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Authors: Mel McKinney

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BOOK: Where There's Smoke
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“Gents. Tell you what we've got here. Now I know none of you are going to believe it, but those are stolen cigars.” He surveyed the shocked expressions, warming inside.
“Yep, stolen from a home here on the Cape. Now seein' as none of you claims ownership of 'em, I'm just
going to have to confiscate 'em into my official custody. I'll notify the rightful owners.”
Hiram's smile broadened as he anticipated
that
conversation. His thoughtful patting ceased. He pulled a pack of Swisher Sweets from his shirt pocket and held it up. “Anyone care for a cigar?” he asked.
“JESUS! WHAT A tough old bird.” Joseph Bonafaccio gazed down at the Caribbean from the window of the DC-3. Romelli was seated beside him, reading
Sports Illustrated
. “What do you think, Dom? Was he telling the truth?”
Romelli gave him a patient, benevolent smile—the old master to the student.
“Joseph, it's a very hard thing to call. When a man realizes he's been so destroyed that he knows he'll die regardless of what he says, reliability is uncertain. Some finally sing, hoping, I suppose, that when it all stops, everything will be the same. Some lose the truth altogether and simply go crazy. And some decide to die with the truth locked away, their last victory. At the end, when he kept repeating he knew nothing of cigars with diamonds in 'em and that Raul Salazar was in Kingston, he had nothing further to gain or lose, you see. Or did he? That's the difficulty. It always is in these situations.”
Joseph turned to the window again, reflecting.
“Well, at least we know where Salazar is. Good thing you called the hotels. He'll have a surprise from the past this morning, won't he?”
Romelli nodded and returned to his magazine. After a few seconds he closed it and stuffed it into the seat pocket. He leaned close to Bonafaccio.
“Joseph, it's tough to admit, but last night's work was too much for me. It was good we took Enzo to do it. I'll level with you; I've lost the stomach for it. It's one thing to line up crosshairs of a scope and bring something to a quick, clean end. Last night's session was something else altogether.
Capisci?”
Joseph looked away, afraid his eyes would betray him.
He
had found the interrogation of Paulo Enriquez disturbingly thrilling. Shepherding the Bonafaccio holdings through labyrinths of tax regulations and board room strategies left him flat. But stepping back in time to the ruthless ways of his family's past had been intoxicating. This affair involving Salazar and the stolen money had fed his conviction that he should have lived in his father's time, when power rested on pillars of force and intimidation instead of columns in a ledger. He patted Romelli's arm.
“Ahh, what the hell, Dom. Victor Salazar started this in fifty-five when he turned pirate on us. His son might just be smarter. If he's got the cigars with the diamonds, maybe he'll just turn them over.”
Romelli shook his head, smiling, and retrieved the
Sports Illustrated
. “Right,” he said.
 
 
Raul tightened his arm around Rosa's shoulder as they watched the DC-3 turn off the runway and taxi toward the terminal. The bulbed silver nose of the airplane angled to the sky as if straining to return to its true element. It would be a short time on the ground, ten minutes at most. Just time enough for the arriving Miami passengers to disembark and the handful of Kingston passengers to take their place.
The whirling propellers coughed to a stop in front of the building and two attendants in shirtsleeves wheeled the portable stairway to the aircraft's oval door. Rosa looked up at Raul, tears glistening in her eyes.
“Raul, my sweet Raul. Forget all this. The money you have brought is plenty, a godsend. Return to Cuba with me now. Don't go back to Miami. The things you told me last night about your father and those monsters who killed him …
“If, as you think, they may discover how your father hid what he took from them, then no millions are worth that risk. Please, my love, forget this and let us finally be together.”
Raul drew her close and buried her head against his shoulder. Speaking softly, he said, “Rosa, we will be together in such a short time. We have waited this long, another few days will be as nothing. So many in Cuba are being strangled by politics. These millions will make a difference.
“It will be so simple. All I have to do is collect those cigars and Paulo. I am sure he wants to return with me. I owe at least that much to the memory of my father. What he was able to take back from the gangsters belongs to
our people. He paid with his life for this gift, and I must see that it is delivered.”
She looked up again, her eyes clouded. His own eyes started to fill, and he looked past her to the airplane that would return him to Miami for the last time. He stiffened.
“Madre de Dios
,” he gasped.
