Black Horizon (11 page)

“A boxing gym?”

“Sí.”

Jack reached for his wallet. “How much of the twenty-five CUC do you get to keep?”

The driver shrugged.
“No bastante.”
Not enough.

Jack tipped him ten CUC, and the note caught his eye. It bore the image of an electric power plant and boasted of Cuba’s
Revolución Energética.
The Energy Revolution.

“I’m curious,” Jack tried to say in Spanish. “What do you think of the oil spill?”

Again, the driver gave him only a shrug and a little smile. It was possible that Jack had mangled the question in Spanish, but more likely the driver didn’t want to talk about it to an American. Jack dropped it, thanked him for the ride, and climbed out of the cab. The door creaked like a wounded animal as it closed, and the tailpipe belched blue-gray smoke as the driver pulled away.

Jack stepped onto the sidewalk across the street from the gym and took a minute to absorb the neighborhood. His gaze drifted toward a twelve-story landmark bearing the Gotham-like emblem of a large black bat atop the art deco tower. Any true Miamian who had ever enjoyed a Cuba Libre (rum and Coke) knew the story of the old Bacardi building, “donated” to the Cuban people when the family fled Cuba after the revolution.

“Hey, dude.”

Jack froze, not sure he was hearing correctly. He turned, looked, and nearly fell over. “Theo?” he said, more an expression of shock than a question. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Theo removed his sunglasses. “What kind of welcome is that?”

Jack checked over his shoulder, more out of instinct than any real concern about confidentiality. “You can’t travel to Cuba.”

“Why not?
You
did.”

“I’m legal. I have close family relatives here.”

“Close family relatives my ass. There are card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan who speak better Spanish than you.”

“How did you get here?”

“Same way thousands of Americans do every year. Through Cancún. The Cubans are totally cool about it. They don’t even stamp your passport at immigration.”

“You’re breaking the law, Theo.”

“Actually, I’ve already
broken
the law. So we might as well make the most of it. After all, dude—we are still on our honeymoon.”

“This isn’t a joke. Don’t you remember how crazy things got when Jay-Z and Beyoncé went to Cuba? If they hadn’t been able to prove they had permission, they would have been prosecuted.”

Theo laughed. “Maybe Jay-Z and me can rap about it. Come on, let’s check out this gym.”

It was a can’t-beat-’em-join-’em situation, so Jack followed him across the street.

La Escuela de Boxeo was in an old building that in another century had served as the carriage house and horse stables for the wealthy residents on the Paseo. The stable doors had been bricked over, and the lone entrance was a metal door halfway down the block. A pair of young fighters exited as Jack approached, and they held the door open for him and Theo.

“Gracias, chicas
,” said Theo.

Jack let the door close and said, “You just called them girls.”

“Those were girls, dumbshit.”

Jack had been so on-mission, wrapped up in his thoughts, that he hadn’t noticed.

The sounds of the gym were at the end of the hallway, and the sweaty smell of hot, stale air welcomed them to the training area. Jack counted six rings and two windows, neither of which was open. It had to be ninety degrees inside.

Jack walked up to the old man behind the desk. He was absorbed in his copy of the
Granma
, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party—the name “Granma” borrowed from the yacht that had carried Fidel Castro and his band of rebels to Cuba’s shores in 1956, launching the revolution. Jack translated the above-the-fold headline to himself. The oil spill, front-page news across America, was apparently not as big a story as the 88 percent voter turnout in the election of delegates to the People’s Power Municipal Assemblies.

“Josefina Fuentes?” asked Jack.

The old man looked up from his daily. With a jerk of his head he indicated a ring to Jack’s right, where a young woman was sparring with a male fighter. Jack and Theo walked around the weights and mats on the floor and stood outside the ring. It was impossible not to admire the quick hands, sculpted arms, and amazing footwork.

Theo smiled at what he saw. “That girl is ripped.”

Jack took a step closer to the ring. Theo followed, unable to tear his eyes away from her. They watched for several minutes until the sparring ended. Josefina went to the ropes, where her coach gave her pointers as he removed her headgear and unlaced her gloves. Josefina’s trainer was beyond boxing age but looked as though he’d spent some serious time in the ring in his not-too-distant youth. He gave her a fist bump and moved to the next pair of fighters. Josefina was dripping with sweat as she walked toward the watercooler.

