Act of Betrayal (18 page)

Life's journey is so short, so solitary. We arrive alone and leave the same way. Sometimes, in a rare moment, we achieve a oneness with a fellow traveler. This was one of them. “Bedroom,” I murmured. He nodded, breathing hard.

Like survivors of a whirlwind, we luxuriated in the soft comfort of my bed and each other. His tight shiny skin and the touch and smell of his hard body took my breath away.

He was skillful with his mouth and hands. We took all the time we needed and reveled in the warmth afterward. Sex after death is good.

“Do you want me to go?” he whispered, cradling me in his arms.

“Try it and I'll confiscate your car keys,” I said, and kissed him soundly.

“Good.” He sighed and settled into my bed as though he belonged there. At that moment, he did.

Too exhausted to sleep, we talked about the man he killed, about life, death, our parents—not typical pillow talk, but right for us.

“If only they hadn't released him early. If only he had been rehabilitated or learned a damn trade…”

“Forget the if onlys,” I murmured. “There is no justice, just us. His crimes were escalating. You saved somebody else.”

I told him about my mother's rejection of me and about my father and his diary.

“I want to know,” I said dreamily, Hal's heartbeat in my ear, “am I the kind of daughter he wanted me to be? Do I think like him? Walk like him? Talk like him?”

“If he was alive, he would probably kill me,” Hal said, thoughtfully. “But you're right. Whatever he wrote belongs to you. You should find it, like the adopted children who track down their biological parents. It's a clue to what made you the wonderful creature you are.” He kissed my left eye, where Bitsy had been licking earlier.

We slept like the dead, in each other's arms. He started awake once, disoriented, sitting upright in bed, fists clenched. The digital clock glowed 3:30
A.M
. “It's all right. You're here with me,” I said sleepily and reached for him.

“Jesus,” he whispered, sinking back into my arms. “I've been doing that at the same time every night since it happened.” Grazing his biceps with my teeth, I nibbled upward toward his throat. “As long as we're both awake…” I breathed. He grinned as I straddled his body and we were lost again in each other.

I stared glumly into my pantry as Hal showered. The kitchen glowed with sunlight, birds chirped in the ylang-ylang tree outside, and all seemed right with the world—or would have if I had something besides stale bread for breakfast.

Hal loomed in the doorway, one of my blush-colored bath towels around his waist just below the tan line, running a comb through his damp hair.

“How does breakfast at the News Cafe sound?” In addition to his other talents, the man was a mind reader.

“Great. If only you had the right clothes with you, we could jog the boardwalk first.” I ached to run beneath Miami's big sky, in front of the open sea and sand.

“I thought we already achieved our target heart rate.” His voice was husky. He pulled me close, nuzzling my hair. “Best night's sleep I've had in a long time,” he murmured in my ear.

We had been there for each other, paths crossing at a perfect moment in time. Synchronicity, coincidence, a gift from a benevolent God?

He drank coffee and read the paper while I showered.

“One problem,” I said, as I finished dressing and brushed my hair. “Seth is an early riser.”

“The jealous type, huh?” Hal grinned. “Should I climb out your bathroom window and crawl to the car though the hedges?”

“That may not be a bad idea. He may even have his camera,” I worried, squinting through the blinds.

I took Bitsy out to reconnoiter and then we made a run for it.

We chose an outside table at the News Cafe on Ocean Drive, across from the sandy beach and sparkling surf, surrounded by drop-dead gorgeous models, tourists in shorts, habitues with their dogs, yuppie motorcyclists, wealthy retirees perusing their
Wall Street Journals,
and beautiful people trying to hit on one another. Sleepy-eyed Europeans inhaled coffee with their cigarette smoke. The on-camera Hollywood types looked buff, well manicured and polished, while the off-camera specimens, artsy and creative, hunched at tables, hair in their eyes. The waiters and waitresses, mostly starving performers, wore shorts and T-shirts. Seagulls and in-line skaters flashed by, and a local character wearing a birthday-cake hat with real candles appeared to be selling something to passersby. Mere hours ago I was an unloved orphan. Now I laughed a lot while devouring a huge breakfast of yogurt and granola with Florida pecans, fresh strawberries, pineapple, watermelon, and honeydew. Hal drank fresh-squeezed orange juice and attacked his scrambled eggs and bagels ravenously.

As we lingered over cafe au lait, the sun climbing higher, super-heating the salty air, my beeper chirped. The number was that of the city desk. “Its my day off,” I said, and shook my head.

“Don't you think you should see what it is?” Hal said.

“I know I'll regret it,” I predicted, and went reluctantly to an outside pay phone.

As usual, I wound up on hold. As I stood and waited, a booming voice rent the air behind me.

