RAUL CLOSED THE doors to the private banquet room and turned to greet his guests, Juan, José, Pedro, and Jorgé. The four sat sprawled with the arrogance of conquerors. The box of Romeo Y Julieta Fabulosos Raul had instructed Paulo to leave on the table was open, and a dizzying ether of rum and smoke filled the room.
“Heros! Welcome!” Raul cheered, circulating and hugging each of them. He lit one of the cigars for himself and poured out a generous helping of rum. Then he settled into one of the overstuffed chairs, leaned forward, and, in the conspiratorial tone of a pirate, said, “All right, lads. Out with it. The whole story.”
Four sets of gleaming teeth flashed back at him. Finally, Jorgé spoke. “Ah, Raul, Raul. From such a troubled start to such a glorious finale. Your call to us that day, the day of the assassination, masterful! We were packed, ready to leave the motel, on our way to the airport, our heads hanging in shame and failure. Two weeks we had
waited, working, searching for a way. I mowed lawns. Juan washed dishes and helped with the mowing. José cleaned fish at a market. Pedro, well, Pedro, he ⦠what
did
you do, Pedro?”
Robust laughter erupted from the three. Pedro shook his lowered head.
“Oh, yes. I remember! Pedro met a señorita! What was her name? Ah! Felicia! She works for the Kennedys, a maid. So he was trying to do his part. And, as it happens, he did, or she did. You will hear.”
Clearing his throat with rum, Jorge continued.
“The place was impossible! People everywhere.
Policia,
guards. The skinny brother's wife was there with her kids. Dozens of them! These people breed like Puerto Ricans! Then, just as we were prepared to give up, to crawl back to you in disgrace, Dallas happened, and you called. I will never forget your words. âWhen they leave for the funeral, you go.' Just like in a commando movie.
“We went in three nights later, after the place emptied out. We knew exactly where to go. Pedro's señorita, the maid Felicia ⦠Oh, but I will let the lover, Pedro, tell you that part.”
“No trouble? None at all?” Raul asked.
“None!” Jorge proclaimed. Then he darkened. “Well, there was the door, but ⦔
“Door?” asked Raul, preparing for the worst.
“As we were leaving, an old door for storms, a door to the basement where the cigar room was. It came down on poor Juan's head. So he ⦔
“I smashed it,” Juan muttered sheepishly. “With a rock. Then I threw the rock into the sea. No prints.”
“Is that all? A smashed door?” asked Raul.
“Well, there was my head,” Juan said ruefully.
“And the cigars?” asked Raul. “I presume they are safe?”
“SÃ
, Raul,” replied Jorge. “As you told us, we stored them up there. The motel had no business and the goofy
cabrón
that owned it was happy to rent us a room for another two weeks. The cigars will be safe there. It would have been too risky to carry them with us or send them down here. We can deliver them to Señor Gessleman up there. Let
him
live with that risk. You were right.”
Jorge smiled and looked at his three comrades, who all nodded, encouraging him. Raul could see there was more.
“What else?” he asked.
Jorge winked. “On the count of three,” he said to the others, his wide grin growing impossibly wider.
“Uno, dos, tres!”
With that, he reached behind his chair and produced a box of cigars. Pedro and Juan did the same. The three men extended the boxes to Raul, who gasped, recognizing at once his grandfather's distinctive
marque
.
“Madre de Dios!
Don Salazarios! And Presidentes at that! Where have these come from?”
Pedro proudly answered, “Ironic, eh? They were part of the president's cigars. We knew you would want them, so we brought them with us. They should be yours, not this Señor Gessleman's.”
Raul ran his hand over the three exquisite boxes set before him. The mitered joints, delicate brass hinges, and hand-embossed design surrounding his grandfather's
marque
, an elegantly attired gaucho waving his hat from an immense, rearing stallion, heralded the quality of the cigars inside. Jorge was correct, and he had meant well. They should be Raul's as a right of heritage. But they were not. Unless â¦
“Ah, my friends,” he said, misting, “you have done so well. And to honor me with such a gift. I cannot find words.”
In truth, Raul could not find the words to tell them that he would not be able to keep the Don Salazarios, not like this.
Raul Salazar's early years on his grandfather's tobacco farm, tempered by the rich theater of human nature played out in his father's casino, had left him with a conscience labrinthed with chambers of rationalization and a unique, philosophical sense of justice. Casting a scenario that left Cornelius Gessleman and the congressman believing they had subsidized the president's assassination had been a simple marriage of fate, timing, and opportunity. Between Gessleman's lust for the Kennedy cigars and, now, Gessleman's fear of exposure for the role he believed he had played in the president's death, Raul would generate the cash he needed to be rid of his declining restaurant and join Rosa, forever.
But substituting three boxes of some other cigars for the Don Salazarios was, to Raul, an inexcusable fraud. No compartment of Raul Salazar's complicated conscience housed
that
degree of duplicity. A bargain was a bargain. He would deliver to Gessleman and the congressman the
actual
cigars gathered through Kennedy's guile. The president's death and the knowledge already seeping through
interested circles about Kennedy's embargo-eve mendacity made the cigars uniquely valuable to Gessleman. Raul would not cheat him of that perverse pleasure.
Perhaps, thought Raul,
another
bargain could be made. One by which he could honestly claim one of the boxes bearing his grandfather's
marque
. What a thing that would be, if someday he had a son and was able to present him with a box of cigars rolled by his great-grandfather!
Raul blinked himself back to the moment.
“How can we be sure that the cigars you took are the thousand cigars Kennedy obtained before the announcement?” he asked. “Our âclients' may want to know that.”
Jorge nodded toward Pedro, giving him center stage.
Pedro answered, grinning. “Number one, there were no other cigars in the room. Just those: 992 cigars. A few of the boxes had been opened.”
