“Yeah.”
“Eugene Moore?”
“Yeah. This is me.”
“You have something that we need. If you give it to us, we can call things even.”
The Spanish accent gave him away. It was the greasy haired nervous guy from our Cuban duo.
“Mr. Moore?”
“What do I have?”
“You have mail.”
Like a computer. “You have mail. You have mail.”
“Obviously we’ve had some confrontations in the last several days that have come to no resolution. I am suggesting that you turn over whatever mail you have and we will stop any aggressive action.”
Did they think we still had the finger? And what would happen if they found out we didn’t have it? Everything was a blur in my mind.
“Mr. Moore?”
“I’m here. Can I think this through?”
“No. I need an answer.”
My head was clearing by the second. I saw movement in the doorway and James stood there, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, rubbing his eyes.
“What is it, man?”
“What’s your name?”
“Carlos.”
“Carlos, my partner is here and we need to talk. Call me back in ten minutes.” I hung up the phone.
“Whoa!” James had snapped back much quicker than I had. “They want the mail? We don’t have the fucking mail.”
“Well, James, that’s not entirely true.”
“One envelope out of two boxes of mail-come on. That could have just fallen out by mistake.”
“It’s a little too early in the morning for me to figure all this out.”
We’d talked until one thirty in the morning, sitting outside on the slab, smoking cigarettes, and getting loose on cheap beer. I kept staring at the building behind us, and the playpen. Two old people praying for a chance to be with their first grandchild, and me, praying that maybe there was a mistake and Em really wasn’t pregnant. One thirty in the morning I’d gone to bed, and it was now three thirty. I’m a growing boy. I need a lot more sleep than that.
“I’m having a tough time putting it all together, James.”
“Yeah. You’ve got a full plate, partner. I say we call Rick Fuentes. Tell him that as far as we know he got all the mail we had. Ask him what we should do. Or, we could just tell your pal Carlos to stop by Fuentes’s condo and get it for himself.” James looked at me, then glanced at my cell phone. Obviously he didn’t want to call the man at three thirty in the morning. I sat on the edge of the bed and made the call. The machine picked up.
“Rick Fuentes, this is Skip Moore. We just got a phone call from the two guys who threatened us and, by the way, almost killed us on the way home from your place. They say that if we give them your mail, they’ll go away and leave us alone. You’ve got the mail, Mr. Fuentes. Should we just tell them to deal with you?”
I had this thought that maybe I should have just kept quiet. Once the two Cubans had the mail, all of us were expendable. If they wanted to get rid of everyone who knew about their plans, they’d have to eliminate all of us- including Angel and Emily.
“I need to hear from you in the next ten minutes. It’s,” I struggled to read the alarm clock, “three thirty-eight in the morning.”
I hung up and we waited. James paced and I sat on the bed, thinking for a couple of seconds about actually having a kid, then thinking about how much trouble we were in. Back and forth. Would she even want to discuss marriage? Would these guys actually try to kill all of us because we knew about the plot to overthrow Castro?
Finally, James sat down on an old wooden trunk that I used as a closet and cupboard. “If they get all of that mail, they may kill us.”
“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. And some other things as well.”
“My old man, he had fifteen different businesses. That’s just fifteen that I knew about.”
“And?”
“I never heard of one of them leading to murder. Or even the threat of murder.”
“Well, he never had a trucking company. Pretty rough business.”
“Yeah.”
“James, I think we should just tell Carlos that we don’t have the stuff. That’s all. We don’t have it. What can they do about that?”
“We don’t have it.”
“Yeah. We don’t have most of it, but they’re liable to stop over here and find out for sure.” I looked at my watch. “I’ll call Fuentes one more time. If he’s not there, we’ll have to tell this guy that Fuentes has it.” I dialed his number and got his answering machine one more time.
“We can’t wait any longer.” James was pacing again. “If they call back and we don’t have an answer-”
“They’re liable to come over here.”
“Shit. Why won’t Fuentes call back?”
Off the charger, “Born in the USA” blared from the little flip phone. “Hello?”
“Skip?”
“Em.” I found myself short of breath. “I… I am so, so sorry about this afternoon. There was no excuse for that response. I mean, you just shocked me and I-”
“No. I’m sorry. I planned how I wanted to tell you, and, and it just didn’t come out right at all. I didn’t mean to walk away. I’ve been an emotional wreck, and-” the receiver beeped. Somebody else was calling in.
“Em, I am so sorry. I’ve got to take this call.”
“At four in the morning? Come on, Skip. Look, if you don’t want to talk, fine.”
The line went dead. I hit the green button. “Hello?”
“Eugene? This is Carlos. Do we get the mail?”
“Carlos.” I let out a slow breath. Em had called and wanted to talk, and here I am dealing with a life and death situation. I guess Em’s situation is life and death too. “We don’t have it.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, I’m leveling with you.”
“Would you care to tell me where it is?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to put Fuentes in more danger, but this was his battle. And, it was his mail. “Rick Fuentes has it.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Carlos?”
“Rick Fuentes has all of it?”
“We took it up to him the night you tried to run us off the road.”
“Cut the bullshit, Mr. Moore. You have the list of donors for Cafe Cubana. I want it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
JAMES STARED AT ME, his jaw slack. “He said he knew we had the donor list?”
“Why would I make that up, James?”
“How the fuck does he know?”
There were two ways. “One, they were parked nearby and saw us when we took the envelope out of the box and tossed it back in the truck.”
“Possible. We know they tried to get by the gate.”
“Number two, they did get by the gate and took the mail from Fuentes. Once they went through everything in
