Castro Directive (31 page)

"I know what you mean. I figured you wrong."

She stood up, smiled, and wiped her eyes. "God, what am I going to do if Steve shows up?"

"Don't let on that you know anything." He thought a moment. "How about if I come over again tonight? You mind?"

"Of course not."

He reached out, touched her arm. "I'll call you."

She hugged him, pressing her face into the nook of his shoulder and neck. Her body, snug against his, felt like a missing part that had suddenly found its home. They held the embrace long past a friendly good-bye; and when they separated, Pierce felt slightly flushed. His heart pounded and ached for what wasn't yet. But still might be.

P
ierce almost missed Marisol Puente's house. It was set back from the road under the folds of a pair of trees whose branches were weighted with mangos. Even though she lived just a few blocks from Calle Ocho, the busy commercial hub of Miami's Little Havana, you'd never know it here. Her backyard was a tropical garden, a lush, verdant sanctuary. A self-contained world, Pierce thought as he knocked at the side door.

The dark-eyed woman who answered gazed warily at him. Her frizzy black hair flowed over her shoulders. She wore khaki shorts and a black T-shirt and wore several gold necklaces, the longest of them with a cross dangling from it. She was broad-shouldered, large-boned, neither slender nor chunky. Her skin was a deep tan, and it was difficult to tell her age. She could be thirty-five or a dozen years older.

"Are you Marisol Puente?"

"What can I do for you?"

"My name is Nicholas Pierce. I'm here about Fuego."

"Who? I don't understand." She spoke with a slight Spanish accent, and he sensed fear in her voice.

"Felix Ferraro. I think you know him."

She took a step back and started to close the door. "I don't think I want to talk to you, Mr. Pierce."

"Wait, Please." He stuck his foot in the door. "It's important. Fuego is dead; I went to his funeral this morning."

"I know he's dead, and it's because he was snoopy. For your own good, please leave. Now."

"Listen, I'm a private investigator. I hired Fuego to investigate Raymond Andrews. I want to know what you told him."

She paused, considered what he said. "Why? Why did you hire him to do that?"

"I've been working for Andrews, and now I've got a lot of questions about him. I need to know what you told Fuego. It's very important."

She looked uncertain, then resigned. "Oh, God. I don't know. Guess it doesn't matter now. I knew Andrews would find me someday."

"This conversation will go no further than the two of us."

She stepped back from the door, then led him into a tidy living room the size of a postage stamp. It was packed with odds and ends—books, a collection of dolls, paintings, sculptures. Everything was crowded together, yet somehow orderly.

She perched at the edge of a wooden chair and watched him like a predator. Her feet were bare, her back was as rigid as an iron bar, and her hands rested lightly in her lap. She had the grace of a dancer. He, on the other hand, felt like an oaf as he lowered himself into a rocker and nearly toppled over backward. "Be careful in that chair," she said. Then: "So what do you know about me?"

"The day Fuego died he left your name and address in an envelope for me. That's all I know, except that he'd been looking for someone named Marisol who had known Andrews's wife."

He decided not to mention that he'd heard about her relationship with Loften. Not yet. "What did you tell Fuego that he thought was so important?"

"That Ginger died because she knew too much."

"What do you mean?"

Marisol didn't reply immediately. She breathed deeply, exhaled; he was reminded of Redington's relaxation exercise. "Ginger hired me to find out how her husband spent his time away from home."

"Hired you?"

"Yes, I was a private investigator."

"But no longer?"

"I quit after that case. I had had enough."

Pierce looked down at several painted stones that lay on end tables next to him. He picked up one of them and saw the eyes and nose and realized it was an animal. "So you're an exile from your homeland as well as your profession."

"I don't consider myself an exile in either sense. Miami is my home. As for the P.I. work"—she shook her head—"that case convinced me it was time for me to move on. I'm a commercial artist."

"If Mrs. Andrews died because she knew too much, you must also know too much. How come you're alive and she isn't?"

"Because I'm cautious. I respect the threat that Raymond Andrews represents. Something you apparently aren't concerned about."

"But you talked to Fuego."

"Yes. I confided in him. Maybe it was because we both grew up in Santa Clara, and shared memories of our childhood in Cuba."

"You knew him in Cuba?"

"No, and we probably would never have met, either. My father was a doctor, his was a storekeeper. But look what happened to him." She touched the gold cross dangling from her neck and bowed her head. "
Dios lo bendiga
."

When she looked up, Pierce asked why Ginger had wanted her husband followed.

"He was a secretive man, always going off on trips, and rarely taking her. She was sure he was having an affair and wanted to document it for a divorce case."

"Did you find another woman?"

"No, I did not." She was answering his questions, but offering nothing beyond a minimal response.

"Did you find anything suspicious?"

"I found a lot that was suspicious about him. But there was no other woman as far as I could tell. I told Mrs. Andrews that."

"Was she satisfied?"

"For a short time, yes. Then one day, she took a telephone call for her husband from an antique dealer in Edinburgh, Scotland. He told her to tell Mr. Andrews that his three-million-dollar offer for the skull did not interest him. That baffled her, because she'd never heard him say a word about spending millions on a skull."

Pierce nodded, doing his best to avoid indicating that he knew anything about the skull. "Did she ask him about the call?"

"Yes. He acted like he didn't know what she was talking about. A couple of days later she asked me to see what I could find out."

"And what did you find?"

