Michael was surprised to find Luis’s bicycle in the same spot he’d left it. As he pedaled from the square back to the ferry, the weight that had been pressing down on him started to lift. The bike hadn’t been stolen, and by tonight they would be safe, well out of Havana on a boat bound for Florida. If Carla were here, she would say it was a sign. That his meeting with Diaz had been the right move. That they were supposed to leave Cuba.
As he rode back to Lawton the sky lowered. Brooding clouds squeezed the air into a humid sludge as heavy and thick as a wet blanket. Sweat poured off Michael as he pedaled up the hill to Luis’s home. When he arrived, he laid the bicycle down in front—there was no kickstand—and went to the front door.
Then he stopped.
Luis’s door was open wide. He knew his father often kept the door partially open during the day to catch the breeze. But not this wide. Was a visitor there, a visitor Luis was trying to make more comfortable? Or was his father trying to signal something by leaving the door open? And if so, what?
Michael crept to the door and leaned his ear against it. It was quiet. No movement, rustles, thumps, or other sounds inside. Where was the idle chatter between Luis and Carla? The sounds of cleaning up, washing dishes, cooking? He spun around. The street was clear of people. No one strolling past. No children playing. No birds singing, either. Fear ballooned in his gut.
He backed up and circled the yard. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He came back to the front of the house. He took another look down the street. Still no one. He took out his gun, released the safety, and slipped inside.
When he saw what had happened, his stomach pitched.
Everything in the front room had been tossed. The tiny sofa lay on its back, its cushions ripped to shreds. One of the two chairs was upside down. His father’s books had been hurled everywhere. The lamp was on the floor, its light bulb shattered. Shards from the bulb stuck out between books.
Michael called out for his father. Then Carla. No one answered. He racked the slide of his gun and started to case the house. The kitchen was empty, the breakfast dishes stacked in a drain-board by the sink. But the cabinet doors were open, and the few cans Luis had stored had been flung on the floor.
He stopped outside the tiny bedroom he and Carla shared. Aiming the gun, he pivoted fast into the room. No one was there. But someone had been. Their mattress had been slashed and the few clothes they’d brought were scattered on the floor. He checked the bathroom. Nothing, but the bathroom cabinet was empty. A half-used tube of toothpaste lay on the floor.
He aimed the pistol again and swung into his father’s room. The doors to Luis’s wardrobe were open, his clothes strewn on the floor. The bed was torn apart too, the mattress humped in one corner of the room. The chair beside the bed, the only upholstered chair in the house, was ripped. Michael sank down on the bed frame and covered his eyes. He thought for a moment maybe the police had paid them a visit, but he didn’t think they would have trashed the house.
Someone was clearly looking for something. Walters. Still, he wanted to believe that Carla and his father had escaped. He dropped his hands and scanned the room more carefully. When his gaze rested on the mattress, he went cold. Red blotches stained the mattress. He got to his feet. He’d assumed his contact, in his rage, had hurled the mattress into the corner, but now he could see it was partially covering something. As if to conceal it. His jaw clenched, his hands shaking, Michael went over and raised the mattress.
His father’s body was crumpled underneath. A gunshot had blown off most of his head. Streaks of red and brown spattered the walls. A second shot to the chest had produced a pool of blood on the floor that, in the tropical heat, was already congealing. Flies were beginning to settle on his father’s face—which meant Luis had not been dead for long. Michael dropped the mattress and ran to the bathroom.
By the time Michael pulled himself together, the only remnant of his grief was a profound exhaustion and a trembling in his hands that wouldn’t stop. He tried to compensate with precise movements designed not to waste any energy. He forced himself to compartmentalize. Detach. Strategize.
When the police found Luis’s body—which would happen sooner than later—his father’s neighbors would pretend to know nothing. That was Cuba. Eventually, though, with enough pressure, they would crack. They would tell them about the visitors who’d been staying at the house: a young man and a woman. He and Carla would become the prime suspects and targets of an investigation. Unless Carla was dead, too. He squeezed his eyes shut. God couldn’t be that cruel. Still, he had to put as much distance between himself and Lawton as he could. He shouldered his backpack and slid his gun in his waistband.
