That Time in New York: A Válairia Hernández Mystery

By Carolina Cositore

Divorced Cuban social worker Válairia Hernández (named for Vladimir Lenin), the outspoken mulatta, who met her first foreigner and solved her first murder in That Time in Havana, comes to New York in 2005 for a brief fiancée visit "but I am not your fiancée", fulfilling a longtime wish to travel.
The story is told through the perspectives of key characters, a gay couple, a divorced professor and single father, a lesbian couple, a couple facing an empty nest, as well as community leaders, but we see New York and them through Laira's Cuban eyes as she encounters and counters U.S. misconceptions about Cuba and shares experiences with her new gay, lesbian, Jewish, and diaspora African-American friends. She also becomes embroiled in the tensions of an upstate New York progressive school that result in murder, and in which she becomes a suspect. Flashbacks to left wing events in the 40s through 60s help to orient the reader who may not be familiar with them or might just enjoy reliving them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098324490

Book preview

Valáiria Hernández Mysteries

THAT TIME IN HAVANA

ESO TIEMPO EN LA HABANA (Spanish version in process)

ЭТО ВРЕМЯ В ГАВАНЕ (Russian version in process)

THAT TIME IN NEW YORK

THAT TIME IN CARACAS

CAONAO AND JAGUA/CAONAO Y JAGUA

(A bilingual retelling of a Cuban myth)

This book is dedicated to my family

of whom I am truly very proud

both those from whom I came

and those who are coming after

and

as always, to Cuba,

  the homeland of my heart.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I must first express my gratitude for the good fortune to have lived in two very special places that figure prominently in this story: my hometown, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. and, although it appears indirectly, Havana, Cuba.

Secondly, I am grateful to the nation of Cuba for being an example to the world.

Next, thank you to my family and friends for their continuous support in encouraging me each in his/her own way, especially my mystery readers and cover critics: Sherman Sitrin, Samantha Sitrin, Marina Sitrin and Aviva Katz

Thank you to anyone whom I have inadvertently left out, it is truly an error of the mind, not of the heart.

Please remember, this is a work of fiction and all characters, unless public figures so identified, are creations of my imagination and not anyone living; although the anamneses are firmly based on actual accounts of the time.

Table of Contents

Characters in Order of Introduction

Minor Characters - Or Are They?

Copyright

ANAMNESIS ONE*

CHAPTER 1: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2005 - CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N. Y.

ANAMNESIS TWO

CHAPTER 2: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2005

CHAPTER 3: THURSDAY EVENING - KITCHAWANC SCHOOL

SUBSEQUENTLY

CHAPTER 4: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2005

ANAMNESIS THREE

CHAPTER 5: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2005

CHAPTER 6: SATURDAY EVENING

CHAPTER 7: SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2005 - NEW YORK CITY

CHAPTER 8: MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2005

ANAMNESIS FOUR

CHAPTER 9: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2005

CHAPTER 10: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28

CHAPTER 11: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2005 - NEW YORK CITY AGAIN

CHAPTER 12: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2005

CHAPTER 13: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2005

CHAPTER 14: SUNDAY, NEW YEAR’S DAY 2006

EPILOGUE: SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2006 - HAVANA, CUBA

CHARACTERS IN ORDER OF INTRODUCTION

VALÁIRIA Hernández Garcia (LÁIRA) –40-year-old divorced Cuban social worker, in US for first time on a fiancée visit "

but I’m not your fiancée!"

BILL Richards - 54-year-old US citizen, twice divorced CUNY political science professor, father of Reese, who is not in love with Láira.

ROGER Williams –42, gay African-American artist, brother to Mark, will the stars steer him wrong?

GEORGE Dubois – Roger’s partner, ambitious history teacher obsessed with genealogy.

ALICE Lindsey and MOIRA Gavin Lindsey–Kitchawanc teachers, baby daughter Kimberly. Alice is go-between for the board but out of political sync with the school.

JOAN and STEPHEN McIntyre – He, a research scientist; she a teacher at 52 feeling school pressure.

JACK and CARLOTTA Richards – Bill’s leftwing parents, how seriously do they take their politics?

JOSEPH and THERESA Delaney – The dean is cause of school maelstroms. Domestic liqueur is her hobby.

MARIA Mendez – Artist living on Delaneys’ farm.

MARK Williams - 37, Afro-American CUNY associate of Bill, brother of Roger, very loyal to his family.

MINOR CHARACTERS – OR ARE THEY?

Rabbi JEFFREY and SARAH Warsaw– Rabbi Jeff is on the school board, Sarah is a green political activist,

sons David and Jonathon at school.

