White Shadow (7 page)

THE BOSTON BAR stood at the corner at Twenty-second and Columbus, a pie wedge of ramshackle building that catered to hard-bent working-class men and tired women who wanted to make a fast buck. Rivera walked into the cool, dark bar through the back entrance and unlocked the liquor storage room, counting through the cases and making sure the bar was stocked for the night. He’d cut up limes and lemons and dish out the cherries into a little bowl. He’d plug in the jukebox and load it with some dimes and play some of that country music he liked so much.

But first he went to his office, pulled the cord on the light, and closed the door behind him. Pretty soon, some of the barmaids would start showing up, and that man who cleaned the toilets.

He wanted to be alone.

Johnny pulled back a file cabinet from the wall and reached into his pocket for a folding knife. On his hands and knees, he wedged the knife under a floorboard slat and pulled away the wood. He reached into the hole and felt around in the space.

Nothing.

He dipped his head close to the floor and looked inside.

He used his pocket lighter to illuminate the space.

But it was gone.

He thought maybe the cops had already been there and found it, and in that case he was double-fucked. But then he remembered the other night, the girl, that Cuban waitress who he’d hired sometime back, who he’d caught watching him when she should have been cleaning the piss splatters in the bathroom.

He always thought she was mental or something. The way she couldn’t talk. He thought she hadn’t seen a thing and that he was just jumpy after seeing the Old Man and all.

On his butt, Johnny Rivera leaned against the wall in his office and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt. He ran his hands through his greasy hair and lit the cigarette and smoked and thought. He laughed at himself for being so goddamned stupid in his own bar and being taken by a little twat.

He got to his feet, shaking his head, and reached into his desk drawer for the .45 he’d taken off that army boy.

He checked to make sure it was loaded and then tucked it into the waistband of his pants, pulling his silk shirt over the handle.

On the way out of the bar, he saw the old woman who’d worked for him for years and he tossed her the keys to the register.

“Hey,” she said as he glided past. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I got some business,” Rivera said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

LUCREZIA TUCKED everything she owned into her tattered bag (two ragged dresses, a pair of socks, two sets of underwear, a toothbrush and powder, and the pistol she’d taken from the men at Nuñez Y Oliva), occasionally catching her dirty face in the bureau’s mirror and looking away. She’d stolen a can of black beans from the woman who’d rented her the room, and a dollar in coins from an ashtray. She knew she shouldn’t have come back, but there were papers from her father and pictures of her family and contacts she needed for the 26th of July movement.

Her father had been one of the men who’d tried to take the Moncada Barracks in July two years ago. They had stolen army uniforms, and carried .22s and hunting shotguns, but the planning had been poor, and the truck carrying heavy guns had become lost, one had had a flat tire, and some men fighting their way to the ammunition storage had found the barbershop instead. They’d wanted to take over the radio and broadcast their revolutionary message against Batista throughout Cuba.

They were slaughtered.

Sixty-one died.

Most of the survivors were tortured to death or executed. Men had their skulls bashed in, eyes gouged from their heads, and some were castrated. That’s how she came to be a Moncadanista and how she left Cuba. Two years ago, she had been but a child. A stupid child with stupid passions and ideas and nothing on her mind but her own empty plans.

“He’s dead,” she said, unaware of those around and walking ahead of her in a dry
clump-clump-clump
of her man’s work shoes, which were unlaced and broken.

Lucrezia sat on the bed, her feet dangling in the old army boots, and thumbed through Johnny Rivera’s ledger. So many numbers and names of banks in Habana.

She tucked the ledger in her bag. She wasn’t sure what she had, but she knew it was important.

FADED COLORFUL CASITAS lined the brick streets of Fifth Avenue, two blocks south of Broadway. It was five o’clock when Johnny Rivera pulled his baby-blue Super 88 Olds into a vacant lot and shut off the engine. The engine burned and ticked from driving all over Ybor City looking for the girl. But he had it pretty good that this was the place, a seafoam green casita with a small porch and tin roof. A single door in front, and one in back by the kitchen.

He followed the sidewalk and passed some kids playing marbles. One of the boys was watching his kid brother or something and the little baby sat in a pair of droopy diapers munching on a soggy cracker.

Johnny paid them no mind as he looked back and forth down the street and circled the casita. Trash covered the dusty path and he kicked it out of the way.

Toward the back, he stared into a leaded-glass window. There, he saw the warped shape of a girl.

She was packing a bag.

He moved around back and found a screen door to the kitchen. Johnny took his pocketknife and lifted up the latch and crept into the small room. Dirty dishes sat in the sink and flies buzzed around the dried food on the plates. There was a small dinette set and a framed picture of the Virgin. The room smelled of olive oil and fried meat, and he could hear steps through the shotgun hallway.

He crept through the house. He could hear the children playing outside. The wooden floors bent and creaked under him.

Johnny pulled the .45 from his waistband and walked to the door, placed his hand on the doorknob, and turned.

It was locked.

He kicked in the door.

The room was empty.

The window was wide-open, and the curtain popped in the wind.

SHE CRAWLED slowly over the stones and dirt under the house and waited for him to leave. She pushed along her back, knowing that if she made a run to the street he’d see her. She waited, and slowly inched forward just beneath the room where she slept. Lucrezia heard footsteps on the uneven wooden slats as light broke across her face and hands and onto the dirt. Under the house, there was garbage and rusted toys and stray chickens that nested in the crossbeams.

She could not breathe. She inched along.

Johnny Rivera’s shoes ambled over the wood, back and forth, pacing. She heard cabinet and dresser drawers opening and slamming. She heard him cursing and tossing the metal bed onto its side.

Lucrezia bit her lip and covered her ears. She was afraid to breathe.

The pacing stopped.

He was right above her.

She looked up.

A chicken began to cluck nervously in the rafters.

Rivera shifted his weight.

The chicken kept clucking and flapped its wings. Feathers scattered in the light.

Lucrezia lay on her back looking up at the old wooden floors, a mirror image of Johnny Rivera.

There was more slamming and cursing until she finally heard the
thwap
of the back screen door, and then she saw him walking around the casita and over Fifth Avenue, where he disappeared.

She heard the sound of a car’s ignition.

It was only then that she took a breath, pulled her duffel bag close to her, and made her way from under the house.

It was late in Ybor City and the light had turned golden on the brick streets. She walked along the backs of casitas and restaurants and fishmongers and tobacco warehouses. The tugs sounded in the port and she heard the gulls eating out of trash cans.

She needed to find a phone.

AFTER MAKING all the calls and putting out both editions, a few of us retired over to the bottom of the Thomas Jefferson Hotel, across the street from the
Times,
and the Stable Room bar. The Stable Room kept its front door open on cool nights, and the inside was softly lit from candles in red glass. There was wicker furniture and a long wooden bar, and a piano man who always started up about quitting time in downtown Tampa and sometimes played until the last drunk stumbled home. I knew him by name because in ’55, people in the newsroom and in the bars were my only friends and a bartender or a piano man could be a hell of a source. Or at least I told myself that while I hit whiskey sours or cold Miller beer and smoked on a few cigarettes, trying to work it all out.