“… and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood…”

The lean ragged street preacher from that night with Lottie at South Pointe was railing at the diners and passersby. “A
nd the stars of heaven fell unto the earth…”

“Britt?”

“Yes, what is it, Gretchen? I'm off today.”

“… even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs…”

“Who on earth is that?”

“I'm on South Beach,” I said, impatiently, blinding sun in my eyes, perspiration beading on my brow.

“
…when she is shaken of a mighty wind…”

“Apparently Jorge Bravo and his crew conducted a commando raid on the Cuban coast yesterday, and the FBI is looking for him. We're short-handed. Could you come in and handle it?”

“That crazy SOB.” I remembered the bulky outline under the tarp in Bravo's living room and felt a stab of remorse. I should have tried to stop him. But he was so crippled, how could he…?

“And the heaven departed…”

I turned to frown at the bearded preacher, intending to shush him, but his eyes were so wild and dark that I quickly averted my own.

“Are they sure it was him?”

“That's what we need to find out. And, oh, Lottie needs to talk to you. She's back in photo. Thanks much, Britt. I'll transfer you. When will you be in?”

“I don't get involved in Cuban politics…” I sighed. “An hour.” Amazing how polite Gretchen had become.

“… as a scroll when it is rolled together; and…”

Lottie came on the line demanding to know where I was.

“South Beach, having breakfast with a gorgeous man.”

“… every mountain and island were moved out of their places!
”

“That him?”

“No, it's that crazy street preacher, you've seen him.”

“Not that I can recollect.”

“Of course you have, what do you need?”

“Your buddy, Jorge Bra—”

“I know, I know,” I muttered, “the feds are after him again.”

She lowered her voice. “But didya know he's trying to reach you?”

“What?” I turned, and the street preacher was gone and there was only casual chatter and laughter from the cafe and the sounds of the Atlantic throwing its huge salty body onto the beach. I stared up and down the side streets but he had vanished.

“When he couldn't get you, he called me,” Lottie was saying. “Said he needs to talk to you right away.”

“Oh, swell.” Wants to tell me his self-serving side of the story before he gets busted, I thought. “So he's back from … wherever he was last night. Give him my beeper number if he calls again. Is, uh, everything else okay?” Seeking nonexistent shade, I paced three tiny steps back and forth, as far as the phone cord permitted. The scalding pavement burned the bottoms of my feet through the thin soles of my sandals.

“Couldn't be better,” she said. “I'm shopping for cruisewear later, if I can get a break.”

“It's only a day cruise. For Pete's sake, Lottie.”

“I know,” she said happily, “but I'm in a mood to shop.”

Lottie normally hates shopping and does hers by catalog. “I'm impressed,” I said. Amazing what love does.

“Did you see where that street preacher went?” I asked Hal, back at our table.

“Who?”

“The guy with the beard, spouting doomsday stuff, making all that noise.”

He frowned. “Didn't notice ‘im,” he said. “I was watching you.”

“I'll call,” he said, as he dropped me off at my apartment. “But I need your home number.”

“I never share it with story subjects,” I said briskly. “Bad policy.”

I smiled at his expression. “But you're an exception. I have good news and bad news,” I said, scribbling my number onto the back of a business card. “Remember why you called me last night?”

He blinked. The big breakfast, or maybe the busy night preceding it, had slowed his thought processes down to a crawl.

“The inquest. You wanted me to cover the inquest.”

A shadow reappeared behind his eyes and I regretted mentioning it on this beautiful cloudless morning.

“Well, the bad news is that I can't report it because we now have a … personal relationship. But the good news is that I'll be there if you want me to, maybe bring my friend Lottie along, too, for moral support. Then we can go out for a drink or something.”

“Deal.”

Our good-bye kiss lingered.

The “war communique” issued by Jorge Bravo and his organization, A Free Cuba Regiment, was waiting at the office. Foreign tourists were ordered off the island and warned that future travel to Cuba would be at their own risk. Faxed to the newsroom at 2
A.M
., the statement was addressed to the paper and marked to my attention. An accompanying press release announced an AFC raid on a “military target” in Cuba twenty-four hours earlier. Radio Havana had confirmed an attack on a Spanish-owned hotel in Varadero, Cuba's leading tourist resort in Matanzas Province about sixty-five miles east of Havana, on the north coast.

In an attempt to make up revenue lost when the Soviet Union collapsed, Castro focused on rebuilding the country's once thriving tourist trade. Spanish investors had poured millions into Cuba's hotel industry.

Hit-and-run raiders in a twenty-eight-foot boat had fired machine guns and lobbed grenades at the oceanfront Vista del Mar resort hotel. No deaths, but several security guards, a police officer, and a busboy at a poolside bar had suffered minor injuries.

