Red Angel

by William Heffernan

  Reception proved friendly, efficient, and quick, and they were led to adjoining rooms on the third floor. Adrianna was delighted with what she found. Their room was surprisingly spacious, with twenty-foot ceilings and graceful, old mahogany furniture—two queen-size beds, an armoire, matching upholstered chairs, and an oversized desk. Behind heavy brocade drapes, twelve-foot louvered windows overlooked the cathedral and the plaza, and when she opened them she smiled at the sound of the salsa rhythms that drifted up from the park.

  “I feel like I’ve gone back in time,” she said, smiling at Devlin.

  He inclined his head toward the bath. “Wait until you go in there. It’s all marble with gold fixtures. There’s even a bidet. It makes our hotel in Havana seem like a Times Square fleabag.”

  A knock on their door produced Ollie Pitts, dressed now in a pair of massive red Bermuda shorts and another Hawaiian shirt. Devlin took in his enormous legs and thought of two tree trunks protruding from a billowing red tent.

  “Martínez said we should refresh ourselves, so I’m thinking of a beer or two,” Pitts said. “Anybody interested?”

  Adrianna turned back toward the bed. “I think he meant a shower or a nap,” she said. “I’m going to opt for a shower, then go down to the terrace with my sketch pad.”

  Devlin encircled her with his arms and kissed the back of her head. “Sounds good. Maybe you’ll come up with another sketch we can use. I’m going to give my daughter a call and check in with the office. Then I’ll go with Ollie. I want to get a look around, myself, just to see if any of Cabrera’s boys have the hotel staked out.”

  She turned to face him. “You think he knows we’re here? I thought that’s why we didn’t check out of our hotel in Havana. To throw him off. Isn’t that what Martínez said?”

  Devlin winked at her. “Maybe it worked. Maybe not. But Cabrera’s the number two man in State Security, and Martínez claims he’s also the head of the secret police. If that’s true, I suspect the colonel knows just about everything that goes on in this country.”

  “Then why would Martínez lead us on like that? Why does he want us to think we can get away from him?”

  “Good questions. Unfortunately, like everything else on this infuriating island, I don’t have answers for those either.”

  “So what’s happening at the office?” Pitts asked as they stepped into the elevator.

  “Sounds like the mob settled their little war,” Devlin said. “Cavanaugh tailed Rossi to Kennedy Airport. Seems like John the Boss hopped a flight to the Bahamas.”

  “You think the other families made him an offer he couldn’t refuse?” Pitts finished the sentence with an evil cackle.

  “Looks that way. Cavanaugh said there was a sit-down at Rossi’s house a couple of days ago, and the old Bathrobe left town the next morning. Red wanted to know if he should follow him to the Bahamas.”

  “So what did you tell him?”

  “I told him to forget it.”

  Pitts laughed again. “Hey, Cavanaugh ain’t stupid. It never hurts to ask.”

  Despite Ollie’s protests, the beer he wanted was put on hold. Instead Devlin led him on a quick tour of the surrounding area, then up onto a wide stone piazza that ran along one side of the cathedral some thirty feet above the street. They did not enter the church, but took up positions behind one of two stone lions that guarded the staircase to the street.

  “Watch for nasty boys dressed in white,” Devlin said. “If they’re watching us, they should start to move when we don’t come down.”

  Twenty minutes later two men wearing white shirts and matching skullcaps exited a store across the street and took up a position in the park where they could watch the staircase that led up to the cathedral.

  “Bingo,” Pitts said. “These Abakua must all be twins. Somebody should tell their mama to dress them a little less conspicuously. Those white costumes play hell on a good surveillance.”

  Devlin raised his chin toward the park benches that had suddenly emptied with the appearance of the Abakua. “Martínez claims it’s a religious thing with this particular sect. It’s also supposed to be a type of intimidation. People know if they mess with an Abakua, the whole cult will be out to get them. The white outfits are supposed to be a warning.”