He backed Rosa into a darkened alcove, buried his head against her shoulder, and watched through her parted hair as Joseph Bonafaccio Jr. and Dominick Romelli stepped out of his past and onto the tarmac.
As THE PLANE banked and climbed, Raul kept his eyes on the terminal until it disappeared beneath wisps of cloud.
Clasping Rosa in the shadow of the alcove, he had watched Bonafaccio and Romelli stalk briskly by, not five feet from him. Only after a waiting cab sped them from the terminal building had he given Rosa one last kiss and sprinted to the waiting plane.
Safe, for the moment, he settled back and closed his eyes.
It would be a lethal mistake to treat this as coincidence
, he thought. He smiled at the irony. The last time he had seen those two had been from the window of a climbing plane, with the lights of Havana shrinking into the night, one life ending as another began. Only then, the killers had stayed behind.
He had one hour to piece this together and improvise a solution.
Thank God for Paulo
, he thought.
 
 
Raul broke his race through the Miami terminal with a brief stop at a pay phone. He quickly dialed the restaurant. When there was no answer, he abandoned all pretense of blending in with other travelers and bolted for the cab line.
“Señor?” asked the driver.
“Noches Cubanas.
Arriba!
Set a record!” Raul thrust a hundred-dollar bill into the driver's hand and recoiled as the '60 Chevrolet leapt forward in a burst that numbered its transmission's days.
Ten minutes later he jumped from the cab as it slowed in front of the restaurant. Paulo's ancient pickup truck was parked in the adjacent alley. He unlocked the front door and stepped inside.
“Paulo!” His shout lost itself in the empty restaurant. Chairs were still on the floor, and the tables were bare of tablecloths. The restaurant had not been properly closed. He passed through the bar and called into the empty kitchen. Again, no answer.
Raul stood at the top of the stairs that led down to the wine cellar and humidor room. Sometimes, after a long night, his maître d' would simply sleep on the cot in the storage area outside the wine cellar.
“Paulo?” he repeated, slowly descending the stairs.
The blanket at the foot of the cot was neatly folded and the door to the wine cellar and humidor room was unlocked. He pushed it open.
The heady must of aging wine and tobacco in cedar greeted him, usually a moment of pleasure he would pause to enjoy. Not now. Another aroma greeted him, a clinging
sweetness that did not belong. He reached to his right and found the light switch.
Paulo, naked and gagged, sat at the pine table in the middle of the wine cellar, his arms bound to the vertical posts of the straight-backed chair. Each of his legs was secured at the ankle by thin cord to the corresponding chair leg, forcing his hips forward and compressing his back rigidly against the slatted rise. His defeated efforts to kick out in anger or terror at the torture practiced upon him had scraped the skin from around his ankles, leaving raw streaks of blood and exposed bone.
Raul leaned against the door frame and slumped to the floor.
Gruesome objects formed two neat rows on the table in front of Paulo. From the white glints at the ends, Raul made out that some were fingers, then toes. Then a curved, small bowl of an object, an ear. Then, an indistinguishable mass, lumpy and rough. Next to it, separate and distinct, what could only be a shriveled penis. Next to that, an eye, then another.
Too numbed to scream, Raul threw up, sobbing. The grisly evidence told of his friend's slow, agonizing death. He had been forced to watch his own ghastly mutilation until he could see no more. As Raul felt consciousness rush from him, he prayed that the same mercy had been visited upon Paulo.
He woke, minutes or hours later; he was not sure. The scene had not changed. He understood completely what had happened and recognized the unmistakable signature of who had done this to Paulo. He could not call the police. He would tend to Paulo's body himself. After that, he did not know. He was shaking.
RAUL WENT TO work at once. He knew he would be crippled by the waves of grief and horror washing over him if he did not stay busy. The simple mission he had hoped to accomplish was now grimly complicated, and time was running against him. He harbored no doubt that Bonafaccio knew what had become of Victor's treasure and was possessed by a savage hunger to reclaim it.
Paulo's body needed to be removed and the room cleaned before the staff arrived.
With his Bonneville off on the road trip to Cape Cod, he had only one choice for the grisly job ahead—Paulo's wreck of a pickup. He gently wrapped his friend's mutilated body, and its various parts, in the old canvas tent Paulo had used for his trips into the interior swamps. Then he hefted the ghastly bundle and carried it upstairs to the truck. All the while, images of the past flashed in his mind, scenes spinning in a dizzying collage.
