Playing for Keeps (15 page)
14
ON OUR LAST DAY AT SEA, NEIL, JULIETA, AND I FAITHFULLY visited Ricky during each half-hour period the captain had allowed us. It wasn’t enough time.
Glory and her partner didn’t win the bridge tournament, but she didn’t seem to care. It was obvious that she was enjoying working as an attorney again. She met twice with Captain Olson and the chief of security. Things were once more happy between us, and she loyally reported to me.
“The captain wants as few passengers as possible to be around when the INS officials arrive to take charge of Ricky,” she said. “He’s going to start disembarking proceedings immediately upon docking, and once all the passengers have left the ship, he’ll allow the INS officers to come aboard.”
I couldn’t see through my tears. “I want to stay with Ricky as long as possible,” I said. “He needs someone to be with him when the officials come.”
“Rosie, you know you can’t remain on board,” Glory said. “You have to leave with the other passengers.”
I sighed. “As Ricky’s attorney, can you stay with him?”
“Yes,” Glory said. “I should be on hand to make sure his arrest is handled properly. I’ll wait for the INS in the lounge, but I want you to leave the ship with Eloise and Neil and wait for me in the terminal where our baggage will be collected.”
A tear ran down my nose and I rubbed it away. “Ricky can’t go back to Cuba,” I pleaded with her.
“That will be up to the INS,” she answered. “To be honest with you, since Ricky is a minor and he hasn’t set foot on U.S. soil, there’s a good chance he’ll be sent back.”
I let out a sob. I couldn’t help it.
Glory patted my arm and smiled encouragingly. “On the other hand, if his uncle can manage to stall things in the courts, Ricky will reach his eighteenth birthday in less than two months and will be free of that custodian-guardian control. There’ll be plenty of supporters for his cause. I suppose you know that.”
“No,” I said. “What supporters?”
“Ricky’s uncle has a great many friends in the Cuban population of Miami. The captain has been warned that there will be demonstrations at the pier, along with a large number of media people. The Miami police are going to set up barriers to keep them from the pier itself.”
“Will the demonstrations and publicity help?”
Glory shrugged. “Who knows?” She hugged me and said, “Don’t look so mournful, Rosie. There will be other loves in your life.”
“Not like Ricky.”
“Remember Rose Calvert in the movie? She had a granddaughter, which means that after she loved and lost Jack, she married and had children.”
“But did she love her husband?”
“Maybe even more than she had loved Jack. Life didn’t end for her. She had spunk. She kept going.”
And so would I, I knew, because there were things I had to do. I had to keep Ricky from being sent back to Cuba. I’d figure out how. I knew I would.
On Sunday morning we docked in Miami at eight-thirty, but we had all awakened much earlier and eaten a quick breakfast. Our luggage had been placed outside our doors and collected the night before, so we were left with only our carry-ons.
All passengers had been ordered to report to the main lounge at eight-thirty sharp, so at eight Neil, Julieta, and I met in the passageway outside Ricky’s stateroom. I had on the jeans and T-shirt I planned to wear on the flight home, Julieta was in a pink shorts-and-shirt outfit, and Neil was again wearing his awful long-sleeved nylon shirt with the pink flamingos, his straw hat jammed firmly on his head. He looked like a candidate for the worst-dressed tourist of the month. He looked like a nerd. He looked like Neil. I sighed and squeezed his hand. No matter what his appearance, he was the nicest kind of guy.
Stepping up to the guard at the door, I said, “We’ve come to say goodbye to Ricky.”
“The captain didn’t say—” the guard began.
Julieta began to cry. “He’s our friend. We’ll never see him again. You have to let us see him.”
“Just for a few minutes. Please?” I begged.
The guard looked uncomfortable. “I don’t have today’s orders, but . . .” His forehead puckered, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “Okay,” he said. “No more than ten minutes. I’ll open the door when you have to leave.”
“Okay,” Neil said. “Thanks.”
We filed into the room, where Ricky was sitting on the edge of one of the twin beds. He was wearing slacks, the cruise line’s T-shirt, and his straw hat. “It wouldn’t fit in the suitcase,” he said when he saw me looking at it.
We all sat with him, and a couple of tears I
couldn’t keep back rolled down my cheeks. “I’m going to miss you,” I said.
Ricky put his arms around me and said, “Rose, how can I thank you for all—”
Neil interrupted in a gruff voice. “Stop crying, Rose,” he said. “We haven’t got much time.”
