“Geezus, that’s terrible.”

“Not as bad as cutting off my rooster.” He motioned vaguely at his crotch. “She always gave me a choice, though, so you can understand why I’m still thankful. It’s better to be locked up, I think, or beaten with a cane stalk.”

Tomlinson had been looking forward to meeting Castro’s mistress. Not now. “This was after you moved from the village near Cojimar?”

“Hell yes. I’d have run away, but I still had bad memories of drowning. And lots of bad hops, as you know. Plobacho has a much better baseball field. Look—you can see it from here.” He moved a stool, stood on it, and opened the window. “This is how I got out at night. If there was a full moon, we’d play until morning.” For a moment, he was happy. Then, from a higher vantage point, he surveyed his old room and realized something was amiss. “Those maricóns,” he said after a moment. “Someone stole my best shit.”

Tomlinson nearly winced. Weed that was more than three years old? No . . . Figgy was missing a sports coat he claimed almost fit, and a shrine to his patron saint, Eleguá, and a baseball trophy. On the shelf was a photo of the thing: an ornate silver cup with seams like a baseball and an inscription plate too blurry to read.

“You won this?”

“How old do you think I am? That’s a valuable antique, brother. Nobody won that game. I wouldn’t have felt okay stealing it if they had.” Figgy had placed the photo against the wall in a respectful way before tying on a pair of old sneakers. “If they stole my best shit, I bet they took other shit, too.”

Tomlinson had to ask, “What do you mean, no one won the game?”

Too late. Figgy went out the door, saying, “She’s going to be mad. There’s nothing my mu-maw hates worse than a thief, and that was my job. You know, protecting her valuables. But not everything valuable would fit in here.”

The briefcase, he meant, which he carried against his chest like a pillow, or a shield.

Upstairs, the house was spacious, though not large enough to cloak the poverty of its owner. A penniless woman lived here, but a sickness inhabited the place, too. Figgy switched on lamps that had no bulbs. Closets had been thrown open and emptied. Walls once adorned with art were scarred by outlines of missing frames. What little furniture remained was littered with fallen plaster. Yet, in the formal dining room, undisturbed, was a table big enough for candelabras and a dozen chairs, plus fine china and silverware—and place settings for only two. In the middle, a wilted sunflower.

“Does she ever come down here?” Tomlinson kept his voice low, spooked by it all, the craziness of ageless and interminable yearning for something long dissolved by time. It scared him because the same crazy yearning burned within him.

Figgy, at the foot of the stairs, tilted his head and called, “It’s me, Figueroa. I’ll find the men who robbed you. I won’t let the Guardia take me away from you this time. But, uhh . . . I’d like to say hello first. Oh—and I brought this to make you feel better.”

The briefcase—he held it up.

Tomlinson put his hand on the shortstop’s shoulder in a comforting way. “I’ll go up and check on her. Stay here, if you want.”

Figgy let him pass but said, “I’m coming, too,” then took the lead when they got to the landing because there were halls and many rooms. “She lives in there,” he said.

Tomlinson entered through double doors into a circular room with so many windows it reminded him of a lighthouse. Antique lamps and furniture . . . the scent of lavender even stronger than the scented letters opened here sixty years ago by a girl who was in love. Not a girl . . . a beautiful young woman. Tomlinson, looking at a framed photograph, said, “That’s her—Imelda,” because it could be no one else. Stunning. A teenage mistress dressed in virginal white, black eyes that projected a yearning spark across the decades.

He stood fixated while Figgy cracked a door, then another door. “She’s gone,” he said, and walked to a window that opened into stars and a breeze sweet with trees and a nearby river. “Damn it,” he muttered. Then swore again, louder. “Son of a mother . . . you see that?”

It was enough to yank a man back to reality. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s there”—Figgy pointed—“she goes there at night sometimes. But that can’t be her. She carries a candle or a lantern, not a flashlight. Last time men with flashlights were there, well . . . you know what happened. I had to throw my best bat off the cliff.”

Tomlinson was completely lost. “What in God’s name are you talking about?” But then he saw it: in the distance, a beam of light. Someone a quarter mile away panning a bright LED vertically up and down an industrial-sized chimney that had no roof or building to support it. “Is that an old factory or what?”

“You can’t stay here,” Figuerito said, “but you can’t see where she is either.” He rushed across the room, then stopped with an I’ve got it! expression on his face. “Follow me.” He grabbed the briefcase and took off.

Tomlinson ran after him. “Where are we going?”

“There’s a place in the cellar. No one will find you there. Me, I’m going after those men with flashlights.”

“And do what?”

“I already told you.”

“Kill them? Gad. Just because they’re trespassing? At least you could pretend to be undecided.”

Figgy didn’t know what that meant. “Do you like home movies?” he asked, and vaulted the last three steps.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy. Let’s take the Buick. Hey . . . what’s the rush?”

“The old kind that you crank on a projector,” the shortstop replied. “If someone hadn’t stolen the projector, but they must have. Mu-maw, she wouldn’t like you seeing her movies, so don’t make any noise.”

“You can’t be serious, man. Watch a movie while you go off and kill people? Dude . . . slow down. Christ, you’re going to pull a hamstring. Figueroa . . . ?”

The little Cuban didn’t stop until they were in the cellar, where he opened the washing machine, removed several blankets with Copacabana embroidered across them, then a metal film canister. The canister was old-style, huge. “Here,” he said. “There are some parts about baseball you’ll like.”

Odd, the look on the shortstop’s face. Figgy was not a man who communicated via clever subtext, but there seemed to be a message there.

“Baseball?” Tomlinson asked.

Figgy pointed to a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, the cellar’s only light. “You’ll have to hold the film up to that and sort of strip it through your fingers. Do it fast.” He pantomimed to illustrate. “It’s almost like watching TV.” He placed the canister on a chair next to a couple of candles. “Don’t let anyone see this, and be careful if you light a match. Film burns fast, brother. You’ve got to promise. I won’t be gone long.”

Tomlinson realized, He thinks he might be killed by whoever is out there. “Amigo,” he said, “let me tell you something about your grandmother. She’s crazy as three loons. Let’s leave the letters—that’s what we came to do—and get the hell out of here.”

Figuerito was in a hurry. “Don’t tell her that. If you’re lucky, she’ll only lock you in my room.”

If not for stomach cramps, Anatol Kostikov might have reacted differently when the Cuban cops forced him against the car and tried to cuff him. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation because he had been looking forward to following the hippie and the traitor into the cemetery. If Vernum Quick, the deviant worm, was right, they would lead him to a mausoleum where, locked inside, was something the Russian had wanted all his life.