Pedro paused, gesturing toward the three boxes in front of Raul. “Fortunately for you, the Don Salazarios were still sealed.
“Number two, Felicia, sweet Felicia. She loved it that I smoked cigars. She told me that she had helped the president's aide and a man who looked like a movie star carry a lot of cigars to a room in the basement from the back of the aide's car and a big Cadillac the man was driving. That's how we knew exactly where to strike. After she saw my love for cigars, she sneaked me into the basement one night to show me all those fine cigars!”
“Amazing!” declared Raul, laughing. “Such talent! And the Señorita Felicia? What of her now? Just a fond memory or is there something else?”
Pedro averted his eyes, smiling.
“Pedro, Pedro. Be very careful, my friend. We all ⦠Ah, I do not have to tell you. You will use excellent judgment, I know. Well, my friends, you deserve a feast.” Opening the doors, he called, “Paulo, we are hungry!”
“CONSTABLE THORPE HERE.” Hiram lifted his wife's leg from his thigh, which brought her snoring to a snagged halt. He propped himself up on an elbow and looked at the clock. The luminous hands pointed to 4:07. His wife rallied and the snoring revived.
“Hiram? Oscar Fenton again. Sorry to bother you so early, but well, you did say to call if there was anything else. And there is. Oh, yesiree, there is. Think you should get out here soon as possible.”
“Want to tell me a little now?” Hiram asked. He cradled the phone as he shrugged on his shirt and reached for his pants, alerted by the excited pitch of Oscar's voice.
“Well, you remember the storm doors? One was all busted up? And the big doors to the wine room? The ones with the big lock?”
“Yes, yes, Oscar. I remember. What about them?”
“Hiram, it's the damnedest thing. Those storm doors
are gone. Plumb gone. And the wine room? It's a mess! Everything's all ass-over-teakettle. The lock's been hack-sawed and ⦠oh, hell, you just better get on out here.”
Â
Hiram shut off the rotating beacon as he pulled into the Kennedy compound. Again Luther had surprised him. He was already there.
That's twice in two days now
, Hiram thought.
Better watch out for my job.
He parked alongside Luther's patrol car and stepped into the wet, morning darkness.
“Howdy, Hiram!” chirped his deputy, clearly energized by the magnitude of the event.
“Settle down, Luther,” Hiram muttered. “Don't want to get everyone too excited, do we?” He angled his head toward the half-dozen staff, some in bathrobes, huddled in the early dawn.
“Let's see what we've got here,” he said, setting off for the storm opening.
A half an hour later he knew no more than when he'd hung up with Oscar. Standing in the middle of one of the expansive lawns, trying to decide what to do next, Hiram felt a gentle pull at his sleeve. He turned and found himself looking into eyes darker, softer, and prettier than any he had ever imagined.
“Yes, Miss?” he asked.
“Señor Constable, excuse me. I do not wish to bother you, but ⦔
Enchanted, Hiram studied the slender, young woman. Her copper skin and black eyes captivated him completely. “Oh, that's quite all right, Miss. Is there something you want to say? Why don't we start with your name.”
“I am Felicia Mercado, one of the downstairs maids. I ⦠I ⦔ Her eyes lowered.
Hiram turned and faced the water. Even the golden glow of her exquisite skin could not cover the blush reddening her cheeks. Out of the corner of an eye he saw that she also had turned toward the sea. She started again.
“About two weeks ago a man came to visit another man who had been hired to help the gardeners. The man's name was Pedro. The helper was Jorge.
Hiram resolved to let her have her say without prompting. As she started to talk, she seemed to gain some momentum. Besides, he could not interrupt a voice that had the loving, sweet richness of a viola.
“I brought iced tea to the gardeners and met Pedro. He was a very nice man, very handsome. We talked and laughed. He was very funny and teased me. I liked him.”
Hiram began to sense where this was going. He let her continue.
“We went to dinner and the movies. Several times. We became ⦠close. He talked of finding work and moving here from Mexico, where he said he was from. But I think he was not. I am Mexican. I think he was from Cuba. There is a great difference in the accent.”
Suddenly the words were tumbling and Hiram looked down at her. Tears filled her eyes, but still the words came.
“He loved cigars and smoked them all the time. I wanted to please him so one night, when none of the family was here, I took him into the basement and showed him all those beautiful cigars, the ones I helped the gentlemen take into that room some months ago. It made him very happy. But then I saw him only one more time.”
After a pause, Hiram cleared his throat and started to fill in some blanks. He obtained descriptions of Pedro, Jorge, and one other who had helped the gardeners. She did not know his name. Then he asked her to tell him about the men she had helped with the cigars.
“Oh,” she said, brightening. “One of them, Señor Swindt, is here all the time. I am sure you know who he is. The other, a short, heavy man with wavy, gray hair, like a movie star, but he looked also like a
luchador
⦠how do you say ⦠?” She made grappling gestures.
“Wrestler?” Hiram asked.
“SÃ!
Like a wrestler,” she answered.
“I had never seen him before. He arrived here one afternoon about the same time as Señor Swindt. He was driving a very beautiful big, black car. A Cadillac, I think. There were many boxes of cigars in both cars, and I helped the two of them take them into the room in the basement where the wine and cigars are kept.”
Â
As they walked toward the patrol cars, Luther could not contain himself. “Jeeez! What a morning. First, those three guys, and now this!”
Hiram stopped. “What three guys, Luther?”
“The three guys roaring down the highway lickety-split in the biggest black Cad I've ever seen! That's who. Passed by me as I was coming out here to meet you. If I hadn't been so gosh durned in a hurry to get here, I would've run âem down and given 'em the ticket they deserved!”
Hiram dug into his mackinaw for a cigar. Empty. It was going to be one of those days.