Suspicion of Deceit (29 page)

"Great. You don't need me? Then leave!" Gail screamed back at him. "Go find yourself a nice little
cubana
like you had before, who couldn't stand being married to you."

Panting for breath, he stared at her a moment longer, grabbed his coat, and walked out of the kitchen. The front door slammed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Irene Connor's house was just north of downtown in Belle Mar, a waterfront area that looked out on the islands between the city and Miami Beach. A girl Karen's age lived across the street, which gave Karen someone to play with. While Gail lay on a lounge chair, the two girls swam in the pool. Shrieking happily, they made cannonball dives, and Gail would flinch at the occasional drops of cold water that hit the backs of her legs. She had untied the top of her swimsuit and propped herself on her elbows to read.

Along with a suitcase for the weekend, she had brought all her files relating to
Miami Opera, Inc.
v.
City of Miami.
Gail had spent yesterday drafting the complaint. There would be an emergency hearing in front of whatever judge might be assigned to the case—if it were filed. That was looking less likely. The mayor was on the opera's side. A local TV station had conducted a poll, and respondents—those who recognized the name Thomas Nolan—voted five to one that he had a right to sing in Miami. A Little Havana civic leader had been interviewed: "It is unfair that a few troublemakers can create a bad image for all of us."

She lay on the lounge chair reading old newspaper articles about exile terrorism that her secretary had copied from library microfilm. The purpose had been to give some background to the lawsuit. Gail had not used the research after all, but flipping through it on Friday had piqued her interest. Today, reading about bombings and assassinations suited the bleak mood she was in.

She had read that in 1975, the publisher of
Réplica,
a Spanish-language magazine in Miami, had the nerve to suggest working with Cubans inside Cuba, even participating in elections if they were held. He was gunned down outside a children's hospital.

A radio commentator preached against such violence. When he left the studio and started his car in the parking lot, a stick of dynamite tore off his legs.

Raids were planned. Men trained in paramilitary camps in the Everglades. Armed militants were arrested by the FBI or Customs on their way to Cuba in boats riding low in the water. Weapons were seized.

The name Ernesto José Pedrosa Masvidal had appeared several times, referred to variously as exile leader, hard-liner, right-winger, extremist. Suspected of financing terrorist acts, Ernesto Pedrosa had been investigated by the FBI. This image did not fit the old man Gail had seen the other night, who had dreamily gazed at a faded photograph of a house in the country.

If Anthony had wanted to be cruel, he would have said, Sorry,
abuelo,
your country estate was paved over, and the
framboyán
tree is gone. But he let his grandfather believe in a gentle lie. Gail had loved him at that moment. Then he had closed up entirely, shut her out, and screamed at her for pushing to know the truth.

Gail jerked when a splash of cold water hit her back. She held a towel to her front, turned around, and yelled, "Karen! Lisa! Stop that!" Two faces appeared grinning, their owners dog-paddling in the sparkling pool. Giggles. There was another face, too— a fifty-nine-year-old woman in a swim cap with yellow daisies.

"Mother, what are you doing?"

"Come in with us, you grouch."

"I'm working."

She put her sunglasses on, fastened her top, rearranged the towel, and sat down. Reaching into the box on the patio, she pulled out a book titled
The Exile: Cubans in the Heart of Miami.
She tossed it back, not in the mood to read another word about Cubans in the heart of anything. She suddenly longed for a romance novel set in Montana. The hero would have cool blue eyes and a monosyllabic name. Jake. Ted. Luke.

She heard the patter of wet footsteps. Her mother hurried across the patio in her sea blue swimsuit with the little skirt, pulling off her swim cap, fluffing her red hair. Her skin—once so luminous and smooth— was sagging at thigh and upper arm, and her petite torso had thickened. How sad, thought Gail. Or maybe it wasn't sad at all, but a liberation from the demands of the flesh.

"Brrrrr, that was invigorating." Irene dried herself off and tucked in the towel at her bosom. "Are you still reading those depressing newspaper stories?"

Gail said, "It was pretty exciting around here in the seventies. I was in high school, then I went away to college, so I don't remember very much. Do you?"

