The Killing of the Saints Page 18

  Don't misunderstand me, I thought myself very lucky indeed to have her. The few times friends and colleagues saw us together, at an outdoor cafe in Santa Monica or exiting a movie theater in Westwood, I felt exultant at their envy. But whenever we were alone, away from bed, I would invariably, in my mind's eye, pick out the small defects in her beauty, flaws so small they could hardly be called flaws, perhaps just irregularities, like the high curve of her nostrils or the flat, blunt ends of her fingers or her knobby knees, and I would want to be a surgeon or God to wipe away these imperfections and make her the pristine image of my desire. Perhaps it was best that I never succeeded, for who knows what monster might have resulted, what terrifying creature, born out of my efforts, I would have held by my side all my days long. I was searching for someone or something and Lucinda became the handiest expression of that unformed longing, the path out of the thicket of the instant, at the end of which waits the mighty creature who feasts upon the foolish and unwary.

  "Daddy," she said to me one afternoon, "daddy, let's go dancing, it's been so long since I went dancing."

  Her choice was Alberto's, a converted rice hulling factory on the edge of Chinatown, next to the railroad tracks. From the moment we set foot inside, Lucinda was in a swirl of smiles, kisses and dances, the doorman letting us in ahead of the line, old friends greeting her with abrazos, the barman sending a drink to our table, the leader of the band dedicating to her a Latinate "Love Me with All Your Heart."

  "I used to come here every weekend before I met you," she whispered as we danced.

  "Am I keeping you prisoner?"

  "Ah, papi, no, no, daddy, of course not. It's just that every so often I wish you wouldn't pay so much attention to that stupid trial. You worry too much. That's why you're sick all the time."

  "So you don't think someone put a spell on me anymore?"

  "You're so bad. Even if they did, you can always fight back. So when things happen, you can face up to them."

  "What things?"

  She brushed her lips on my earlobe. "Oh, things like your father coming to life before your eyes or thinking other people have seen him. That's done by someone who wants to destroy your self-esteem, your center. The way you fight back is with a cleansing. If not, then with plenty of entertainment." She laughed. "Yes, I recommend we go out more often, to break that spell."

  "I didn't know I was living with a witch."

  She pressed her body against mine, her thigh in my crotch.

  "I'm not a witch, I'm just magical."

  It took a while before her friends and acolytes left us alone at the upholstered booth. She twirled the bamboo umbrella in her drink and gazed wistfully at the couple on the floor.

  "I always wish I'd been a dancer. You know, like in the Tropicana? To go out there with all those costumes and just show them on stage. But back in Cuba my dance teacher said I wasn't good enough. You know how it is there, the government tells you what to be. We don't need any more dancers, she said. She said, every mulatica like you wants to go on stage. What we need is teachers, more physical education teachers. So that's what they had me doing. Let me tell you, I was so happy when I got off the boat in Key West I almost kissed the ground."

  "Didn't you?"

  "Ay, chico, no, it was too dirty." She snuggled up close. "I'm so glad I found you, daddy. Or that you found me."

  "Have you ever thought of studying a career? I'd help you, you know."

  She frowned at the prospect of serious work. "I don't know. I don't really know what to do. Sometimes I look at the television, you know, and I wish I were a lawyer or a doctor or anyone of these things these American girls are. Even a capitalist! But then I tune in my novelas and I know everything is going to turn out all right. That's when I realize a woman's job is to love her man, that her happiness is to have someone by her side through all the tragedies that life inflicts on us."

  "What would you do if something happened to me?"

  She pulled away slightly, sizing up my question, then snuggled in close again.

  "Nothing. I would die, that's all."

  I was in the bathroom, a white-tiled cavern with fifteen-foot ceilings and a long troughlike urinal when the drunk stumbled in. He was reeling from the combined effect of who knows how many beers and aguardientes and he staggered off to the toilet, where he retched quickly and efficiently then cleared his nose and came to take a leak.

  "Bad night?"

  "Coño, chico, it must have been the tamal I had at the Gallego's. That meat was bad, I'm sure."

  His dick was dark, long and uncircumcised, like that of many Cubans. He shook it carefully several times, dropped it inside his trousers, zipped up. He splattered water on his face at the wash- stand, his wiry hair and coarse features glistening in the yellow light.

  "So how's Palito doing?" He spoke with a thick pasty voice, the native Cuban intonation modified by another fast-clipped dialect that I failed to identify.

  "Excuse me?" I walked to the towel dispenser, pulled one out, dried my hands.

  "Palito. Ramón Valdez, coño. How is he doing?"

  This was new. Palito? Ramón had friends?

  "Yeah, he's a buddy of mine," he said." We go back to the Mariel. You hear from him lately?"

  "He OK, considering he's facing the gas chamber."

  "You're fucking with me. He's in the soup again. That son of a bitch, he never learns."

  "You didn't know? It was in all the papers."

  "I just got back into town. I've been in South America several years, eh, in the lumber business, you know? We don't get many papers in the jungle."

  "Has he always been crazy?"