The shapes under the tarp in Jorge's living room haunted me. The wires buzzed with protests from Havana, accounts from the State Department. My pager sounded. The number was one I didn't recognize. Taking a deep breath, I dialed.

“¡Hola!”

“Jorge?”

“Si, ¿Montero?
”

“Yes. Where are you?” I demanded.

He paused. “Little Havana.”

“Where?”

“Little Havana is anywhere that two or more Cubans are gathered together in the cause of freedom.”

I sighed. “Jorge,” I said sharply, “are you aware that the FBI…”

“I cannot speak on this
telefono.
It is too dangerous. Did you tell anyone?”

“No, Jorge, but I think the FBI wants to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say to them. It is you I must talk to.”

“Talk.”

“Face-to-face.”

Why did I know he would say that? “Where?”

“The Torch of Friendship.”

“In Bayfront Park? Isn't that rather public, under the circumstances?”

“I must hang up. This
telefono…”
His voice grew distant. I could hear the din of traffic in the back-

The local cops probably couldn't trace a call successfully with six months' advance notice. I was not so sure about the FBI. They were probably better at it.

“I'll be there. When?”

“Now.”

What am I getting into? I asked myself. Exactly what I swore I wouldn't, the murky undertow of Cuban exile shenanigans.

I found a parking spot on the Boulevard and walked across to the Torch, built in 1960 and rededicated in memory of President Kennedy in 1964. The eternal flame was not burning. The eighteen-foot-tall symbol of hemisphere solidarity and goodwill had been deliberately rammed by a huge rental truck ten days earlier.

A Cuban flag draped around him, a sixty-year-old refugee was driving the cargo hauler, fitted with a heavy-duty bumper, when it mounted the curb, roared through the flower beds and a black olive hedge, and smashed into the bronze torch. Gas lines feeding the perpetual flame ruptured. The symbol of unity buckled, and witnesses fled for their lives, fearing an explosion.

The driver didn't seem to care that his next stop was jail. He and several accomplices were painting “Cuba Will Be Free” on the memorial wall behind the torch and shooting snapshots of their handiwork when the cops arrived. The torch would be restored when the city figured out how to appropriate the money.

Jorge was nowhere in sight. I stood for a moment, sun beating down on my face, shriveling the ends of my hair into burned wisps. Sweat wormed its clammy way down the middle of my back. I needed a hat, I needed sunscreen, I needed my day off.

Nobody around but a few of the homeless who have virtually taken over the park. I checked my watch. A teenage girl in cut-offs and a black midriff top strolled by. She smiled persistently as I looked away, annoyed and impatient. Was she going to ask me for money?

“Britt Montero?”

“Do I know you?” No more than sixteen, she was slim, in straw sandals and mango-colored lipstick, her eyes concealed behind dark shades.

“Luisa, AFC
especialista.
The
comandante
asks that you join him.”

“You're a member?”

“
Si
,” she said proudly. “Since I was born.”

We strolled toward the Boulevard as I realized that an upper floor of the aging hotel across the street was an excellent vantage point from which to determine whether I had arrived alone or leading a phalanx of federal agents. I assumed, as we picked our way through traffic, that we would continue into the lobby and board the elevator to some small room overlooking the park. Instead an old Lincoln, black with rust spots, glided to the curb.

The girl steered me toward it as I resisted. “It is the
comandante,”
she said. Sure enough the back door swung open and Jorge Bravo beckoned. He wore a military bearing, a white guayabera, and a sunburned face. Like someone who's been out on the water, I thought grimly. A skinny middle-aged man with black shoe-polish hair and dark glasses sat behind the wheel. With major misgivings, I climbed into the backseat.

“¿Estàs loco?
”
I greeted him.

“We are at war,” he announced dramatically, as the car lurched away from the curb, leaving Luisa on the sidewalk.

“You can't wage war on tourists, Jorge.”

“It was a military objective,” he said, his jaw square.

“It was a resort hotel, for Christ's sake! Kill some tourists and see what happens. You want to create an international incident? If the feds prove you planned it here, you won't see daylight again.”

“We must frighten them, so they stop traveling to Cuba, spending their tourist dollars, strengthening Castro and keeping him in power.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as though explaining the only commonsense course of action to a child.

“I know what you're saying, but if you kill innocent foreigners, you only succeed in making Castro's position stronger. And what about you? What about the neutrality laws?”

Because the law forbids launching military expeditions from U.S. soil, freedom fighters on missions usually make pit stops in the Bahamas in order to claim that their operations actually originated there. They don't fool anybody.