Where There's Smoke (17 page)

Authors: Mel McKinney

BOOK: Where There's Smoke

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IT HAD BEEN hard finding a
Washington Post
on the Cape. Finally, Hiram Thorpe had subscribed, sure that the item he had been waiting for would appear there. He was right.

“Peter Swindt.”

“Oh, Mr. Swindt. You're still there, are you? Good. Thought you'd be working late tonight. We need to talk.”

Hiram Thorpe tilted back in his chair, the creaking mechanism defying several laws of physics as it balanced his girth at a delirious angle.

“Who is this?” Swindt asked curtly.

“This is Hiram Thorpe.
Constable
Hiram Thorpe, up here in Cape Cod. Barnstable County. Remember me now?”

A sigh. Then, “Yes, Constable. I'm, uh, rather busy right now. What's up?”

Hiram let out a long blow of smoke as he took the Swisher Sweet from his mouth and laid it on the ashtray in front of him. He tilted forward.

“Yep, I'll bet you're busy all right. Clearin' out, correct? The New Broom and all that. Been doin' some of that myself.” Hiram looked proudly at Pedro's desk, now cleared of Luther's airplane magazines and model parts. “Took awhile, though. Damned Civil Service, know what I mean?”

“Look, Sheriff â¦”

“Constable,” Hiram corrected.

“
Constable â¦
”

Hiram warmed, enjoying his success.

“ â¦ whatever it is you want to say, get on with it. I have to catch a plane to New York.”

“No kidding. Just like that, huh? Fly from D.C. to New York. Can't be more than a couple hours' drive, is it? How long's it take to fly?”

“I really do
not
have time for this. Now tell me what you want, or I'm hanging up.”

Hiram figured he'd stretched the string taut enough. Time to wrap the package.

“Well, remember those cigars that were never stolen during that break-in that never happened? Thought you'd like to know I'm lookin' at all forty boxes of 'em, not ten feet from me. Just wondered what you wanted me to do with âem, you bein' the family's official spokesman and all.”

Another sigh. “Is that all? I thought I made myself very clear about that. As far as I and the family are concerned, any cigars you have, you can burn. Got that?
Burn
them. Get rid of them. End of chapter. End of conversation. Good-bye.”

The outer door burst open and Dep. Pedro Vasquez entered, brushing fresh snow from his shiny deputy's
jacket and stamping slush from his new fur-topped boots.

“Pedro! Just in time! We got us an official duty to perform. Have to destroy some confiscated contraband.”

Hiram stood and walked over to the stacked boxes. His forefinger danced down the columns of bright labels. Stopping at a box of Ramon Allones Coronas, he removed it, slit the seal with a letter opener, and pried it open.

“Might as well start here,” he said. “Probably only take us ten years or so.”

At first, shards of the erupted boat drifted apart, still obeying cosmic laws of explosion. Then, as maxims of the sea prevailed, they congregated in a loose village of fragments, borne by currents, and drifted as a mass in compliance with the ocean's will.

Foodstuffs, buoyed by their packaging, floated on the surface. Scavengers from above and below gorged themselves on Raul's meals as sharks and emboldened bonita threaded through the flotsam. Gulls and terns marked the course of the wreckage from the air.

Abandoned by the Coast Guard and the police, its devastation having yielded all the clues they could gather, the orphaned remnants of the
Don Salazario
continued to drift, its master now the sea.

The first of the gaunt, browned men on makeshift rafts spotted the feeding birds from two miles away. The swells of southerly current lifted them toward the birds as it carried them from Cuba, to Florida and sanctuary in the United States.

“Amigos!” the leader shouted to his comrades. “Food!”

He leaned from the ragtag collection of oil drums and wooden crates that had been his home for eight days and in amazement, swept up an orange and a small box of cereal wrapped in cellophane. Then he spotted something else, bobbing just below the surface. His brown arm dipped into the water a second time, and he brought up a bundle of bills. He suppressed a second call to his companions.
They will each
, he thought,
in turn, encounter this strange welcome from their new homeland.

Eighty miles south of the
Don Salazario
's splintered remains, a new group of rafters awakened to the perils of their voyage. Eleven skinny young men, seasick and frightened, watched the great sharks cruise closer as a new storm formed in the northeast and began to bear down on them. Panicked, they struggled to cluster together, their sad eyes filled with parting for those who would not see the next sunrise.

The leader straightened, his attention drawn to a speck on the darkening horizon. It grew, its shape changing and eluding him as the distance closed. Then, as the shape danced across the whitecaps, he heard the bee's buzz of a small outboard motor. An inflatable boat! Coming straight toward them! Was it Castro's police?

“Amigos!” he called. “Over there!”

Eleven pairs of eyes now strained to make out the craft bearing down on them.

“It is too small to be the police!” called one of them. “There is only one man.”

Seizing respite from the dark seas rolling under them, the young voyagers stared toward the intruder. Then the leader started to laugh. “He is smoking a cigar! A very grand cigar!”

The rest joined in his laughter, their plight on the swelling ocean now minimized. This madman careening toward them in a rubber boat smoking a huge cigar had made the moment a circus.

“Amigos!” called Raul, slowing and maneuvering the inflatable dinghy through the sorry flotilla. “You must postpone your journey! There is a storm coming. You will only feed the sharks!”

“We cannot go back!” called the leader. “Castro freed us from jail to leave. We will rot in prison or be shot if we go back. Without jobs, we are garbage to him.”

Raul continued to circle among the tubes, his eyes scanning each occupant. Then he cut the motor to an idle.

“Here!” he shouted, passing a line over the side of the inflatable, as it trailed through the group.

“There are jobs for you at my new restaurant or at the clinic my Rosa will build. Castro and Cuba need us now more than ever. Those who wish to return, grab the rope and come with me.”

With each hand that grasped the line, Raul felt Rosa and Cuba reaching across the water, drawing him home. Finally, the added burden of his motley convey in tow, he twisted the outboard's throttle and slowly took up the slack. Unable to make his previous speed, he surveyed the approaching storm and gauged his now impeded progress.

Satisfied they would make landfall ahead of the
weather, Raul opened the waterproof container that filled the center of his craft. Resting on top of the bundles of bills was a large cedar box embossed with the name, EL ROSARIO-FABRICA DE TABACO. He lit a fresh Don Salazario and passed it to the leader.

“We will touch the beach well ahead of the storm!” he said, as the skinny, dark man accepted the great cigar. “Smoke this carefully and give me what you find inside. It will be your gift to Rosa and her children.” Laughing at the man's confusion, Raul patted his buttoned shirt pocket, cradling three diamonds already freed on his voyage south.

“El Balsero!” Raul shouted, suddenly inspired. A perfect name for his new restaurant.
But, who knows
, he thought,
maybe Castro will have something to say about that
. “La Rosa,” he said to himself, savoring the way her name slipped from his tongue. Now
there's
a name. He gave the squall to the north a last look and turned to face the land and the woman he loved.

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE. Copyright Â© 1999 by Mel McKinney. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

ISBN 0-312-20623-2

eISBN 9781429977814

First eBook Edition : June 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McKinney, Mel.

Where there's smoke / Mel McKinney.â1st ed.

p. cm

“Thomas Dunne books.”

1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald). 1917-1963âAssassination Fiction. 2.Cubaâhistoryâ1959-Fiction. 3.Cuban Americans

Fiction. I. Title.