DAWN PENETRATED THE storm-troubled sky, bestowing a rose-and-crimson blush. As Raul drove from the darkened hacienda, he wondered if Rosa was watching the same spectacle. He savored the day's beginning, knowing it might well be his last.
Many times during the long night the old man had faltered and nodded in exhaustion. Maria had seen him throughâalways at his side, her voice prodding in quiet encouragement. Raul hoped he was now getting the rest he had so richly earned. As for Raul, sleep would have to wait. There was still much to do.
At 4:30 A.M. there was no traffic, and the drive south rimming three counties passed quickly, even in Paulo's truck. Raul made the Miami city limits at 5:45 and drove directly to Little Havana, staying on back streets and away from the neighborhood of Noches Cubanas. He was not yet ready to confront Joseph Bonafaccio. That would
come soon enough. When they met, it would not be in the early dawn at an empty restaurant.
El Rosario was just awakening, the
tabaqueros
drifting in by twos and threes, plumed curls from the day's first smoke drifting behind them.
Here, nothing has changed
, thought Raul, remembering his grandfather's workers and their unlimited access to the finest product of their labors.
Ernesto Torres was at one of the work stations, his back erect in the forced posture of one who has spent many hours seated. The sleeves of his fine shirt were rolled above his elbows, and a gray stubble spoke of his night-long toil. He looked up as Raul approached the bench.
“So, were you successful?” Ernesto's voice was a whisper against the salutations of the
tabaqueros
filing into the long room, tarrying before beginning their work.
“Yes,” said Raul, setting before the old cigar maker the three boxes of Don Salazarios recently retrieved from the boat.
“You can see that one box has been opened and four cigars are missing. Everything else is intact, just as my grandfather made them.”
“Good,” said Ernesto. “And the rest?”
Raul drew a cloth bag from his pocket and set it on top of one of the boxes.
“Excellent!” beamed the old man. “I have also been busy.” He gestured toward several neatly stacked piles of tobacco leaves filling the stations on each side of him.
“Now you should get some rest. It will be many hours
before I am done. Go. Use the couch in my office. I will come for you when all is ready.”
Raul laid a hand on the old man's shoulder. Their eyes met in tacit understanding. Raul should sleep while Ernesto awakened ebbed skills to save his life.
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“He'll come back here, Dominick, he has to. He's just staying away to make us believe he's been here and gone. This crafty spic's just like his father, too smart for his own good. The diamonds are still here somewhere. I can smell 'em.”
The two of them sat in the rented car, a half block down the street from Noches Cubanas. Bonafaccio pulled a cigar case from his pocket, slid it open, and offered one to Romelli.
“No thanks, Joseph. Too early for me. Tell you what, though. I'm going to take a walk to that coffee shop up the street and get a couple of donuts or something. Coffee?”
“Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks, Dom. Keep an eye down here, though, in case he shows up.”
Romelli nodded. “Will do.” He got out of the car.
“Oh, hey, Dominick,” Joseph said through the open window, looking at his watch. It was a few minutes before 9:00 A.M. “Lisa should be in the office by now, probably be a good idea if you called her, just to check in.
Romelli returned to the car fifteen minutes later with two cups of coffee and a bag of apple fritters. He slid into the front seat, smiling.
“You're not going to believe this,” he said, passing one of the cups to Joseph.
“Gessleman called first thing this morning from Kentucky. Lisa said he was all hot and bothered about something, so I returned his call. Says he wants to talk to us before I do the jobs on his son-in-law and Salazar. I told him we were in Miami, and he assumed we were here for the hits. He got excited and told me to hold off until he talks to us, in person. Says he still wants the jobs done but needs something
extra
. Wouldn't go into it on the phone. I told him I'd call him later to arrange a meeting.”
Romelli stuffed half a fritter in his mouth and washed it down with a gulp of coffee. “Oh,” he added. “I told him âextras' cost extra and to get at least three hundred grand together as advance payment. We'll collect it when we meet.”
Bonafaccio grinned and patted his mentor-employee on the shoulder. “Fingers, you're something else,” he said. “Always thinking.”
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Raul looked up into the core of hot sun searing the dusty floor of the Plaza de Toros. Momentarily blinded, he glanced toward his feet, planted in the red soil. The bullfighter's delicate, slipperlike shoes came into focus. They seemed ridiculously suited for engaging the enraged animal, in whose eyes of red hate he now saw his reflection. The
traje de luces
shone in the bull's eyes, its shimmering sequins catching the bright sun and inflaming the beast even more.
A ragged drool of red-tinged gore hung from the side of the bull's open mouth and its thick tongue probed to cleanse this further annoyance before returning to the afternoon's deadly work.
Raul's eyes cleared as he slowly maneuvered between the bull and the sun. He focused on the massive head, his eyes fixed to the bull's. Something else, though, fought for his attention. There, from behind the bull, rolling toward him in the dirt, two bloody objects, coming closer.
The first one stopped at his feet. He knelt and his fingers closed on thick strands. He lifted and the tendrils tightened with the awful weight they bore. His father's face stared back at him, peaceful and reassuring, though jagged ribbons of flesh and blood streaked the neck.
The second object rolled to stillness, and again he reached into the hot dirt at his feet. This time he pulled up Paulo's head. Paulo's lips were compressed in a tight, resigned smile, his dark, eyeless sockets staring vacantly.
Then Raul heard a song. Not the brassy celebration of the bullring, but the lilting soprano of children. At the tip of his vision, in the seats above the ring, he saw a cluster of children surrounding a woman: Rosa. Their song was hauntingly familiar.
