Red Angel

by William Heffernan

  Baba Briyumbe jumped from his chair and began shouting in a mix of Spanish and Bantu. Again, Martínez leveled the pistol at his head, but this time it had no effect.

  “What’s he saying?” Devlin asked.

  “He is placing a curse on Detective Pitts,” he answered.

  Devlin looked over at Ollie, who was smirking. “In three days your dick will fall off,” he said.

  Pitts narrowed his eyes, and Devlin could see that catching the witch doctor tuned in to a soap opera had dispelled any voodoo threat.

  “Yeah, well, you tell old mumbo jumbo that if it does, I come back here and shove it down his fucking throat.”

  Baba Briyumbe took three steps toward them, waving his arms and chanting. Pitts reached into his pocket and withdrew the pouch Martínez had given him outside. He held it up so the palero could see the red feather protruding from its top.

  “Plante Firme,” he growled. “Ooga booga.” He pulled the pouch open, dipped two fingers inside, and withdrew a small portion of earth, which he then smeared across his forehead. He took two steps toward the palero and let out a lionlike roar.

  Baba Briyumbe shrank back, eyes wide.

  “Hey, I like this fucking mojo.” Pitts’s lips were spread in a wide grin. “Next time I go to the South Bronx, I’m gonna take this mother with me.”

  Devlin jabbed a finger at the palero. “Sit,” he snapped.

  Martínez repeated the order in Spanish. The palero, now ashen-faced, obeyed.

  They knelt before the contents of the small nganga. A human skull lay in a mix of smaller bones. Devlin removed a pen from his pocket, fitted it into an eye socket, and lifted it so they could see it more clearly.

  “It is an old skull,” Martínez said. “It is not the Red Angel.”

  Devlin nodded. He turned the skull so he could see inside the cranial cavity. “You’re right. This one’s been in the ground for a while. If it was fresh, there’d still be bits of dried flesh attached somewhere. Even acid wouldn’t get it all.”

  Martínez pointed to the other bones. “Feet and hands,” he said. “Large ones. More likely from a man.” Another small skull lay off to one side. It appeared canine. Then the bones of a bird, mixed among the black feathers. “We will search the house,” Martínez said. “Then we will take Baba Briyumbe somewhere where we can question him in privacy.”

  Pitts raised his eyebrows and gave them a fast flutter. “I like your style. You get any openings on the Havana PD, you give old Ollie a call.”

  “You’ll have to become a communist,” Devlin said.

  “Hey, communist, right-wing Republican, what’s the difference? So long as I get to use my rubber hose.”

  Baba Briyumbe sat in a straight-backed, wooden chair, his hands cuffed behind his back. They were in a front second-floor room on Calle Aguilera, diagonally across the street from Santiago de Cuba’s provincial palace. It was the “private place” Martínez had chosen to question the Abakua witch doctor.

  Devlin stood at the window, watching people mount the high marble stairs to enter one of three arched portals guarded by provincial police. A large Cuban flag hung from an upper balcony. Beside it, a banner proclaimed EL PODER DEL PUEBLO. ESE SI ES PODER. Devlin gave it a rough translation: “The Power of the People. That Is Real Power.”

  He glanced back at Martínez. He was standing in front of the palero, peppering him with questions. Devlin drew a long breath. Something in this whole scenario just didn’t jibe with what he’d been told. In the States, if a cop found a “private place” to interrogate a subject, he’d be on a oneway ride to the unemployment line, perhaps worse. Still, this wasn’t the States, and Martínez didn’t seem at all concerned. Yet Martínez had told him that Cubans weren’t lacking in civil rights. Police powers were certainly greater, but strict rules existed. Suspects in a crime, for example, could be held only for seventy-two hours before evidence had to be presented to a grand jury, which would then either indict or release them. Civil libertarians would howl, but it was a far cry from a police state.

  He motioned to Pitts and led him into a hall outside the room. “What’s your take on this?” he asked.

  “On the witch doctor?”

  “No. On Martínez.”

  Pitts pursed his lips. “At first I didn’t trust the little fuck.”

  “Why?”

  “He was too fucking nice. You can’t trust a nice cop.”

  Devlin shook the argument off. “What else?”