“Josefina?” Jack asked.

She stopped, removed her mouth guard, and smiled. Her face was a little puffy from the workout, but she still qualified as an athletic Latin beauty.

“Do you speak English?” asked Jack.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Jack Swyteck, from Miami. I’m the lawyer for Bianca Lopez. Rafael’s husband.”

The ambush was necessary to gauge her reaction. If Jack had caught her off guard, she didn’t show it.

“What took you so long?”

“Can we talk?”

Josefina glanced toward the next ring. Her trainer, though working with another fighter, was watching Josefina—like a hawk.

“Not now,” she said. “And not here. My trainer misses nothing.”

Jack understood. “You name the time and place.”

She glanced again toward the next ring, then back at Jack. “Four o’clock. Heladería Coppelia.”

“An ice cream parlor?”

“
The
ice cream parlor. El Vedado neighborhood. Packed with tourists.”

Obviously she wanted no one she knew to see her talking to an American lawyer.

“Okay,” said Jack. “It’s a date.”

Chapter 17

J
ack ordered strawberry and chocolate, a nod to the famous film
Fresa y Chocolate
, in which the main characters meet at the Heladería Coppelia in Havana. Theo did him one better and ordered one scoop in every flavor. To his disappointment, only two of the twenty-six
sabores
on the state-owned menu were available—
fresa y chocolate
.

The claim of “world’s largest ice cream parlor” was debatable, but Coppelia was both a local landmark and a tourist magnet. The main pavilion was a modernist design, shaped like a flying saucer, and the park surrounding it occupied an entire city block that was within easy walking distance of Hotel Nacional de Cuba and other signature hotels in the relatively expensive Vedado district. Tourists could pay Western prices in CUC to avoid the long lines, but thirty minutes of people-watching and anticipation was part of the Coppelia experience. Jack paid in
moneda nacional
.

“For twenty-seven cents, I’m cool with two scoops,” said Theo.

Jack wasn’t really listening, his gaze having drifted toward a young Cuban mother. She was sharing ice cream with her toothless infant, one tiny spoonful after another. From the joyous expression on the baby’s face, Jack guessed it was her first taste, though it was more of a multisensory experience, including an all-ten-fingers-in-the-mouth feel. A mother-daughter moment like this would have barely caught Jack’s eye before the morning sickness. Now, it made him miss Andie more than ever.

“Where you want to sit?” asked Theo.

Most patrons seemed to prefer inside seating at the upstairs tables or downstairs stools—again, part of the Coppelia “experience.” Jack figured that Josefina would rather be outdoors, away from the center of activity. They took a patio table beneath the shade of a towering banyan tree. Jack’s ice cream was nearly melted when Theo spotted Josefina on one of the curvilinear paths that led to the elevated flying saucer.

“Damn, she’s gorgeous,” said Theo.

Jack signaled to catch her attention. As Josefina started toward them, Jack gave Theo an under-his-breath warning. “I don’t know what the real deal was with Rafael, but if you hit on a woman who is mourning her dead fiancé, I’ll bust you myself for violating the trade embargo.”

They rose to greet her, and Josefina joined them at the table, Jack and Theo together on one side, Josefina on the other. It had been Jack’s plan to ease into the conversation, but like a good fighter, Josefina went straight on the offensive.

“Rafael was my best friend since I was three. Did you know that?”

“No,” Jack countered. “His wife didn’t mention it.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said, looking off to the middle distance. “I don’t think she ever really liked me, which is so unfair. If you asked her, she’d probably tell you that she doesn’t even know who I am.”

Jack didn’t answer, but as he recalled, those had been almost Bianca’s exact words.

“That’s why Rafael couldn’t even invite me to his wedding. I think Bianca felt threatened, which is stupid. All I ever did was help her.”

Jack pushed his empty bowl of ice cream aside. “How did you help Bianca?”

Josefina sighed, as if not sure where to begin. “When a Cuban national defects to the United States, the way Bianca did, do you know what happens to family members who are left behind?”