  Pitts snorted at the idea. “Some fucking warning,” he said. “The two outside the witch doctor’s shack last night were a pair of pussies. They wouldn’t make it across the Port Authority Bus Terminal without getting sliced, diced, and fucking hung out to dry.”

  Devlin smiled at Pitts’s bravado. It was exactly why he had brought him to Cuba. It was what Ollie Pitts was for.

  Martínez arrived on the hotel terrace one hour later, as promised. He found Devlin and Pitts sipping orange juice and beer, respectively, their eyes fixed on the people milling about the plaza.

  “Your Abakua are back,” Devlin said as Martínez seated himself at their table. He handed him a sketch of the men he had seen. Adrianna had also spotted them from the hotel terrace, and had produced a quick drawing before returning to their room.

  “This is excellent,” Martínez said as he studied the drawing. “My men saw them as well, but could only give a general description.” He ran a finger along his mustache. “We also have another visitor to Santiago. Are you familiar with the name Robert Cipriani?”

  “The fugitive financier?” Devlin asked. “The one my government has been trying to extradite for the past ten or fifteen years? I thought I read the Cubans had busted him and sentenced him to a long stretch in prison.”

  “That is exactly so,” Martínez said. “At last report he was being held in one of Cabrera’s very exclusive cells at State Security headquarters. It would seem he has either escaped or has been given some special mission.”

  “Us?” Pitts asked.

  “It is possible. But I doubt that is the only reason he is here. Cipriani is not a killer. He is a financial gangster.”

  “How do you know all this?” Devlin asked.

  “Our police here work very closely with the immigration police at the airport. Just to be aware of who is coming into their territory. It would appear that Mr. Cipriani and another gentleman—who I suspect is one of Cabrera’s men—arrived on the flight following ours. They were met by two Abakua, who drove them to El Cobre.”

  “What’s El Cobre?” Devlin asked.

  “A small mountain village to the west. It is the site of a church that houses the shrine to the Virgin of Caridad.”

  “Maybe they just wanna say a little prayer?” Pitts said.

  Martínez smiled across the table. “Perhaps that is so. It is a very famous shrine. Your novelist, and Cuba’s great friend, Ernest Hemingway, presented his Nobel medal to the virgin shortly before his death.” He shifted his gaze to Devlin. “But I suspect Señor Cipriani is here for other than prayerful reasons.”

  “I think we should find out,” Devlin said.

  “Yes, we should.” He reached into a pocket and removed the small pouch containing the earth from the Red Angel’s burial site. He laid it on the table. The red feather Plante Firme had given them protruded from the top. “But first I think we must confront Baba Briyumbe. Just to stir the pot a bit.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Perhaps it would be better if we do this without Señorita Méndez. It could prove to be … difficult.”

  “She’s resting in our room,” Devlin said. “I’ll leave her a note that we had some errands to run.”

  “Good,” Martínez said. “My men will continue to watch all entrances to the hotel. No Abakua will be allowed inside.”

  “What about State Security?” Pitts asked.

  “No one from State Security will harm the niece of the Red Angel,” Martínez said. “They will have others do that for them.”

  Baba Briyumbe’s house was located on Maximo Gomez Street, only a few blocks from the waterfront. It was a moderate walk from the hotel, along a twisting route of narrow streets, filled with the occasional sounds of bar
king dogs and crowing roosters. Before one house, two men busied themselves gutting a pig. A score of children had gathered to watch, and they let out squeals of delight and disgust as the entrails spilled to the ground.

  “Jesus Christ, ain’t you guys ever heard of butcher shops?” Ollie Pitts groaned.

  “Ah, but it is cheaper this way,” Martínez said. “And what they do not eat, they can sell. Hopefully for dollars.”

  They waited at a corner for a battered truck to make its way past, its bed filled with people standing and sitting. It was followed by a horse-drawn wagon also filled with people.

  “Our bus service from outlying neighborhoods and from the countryside,” Martínez said. “One of the many private enterprises the revolution now allows. This second one with the horse also confronts our great gasoline shortages. It is ingenious, eh?”

