“Your friend’s not there?”

“The guard won’t say, which tells me Doc checked in but he left and hasn’t come back yet. It’s a sort of sensory connection thing we have.”

In the glove box, Figueroa found a receipt book and a stub of a pencil. “What kind of car does he drive?”

“That he rented, you mean?” Tomlinson began scribbling a note. “Knowing him, something beige with seat belts.”

Next stop was the Masonic Grand Lodge of Cuba on Avenida Salvador Allende, west in Vedado. The building was an Art Deco Gothic from the ’50s, eleven stories tall, crowned by a lighted, revolving planet Earth. Two guards stationed here. Tomlinson got out, carrying the card given to him by Raúl Corrales. “These guys meet at weird hours, you never know, but keep an eye open for the Mercedes,” he said to Figgy. “If they let me in and I give you a thumbs-up, that means you can haul ass inside if you need to hide from the Russian.”

For fifteen minutes, Figueroa sat there, long enough to roll a joint and light it. He checked and rechecked the mirror, alert for the Mercedes, but didn’t notice two motorcycle cops parked down the street, which also happened to be downwind. That’s who he was talking with, the cops, when Tomlinson exited the building and did an immediate about-face. But then turned around—he couldn’t just go off and abandon the little guy—despite an ingrained aversion to men in uniform, especially with the scent of good weed in the air.

Figgy, though, had the situation under control. “They feel you should drive,” he whispered. “Do you have twenty dollars American?”

“You bribed them? Thank god.”

“And the chickens, they wanted them all, but I talked them down to two.”

Tomlinson smoked the last of the doobie while he followed the cops to their apartment on Zapata, a street that skirted a cemetery so large that mausoleums and lighted statuettes accompanied them ten blocks before the cops pulled over. They switched off their headlamps, checked the street both ways, and waved for Figueroa to help them with the poultry cages. Gad . . . it reminded Tomlinson of a bizarre drug deal from long ago. Tabs of mescaline, an undercover narc, and a conga line of Hare Krishnas had somehow intersected. Details were sketchy, but he remembered thinking the bald men in robes were skinheads and was terrified of whatever crazy shit came next, yet he’d remained fixated on the dazzling lights of Berkeley . . . or was it San Francisco Bay?

Didn’t matter. The sick feeling in his hara is what mattered. Same with his fixation on the cemetery, a dazzling grotesquerie, well-lit, a forest of cathedrals, crypts, and crosses, a gated community for the dead. His instincts warned him not to look away, but his battle for clarity won—and there, a block behind them, was the black Mercedes.

Figgy reappeared, slapping at bugs . . . no, pinfeathers on his shirt, and saw the car, too. Instead of getting in the Buick, he jogged toward the cops, who didn’t want to be bothered—not while lugging cages up the stairs—but the good cop relented . . . placed his chicken on the ground and listened while Figgy talked and pointed at the Mercedes.

Brilliant, Tomlinson thought, yet futile. It was a finesse that could not work. But, my god . . . it did work. The cop drew his weapon, signaled his partner, and they both trotted toward the black car.

Figgy jumped in and slammed the door. “Drive fast, brother.”

Tomlinson was already in second gear. “Christ, what kind of crazy bullshit story did you give them?” He shifted to third and checked the rearview mirror: the Russian was out, hands up, a man so big he dwarfed the Mercedes and the cops.

“Story?”

“Dude, if there was ever a time to make up a story, this is it.” Now, in the mirror, the Russian, instead of handing over his wallet, was gesturing impatiently like a VIP without a driver’s license or even an ID.

Figueroa, looking out the side window, said, “Damn . . . I wanted to drive through the cemetery. You think Key West is nice? There’s a cathedral in there full of dead famous people. It’s next to the baseball memorial, and I wanted to show you—”

“The cops,” Tomlinson interrupted, “try to focus, man. What did you say?”

“I told them”—he plucked a feather from his tongue and spit—“I told them the Russian wants to kill me. That he’s a fat bolá who hates Cubans, especially me, ’cause I defected to the Estados Unidos to play in the major leagues. But I came back to help my abuela.”

“To save your ‘grandmother,’” Tomlinson translated.

“Yes, I’m fairly certain. To save her from embarrassment.”

“They bought it? I’ll be go to hell.”

“Perhaps,” Figgy said, “but what I told them is true.” He twisted around in his seat. “Next time we’re in Havana, we’ll buy beer and visit the grave of Dolf Luque, Cuba’s first major leaguer.”

Gad, he was still talking about the cemetery.

“There’s an area where left-handed pitchers are buried, a nice place to lay in the grass. But even before crazy prison, I couldn’t enjoy my trips because the bad Santero followed me. Others sometimes, too.”

“To a . . . geezus, why?”

Figuerito became uneasy. “Could be that people believed I knew where things of value were hidden, but I don’t. I mean, I do, but that’s not where they are.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Does this have something to do with why every narc, cop, and bad guy in Cuba is after us?” He glanced at the briefcase on the floor. “The cemetery—is that where you found the letters?”

“That’s where some people looked for them, brother. I’m fairly sure. Same with the motorcycles and machine guns.”

Tomlinson needed a time-out. “Let’s not talk for a while,” he said.

•   •   •

FIGUEROA’S GRANDMOTHER, Imelda Casanova, whom locals called the Dowager and feared as a recluse, lived in a gabled house that in a village as small as Plobacho was considered a mansion.

Driving west into the foothills of Sierra del Rosario with the sea to their right, Figgy explained that villagers also feared his grandmother because after the Revolution wealthy Cubans were evicted and their mansions were turned into apartments. Except for one woman. And one house.

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask my mu-maw. Think she’ll be surprised to see me? I’m kind of worried, brother, ’cause I didn’t leave under what you’d call real good terms.”

They discussed Figueroa’s grandmother awhile before Tomlinson got back to it. “Was your father famous? That might be why Fidel let her stay. You said he danced for the Moscow Ballet.” Another motive came to mind, but it was better to get all the options on the table.

“I never met him. Why else would my mother live in Russia when I was a boy living in Cuba? Before I was kicked out of school, children teased me, saying it was a lie: Cubans didn’t dance ballet, especially in Moscow, where all men are fat except for soldiers and maricóns. Oh, brother, did that make me mad.”

Uh-oh, Tomlinson thought, and pictured Figgy as a schoolboy tossing bullies off a cliff. “How did you, uhh, deal with the situation?”

“The multiplication table ended the problem,” he answered.

“Excellent, a great way to deal with anger.” Tomlinson nodded. “Doing math problems in your head. Know what? I’m going to suggest that to my friend Doc. A nice guy but a lot of repressed anger, I think, that manifests itself in tight-ass behavior. You know, always on time, has to follow through with every little promise. The guy won’t even smoke a joint.”

“Who?”

Tomlinson had to go through it again, an abbreviated version.

“Smoking pitillo, sure, it might relax your friend, but I don’t know about his ass. What I was talking about was getting kicked out of school because of arithmetic. I couldn’t get past three times three—three being my lucky number, as you know—so I didn’t have to listen to their shit on the playground no more. Your friend the doctor, is he good at arithmetic?”