Red Angel

Martinez pointed to the other bones. “Feet and hands,” he said. “Large ones. More likely from a man.” Another small skull lay off to one side. It appeared canine. Then the bones of a bird, mixed among the black feathers. “We will search the house,” Martinez said. “Then we will take Baba Briyumbe somewhere where we can question him in privacy.”

Pitts raised his eyebrows and gave them a fast flutter. “I like your style. You get any openings on the Havana PD, you give old Ollie a call.”

“You’ll have to become a communist,” Devlin said.

“Hey, communist, right-wing Republican, what’s the difference? So long as I get to use my rubber hose.”

Baba Briyumbe sat in a straight-backed, wooden chair, his hands cuffed behind his back. They were in a front second-floor room on Calle Aguilera, diagonally across the street from Santiago de Cuba’s provincial palace. It was the “private place” Martinez had chosen to question the Abakua witch doctor.

Devlin stood at the window, watching people mount the high marble stairs to enter one of three arched portals guarded by provincial police. A large Cuban flag hung from an upper balcony. Beside it, a banner proclaimed EL PODER DEL PUEBLO. ESE SI ES PODER. Devlin gave it a rough translation: “The Power of the People. That Is Real Power.”

He glanced back at Martinez. He was standing in front of the palero, peppering him with questions. Devlin drew a long breath. Something in this whole scenario just didn’t jibe with what he’d been told. In the States, if a cop found a “private place” to interrogate a subject, he’d be on a oneway ride to the unemployment line, perhaps worse. Still, this wasn’t the States, and Martinez didn’t seem at all concerned. Yet Martinez had told him that Cubans weren’t lacking in civil rights. Police powers were certainly greater, but strict rules existed. Suspects in a crime, for example, could be held only for seventy-two hours before evidence had to be presented to a grand jury, which would then either indict or release them. Civil libertarians would howl, but it was a far cry from a police state.

He motioned to Pitts and led him into a hall outside the room. “What’s your take on this?” he asked.

“On the witch doctor?”

“No. On Martinez.”

Pitts pursed his lips. “At first I didn’t trust the little fuck.”

“Why?”

“He was too fucking nice. You can’t trust a nice cop.”

Devlin shook the argument off. “What else?”

“Well, now he’s suddenly Mr. Hard-ass, which I like. But it’s like he’s onto something he hasn’t told us about. I get the feeling we’re only seeing half of his game here.”

“Your Spanish is better than mine. What are you getting out of this interrogation?”

“Hey, my Spanish is only good enough to get me arrested,” Pitts said. He grinned at Devlin. “But he seems to be asking a lot of questions about Cabrera, about people maybe this witch doctor is supposed to meet. I’m not getting a sense that finding this Red Angel’s body is a big thing for him. Not unless he can link it to Cabrera.”

Devlin shook his head. “The last thing we need is to get dragged into some political game.”

Pitts laughed at the comment. “Hey, back in the Apple our whole life is a political game. Ever since the mayor decided he wanted his own special squad, we’ve been drowning in fucking politics.”

“Forget New York. Talk to me about here. What did you find out about Martinez while you were going through files at his office?”

“He’s something called a jefe de sector, which means he’s responsible for one section of Havana, sort of like a precinct commander, fairly mid-level in the command structure. I got pretty friendly with his second in command, a captain named Julio Pedroso. This Pedroso’s main job seems to be working as a liaison with something they call the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, or CDR, which is some kind of neighborhood watch that was set up after Fidel and his boys took over. To sort of keep an eye out for counterrevolutionaries. These CDR cats exist on just about every block. According to Pedroso, people on the block actually elect them every two years or so.”

“Political spies for the police?”

Pitts shook his head. “Not according to Pedroso. He claims they’re not used so much politically anymore. Now they pretty much keep an eye out for any criminal activity-burglary, street crime, even renting out rooms and not paying taxes on the profits. All kinds of shit like that. Pedroso says they report in every day, and it lets the cops know what’s going on in every neighborhood, every day of the week. It also lets them know who’s in that neighborhood when maybe he’s not supposed to be.” Pitts paused a moment. “What bothers you about the little dude?” he asked.

Devlin stared at his shoes. “I can’t quite pin it down.” He looked up at Pitts. “But you’re right. He’s too nice. He’s like some Spanish Columbo, and there’s no question he knows a helluva lot more than he’s letting on. He also seems to throw a lot of weight here in Santiago, especially for a precinct commander from a city that’s nine hundred kilometers away.”

“He says it’s because they’re all part of the national police.”

Devlin nodded. “Yeah, I got that part.” He gave Pitts a long stare. “You ever know a cop who didn’t guard his own turf? Who let some cop from another area just waltz in and take over.”

“Not unless word came down from pretty high up,” Pitts said. He grinned again. “I told you we shouldn’t trust the little fuck.”

Devlin nodded. “Maybe, maybe not. But it does make me wonder who Martinez has for a rabbi. Especially when he seems to be going up against a top dog in State Security, maybe even the secret police.”

Baba Briyumbe glared at them when they returned to the room. But he was sweating now, and it wasn’t from the heat.

“You get anything from our boy here?” Devlin asked.

Martinez reached out and lifted the palero‘s chin, forcing him to look him in the eye. Devlin noted that the glare Baba Briyumbe had given them disappeared quickly when he was forced to face Martinez.

“Baba Briyumbe is an unpleasant man, much impressed with his power,” Martinez said. “But he has seen the wisdom in speaking to me.” He gave them his innocent Cuban shrug. “It seems he was brought a body that was badly burned, and he performed a ritual, preparing it for a nganga dedicated to BabaluAye. It is to heal someone of great importance, he said. The ritual is a changing of heads, or changing of lives, which is a way of taking an illness from one person and giving it to another. There are many ways to do this ritual. Paleros have been known to go to hospitals and, through certain incantations, to take the sickness of a person in one room and give it to the person in another. It is a practice much feared in our hospitals. But when this is not possible, there is a second way.” Another shrug. “This involves the use of a dead one, who was once a great healer.”

“Yeah, that’s great mumbo jumbo,” Devlin said. “But where’s the body now?”

Martinez smiled. “It is not mumbo jumbo, my friend. I have seen this evil work with my own eyes. But, as to the body. He says it is in the hands of his disciple, a young palero named Siete Rayos, which means Seven Thunderbolts.” He smiled at the name. “He says the Abakua have taken both the palero and the body to Cobre.”

Devlin hesitated, as if he didn’t want to know the answer to the question he was going to ask. “Is the body … whole?”

“Baba Briyumbe would not say, but I suspect it is now part of a nganga. He would not leave such a task to a disciple.”

“And it’s in Cobre, the same place our friend Cipriani went.”

“Exacto.”

“So we go to Cobre.”

“Tonight,” Martinez said. “After I make some preparations.”

“What preparations?” Devlin asked.

Martinez simply held up one hand in a wait-and-see gesture.