  Pitts shook his head. “If you’re fucking Wyatt Earp,” he muttered.

  They moved halfway down the next block. The street ran at a moderate downward pitch, and from this upper point they could see the harbor some three hundred yards distant. Martínez stopped them and raised his chin toward a dilapidated row of attached houses across the street. The houses were all two stories, but the one they faced had only a blank wall at its lower level, with narrow, steep stone stairs leading to a gallery above. On the side of the street where they stood, the stucco wall of another building bore a painted portrait of Fidel in profile. The words SOCIALISMO O MUERTE were written beneath it.

  “The palero must get a lot of business,” Martínez said.

  “Why is that?” Devlin asked.

  Martínez turned to face the portrait. “The government only puts its propaganda in places where there is the movement of many people.” He smiled at the two Americans. “To maximize its efficiency. Is it not so for politicians in your country?”

  “Only when there are elections,” Pitts said. “Then the politicians are running scared, because some other hacks are trying to take their jobs away, so we see their faces and their slogans everywhere.”

  Martínez nodded. “So it is the same. Except here we have only one political party, so the politicians must seek support all the time, because they never know when or from where opposition will come.” He made a gun out of his index finger and thumb. “In such a system, change can be quick without great support of the people.”

  Devlin raised his chin toward the palero’s house. “The civics lesson is very interesting, Major. Now what about Baba Briyumbe?”

  Martínez looked down the street, then back the way they had come. Devlin followed his gaze and saw two men in each direction—two in civilian clothes, two in uniform.

  “Your people?” he asked.

  Martínez nodded. “When we enter the palero‘s house, they will move toward us. If there is trouble they have been told to force their way inside.”

  “That’s very good cooperation from another city’s cops.”

  “We are all the same, a national police, and the senior officer here is a captain, so he is at my orders.” He smiled. “Also, he dislikes Baba Briyumbe, who was once suspected of telling a follower to kill his uncle so a nganga could be made from his bones.”

  “Did the follower do it?” Devlin asked.

  “Oh yes.” Martínez paused, as if deciding whether to say more. “The follower was a member of the police,” he finally added. “A young man who was a secret member of the Abakua.” He shook his head. “His crime was never officially made known to the people. But of course they knew. The captain arrested the man, and he was sentenced to be shot. In reprisal, Baba Briyumbe put a curse on the captain’s family.”

  “What happened to the captain?” Pitts asked. His voice sounded just a bit nervous.

  “To him, nothing,” Martínez said. “But his child became very sick, and he was forced to go to another palero to have the curse removed.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Pitts said. “I want a fucking piece. This Baba guy gives me any mumbo-jumbo shit, I wanna stick it up his nose.”

  Martínez reached into his pocket and removed the bag containing the cemetery earth and the feather. He held it out to Pitts. “Take this,” he said. “It will give you more power over Baba Briyumbe than any other weapon.”

  The door to Baba Briyumbe’s house was opened by a tall, slender man dressed all in white, another Abakua. There was an old knife wound running along his jawline, and his unbuttoned shirt revealed a crudely executed tattoo. To Devlin it appeared to be a solid red sphere the size of a grapefruit, bisected by five black arrows and a series of small crosses and circles. Behind the man, Devlin could see a tile-floored room, empty except for one thronelike chair facing five others. It reminded him of Plante Firme’s courtyard.

  Martínez displayed his credentials. He spoke to the man in a soft voice, but his eyes were cold steel. What Devlin caught from his rapid-fire Spanish was a request to see Baba Briyumbe.

  The Abakua eyed Martínez, then Pitts and Devlin. He appeared to be in his early thirties, but the sneer that broke out on his face added an easy ten years in street time. He raised his chin toward the major and uttered one word: “Irse.”

  “The fuck is tellin’ us to scram,” Pitts said.

