Beyond Suspicion

21

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By nine o’clock Jack was on a second plate of ropa vieja, a shredded-beef dish with a name that translates to “old clothes.” According to his grandmother, the name only described the meat’s tattered appearance and had nothing to do with the actual ingredients. Then again, she’d fed him tasajo without disclosing that it was horse meat, and she would argue until her dying breath that Cubans do so eat green vegetables, as fried plantains were the tropical equivalent thereof.

Jack had a lot to learn about Cuban cuisine.

The stop at Abuela’s was yet another diversion. He’d tried to call Cindy but had gotten nowhere, which was perhaps just as well. Perhaps he needed to take a little time to refine an explanation that, as yet, sounded only slightly better than “Good news, honey, it’s been at least a decade since my last sex tape.”

“Más, mi niño?” Predictably, Abuela was asking if he wanted more to eat.

“No, gracias.”

She stroked his head and ladled on more rice. He didn’t protest. Jack could only imagine what it must have been like to enjoy cooking, more than anything else in the world, and yet have practically nothing in the cupboard for thirty-eight years. Abuela had a great kitchen now. The townhouse Jack had rented for her was practically new, and she shared it with a lady friend from church. She’d lived with him and Cindy for a short time. They’d sit around the dinner table every night, Jack speaking bad Spanish and Abuela answering in broken English, each of them trying to learn the other’s language in record time so that they could communicate freely. But having a place of her own made it easier to get out and enjoy herself.

Hard to believe, but almost three years had passed since Jack’s father called to tell him that Abuela was flying into Miami International Airport. Jack had nearly dropped the phone. Never had he expected her to come to Miami at her age, even on a humanitarian visa to visit her dying brother. He’d tried many times to visit her in Cuba, and while many Americans did visit relatives there, Jack was never approved for travel. His father’s staunch anti-Castro speeches as a state legislator and later as governor had surely played a role in the Cuban government’s obstinacy. She’d come over on a temporary visa, but she was on her way to U.S. citizenship and would never go back. Their initial face-to-face meeting evoked a whole range of emotions. For the first time in his life, Jack had a profound sense that his mother had actually existed. She was no longer just an image in a photo album or a string of anecdotes as told by his father. Ana Maria had lived. She’d had a mother who’d loved her and who now loved Jack, gave him big hugs, fed him till he could have exploded-and then served dessert.

“I made flan,” she said with a grin.

“Ah, your other invention.”

“I only perfected flan. I didn’t invent it.”

They laughed, and he enjoyed her warm gaze. All his life he’d been told that he resembled his father, a well-intended compliment from people who had never met his mother. Abuela saw him differently, as if she were catching a precious glimpse of someone else each time she looked into his eyes. Those were the rare moments in his life when he actually felt Cuban.

She served an enormous portion of the custardlike dessert, spooning on extra caramel sauce. Then she took a seat across from him at the table.

“I was on the radio again today,” she said.

Jack let the flan melt in his mouth, then said, “I thought we agreed, no more radio. No more stories about inventing tres leches.”

She switched completely to Spanish, the only way to recount with proper feeling the entire fabricated story. With a totally straight face, she told him yet again how she’d invented tres leches a few years before the Cuban revolution and shared the recipe with no one but her exbest friend, Maritza, who defected to Miami in the mid-sixties and sold out to a Hialeah restaurant for a mere twenty-five dollars and a month’s supply of pork chunks.

Abuela was the only bilingual person on the planet who was patient enough to endure his stilted Spanish, so he answered in kind. “Abuela, I love you. But you do realize that people are laughing when you tell that story on the radio, don’t you?”

“I didn’t tell that story today. I talked about you.”

“On Spanish radio?”

“The news people all say terrible things. Someone has to tell the truth.”

“You shouldn’t do this.”

“It’s okay. They like having me on their show now. What does it matter if they tease the crazy old lady who says she invented tres leches? So long as I get to slip in a few words about my grandson.”

“I know you mean well, but I’m serious. You can’t do that.”

“Why can’t I tell the world you are not a murderer?”

“If you start talking publicly about this case, people will want to interview you. Not just reporters. Police and prosecutors, too.”

“I can handle them.”

“No, you can’t.” He was serious without being stern. She seemed to get the message.

“Bueno,” she said, then switched over to English. “I say nothing to no one.”

“It’s best that way. Any media contacts need to be approved by my attorney and me. Even Spanish radio.”

Her eyes showed concern. Jack pressed her hand into his and said, “It was nice of you to try to help.”

She still looked worried. Finally, she asked, “How are you and Cindy?”

“We’re… okay.”

“You tell her you love her?”

“Of course.”

“When?”

“All the time.”

“When last?”

“Tonight.” Just before she kicked me out of the house, he thought.

