In the morning I dropped off Alberto’s money at his apartment. He said he’d call me “within the next few days,” and quietly closed the door in my face. I reminded him I knew where to find him.
I spent the rest of the day and most of the next making calls, reading surveillance reports on the Moreno case, and generally waiting for inspiration to arrive. It didn’t, and I was pondering calling it a day, when my phone rang. It was Tommy McDonald, asking for a dinner date. Since I wasn’t planning to apply for sainthood anytime soon, and since the Moreno case had filled my waking thoughts since the first day, I figured I deserved a nice time. And Tommy would certainly provide it.
Tommy was an American, or, as they are called here in Dade County, a “non-Hispanic white.” I met him by chance working on a case a few years before. I was set for deposition by his law partner in a civil case, but at the last minute his partner couldn’t make it. Rather than cancel, he asked Tommy to sit in for him.
It was a total bullshit case—a slip and fall—so Tommy and I decided to make it interesting by flirting shamelessly with each other. The court reporter had barely put away her equipment when Tommy and I were out the conference room door on our way to have drinks. I awoke at dawn, tired and hung over but admiring the view from his penthouse apartment on Brickell Avenue.
I quickly learned that Tommy was a cowboy, a criminal defense lawyer—which made him, almost by definition, irritatingly condescending about civil cases. Nothing got his testosterone rushing better than a trial, especially when his client didn’t stand a chance of acquittal. Uncharitable prosecutors called him “the criminal’s best buddy” because of the kind of clients he represented. But he was a quixotic believer in the Constitution in his own way, particularly the part about universal entitlement to legal representation … especially for rich clients. Dating him was fun, but sometimes it was too interesting even for me. I still remember a time when he was involved in a controversial homicide involving a runner for the drug cartels, and we had to check under his Rolls for bombs before going out.
At one point in our relationship, we almost considered marriage, but then we turned sane again and decided we liked each other too much. We went out to dinner maybe once a month and somehow stayed friends. Tommy liked to shock his friends by declaring that he was dating a Cuban Catholic whose sister was a nun! What the hell. I enjoyed his company better than most men’s, and the sex wasn’t bad, either.
We ended up at the Strand, one of the older restaurants on Washington Avenue in South Beach, for an early dinner. They have a sophisticated menu, but as usual I ordered the meat loaf. It was my favorite, and I loved the decadence of washing it down with Dom Perignon.
“What’s up, Lupe?” Tommy asked, his handsome Irish face set in dramatic shadow by the candle on our table. “You haven’t even touched your mashed potatoes.”
I nudged the plate closer to him, and he eagerly dug in. Tommy could outeat almost anyone. “There’s a case I’m working, and it’s driving me nuts. I think I might be spinning my wheels.”
The crowd that night was the usual South Beach assortment of movie stars, starlet wanna-bes, models, gay couples of both sexes, even a couple of cross-dressers. Tommy and I made quite a pair—even in my high heels, he was easily a foot taller than me, and he was as fair as I was dark.
“Anything you want to talk about?” he asked.
A bottle of champagne arrived at our table. Tommy looked perplexed until the waiter pointed toward a table in the corner. I glanced over and saw a small crowd of Colombians. The eldest among them raised his glass and smiled. Tommy waved.
“That guy would have got thirty-five years if it wasn’t for me,” he whispered.
For a moment I thought about asking him about Elio Betancourt. They ran in some of the same circles, they knew a lot of the same people. But no, I was trying to forget. I would drive myself crazy thinking about Michelle and her parents, about Betancourt and Cruz.
“Hey, something’s really bothering you.” Tommy reached across the table and took my hand. “Why don’t you tell me?”
I paused. No, I wanted to enjoy myself a little. It might be my last chance for a while. “Hey, remember the time you sent me to the county stockade to interview that guy on the home invasion case? Remember, it was a total junk case, and the guy fell in love with me?”
Tommy stared into my eyes. He knew something was bothering me, and he also knew better than to pry. “Yeah, he started writing poetry to you,” he said, smiling gently.
“ ‘As I sit here looking through the bars of my cell,’ ” I recited, “ ‘I dream of the day I am free, and can come demonstrate the depth of my love to you.’ ”
“That stuff got pretty graphic, didn’t it?” Tommy said, wincing but mischievously delighted. “Damn, that guy was scary.”
“Well,” I said, “he had a flair for words.”
After dinner we passed on more drinks and drove to his place. Tommy was surprised when I said I didn’t want to stay the night, but for some reason I wanted to sleep in my own bed. He didn’t act hurt or try to make me stay. I drove home as the last light of day vanished over the city, thinking that Tommy was a good man. Thank God I hadn’t ruined everything by marrying him.
* * *
On nights like this, when I came home relatively late or not at all—depending on the success of the evening—I would always return to my apartment on Brickell. There was no point hammering home to Papi that I was no longer his sweet, virginal little girl, the one in the pure white First Communion dress framed over the mantel at home in Cocoplum.