"Not clearly," Irene said. "It was mostly in Little Havana, and nobody I knew was affected. There wasn't as much violence as those articles make out, but a lot of my friends left Miami during those years. They said the city had been ruined. It wasn't, of course."

"We should have gone, too," Gail said. "Put one of those bumper stickers on the U-Haul. 'WILL THE LAST AMERICAN LEAVING MIAMI PLEASE BRING THE FLAG.' "

"What a thing to say!"

"Why didn't you and Dad leave?"

"This is our home," her mother said.

Gail stretched her arms over her head. "Last time I saw Ernesto Pedrosa he was talking about those Cuban tourist hotels that were bombed last summer. He says the people will rise up. He thinks he's going to make it back home." .

"Maybe he will."

"He could go if he wanted. He's just stubborn and contrary."

"He's very old, Gail. You're in a mood, aren't you?"

"I've had a hard week."

Slipping into her sandals, her mother said, "I'm going to get dressed and make some fruit daiquiris. We'll get our vitamins."

In 1978 Ernesto Pedrosa had been investigated by the FBI for funding sabotage raids, the same year that Pedrosa's eldest grandson, whom he had rescued or kidnapped from Cuba, depending on one's view of it, had gone to Nicaragua to fight with the leftists and get the innocence blasted out of him for good.

The telephone in the kitchen rang. Gail stopped breathing. When her mother didn't lean out the door to call to her, she pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and lay down. Spots of color swam in the darkness like miniature fireworks. She dozed.

There was a thump of a tray being set on the metal table. Gail ratcheted up the back of her lounge chair and felt the prickle of a sunburn. Her mother, dressed now in white slacks and a bright green T-shirt, filled two tumblers with frothy pink liquid. She had put on fresh lipstick and mascara.

After handing Gail her drink, Irene went to the edge of the pool. "Little mermaids! Little mermaids, time to grow legs and come out of the water. Cookies and juice." Dripping and shivering, the girls wrapped themselves in colorful beach towels that hung to their ankles. Irene gave them a bag of bread and told them to carry their snacks to the seawall and throw crumbs to the fish.

Then she stood at the foot of Gail's lounge chair, stirring her frozen daiquiri with a cocktail straw. "Jeffrey Hopkins called just now looking for you. He wanted to know if you had seen the interview on Channel Seven last night with Tom Nolan. He tried to reach you at home."

"Oh, God. What happened?"

"Well—" Irene made a little smile. "Tom said he was happy to have sung in Havana. The U.S. embargo is causing all the problems down there. Washington is afraid of the exile lobby. What else? Oh, yes. Fidel has done more for the Cuban people than the exiles ever would have, if they'd stayed."

Gail took a long breath in, then let it slowly out. "I'm going to kill him. I'll tear out his tongue. Does Jeffrey want me to call back? He has got to be boiling." She imagined his smooth cheeks flaming over his bow tie.

"You can call later," Irene said. "He was on his way out. Who you should call is Tom Nolan before he makes it any worse. I have his number in my address book by the phone."

Knotting her towel at her hip, Gail strode barefoot into the kitchen. She grabbed the phone off the wall and punched in the numbers.

Four rings. Then an answering machine. Then a soft, deep voice informing her that no one was home. "Tom, this is Gail Connor. Are you screening your calls? If so, please pick up." Silence. "I suppose you're at rehearsal. I hope you made it there without being shot at. I heard about your interview on Channel Seven last night. How can I put this without being rude? I can't. That was so incredibly
stupid.
We agreed,
no interviews!"
She paused for a breath. "All we can do now is pray that nothing happens. And meanwhile, if anyone asks, would you
please
say it was a joke, a misunderstanding, you lost your marbles, you didn't mean it. And call me immediately. I'm at my mother's house, Irene Connor."

She left the number and hung up. "Dammit!"

At the table outside, she gulped down half her frozen daiquiri, then felt the ache grab her throat. "Shit." She held her mouth open and breathed in some warm air.
"Idiot.
What is he doing this for, the publicity? I'm going to kill him."

The phone rang again. Gail glared in the direction of the kitchen, then feared that it might be Anthony. She had not told her mother anything about their argument.

The phone was still ringing. "Do you want me to get it?" Irene asked.

He was not likely to call here, Gail decided. "No, I'll do it."

