The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (24 page)

Chapter 26

“C
an I tell you just how much I wanted a remote-controlled car like this one when I was kid?” Jorge said, running his hand slowly over the top of one of Henry's RCs, a dreamy look in his big brown eyes.

“No remote cars in Havana?”

“Woman, and here I thought you were Cuban! No, of course no remote-controlled toys in Havana, at least not for kids without family in exile with money to send one to them.”

“Okay, well, I promise to buy you one of those if you stand close to the door and be a good lookout like you promised.”

“I got you in, didn't I?”

“That you did, and I thank you because I really didn't want to take that key from Iris.”

We were inside Abril's apartment, and as Jorge dutifully stood beside the front door with Henry's car still in hand, I proceeded to look around for a diary, a letter, or a copy of any Gabriel García Márquez book with a sticker identifying it as having come from Del Tingo al Tango. I was also keeping an eye out for a belladonna plant or for leftover leaves, even though I knew Abril would never leave something with the ability to be even remotely dangerous lying around where Henry could find it.

I wanted to know if they'd been lovers. But more important, I felt, was finding proof of the depth of the relationship, if it existed. You see, if it had been a quick fling, then the only one with enough of a reason to kill him was Olivia. On the other hand, if the relationship had been long and intense, then maybe Abril had real motive. That said, I wondered exactly how intense a relationship can really be with a man who already has a wife he lives with and a mistress he sees regularly? And if it had been going on for a long time, how had I not known? Then again, maybe I hadn't noticed in exactly the same way Olivia had failed to catch on about Hector and me. Maybe he'd just been that good of a liar. Or maybe, and a lot more likely, we'd all been that good at not seeing.

I did a mental inventory of things in my apartment that would be symbols of my relationship with Hector to someone who'd known him and scanned the living room for possible matches: a forgotten linen scarf, a classic novel, a blues jazz fusion CD.

Nothing. At first glance, Abril's home was as unrevealing as Abril herself. The living room was sparsely decorated with a sofa, a couple of wooden rocking chairs that looked like inherited heirlooms belonging on a tropical balcony, a tube TV set, and three big plastic bins with Henry's toys carefully sorted: one for cars and robots, another for games and puzzles, and what I guessed was the “everything else” bin with coloring books, crayons, and some old plush Beanie Babies that had obviously been smothered, kissed, cried into, hysterically thrown during tantrums over the years, and then rescued just in time to be preserved like honored members of the family, reminders for his grown-up self of who he really was, as reflected in who he'd really been.

Between the living room and the kitchen was a very small dining room with a square-shaped Formica table, three chairs, and a filing cabinet. I pulled at its top drawer, but it was locked, so I picked it with the errant bobby pin that manages to always be left behind in my hair. The drawer contained a few manila envelopes and a small pinkish-peach Capezio ballet flats shoe box full of papers: plane tickets, hospital records, and a copy of Henry's birth certificate, as well as receipts for his baby formula, his clothes through the years, his orthopedic doctor bills, food, books, toys, glasses, immunizations, and a few school trip permission forms.

Among these, one receipt caught my attention. It was from a detective agency and identified the service rendered in a single word with capital letters: HENRY, as if he were a government agency and not a sweet boy with a smile so honest it could make you happy to be alive all by itself. Underneath his name, it read, C
ONTACT
I
NFO
R
ETRIEVAL.

I spread the contents of the box on the Formica tabletop and could almost see the invoices, corresponding receipts, and canceled checks drawing a southbound dotted line from New York City, where Henry was born, to his present life in Miami.

I opened one of the manila envelopes, and dozens of pictures of Henry fell out onto the table, almost covering the receipts. Together, pictures and receipts looked like the elements of a baby book someone had forgotten to make and made it clear to me that Abril had come back to Miami with the intention of bringing Henry's father to justice, or at least to court, and had slowly and painstakingly prepared for the task, documenting her child's life and the cost of the sacrifices she'd had to make along the way.

I wondered what Abril was really hoping to get from this man. Was it the child support owed her? Did she want a relationship with her son's father? Or was she just trying to force him to hold Henry in his arms, teach him to throw a baseball, and call him “son”?

I began to put everything back as carefully as I could.
How hard could it be to find a man?
I thought looking at it all. That's when it occurred to me that he was probably dead. It was the only way that all this paperwork wouldn't have already led Abril to Henry's father. Maybe he'd been rich and Abril was trying to build a posthumous case for Henry's rightful inheritance or suing his estate for child support, which would explain all the receipts. Or maybe he was dead, but she didn't know it yet. Maybe she'd have to wait until the next detective agency revealed it to her. The news would, of course, be delivered in the form of a receipt:
Subject of search no longer at last known address. New address beyond this detective's scope.

“You know, I think we should hurry,” said Jorge, opening the door a crack to peek out down the hall.

“I thought you said you saw her carrying a clothes hamper.”