“Is good. Is muy importante that you tell your wife how you feel.”

“I did.”

She cupped her hand, gently patted his cheek. “Maybe you should tell her again.”

From the moment Jack had walked into her apartment, he thought he’d managed to keep his problems with Cindy to himself. It amazed him how well Abuela had come to know him in the short time she’d been in this country. “Maybe you’re right.”

He rose to help with the dishes, but she wouldn’t allow it. “Go to your wife. Your beautiful wife.”

He kissed her on the forehead, thanked her for dinner, and left through the back door.

Jack had a renewed sense of energy as he followed the sidewalk around to the back of the building. He definitely had some smoothing over to do with Cindy. But for the moment it was refreshing to step outside the cynical world and let himself believe, as Abuela did, that love conquers all.

His car was parked in a guest space, two buildings away from Abuela’s townhouse. He followed the long, S-curved sidewalk through a maze of trees. A rush of wind stirred the waxy ficus leaves overhead. He reached for his car keys, stopped, and glanced over his shoulder. He thought he’d heard footsteps behind him, but no one was in sight. Up ahead, the sidewalk stretched through a stand of larger trees. The old, twisted roots had caused the cement sections to buckle and crack over the years. It was suddenly darker, as the lights along this particular segment of the walkway were blocked by low-hanging limbs.

Again, he heard footsteps. He walked faster, and the clicking of heels behind him seemed to quicken to the same pace. He stepped off the sidewalk and continued through the grass. The sound of footsteps vanished, as if someone were tracing his silent path. He returned to the sidewalk at the top of the S-curve. His heels clicked on concrete, and a few seconds later the clicking resumed behind him.

He was definitely being followed.

Jack stopped and turned. In the darkness beneath the trees, he could see no more than twenty meters. He saw no one, but he sensed someone was there.

“Abuela? Is that you?” He knew it wasn’t her, but somehow it seemed less paranoid than a nervous “Who’s there?”

No one answered.

Jack waited a moment, then reached for his cell phone. Just as he flipped it open, a crushing blow to the center of his back sent him, flailing, face-first to the sidewalk. The phone went flying, and his breath escaped with nearly enough force to take his lungs right along with it. He tried to get up and wobbled onto one knee. A second blow to the same vertebrae knocked him down for at least another eight-count. This time, he was too disoriented to break the fall. His chin smashed against the concrete. The hot, salty taste of blood filled his mouth.

With his cheek to the sidewalk, he counted two pairs of feet. Or was he seeing double?

“What… do…” He could barely form words, let alone sentences.

His hand exploded in pain as a steel-toed boot smashed his fingers into the sidewalk. He tried to look up, but it was futile. In the darkness, it would have been hard for anyone to make out a face. In Jack’s battered state, the attacker was a fuzzy silhouette.

“Consider yourself warned, Swyteck.”

The voice startled him. It sounded female. I’m getting whooped by a woman?

He laid still, playing possum. The boot extended toward him, gently this time, poking his ribs, as if to see if he was conscious. Somehow, he found the strength to spring to life and grab an ankle, pulling and twisting as hard as he could. His attacker tumbled to the ground, and Jack tumbled with her. His arms flailed as he tried to get hold of another leg, but she was amazingly strong and quick. They rolled several times and slammed into a tree. Jack groaned as his attacker wiggled free. He started toward her, but she threw herself at him, legs whirling like a professional kickboxer. Her boot caught him squarely on the side of the head, and down he went.

He was flat on his belly as someone grabbed him from behind, took a fistful of hair, and yanked his head back.

“One more move, and you bleed like a stuck pig.”

Jack went rigid. A cold, steel blade was at his throat. The voice was a man’s. He hadn’t been seeing double; there were two attackers. “Take it easy,” said Jack.

“Silence,” he said with a slap to Jack’s head. “Like we said, consider yourself warned.”

“Warned-of what?”

“Pin Jessie’s murder on whoever you want. Just don’t pin it on us.”

“Who… you?”

The man pulled Jack’s head back harder. “We don’t like to hurt grandmothers, but if you keep putting her on the radio to point fingers where she shouldn’t, it’s on your head.”

He focused long enough to regret he’d ever told Abuela about the viatical investors. “She’s not part of this.”

“Shut up. You don’t know who you’re fucking with. Get your grandma off the radio, or there’ll be another bloodbath. Understand?”

“You don’t-” Jack stopped in midsentence. The blade was pressing harder against his throat.

“Yes or no, Swyteck. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Make sure you do,” he said, then slammed Jack’s head forward into the sidewalk one last time. Jack fought to stay conscious, but he was barely hanging on. He saw nothing, heard nothing, as his world slowly turned darker than night itself, and then all was black.