Suddenly, the bull was upon him, immense and grinning. Raul felt himself swept up, riding the great horns into the sun, their points tearing his flesh as they carried him higher. Then the bull twisted its head and slammed him to the dirt, the horns ripping, goring, shaking, shaking â¦
“Raul! Raul!” Ernesto Torres lightly shook Raul once again by the shoulder. “I am done. Wake up and look.”
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Raul left Little Havana, again staying well clear of Noches Cubanas. The restaurant staff would be showing up soon, wondering why neither he nor Paulo was there to orchestrate
their nightly ritual. Mindful that Bonafaccio was probably waiting, he had not called.
They will know what to do, he told himself. Henry, the dishwasher, will tend bar, as we have taught him to do in a pinch. Rafael will cook, as usual. Perhaps he will do a limited menu. Rafael's assistant, Cruz, will be the host.
This time, because of the Friday afternoon traffic, the drive to Key Biscayne did not seem so onerous. Paulo's truck crept along with the best of them, a steady stream of automobiles emptying the city for the weekend.
Restored by the fitful sleep at El Rosario, Raul used the time to once again ponder the events of the past week and where they were taking him. It was difficult to shake the haunting images of his dream.
On a long-ago, hot summer morning in the Vuelta Abajo, minutes before Victor Salazar and eight-year-old Raul left for Raul's first bullfight, Lucia Salazar had knelt next to her son, her soft voice filled with a mother's wisdom.
“Remember, son, the bull was created by God, too. It has a heart and a soul like you. It is right to feel sad for the bull when it is over.”
After that day, in the rough corral that served as the town's Plaza de Toros, Raul grew to love the ceremony and pathos of the bullfight. His fondest memories of his father were of their many
temporadas
. Together they had pursued the bullfighting seasons to Mexico City and, later, to Spain. Victor's success with Noches Cubanas made it possible for the two aficionados to enjoy their shared passion on a grand scale. Madrid, Seville, Ronda, and Bilbao
became an annual pilgrimage. His mother's advice, given before that first
corrida
, stayed with Raul throughout these journeys. He respected the bull, always.
Fragments of the dream at El Rosario continued to invade Raul's thoughts as he neared Key Biscayne.
Madre de Dios,
what a dance this was!
He stopped at the pay phone by the marina entrance and checked his watch: 6:15. Pedro and Jorgé should be back from Cape Cod by now. Nothing could keep Jorgé from the weekend races at Hialeah, especially with ten thousand dollars of Gessleman's money burning a hole in his pocket. Raul dialed the number of La Paloma.
The bartender shouted over the animated din of La Paloma's mariachi guitars and trumpets celebrating the week's end.
“SÃ! BUENAS TARDES!
LA PALOMA.”
“Gregorio, this is Raul. Are Pedro and Jorgé back?”
“Ah, Raul.
SÃ.
Jorgé is back. He is right here. Wait.”
In a few seconds, Jorgé was on the line.
“Raul! How is Jamaica? You should be making love at this time of day, not calling your friends. But I am glad you did. I stopped by the restaurant and no one knows where Paulo is. His truck is gone. Did he go fishing?”
Raul responded tersely, his voice a sharp contrast to the celebration on the other end.
“Jorgé, I cannot tell you right now what has happened. I will meet you at La Paloma in one hour and give you something to take to Noches Cubanas. I want you to take four or five hombres, big ones, with you. Get them together now, and I will see you at La Paloma in one hour and explain. Understood?”
“SÃ,
Raul. Here, in one hour. There are plenty of hombres here already. I will pick out the best.”
“Is Pedro with you?” Raul asked.
Jorge laughed. “No, Pedro stayed up north. He is in love. The señorita from Cape Cod. Ah, Raul, we had such an adventure! You would not believe it. The sheriff swooped down on us like a cormorant, just as we were giving the cigars to Señor Gessleman.”
Raul shook his head. He had no time for this.
Obviously his delegates had not been arrested if one of them was making love and the other was spending his usual Friday night tossing back Cuba libres. The story could wait.
“Okay, Jorgé, tell me later. I will see you there in an hour. Adios.”
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Dominick Romelli polished off his third
taco de carnitas,
tilted the seat back as far as it would go, and slid his hat down over his eyes. By 6:00 P.M. he was convinced Raul Salazar had reunited somewhere in the Caribbean with his señorita and that the Bonafaccio cigar diamonds were history. It had all seemed a fairy tale to him anyway.
The only real loss, he thought, was the fee from Gessleman for doing Salazar. Or
was
it lost? If Salazar
was
gone, he
could
just tell Gessleman he had carried out the job. How would Gessleman know the difference? Sure, make up some gruesome story and ⦠Naa, good way to destroy a reputation.
He watched the entrance to Noches Cubanas as five boisterous Castro haters entered the restaurant.
God
,
Manhattan is going to look good
, he thought.
“You got it, Boss? I'm going to catch a little shut-eye.”
Hell, it was the kid's show. He didn't need Romelli's eyes, only his gun, and that appeared unlikely now.
“Yeah, Dom. Go ahead. I'll wake you when he shows. Shouldn't be long.”
Right
, thought Romelli, conjuring up the image of that shapely little Lisa back in Joseph's Manhattan office.
You'll learn, kid. Guy as slick as this Salazar isn't going to be hanging around with the Bonafaccio family breathing down his neck. Don't think so.
In what seemed like thirty seconds, but what his watch told him was an hour, Romelli felt Joseph's hand on his arm.
“Dom! He's here. I'm sure that's himâdriving that wreck of a truck parked in the alley last night.”
Romelli blinked his eyes open. He watched the truck climb the curb and the lights flicker off. Raul Salazar stepped out and looked around.
“I'll be damned,” Romelli said, suddenly bristling with energy, proud of his boss's tenacity. He would be able to score the hit for Gessleman after all. Then it struck him: There was still a financial wrinkle to iron out.