His father—the Bonafaccios—his exile from Cuba—
his father's murder—Rosa's crusade—the embargo—the Kennedy cigars—the diamonds in the Don Salazarios—and, finally, this: Paulo.
Raul clamped the tailgate in place and paused a second to catch his breath. Paulo must have had time to carry out Raul's instructions before Bonafaccio showed up. The cigars had been in plain sight when Raul had left them. Now they were gone. Could Raul's brief, excited telephone call to Paulo from Kingston have been enough to ignite the will to resist such a fatally brutal interrogation? Could any man have buried the secret of the cigars' hiding place from such an inquisition? Then Raul recalled the look in Paulo's eyes when Raul had proposed their new venture together in Cuba. Raul had seen that look in another's eyes: Rosa's.
As the kaleidoscope spun, other fragments emerged and hovered before tumbling into place. Slowly, a picture, a new picture, began to form.
The cigars could wait. They would have to. The wick of fate kindled by Victor Salazar and now fueled by Bonafaccio's fierce vengeance burned rapidly toward conflagration. There was much to do and precious little time. Raul slid into the dusty cab of the pickup and set off for the deepest part of Little Havana.
 
Dominick Romelli pressed a fifty dollar bill into the hand of the startled desk clerk with a pressure calculated to send a clear message. Romelli's basset hound eyes capped a congenial smile as his thumb gouged the sweaty palm, sharply persuading the clerk to abandon the hotel's privacy policy.
“Sir, though Señor Salazar has not checked out and is scheduled to stay with us another three days, I saw him and the lady leave early this morning. I believe they took a cab to the airport. I have not seen them since. If, as you say, the hotel operator told you when you called earlier that he still was a guest, it is because he still appears to be. I do not know if he will be returning.”
Romelli released the pressure and turned to Joseph, who shrugged and pointed his chin toward the door. As they left the hotel, Bonafaccio said, “That's it, then. He's split. Shouldn't be much of a problem to track him from the airport. Only one or two flights out of here a day, right?”
Within thirty minutes they confirmed they had crossed paths with Raul Salazar at the airport. Joseph sulked as he sat in the waiting area clutching his ticket on the 3:00 P.M. flight to Miami. One fleecing by the Salazars was one too many. He would recover the treasure skimmed from the Bonafaccio family, with interest.
THE POCKED STUCCO front of the dreary, low building revealed nothing. It was simply one of the many hundreds of wretched, though functional, structures in Little Havana. You had to know where to look for the faded wooden plaque, nearly hidden by a drooping eave. EL ROSARIO—FABRICA DE TABACO, it proclaimed with tarnished pride.
Raul coaxed the truck's bald tires up onto the curb. Rounding the truck bed, he patted the rolled tent. “Smells good, eh, amigo?” he said out loud, drawing in the pungent aroma of aged tobacco escaping through holes and cracks in the skewed structure. He moved toward the building's large, wooden door, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
The mottled outward appearance of the building yielded within to soft, effective, overhead lighting. Twenty wooden worktables spanned the large room, facing the door. Each table was divided into four work stations occupied
by men and women, their skin the color of Moroccan leather. The men wore stained sleeveless undershirts or loose-fitting, short-sleeved shirts that had once been white. The women were topped in faded prints that had once burst with color. Many of them smoked the results of their labor. In a relaxed, steady rhythm, they rolled the piles of brown leaves splayed in front of them into new cigars.
A dark pulpit imposed itself at the head of the room, just to Raul's right, inside the door. There, a heavy woman,
la lectora
, sat reading in a robust voice to the intent assembly. At the moment she was turning a page of an open newspaper. A pile of newspapers and magazines waited in front of her.
Raul closed the door behind him, and
la lectora's
animated recital of baseball scores came to an abrupt halt. A soft clacking filled the room as the
torcedores
tapped their chavetas against the wooden tables.
“Señor Salazar!” the reader called, beaming. The
torcedores
' tapped greeting faded as many pairs of white or yellowed eyes reflected the lights above.
She stepped down from her stool, casting a stern look across the room. The
tabaqueros
regrasped their tools and the gentle work resumed.
“So soon?” she asked. “You just took fifteen boxes three weeks ago. Business must be good, very good!”
