Page 82 of Old Flames

Leo reached for his phone and tapped on the voice notes app. “Do you mind if I record this interview?”

“I don’t mind.” The director pulled a rectangular wooden box from his tote bag. “Do you mind if we play a hand of dominoes while we talk?”

“Not at all.”

Leo was no expert domino player, but having something to keep their hands distracted would go a long way at keeping the director talking. To rest his injured right wrist, Dr. Flores delegated to him the task of laying domino pieces face down on the table and scrambling them like eggs.

“Where do we begin?” Leo asked as they each drew seven pieces to start.

“This is a triple-layer cake,” Dr. Flores said. “We begin with the greater geopolitical forces at play.”

“Sounds good.”

Leo had the highest double, a double five to Dr. Flores’s double three. He set it down at the center of the table while the director set the scene.

“Key West was fertile ground for Cuban exiles with an entrepreneurial spirit. They started cigar factories, some making great fortunes. Yet for every dollar earned, a fraction was funneled to the island to strengthen the revolutionary efforts of those fighting against the Spanish Empire to free it from colonial rule.”

“Key West was the political hub,” Leo said.

“And the cigar industry was fueling the unrest. This lifeline had to be eliminated, and so Spain devised a plan, and they weren’t subtle. The fire started at a coffee shop next to the institute’s former location on Fleming Street. The wooden building was quickly engulfed in flames. However, they must have been laboring under an auspicious moon because the conditions were ripe for a catastrophe.”

Leo drew from the boneyard hoping for a playable domino piece. “You mentioned the fire engine was out of commission.”

“That didn’t help, of course, but the strong winds refused to let the fire die. It raged on through the night, ravaged factories and warehouses, destroyed homes. The commercial area was wiped out. A staggering loss. The most destructive fire in our history. It burned for twelve hours. Can you imagine? It must’ve been hell on earth.”

Leo had no trouble imagining the horrors of that night, the howling wind and the flames raging through the buildings reducing entire blocks to rubble. Smoke, screams, and cries of anguish. The missing, the injured, the destitute. And the morning after? An ash-gray sky hovering over heartache and desperation.

“How many died?” Leo asked.

“Seven.”

“Was anyone held responsible?”

“No. They got away,” he said. “And I hope they’re roasting for all eternity, which is only befitting for master arsonists.”

In Leo’s novel the culprit would be a villain with pyrokinetic abilities, but what would push an ordinary man to unleash such devastation on an unsuspecting community? Power, favor, a few gold coins?

Leo abandoned his dominoes for his notebook. “I’d like a general idea of where the fire spread.”

“I’ll show you.” Dr. Flores opened his phone’s browser to a period-accurate street map. He outlined the path of destruction, from the business district to the shore.

Leo pointed to Caroline Street. “That’s where I’m at, The Aurora.”

“The old Jacobsen house,” Dr. Flores said. “It was spared, but other grand properties on that street went up in flames and a prominent couple died in their home. The next day, a Spanish vessel was waiting offshore to take any willing workers back to Cuba. Not surprisingly, many accepted.”

Leo pictured the men filing aboard the vessel, resigned, returning to the status quo.

“Finally, to add a pinch of insult to injury,” Dr Flores said, “a trade paper in Havana ran the story of the fire the day before it occurred.”

“Jumped the gun, there.”

Predictably, Leo lost at dominoes. Dr. Flores’s buddies folded their game and came over to collect him. “Looks like the storm is rolling in early.”

Thick clouds hovered ominously. Before leaving the inn this morning, the front desk had warned him of rain. He’d figured a light spring shower, not a full-on storm.

“Well,” the director said regretfully, “all good things must end.”

Leo narrowly beat the rain. By the time he made it to the inn, he was drenched anyway. The humidity alone made his T-shirt cling to his chest. He went up to the tower, emptied his pockets onto the desk, and stripped off the damp T-shirt on his way down. He was toweling dry when someone knocked at his door. The rain was coming down steadily. Just outside the bedroom windows, the east-west palms bent under the weight of the rain. He hadn’t ordered anything. He wasn’t expecting anyone.