R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

‘A little problem,’ he started, and again he assumed a serious expression. When these guys got serious then life was serious.

‘Your father,’ he went on. ‘There seems to be some kind of problem with your father.’

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my legs. I looked around for my cigarettes but could not see them.

‘He went with the delivery guy to the bank this morning,’ Maxie said, his voice hushed, a little hesitant. ‘They took the usual kind of money, maybe five or six grand, and they went off to the bank just like regular.’

I sat patiently, waiting for the problem to be voiced.

‘Seems they never reached the bank, Ernesto. Seems that your father and the courier never arrived at all, and we got to thinking that perhaps they did a runner with the money.’

I nodded understandingly.

‘An hour or so ago we found the courier. You know Anselmo, young guy with the scar on his face here-’ Maxie raised his right hand and indicated a point above his left eyebrow.

I knew Anselmo Gamba; had fucked his sister one time.

‘We found Anselmo with his throat cut down an alleyway off of one of the sidestreets near the Starboard, maybe two or three blocks away. There was no sign of your father. Not the money neither. So Don Ceriano… Don Ceriano said I should come down here and speak with you and see if you couldn’t take a look for your father and take care of things, you know?’

I nodded.

‘So that’s what I came to tell you,’ Maxie said, rising awkwardly from the chair. ‘See if you can’t find him, sort out what happened, okay?’

I smiled. ‘Okay Maxie, I’ll sort things out. Tell Don Ceriano that whatever the problem is isn’t a problem any more.’

Maxie smiled back. He seemed relieved to be going. I showed him to the door, placed my hand on his shoulder as he stepped into the hallway, and noticed that he flinched. I noted this inside. Even Slapsie Maxie, a man who had hit a kid with a roundhouse and busted his neck, was a little scared of the Cuban. This pleased me, confirmed once again that I had become someone.

I waited until Maxie was out of sight and then collected my coat and my cigarettes. I left the apartment and started towards Old Havana and the watering holes where I knew my father would be hiding.

It took me three hours to find him, and by then it was evening. The sky was black, almost starless.

Even as he saw me coming towards him across the floor of a beat-to-shit rundown joint on the coast side of the quarter he started to cry. I felt nothing. This was business pure and simple, and I had no time for over-emotional performances.

‘The money?’ I asked him as I slid in beside him on the seat.

‘They robbed it,’ he slurred. ‘Robbed the money and killed the kid… I tried, Ernesto, I tried to stop them, but there were three of them and they were quick-’

I raised my hand.

‘Ernesto… they came out of nowhere, three of them, and there was nothing I could do…’

‘You were supposed to protect the courier,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘That’s your job, Father. They send you along to protect the courier, to make sure that the money gets to the bank, that nothing happens to him on the way.’

My father raised his hands as if in prayer. ‘I know, I know, I know,’ he whined. ‘I know why they send me, and every time I have done my job, every time I have protected him and nothing has happened-’

‘You have the money with you?’

My father opened his eyes in shock. ‘The money? You think I took the money? You think I would kill someone for money? I am your father, Ernesto, you know I would never do something like that.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, I know you, Father. I know you would kill someone for no money at all.’

He did not reply. There was nothing he could have said. All these past years the death of my mother, his wife, had sat between us like a third person. It had always been there, spoken of or not, it had always been there.

My father shook his head. ‘You have to tell them… you have to tell them what happened. You have to make them believe that I did not steal the money and kill the boy. I didn’t do it, Ernesto, I couldn’t…’

‘You have to tell them, Father. You have to stop running away and hiding. The longer you stay away the more they will believe that you took the money. If you come with me now and tell them what happened, how these men robbed you and killed Anselmo, I will support you, I will make them understand that there was nothing you could have done.’

My father nodded. He started smiling. He was already rising to his feet. He reached out and gripped my arm. ‘You are my son,’ he said quietly. ‘I will never forget what you have done to help me. You brought me here, you got me a job, a place to live, and I will remember this for the rest of my life.’

My father, the Havana Hurricane, did not have to remember how much he owed me for very long at all. A little more than twenty minutes later he lay dead in an alleyway two blocks from the Starboard Club. He did not question me when I turned right and walked him down that alleyway, which he would have known went nowhere at all. He did not cry out when I hit him across the back of the head and he fell awkwardly to the ground. He lay there for a moment, stunned and speechless, and in his eyes was an expression of such resigned inevitability that I knew he was aware of his own death coming fast like a freight train.

From the ground I took a brick, and squatting down with one knee on his chest I raised the brick above my head.

‘For your wife,’ I told him quietly. ‘For your wife and my mother this is long overdue.’

He closed his eyes. No sounds. No tears. Nothing at all.

I think he was dead after I hit him the first time. The corner of the brick destroyed much of the right hand side of his face. I imagined the subsequent repeated blows to his head and neck would not have been felt at all. It was like killing a dog. Less than a dog.

Three days later it was discovered that Anselmo Gamba and my father had been robbed on the way to the bank. They had been robbed by three Cuban brothers – Osmany, Valdés and Vicente Torres. I was not despatched to attend to them, for such things as the killing of three small-time Cuban hoodlums was considered beneath my talents, but someone was despatched and the money was recovered, and a month and a half later an oil drum was recovered from the Canal de Entrada with three heads and six hands inside.

Don Ceriano had been the one to tell me that my father had not lied, that they had in fact been robbed on the way to the bank.

‘I sent you to attend to this matter for my own reasons,’ he told me. ‘I sent Maxie over to tell you so that you could help us find your father and discover what had happened.’

I did not reply.

‘I wondered what you would do when you found him,’ he went on. ‘I wanted to know what action you would take.’

Again I said nothing. I was asking myself if there was a point to what he was saying.

‘And you killed your own father,’ Don Ceriano said.

I nodded my head.

‘You have nothing to say, Ernesto?’ he asked.

‘What do you want me to say, Don Ceriano?’

Don Ceriano looked both surprised and perplexed. ‘You killed your own father, Ernesto, and you have nothing to say?’

I smiled. ‘I will say three things, Don Ceriano.’

Don Ceriano raised his eyebrows.

‘Firstly, my father murdered his own wife, my mother. Secondly, his punishment was both appropriate and overdue.’ I paused for a moment.

‘And the third thing?’ Don Ceriano asked.

‘We shall not talk about it again as it deserves no importance.’

Don Ceriano nodded. ‘As you wish, Ernesto, as you wish.’