Rebecca Dixon was on the other end of the line. Yes, she had heard about Tom Nolan's interview, wasn't it awful?

"My maid, Juanita, just told me that Octavio Reyes made another of his vicious commentaries this morning. He even played some of Tom's remarks on the air and translated them into Spanish. All the other stations are talking about it, too."

Leaning her forehead against the cabinet over the sink, Gail said, "Rebecca, if you expect me to have a solution to this mess because I'm a lawyer, prepare to be disappointed. I don't know what the hell to do now."

"Lloyd said he's going to have a talk with him."

"Who, Tom?"

"No. Octavio Reyes." Rebecca spoke as if she were afraid of being overheard. "He's coming here tonight, and Lloyd's going to talk to him."

"Lloyd asked him to come to your
house?"
Gail found this incredible. "And Octavio Reyes is going to be there? Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm sorry I didn't tell you this before. Lloyd is having some people over for dinner, and Reyes is on the guest list."

"The dinner party where
Tom Nolan
is going to sing? How is that possible?"

"Mr. Reyes doesn't know about it. It's Lloyd's little joke. He says it's payback for all the trouble he caused us. He wants to see his reaction. He thinks it's funny."

Gail stood up straight, still not believing this. "What is going on, Rebecca? What are they doing?"

She heard a little laugh on the other end. "These people at the party are acquaintances of Lloyd's. They have money, and they're going to invest it in Cuba as soon as the opportunity arises. It's not legal now, you know, but Lloyd says that luck comes to those who prepare for it."

"And Octavio Reyes is one of his friends," Gail said.

"Not
friends,
per se. They don't socialize or anything. Octavio Reyes has been to the house, but not while I was here. I wouldn't recognize the man if he walked into my bedroom this minute. I'm sorry. Lloyd told me to stay out of it, so I kept quiet. Maybe you should tell Anthony."

"He already knows about it, Rebecca. Not that Reyes is going to show up at your house tonight, no, but the rest of it he's aware of."

There was a long pause. Then Rebecca said, "How does he know?"

"Felix Castillo. Anthony hired him to look into it."

"Oh." A laugh came over the line. "Well, Anthony's always a step ahead of us."

Hanging up the phone, Gail thought for only a moment about calling Anthony to report all this. But he knew about it. What was the point? What Anthony did not know was that his brother-in-law was more of a snake than he had ever imagined.

Outside on the patio she finished her daiquiri, refilled her glass, then sat down and told her mother that the call was from Rebecca Dixon, wanting to talk about Tom Nolan's interview. She did not mention the rest of it. All roads led to Anthony.

Irene's arms shone with sunscreen, and she had put on a big straw hat. From the shade of its brim she said, "I've been thinking about what Tom might have brought back from Costa Rica in that suitcase."

"Your guess is as good as mine." Gail reached for another of the articles on exile terrorism.

"I think it was ancient musical instruments. Mayan or . . . what kind of Indians did they have in Central America? A musician would want souvenirs like that. Tom could never have gotten pre-Columbian artifacts into this country legally, so he had to ask Lloyd Dixon to smuggle them in. What instruments did the Indians play before the Spaniards got there?"

"I don't know, Mom." Gail flipped another page, looking at a photograph of the smoking ruins of a cigar factory. The owner had been suspected of traveling to Havana.

A minute later her mother asked, "Are you going to tell me what's going on with you and Anthony or not?"

Gail kept her eyes on the page. "Well, I didn't really want to bring it up this weekend, but it's pretty much over."

"Oh, no. You can't mean that."

"Afraid so. You were right when you warned me about him six months ago."

Irene scooted her chair around to face Gail. "You said he made you happy."

"Sometimes he does, but sometimes isn't enough. The moment we disagree—
kaboom!
He has a horrible temper."

"Oh, Gail. He isn't violent, is he?"

"No." She thought of Octavio Reyes gagging after a punch to the stomach. "Never with me."

"Darling, all couples have their disagreements and sore spots."

"It's more than that. I've talked to Cuban women, so this isn't just my politically incorrect opinion here, all right? They've told me, Cuban men tend to be selfish, domineering peacocks, and they expect the woman to take a secondary role. It's a cultural thing. I don't blame Anthony. He can't help the way he was brought up."