LUCY and TOM Lozano–Lucy on school board, son Louis

RICHARD and LINDA Ellis- Richard on school board, daughter Amanda

ANDREA and MATTHEW Davis – Andrea on school board.  Daughter Desiree

Detectives Randy Mitchell, Suzanne Taylor and Juan Espinosa.  Will they find the real killer or take the easy way out?

DENE and TEREMUN Johnston – Roger’s aunt and uncle immersed in African culture.

Daughter DADA’s husband BERNARDO is NYC detective.

©2012 United States.

Although registered copyright, this is a copy left work, you may use it as you wish, please acknowledge the source.

ISBN: 978-1-09-832449-0

ANAMNESIS ONE*

In the racially tense Chicago of 1969, Fred Hampton, rising leader of the local Black Panther Party, is responsible for children’s breakfast programs, a free medical center, hospital blood drives and sickle cell anemia testing.

Fred Hampton is also an advocate of the Party’s insistence on armed self-defense and is publicly critical of Cook County State Attorney Edward Hanrahan for violent and prejudicial police attacks on the black community. Chicago police and the Panthers had engaged in four shootouts in the two years prior to this one, in one of which two police officers were killed.

State Attorney Hanrahan ordered a raid on Hampton’s apartment and at 4:45 AM on December 4, 1969, acting on information from the FBI that guns are stored there, 15 heavily armed police charge the apartment where Hampton, drugged by a confederate of the raiders, is deeply asleep next to his eight-month pregnant wife.

Seventeen-year-old Mark Clark, on security duty in the front room with a shotgun on his lap, is killed instantly; the single round he fires in his death convulsion is the only shot from the apartment’s occupants. The police fire between 82 and 92 rounds at the sleeping Panthers.

Hampton’s wife and four others are wounded, but they can hear two of the raiders in the bedroom identify Fred as wounded (in the arm and shoulder).

That’s Fred Hampton.

Is he dead? …Bring him out.

He’s barely alive.

He’ll make it.

Two shots are heard, later found to have been fired point blank into Hampton’s head as he lay.

He’s good and dead now.

*This reminiscence in this work of fiction is completely factual. The other anamneses, while firmly based on fact, are altered for the needs of the story.

CHAPTER 1

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2005

CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N. Y.

Láira and Bill

I’d found that if I stood at a slant away from the window while keeping my feet in Bill’s thick ugly socks close to the baseboard heating, I could see and even appreciate the icy unfamiliar beauty of winter sun glistening on frosted grass in the meadow below.  It wasn’t the warm morning view of river and sea at home that usually allowed me to lose any leftover night worries, but maybe it would do.  As long as the cold keeps a healthy distance, I thought.

Waking next to Bill this morning felt so comfortable, so right; but nothing else did.  Give it time I told myself, you’ve only just arrived and it’s only for a little while.  My feet stayed warm, but the cold began reaching in, trying to touch me through the glass of the large picture window.  Never have I been as cold as I was yesterday.  Just thinking about it I rubbed my arms.  Here, cold starts with a tingle in your hands and feet then moves so you can’t feel the tips of your nose or ears and works into your very bones.

In the winter in Havana it can be in the 50s or even the 40s for a night or two, but once the sun comes out it gets hot again.  New York doesn’t seem to work that way.  The winter sun here is bright but very far away, it lights but doesn’t warm. Maybe that’s why foreigners seem so cold to us, I thought, they live in such cold places they must close up to protect themselves.  But I’m the foreigner now and Bill is not a cold person.  I was afraid I was the closed one, although the warmth I felt when I saw him waiting for me in the airport and our night together belied that.

I had a great many misgivings about this holiday: cultural, political and overall personal qualms.  It had taken Bill a couple of months to convince me by telephone and email to come for this fiancée visit and then a few more months to get permission to come from the US Interests Section in Havana and the FBI and who knew who-all.  Everyone said my permission came very quickly, that usually it took a year or more, which had made my older brother, Mio as I call him, Colonel Camillo to everyone else, very suspicious and negative about this trip, but Mio is always suspicious, as a police detective in Cuba’s Playa del Este, it’s his job to be.  My twin, Ladi, had been encouraging and enthusiastic.  He knew how much I always wanted to travel and this was my opportunity; too bad it had to be to the United States, he’d said.  A practical and conscientious physician, Ladi had given me a list of medications to buy that Cuba was not permitted by the US blockade to import.

