Death of a Telenovela Star (A Novella) Read online

  Yoel only contributed to the household budget when he sold a painting, which didn’t happen often, and Marlene’s salary as a National Revolutionary Police lieutenant wasn’t enough to support both of them. His solution to generate some extra income was to set up a casa particular—a Cuban-style rental for foreigners—but clearly, their current home didn’t meet the requirements.

  “People who have beach houses want thousands of CUCs for them, not an old place in Centro Habana,” Marlene told him.

  “Not always,” Yoel replied. “Papo, a friend of mine, knows a family that owns a duplex in Bacuranao. They are willing to trade half of it for a house.”

  “Even in the condition mine is now?”

  “Yes, yes! They’ll repair it. See, they rent part of the duplex to foreigners, forty CUCs a night, fifty or sixty in high season, and have saved enough cash to invest in a bigger place.”

  “Why do these folks want to get rid of a casa particular that’s so profitable?” Marlene asked, suspicious.

  “They need to split, amor. The parents are old and would rather live downtown, where they have better access to hospitals and other services. Their daughter and her kids will keep half of the duplex. It has two bedrooms, and one can still be rented. We’ll do the same!”

  In the end, Marlene agreed to the permuta. There were too many sad memories in her home. Her mother had died in the living room watching the eight o’clock news. In the dining room, Marlene had had a big fight with her brother before he left for Miami—she’d called him a despicable worm and a cabrón. Maybe it was better to begin a new life from scratch.

  When Marlene said yes, Yoel hugged her and said, “We will be very happy there, my love.”

  He had been too exuberant, his eyes bright but averting hers. I should have known, Marlene chided herself. Why hadn’t she noticed the red flags from the start? The detective instinct that had solved so many cases was deadened by the fragrance of Yoel’s skin, kisses that tasted like chocolate and cream.

  Yoel was the first man Marlene had wanted to marry. He claimed that he was ready too, but that there were problems, which he never fully explained. He and his wife had separated a long time ago, and their divorce was “almost final,” he said. Marlene believed he had commitment issues, but would eventually come around. She was, after all, eight years his senior.

  Georgina, Yoel’s mother, hated her. Yoel was a graduate from the San Alejandro School of Art, and Georgina wanted another artiste for her son, not a cop. “A woman who carries a gun. Older than him. A marimacha!” Georgina’s comments were reported to Marlene by an officious neighbor. They were hurtful, but she pretended not to care.

  On the flip side, Yoel wasn’t particularly popular among Marlene’s friends. Her boss at Unidad 13, Captain Antonia Lujan, had met him at a party and hadn’t been impressed.

  “He isn’t the right guy for you,” she stated.

  “Why do you say so?” Marlene asked.

  “He doesn’t have a job, for starters.”

  “He’s an artist! He works for himself.”

  “Artist? A comemierda, that’s what he is.”

  A shit-eater? Marlene didn’t think so then.

  “And there’s something else about him,” Antonia added. “He doesn’t look people in the eye.”

  Marlene respected Antonia’s judgement but in this case, she pushed it aside. Yes, she had noticed her partner’s often furtive expression. He wasn’t comfortable around cops, Yoel had confided, because he’d had a few brushes with the law. Nothing serious, just maría, as he called marijuana. Most artists used it, but he swore he didn’t anymore.

  After the permuta papers were signed, Yoel sold the entire contents of Marlene’s house for one hundred dollars. The furniture was heavy and difficult to transport. “The collar will be more expensive than the dog if we try to move all of that to Bacuranao,” he said when she argued for keeping some of the pieces. “And there isn’t enough space in our half of the duplex.”

  It was painful to say goodbye to the armchair she always sat in to read the paper on Sunday morning, her mother’s bed, the chest of drawers and the armoire that had been in the family since her grandparents’ wedding over seventy years ago, the full-sized mirror in front of which her grandma had fitted Marlene’s quinceañera dress.

