Robert Walker - Cuba blue

“You don’t suspect Alejandro?” asked JZ.

“No…it wouldn’t serve his ends.”

“People talk,” muttered Cordova. “Secrets are impossible to keep for long in this place.”

“Worse than in Havana?” Qui asked. “Colonel Cordova, I assume you be in charge of Gutierrez.”

“Yes.”

“Then see to it that he has round the clock guards placed on him.”

“In his condition, he’s not going anywhere.”

“He may not be a flight risk, but he is at high risk of being assassinated…and he may consider suicide.”

“Yeah, and some people don’t need to know he survived the explosion,” added JZ.

“Ahhh…of course…understood. We’ll keep him under constant watch and arrest.”

“Do you have the facilities for that?” asked JZ.

“We’re not exactly a backwater force here, Mr. Zayas. We have a prison wing at the hospital where he’ll be kept as soon as the doctors okay a move. Still,” he shrugged, “if the SP comes for him, there is little we can do.”

“Just like in Havana,” Qui muttered in frustration. “Where even three dead bodies disappear overnight.”

“Then, admit him under an assumed name,” suggested JZ. “That’ll give us time to seal our case.”

“As you wish. Do you have a suggestion for the assumed name?”

“Ass,” leapt from Qui’s tongue. “Mr. Ass.”

The two men laughed at this. JZ suggested, “Jacques de le Bontemps.”

Qui now laughed at the play on words, “Good times are gone for this jackass.”

This time all three laughed.

Qui added in a serious tone, “And by the way Cordova…”

“Yes?”

“Be sure Jacques has no access to a phone and no contact with anyone-remember, the other guy’s dead.”

“Of course! We haven’t the power to bring back the dead.”

“When the time comes, this dead man will walk and talk.”

“You may count on it, Detective Aguilera.” Then he added, “I cannot imagine how I would feel to learn that my own superior plotted murder against me.”

JZ asked, “What’ll happen to Gutierrez when it’s all over?” He imagined the man tortured behind stone walls for the rest of his life.

“Disgraced and on permanent ‘probation’ if he cooperates,” replied Cordova. “Unlikely he’ll be executed. I suspect his actions will make of him a social pariah.”

Several hours later at the Santiago Hospital

Qui and JZ joined Rita around Luis’s hospital bed. Other than being pale, the big man looked good.

“Uncle, how are you doing?” asked Qui.

“The nurses have petitioned to throw him out, Qui,” Rita joked.

“Ahhh, then he’ll live!”

JZ shook Luis’s hand saying, “Your single shot is gonna bring down an empire.”

“That’s funny, I don’t even remember firing!”

“Interesting weapon you fired, Luis,” Cordova calmly said, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “Created a hell of a fireball.”

Luis visibly stiffened. “Ahh…a loaner,” he weakly joked.

Cordova gave a nod, knowing it’d likely come from the local chapter of the growing anti-government faction. “Well, you’re not gonna get it back.”

“Get what back?” asked Pasqual entering the room.

“The weapon that saved out collectives lives,” replied JZ. “Seems the good colonel here doesn’t think Luis should be toying with such toys.”

“Some toy,” said Cordova suppressing a smile and garnering a smirk from Rita. “Now that we all know the terrible secret of the lake, what are we gonna do about it?”

Rita, with a hasty glance toward the door, walked over and firmly closed it. “This is better discussed in private.”

“I agree. This should be kept quiet,” said Qui. “It would serve little purpose to reveal the enormity of this fraud outside police circles right now.”

JZ promptly agreed, “In the meantime, the ‘Treasure of Santiago,’ must be handled with care and sensitivity by the most expert archeologists and antiquarians in Cuba.”

“Perhaps at some future date, once the second statue is authenticated, we can tell the world.”

Cordova added, “Most, if not all, of the treasures belong in Cuba’s museums and at the Basilica del Cobre.”

“But,” countered Qui, “such determinations must be left to the museum curators and specialists.”

“Like my Esmerelda,” piped in Luis.

“I promise on the spirit of our fathers that this remains secret,” Cordova added. “But such knowledge is a curse to carry.”

From his bed, Luis added, “A close look at Alejandro will tell you that.”

“But, if it hadn’t been for him,” Cordova said defensively, “Arias would still be dipping into his private bank from time to time whenever the need arose.”

“Such prizes as we saw down there would sell for a fortune on the international black market,” JZ assured Cordova.

“We’ll likely never know the extent of Arias’s dealings in Cuban treasures,” commented Qui. “Think of it, the most respected and successful man in antiques in Cuba-retired Majordomo Humberto Arias-a thief and murderer.”

“With a trail of crimes going back to the revolution,” declared Rita, “and who knows how many before that?”

Pasqual muttered, “Brought down by the hand of my brother.”

“A clean hand so far as we can tell,” Qui replied. “He clearly dangled the lock of El Cobre to lead us here.”

“This business of a third Madonna,” said JZ, “does anyone here think Alejandro knew?”

“Third Madonna?”

Qui drew in a quick breath glaring at JZ’s typical American habit of speaking before thinking.

“Oh, I meant second…second, the second Madonna. There’s too many Madonnas!” JZ grinned to cover his slip of the tongue.

“No, it’s likely the one secret Arias withheld,” observed Luis, “even from his soon-to-be son.”

“Bones of our fathers,” Father Pasqual muttered dispiritedly, “in eternal sleep at the bottom of the lake. Unhallowed graves.”

“Your father’s, my father’s too,” asked Cordova.

“As Alejandro vowed,” JZ noted, “we’ve found clear evidence that will be Arias’s ruin. He might not pay for the deaths of the three doctors, but he’ll have to pay for this.”

“Never once did Ali share this with me,” said Pasqual. “Arias’s crimes must be punished! I’ll go to Fidel myself…insist on it as a representative of the church.”

“This is the discovery of the century, Father,” Qui countered. “It could rock the whole country. It could shake the faith of thousands.”

“I doubt anyone suspects Arias,” replied Qui, “including Fidel.”

“Does Fidel know Arias had a shadow life?” asked JZ.

“None of us here knows what Fidel knows,” said Cordova.

“That is the normal state of affairs in Cuba,” explained Qui. “No one knows what he knows or when he knew it.”

JZ, frustrated by this answer and the complacency it implied, took a deep breath and asked, “Qui, all I want to know is: will Fidel punish the man or fail us by sweeping it all under a carpet?” JZ looked about the room at the collection of El Cobre orphans, only Alejandro missing. “Does anyone in Cuba know what happened here fifty-odd years ago?”

“Before I got this case, I’d never heard of the Butcher of Santiago or any hint of it,” answered Qui. “I grew up knowing only what the government wanted us to know, and this wasn’t on the curriculum.”

“Sure,” noted JZ, “it’s a national tragedy, and no leader wants it known such things happened on his watch.”

Qui quietly added, “If Castro fails us, then he fails Cuba.”

Three days later

With help from Fathers Pasqual and Cevalos, Qui Aguilera turned over the information on the treasures found in the deep waters of El Cobre’s Lago de Sangre to Professor Esmerelda Estrada at the University de Santiago. She, in turn, called in the curator of Santiago’s largest cultural museum, Ramon Ponce de Cabrera. Between these trusted experts, Qui felt certain that the treasures would be properly preserved and placed. These experts were both astounded and pleased at the bounty described to them, and also equally saddened and dismayed over the news of the Madonna-news too sensitive to make public.