The Hour of the Cat (19 page)

“Do you know anything about Cuba?” she said.

“Rum, cigars, best nightclubs in the world.” He drove across the 225th Street Bridge into the Bronx, turned right onto Kingsbridge Road, and went up Marble Hill.

“Have you ever heard of Machado?”

“A brand of cigars?”

“Oh God, you're such a typical
yanqui!
Machado was the president of Cuba. He turned himself into a dictator and ruled with the support of the army and the rich. Wilfredo helped lead the movement to reform the university and open its doors to the children of the poor. Before long, Wilfredo sought to consolidate an even wider coalition to seek real democracy and true independence.”

Dunne braked at the light where Kingsbridge Road passed beneath the Jerome Avenue El, in a patch of track-striped Bronx sunshine. “Would you light me another cigarette, please?” she asked. He lit two simultaneously and handed her one.

She took a quick, deep drag. “You Americans are so ignorant of what goes on in Cuba, or what your government supports,” she said. “For you Cuba is a playground. ‘Cigars and nightclubs' as you put it, along with casinos and brothels. You behave there the way you can't here. For us, it's a struggle for self-rule and democracy. It's impossible to understand who Wilfredo is, how incapable he is of the crime he's been convicted of, without knowing the role he played in our homeland.”

Dunne blew a trio of smoke rings out the window toward the looming bulk of the Kingsbridge Armory. A nice notion: hometown hero can't turn out to be a criminal. The history of crime said otherwise. So did the jury that condemned Wilfredo. He kept the thought to himself and drove straight ahead when the light changed.

She reached in the glove compartment and took out a photograph. At the next light she handed it to him. “This was taken of Wilfredo in Havana, when he was a professor. No matter the changes, this is how I'll always picture him.”

A tall, thin gentleman in an elegant white suit posed on a battlement beside a cannon. The sea was behind him. He had his hat in one hand and leaned on a cane in a lighthearted way that made clear it was there for fashion, not support. A broad smile pushed his mustache out toward his ears. It was a handsome, enthusiastic face, devoid of the resignation that had stared across the table at Dunne in Sing Sing. He had the same wide, intelligent eyes as his little sister, and in Wilfredo's youthful face, the resemblance between the two was particularly striking.

The car behind honked. The light had changed. Dunne saw in the rearview that the impatient horn belonged to a patrol car. He handed the photo back to Elba and drove at what he hoped was an unsuspicious speed, not too fast, not too slow.

“This was taken in the last of the happy times,” Elba said. “Soon after, President Machado canceled the election, closed the opposition's newspapers, arrested the union leaders and shut the university. Wilfredo was among those who organized a protest. The authorities broke it up. There was violence and shooting. Wilfredo was indicted for treason and went into hiding. They searched our house, smashed the furniture, ripped apart books and bedding. My aunt was so frightened her heart gave out and she had to be taken to the hospital. Our whole world was collapsing.”

The thin whine of a siren rose into a wail. The traffic on Fordham Road made it impossible to think about escape. He slowed down. The patrol car swerved past and zoomed left on to Third Avenue, the siren trailing away in the distance.

“I thought for a moment they were after us,” Elba said. “But we've done nothing wrong, have we?”

“Not today.”

She propped the photo of Wilfredo on the dashboard. “And he's done nothing wrong either. It's important to remember that.”

Dunne threaded his way through the congestion. Wilfredo's photo sat on the dashboard like one of those holy cards people kept to ward off accidents and flats. Dunne couldn't remember the photo the newspapers used of Walter Grillo when he was arrested, but it was a safe bet it didn't bear any resemblance to a holy card. More likely it wasn't any different from the unholy pose beloved of Brannigan and company, handcuffed defendant, head bowed, cop on either side, each holding an arm, the accused convincingly transformed into guilty-as-sin perpetrator. Pop goes the flashbulb:
Hey, Grillo, say cheese, say whiskey, say guilty until proven innocent.

“At the trial,” Elba said, “there was barely a mention of his stature in Cuba.”

“I know. I read the transcript.”

“Roberta Dee convinced me not to attend. She said the press would hound me and that would only make things worse for Wilfredo.”

“She was right.”

“Still, I felt guilty that I wasn't there.”

“You do whatever Roberta Dee tells you?”

“She's been very kind to me.”

“How'd you meet?”

“She came into my shop soon after it opened.”

“Out of the blue?”

“She was in the neighborhood, shopping. She's a very stylish woman. She became a steady customer. Now she's a good friend.”

“How's she support herself?”

“She's a widow. Her husband was in the garment business. He left her comfortably provided for.”

“She tell you that?”

“Yes, she told me.” The tone of annoyed frustration Elba had used in their first meeting, at Dunne's office, returned. “Why must you always sound so doubtful, Mr. Dunne? I'm trying to save my brother's life. Why would I lie?”

“It's my job to be skeptical. Don't take it personally. And by the way, there's no need for ‘Mr. Dunne.' Fin, that's what everybody calls me.” He'd wanted to tell her that since he got in the car.

“All right then, ‘Fin' it is.” She smiled.