Since the embargo, there had been a brisk demand for the hand-rolled cigars crafted in the small factories of Little Havana, particularly those like El Rosario, which still drew from their warehouse of previously imported Cuban tobacco. Raul had seven boxes of his recent purchase of El Rosarios left. When his own stock of true Cubans
was gone, which would be in a matter of days, he would easily sell fifteen boxes of the El Rosarios in much less than three weeks. But after that, when the Cuban tobacco in the sheds of Little Havana was gone, the boom would end.
“I wish that were so, Señora. No, this time I have come about something else. Is Señor Torres here?”
Her disappointment flickered briefly, then she stepped down and regally strolled the few steps to a door behind the podium. She knocked softly, nodded to Raul, and returned to her stool.
The door opened.
The old man's tan, weathered face was in sharp contrast with his white linen suit. His broad, silk tie flourished in brocaded splendor against a tailored, lime-colored shirt. Pleasure warmed Raul, and he clasped his grandfather's best friend in a firm embrace.
“Raul, my son. Welcome!” the old man said, in a voice softened by what Raul could only guess must be around eighty-five years.
“Ernesto, you are a tribute to all that is civilized,” said Raul. He stood away and held onto the older one's forearms, admiring the perfection of stature and dress before him.
“Ah,” Ernesto Torres demurred, “señoritas and cigars. They have been kind to me. That is true. But evening is finally here and soon my midnight will come, as it does for us all. Come, sit down.”
The old man closed the door and moved to his desk, a rich mahogany table. Its gleaming surface was studded with neat piles of yellow paper slips bearing handwritten
scrawls. Raul recognized them as the tags identifying fields of origin and harvest dates of tobacco bundles from the Vuelta Abajo, Cuba's inland tobacco treasure house. As a boy Raul had helped his grandfather print slips like these and attach them to bundles. It was said that Jennaro Salazar had originated this “system,” such as it was.
“It is nice to see some things that do not change,” Raul said, sweeping his hand over the desk.
“Yes, Raul. Your grandfather's way has served us well. Like labels on fine wine. But, sadly, it is ending.” He laid his hand on a small pile about two inches high. “These represent the last
hoja de fortaleza
we have from Cuba, the last of our leaves of strength and flavor. I am afraid that the Norte Americanos will not change their policy toward Cuba for many, many years. Next week we start using tobacco from other countries. Nothing will ever be the same.”
So, Raul thought,
even sooner than I had expected.
Yes, he had been right. His business could not help but strangle in the choke hold of the embargo. What good was a fine Cuban restaurant without fine Cuban cigars?
Belying the funereal tone of his soft voice, the old man's eyes sparkled from their dark crevices. Clearly, he was pleased at the visit from his old friend's grandson.
“What brings you to El Rosario so soon, Raul? Did you not just make a purchase from us?”
Raul nodded. “Yes, Ernesto. But today I am here to ask a favor. A very special favor. One that will bring the blessings of my father and grandfather down upon you. Someday, when we are all together, we will laugh over it.”
Ernesto Torres made the sign of the cross and shook
his head sadly. “Ah, your grandfather, God rest his good soul. Jennaro taught me everything. If only he had listened to me! When the gangsters came, I told him it was only a matter of time. And look what happened. They murdered his son and stole his lands. He could have been here, working side by side with me all these years. Instead, he died alone and penniless, a trespasser in his own fields. When they took your father, their cruel knife cut out your grandfather's heart as well. Stripped of you both, he had nothing to live for.”
Raul hesitated. Friends of Paulo had sent news of his grandfather's death a month after he'd landed in Miami. There had been no details.
“You know of Jennaro's death … how he died?”
Ernesto Torres embraced Raul with his eyes. “Yes, I know. We shared many friends, as you know.” Reading the torment in Raul's expression, he continued.
“Within hours of murdering Victor, the gangster, Bonafaccio, was at Batista's side. He asked that all the Salazar properties be forfeited to him as payment for his services to Cuba and as compensation for Victor's thievery. The story goes that he and Batista enjoyed a good laugh over that and then Batista drafted a decree granting Jennaro's lands and the Salazar Fabrica to Bonafaccio.
“The next day the Mafia snake took his men and drove to San Luis. They found Jennaro at the warehouse and drove him out, laughing and beating him with sticks. Bonafaccio showed him the paper signed by Batista and told him the only way he would return to his fields would be as a laborer, working for Bonafaccio. It is said that Jennaro picked himself up from the dirt, laughed in Bonafaccio's
face, and walked away. He was found a week later, dead, in the middle of one of his fields—a heart attack they said.”