  “Well, now he’s suddenly Mr. Hard-ass, which I like. But it’s like he’s onto something he hasn’t told us about. I get the feeling we’re only seeing half of his game here.”

  “Your Spanish is better than mine. What are you getting out of this interrogation?”

  “Hey, my Spanish is only good enough to get me arrested,” Pitts said. He grinned at Devlin. “But he seems to be asking a lot of questions about Cabrera, about people maybe this witch doctor is supposed to meet. I’m not getting a sense that finding this Red Angel’s body is a big thing for him. Not unless he can link it to Cabrera.”

  Devlin shook his head. “The last thing we need is to get dragged into some political game.”

  Pitts laughed at the comment. “Hey, back in the Apple our whole life is a political game. Ever since the mayor decided he wanted his own special squad, we’ve been drowning in fucking politics.”

  “Forget New York. Talk to me about here. What did you find out about Martínez while you were going through files at his office?”

  “He’s something called a jefe de sector, which means he’s responsible for one section of Havana, sort of like a precinct commander, fairly mid-level in the command structure. I got pretty friendly with his second in command, a captain named Julio Pedroso. This Pedroso’s main job seems to be working as a liaison with something they call the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, or CDR, which is some kind of neighborhood watch that was set up after Fidel and his boys took over. To sort of keep an eye out for counterrevolutionaries. These CDR cats exist on just about every block. According to Pedroso, people on the block actually elect them every two years or so.”

  “Political spies for the police?”

  Pitts shook his head. “Not according to Pedroso. He claims they’re not used so much politically anymore. Now they pretty much keep an eye out for any criminal activity—burglary, street crime, even renting out rooms and not paying taxes on the profits. All kinds of shit like that. Pedroso says they report in every day, and it lets the cops know what’s going on in every neighborhood, every day of the week. It also lets them know who’s in that neighborhood when maybe he’s not supposed to be.” Pitts paused a moment. “What bothers you about the little dude?” he asked.

  Devlin stared at his shoes. “I can’t quite pin it down.” He looked up at Pitts. “But you’re right. He’s too nice. He’s like some Spanish Columbo, and there’s no question he knows a helluva lot more than he’s letting on. He also seems to throw a lot of weight here in Santiago, especially for a precinct commander from a city that’s nine hundred kilometers away.”

  “He says it’s because they’re all part of the national police.”

  Devlin nodded. “Yeah, I got that part.” He gave Pitts a long stare. “You ever know a cop who didn’t guard his own turf? Who let some cop from another area just waltz in and take over.”

  “Not unless word came down from pretty high up,” Pitts said. He grinned again. “I told you we shouldn’t trust the little fuck.”

  Devlin nodded. “Maybe, maybe not. But it does make me wonder who Martínez has for a rabbi. Especially when he seems to be going up against a top dog in State Security, maybe even the secret police.”

  Baba Briyumbe glared at them when they returned to the room. But he was sweating now, and it wasn’t from the heat.

  “You get anything from our boy here?” Devlin asked.

  Martínez reached out and lifted the palero‘s chin, forcing him to look him in the eye. Devlin noted that the g
lare Baba Briyumbe had given them disappeared quickly when he was forced to face Martínez.

  “Baba Briyumbe is an unpleasant man, much impressed with his power,” Martínez said. “But he has seen the wisdom in speaking to me.” He gave them his innocent Cuban shrug. “It seems he was brought a body that was badly burned, and he performed a ritual, preparing it for a nganga dedicated to BabaluAye. It is to heal someone of great importance, he said. The ritual is a changing of heads, or changing of lives, which is a way of taking an illness from one person and giving it to another. There are many ways to do this ritual. Paleros have been known to go to hospitals and, through certain incantations, to take the sickness of a person in one room and give it to the person in another. It is a practice much feared in our hospitals. But when this is not possible, there is a second way.” Another shrug. “This involves the use of a dead one, who was once a great healer.”

  “Yeah, that’s great mumbo jumbo,” Devlin said. “But where’s the body now?”

  Martínez smiled. “It is not mumbo jumbo, my friend. I have seen this evil work with my own eyes. But, as to the body. He says it is in the hands of his disciple, a young palero named Siete Rayos, which means Seven Thunderbolts.” He smiled at the name. “He says the Abakua have taken both the palero and the body to Cobre.”