“I did, but it was one hamper, not three. How long can it take to wash and dry one load?”

“I'm almost done,” I said now, heading down the short hallway in Abril's apartment, past a light blue bathroom, to the only bedroom, right above Iris's.

Abril and Henry's bedroom was in keeping with the rest of their home: sparse and neat, a light yellow chenille bedspread on the only bed in the house, queen-sized, providing the frill factor in the room.

I went straight to the single night table. There were just some barrettes, a tube of Neosporin, and a faxed confirmation of an order for a school dictionary. I closed the drawer and quickly opened the top two drawers of the white laminate bureau facing the bed. I felt along the underside of the mattress's edge, finding nothing.

I was giving the room one last glance to make sure everything was as I'd found it when it dawned on me. The force of the realization was so strong, it closed my eyes and almost made me sit on the bed, catching myself just before my butt disturbed the perfect alignment of the chenille popcorn detail on the bedspread.

I opened the drawer on the night table again and picked up the fax confirmation sheet knowing exactly what I was going to find, for why would Abril, who didn't even own a computer of her own, fax a confirmation to buy a dictionary for Henry or anyone else?

Sure enough, the fax confirmation had been sent to Del Tingo al Tango by a teacher for twenty copies of
El Pequeño Larousse Ilustrado 2010
(
The Little Larousse Illustrated 2010—Spanish Edition
). I turned it around and read the handwritten scribble: “Coffee Park 11 p.m., if okay with your boyfriend.”

I wasn't sure about the handwriting, but the sarcastic tone was unmistakably Hector's, the “your boyfriend” like an echo of his ghost's announcement of Jorge at my door less than an hour ago. And now the vision came again like a hammer on my head. There was Hector facing Abril, but the feeling was definitely tense, adversarial, and painful. What had I been thinking? This woman didn't care about affairs! This woman only cared about her son's father, about finding him and making him pay, or something.

I couldn't believe it.
How could I not have seen this?
I thought, walking back into the living room.

“Mariela, we should really get out of here,” said Jorge, eyes trained on the hallway through the narrow slit of the slightly open door.

Abril hadn't been trying to make Hector stand in for Henry's missing father. Hector
was
Henry's father.

“Are you okay, Mariela? What's wrong?” Jorge said, closing the door and coming toward me as if intending to carry me out of there by force if he had to.

But I ignored him, shocked out of my skull, all the events of the past year sprouting new meanings in my head, and went back to the file cabinet and to the detective's invoice I'd put back into the shoe box. The attached receipts were all from just before Abril moved into this apartment and corresponded to coffee shops and cafeterias that were next to, or right across from, Hector's bookstore. The man meeting her that morning had been a detective.

“Come on,
Tatica
. Let's go!” Jorge said, in his desperation, using his old nickname for me, which I'd always loosely translated as “my sweet girl,” but had any number of meanings along the same lines. “I don't want to have to leave this apartment by jumping off a ledge.”

“Jorge, I think I know,” I breathed.

“You know who killed him?” asked Jorge, eyes wide.

“No, but I know something just as important.”

And that's when we both heard it, coming from the street below and through the window: Henry's voice.

“How is it fair that it's always after? Why can't I have ice cream
while
I do my homework? It's still going into my stomach.”

“I don't want you to be distracted,” Abril was saying, her voice now directly underneath the window, meaning she and Henry were standing on the stoop, probably looking for her keys while balancing her folded clothes.

“Who gets distracted by ice cream? It's just ice cream!” whined Henry.

“Stop it, Henry. No ice cream until you're finished with all your homework. Now, come on, help me with the key,” said Abril, a minute before the entry door swooshed open, then closed with a clean click.

“Damn it, Mariela. We have to get out
now!
” whispered Jorge, putting his arm around my waist and basically towing me toward the door, the voice of the little boy I now knew was at the center of this entire mess still echoing in my head.

Chapter 27

I'
d been so scared when I realized Abril and Henry were back from the Laundromat that I'd allowed Jorge to carry me out before he locked the door to her apartment and took my hand to steady me.

“Relax,” he'd said, slowing me down to a stroll. “We're not going to make it. They're going to see us, so let's not look like someone who just broke into another someone's apartment.”

And then they were upon us.

“Mariela!” said Henry, grinning at me.

“Hi, Henry,” I said, touching his chin with the tips of my fingers. “I've missed you.”

“What are you doing up here?” asked Abril, pulling Henry back.

“I came to see if Mr.—” I gestured toward the door of the apartment facing hers.

“Mrs.”

“Right, if Mrs . . . the lady who lives there . . . was home.”

“That lady's crazy, right,
Mami?
” said Henry.

“Henry!” said Abril. “She's not crazy. She's sick.”

“Oh, well, maybe that's why she didn't hear me knocking, and by the way, this is Jorge. Jorge, Abril. Abril, Jorge.”