  "Ramón? Like I said, that son of a bitch never learns. I saw him cut open a guy's throat in an argument once. You don't fuck with him, that's for sure. The funny thing is, he always claims he didn't do it, the gods did it, Oggún did it, Oggún this and that. He was always pulling that witchcraft shit on us. We worked together for a while, you understand, back in Miami."

  He rolled up the paper towel, threw it in the open oil drum that served as wastebasket. I could hear the band starting to tune up back on stage, the horn riffs, the twanging of electric guitar and bass.

  "How did you know that I know him?" I asked as we walked back out together into the pressing crowd.

  "Coño, man, you're with Lucinda, I saw you."

  "So?"

  He stopped, grinned. The band broke into a merengue and the dance floor filled with spinning couples.

  "They were man and wife, didn't you know? Muchacho, she sure is keeping you ignorant. You better ask her a few questions, know what I mean?"

  We came home at four in the morning, sweaty, tired and with more than just a haze of alcohol. We stopped in the stairwell to kiss, I sucking her tongue, feeling her breasts, she running her hand down my crotch and squeezing my cock, fingernails sinking into the pants fabric. I carried her upstairs, she giggling every step of the way, dropping a shoe in the landing. I struggled with the lock, popped open the door, set her down on the couch and without even closing the door, without more kisses or foreplay or any words of anticipation, I tore her panties off her and stuck my cock inside her. She was ready, her cunt running hot and drippy, a hand that came out from between her legs and held me and squeezed me as the vaginal walls clamped around the shaft of my dick. She writhed the moment I entered her, throwing her arms around me, lifting her legs and wrapping them around my back, her pubic bone rubbing against mine, burying her head in the crook of my neck. She shuddered as she came and I ejaculated. We uncoupled. I fell, thumping on the carpet. She made her first sound then, a low-throated purr of delight. She stretched her arm and ran a hand through my hair. I could hear a bird singing, anticipating the warm dawn.

  "You're such a lover, Charlie."

  "As good as Ramón?"

  She whipped her head around. "Where did that come from?"

  I got up, pulled up my pants. She made no effort to cover her nakedness. I sat on a tufted leather f
ootrest she'd picked out at an antique shop.

  "Why didn't you tell me you were married to Ramón?"

  "Ramón who?"

  "Stop fucking around. Ramón Valdez."

  She adjusted her dress, sat on the couch. Then she leaned over, kissed me on the cheek.

  "You're such a child, really. I'm dripping. Let me go to the bathroom."

  I was sitting in the same spot when she returned. I had not had a thought during the interval.

  "And?" I asked.

  "And what?" she replied, sitting primly, legs closed. "I don't see what the problem is."

  "Were you married to him or not?"

  "I may have been."

  "What cunt-faced answer is that? Were you or were you not-and if so, why didn't you tell me?"

  "I told you he stayed with me when he was released from Atlanta."

  "But it's different if you're married to someone, don't you think? I mean, at least you'd remember that."

  "You're annoying me. What is your problem? I don't see why you should be so concerned about something that may have happened years ago."

  I got up, put my face up against hers, inhaling the sweet smell of vodka in her breath, the fragrance of love and French perfume. I fought a maddening desire to kiss her and make love to her again.

  "Because you're living with me, that's why. Because I'm working to defend your former husband, if he was married to you. Because you're taking me for an asshole, pretending the sun don't shine. Because, and this is the main reason of all, you didn't tell me the truth. So tell me now, because tomorrow it will be simple enough for me to find out. I want to hear it from you first."

  She looked me in the eye, the bits of yellow in her iris shining from the reflection of the hall light. For the first time I detected an emotion I had never noticed in her before, a feeling that became more powerful because she was trying so desperately to conceal it. She was afraid. The possible reasons for that fear rose fully armored from the soil of my imagination.

  "Ay, mi amor, I'm so sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. There are so many things we do for love, when in love, that later we regret. One remembers then the stupidity of it but not the delirium that pushed you into doing these things. Do you understand me?" I leaned back, saying nothing, keeping my face as blank as I could, while passion and pride did battle inside of me.

  "No, you're not a woman, you wouldn't understand. You can't comprehend the things we do for those we love. When Ramón came out of Atlanta, he was different from the man he is now. He was so happy to be free again-the world was full of possibilities for him. He had plans to take up his engineering career, to start a new life. The first thing he did was learn the language. In a matter of months he was fluent in English. I was so amazed. He seemed determined to make his own way. We started going out then, he was so sweet." She stopped, gave me a perfunctory smile. "If it is any consolation, you are a better lover. You're more inventive. He was never that interested in anything other than the standard. But then sex isn't everything, love is."

  She took a breath, reliving those moments as though to make sure no important aspect was left out.

  "Then something happened. He had a job selling kitchen appliances from door to door, frying pans, pots, things like that. They told him he was being let go because they were cutting down the sales force. But he thought it was because he was black and Central American housewives wouldn't open their doors to him. He tried getting a job with other Cubans, but the Cubans who came right after the revolution, like you, they didn't want him either. He was a Marielito, a common criminal, and black. So then he tried to get work with an American company, run by some negros selling hair products. But they said he was Hispanic and they turned him down too. He began doing drugs. Funny thing was that's when he finally started making some money, with Juan Alfonso, fixing houses for resale. But it was too late by then, it was easier to sell dope.

