Voodoo Eyes (44 page)

He was cuffed and chained by the right wrist to a square cast-iron table, and again by the left ankle to a ring in the floor. The chair was cast iron too. He could hardly move without the cuffs pinching and cutting his skin, edging for the bone. They’d taken his shoes and socks. His feet stank, but what the fuck? It smelled bad enough in here already. It was windowless and the walls were thick. The air was rancid with old blood, piss and sweat, and it was so hot he could almost smell his flesh baking a little. His mouth felt dry, his bladder was bursting and sweat was slithering from the top of his head all the way down his back. He wriggled at the sensation.

He was being watched by a young guard sat in the corner by the solid metal door. Thick hairy arms folded across his chest, legs wide apart, chewing, dark half-moons spreading out from his armpits. Whenever Max looked his way, he’d be staring at him, detached and one-dimensional. All Max could hear were the inner rumblings of the man’s stomach, his shallow breathing, the scraping of his shoes on the floor, his gun clanking against the chair frame as he took a deeper breath.

Max wondered how Benny was doing.

While Rosa Cruz was cuffing Max, Benny tried to run, but he was so weak, he fell flat on his face and couldn’t get up. Cruz grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to her car, pushing Max forward with her gun. She’d been parked right across the road, waiting for them to come back. How had she tied them to the Firedome? He hadn’t asked. She put both of them in the back, a wire grille separating them from her.

She’d called it in on the radio and driven off at speed. The city centre flashed by. Then they were in the crumbling, flat suburbs and pulling up to a row of anonymous concrete office blocks. No signs anywhere, just metal numbers power-drilled to the walls and immaculate squares of grass in front of every building.

People were exiting the block as they marched in. Men in shirtsleeves and side holsters. They stopped and stared at her and her haul, especially Benny, who stumbled the whole way, tripping over his feet.

In an air-conditioned office, with desks and plants and men and women at computers and on phones, every one of them wearing a gun, Cruz talked to a man, then a woman.

Then they went down five flights of stairs, the temperature going up as they descended. Their destination was a corridor with cells to one side, interrogation rooms to the other. She pushed them past the cells, alternating male and female cages crammed with miserable, half-naked, grimy bodies, their terrified eyes staring out of the gloom, everyone absolutely quiet, almost all bruised and bloodied; communal buckets for toilets, no light, no beds.

She’d shoved Benny into one room, Max in the next.

His door stayed open while she cuffed Benny to the metal furniture. Outside, he saw a man clinging to the bars of a cage, looking at him. A guard came by and smashed the man’s fingers away with a nightstick. The man screamed. The guard flashed a ratchet. Sadistic fucker.

It was the same guard who was watching him now.

Rosa Cruz came in.

She held the door open and nodded to the guard, who got up and left. She sat down and opened the US military map on the table.

She looked different in the light: severe, no nonsense, all business, practically forbidding. She was wearing a plain dark-blue blouse, slacks and a gun on her hip. No jewellery. No make-up.

Her forearms were roped with large, prominent veins. He guessed she worked out daily. It told in the tautness of her skin and the glow of her face, with its delicate balance of African and European features – dark-brown skin and deep-brown eyes with clear bright whites, a small nose and wide, full mouth. Like a lot of black women who kept themselves in shape and possibly dyed their hair, it was impossible to tell how old she was, but she’d definitely left her twenties behind and didn’t seem the sort who’d miss them. Her face showed every indication of baggage carried up a hard road.

‘Have you found Vanetta Brown?’ she asked.

‘I need a piss,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t mind some water.’

‘Have you found Vanetta Brown?’ she repeated, staring at him, expressionless, tone level and slow, reminding Max of a language tape for beginners.

‘Not yet. Guess I never will now.’

She tapped at the map. ‘What’s this?’

‘What it looks like. A standard-issue US military map of your fair country, showing places that even you might not know about: little towns with no name, an offshore island or three – also with no name – and those funny roads that start in the middle of nowhere, keep on going awhile and stop right where they started – nowhere. You can’t miss them. They’re all marked in red.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘From someone on that
camino muerto
Castro sold to the US army.’

