by C I Dennis
“Congratulations.”
“And then you get yourself beat up, and Roberto moves in, and then the whole fucking world is living in our house, and I’m scared about my own safety, and the safety of our baby, and—”
“Look, Barbara—”
“No. No more look Barbara. I’ve had enough. You go to Cuba, I’m checking out. You can stay here with all your castaways.”
“What?”
“Royal and I are leaving,” she said. “Right now.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know yet. Probably my sister’s.”
Barbara’s sister Vicki lived two hours north in Jacksonville. Maybe that was for the best. She would be out of harm’s way there, and we both needed to cool off.
“I understand,” I said, but she had already gone inside, and I heard her taking her suitcase out of the hall closet.
Fair enough. A little time apart could be a good thing. Or maybe not. One thing was for certain:
She may have aced her nursing school exams, but she had just failed the Eyeball Test.
*
I hadn’t done a head count, but to my knowledge Roberto was in the study on the pull-out bed, Megan was in the nursery, Sonny was on the couch, and Susanna was in the spare bedroom. I was in my own room, wondering what I was going to do about my marriage. Barbara and I had been husband and wife for a grand total of nine months—our ceremony had been held in my backyard only a few hours before our son had entered our lives. Having Royal was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and it had followed directly on the heels of several of the worst things that had ever happened to me. I thought at the time that I had turned a corner, and that I might live out the rest of my days being a dad and a husband, and would not ever again be surrounded by some kind of crazy shitstorm like the one that I currently found myself in, both personal and professional. Wrong.
I had the bedroom TV on and my knitting out, but I couldn’t pay attention to either one. Distractions were not what I needed right now—I needed solutions. I had to go out and find Lilian Arguelles and solve the case. Then, I might solve the curious and enduring mystery of my marriage. Maybe marital mysteries were not to be solved, and the point was simply to persevere.
Endurance. That was what marriage was really about. There was no guaranteed happy ending, no permanently blissful state. Married people were like Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to roll a huge boulder up a hill every day, only to have it roll back down again. You did your job, called it a day, sat down in your favorite chair with a beer, and you hoped that you didn’t get run over by a gigantic rock. From the outside it might look futile, absurd—even tragic. But men and women feel compelled to do it anyway, and there are those times in a marriage when you welcome the repetition and routine, and it’s sweeter, cozier, and more satisfying than anything else. This was not one of those times.
I heard a soft knock on the door, and someone pushed it open. It was Megan, in my light-brown T-shirt that she had apparently adopted.
“You can’t sleep?”
“I haven’t really tried yet,” I said. “Just thinking about some things.”
“Barbara?”
“Yeah,” I said. She crossed the bedroom and sat on the mattress, near me. Too near.
“It’s none of my business, but I can’t believe she left. You need all the help you can get right now. I don’t know what you guys fought about, but that was wrong.”
“She had her reasons. It takes two with these things. It’s not just her.”
“You don’t just leave like that though,” Megan said.
“She’s a little impulsive sometimes.”
“Do you like that? Is that what you find attractive in a woman?”
Megan was now about a foot away from me, and I could not only smell her, I could feel her warmth as if she was some kind of heating pad and I was a guy with a sore back.
“I—”
“You are so stressed out,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Roll over and I’ll do your shoulders.”
“Megan.”
“Vince.”
We looked at each other for a long time. I’m of the male persuasion—meaning, normally oblivious to the wants of those of the female persuasion—but it was crystal-clear to me that Megan Rumsford wanted to give me a back rub, and then she wanted to rub the rest of me.
It would be so easy. Some bad guys in a van had practically delivered her to my doorstep, although I suddenly wondered if that had actually happened or if Megan had made it up.
“I can’t do this,” I said.
She smiled. “Warm milk. You’ll be asleep in no time. You stay right there.”
I lay back on the pillow, relieved. She really was a good kid. She came back into the bedroom after a few minutes with a glass, and held it to my lips. I hadn’t had warmed-up milk since I was five years old and my mother had made it for me when I’d been home with the measles.
