Black Horizon (40 page)

Chapter 67

F
or the first time in his life, Theo walked right past a jazz bar without even the slightest temptation to go inside. He was on a mission.

He didn’t trust Brunelli. Not for a minute did he believe that the FBI would keep its promise to resist his extradition to the Bahamas—not if he was the number-one suspect in the brutal murder of a Bahamian banker. He’d spent four years on Florida’s death row for another man’s crime; no way was he going to a Bahamian jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Too many people had their own agendas. Theo had his own ideas about who had kidnapped Jack in Cuba, threatened Bianca in her trailer, and killed Jeffries in his living room. It was time to take matters into his own hands.

He stopped outside La Escuela de Boxeo. The long shadows on the sidewalk were disappearing as twilight turned into darkness. The light over the entrance flickered every few seconds with a bad electrical connection. Theo tried the door. It opened, and he went inside.

The hallway was dimly lit, but even in total darkness Theo could have simply followed his nose to the stale, smelly air of the training gym. All but one of the six boxing rings were empty. The lonely sound of one woman’s punches echoed through the gym. Her trainer wore padded coaching mitts to absorb her blows. It was just the two of them, Josefina and Sicario, working late in the ring, as if nothing had happened. Theo would have something to say about that.

“Missed you today, girl,” he called out.

Josefina stopped, her trainer lowered his punching mitts, and they watched Theo walk slowly toward them. He said nothing until he was almost to the ring.

“Something’s not right here, Josefina.” Theo stopped at the ropes, but his thinking aloud continued. “You train hard. You love boxing. Last time I saw you, we joked around, kept it light. But working in a bar makes me a pretty quick study on people. If there was one thing I knew about you when I left Cuba, it was this: money ain’t what it’s about.”

She chewed her mouthpiece, silent.

“So I ask myself: What’s in this for you?”

Sicario stepped in front of her, putting himself between Theo and his fighter. “Why don’t you go ask yourself outside?”

“ ’Cuz here’s my problem, dude. I can’t think up a single reason why Josefina would
wanna
do this. So maybe the real question is, who could
make
her do something she doesn’t wanna do? It has to be someone who’s got the power to end her boxing career, to kill her dream. Someone who knows she wasn’t really engaged to Rafael. Someone who could tell the Cuban government that she was part of Rafael’s lie so he could get a job on the rig.”

“That’s pretty big talk,” said Sicario.

“I’m a pretty big guy.”

“We don’t like talkers around here. Boxers only.”

“You want to box?” asked Theo. “I’ll box you.”

Sicario laughed.

Josefina’s mouth guard dropped into her glove, her voice filled with concern. “Sicario, don’t. Your head.”

“My
head?” said Sicario, scoffing.

“Theo, just go away. He had to stop boxing because of his head.”

“You’re afraid he’s going to hurt
me
?” said Sicario.

She was pleading with her trainer. “He’s younger than you, and look at him. You can tell he grew up fighting. All he has to do is land one lucky punch to your head and—”

“Wear the headgear, if you want,” said Theo. “I can still kick your Cuban boxing ass.”

Sicario glared at him from inside the ring. Theo hadn’t planned to pick a fight, but he’d picked one.

“Get us gloves, Josefina. This won’t take long.”

Chapter 68

J
ack followed his hunch and jumped into a taxi outside the Hotel Nacional.

“La Escuela de Boxeo
,
Habana Centro
,” Jack said, handing up a twenty. “Show me how fast this old Buick can go.”

The driver didn’t understand English, but he understood cash. The sixty-year-old Buick Special rumbled away from the car port, down the main driveway, and onto the Malecón. Traffic was moving along at about thirty miles per hour, top speed for many of the pre-Castro classics. Another twenty-dollar bill from Jack had the driver changing lanes and weaving between cars as if they were standing still. The cash incentives were working just fine—until they came upon a vehicle that actually was standing still. The smoldering shell of a vintage 1940s Ford pickup was blocking the right lane. The tourists strolling along the esplanade were moving faster than Jack’s taxi.

“Aquí está bueno
,” said Jack, telling the driver to drop him off.

