The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [212]
Raffy unzipped the soft brown leather bag. He was so focused on the fact that he was staring at what would prove to be, when they counted it, a million dollars, that he forgot to be terrified that Annie was taking off into air. “Madre de Dios!” he shouted. “Whoever saw so many dollars? We did it! Jack, we did it!”
Dan thumbed one of the stacks of bills like a deck of cards. “Yep, if you’ve got to be left holding the bag, this is the way to do it,” he agreed.
As Annie came out of their climb and headed North by Northwest, Dan and Raffy counted up one hundred bonded stacks of one hundred hundred-dollar bills,
Annie burst out laughing. “So he did leave me a million dollars?”
Rafael’s enthusiasm overwhelmed him and he had to pat his chest to calm himself. “I told you, Annie! I told you! It was never the money with Jack. See how he gives away the money. Easy as a smile. He always said, ‘I’ll leave Annie a million dollars.’ Of course, if you could see your way to sharing say maybe a quarter, okay, a tenth, with me? That would be very kind. With Jack, it was, well, with Jack—” The small man pulled at his ponytail, trying to think of the right way to say it. “Jack’s ‘nature is subdu’d to what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.’ That happens to be the Bard of Avon’s view on art and if the Bard tells you something, you can definitely take it to the bank.” The slender Cuban put down the money and picked up his guitar. “Art. It’s a little past the wit of man.” He played a melody softly.
Los amigos me olvidaron
Sólo mi madre lloraba
A Dios pedía y rogaba
Que salvara su hijo.
While the Cuban sang, Dan told Annie that he had forced Raffy to go see his mother in the goldsmith shop and that Raffy’s reunion with her had been “a calamity, more or less,” that Mrs. Ramirez had called him a criminal ne’er-do-well musician and had shut the shop door in his face. In fact, on learning that Raffy would be returned to prison in Florida (which unfortunately he’d told her was absolutely true), Mrs. Ramirez had called him, in comparison with his older brother, the shame of the family name.
Slumping over his guitar, Raffy sighed to Annie that Dan was right. His mother had thrown him out of her life as a failure; for a Communist, Maria Ramirez really seemed to care only about what the Bard would call, putting money in her purse.
“You’re going back to Havana right now!” Annie abruptly turned the Cessna TU206 around in a high-banked 180-degree curve.
“What are you doing?” Both Raffy and Dan were shouting at her.
Annie steered the plane back toward the coast and over the Viñales Valley, so low she could see fields of tobacco. The bumpy flight at low altitude sent the two men in the rear seats falling against each other. “I’m taking you back,” she told Raffy.
“Are you crazy?” shouted Dan. “He’s in my custody.”
“I’m sorry,” Annie told him. “Raffy’s going home to Havana. Give him half of the money in that suitcase, $500,000. Come on, Dan. Do it!”
Raffy shouted, “What?” He was torn between his horror at the flight and shock that she was giving him half Jack’s money.
Annie yelled, “You’re going to tell your mother you made all that money playing guitar. That you’re not a failure, that you’re a great big success, a musical star, in America.”
At first stunned, Raffy pulled himself together enough to protest vehemently. First of all, Annie couldn’t re-land the plane at Puerto Esperanza! Raffy had only been able to guarantee that one tiny time when his relative was on duty at the harbor. That time was past. If they tried to land now, they’d be arrested!
Annie called back, “Then I’ll fly you to a drop-point over land and you’ll have to, as my dad used to say to me, ‘Jump!’ Put a parachute on him, Dan.”
Raffy grabbed Dan by the jacket, “Save me. To tell you the truth, Annie’s more like her dad than I thought. I mean, crazy. Do something.”
Dan pried loose Raffy’s cinnamon-colored fingers from his jacket lapels. “I don’t think she’s joking about this. Have you ever jumped before?