My son Miguel had given me a list of things to buy as well, computer gadgets.  Miguel at 12 did not believe I would find a trace of his lost twin, which is one of the main reasons I’m even here; he doesn’t remember her and probably doesn’t still believe in Mercedes after ten and a half years.  He does believe in Bill however, and likes him too much.  My father, José, likes Bill as well and, as a retired military man he too was cautious, but his caution was concerned with the personal, not the political.  How much do you like Bill? he had asked me more than once.  How much do I like Bill?  I didn’t know the answer to that.  I liked to say to myself, more than like, but less than love; but I’m afraid this trip may push me in a direction I’m not at all sure I want to go.

We’d met for only a week last summer in Havana.  Granted, it was a week of excitement, adventures, sex and romance, but it was only a week.  In the months since, he’s made a lot of changes in his life.  He moved from Brooklyn and bought this house in Croton so his daughter could go to school near his parents; he told me he appreciated how important the extended family was for my son in Cuba.  Bill and I had missed each other terribly those first weeks and months; incredibly, we’d formed a very strong attachment in our short time together.

But I remained in Havana where I’ve always been and returned emotionally to where I’ve been for years, concentrating on being director of a social work agency and on my son.  I do not need or want a permanent man in my life.  My one disastrous marriage and a hopeless affair were quite enough to cure me of that.  José had cautioned me that Bill, despite his own two failed marriages, was 14 years older than I, had a twelve-year-old daughter to raise alone, was smitten with me and would probably want to marry me.  And, what he was afraid to say, would want me to move here.  Bill has even hired a private detective to try and find my daughter.  Although he had not much to report yet, we both knew it gave me hope.  Bill’s a good man, and I’ve been honest.  I came as his fiancée as the only way the US would let me come; Bill knows I am not his fiancée.  I’d warned him that these two weeks together – I wouldn’t leave Miguel for longer - might make our inevitable parting again exceedingly painful.  But I’m here.  We make each other laugh, I love his grin that spreads from one side of his face to the other, we share many values, we make beautiful sex together, but he knows I would never leave Cuba.

Noises from downstairs signaled that Bill’s daughter Reese was waking up.  And what will I do with that?  My meeting with Bill’s 12-year-old at the airport yesterday had been a blend of affection and poorly disguised hostility.  The welcoming hug and kiss that felt real were accompanied by a sharp accidental stomp on my foot that had been a signal of how the rest of the day and evening were to go.

After the long drive up to Croton, the three of us stretched our legs by walking on the wintry streets with arms around each other’s waists - how very, very cold it was despite Bill’s belated 40th birthday gift to me of hat and gloves – I would feel a sharp elbow or inadvertent dig of nails from his daughter.  How much do I like Bill?  Should I reassure her that I am not a threat to her with her father, or do I like him enough to try and win his daughter over?

And then there’s the religion I thought, as I headed into the shower.  Reese was anxious last night to light the Chanukah candles even though that Jewish holiday was over.  Bill said this was part of his Reconstructionist Judaism that is and isn’t a religion for him, and which he knows I cannot comprehend at all.  I’m a secular humanist, a revolutionary; not that religious people can’t be revolutionaries of course, I’m just not one of them I thought as I tried to adjust the shower water temperature that either came scalding hot or tepid.  I settled for tepid and while I hurriedly washed in the cold bathroom, I remembered gathering around the tiny colored candles set in a holder on the windowsill in front of the huge living room window.  We all lit some of the eight little candles and, reflected in the dark glass, the candlelight was bewitching.  Bill said some words in Hebrew, a prayer I guess, and they sang a song in that language too, none of which I could understand, but I did understand when they exchanged little presents, so I ran to my bags to get the little gifts I’d brought.  It was a cozy way to be welcomed and we ate applesauce and potato pancakes that Bill made and drank wine, not Reese of course, as she’s only 12 like my son Miguel.  Bill said Reese could tell me the story of Chanukah today; at least she speaks a good bit of Spanish.

We’d sat in the candlelight in that room full of books; how many books are in that living room, the bedroom, all over this house.  I was envious, because with almost half a century of blockade, my country has only recently begun to publish books like it used to do.  I couldn’t hope to read so many in my two-week visit; besides, most of them are in English.  My English is terrible, although once I decided to come for this visit I tried to study some more on the English television course, but I didn’t have much chance to practice.  I can read a bit and understand when people speak slowly, but no one seems to understand me.  Last night we had talked and talked in Spanish until Reese went downstairs to bed.  The downstairs is a little mother-in-law suite they call it, which almost-adolescent Reese has taken over.  I smiled as I stepped out of the shower and began to dry myself; remembering how Bill and I then went to bed too, and came together in a way that made the intervening months disappear.

Reese rapped on the bathroom door interrupting my erotic reverie, Cuño! I forgot the downstairs bath doesn’t have a working shower!  Sorry, I’ll be right out, I called, hurriedly finishing drying and wrapping the towel around me to dress in the bedroom.  Good morning. I’m sorry Reese, I forgot about the shower downstairs not working, I said, about to give her a morning kiss as she rushed past me.