He was right. It seemed like only a few minutes before the guard opened the door. “You kids gotta go,” he said.
We filed out. “Goodbye, Ricky,” Julieta said.
Ricky sat bent over in dejection, his arms resting on his knees, his hat covering his face. He didn’t say goodbye, and I didn’t trust myself to speak either.
Someone over the loudspeaker advised passengers with blue slips to disembark, collect their luggage, and go through customs.
“Blue slip,” Julieta said, holding it up. She gave me a quick goodbye hug and said, “I’ll never forget this trip. E-mail me, Rosie. Tell me everything.”
“Goodbye, Neil,” she said. She ducked under his hat’s wide brim to kiss his cheek, and she hugged him longer than she needed to.
“Julieta, hurry up!” her mother called from the doorway. In a moment Julieta had gone.
“Green slip holders may now disembark,” the loudspeaker voice said, so we hurried to where Neil’s grandmother was parked in her wheelchair with two of the other bridge club members.
I gave a wave to Glory, who was sitting near the service desk in the lounge waiting for the INS, just as she had promised. I followed Neil and Mrs. Fleming in her wheelchair down the ramp to the terminal where we’d collect our luggage. For a fleeting moment I wondered how attached Neil’s grandmother was to his gaudy Hawaiian shirt and straw hat.
I moved in under the wide hat brim. “I’ll take over now,” I said to Ricky, who was wearing Neil’s clothes. The plan had actually worked. “Hurry. I can see a line of taxis right outside the door. Take one to the central Miami police station.”
“We may never see each other again, Rose, but I will always remember you and all that you and your friends did to help me,” Ricky said. He gave me a quick kiss and was gone.
“Where’s Neil going?” Mrs. Fleming asked me.
“Neil will be back soon,” I shouted at her. “He’s doing a favor for me.” In spite of the ache in my throat, I gave a long sigh of relief as I saw Ricky’s cab take off, heading into Miami. He had set foot on United States soil. He could ask for political asylum. He could show authorities one of Major Cepeda’s flyers to easily prove that his life would be in danger if the INS returned him to Cuba.
“We’ll wait over here for Glory and Neil,” I told Mrs. Fleming, and I wheeled her chair to a bench against the wall. I sat beside her.
“I knew you and Neil would have a good time together,” she said. “He’s a fine boy, isn’t he?”
She was right. Neil was a fine person. He was bravely sitting alone in the Urbinos’ stateroom, waiting for Glory and the INS. “He’s a very special guy,” I told her. “He’ll always be a good friend.”
I’d need a good friend. And so would Neil. We’d stand by each other. I didn’t know whether Glory would be angry when she discovered Neil waiting for her instead of Ricky. I didn’t know how Mr. Wilson or Captain Olson would react. Probably a lot of people would be mad, and Neil and I would be in big trouble.
Neil had said he was willing to take the risk because no one could truly live without freedom. I felt the same way, and I had the feeling that my mother would understand and even be proud.
Ricky was safely in the United States, and that was what mattered most to me. As for what would happen to Neil and me, I wasn’t worried. We had a very good attorney.
“It’s very tiring sitting here,” Mrs. Fleming said. “It was a nice cruise, though. When I get back home, I’m going to take a hot bath and a nice, long nap.” She peered into my face. “What are you going to do, Rosie?”
“When we finally get home? Well, first, I’m going to hug my mom, and then I’ll call my friend Becca,” I said. “I’ve got so much to tell her.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOAN LOWERY NIXON has been called the grande dame of young adult mysteries and is the author of more than a hundred books for young readers, including
Nobody’s There; Who Are You?; The Haunting; Murdered, My Sweet; Don’t Scream; Spirit
Seeker; Shadowmaker; Secret, Silent Screams; A
Candidate for Murder; Whispers from the Dead;
and the middle-grade novel
Search for the Shadow-man
. Joan Lowery Nixon was the 1997 president of the Mystery Writers of America and is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Best Juvenile Mystery Award. She received the award for
The
Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance,
The Name of the Game Was Murder,
and
The
Other Side of Dark,
which was also a winner of the California Young Reader Medal. Her historical fiction includes the award-winning series The Orphan Train Adventures and the Colonial Williamsburg: Young Americans series.
Joan Lowery Nixon lives in Houston with her husband.
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Copyright © 2001 by Joan Lowery Nixon
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RL: 5.4
January 2003
eISBN: 978-0-307-43363-3
v3.0
