“I might have what you’re looking for. Somewhere back here.”
Britt followed Lilia behind a tinkling beaded curtain to a bedroom with a chest of drawers. In the second drawer was a cigar box that smelled of patchouli. Lilia opened the box. Nestled in tissue paper were locks of hair of varying lengths and colors.
Lilia smiled. “I got around,” she said. She raked the locks with long, well-manicured fingernails and fished out a strand bound in a red and gold Montecristo wrapper.
There was a knock at the front door.
Lilia called through the beaded curtain, “Somebody see who it is.”
Jake and Fay exchanged glances. Could Hector or whoever he worked for have followed them? The rap was sharp and insistent.
“I’ll get it.” Tensing his body for a straight buck up the middle, Jake threw open the door.
The boy in the Marlins baseball cap and high-top Air Jordans stood on the threshold. “Where’s Miss Lilia at?”
Lilia swished her way past Jake. “What’s happening?”
The boy handed her a crumpled slip of paper. “Old man in cutoffs and sandals say to call this number.”
Lilia turned from the boy and slipped the paper in the folds of her kimono. “It’s a message,” she said.
“Who from?” asked Jake.
“Garcia,” she replied.
8. STRANGE FISH—Tananarive Due
Lilia Sands worked her overpainted face into a frown. “Garcia? Which Gar-cia? Do you know how many Garcias there are in the Dade County phone book?” She studied the young messenger, who was orbiting her as though he expected a tip. I’ll give you a tip, all right, kid, Jake Lassiter thought. You’d better earn that ten bucks I just gave you and go back outside to keep an eye on Fay’s pickup.
“What’s his first name?” she asked the boy.
He shrugged. “He said you’d know.”
Lilia smiled, then delicately raised her fingertips to her temple as if to brush away imaginary perspiration.
“Ah…” she said, with a long, rapturous sigh. “That Garcia.”
Jake shifted his weight from one sore leg to the other. Time out, he thought. He, Britt, and Fay had come to Lilia’s for a lock of Castro’s hair—the real Castro’s hair. So, they had what they’d come for. No need to tango here all day. Even a pit bull reporter like Britt had to know when it was time to move on.
“Look, Miss Sands,” he said, surprised at his own politeness, “we can bail out of here if you need to catch up on your phone calls.”
“This will interest you,” Lilia said, holding up her index finger to silence Jake. (Watching, Fay and Britt both took mental note of this tactic in case it might come in handy someday.) Lilia cradled the receiver of her black novelty telephone, which was shaped like a baby grand piano. Each time she pressed a key, a tone sounded; she was dialing a laborious version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Long-distance, Britt noticed.
Off key, Fay decided.
Damn annoying, Jake thought.
“It’s me. Put him on,” Lilia said abruptly, in Spanish, and then she smiled and nodded, her green-flecked brown eyes wide with pleasure as she listened to an indiscernible voice. Hanging up, she surveyed her waiting audience as though she were reliving a finale number onstage at the Nacional.
“I shouldn’t tell you this… ” Lilia began.
But you will, Britt thought, perking up. Sentences that began with “I shouldn’t tell you this” were verbal foreplay, and satisfaction was never far behind.
“You didn’t hear this from me, and don’t ask who told me—but Miami is about to have an important visitor from Cuba. Believe me, when he comes, the people’s reaction will make Nelson Mandela’s reception in Miami look like the papal visit. He’s coming soon, within days. He didn’t say exactly when.”
“Give me a break,” Jake said, not buying it.
“It can’t be,” Fay said.
“It is,” Lilia said, beaming.
Britt’s brain was turning somersaults. Not one head, but two, and Fidel was still alive? And, apparently, intending to set foot in a city that nourished itself on fantasies about the day he would drop dead? Home to weekend commandos who would love to help him do just that, with a million-dollar price tag on his head?