The brakes squealed, followed by a horrific grind from the transmission as the driver shifted into
PARK
. Jack jumped out of the backseat and ran the final three blocks. The light outside the school was still on—flickering, but on. Jack took a moment to catch his breath and then tried the door. It opened. Jack went inside. The front desk was unattended, but Jack remembered his way down the narrow hallway. The familiar sounds of boxing—footwork on canvas, gloves meeting, competitors sucking air—drew him into the gym. Then he stopped, taken aback. Theo was moving around the ring, squaring off against Josefina’s trainer. Jack walked to the ropes and stood beside Josefina.

“Make your friend stop,” she told Jack. She checked the clock on the wall, and when the second hand swept twelve, she rang the bell. The fighters broke. Sicario went to the far corner, and Josefina brought him a stool. Theo went to the opposite corner. Jack joined him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Jack.

Theo took a mouthful of water and spit in the bucket. “Rafael’s dead. You know it. I know it. Sicario’s our man. I’m gonna knock his ass out and rip those gloves off. We gonna see that same tattoo.”

“He’s a professional, you moron.”

“Was
a professional. He’s old.”

“Not
that
old. His hands are lethal.” Jack shot a quick glance across the ring. Josefina was pleading with her trainer. “Josefina’s over there right now, begging him not to kill you.”

“She’s beggin’ cuz he should’ve hung up his gloves long before he did. All those punches left his skull like an eggshell. I’m gonna knock him out.”

Jack cast another look to the opposite corner. Josefina gave up the pleading. She walked over to the bell and rang it. Round two. The fighters came out. Jack stayed right outside Theo’s corner. Josefina came around the ring and stood beside him.

“Say something, would you? Sicario is not what he used to be. He’s not quick, he’s not strong. He’s damaged.”

Josefina’s words hit Jack in a way that she couldn’t have intended. They didn’t describe at all the man who had overpowered him at Vivien’s house.

Jack leaned into the rope and addressed himself to the fighters. “Don’t see much point to this, men,” he said in a voice loud enough to carry throughout the gym.

The boxers continued to move, sizing each other up, looking for an opening, but no punches had landed. Josefina’s assessment seemed fair: Sicario was slow.

Jack tried again, speaking to Sicario. “Bianca has a right to know if her husband is alive.”

Sicario tried a left hook, but it missed.

“He’s dead,” Josefina said, her voice loud enough only for Jack to hear.

Jack glanced in her direction, but her eyes were cast to the floor, refusing to meet his. Jack put the next question to Sicario, again in a loud voice.

“She has a right to know if he was involved in the explosion.”

Theo ducked away from Sicario’s wild right. Sicario regained his balance and shouted, “Guilty.”

“Sicario!” Josefina shouted.

“He said he was going to do it.”

“Sicario, no!”

Jack suddenly felt like the referee in another fight, one between Josefina and her trainer. “I want the truth,” said Jack.

Sicario seemed energized, suddenly finding his long-lost rhythm as a fighter. He was clearly the aggressor, and he landed his first combination. Theo staggered backward but righted himself.

“You want to know the truth? I’ll tell you the truth.”

Theo wisely backed away, out of Sicario’s reach.

“You don’t know the truth!” said Josefina.

“I know what you told me.
That’s
the truth.”

“Sicario, stop!” shouted Josefina.

Sicario was breathing heavily. It was becoming an effort to talk, but he pushed through it. “Time for this shit to end, Josefina. Tell him. Tell him what Rafael told you.”

Josefina grabbed the rope, ready to hop into the ring. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Tell him what Rafael said the last time you saw him.”

Jack took a hard look at Josefina. She still had a hold of the rope, but her hands were shaking.

“Rafael told her everything,” said Sicario.

“Stop!”

“He told her he was gonna do it.”

Jack’s eyes darted back and forth from the ring to the rope, from Sicario to Josefina.

Sicario suddenly found another gear as a fighter. He was on the attack, no longer measuring his opponent for the strategic combination. It was an adrenaline-driven surge that bore no resemblance to the former champion’s patient and smooth style. This was pure anger, a recklessness that surely would have gotten him killed in a match with a skilled opponent. But Theo was a street fighter.

“Theo, get out of there!” Jack shouted.