  Martínez stepped through the door, bumping the man back with his shoulder, followed quickly by Devlin and Pitts. The man’s hand went to his pocket, but it wasn’t fast enough. The speed with which Martínez moved caught Devlin by surprise. The rigid fingers of one hand struck out, catching the man at the base of the throat. He staggered to one side, gagging, and Devlin quickly pinned his hand in his pocket. Not to be left out, Pitts took a step forward and drove his hamlike fist squarely into the man’s face. The Abakua bounced off the tile floor like someone hit by a fast-moving train.

  Devlin pulled the hand from the man’s pocket and removed a six-inch gravity knife. He flicked it open and showed Martínez the razor-sharp edge.

  “He thought you needed a shave,” Pitts said.

  Martínez stared down at the man, his eyes still steel. The Abakua stirred and Martínez drove the point of his shoe into his temple. Then he bent down, turned the now unconscious man over, and cuffed him.

  “Now, that’s definitely police brutality,” Pitts said. “You could definitely lose your pension.”

  Martínez glanced up at him and Pitts shrugged. “Hell, it’s only fourteen bucks a month. I think you should kick the skinny asshole again.”

  Martínez removed a nine-millimeter Beretta from his waistband and smiled when he saw both Devlin and Pitts stiffen. He inclined his head toward a door on the opposite side of the nearly empty room.

  “I will shoot him later,” he said. “Now we must find Baba Briyumbe and search his house. The captain tells me that his ceremonial room is down on the first level.”

  He led Devlin and Pitts to the door, his automatic held along his right leg. They entered a dark narrow stairwell and descended quietly. Ahead, they could hear the rapid jabber of two female voices. They slipped through another doorway, and into another tile-floored room. A nganga, almost as large as Plante Fume’s, stood in one corner, surrounded by numerous vases and statues, one a hideous depiction of a man whose face and body were covered with sores. An older black man sat in a folding beach chair, his eyes glued to a portable black-and-white television set tuned to a Spanish soap opera.

  Martínez snapped out a command, and Baba Briyumbe jumped from the chair.

  “Days of Our fucking Lives,” Pitts said. “The fucking witch doctor watches Days of Our fucking Lives.” He let out a snorting cackle.

  Baba Briyumbe glared at them with pitch-black eyes. He was well into his sixties, his head shaved to a shiny, gleaming brown. His face was grizzled and lined by years in the sun. He was of medium height with a large belly that pushed out against a white Miami Dolphins T-shirt, which he wore over baggy white cotton slacks and bare feet.

  Martínez snapped out another command, which seemed to have no effect on the Abakua palero. He grabbed the man’s arm
and spun him around, then quickly patted him down.

  Pitts had walked over to the statue that stood beside Baba Briyumbe’s nganga. He pointed to the hideous figure covered in festering sores. “This is the ugliest fucker I’ve seen in a long time. It looks like it’s got a terminal case of crud.”

  Martínez had pushed Baba Briyumbe back into his beach chair and shut off the television. “It is BabaluAye, the god of sickness and death. One of the most powerful and feared of the orishas.”

  “Yeah, well, he don’t look too fucking scary to me.”

  “That is because you are a son of Chango, who plays tricks on all the other gods.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Pitts said. “I’m a regular fucking jokester.”

  “Over here,” Devlin said. He was standing over a small nganga that had been covered by a white drop cloth. “Looks like one of those baby ngangas the other palero was growing in his courtyard.”

  The others crowded around. Baba Briyumbe began to shout at them in rapid Spanish.

  Martínez leveled his pistol at the palero‘s head. “Silencio,” he snapped.

  The palero stared at the bore opening of the pistol and snapped his jaw shut.

  Devlin pointed down into the cast-iron pot, which was two feet in diameter and, like Plante Firme’s, had a ring of small bones tied around its lip. The interior was filled with sticks, herbs, and old bandages, mixed in with clusters of bird feathers. Beneath the mass, they could see a glimmer of white bone.

  “If we find bone and body parts, you’re capable of running DNA tests, right?” Devlin asked.

  Martínez nodded uncomfortably, and Devlin glanced at Pitts.

  “My pleasure,” Pitts said. He lifted one foot and kicked the pot over, sending the contents scattering across the tile floor.