Whatever, she said.

I squatted down next to the heat in the bedroom, clumsily pulling on jeans and the purple sweater Bill had given me for a Chanukah present last night.  Purple is my favorite color and looks well with my dusky coloring.  I hesitated, and then wrestled my long thick kinky hair into a sort of twist to wear the chopstick-like contraption Reese had given me.  That proved a happy choice as Reese was obviously pleased and breakfast and newspaper reading proceeded uneventfully.

So, what do you want to see and do today? Bill asked me over jelly donuts, putting aside his New York Times.  His blond curls were damp on his neck and, unbelievably, it looked like there were bits of ice on the tips of his hair from his jog.

Everything, anything, as long as its warm, I said, concentrating on trying not to make too much of a mess with the jelly squeezing out of my donut.  It didn’t help that their big dog Lucky was sitting with his head on my lap as if he knew I was the one who was going to drop something.

Watching me struggle Bill gave the grin I love that crinkles his eyes, I think it’s better if we limit our first excursions to the area and save going into the city for the weekend, he suggested.  Jetlag will hit you later today and you’ll be tired, and you’ll need to get a warmer coat too.

I hesitated, not because I didn’t need a warmer coat, but because I haven’t money for such things and, while I’m Bill’s guest for food and shelter, dressing me is something else.  An unpleasant image flashed of some women at home, many of them mulattas like me, sporting foreign clothes that were gifts from their consort of the moment.  I know this is not our relationship, but the image came nonetheless.  Reese rescued the situation by suggesting a secondhand shop in Ossining, which is just the next town south, she said.  Bill frowned, but I said a used coat was an excellent idea; I’d only need it for two weeks.

The shopping proved to be fun.  Reese helped me select a long black coat, very long on my 5’2" and black isn’t my favorite, but she said most grownup women in New York wear black and I’d fit right in.  They told me the coat is warm enough for Siberia, which is something I don’t care to test.  I also found used boots with a fur lining, so maybe my feet won’t freeze.

Ossining is a little city, Bill drove pass Sing Sing Prison, which he said used to cause a brownout in the city when someone, like Jack and Ethel Rosenberg in the 50s, was electrocuted.  Cuba has capital punishment on the books as well, but it is very rarely invoked.  Even the Salvadoran who put the bombs in the hotels on Posada Carriles’ orders has not yet been executed, but I knew the US was different.

Although Bill’s grandparents were born in Cuba and he and his parents had visited in the past, like most other Americans, Reese has not been allowed by her government to go, so as we drove back to the little town of Croton she was constantly pointing to things and asking me do you have that in Cuba? Is it like this in Cuba? Everything was very new to me and, from what I could see from the car window, most of my answers were no.

With my warm coat and boots, I thought I might be ready for a little outdoor time, so Bill drove to the Croton Dam.  First we drove across it for a view of the Croton River Gorge below and then parked down at the Reservoir Park.  We strolled around the little recreation area and Reese and I got on the swings.  I hadn’t been on a swing in years, but I remembered how and Reese and I had a little contest to see how high we could go until Bill called us to please stop. 

This reservoir supplies water to New York City and Bill said he’d been taught in school that the dam was the second largest hand-hewn masonry structure after the Great Pyramids.  It’s good to know I’ve seen the second largest, I don’t expect I’ll ever get to see the pyramids, I laughed. 

The stonework was impressive from below and Reese took our photo sitting on the wall in front of the spillway while Bill kissed me, whispering that he’d like to keep me warm like this until summer.  I snuggled against him thinking it very unlikely we’d be together anywhere in the summer.  His government has cut trips to my country by US citizens to almost nothing.  Even very close relatives can only visit once every three years.  Last summer he came illegally, but as the US spends more manpower and money hunting its citizens who visit Cuba than it does hunting terrorists, it is too dangerous for him to continue doing that.

On the way home we drove past Reese’s new school, the Kitchawanc School.  Bill said Kitchawanc was the name of the original indigenous settlers in these parts, and the school was up in the Mt. Airy hills.  I went to this school when it was just elementary level, he said, Jack and Carlotta were founding members.  It was just a two-room schoolhouse then, nothing like today.

From the car, I saw four buildings set in what seemed like a forest.  Reese played tour guide and pointed out the small office building in what was the original school, the elementary and high school buildings and a small dormitory for boarding students.  Bill offered to keep me warm if I’d like to get out and walk around, but I declined.  Cuddling is wonderful, but the car heater is more effective.

We stopped at