“They go work on an oil rig?” asked Theo.

“Actually, the opposite,” said Josefina. “Those jobs on the rig were excellent jobs. A man like Rafael, whose wife turned her back on Cuba, would be lucky to find work sweeping the street. No way could he get hired by the oil consortium.”

“Then how did he get the job?”

“I helped him. And I helped Bianca.”

A boy approached their table, breaking their conversation. He was handing out leaflets for the annual
Tras las Huellas del Che
(In Che’s Footsteps), a chess tournament dedicated to the memory of Che Guevara. Jack gave him ten pesos to go away.

“How did you help him?” asked Jack.

Josefina paused, seeming to have some difficulty. Then she looked Jack in the eye and said, “I became his fiancée.”

“So you’re saying that your engagement was a . . .” Jack stopped himself, not wanting to say “fraud.”

“An arrangement,” said Josefina.

Theo jumped in. “So you and Rafael never slept together?”

“Theo!”

“What? You think Bianca don’t want to know the answer to that question?”

“It’s okay,” said Josefina. “I like a man who says what he thinks. The answer is no. Never. Look, the whole point was this: Rafael had to prove that he was a good Cuban who still loved his country. The only way he could do that was to show them he no longer loved his wife. He loved another woman in Cuba.”

“But he was still really in love with Bianca?”

“Yes.”

“And he still considered her his wife?”

“Yes.
Claro.
”

Jack had the letters with him, and it seemed like the time to lay them on the table, literally. “What about these letters that Rafael wrote to ‘
Josefina, mi amor
’?”

Josefina skimmed them. “I haven’t seen these before.”

“The lawyers for the oil consortium gave them to me in court. I’m told that the Cuban government reviewed all mail sent from the rig. These were still under review when Rafael died.”

“That makes sense.”

“I’ve read the letters,” said Jack. “These sound like they were written to a woman he truly loved.”

“That’s because they were,” said Josefina.

Jack took a moment, confused. “But you said the engagement was just an ‘arrangement.’”

Josefina opened her exercise bag and removed a stack of letters—a dozen or more.

“What’s this?” Jack asked.

“More letters from Rafael. Just like the ones you have.”

Jack took a quick look. “They all are written to you.”

“No. They are addressed to me. They are written to Bianca.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Jack.

“That was the ‘arrangement,’” said Josefina. “The whole reason Rafael wanted the job on the rig was so that he could earn enough money to buy his way out of Cuba and be with Bianca. He couldn’t write letters to his wife saying, ‘Dear Bianca, I can’t wait to be with you again.’ He couldn’t have any contact with her at all.”

“That is what Bianca told me: no contact with Rafael since she landed in Key West.”

“Right,” said Josefina. “That’s the way it had to be.”

“But there’s still something I don’t get,” said Jack. “Instead of applying for a job, why didn’t he just apply for a visa? Cubans can travel now. The law changed after Bianca got off the island.”

“Change of laws on the books doesn’t change the way a government thinks. A man whose wife defected to the United States before or after the law changed has zero chance of getting a travel visa. Especially a man like Rafael, who is college educated and studying to be an engineer in the oil industry. My government is paranoid about the brain drain—the flight of doctors and other professionals. They would never let Rafael leave Cuba if they thought he had any connection with his wife in the U.S.”

“So Rafael sent the letters to you,” said Jack.

“Yes. All these letters,” she said, holding up the stack, “Rafael sent them to me. But in his heart, they are all written to Bianca.”

Another boy with the Che Guevara leaflets approached. Word was apparently out on the street that Jack was an easy mark. It cost him another ten pesos to be left alone.

Jack recovered his train of thought. “I think I know the answer, but you tell me, Josefina: What were you supposed to do with all these letters?”

“It was my job to get them to Bianca.”

“Yer fired
,” said Theo, mimicking the Donald.

Josefina didn’t understand the reference to American television, but she got Theo’s drift. “I failed,” she said. “I was afraid to pass them on.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Getting caught.
Oye
,” she said. Listen. “I have it good here. A real shot at being an Olympian.
El Boxeo
is my life. If the government finds out I was pretending to be engaged to Rafael, that’s the end for me. So I didn’t pass along the letters.”