Wide and green, Pelham Parkway had far less traffic than Fordham Road. He stepped on the gas. The picture of Grillo fell from the dashboard and fluttered to the floor. She picked it up. “This photograph was the only reminder I had of Wilfredo when he left Cuba. He escaped on a cruise ship to New York. He wrote us and promised that as soon as Machado was overthrown, he'd return. But when Machado was kicked out, it was by Fulgencio Batista and his army buddies who, with the blessing of the American government, installed a puppet of their own. One gang of thugs replaced another. Wilfredo stayed where he was.”

“And you came here to be with him?”

“I stayed in Cuba another year, then my aunt died and I had no one. Wilfredo was afraid for me. He wired the money for me to come to New York. I was shocked when I saw him. His face was puffy and sickly. He was drinking heavily. He'd cut himself off from the other Cuban exiles in New York. He was bitter and alone. He was also afraid, I think, that Batista might use his friends in the Mafia to eliminate him.”

“You lived with him?” Dunne couldn't picture Elba in the dungeon that Henry Draub now occupied. An orchid in a coal bin.

“Wilfredo was deeply embarrassed by where he lived and his job as a janitor. He'd arranged for me to reside as a student at Mount Saint Vincent College. I don't know where he found the money, but he did. The nuns were strict. I hardly left the campus. When summer came, I got a job in a dress shop in Manhattan and shared an apartment with two other girls from the college. In the autumn, I refused to go back. Wilfredo was very angry, but we have the same blood in our veins, and I can be as stubborn as he. I stayed at the dress shop. The owner made me assistant manager. I had a flair for the business. I began to save for the day I'd own my own shop. It was my dream, and I shared it with Wilfredo. One day he met me after work and handed me a check. He'd received a settlement of my aunt's estate in Cuba and he wanted me to have it all, his share as well as mine, so that I could open my shop. ‘If your dream comes true,' he said, ‘mine does too.' That's the kind of brother Wilfredo is.”

Crossing the City Island causeway, Dunne shifted into second and slowed the car. The salty tang of low tide tainted the air. Using a handkerchief from her pocketbook, Elba wiped her eyes and softly blew her nose. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But each time I think of what has happened to him, the wound becomes fresh.”

In the distance, the towers of the Whitestone Bridge, bright and new as the chrome on Elba's car, poked above the foliage of Throg's Neck. “Where are we?” she asked.

“City Island.”

“It's so quiet, so quaint. We could be in New England.”

“Don't worry. You're safe. We're still in the Bronx.” He drove slowly down the leafy, uncrowded street. A few women were out shopping. Workmen from the nearby shipyards lolled outside a tavern. She put away the handkerchief.

He'd seen her kind of wound before: beneath the outward sophistication, woman's shape, makeup so expertly applied, a young girl's hurt at discovering the world's indifference to her hopes and dreams. Sooner or later, to one degree or another, everybody got taught that lesson and was disabused of their belief in the inevitable triumph of the good and the true. Roberta Dee thought she could preserve Elba's innocence. But she couldn't. Nobody could.

They parked at the very end of the street, in front of a cinder-block snack bar with a veranda facing Eastchester Bay. At a white enameled table, beneath a frayed, sun-bleached umbrella, Dunne ordered a bucket of boiled shrimp and a pitcher of beer. Elba nibbled at a few shrimp and took a single sip of beer. She talked more about her girlhood in Cuba, itemizing her memories, the way people recalling an especially happy (or unhappy) time will do: doors and windows that open on the blue-white expanse of the Caribbean sky, sun-drenched balcony, wooden jalousies rattled rhythmically by a gentle, constant, flower-scented breeze.

“Oh, Fin, you can't imagine how beautiful Cuba is.”

They walked past a row of sail shops and clam chowder joints. She went into a second-hand clothing store, and he followed. She wandered the aisles, fingering pea jackets and yellow rain gear. “With the right design,” she said, “this could be an attractive line of women's wear.” After the store, they proceeded slowly down the leafy street. He sensed her reluctance to return immediately to the city. He shared it. It was early evening by the time they were finally ready to leave. She asked him to drive again.

“Where to?” he said.

“I'm not ready to go home, not yet.”

“Me neither.” He took the first right over the causeway, pulled into a large, mostly vacant parking lot and stopped in front of a row of skinny saplings.

“Where are we now?”

“Orchard Beach. Come on, let's walk.”

Ahead was the curved façade of a large bathing pavilion, a structure whose size and sweep belied its simple function as a place to change or go to the bathroom. They emerged through a tunnel that ran beneath the pavilion onto a crescent-shaped beach. A scattering of people sat on towels or stood at the water's edge. Elba put her hand on his shoulder, steadying herself as she unstrapped and removed her shoes. Dunne took off his suit jacket and laid it down. They sat on it, facing the water.

The early-evening sky was filtered at its edges with a pinkish blue light, land and water aglow in the sunset, nothing yet lost to the night. They sat and smoked. Elba let a handful of sand run through her fingers. “This is as white as the sand in Cuba, and as fine as the sand in an hourglass.”

“Or in an ash tray.” He buried his cigarette butt in the sand. “The WPA hauled it here from Long Island when they built the place.”

“It seems like it's been here forever.”

“Nothing in the Bronx has been here forever. Except maybe the rocks. The rest of it, sand, people, and the animals in the zoo, all arrived from somewhere else.”

“Are you from the Bronx?”

“Spent time here.”

“Your childhood?”

“Mine ended before I got here.” Dunne stood and brushed off his trousers. “Let's go. Be dark in a minute.”