  Devlin hesitated, as if he didn’t want to know the answer to the question he was going to ask. “Is the body … whole?”

  “Baba Briyumbe would not say, but I suspect it is now part of a nganga. He would not leave such a task to a disciple.”

  “And it’s in Cobre, the same place our friend Cipriani went.”

  “Exacto.”

  “So we go to Cobre.”

  “Tonight,” Martínez said. “After I make some preparations.”

  “What preparations?” Devlin asked.

  Martínez simply held up one hand in a wait-and-see gesture.

  10

  Michael DeForio sipped his rum and smiled across the room at Antonio Cabrera. The rum, like the two prostitutes now jabbering quietly in an adjoining bedroom, had been a welcoming gift when the colonel arrived at DeForio’s suite in the Capri Hotel.

  “Excellent rum,” DeForio said.

  Cabrera nodded, accepting the praise. “It is the finest in all Cuba. Perhaps the finest in the world.”

  DeForio inclined his head toward the bedroom. “If the putas are equally superior, I will be a very happy man.” He paused. “Providing our business also goes well.”

  Cabrera glanced toward the bedroom. He had little concern the two young women would eavesdrop on his conversation. Neither spoke English, which was the language he and DeForio would use. They were country women from Santa Clara, young and hungry and ambitious, women like so many others who had poured into Havana to become whores, to earn all-powerful dollars by offering tourists the same gifts their boyfriends had enjoyed for free. To Cabrera, the women were nothing but an amusing fact of life, one that also made them inconsequential. Still, he preferred to be safe.

  Cabrera rose from his chair and closed the bedroom door, taking in the women’s frightened eyes as he shut them away. They were greedy young women, eager to fill their pockets. They also were terrified to find themselves in the hands of State Security. He smiled at the thought. DeForio would indeed enjoy his stay in Havana.

  Cabrera returned to his chair. “Now to business.”

  “Yes,” DeForio said. “Let’s begin with the Isle of Youth, and how we can best use Public Law Seventy-seven. Later we’ll order up some dinner. Perhaps some champagne if our discussion proves successful.”

  Giovanni “John the Boss” Rossi sat in a cushioned planter’s chair. There was a bottle of oxygen by his side with tubing that ran to a clear plastic mask held in his right hand. He stared across the room at Robert Cipriani and the two sullen Abakua who hovered behind him. Cabrera’s man, a major named Cepedes, sat off to one side cleaning his fingernails.

  “So they sent you to assure me that Mickey D and Cabrera know what they’re talking about, eh?”

  Cipriani raised his hands, then let them fall back. He was standing before a wall of glass that offered a view of the Shrine of the Virgin of Caridad, nestled against a rising peak of the Sierra Maestras.

  “You ever notice the way the shrine seems to float on the side of the mountain?” Rossi asked. “You should see it when the sun sets. It’s magic.”

  Cipriani turned and glanced out the window, more as a courtesy than from any real interest. It was six in the evening, and the sun was still hours away from setting.

  “You’re getting romantic in your old age, Don Giovanni.” Cipriani turned back and smiled.

  “I was always romantic,” John the Boss said. “When I was a young button, back in the fifties, I worked here for Meyer Lansky, and I fell in love with this island. As fucked up as it was then, it was a paradise. Hell, as fucked up as it is today under that nigger lover Castro, it’s still a paradise.”

  Cipriani glanced nervously over his shoulder at the two Abakua.

  “Don’t worry about them. They do what they’re told.” Mattie “the Knife” Ippolito came up behind him and placed a hand on Rossi’s shoulder. “Besides, I’ve got Mattie. Those two eggplants would wake up dead if they got within ten feet of me.”

  “Did you ever meet Castro back in the fifties?” Cipriani asked. He wanted to change the subject before he found himself in the middle of a bloodbath.