  True, most pieces were damaged, unpainted and older than Marlene herself. The whole lot wasn’t worth much. But how would they replace them? Yoel had it figured out: he’d give the money to a fine carpenter who would make new furniture for them: a sofa, a bed frame, a dining room table and chairs. “Everything built to our specifications,” he said, giving her a long kiss.

  Marlene never forgave herself for saying yes to that too. The moment she saw the mirror leave the house in the back of a truck, reflecting the street pavement on its clouded surface, she felt that some valuable, irreplaceable part of her life was being hauled away. But it was a done deal. Yoel pocketed the cash, which he promised to hand to the carpenter right away, and they moved to the Bacuranao duplex, or rather half duplex, the following day.

  It didn’t take long for Marlene to realize that Yoel was chummier with their neighbors, the family of three that stayed in the other part of the duplex, than he had originally let on. They were a middle-aged single mother and her children, a teenager named Luis and a pretty young woman, Delia, who preferred bathing suits to regular clothes even for going to the grocery store.

  Marlene wasn’t the jealous type, but she couldn’t help but notice that Delia was always hanging around the shared entrance of the building when Yoel came in or went out. Once she caught them talking. Not too close, and the conversation was innocent enough, something about surfboards and diving, but she made a mental note.

  More worrisome was that Luis was the “fine carpenter” Yoel had entrusted with making their new furniture.

  “The kid is barely old enough to be an apprentice!” Marlene said.

  “He’s very talented,” Yoel answered. “He makes beautiful woodcarvings and sells them to tourists. He’s an artist too.”

  Marlene wasn’t convinced. “How long have you known these folks?”

  “A couple of months,” Yoel said, his eyes fixed on his own bare feet. “It was Papo who introduced us when I told him we were looking for a place on the beach, remember?”

  Marlene had met some of his friends—other painters and a sculptor—but not Papo, who was preparing an exhibit in Holguín then, Yoel said. She made another mental note.

  When they moved in to their new home, Luis was still working on the furniture, so they borrowed a motley assortment of pieces: a mattress on a metal frame, two chairs that didn’t match, provided by Antonia, a smelly brown suede sofa, and a plastic table. They were all, Marlene realized with annoyance, much older and uglier than the ones she had owned.

  There was no way they would be able to turn the place into a casa particular anytime soon. As days passed, Marlene made more mortifying discoveries: the toilet overflowed, the bedroom doors didn’t lock, most of the metal fixtures were corroded by salt, and blackouts happened there more often than in Centro Habana. Within less than a month, her mental notes could have filled a phone book.

  There was also the transportation problem. Marlene was still working at Unidad 13. Before, she used to walk to the station, but now she had to take three buses. She had petitioned to be transferred to a Bacuranao unidad, since there was a shortage of officers there, so there was hope this might be a temporary situation. But in the meantime, the twice-a-day trip could last hours. On Wednesdays, when she was on duty until 3 a.m., she spent the night with her aunt Isidra, who had an apartment on Espada Street, not far from Unidad 13. She didn’t return home until Thursday evening.

  It was a Wednesday when hell broke loose. The police station had been sprayed with a strong pesticide that made Marlene’s allergies flare up. Noticing her watery eyes and runny
nose, Antonia sent her home. She would cover for her that night. Marlene didn’t have to report back until the following day at noon.

  She sneezed all the way to her aunt’s. But after taking a shower and resting for a while, she felt so much better that decided to go back to Bacuranao. Fresh air would do her good. Back in civilian clothes, she left her gun in Isidra’s home, tucked under her uniform. She would swing by the next morning, change her clothes and retrieve it.

  It wasn’t like her to do that. Marlene seldom left her Makarov out of her sight, much less at the old lady’s place. Now, her lips salty from the waves that crashed against the North Star, she realized that she subconsciously must have known what she would find at home.

  She arrived in Bacuranao around four-thirty. She walked to the duplex, opened the door and entered the bedroom. The couple was naked on the borrowed mattress. Her right hand went straight to her hip and found nothing.