“This is nice,” I said.
“Everything about you is nice, Vince,” she said, taking away the glass. “Now, sleep.”
*
My phone buzzed on the bedside table with a text from Robert Patton. Patton was a friend in Vermont who was in charge of the state’s Border Patrol, and he seemed to know anyone and everyone in law enforcement and beyond, since the Border Patrol was part of Homeland Security and interacted with the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, the TSA, the ATF, the Coast Guard, the State Department, and Brownie Troop Number 415.
You can pick up your visa in Coral Gables tomorrow, he had written. Your charter leaves the Miami airport at 1 PM. You’re going with a church group from Minneapolis.
Seriously?
Yes. You’re Father Vince Tanzi. You’re accompanying a group of nuns.
You’re kidding, right?
No, I’m not. You’ll need to wear one of those dog collars.
Me? Anyway, thanks for pulling the strings.
No problem, Patton wrote back. Behave yourself now. No lap dances.
God forbid.
You can get into Cuba fairly easily these days if you fly in from Cancun or Montreal, but it takes longer, and there’s a lot of red tape. Certain church groups can fly directly from the United States on a charter, provided that they are going to visit shrines and so on, and not just to travel for tourism. So Father Tanzi wasn’t going to be hitting the beach. In fact, the good Father had already worked out a preliminary itinerary with his technology consultant, and the two of them had spent part of the evening outfitting his suitcase with a few items that would hopefully make it through security.
A group of nuns? I’d gone to Catholic school in Vermont, and I still had to cross myself when I thought of some of the sisters who had taught there. They were good people, but they didn’t put up with any crap, and the wiseacres like me who got themselves sent to the Mother Superior’s office usually toed the line after the first visit. As far as we knew, her authority came directly from God, and she might have even outranked the Pope.
The warm milk that Megan had poured me was taking effect, and I put down the phone. I had slept so long the previous night that I still wasn’t sure that I could drift off, but as soon as I darkened the lights I knew that I was about to fade, which was good. I might need the sleep.
*
I was in Vermont, lying on the cold stone slab. Barre Gray is what they called the granite that was quarried from my hometown; it was the same stone that my grandfather and my father had fashioned into gravestones at the Rock of Ages monument company. Almost everyone I had grown up with had a family member who worked there, if not several.
Two warm hands were working my back, pressing upward from underneath. It was my dream again. The soft, sensuous, erotic movie that my subconscious had drummed up to entertain me. I might as well enjoy it. I was asleep, and no harm could come to me.
Wait a minute. My eyes were closed, but I could see, and a topless red-haired woman was leaning over me as her st
rong hands kneaded my lower back, and then slowly migrated up toward my chest.
No.
I forced myself to wake up, and saw that I had scattered the bed sheets everywhere. I flicked on the bedside lamp, remade the bed, and then went into the bathroom for a pee.
Goddamn. It wasn’t even midnight, and I was wide awake again. I padded out of the bathroom into the hall and checked on everyone in the house. Sonny was on the couch, snoring lightly. Roberto was asleep in the study, Susanna was in the spare room, and Megan Rumsford was on the cot in Royal’s nursery, lying under a single sheet. I quietly shut the door.
Everything was fine. My refugees were safe, and nothing crazy had happened. My subconscious had just conspired with my libido and had put on a show, that was all. I returned to my bedroom to try to get a few more hours rest, careful to avoid the full-length mirror that I had installed for Barbara on the closet door.
Because I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that I would pass the Eyeball Test, either.
TUESDAY
I stopped at St. John of the Cross on the way out of Vero Beach to pick up a couple of tab-collared shirts from a priest I knew who was about my size and who was willing to help me once he heard that I was going after Lilian. She was a member of his congregation, and he said that they would be praying for her. I asked him what the penalty was for impersonating a clergyman, and he laughed and said that it would remain between us and the Lord.