“We've met,” she said, giving us a wary look before turning to open her door without so much as a good night.

“Yes, of course. You're Gustavo's ex,” said Jorge.

“I'm Gustavo's friend,” she said with her back to us.

I couldn't help snorting at that.

“Okay, well, now that that's all cleared up, um, good night,” said Jorge.

“Good night!” said Henry. “Don't let the bedbugs bite.”

I smiled, looking into his beautiful, innocent dark eyes, searching for (and finding!) Hector in his face, before waving good-bye to him and following Jorge down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. I walked slowly, my hand still in his, my eyes shut tight with fear and dread of all that lay ahead. It was true: Abril and Hector. Maybe not now, but at some time.

When we got to my stoop, I turned to go up the stairs, while Jorge turned toward the sidewalk, pulling me.

“Where we going?” I asked, eyes wide open now.

“Across the street,” he said, gesturing toward the park.

“I can't.”

“Yes, you can. Now come on.”

“I can't, Jorge.”

“Would you rather go by yourself?”

“No.”

“Are you going to avoid the park you live across from forever?”

I couldn't do that either. The park, that apparently inconsequential square patch of green and brown, was the heart of Coffee Park, of this place that had sheltered me after every one of life's blows.

So I went.

As we neared the bench where Hector's body was found, my body began to quake. My knees, like poorly secured stilts under an old, creaky beach house, started to sway left, then right, until I had to sit down on the bench right across from it.

Coffee Park was silent, all shadows and rustling leaves.

“How do you feel?” Jorge asked.

“I don't know.”

“You were lovers,” he said.

“Yes,” I admitted this time.

“Okay. How do you feel?”

“Sad.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“I think I might have been. His smarts, his brain, how he made things interesting. I think I wanted to be the feminine version of him, and yet I didn't want to marry him, or even live with him. Does that make sense?”

“I'll make it make sense,” he said.

It was something he'd say to me when we were together, and back then it had been enough to make me feel safe when he was close.

I kissed him, and he kissed me back, his tongue tasting faintly of coffee and cinnamon.

“Okay. Not what I brought you here for,” he said after a few seconds, putting his hands on my arms and gently pushing me to rest my back on the bench.

“Well, this is no fun,” I joked.

“You're avoiding it.”

“Avoiding what?”

“Mariela, you just broke into a person's apartment to find out what happened to him. There are obviously things you need to deal with. Now we're here. Where he died. Talk about him, think about what happened, remember him, cry, whatever, but face it.”

When I didn't answer, he said, “Here, I'll help you. Tell me about him.”

“No.”

“Come on. Please.”

“Uhn-uhn,” I said.

“Talk to me, woman,” he said in mock exasperation.

“Since when are you such a grown-up?”

“Start talking.”

So I told him everything up to Hector's death. And then I cried, and he hugged me, and the hugs turned into kisses that felt good, but also good for me. And then
he
told me everything. About Yuleidys, and how mind-blowing it had been to realize he missed me while being with her. About how he'd kept on missing me, but hadn't known how to approach me or what to say. About the day that had turned him around: He'd gone to work high on pot and screamed at a customer who'd sent back his signature dish—baked white fish on a bed of mango, avocado, cucumber, and crabmeat. The customer's wife had looked at his enraged face and begun to cry.

“I will never forget her face. She was afraid of me! She thought I would hurt them. That's when I decided I needed to do something with my life. Get over Cuba already, carry it with me without letting it drag me down, and put down some roots here, you know? Get high on life, as they say.”

He told me how he'd thought of me as he worked on turning his house into a proper restaurant, fantasizing he'd invite me to his place, to see everything he'd done, and how he'd changed, and that I'd be proud of him.

I listened to him in that place that had recently witnessed death, but also, no doubt, life, and children's squeals, and the banter of friends. I wanted to tell him how much he was making me want to believe in the existence of happy possibilities. That sitting next to him, I could almost see myself having a good life, a loving life free from fear of my own sight, strong enough to see what I was meant to see, and wise enough to use what I saw to help myself and others.

“I'm afraid,” I said instead.

He let out a huge laugh and put one hand on each of my cheeks as if he couldn't believe the clock had somehow turned itself back to this place, the “place” where time and space and circumstance had intersected to let us meet again.

“Mariela, I get it. You're working through some stuff now, and I don't want to rush anything, but—”

“Jorge, I don't even know what will happen or what I'm feeling. A part of me is still grieving for something without knowing exactly what that something is, and there's all this unfinished business surrounding Hector's death.”

Not the least of which was his ghost, living in my house.

“I know. I know. When you're ready. And if it's a no-go, fine. I think I've proven to you I can take a hint. But. If it's even close to being a maybe. Then we'll figure out how to take it one day at a time. How's that? Deal?”

“Deal,” I said, happy to be offered a short-term layaway while I mourned Hector and thought about the little boy to whom he'd never teach the joys of a good book.