Theo was back against the ropes. Sicario was right on him, hammering at his midsection.

“Just go down, Theo!”

The blows kept coming, but Sicario was tiring. The adrenaline rush could carry him only so far. It was like watching a car run out of gas, and the damage of too many blows and too many concussions in a career that had lasted way too long was evident. Sicario finally took a step back, putting a little space between himself and his human punching bag. It was enough space for Theo to unleash his bulging right arm with all the force he could muster. The punch caught Sicario between the eyes. His costly half-step away from his opponent became a backward stagger. Sicario was no longer a car out of gas. The stone had downed Goliath.

Sicario was on the canvas, out cold.

“Sicario!” Josefina shouted as she ran into the ring. She knelt at his side, put his head in her lap, and then screamed at Theo: “Why did you have to do this?”

“Jack told me to take him down.”

“I told you to go down,” said Jack.

Jack brought a cool, wet towel from the corner. Josefina applied it her trainer’s forehead. He was breathing heavily but still unconscious.

“Take his gloves off,” said Theo.

“Leave us alone,” said Josefina.

Theo didn’t back off. “I want to see the tattoo.”

“He doesn’t have a tattoo,” said Josefina.

“I want to see.”

Sicario was coming around and mumbled something to her in Spanish. Josefina glared at Theo as she untied Sicario’s right glove. She pulled it off, then held up Sicario’s hand for Theo to see. There was no tattoo. She untied the left, tossed the glove aside, and showed Theo his hand. No tattoo.

“You happy?” she asked.

Theo said nothing. Jack answered for them both. “No,” he said. “Confused.”

“He did it!” shouted Josefina. “Okay? Rafael did it. End of confusion.”

“What?”

“Don’t you get it, Jack? Rafael was so close to Key West, closer to the United States than to Cuba. He could practically see Bianca from the top of the derrick. Every other Cuban could leave Cuba under the new travel rules. But not Rafael. Not someone with a college degree and a wife who defected and who might never come back. He was ready to swim there.”

“But, blowing up a rig?”

“They didn’t
tell
him it would blow up. They
used
him. All Rafael wanted was some kind of emergency. Something that would get him and all the other workers evacuated to the closest dry land. Haven’t you ever heard of wet foot/dry foot?”

Of course Jack had. It was the U.S. immigration policy that had produced those tragic images on television of Cuban refugees swimming toward shore until they could swim no more. It wasn’t enough simply to reach U.S. waters. They had to get all the way to dry land to get asylum. Or else they were sent back to Cuba.

A noise cut through the gym, the unmistakable sound of the entrance door opening. It pulled a much-needed draft through an open window at the opposite end of the gym, cooling the ring for a moment, but the air went still again as the door closed with a thud. All eyes—even Sicario’s—turned toward the dimly lit hallway. Footsteps echoed off the walls, and finally a man emerged from the shadows.

“Who are you?” Josefina asked in Spanish.

Noori didn’t answer. He kept walking toward the ring.

Theo went toward him, stopping at the ropes. “She asked who you are.”

Noori stopped outside the ring. “I’m looking for Rafael.”

Sicario pushed himself up from the canvas. Josefina helped him to his feet, but he was still wobbly.

“Rafael is dead,” said Sicario.

Jack was about to speak, but Noori pulled a gun from inside his jacket, which silenced everyone.

“So are you, liar,” said Noori.

The gun was quickly aimed in Sicario’s direction, the pop of a nine-millimeter round echoed through the gym, and Sicario dropped to the canvas for the last time. Josefina screamed and lunged at the shooter. Another deafening crack of gunfire cut through the gym, and Josefina fell forward and landed beside her trainer.

Jack went to her as Theo threw himself at Noori, but before Theo could make contact, Jack spotted something in the open window, and just as he realized what it was—an arm, a fist, a gun—he heard the pop of a revolver. Noori’s head snapped back, and a hot spray of crimson showered the floor around him. It wasn’t clear who had fired the shot from outside, but it was no amateur. Noori was dead before he hit the floor.

Jack rolled Josefina onto her back. Blood soaked through her shirt at the rib cage, just below the heart.

“Theo, get an ambulance!”