Two hours later I was in Coral Gables, where I made a stop at the Border Patrol office to pick up my paperwork. I decided to double back and visit Gustavo Arguelles at South Miami Hospital, to see how he was doing and if he could shed any more light that might help me on my trip.
Gustavo was sipping water through a straw with the help of a nurse. “He still can’t talk,” she said. “But they want to release him soon. Maybe at the end of the week. Do you know anyone who can care for him? We know his wife is missing.”
“He can move into my place. I may have to add a new wing.”
“That’s good,” she said, and Gustavo appeared to smile behind his bandages. He waved his hand, signaling for a pencil and paper.
Roberto?
“In school. He’s still at my house, and Sonny and Susanna are looking out for him. Those two are getting along pretty well, by the way.”
Crazy, Gustavo wrote.
“Yeah,” I said. “And I’m going to Cuba. I leave in a couple hours.”
Why?
“I’m looking for a guy who goes by Pescador. That’s who Segundo was emailing, but the emails are scrambled. Segundo’s paralegal gave me a tablet computer that belonged to him, and Roberto hacked into it, but that’s as far as we got.”
You think he’s in Cuba?
“I found Javier’s boat in Key West the day before yesterday, after I saw you. I stowed away on the boat, and Javier and the two guys who beat you up came aboard and sailed us to the Cuban coast. They dropped a big sealed-up cooler off the side, and it was picked up later by a Cuban Navy ship.”
Gustavo wrote down his thoughts after a pause. Efectivo. That’s Spanish for cash.
“Roberto thinks the same thing.”
They owe somebody. Segundo was a gambler.
“And Lilian is collateral?”
Hadn’t thought of that, he wrote. Maybe.
“Can you think of anything that I should know before I go there?”
Eat the buñuelos, Gustavo wrote. And don’t forget about backgammon. That’s all that Segundo cared about.
Actually, I knew that there was something else that Segundo Pimentel had cared about—a detective lieutenant’s wife. But there was no need to bring that up.
“I’m assuming that buñuelos are fattening, whatever they are?” I asked.
God’s gift to the Cuban waistline, he wrote. Good luck, Vince.
*
Miami International Airport is one part crying baby, two parts European tourist sitting next to me who doesn’t believe in deodorant, three parts unintelligible-but-loud P.A. system, four parts clueless business traveler sitting on the other side of me and talking on his phone louder than the P.A. system, and a dash of every other personality-type and nationality on the planet. Today it was mostly occupied by students in baggy outfits, lying on the carpet and plugged in to one electronic device or another via white headphone cords that stretched like vines upward to their ears. I spotted the Minneapolis sisters as soon as they got near the gate. They looked like a vision: a heavenly horde of angels—with roller bags—who had come to take me away. I had my dog collar on, but it didn’t feel like I was fooling anybody, and so far no one had approached me to ask for forgiveness or to hit me up for a communion wafer. I wondered how long it would take until the sisters exposed me as a fraud and I would be excommunicated, or whatever they did these days.
“Father Tanzi?” A cherub-faced woman of around sixty tapped on my shoulder from behind. She had gray hair cut in a pageboy, and she wore a trim blue Ralph Lauren shirt over black slacks.
“Yes?”
“I’m Sister Mary Carelle,” she said, “from the Visitation Monastery. It’s so nice to meet you!” She extended her hand.
“You’re not wearing—”
“A habit? No, we don’t all do that when we travel. But please, you do as you like.”
“These are the only shirts I brought.”
“We’ll dress when we visit the holy places,” she said. “Oh, I’m so excited! Aren’t you?”
“Oh—yes, I am.” I gave her a weak smile.
“That was so nice of your friend—Mr. Patton? He said that you know a lot about Cuba.”
“He did?”
“Yes. And that you speak perfect Spanish. That will be so helpful.”
“He said that?” Holy crap. What was I supposed to do now? I didn’t think that the nuns would appreciate the fact that I could order them a Dos Equis in Spanish, and that was about it.