  “Thank God,” Marlene said aloud as she watched the sun set. Her karate-trained arms and legs had done enough damage, but sending both Yoel and Delia to the hospital with multiple broken bones was different from sending them to the cemetery.

  Marlene tried to return to the more pleasant reality of the cruise, angry for reliving the memory of an event from so long ago. It was these people’s fault, Helen and Carloalberto. She hoped Emma would catch them.

  4: Peer Pressure

  They had been on the cruise for two days. Being away from land provided a sense of freedom that Marlene had never experienced before. She felt lighter, untethered. The fact that ordinary tasks like cooking and cleaning were taken care of by the crew made it even nicer. “This is a vacation from life,” she told Sarita. The girl didn’t seem to miss the high, dry desert where she lived or her parents. If only her best friends were there too, it would have been perfect, she said.

  Marlene loved their stateroom, a cocoon of peace in the otherwise bustling onboard life. She didn’t spend much time there, though. There was always something going on, from a musical to a hypnotism session (her favorite) to a short lecture about the sites they were visiting. Sarita was more inclined to head to the boutiques, the pool area and the game room, which had been designed specifically for teenagers since they couldn’t gamble. Sarita was also usually magnetically drawn to whatever section of the ship Carloalberto happened to be in, which made Marlene nervous. The man seemed to attract trouble, and after yesterday, she suspected he deserved it.

  Fortunately, they hadn’t seen him in the past few hours. They had just come back from the pool, and Sarita was taking a shower. Marlene wanted to take one too, but knew from past experience that the girl wouldn’t finish in less than fifteen minutes. She had just started singing, her words reverberating off the walls.

  Having nothing more constructive to do, Marlene began to check her messages. She had left Max, a one-hundred-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, with her cousin Candela. Max would be treated like a prince, but she still felt concerned. Aware of that, Candela had already sent a picture of him snoozing under a palm tree. Marlene smiled and texted her, Gracias mil! The dog had been her only companion since she’d moved to Miami three years ago.

  Mercy Spivey, Marlene’s business partner, was temporarily in charge of La Bakería Cubana. They had agreed that she would only contact her if there was an emergency. Relieved to find nothing from Mercy, Marlene laid down on her bed, ready to relax. Her initial concerns about something going wrong in the cruise began to fade. It would just be a fun, aunt-niece bonding kind of trip.

  A minute later, she heard a ping on Sarita’s phone—the girl had left it on Marlene’s bed, so she glanced distractedly at the incoming WhatsApp message in a group chat named “Carloalberto Fans.”

  Jane: Did u do it?

  Do what? Intrigued, Marlene unlocked the phone, hitting “2” several times, and read on.

  Lupe: Yeah, r u done?

  Jane and Lupe—weren’t these the girls who had gotten Sarita into trouble? They were supposedly reformed, but you never knew with kids. Just in case, Marlene scrolled up to the beginning of the chat.

  Sarita: Still trying

  Jane: Can’t b 2 hard

  Sarita: It is with M around all day

  Jane: Hurry up. We have 2 finish this!

  Sarita: Gimme some time, bitches

  Marlene winced. Not only did she not approve of teenage girls calling each other “bitches,” but Sarita’s friends were trying to get her to do something that probably had to do with Carloalberto. Something Marlene, or M, wasn’t supposed to know.

  The sound of water in the shower stopped, but Sarita was still singing her heart out. Marlene inspected her call log. She had made two the first day of the trip, July 12, to different area code 575 numbers. Jane and Lupe? She remembered Sarita’s excitement on the phone. She must have called her friends right after discovering that Carloalberto was on board. Marlene checked the WhatsApp group again. It had also been created on July 12.

  She left the phone on the bed and walked to the balcony. Sarita came out of the bathroom, toweling her hair. She looked older than her fifteen years, with “Caribbean” curves and a fresh, rosy face that didn’t need the fake eyelashes and red lipstick she chose to wear. She had inherited her father’s dark hair and her mother’s blue eyes. She was already turning into a beauty, often attracting men’s stares.