"I visited the antique dealer and told him I was there about the skull. He assumed I represented Andrews and got angry. He said he wasn't selling the crystal skull for any price, and to tell Andrews to stop bothering him. By the time I left, I realized that owning this skull was the consuming passion of Mr. Andrews's life. That was the other woman."

"Why did he want it?"

"What're you going to do with this information? Get me killed, get yourself killed, or get both of us killed?"

Some choice, he thought. "If I get enough evidence that he's involved in a murder, I'll take it to the authorities."

She stood up, pacing the room. She stopped in front of him; her features were relaxed, resigned. "I don't know if that'll do any good, but I'll help you. I've been blessed that I've lived this long in peace without him finding me."

"Like I said, I'm not going to tell Andrews, and I made sure I wasn't followed. If he's guilty of murder, the police will protect you."

She nodded, but didn't look convinced. "The reason he wants the skull is that he feels it's powerful, that it would keep him from growing old."

He gazed after her as she meandered about the room. "How would it do that?"

"There's a legend that involves two skulls. He and his inner circle are set on obtaining both. He believes that by fulfilling this legend he will conquer death like the ancient gods. In fact, you could say he expects to become one of them himself."

Possessed by a myth, Pierce thought, recalling Redington's paper. "What is this inner circle?"

"It's part of a secret organization. They go by the name Noster Mundus."

"I've heard about it."

"Well, the inner circle is like a group of alchemists. That's the only way I can describe them. Their main work, they call it the opus alchemicum, is transformation to god-man through the prima materia—the first matter—the crystal skulls." She touched her cross again. "I am a religious person, and to me what they are doing is the devil's work."

"How did you find out about it?"

"Partly on my own, and through the help of someone in the inner circle."

"Who?"

"Someone I met through Ginger. She thought he might know something about the skull."

"Would this person talk to me, or the police?"

"No, Paul is dead. He was murdered."

"Paul Loften?"

"You know him?"

I was in his office when he was shot," he said, and explained the circumstances.

Marisol sat down again, closed her eyes as she spoke.

"My God. Now I understand why Andrews didn't kill him earlier. He used him to get the skull."

"I don't understand. Why would he have killed him earlier?"

"Because he thought Paul had told Ginger too much about the scroll."

Pierce frowned, shook his head. "Did you say scroll? What scroll?"

She studied him a moment. "You don't know about it? It's a silver scroll, an ancient document. Paul showed it to Andrews. That was ten years ago, and a short time later, Noster Mundus was formed and Andrews became interested in crystal skulls."

He remembered the scroll in the Noster Mundus emblem. "What does the scroll say?"

"It's devil's work about the two crystal skulls and immortality."

"Where is it?"

"Paul told me it was kept in Europe, somewhere near Bayonne, or just over the border, in Spain."

"Why would Andrews believe that what the scroll said was valid?"

"Maybe because of the source. Paul said that the scroll was written by Plato—that no one else could have written so beautifully. He said it was a lost dialogue, and that it was incredibly important."

"Plato?"

"That's right."

Pierce recalled the book on Plato he'd seen in Andrews's study and his scrawlings in the margin of the one he'd taken off the shelf. "But did Loften also believe this stuff about immortality?"

"Paul's interests were professional. He wanted to make the scroll public, but he promised Andrews that he wouldn't reveal its contents until the two skulls were together. In return, Andrews became a major donor to the museum."

"Why did Loften tell you all this?"

She picked up one of the painted rocks, nervously brushed the dust from it. "I got to know him by forming a liaison with him."

Pierce assumed she meant she'd had an affair with him.

"Gradually, he confided in me. I told Ginger everything. Her mistake was in confronting her husband with some of it. Andrews knew the information must have come from Paul—and since he knew Paul was having a love affair, he wrongly assumed it was with his own wife."

"Christ. She kept you out of it?"

"She denied having an affair with Loften when Andrews accused her of it. But he didn't believe her. I was very fortunate, because she never told him anything about me. She didn't care if he believed her or not. She just wanted out of the marriage. She didn't want to be married to someone who had such a strange and secret life, and who was so heedless of her existence."

"Then she gave herself a fatal injection," Pierce said.

"I don't believe that. She called me at ten the morning after he accused her of adultery. She said she was fine, but was afraid of him. She'd told him the marriage was over. I advised her to get out of there, to meet me for lunch. She agreed, but never showed up. She died before noon."

"If you thought he did it, how could you let him get away with it?"

Her glance was sharp. "You think I'm proud of that, Mr. Pierce? I was terrified. I kept thinking he was going to find out from Paul that I'd told Ginger about her husband's secret life. But nothing happened. He never confronted Paul. He was saving him."

"You stopped seeing Loften?"

"Yes, I loved him, but it was too dangerous. I never saw him again. I tried to forget him and all that happened. But I've always felt that someone like Fuego or you would show up at my door someday and Andrews would find out." She smiled ruefully. "I'm not surprised it happened now. For some reason, Andrews always thought that his quest would be completed this year. In fact, this very week."

T
hor huddled amid the thick undergrowth of elephant ears and cabbage palms, remaining as still as possible. From his position he could see through the sliding glass doors into the living room, where Pierce and the woman were talking.

He couldn't hear a word, of course, but he knew from the woman's behavior that Pierce hadn't dropped by for a friendly chat. He was on to something, and that something was whatever Fuego had discovered.