‘Leased,
not sold.’

‘Like Guantánamo?’

‘Exactly. Only the terms are fairer. We can kick them out whenever we want and the rent is inflation-indexed.’

Max laughed. ‘I thought you people were commies.’

‘Socialists. There is a difference. The Americans call that road “Freedom Row”. We call it “La
Alcantarilla”
– “The Sewer”.’

‘For once I agree with your side.’

‘You’ve gone a little native.’

‘That would be pushing it,’ he said.

‘Cuba leaves its fingerprints on all who pass through.’

‘I really need that piss.’

She tutted under her breath, stood and went outside, returning a few moments later with the guard. He was carrying a black plastic bucket and a bottle of water. He handed the water to Cruz and pushed the bucket under the table with a foot.

‘Aren’t you going to uncuff my hand?’ Max asked her.

‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

Max unzipped himself with his free hand and pissed into the bucket as Cruz and the guard watched.

After the guard took away the bucket, she sat back down, uncapped the water and handed it to him. It was cold. Max glugged the bottle half empty.

‘Tell me about Señora Brown,’ she said.

‘She doesn’t have long to live. She has terminal cancer. But I guess you know that already.’

‘No, I did not.’

‘The Dascal family didn’t tell you?’

‘They’re senior government people, friends of our leaders. I don’t have the authority to interview them.’

‘Didn’t your superiors talk to them?’

She didn’t answer.

‘I thought the Cuban secret police was supposed to be state of the art? I mean, how many times did the CIA try to kill Castro? About a million, right? They failed every time,’ he said. ‘And now you’re telling me a member of Castro’s
inner circle
– someone he knew
before
he came to power, someone he’s looked after and protected all this time – goes missing and you people don’t even think to question their family? Because that’s what the Dascals are to Vanetta Brown – family.’

‘The situation is more complicated than you realise.’

‘Care to tell me how and why?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘When did her cancer come back?’

‘That you should know.’

‘Why?’

‘Remember the night we “met”?’ he said. ‘You found the stuff I took from her apartment – a compliment slip, a photograph of Vanetta and my friend Joe, taken here, in this city, and an empty bottle of Zofran: medicine commonly prescribed to treat the side-effects of chemotherapy.’

She frowned, her brow forming a swirl of tight creases. ‘I thought you only stole the compliment slip. The medicine and the photograph were yours.’

‘I found them in the apartment,’ he said.

‘Impossible. After she disappeared, we went through her apartment inch by inch, item by item. We catalogued each object. We’re experts in this kind of procedure. Even the dust gets put back the way it was. That medicine bottle and the photograph were not there. I guarantee you. Where did you find them?’

‘The pill bottle in a bedside cabinet drawer. The photograph, on the floor, behind the desk in her study.’

‘Obvious places we’d look, don’t you think?’

‘Sure. So either your people got sloppy, or—’

‘We do
not
get sloppy.’

They could have missed the pills and photograph – if they were first-timers,
and
dumb. Which they weren’t. So the objects may have been planted after the search. If that was the case, then who by and why?

Cruz cleared her throat. ‘I’m guessing the reason you obtained this map is because you’ve found out that Vanetta Brown is presently in another secret location – the old Russian hospital. It specialises in cancer treatment. And it’s very discreet.’

‘If it’s good enough for Fidel …’

She ignored him.

‘Where is the hospital?’

‘You know about it, but you don’t know where it is?’ he said.

‘Everyone knows about it.’

‘But you don’t have the
authority
to know where it is, right?’

She scowled at him, saying nothing.

‘What kind of investigation are you
running?’
Max snapped.

‘The exact location of that hospital is more than just a state secret,’ she said calmly. ‘Only Fidel, Raoul and their very closest associates know where it is. My boss doesn’t. And her boss doesn’t either. But
you
do. So tell me.’

Max had a little leverage, a bargaining chip. His only one.

‘I’ve been doing all the talking,’ he said. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

She gave him a quizzical look.

‘What’s going to happen to me?’