  Marlene fought the urge to ask her about the WhatsApp group. Looking at somebody’s messages was probably a criminal offense in Sarita’s world, akin to reading private diary entries in Marlene’s generation. It could ruin the whole trip. Besides, it would be easier to watch her niece if she didn’t suspect anything. Maybe all her friends wanted was a picture of Carloalberto or a selfie of him and Sarita.

  Or not. Marlene remembered her sister-in-law cautioning her to “keep the girl on a short leash.” Sarita had been in trouble largely due to peer pressure, her father had said. Because of these two girls. When Sarita announced she was going to browse the boutiques, Marlene insisted on accompanying her.

  Later that evening, they ate again at The Ambassador. Without Carloalberto there, Sarita admitted that she didn’t really enjoy the place; it was too formal for her taste and didn’t allow shorts or sandals. But Marlene insisted. The desserts alone were worth donning a pair of nice shoes.

  Per usual, the girl tried to start a conversation about Carloalberto’s good looks, but Marlene redirected the conversation to a couple of the cases she’d solved back in Cuba. Sarita listened attentively, more interested than she would ever admit.

  “Did you like being a cop, Tía?” she asked over her spaghetti Bolognese.

  “I did,” Marlene answered. “It wasn’t always easy, and political issues made it tougher, but I enjoyed my work.”

  “Was it dangerous?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Sarita cocked her head slightly to one side, then whispered, “Did you carry a gun every day?”

  “Every day I was on duty, yes,” Marlene said, flashing back to the Bacuranao incident, which she had no intention of sharing.

  “What kind was it?”

  “An old Russian model. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

  “Do you own one now?”

  “Goodness, no, mijita. What for?”

  “Could you teach me how to shoot?”

  “Not in a million years,” Marlene laughed.

  A man wearing a chef’s hat and an immaculate white apron walked by their table and glanced at them, but Marlene barely noticed.

  The main course finished, the waiter brought out the guava caramel bread pudding—large enough to share—that Marlene had chosen for dessert, intrigued by the guava addition. At the sight of the candied pecans layered over the pudding, Sarita whistled. They dove right in, munching ecstatically for a few minutes.

  “Would you ever become a cop again in Miami?” the girl asked after the bowl was compl
etely clean.

  “I don’t think so. My English isn’t good enough, for one thing. Besides,” Marlene licked her lips, “being a baker is more fun.”

  “But not as cool as being a detective.”

  Marlene laughed. “I’m past the cool stage, mijita. What about you? Any idea of what you want to do when you grow up?”

  “I’d like to be a journalist,” Sarita said thoughtfully. “It’s cool, fun, even a little dangerous.”

  “Every job that involves finding out the truth has an element of danger,” Marlene agreed.

  Sarita nodded.

  “I’m not scared of danger,” she announced.

  Marlene sighed. “I know. But I’m scared for you, mijita.”

  5: The Shamana’s Prophecy

  The bus was headed to the Stann Creek district of Belize, where a local shamana would give them a talk about jungle plants and Mayan ceremonies. The tour guide was a short, muscular young man named Manuel who spoke fluent English, Spanish and Maya. “You guys are lucky; you’re going to meet the most famous female healer in Stann Creek,” he told the group. “We had to schedule this eight months in advance—she’s that in demand!”

  Marlene had booked the excursion out of curiosity, wondering how different shamans were from Santería practitioners. She wasn’t a believer, but one of her best friends in Cuba was a highly respected santero. She was hoping to write him a letter—a real one, handwritten and stamped—about her findings. Though she used email for work, Marlene wasn’t a big fan of the Internet.

  Sarita hadn’t been interested in meeting the shamana at first, but changed her mind when she discovered that Carloalberto, Helen and Emma had signed up for the excursion too. When they got on the small, air-conditioned bus, Sarita positioned herself behind Emma, who had a window seat, and Carloalberto. Helen was on the aisle seat across from him. Marlene sat next to her niece and watched the couple’s exchanges, which looked quite ordinary: