“I still have enemies who-”
“Papa, please!”
“-enemies who harbor evil thoughts about me. This case places all of us in jeopardy-you, me, Maria Elena, Yuri, possibly even Montoya. You must turn this over to…to someone like Pena.”
“Pena, that pea-brained clock-watching rum-sucking ass-kissing suckup? Papa, have you gone senile?”
“You’re so stubborn, just like your mother!”
“Papa, if I find out you’ve interfered, I swear I’ll move out completely! Now not another word. I’m going back to bed. I have to get up early to see what your old friend Benilo has uncovered.” She started back toward her apartment.
“You’re making a bad choice, Qui.” He’d taken a step toward her, then stopped, shaking his head, his voice softer, he added. “Just know this, if you need help, I am here and so is Yuri. With his background, he could be a good ally.”
At his comment, she turned and walked back to him. “I know you mean well, Papa, but you have to let me succeed or fail on my own. You’re right about Yuri, thanks for the reminder.” She gave a thought to Yuri, a Soviet ex-patriot who’d arrived in Cuba along with Soviet missiles, now a family friend, working for her father. She hugged him saying, “Good night, go to bed, and stop worrying about me.”
Watching her leave, Tomaso wondered how bad the mess was that she had been handed. “No good will come of this,” he muttered to a shadow in the darkened corner. Yuri leaned forward, his face coming into the light. “Quiana’s no one’s fool. She may surprise us all.”
13
The following morning…
Having gone in early to work on her case, Qui anticipated leaving soon for the morgue. However, Gutierrez found her first and called her into his office, and with Pena sitting in a corner, the colonel insisted on a time- consuming verbal report of the facts she’d already detailed on paper. Then, he asked for her personal observations. She gave him a play-by-play of what she and Benilo had found on the boat, her words sounding like a tale of horror out of a gothic novel. But curiously enough, the colonel proved more interested in the problem that had gotten back to him from an irate dockmaster. He wanted to know more about the complaints of this petty tyrant than he did about the murder victims. He claimed that Qui had no people skills whatsoever, and she should take a lesson by studying detective Pena.
Qui left in sheer frustration with the man’s incompetence and dislike of her; she hadn’t even spoken to the dockmaster, Tino had, but she was the lead investigator, so no use protesting. She pictured the colonel’s negative attitude as a cloud of flies floating above rotting flesh-the image so apt and so ridiculous she had to smile in spite of her mood.
Breathing the clean mid-morning air, after escaping the oppressive atmosphere of the Capitol Police Headquarters, Qui’s sour humors dissipated-her frustration replaced by a sense of expectation of what she’d find at the newly built, thoroughly sleek, high-tech medical complex where Benilo’s morgue made up two thirds of the basement.
An hour later…
“Wait a minute, Dr. Benilo, you didn’t just say what I heard you say, did you?” Qui asked, looking into the bowels of the crowded-with-bodies morgue and back to Benilo.
“Afraid so.”
“The bodies-all three-gone, poof, disappeared like that?” She rushed about the shrouded bodies, tearing away sheets to stare into dead faces-none familiar.
“Stop that! You’re making a disarray of things!” shouted Benilo. “They’re not here! You have my word.”
Dumbfounded, her eyes screaming confusion, Qui’s mind raced with questions. “If the bodies are not here, where are they?”
“At this point, I don’t know.”
“When did this happen?”
“Last night.”
“But how?”
“Before I arrived from the boat; they were taken.”
“Who’d steal bodies and why?” Secretly, she wondered, Just how involved are you, Dr. Benilo in this magic act? Three murders and now the bodies are missing? What next? What fucking next?
“Trust me, Quiana-”
“Lieutenant Aguilera…” She set her jaw and glared.
His hands rose in the air, either as a gesture of defense or defeat. “I had nothing whatever to do with it, and I am as filled with questions as you, and the short answer is Secret Police.”
“So you do know something, Doctor?”
“If I were a part of this outrage-think! Would I be standing here telling you I suspect the SP of stealing bodies?”
“Imagine if this gets out to the Canadian consulate or the press, or worse, the American Interest Session?”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “How will it play in the International media?”
She paced like an angry lioness. “You realize that without the bodies, there can be no final results. Everyone will blame me.”
“Ahhh, so this is about you and your career?”
“Yes, among other things, yes! Hell, we can’t even prove there are three murders now, can we?”
Benilo went about his morgue straightening all the sheets she’d torn away. “If you’ll curb your impatience and just listen, I’ll answer you.”
She stopped pacing and turned to him. “Go ahead.”
“While the bodies were hijacked, the evidence was not.”
“Then we do have a case, after all?” She followed him from body to body as he re-arranged sheets over disturbed corpses.
“What pisses me off,” said Benilo, “is the thought of those two imbeciles-Enrique and Pedro. They left to go dancing without even reporting to me! Not a damn word! So they’re fired.”
“With the Secret Police involved, they probably had little choice.”
“Cowards. They’re fired. End of story.”
“Perhaps they were ordered to keep their mouths shut?”
““Munoz and Torres know which way the wind blows,” muttered Benilo. “Still, cowards!”
“No…not cowards, cautious men-acting no differently than Estrada’s crewmen or anyone in the face of the SP.”
“They work for me and I expect loyalty. They have more to fear from me than the SP!”
She could not help but laugh at this. “At least they are smart enough to avoid going the way of the vanished ones. ”
“True.”
From somewhere deep in the autopsy room, a dripping faucet created a staccato beat that echoed Qui’s growing headache. “Got any aspirin?”
“Here, my secret stash,” Benilo handed her a green container and a glass of water.
“Thank you Doctor.”
“Remember, Quiana, for all we know, the bodies could be below a hundred feet of ocean, and this time permanently, or incinerated in some old cathedral basement, or even turned into sausages at a meat-packing company.” Benilo realized what he was saying caused her to wince. “Sorry, but it’s so.”
Qui replied, gulping, “Please, tell me you don’t believe their bodies are being sold as sausage.”
Benilo shrugged in response. He then stretched and complained, “I must look every bit as old as I feel this morning.” He gulped down the last of his coffee. If last night on the dock with Jesus went horribly awry, trying to