  “I met him. Meyer left a handful of us here to see if we could bargain with that bearded prick. You know Meyer actually gave him money and weapons when his army was still up in the mountains. Meyer was just playing both sides, laying off a little of his bet, just in case Batista couldn’t pull it together.” He snorted at the name of the former dictator. “Shit, the only thing Batista could pull was his prick.” He sat forward, his hand tightening on the oxygen mask. “But you think Fidel was grateful? The bastard personally put us on a boat, and told us we’d be shot if we ever came back.” He sat back and glared at Cipriani. “Well, we’re back. And the only thing I don’t like about it is that we’re gonna keep that sonovabitch in power.”

  Cipriani walked across the room and took a chair opposite Rossi. “It works better that way. For you. Not just for Castro.” He spread his arms. “Look, Castro’s fucked. The socialist camp that fed his economy no longer exists. He’s back in the real world, and thanks to his enemies in the U.S., he’s finding it a very unfriendly place.”

  Rossi waved his left hand, and used his right to take a deep breath of oxygen. “I know all that.”

  Cipriani leaned forward. “Okay. You also know he changed the laws on foreign investment back in 1992. He knew, even then, that foreign capital was the only thing that was going to save his revolution. I was consulted on that. I know how the thinking went.”

  Rossi chuckled. “Yeah, and it didn’t work. And when they found out about the little side deals you were making, they threw you in a stinking cell and let you rot.”

  Cipriani raised his hands in another expansive gesture, then let them fall back. “That was only part of it. A very small part. If everything else had worked, the side deals wouldn’t have mattered.” He leaned forward, giving weight to his words. “I told them they had to deal with the U.S. Hell, I even had my bags packed and was ready to move to Brazil, just in case they decided to let the U.S. extradite me as part of any deal. But the deal never happened. Clinton was all set to lift the embargo—shit, American business was clamoring to get in here so they could milk the Cuban cow. But then the Miami Cubans”—he paused and smiled—“and your people … Well, you both just pulled the rug out, didn’t you?”

  “That was DeForio’s idea. He sold it to everybody.” Rossi hesitated a beat. “Everybody except me. Me, I wanted Castro out.”

  “Yes, I know. But with all respect, you were wrong on that one.” Cipriani sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “Look. Castro did what he had to do. He changed the foreign investment laws. Joint ventures with th
e Cuban government are now permitted. Foreign corporations and economic associations are even allowed to own the facilities they build, providing those facilities benefit the country’s development. And that means hotels, refineries, manufacturing plants, whatever. The Cuban government keeps its hands on the throttle, but we both know it’s only a matter of time—and a little money spread in the right places—before that hand loses its grip.”

  “So who needs Castro?”

  “Nobody,” Cipriani said. “Except you.” He leaned forward again. “Look. The changes in the law worked, to a point. Investment capital rolled in from Canada and Mexico and Europe. Even the Helms-Burton law didn’t stop it. The Canadians and Mexicans and Europeans laughed at it. There was money to be made.”

  Cipriani leaned back and recrossed his legs. “But it still wasn’t enough capital. Nowhere near what Castro needs. First, the markets aren’t there, especially for sugar. Second, the Canadians and the Mexicans just aren’t big enough players. They don’t have the kind of ready capital that’s needed to really put this country on its feet. And finally, the guys who do, the Europeans, aren’t willing to risk that much on a country that’s still run by communists. They’ve lived with communists at their back door for half a century, and they know they can’t trust them. They’ve also seen what happens when a communist country goes under. Christ, the West Germans—the biggest players in the new European community—saw what happened to their economy when they reunified with East Germany.

  “No, what Castro needs is the U.S. That’s Cuba’s natural market. And it’s also where the big corporate investors are—the moneymen who are willing to gamble on Cuba’s future.” Cipriani seemed to drift for a moment, as if recalling his own days as a financial player. He brought himself back with a shake of his head. “There’s no question that U.S. business wants the action. They know Castro will be dead in ten years, and they know the young guys standing behind him are champing at the bit to bring capitalism here big time. But as willing as they are, they also want to do it in a way that lets the people hang on to what they have—the homes they live in, the educational system, the health care. And that’s okay. Big business understands why they want it. It’s not because these young turks are good little communists. It’s because they know if the people lose those things, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll have another band of rebels sitting up in these mountains.” He gestured toward the Sierra Maestras behind him. “Except this time the rebels will be shooting at them.”