Read Online Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series) by Robert B. Lowe - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert B. Lowe
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In his youth, Lee had seen his grandmother on rare occasions, usually at the weddings and funerals of relatives. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he learned his grandparents had broken off all contact with his mother before he was born. She had refused his grandparents’ order to end a relationship with a young man considered unsuitable. She not only defied her parents but had the audacity to accept her lover’s proposal. Thomas Lee was Italian-Scottish and died in an auto accident when Enzo was 8. The rift within his mother’s family survived.
Then, Ben Hom, one of Lee’s cousins, had called him one day in New York. It was soon after his grandfather had passed away. His mother had died a few months earlier. Only his grandmother had attended his mother’s funeral. And, Lee hadn’t bothered to attend his grandfather’s. Ben’s message was simple: His grandmother was ill and wanted to see him.
It had been an emotional meeting. He could never fathom nor totally forgive the abandonment of his mother. But, when he saw his grandmother, small and weak, in the hospital bed, he couldn’t help but feel compassion for her. Then she showed him the scrapbook. Pictures of his mother growing up. A report card from the fourth grade with straight A’s. A newspaper clipping announcing his mother at age 13 as the featured dancer at a Chinatown benefit. Pressed flowers from her prom night.
She described how she had hidden the book from his grandfather, saying that she had thrown it away. Then, his grandmother had shown Lee a second scrapbook. It was filled with clips of newspaper stories that Lee had written. She had been having friends and relatives in Florida and New York collect them for years. He quickly realized the only words his grandmother could read in the stories were his name.
“Your mother and your grandfather were the same,” she had told him. “Very strong will.”
Afterward, Lee had felt a kinship with his grandmother that was based on more than common blood. He guessed it was the way people felt when they discovered someone else who has lost their loved ones to the same war.
She had recovered from her illness. Now, his grandmother was physically well but her mind wandered, leaping decades in a moment.
His grandmother abruptly looked up at Lee.
“What stories you work on, Enzo?” she said.
“Oh, the same old thing, grandma,” he replied. “A little bit of this. A little bit of that.”
“I’m sure they very good, Enzo,” she said. “I so proud of you. I see you name in paper alla time.”
She suddenly handed Lee the melon and pushed herself out of the chair.
“I will cook this later,” she said. She went to the dresser and pulled out a scrapbook and began turning the pages.
“Your mother. So beautiful,” she said.
Chapter 9
JORGE MASVIDAL HAD watched the numbers grow daily in the small camp in the middle of the vast sugar plantation he supervised. Most of them came with a bag or two. Some came with nothing more than a paper sack carrying a clean shirt, underwear and a couple of pairs of socks. Invariably, they came ill prepared for the back-breaking work they faced.
He wasn’t surprised. Nothing surprised him in the state controlled economy of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. With the breakup of the Soviet Union and the reduction in aid to Cuba, he had witnessed the technological regression of the country’s agricultural industry with increasing dismay. First, the new tractors due the year before had never arrived. Then, the replacement parts to keep the old machines running failed to materialize. Finally, the gasoline and diesel oil needed to operate all of the machinery on the farm ran out.
Instead of machines and fuel, Masvidal was getting men, hundreds of them. Buses brought more each day, soft-handed urban dwellers conscripted into work gangs and forced to work for the glory of Cuba for 90 days at a time. It had taken all of Masvidal’s resourcefulness to keep
In his youth, Lee had seen his grandmother on rare occasions, usually at the weddings and funerals of relatives. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he learned his grandparents had broken off all contact with his mother before he was born. She had refused his grandparents’ order to end a relationship with a young man considered unsuitable. She not only defied her parents but had the audacity to accept her lover’s proposal. Thomas Lee was Italian-Scottish and died in an auto accident when Enzo was 8. The rift within his mother’s family survived.
Then, Ben Hom, one of Lee’s cousins, had called him one day in New York. It was soon after his grandfather had passed away. His mother had died a few months earlier. Only his grandmother had attended his mother’s funeral. And, Lee hadn’t bothered to attend his grandfather’s. Ben’s message was simple: His grandmother was ill and wanted to see him.
It had been an emotional meeting. He could never fathom nor totally forgive the abandonment of his mother. But, when he saw his grandmother, small and weak, in the hospital bed, he couldn’t help but feel compassion for her. Then she showed him the scrapbook. Pictures of his mother growing up. A report card from the fourth grade with straight A’s. A newspaper clipping announcing his mother at age 13 as the featured dancer at a Chinatown benefit. Pressed flowers from her prom night.
She described how she had hidden the book from his grandfather, saying that she had thrown it away. Then, his grandmother had shown Lee a second scrapbook. It was filled with clips of newspaper stories that Lee had written. She had been having friends and relatives in Florida and New York collect them for years. He quickly realized the only words his grandmother could read in the stories were his name.
“Your mother and your grandfather were the same,” she had told him. “Very strong will.”
Afterward, Lee had felt a kinship with his grandmother that was based on more than common blood. He guessed it was the way people felt when they discovered someone else who has lost their loved ones to the same war.
She had recovered from her illness. Now, his grandmother was physically well but her mind wandered, leaping decades in a moment.
His grandmother abruptly looked up at Lee.
“What stories you work on, Enzo?” she said.
“Oh, the same old thing, grandma,” he replied. “A little bit of this. A little bit of that.”
“I’m sure they very good, Enzo,” she said. “I so proud of you. I see you name in paper alla time.”
She suddenly handed Lee the melon and pushed herself out of the chair.
“I will cook this later,” she said. She went to the dresser and pulled out a scrapbook and began turning the pages.
“Your mother. So beautiful,” she said.
Chapter 9
JORGE MASVIDAL HAD watched the numbers grow daily in the small camp in the middle of the vast sugar plantation he supervised. Most of them came with a bag or two. Some came with nothing more than a paper sack carrying a clean shirt, underwear and a couple of pairs of socks. Invariably, they came ill prepared for the back-breaking work they faced.
He wasn’t surprised. Nothing surprised him in the state controlled economy of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. With the breakup of the Soviet Union and the reduction in aid to Cuba, he had witnessed the technological regression of the country’s agricultural industry with increasing dismay. First, the new tractors due the year before had never arrived. Then, the replacement parts to keep the old machines running failed to materialize. Finally, the gasoline and diesel oil needed to operate all of the machinery on the farm ran out.
Instead of machines and fuel, Masvidal was getting men, hundreds of them. Buses brought more each day, soft-handed urban dwellers conscripted into work gangs and forced to work for the glory of Cuba for 90 days at a time. It had taken all of Masvidal’s resourcefulness to keep
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