The old man's eyes glazed as he pictured what might have been. Then he looked directly at Raul. “Of course, I will do you any favor. Tell me what you need.”
Raul sat down. “First, I must tell you a story,” he said quietly, “of why my grandfather was able to laugh at Bonafaccio and of our dear friend Paulo. It will help if you know.”
 
Raul left the El Rosario factory forty-five minutes later, lacking conviction that his fragile thread of a plan would withstand the coming strain. He wondered whether those surreal minutes after discovering Paulo had laid waste to his reason. Common sense told him to forget the Don Salazarios, as Rosa had begged. Bonafaccio's deadly net would soon close, and any sane man would flee for his life, satisfied with the money teased from Gessleman. Paulo's horrible sacrifice had made that option unthinkable.
Raul now knew that his sliver of a chance had opened when Joseph Bonafaccio and Dominick Romelli had disembarked at Kingston. Paulo's anesthetic must have been his knowledge that Raul would return that morning to Miami and that by directing his torturers to Kingston he was buying his employer precious time. The hunters would miss their prey—for now.
As Raul reached Paulo's truck, he again smoothed his hand across the tarped bundle in the pickup bed. He thought of the early morning quiet before a bullfight, broken
only by the
encierro
, the delivery of the bulls from the ranch where they were raised to the ring where they would be fought. “Thank you, my friend,” he said, “for the
encierro.”
Paulo had delivered the Bonafaccio bull to Raul. Now he must fight it.
Normally it took less than twenty minutes to reach Key Biscayne—but that was in the Bonneville. Paulo's truck protested whenever the needle behind the cracked speedometer approached forty-five miles per hour. Rattles and knocks signaling terminal engine failure passed through the fire wall, while gears and shafts, long weary of meshing with each other, whined through gaps in the oil-stained floorboards. Raul fought his impatience as the familiar miles ground by in maddening slow motion. He couldn't help but contrast what he knew would be the speed of Bonafaccio's fury when he learned Raul had fled Kingston. Each minute for Raul would be seconds for Bonafaccio.
He sighed with relief as the hour-long ordeal from Little Havana wheezed to an end and he pulled into the marina parking lot. After locating a dolly outside the harbormaster's office, he loaded the bulky tarp onto it. Satisfied the load looked sufficiently nautical to appease any curious onlooker, he wheeled down the ramp to the slip and slowly pushed Paulo toward the
Don Salazario
.
The twenty-eight-foot fishing boat bobbed gently at its mooring as an early afternoon breeze rattled riggings and outriggers throughout the harbor. Raul unsnapped and stowed the blue canvas that sloped from the rear of the cabin. Then he stepped back onto the adjacent finger of dock and carefully slid the bundle from the dolly to the stern of the boat. After that, he entered the cabin.
Immediately, he knew that Paulo had succeeded. The sliding hasp to the compartment built under the bench seat was pointing down. It was a quirk of Raul's to turn it up when securing it.
Quickly, he unlatched the compartment. He lifted the seat, and his breath caught at the sight. There, nestled in the seat nook, were three richly decorated boxes of Don Salazarios—the cigars Cornelius Gesselman had traded for the gilded Sancho Panzas.
“Thank you, Paulo, thank you,” he whispered, thinking of those terrible last minutes when Paulo must have known he could have bought the sweet death of a bullet in exchange for the cigars.
There was no need to open the boxes. He knew his father's treasure was there. Besides, he had no intention of sacrificing any more of them to the frenzied discovery of the night before. Each one would be lovingly smoked for its prize.
Raul went astern and began to drag the cumbersome bundle into the cabin. After stowing Paulo's tent-shrouded body in the narrow passage, Raul took the cigars, locked the cabin door, and stepped onto the dock. He did not refasten the canvas cover. He raised his hand in salute toward the cabin.
“When I return,” he said, “to send you to your final rest, my friend, I will be in a hurry. Until then, adios.”
Raul looked around and confirmed that he had not been observed. Carrying the three boxes back to the pickup, he steeled himself for the return drive to Miami. This time he would not be in such a hurry. And he had yet another stop to make.
BOOK: Where There's Smoke
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