“We arrive at two thirty, local time,” the sister said. “What do you think we should do first?”
Heaven help me, I thought. Maybe I could read a tourist guidebook on the flight over, and simultaneously take a twenty-minute language immersion course. This was hopeless. I wasn’t going to be excommunicated, I was going to be burned at the stake like the godless heretic that I was.
“Father? What would you like to do first? After we arrive?”
“Get a nap,” I said. “And then we’re going out for buñuelos.”
*
The charter plane was a Brazilian Embraer short-hopper with about fifty seats. The Minneapolis sisters and I brought up the rear, and the front of the plane was divided equally between a party of Mormons and another one of Pentecostals. Everyone, thankfully, had the good grace to keep to themselves, thus averting a possible holy war. I was seated next to a nun who looked to be closer to my age than Barbara’s, and had shoulder-length curly black hair, vibrant green eyes, and a light tan. Too bad she had taken her vows, I thought, because she was—OK, I was going to say cute, but in my role as Father Tanzi I didn’t dare, lest I be struck down by a celestial Taser. She had been thumbing through an Elle magazine, and I thought of the wadded-up pink sweatshirt in Javier Pimentel’s boat that had kept me from freezing. The nun tucked the magazine into the seat pocket in front of her and turned to face me.
“So, Father. What do you think of the von Balthasaar theology? In light of what the Pope has been saying?”
“I—don’t have an opinion.” Uh-oh. Whoever this woman was, she was about to blow my flimsy cover wide open. I needed to shift the conversation to small talk, fast. “What’s your name?”
“Rose,” she said. “So you don’t think that bad people should go to Hell?”
“I think that—bad people should do their time. A lot of them can be rehabilitated. I’ve seen it.”
“You don’t really know what we’re talking about, do you?” She smiled. It wasn’t the kind of smile that you’d expect to see on a nun. More like the one on a hooker who had ju
st taken your money and was about to skedaddle.
“Excuse me, Sister?”
“I’m not a sister. Rose DiNapoli, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Robert Patton sent me to babysit you.”
“Jeezum crow.”
“Question for you,” she said. “Did you bring any electronics?”
“Just my phone.”
“And what else?” Ms. DiNapoli gave me a penetrating look. “Spill, Tanzi.”
“I have a few items in my bag. Very small things.”
“They’ll rip you apart at Cuban customs. They X-ray everything, and if you have so much as a flash drive, they’ll detain you and hassle the shit out of you. And then they’ll confiscate it.”
“That wouldn’t be good.”
“Get your bag out of the overhead bin. I can fit a few things in my bra. That’s off limits to Latino guys, especially since I’m a nun.”
“So why is ICE interested in this?”
“Because we’ve been after the Pimentels for eighteen months now,” she said. “You can buy me a Cuba Libre and I might tell you more. I know where they make the best ones in Havana.”
*
A little over half a millennium ago, Christopher Columbus described Cuba as “the most beautiful island that I have yet seen”. He wasn’t so far off—even though he believed that he was in India at the time. And Havana, the capital city and the Caribbean’s largest at two million inhabitants, is a spectacular, if somewhat tarnished, architectural mix of nineteenth-century grandeur, run-down neighborhoods with music coming from everywhere, and the odd Soviet-era monstrosity like the Russian Embassy, a bizarre, Lego-like structure that pokes out of the landscape like the hilt of a sword. Our cab driver had decided to give us an impromptu tour of the city on the way to our hostel, no doubt in hopes of a tip, and he pointed out things along the way, which the three nuns riding with me expected me to translate. Some of it I could guess, like the park dedicated to John Lennon with a bronze statue of the musician seated casually on a bench, and the rest I made up. According to Father Tanzi we had just passed the Jalapeño Building and were now crossing Avenida Huevos Rancheros, and the sisters hung on every word. Maybe I could get a job doing this. I was almost starting to enjoy myself.