‘Depends on what you tell me,’ she said. ‘You don’t have any choice here, and you know it.’

‘I guess innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply?’

‘No one who’s sitting where you are is innocent.’

‘Thought as much.’

He was fucked either way. Might as well give her what she wanted. What the hell, it was over.

He pointed to the spot in the Windward Passage.

She stared at it, then scrutinised the map.

‘How were you going to get there?’ she asked.

‘Isn’t that hypothetical now? By the by? Fantasy? A waste of breath?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I really don’t know,’ he said. ‘Hadn’t thought that far ahead. I like to improvise. Play a situation like jazz. You like jazz?’

She answered with a stony stare. He guessed she didn’t.

‘Your only chance of getting on that island from here is to swim,’ she said. ‘You won’t find anyone stupid or desperate enough to take you there by boat. No matter what you offer them – a million pesos or a bullet in the head. They’d take the bullet sooner than help you. The waters are heavily patrolled.’

‘Oh well …’ He shrugged. ‘You know the island’s privately owned, right?’

‘Everyone knows that.’

‘Who owns it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He bailed out Vanetta Brown’s centres. Kept them going for ten years.’

‘I don’t know who he is.’

‘Vanetta’s deputy – Elias Grimaud – knows him. You know

Elias?’

‘No.’

‘You never met him?’

‘No.’

‘What about a guy with a hare lip? Possibly called Osso?’

She shook her head.

‘He killed Joe Liston and Eldon Burns in Miami. And I think he’s on that island too.’

‘So you’re saying Señora Brown was behind the murders?’

‘The pieces fit,’ he said. ‘On forensic evidence alone, it’s a lock. Her prints were on the casings. As far as Eldon Burns’s murder goes, she had a strong motive. She also had connections with the two people I suspect carried out the hit – Osso and Elias. They were Caille Jacobinne alumni.’

He told her about the CDs, and what he’d found out.

‘You’re right,’ she said, when he’d finished. ‘The pieces do fit. Except for Joe Liston.’

‘I agree. That doesn’t make any sense. Never has. Which is where my other theory kicks in,’ he said. ‘Vanetta was set up. Maybe someone wanted Eldon and Joe dead for unrelated reasons. Or maybe they wanted one of them dead and killed the other as a diversion to throw the investigation off course. I don’t know. Either way, they put Vanetta’s prints on the casings to create a smokescreen. But it has nothing to do with Vanetta and never did. That’s my gut talking.’

‘Do you always trust your gut?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But I don’t always listen to it.’

‘Why do you think your friends were killed?’

‘Take Vanetta out of the equation and I have absolutely no idea. Could be a million reasons. But one thing’s for sure. The answer’s on that island.’

She brushed a lock of stray curls away and inspected the map again. Max drank the rest of the water.

‘You ever kill anyone?’ he asked her.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He knew anyway. How many times had she even drawn her gun with the intention of using it?

‘This guy with the harelip – he’s
very
dangerous,’ said Max. ‘I saw him put a bullet through Joe’s eye with an automatic. An old school Colt forty-five. Never known for their accuracy. Now, I used to be a pretty good shot back in my day. I won a couple of pistol championships, but even then I couldn’t have done that with a revolver, let alone an auto.’

‘I’ll be armed.’

‘Take my advice. You see Mr Harelip first, shoot him on the spot. Doesn’t matter if he’s sleeping under a tree or stark naked in the shower. Kill him where you find him.’

She nodded, but a filament of fear lit up behind her eyes. He knew she didn’t have it in her. Despite the circumstances, he felt sympathy for her.

But it wasn’t his problem any more. Her welfare was none of his business. There were other things to talk about, like just how fucked he was right now.

‘Those four people shot on the road between Camagüey and Las Tunas? Two of the men, the ones in the white shirts—’

She interrupted him. ‘Which four people are you talking about?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You said
four
people were killed?’

Max was confused. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know about
that
either?’

‘I don’t.’

Yeah,
right,
he thought. She was going to get him to incriminate himself, talk and talk and talk his way into an ever-deepening hole.