Steeling himself, he walked back into Luis’s bedroom. He kept his head down so he wouldn’t have to look at the body. He went to the side of the bed. The woven rug was still in its place. It was probably the only thing in the room that hadn’t been touched. Michael squatted down and picked it up. He pressed the heel of his hand on the floorboard; it snapped up. He peered inside. The envelope containing the map was still there. He lifted it out and slipped it into his backpack. Then he snapped the floorboard back in place, and put the rug back.
He headed to the door. He was almost out of the house when he stopped, turned around, and went back to the front room. He didn’t see what he was looking for, and he didn’t have time to hunt for it. He was ready to give up when he caught a metallic glint peeking out from under a pile of books on the floor. He went over and pulled out the picture of Luis and his mother in Santa Clara, the one that Luis kept on the tiny table by his sofa. Michael turned over the frame, removed the photo, and put it in his backpack, too.
Outside, he kept close to the side of the house and edged around to the back. He should make his way back to Regla. But he still didn’t know what had happened to Carla. Did his contact kidnap her? Take her hostage? Or was she lying somewhere bleeding her life away? He tried to remember what she said she’d be doing today. He thought she would be standing in yet another endless line for rations. But maybe he was making it up. Either way, how could he leave until he knew?
He couldn’t. She was going to be the mother of his child. He would find cover and wait. He crept away from Luis’s home. Lawton was one step up from a shanty town, and the houses were as crowded together as people on a Havana bus at rush hour. But the street was strangely silent. The neighbors were probably glued to their windows, hidden behind their shutters.
He looked for a place to hole up. He remembered where he, his father, and Carla had watched the fireworks. It was farther up the hill. A couple of palm trees blocked the view, but if you pushed aside the fronds, you could see the front of Luis’s house.
Michael jogged up to a tiny plaza now broken into chunks of concrete with weeds growing through the cracks. In the center was a small stone monument, its markings covered with so much graffiti that Michael couldn’t tell why or for whom it had been erected. He crossed the plaza and crouched down beside one of the palm trees. He was almost hidden from view, and a telephone pole in front of him provided more cover. No one could spot him unless they were looking.
He stared at his hands. They were still shaking. He refused to consider the possibility that he was making the biggest mistake of his life. All his training and common sense said to flee. Instead Michael settled in to wait. And grieve the death of what might have been.
Angry storm clouds painted the late afternoon sky with shades of gray and white and purple. Carla had not shown up. Michael was close to despair. It would be dark in an hour. He debated whether to check her apartment on his way to Regla. No, that wasn’t a good idea. The local CDR was looking for her. Carla knew that. She wouldn’t have gone home. He pushed aside the fronds of the palm tree. People were starting to come home for supper. They would find his father.
Walters was reputed to be an excellent cleaner, but he had left Luis’s body, knowing Michael would find it. It was a message: “Look what I can do.” Still, it pained Michael not to bury his father. He hoped his father’s soul would forgive him.
At the same time, though, Walters hadn’t taken the map. Why not? He should have discovered it: a loose floorboard was a flimsy hiding place. Had Walters been interrupted? Had Carla suddenly come home and surprised him? And if so, did Walters kill her too? Or take her hostage? Or did he flee, thinking it might have been the police?
No matter what the situation, Michael knew he couldn’t stay in Lawton any longer. He gathered his backpack and stood up. The irony was he’d sworn to Carla he’d never do to their child what his mother did to him. Their child deserved to know his father. And that it had been conceived in love. But now, like Luis, he would never know his child. With a heavy heart he started to trudge down the hill.
Which was when he saw Carla hiking up. She was carrying a string bag with packages wrapped in brown paper. Relief flooded through him and for the first time that day he smiled. He hurried down to meet her, so grateful she was alive that he almost failed to check whether he was being tailed. Then he remembered and whipped around. He saw the woman pushing a baby stroller, and the black man with a bicycle tire around his neck.
But he didn’t see Walters, who eased out of the shadows after Michael had turned back to Carla.