Cuba blue

5

As the trawler began its journey to shore, the crew became increasingly restless, anxious at the prospect of these horrifying deaths becoming common knowledge-with them at the center of it. It was a kind of notoriety that turned an unwanted spotlight on a man. The kind of spotlight that scrutinized every aspect of his life. Qui, too, felt a pulsating fear of what would come of this once they reached the marina, once officials and civilians alike spread the word of the ugly business aboard the Sanabela II. Qui imagined that her working methods and her judgment would be examined and questioned no matter what course she chose to take. She mentally braced for harsh criticism.

Surely, rumors would spread that Luis Estrada’s ill-named and cursed boat had now fulfilled all prophecy concerning it. The first Sanabela had been ripped apart during an ill-timed, ill-conceived plot to carry six Cuban families to Florida in a bid for sanctuary under cover of a tropical storm.

Luis’s father, Miguel Estrada, had been convinced to challenge nature and the Florida Straits in a bid for ninety nautical miles. But his gamble had ended in death for all aboard-every man, woman, and child gone to the deep. When the younger Estrada named his boat in memory of his father’s vessel, people talked of his tempting fate, and now this. Was the entire Estrada family and all who associated with it cursed?

Now as they neared the world of Havana, Qui kneeled near the bodies, doing a preliminary examination with gloved hands. The wind had shifted, and her nostrils filled anew with the stench of what was left of the three relatively young-looking, pale-skinned victims. The smell of decaying flesh made it hard to concentrate on processing the scene, setting the ‘grid’ as she’d learned to call it.

A few breaths, just a few more breaths, and the scent will be less noticeable.

With both hands, she worked one body loose from the heap and turned it over. With the movement, came an audible poof — an escape of gas-followed by an even louder collective gasp from the crew, many of them crossing themselves. This response sent old Estrada into a minor tirade, shouting at his men. “ Los estupidos! I must work with imbecils! This is the dead! They have no power over you! They cannot harm you! Have you never been with the dead, you fools?”

“I know what my mother and my father taught me,” countered one crewman.

“The man who goes too near the dead,” began another, “he can be next.”

“Go with God, ” muttered a third, hurriedly crossing himself.

The crewmen had huddled at one end of the boat, as far from the dead as possible given the confined space. Estrada jabbed a huge finger and shouted, “What are you fearing, fantasmas, brujas? Ghosts? Foolish sailors! Superstitious shrimpers — you’ve got no brains, the lot of you!” He pointed to his own head. “God help us. All of you, go put your faces to the sea!” But even Estrada knew that his words fell on deaf ears, that he could not combat the old African gods and ancient religion that was the underpinning of so much of Cuban belief: Santeria and Abukua.

Qui admired how Luis managed to forego the superstitions common to many. He was a special sort, this man, one who made his own rules and openly complained of government ineptness and cultural mores and what he considered fairytales, despite the danger of doing so. However, Qui wondered how much of his bravado would be suppressed if he were not given protection as a snitch from her Colonel Gutierrez-a fact she’d only recently discovered. How much of his words were for show, as a cover, and how much was true dissent-impossible to say now. Still, his roguish reputation as a scoundrel of sorts, somehow above reproach remained intact. In every way, Luis resembled his independent and daring father. Having heard stories about his father since a child, Estrada now believed he must uphold the family’s honor against his father’s unfair image and infamy.

Qui looked back to the body she’d earlier focused on. Blond hair lay matted and layered with seaweed, and the blue eyes of this one looked similar to those of a German or American tourist. This victim was perhaps in his late twenties, early thirties. Definitely a foreigner.

The second male victim also seemed foreign born and of a similar age. Qui then turned her attention on the female victim, who also appeared in the same age range. However, bloating has a way of erasing age lines, and Qui decided that their true ages would be hard to estimate with any accuracy- better left to a forensics expert. A quick body scan showed one of the young woman’s hands had been crudely amputated. Additionally, all three victims showed signs of acid burns, an obvious attempt to destroy their fingerprints.

“Going to be hard to identify,” she commented. Someone should shed a tear for these dead, she thought. “Uncle, help me turn the woman.”

“Hey, hold on!” It was young Adondo, who’d inched closer. “I know this one. Sh-sh-she is Canadian.”

“How do you know?” Qui demanded, eager to discover how and to what extent Adondo knew the victim.

“I don’t really know…I mean…I saw her once in the museum.”

“What museum? There are twenty museums in Old City alone.”

“Museo Historica-”

“Nacional de Ciencias?”

“No, not Natural history? The other one.”

“Oh, yes, de las Ciencias!”

“Sciences, yes, that’s the one.”

Like everyone in Cuba, Qui knew that fishermen had no money for museums. “When? When did you see her inside?”

“I was not inside!” he protested the accusation. “I was just sitting on the steps in the sun. She tripped and I–I caught her fall.”

Quiana read his body language and voice. Her training said he was not telling the truth, not entirely anyway. Adondo knew more than he was saying. “Then you actually met her?” asked Qui.

“Yes, we… we had words.”

“About?”

“Her ankle bracelet…pretty sandals.”

“An anklet…sandals?”

“Yeah, I liked the way the straps went up her leg.”

Qui thought this line of questioning useless, when Adondo added, “A pendant from her ankle bracelet came off. It was a leaf.”

“A leaf? What sort of leaf?”

“Maple leaf. Said she was Canadian.”

She looked over her shoulder at Adondo and asked, “Did you learn her name?”

“Denise.”

“Denise? No last name?”

“She had Denise on her nametag. Her last name was long… and, ahhh…strange.”

“Nametag?”

“On her blouse.”

Qui pointed to the male victims. “Was she with these others?”

Adondo shrugged. “Maybe. She was with a group.”

“Did they all wear tags?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“And you have no idea of her last name?”

“No. Maybe started with a B…”

They were interrupted when Estrada gasped. When they looked, he pointed to a perfectly executed tattoo on one of the other bodies-a tattoo of the World Trade Center.

“Oh God…Americans,” Qui blurted out. “Why’d it have to be Americans?”