Lourdes was the only one in the family who ever asked about my love life. Everyone else seemed perfectly content to live in a complete state of denial, which was fine by me. It was easier on all of us that way.
This made us like the rest of the Cuban-American families in Miami. Girls were considered forever chaste and virginal, even after they grew into women, married, and had babies. Still, it’s not as though I slept around randomly; in fact, for the past three or four years I hadn’t been with a new man.
But I did sleep with former lovers. I found that the older I became, the less energy I wanted to put out in seeking new relationships with men. So I came to prefer the men I already knew and trusted. My select group of men friends were happy to entertain me when I called, and they all were content (at least they seemed to be) with my stringent “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
I knew that other men were interested, and in my line of work I met plenty of available guys in varying walks of life, but somehow I never bothered. Health risks apart, I didn’t want to go through the work of opening myself up to someone new, someone who didn’t understand me or my MO. And after spending my days confronted with human deceit, treachery, contentiousness, and violence, it was hard to take a stranger at face value.
My building was quiet that night, and as soon as I got off the elevator on my floor, I sensed something was wrong. I stood in the vestibule outside my apartment and stared at my locked door. For a second I considered turning around and walking away, but I felt ridiculous and paranoid. This case was getting to me.
I put the key in the lock and tried to settle down. After all, my building had good security: guards at the entrances, and locks that only Medeco keys could open. The entire time I lived there, I never heard a report of a break-in. This was all very reassuring. Until I opened the door and knew someone had been in there. I just knew.
There was a lingering smell of something musty, something out of place. And things didn’t seem to be where I left them. I took my gun out of my purse and walked farther in, trying to hold my hand steady. My second bedroom, the one I used as an office, had definitely been searched. Whoever had been in there was gone, though, and I couldn’t see that anything was missing.
I picked up the house phone and called security. I groaned when I learned who was on duty that night.
“Bernard?” I sighed. “This is Lupe. Can you come up here, please?”
A minute later he huffed and puffed into my apartment. I wanted to find out if anyone had asked for me that night or if anything strange had happened, but I knew it was pointless. Bernard couldn’t find his way out of a shopping bag with a high-beam spotlight.
Bernard was a full-time student at beauty school, studying to be a hairdresser and making ends meet by substituting when one of our regular guards took the night off. All the tenants genuinely liked him, but the general consensus was that we had more to fear from him than from burglars. He was more likely to shoot himself or one of us by mistake than he was to shoot any criminal.
“Hi, Lupe, what’s up?” Bernard gave me his goofy grin and looked around, completely at ease. It was impossible not to like him; his incompetence was part of his charm. I noticed he had his gun on backwards, the holster pointing the wrong way.
“Bernard, fix that.” I said, pointing at the holster. He grabbed it like a toy. “And be careful.”
“Thanks,” he said, fiddling with the strap. “I always do that wrong.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I kept an eye on him, ready to dive behind a sofa if he had any undue trouble. “But Bernard, I think someone has been in my apartment tonight.”
“Really?” he asked, moving closer. “Is that a problem?”
I thought I should start again. “Bernard. Someone broke into my apartment tonight.”
“Anyone you know? One of your friends?”
I sure as hell hoped Bernard was a better hairdresser than security guard. Otherwise he had some lean years ahead of him.
“No, Bernard, no one I know.” I spoke very slowly, enunciating each word. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you: to find out if anyone came by for me tonight, or if anyone was asking for me.”
Bernard took out his logbook and checked it. “Nope. I’m sorry. Is anything missing?”
Maybe there was hope after all. “No, nothing’s missing. I just know someone was here, that’s all. Are you sure no one came by?”
“I can’t help you,” he said apologetically. “If anyone was here, they didn’t stop at the gate or the security desk.”
That’s what I was worried about. Whoever came into my apartment was good enough to get past my building’s security. I was certain about one thing: it had to do with the Moreno case.
Bernard and I said good night, and he gallantly made me promise to call him if I had any trouble. I kept a straight face and sent him back downstairs.
After I closed the door behind me, I stood for a moment in the middle of my living room, listening to the quiet. Then I looked in my office again; nothing was missing, but someone had been very interested in my desk and files. They had done a pretty good cleanup job, but one thing bothered me—the place was too neat. My papers were stacked too nicely. I wondered what Alberto Cruz was up to that evening, and what the contract investigator’s report would tell me at the end of his shift. I fervently hoped the wily old Cuban had not been able to shake my investigator off during the night. Alberto Cruz looked like a man who could blend into the woodwork with no problems.
I looked at my unmade bed, checked the fridge for leftovers, and sat down to glance at my mail. It was then that I felt my gun tucked into the back of my skirt. This was ridiculous. The place was too quiet, and I was walking around like a paranoid survivalist. I could sacrifice my privacy for one night. I needed to go home.