William Heffernan - Red Angel

“Don Giovanni, with all respect, I have to move ahead with the business we’re here to conduct.”

Rossi turned his glare on DeForio. “The two things got nothin’ to do with each other. You do what you think is best.”

DeForio tried to phrase the next words in his mind before saying them aloud.

“This woman’s body. It’s causing some complications.” He gave Rossi a helpless shrug. “Before, when this thing was being done so far away, it didn’t present much of a problem.” He spread his arms to take in the room. “But here, so close to Havana, it’s right under everybody’s nose. I just think it’s dangerous.” He placed one hand against his chest. “To all of us. To what we’re trying to do.”

Rossi jerked his chin toward Cabrera. “The colonel’s got that under control.” He stared at Cabrera. “Am I right?”

Cabrera nodded. “Si , senor. It is all under control.”

“With all respect again,” DeForio began. “But it doesn’t seem that way to me. We got a lot of exposure here that we don’t need.”

Mattie the Knife Ippolito stepped out from behind Rossi’s chair. “Hey, you heard what he said. It’s under control. You just watch your fucking mouth.”

“I’m just trying-”

Rossi cut him off. “You don’t try nothin’. You’re a fucking errand boy here. You do what you’re here to do. and you keep your mouth shut. The heads of the other families agreed to this little thing I’m doing here. You don’t like it, you take it up with them. But I warn you. You go up against me, they’ll bury you with your fancy college diplomas sticking out of your ass. You got that?”

DeForio felt a chill. He shook his head. “I’m not going up against-”

Again, Rossi cut him off. “You bet your fucking life you won’t.” He gave DeForio a cold smile. “Because that’s just what you’re betting if you try.”

Adrianna sat at the small, cluttered desk, her aunt’s papers and correspondence spread out before her. It was clear that someone had gone through these same papers. The woman’s meticulousness was amazing, yet many of the papers had been stuffed back into folders or the drawers of her desk with little care. Something clumsy and rushed, as if the papers had been found useless and were being cast aside.

The apparent search did not surprise her. Certainly, the disappearance of her aunt’s body would have prompted police to investigate any possible threats from, or contacts with, groups or individuals who might be responsible. But it also bolstered Martinez’s belief that her aunt had been murdered after she stumbled on information that endangered someone in the government. In either case, a search might then have been conducted either by Martinez himself or by someone looking for that information.

Adrianna sat back in the hard wooden chair her aunt had chosen for her desk. It was useless to speculate, and she doubted Martinez would tell her if it was he who had ordered the search. She glanced about the room. It was austere and simple, lacking even a single luxury. She recalled Martinez’s claim that Fidel Castro lived and thought like a monk, and she wondered if many of those who had brought about Cuba’s revolution had chosen that personal lifestyle.

Martinez had told her another story, this one about Che Guevara. Shortly after the new government had taken power, Guevara learned that he and other top officials were receiving compensation that was disproportionately high, and had ordered an immediate readjustment. Later, Martinez claimed, Guevara found he was unable to pay the family’s electric bill. Fearing the power would be turned off, he had his wife telephone the appropriate official to ask for additional time. Martinez had insisted such an action never would have been taken against Che, but that he and Senora Guevara had obviously believed they were subject to that penalty.

She smiled at the story, perhaps true, perhaps only part of the Guevara legend. Still, she recognized that the country had changed from those idealistic days. Now there were private clubs for high government officials. There were comfortable homes and lifestyles that far exceeded those of the average Cuban. And there were men like Cabrera, who, if Martinez was right, were corrupting everything her aunt and the other founders of the revolution had struggled to achieve.

She wondered if she was really offended by that corruption, and found that she was. It was strange, since she did not believe in the core principles of the revolution itself. Still, it was there. A recognition that some effort for good, however naive or misguided, had been tainted by the same self-serving class who always seem to emerge at the end of every struggle-the people who always view an opportunity to give as a chance to take even more for themselves.

Adrianna stared at the papers spread across the desk. Her search had lasted three hours and had produced little more than a picture of her aunt’s persistent idealism. She pushed herself back and began to rise when her knee struck the corner of the desk’s middle drawer. Wincing in pain, she reached down to rub it, and found her hand brushing against something that had not been there before.

Adrianna pushed the chair back and peered into the desk’s kneehole. The bottom of the middle drawer had fallen away, revealing a false bottom that held a single sheet of paper. She pulled the paper free and began to read. It was a simple message, and she translated it as she read.

“In the event of my death or disappearance, I direct investigators to my cottage in Guanabo. There, under the floor, you will find a safe. It may be opened with the following combination: 17 L; 32 R; 6 L; 27 R; 9 L. Documents within support my belief that corruption exists in our government that threatens the very fabric of the revolution.”

It was signed simply Maria Mendez, M.D.

Adrianna copied the message in English, then returned the original to the hidden compartment. She stared at the copy. “My cottage in Guanabo.”

Earlier she had come across a map of Cuba. She went quickly through the desk drawers and found it again. Guanabo appeared to be a small seaside village no more than fifteen or twenty kilometers from Havana.

But where? There was no address. Nothing to indicate where the cottage was located. Certainly, if investigators, or others who had searched her house, had known about the cottage, they would already have searched there as well. But what if they hadn’t? Then the evidence her aunt had written about would still be there. She could think of only one person who might know about the cottage. Her aunt Amelia.

The taxi dropped Adrianna in front of her aunt’s house fifteen minutes later. She crossed the crumbling sidewalk, then hesitated as her hand reached for the front gate. She wondered how her aunt would react to yet another unannounced visit. She had assured Devlin that her aunt Amelia had been overwhelmed by their earlier invasion of her home, perhaps even frightened by the presence of so many strange men. But even then she had doubted that was true. Amelia Mendez de Pedroso did not strike her as a frightened old woman. Her main concern had been that someone-specifically Adrianna-might want to take something from the home she had wrested from her “communist sister.” Now Adrianna was coming back to ask about a cottage that might have been another bone of contention between the two women.

Adrianna took a deep breath and pushed the gate open, just as a hand reached out and took her arm. She twisted around and found herself facing two men. The one holding her arm had a thin mustache and a self-satisfied smile on his face. The other, standing directly behind the first, was taller and heavier and stared at her with open hostility. Both were in their early thirties and both wore civilian clothes, but there was no question in Adrianna’s mind that she was facing two of Cabrera’s men.