I was on my way home sweet home to Cocoplum when I remembered I’d forgotten my promise to Fatima to check into the Castro rumors. Weaving through the traffic on Main Highway, I switched on the radio. There wasn’t anything to worry about—if something had really happened in Cuba, all of Miami would be going berserk. I fiddled around some more with the radio and, finding nothing but music, turned it off. I could at least tell Fatima I had done something to look into Castro’s demise, without getting too specific about how hard I tried.
I stamped hard on the accelerator. My sister Lourdes was coming home for the weekend, and I really wanted to see her. She lived in a small, modest house in Little Havana with three other sisters, all members of the Order of the Holy Rosary. She usually lived a fairly simple life, but every so often she needed a shot of home. I understood perfectly; I lived on my own for a year after college, when I interned at White and Blanco, but when the lease on my Brickell Avenue apartment came up for renewal, Papi stepped in and tried to talk me into coming back home to live. I considered it, and even returned for a month, but as much as I loved my family I also needed independence. In the year since I moved out I’d grown used to being alone, owing explanations to no one and coming and going as I liked. Besides, I liked my apartment.
I lived in a fairly nondescript building at the southern end of Brickell, near the entrance to Key Biscayne. It had a reputation as a “starter”—in other words, the tenants expected to move out as their incomes grew. But I had two perfectly adequate bedrooms—one of which I used as a study—a living/dining room, a modern kitchen, a decent bathroom, and a balcony. My furniture was nothing to get excited over, sort of early undergrad decor. I was on the twenty-fifth floor, though, with a view of sunsets over the bay, so who cared about furniture?
What I really cared about, other than the privacy of living alone, was that Solano Investigations was finally beginning to make money. Leonardo and I had worked like maniacs, and it was finally starting to pay off. We started out taking lost-dog cases, collections, cases for bail bondsmen whose clients skipped town (desperate as we may have been, though, I drew the line at being a bounty hunter). At the end of our first year we were covering expenses and taking home halfway decent salaries. By year four I had paid Papi back the money he fronted me to start the agency. I had established myself as an independent and successful woman in a notoriously macho field of work.
Papi finally accepted that I was grown up—it took a while, since I was the baby—and that I had a life of my own. I think when Mami died he hoped I would move back in permanently, but he was satisfied that I ran home all the time for meals and laundry and often stayed overnight. All he demanded was that I accept a suitable car from him as a gift—which, in his opinion, could only mean a Mercedes. You can imagine how much arm-twisting it took to get a twenty-three-year-old girl to accept that gift.
Fatima and her two daughters, the twelve-year-old twins Magdalena and Teresa, also lived in the family house. It seemed natural, after Mami’s death and the Julio Juarez scandal. All three of us, my sisters and I, would always return home one way or another. It was hard to explain, especially to Americans. Papi loved it; he always had company, and he got to complain about being the only man in a house full of chattering women.
Papi had been a contractor in Havana, building a sizable fortune in hotel construction during Batista’s time, before he was forced into exile. He was educated in the United States, first at Choate in Connecticut, then at Princeton. He formed friendships with the kind of Americans who had traditionally invested in Cuba.
When Cuba became too volatile and unsafe for business, Papi started to shift the family’s investments to the States, with the help of his American friends. When Batista fell and Castro took over, Papi had already transferred most of his wealth out of the country. He and Mami had just married, and hated to leave their homeland, but after a few years of Castro’s dictatorship they knew they had to leave while they could. Mami was three months pregnant with Fatima at the time.
In Miami, Papi immediately got a contractor’s license and started work. Unlike most Cubans who came to the States in the early sixties, he had no illusions about Cuba’s future. He knew the country wasn’t going to return to the way it had been, and this understanding put him miles ahead of the game. Papi and Mami dug in for the future.
The family first lived in a modest three-bedroom house in southern Coral Gables while Papi waited to build his perfect home. His chance came about fifteen years ago, when the Arvida Corporation started an exclusive development on a large tract of land along Biscayne Bay, just south of Coconut Grove. Papi bought three lots where the water was deepest, knowing he would want to build a dock for a deep-sea fishing boat (his passion).
This development turned into Cocoplum. Some county prosecutors call it Cocaplum, because of all the drug money that went into buying some of the houses there. But that’s life in South Florida. It may have had some elements of the tacky nouveau riche, it might have harbored some wealthy drug dealers trying for legitimacy, but behind the guards and the gates was my Cocoplum: the sprawling earth-tone homes and rich green lawns, the canals and sea breezes. It was home.
And it was quite a home. Pulling into the driveway, I thought for the millionth time that Papi went overboard on our place. Lourdes called it “late refugee” style—the kind of house an immigrant who made piles of money in the land of golden opportunity would build. My parents were usually discreet, but they lost all restraint and proportion on the house. It was huge: ten bedrooms, all oversized, lots of living areas, terraces, patios. Your basic capitalist nightmare.
My sisters and I really don’t know what got into Papi. He designed it when he was investigating our family’s Galician ancestry, so he copied an obscure Spanish hacienda blueprint he found in an encyclopedia. Luckily we owned three lots to put distance between us and the others, but even at that remove we still overshadowed our neighbors’ homes. I always suspected they hated us for it.