  "After he stole from the lady's house in Pasadena, I was let go so I went to live with him. I don't remember much of that time-it was all a string of parties, nights spent waiting for deals, days lying in worried sleep.

  "We got married. We thought it was a fun idea, so we took a plane to Las Vegas. We pretended to be Puerto Ricans and we were married in a chapel up there at two in the morning. That's all I remember of that. I don't know how long we stayed there or anything. When we got back we told everybody so I became his wife. You know that the marriage is not valid if you give false information. We knew it too, but we wanted to believe so we pretended.

  "Already he'd gone back to santería, thinking it would protect him. But then he got more and more into it, like he was someone else, the gods riding him every day and riding him hard. When

  Oggún would come down, he'd be abusive and insulting and would fuck all these women right in my face. So one day I just walked out. Juan Alfonso helped me. He's a good man, he's been like a father to me. That's when you came in."

  She turned expectantly toward me. I contemplated her fine bones, her tawny skin, her frightened eyes. Was it fear that we would break up, or was the cause something else altogether? She sidled over, laid her head on my lap. I played with her hair.

  "When you moved out," I asked her, "had he already gotten the jewels from the store?"

  "What jewels?"

  "The ones he used on his altar, the bangles, pendants, that sort of thing."

  "Oh, those. He said he had gotten them from a friend of his. I don't remember who." She offered her face to me again. "Will you forgive me for not telling you before? I was so afraid."

  "Afraid of what?"

  "Of losing you."

  If it is true that the eyes are the gateway to the soul, Lucinda was expecting a full frontal attack and had barricaded herself for the fight. The fear was gone and those shiny orbs were coolly observing my reactions.

  "There's nothing to forgive," I said, planting a kiss on her forehead. "You just forgot to tell me, right?"

  For the briefest moment she was startled. "Oh, yes, daddy, yes, that was it. I forgot. I forgot. God, I love you so!"

  13

  "a re you sick?" asked Ramón, looking up from the open murder book. The bright overhead light in the interview room cast away all shadows.

  The old feelings of nausea and desperation had swept over me as the sally port clanged open and the deputy showed me into the interview room at County Jail.

  Ramón had been waiting, deep into the law books, preparing the motions and legal citations he would press in his defense.

  "I've been better," I answered.

  "You don't look too good. My mom always used to give me an infusion of chamomile leaves. You should try it."

  "Is your mother still alive?"

  Ramón's eyes went soft for a moment. "No, she died after she got out of the prison camp," he said without regret, distant.

  "Is that why you turned against Fidel?"

  "I was never for Fidel, I just liked to fight, that's all. I lost interest in the revolution when I came back from Angola. I was a hero of the revolution, with a degree, and the best thing I could get was a one-room apartment in Old Havana. Then my kid died from typhoid, just like we were in some undeveloped country. That's when I said this is a piece of shit. At that point, I decided all I wanted to do was to leave the country. But, oye, enough of this shit, the past never helped anybody. You gotta look ahead, mano, look ahead."

  Never again did Ramón mention his family. To him, the past was a gallery of rooms, once lived in but now nailed shut and abandoned, the undisturbed dust of memories growing thicker every year. To him, that was the natural order of things.

  The thrust of Ramón's reasoned defense was a very simple yet specious proposition. It centered on a version of the diminished-capacity defense called the McNaugton test, which posits the innocence of a defendant when he cannot distinguish the difference between right and wrong during the commission of a crime.

  "The legislature changed the McNaugton test after Dan White," I reminded Ramón. "Y
ou can't claim that sort of thing 'cause it won't fly."

  "You mean diminished capacity, not the sort of cultural argument I'm going for."

  "You really think that you will be able to convince an American jury to spring you after you-" I stopped, but he finished my statement.

  "After I killed innocent men, women and children and left the store like it was a butcher shop?" I nodded. "Carlitos, why else are we here?"

  "I don't see how you can convince them."

  "I told you it's a cultural defense. Look, to prove murder you have to prove criminal intent, correct?"

  "Yes. But if you think the jurors are going to close their eyes to the deaths and let you walk, you got another guess coming."

  "Wait a minute. We also have the special circs, right? Murder in the commission of a robbery. My point is, there was no robbery here."

  "I know that's what you claim." I stopped, debated whether to tell him about my conversation with Mrs. Schnitzer but opted against it. I knew she would deny everything if called to testify. Besides, I wanted to see how much he would reveal. In the final analysis, it was his case, his defense, his problem. Not mine. "That's not what Pimienta is going to say."

  Ramón winked at me, almost lewdly.

  "You let me handle Bobo. After I finish with him, the jury will see he's accusing me to get his ass off and he won't be believed either."

  "You mean just because he's getting immunity he's automatically discredited? Don't count on it. When you have something as bloody as this, jurors will go out of their way to give the prosecution every advantage. They'll probably figure that if they can't get both of you, they'll get just you then."