out about the case, information that was, he added, totally free.

  “Yarmila was strangled,” he said matter-of-factly. “Nothing was taken from the apartment. There were two hundred dollars in an envelope in plain sight, on her dresser.”

  “Was she—?” Matt’s voice trembled. “Was she raped or—?”

  “No, the only sign of violence were the marks on her throat,” Padrino said. “It seems like she was left under the shower to erase the killer’s fingerprints. He must have gone around cleaning the whole place because there were no other traces of him. Or her. That’s all I know, up to now. What about you?”

  “What about me?” Matt repeated, confused.

  He looked around and noticed a small round table in a corner, with a blue ceramic pitcher and two matching cups on top. A Cuban watercooler, he thought.

  “Do you have any suspect in mind?” Padrino asked.

  “No, not really. I didn’t think Yarmi had enemies. She never mentioned them. I don’t see a reason—unless she was two-timing Pato Macho too.”

  “So you know about that,” Padrino said.

  Matt struggled to find a face-saving answer. His attention was briefly caught by a framed print that hung above the pitcher. The image looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t identify it.

  “Lieutenant Martínez told me,” he said slowly, his shoulders dropping. “Then Pato Macho came to the room where I wa
s staying and—”

  “Damn kid,” Padrino said. “You shouldn’t worry about him, though. He’s just a big boy.”

  “A big boy with a temper. And a metal bat.”

  “That too. Now, even if we have ruled out robbery, I’d still like to know how often you were sending money to Yarmila and how much you gave her altogether.”

  Matt paused to think it over. “I sent five hundred dollars last year as a Christmas gift, through Western Union. She didn’t ask for it,” he hurried to add. “It was my idea. In January, a friend of mine came to Cuba and I sent three hundred dollars and a care package with her.”

  “What was in the care package?”

  “Deodorant, soaps, two pairs of shoes. But they were from Payless.” He stopped, considering that the name wouldn’t mean a thing to a Cuban. “Inexpensive, I mean. Three T-shirts, a denim jacket . . . Nothing valuable.”

  “Everything is valuable here.”

  “The most expensive item was an interactive map.” Matt smiled sadly at the memory. “A toy, the kind that you can trace a line from one place to another and it tells you the miles and the travel time. I had marked the distance between San Diego and Havana, hoping that it would encourage Yarmila to come with me. I know this sounds silly . . .”

  “No, not at all. Did Yarmila like it?”

  “Yes, very much. She told me that she took it to her workplace and it was a hit there.”

  Matt got a whiff of guava mixed with burned sugar. It was pungent and crisp, and made him salivate. The office door was closed, but he could hear Isabel’s shrill voice giving Gabriela instructions. She sounded like a backyard hen.

  “Did you send her more money?” Padrino asked.

  Matt stared at the wall to avoid Padrino’s eyes. The print portrayed a young woman with dark hair coming out of a river.

  “I wired her another five hundred last month,” he said. “She used it to buy a share of La Caldosa. At least that was what she told me.”

  “That makes thirteen hundred dollars.”

  Matt sighed. It looked now as if he had been taken for a long, costly ride. But he hadn’t seen it like that before. He hadn’t even kept a tally.