Hear No Evil

49

Jack met Maritza Rodriguez at her house in Pinecrest.

South Florida wasn’t the birthplace of “McMansions”-multi-million-dollar spreads so cookie cutter in design that they bordered on tract housing for the filthy rich-but it had certainly run with the concept. Whole neighborhoods had succumbed to the bulldozer, vintage 1950 shoe boxes replaced by nine-thousand-square-foot Mediterranean-style megahomes in which twenty-foot ceilings, walls of windows, and four-figure monthly A/C bills came standard.

Jack was seated on the leather couch in the great room. It was supposed to be the heart of the house, but like most of these new houses he’d visited, it had a sterile feeling-Saturnia floors, ecru walls, crown moldings so high that you needed a telescope to see the dentil details. Behind Mrs. Rodriguez was a shiny black grand piano, another McMansion staple, as if a musical instrument that no one in the house knew how to play would somehow warm up the icebox.

“My ex-husband had a thing for your mother,” she said as she peered over the rim of her coffee cup.

Jack tried not to appear shocked. “That must have been a long time ago,” said Jack. “My mother died when I was born.”

“It was many, many years ago, before Hector and I even met. Before Hector came to this country.”

“It’s funny you mention this now,” said Jack. “A friend recently told me that Hector bears a strong resemblance to my mother’s old flame in Bejucal. The guy swears it was Hector Torres.”

“He’s probably right.”

“Only problem is, the guy’s name was Jorge Bustón. Not Hector Torres. Unless Hector changed his name.”

“Not to my knowledge,” she said. “People did do that, of course. Especially those who took a very vocal role against the Cuban government when they got here. If you left family back in Cuba, changing your name was a good way to keep your loved ones from being persecuted for your own anti-Castro activity waged in exile. But Hector never mentioned anything to me about changing his name.”

“As far as you know, your ex has always been Hector Torres?”

“Yes. But now that you raise the issue, if someone changes his name, it’s conceivable that he wouldn’t tell anyone. It all depends on the reason for the name change, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” said Jack, thinking. He could have probed more, but he didn’t want to get too far off the main point. “When you say your ex-husband had a thing for my mother, what do you mean?”

She sighed, as if not sure how to put it. “Let me start at the beginning. Hector and I met here in Miami in 1967, got married in 1968.”

“My mother was already dead.”

“Right. You were just a baby when Hector became friends with your father.”

“Why would he become friends with my father if he had a thing for my mother?”

“That’s what I wanted to know.”

“Did you ask him?”

“Yes. He told me why, but the answer was obvious. He still loved her.”

Jack shook his head, confused. “Wait a minute. He buddied up to my dad because he was still in love with my mother?”

“I can tell you for a fact that when Hector came to this country, even after he met me, he was determined to find your mother. When he learned that she was dead, he was devastated. Frankly, I think he became friends with your father for one reason. It was the only way he could find out what happened to the woman he really loved.”

“But he and my father have been friends all my life.”

“All I’m saying is that your mother was the reason they became friends in the first place. I didn’t say she was the reason they remained friends over the years. I’m quite certain that, to this day, your father knows nothing about that relationship.”

“So, what made you call me now, after all this time?”

“Like I said, it bugged me to see that hypocrite ex-husband of mine on television invoking his friendship with your father. Especially after the way he treated your client on the witness stand. After the way he treated me in our marriage. After the way I’m sure he treated your mother.”

“What do you mean, the way he treated my mother?”

“Hector was-” She stopped herself, measuring her words. “I was married to Hector for only four years, but I know him well. Trust me, he’s never had a healthy relationship with a woman in his life. He’s not capable of it.”

“Do you know something specific about my mother?”

“Only what I saw.”

Jack blinked hard, even more confused. “Wait. You and Hector met after my mother was dead. So what could you have seen?”

“I saw a man consumed by the memory of a woman he couldn’t live without.”

“Lots of people carry a torch.”

“I’d call it an obsession.”

“He’d probably call it sentimental.”

“There was nothing sentimental about it. The man scared the hell out of me. It’s why I divorced him. I followed him one day,” she said, her voice tightening.

“What?”

“He used to leave the house every Saturday, not tell me where he was going. So I followed him one day.”

“Where’d he go?”

“The cemetery. Flagler Memorial Park.”

“That’s where my mother is buried. He visited her grave?”

“Yes. Every Saturday.”

“Even after he was married to you?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s why you divorced him?”

“It wasn’t just the visiting that bothered me.”

“What was it?”

“It was-it was just strange.”

“I’d like to know.”

“Like I said, I followed him to the cemetery. I hid behind a mausoleum so he couldn’t see me. He looked around to make sure no one was watching. And then he…”

Jack felt his pulse quicken. “What?”

Her voice started to shake. “He lay down on top of her grave.”

Jack went cold.

“And then he…” Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t say the rest, and Jack didn’t want to hear it anyway. Her eyes were cast down toward her coffee cup. Jack was looking at her face, but the image was suddenly a blur.

“So you divorced him,” said Jack, his anger rising. “And he remained friends with my father all these years. Shook his hand, smiled to his face, went to his birthday parties, used him for whatever political capital my old man was worth.”

“I didn’t know that until I saw him on the news tonight. But when I heard that-well, I just had to call you. I’m sorry. This has to be a terrible thing to hear about your own mother.”

“No need to apologize. You did the right thing.”

They sat in silence, as if neither one knew exactly where to take the conversation from here. Maritza stirred her coffee, and the spoon shook in her hand. The outing of her ugly secret had only seemed to make things more awkward.

Jack checked his watch, then rose. “Trial tomorrow. I should be going.”

She seemed relieved by the suggestion. She saw him to the foyer and opened the front door.

“Thanks again,” said Jack.

She shook his hand, then a look of concern came over her. “Please don’t tell Hector that I said any of this. I’m happy now. I’ve remarried, I have a nice life.”

Jack looked into her eyes, and he could see beyond the concern. He saw traces of genuine fear-an old fear that had suddenly reared its head after all these years. For an instant, it was as if he were looking into his own mother’s eyes, and he wondered if it was that same kind of fear that had driven her from Bejucal, that had carried her across an ocean. And then it suddenly came clear to him: Abuela may have bought her daughter a ticket to Miami, but Ana Maria hadn’t boarded that Pedro Pan airplane because her mother told her to go. She hadn’t left Cuba out of shame. She was indeed running for freedom, the kind of freedom that only Torres’s ex-wife could understand.

“I won’t say a word,” he promised. He turned and started down the front steps, walking into the silence of night. As the door closed behind him, he turned for one last look, one final impression of the door too heavy on the house too big-and of the nervous woman inside, all too believable.