Old Osvaldo was watering the flowers when I pulled up, his bald head covered by a straw hat and his wiry, still-muscular frame hunched over a long hose. He and his wife, Aida, had been with our family for years, first as cook and butler for my grandparents in Havana. Upon arriving in Miami they called my parents, announcing they were ready to resume their service to the family. Mami, fully aware they were in their late fifties and that hiring them again also meant taking care of them for the rest of their lives, didn’t hesitate a second. I can’t remember a time when Osvaldo and Aida weren’t around.
“Lupe, bring your car closer, this way,” Osvaldo barked, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “How did it get so dirty? Did you park under that jacaranda tree again? I told you the sap from that tree kills the paint!”
I drove the car closer to Osvaldo. He watched with his hands on his hips, then opened the door so I could get out.
“It’s the little things that are important, Lupe,” he said, shutting the door and inspecting the paint as he scolded. “You must remember these things in life.”
When I was younger I would have stuck my tongue out at him. “I’m sorry, Osvaldo,” I said instead. “I won’t do it again, I promise. Is Lourdes here yet?”
“She’s on the dock with your Papi,” he said, straightening. He was only a little taller than me. “Aida made some conch fritters, but you should hurry. Everyone keeps eating them all as soon as Aida makes them. You know how this family is. All they do is eat.”
Once a week Osvaldo came to Solano Investigations and worked on the property around the cottage. He claimed to enjoy it; he said it brought out his creative side. Gardening and landscaping in disorderly Coconut Grove were a completely different matter than in Coral Gables. Foliage in the Grove was wild and lush, while the Gables preferred manicured lawns and immaculate hedges. There were practically no zoning restrictions in the Grove, while in the Gables homeowners could paint their houses in one of only sixteen approved colors.
Years ago when he first took over the grounds around the cottage, Osvaldo tried to consult with me about the trees and bushes. It didn’t take him long to find that I was completely ignorant about nature. After that, the only time he approached me at work was when he discovered Leonardo’s marijuana patch. To this day, my brilliant assistant is still amazed that old Osvaldo knew another kind of grass when he saw it.
I left Osvaldo in the driveway and stepped into the house, cooled for a moment by the air-conditioning. Then I was greeted anew by the Miami tropical blast when I stepped out to the dock. Lourdes was there, changed from her nun’s habit into casual clothes from the Gap.
She seemed like a Cuppie—a Cuban yuppie—not like a demure sister of God. Actually, there are so few nuns left today that no one really knows what they’re supposed to look like. Lourdes is the only nun I know. We compare our respective professions sometimes, and have to laugh and wonder where we went wrong.
I stepped out onto the dock and hugged my sister. Lourdes, as always, felt strong and solid in my embrace.
“Hello, sis,” she said, her mouth full of conch fritter. She looked great, with her dark hair cut in a short, smart style that set off her gleaming brown eyes. Her skin was flawless.
She might not look it, but Lourdes is every bit the dedicated nun. One day I was at Tamiami for shooting practice on the range. Feeling around in my purse for the Beretta, I found Mami’s white lacquer rosary beads wrapped around the barrel. I recognized Lourdes’s handiwork and my eyes filled with tears—completely blowing the veneer of cool I try to keep at macho places like the shooting range. Lourdes worried about me, always giving me religious items to ward off danger. It can be downright embarrassing when I’m with a man in the throes of arousal and I have to call time out—so I can take off the religious medals she’s made me promise to wear pinned to my bra.
I dug into the plate of conch fritters waiting on the glass table by the dock and poured myself a mojito—rum and lemon juice—to wash it down. Papi gracefully stepped off the deck of his boat, his lined features obscured by a big Panama hat and huge dark sunglasses.
“So there’s no news?” he said to me. I could tell he had accepted the harsh truth—that he would still be in Miami tomorrow and that nothing had happened to Fidel. Papi never explained specifically what he intended to do when he landed the Hatteras in Havana harbor. I don’t think he really knew.
We had dinner on the terrace. The sun set over Biscayne Bay with a brilliant splash of orange over a deep purplish blue, the clouds blowing lazily across the sky with the first stirrings of a cool night wind. Fatima argued with Teresa and Magdalena about riding lessons and whether they could have a horse. Papi ate in silence, his thoughts probably still filled with his dashed hopes. The older he became, the more he identified with our homeland and the more he wanted to go back.
Once or twice I noticed Lourdes staring at me strangely, but she didn’t say anything. I teased the twins about how smelly horses were, then settled back and watched the pelicans perched on their pilings, waiting for some hapless fish to surface so they could gracefully swoop down to capture their prey.
Lourdes and I were alone at the table as Aida cleared the dishes. “Look,” I said, pointing into the day’s last light. “In the water. I think it’s a manatee.”
Lourdes didn’t even bother looking. “Are you going to tell me what you’re so worried about, or am I going to have to guess?”
She leaned back with her drink, her expression placid as she stared into my eyes. She was as close to me as anyone in the world, and I hate to think it, but since she became a nun she developed a real perceptiveness and intensity. It was spooky sometimes.
“It’s nothing,” I said. I knew she would be able to tell I was lying.
“All right, let’s go through the list,” she said. “Is it a man?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Then it’s your work.” Lourdes reached into her purse and produced a cigarette. She shielded the match from the wind and took a long drag. “Are you mixed up in something you shouldn’t be?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just have a funny feeling.”
Lourdes nodded and flicked her ash into a potted ficus tree. “You should listen to those feelings, little sister,” she said, staring at the horizon. “They’re trying to tell you something.”