Summary

A richly plotted legal chessboard of a thriller that pits the litigator Michael Seeley against Cuba's security police, the U.S. State Department, his firm's own partners, and a closetful of skeletons Fueled by alcohol, legal brilliance, and heedless risk-taking, Michael Seeley once oversaw his law firm's most successful litigation practice. Until it all fell apart. Booze, hubris, and overreach cost him his wife, his job, and likely the life of his last client, a Chinese dissident journalist. After two years sober and practicing small-town law in upstate New York, Seeley has earned back most of what he lost: the partnership in his old Manhattan law firm, if not his corner office; the wary respect of most of his colleagues; the lucrative clientsbut not the gin-sharpened passions. Then the aging and renowned Cuban musician Hector Reynoso enters his office with a simple request: help him and six other composers who defined Cuba's musical golden age of the 1940s and 1950sthe music that made the Buena Vista Social Club internationally famousreclaim copyright to their work. When Reynoso goes missing only to turn up dead, Seeley's reluctant promise to help draws him deeper and deeper into the violent underbelly of Havana and a decades-long conspiracy that runs from the partners in his firm to the U.S. State Department to Cuba's security police, which is willing to do anything to suppress the truth. And in the heat of Havana, Seeley will lose himself to his worst and best passions as his pursuit of justice narrows down to a desperate gambit to save the stunningly seductive Amaryll, who is playing her own dangerous game, even at the risk of his own life.

Author Biography

Paul Goldstein is regularly included in Best Lawyers in America and is the author of two previous Michael Seeley novels.

1

The man could have climbed from the frame of an ancient newsreel: a sharecropper escaping the Depression-era South with the last scraps of his possessions; a skin-and-bones survivor fleeing yet another sub-Saharan catastrophe. His suitcase, scuffed and worn, was a cardboard imitation of tweed and leather straps, but the way the old man clutched it to his chest, the valise held his most precious belongings. Black but light-skinned, erect as a recruit, he waited inside the office doorway, intelligent eyes darting about, undecided between entering and escaping. Was it apprehension that Michael Seeley detected, or just curiosity? Fear that Seeley wouldn’t take him as a client, or that he would?
Seeley rose and glanced a second time at the yellow message slip on the corner of his desk. Héctor Reynoso. Musician. Havana. Ref’d by H. Devlin.
“Mr. Reynoso.”
The trim straw hat was a shade or two darker than the suitcase, and Seeley waited while the musician carefully set it on the bookshelf before extending his hand. Reynoso’s gray hair was cropped close and the fingertips against Seeley’s palm were callused.
“Mr. Herbert Devlin said that you can provide me with legal assistance.” The inflection, measured and serious, gave no sign of indecision. Whatever doubts Reynoso had in the doorway, he had made up his mind.
Seeley indicated the client chair and dialed the number for Elena Duarte, one of the three young associates assigned to him. He had asked her to come to the meeting in case he needed translation. Her Spanish was perfect and, he now thought, her good spirits and lively mind might put Reynoso at ease.
Even seated, Reynoso held on to the handle of the suitcase. The musician wasn’t so much thin, as Seeley first thought, as he was narrow: his wrists were sturdy, like a farmer’s, and, in his neatly pressed cotton jacket and khaki pants, he looked taut as a cable. Repeated laundering had worn the jacket white at the seams. The pants had a razor-edge crease and the starched white shirt, tieless but buttoned to the top, was frayed at the collar.
Elena didn’t answer, and Seeley replaced the receiver. “How did Mr. Devlin say I could help you?”
Green eyes measured the office from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. The beginning of a small smile played at the corners of the musician’s mouth. “Muy caro,” he said.
Seeley guessed at the meaning of the phrase, and wondered what Reynoso saw. The furniture was either rented or borrowed, and the office wasn’t half the size of the one, a floor above, that he had occupied for years, before the partners at Boone, Bancroft, & Meserve forced him from the firm. It was only five months since they’d readmitted him to the partnership, and following Reynoso’s admiring gaze as it traveled around the small room gave Seeley the same feeling as when he stopped drinking more than a year ago: that his life had become infinitely precarious.
Reynoso’s eyes stopped at the empty picture hooks on the opposite wall, then dropped to where three frames rested against the baseboard, images facing the wall. The pictures were black-and-white still lifes of apples and pears that the artist had fussed up with garish pastels. The stagy colors weren’t the only reason Seeley had turned the pictures to the wall; it was the very idea of ruining a perfectly acceptable photograph that way. When Seeley looked at Reynoso, the old man winked, as if to communicate that he sympathized with Seeley’s taste. Was the wink a feint, or just a tic? Without seeing the pictures, how could Reynoso possibly know why Seeley had removed them?
“Very rich,” was Reynoso’s final appraisal. “Mr. Devlin informed me that you represent artists with not so much money … how do you say…”
“Pro bono publico,” Seeley said. “But I haven’t done that for a long time. Not now.”
Seeley once represented as many impoverished artists as he did paying clients. That wasn’t why his partners fired him, but the dwindling billable hours hadn’t helped. Since his return to the firm he had stayed close to the arts, taking an art gallery to court for gouging on its commission to a painter and suing a corporate collector that thought that owning a painting entitled it to reproduce the work on the cover of its annual report. He settled a case for a screenwriter, forcing a film studio to change the way it shared profits with writers. But these were wealthy clients, and they paid six-figure fees and more for Seeley’s time. Today if an artist seeking free legal representation called, Seeley would plead overwork and refer him to one of the volunteer lawyer organizations in the city. In the increasingly frequent moments when he let himself think about it, the absence of these struggling artists from his life felt like missing a limb.
“Herbert Devlin said that you are the right man to be our lawyer.”
“Well, he was wrong,” Seeley said. He resented Devlin for setting up two people for disappointment, Reynoso and Michael Seeley himself, and mentally scrolled down a list of other lawyers who might help Reynoso. In twenty minutes he had to be across town to give a lunch talk to Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. There would be dozens of lawyers there glad to represent Reynoso. But they would want to know why he needed a lawyer. “You didn’t tell me what your problem is.”
“Not a problem. Mr. Devlin said it is an opportunity.” Reynoso let go of the suitcase handle. He tilted his head and clapped his hands once. “We know each other for many years. Before Fidel. Mr. Devlin came to the clubs where my friends and I played. Always he had a good-looking woman on his arm.” Reynoso’s smile revealed stained but even teeth. “No women today. Only business and music. No americano loves our music like he does.”
Why would Devlin risk his law license by traveling to Cuba? And how had Reynoso contrived not only to leave Cuba but to enter the United States?
“Mr. Devlin promised you would help us.”
Seeley glanced at the phone. Elena was never late for a meeting, but he was glad she wasn’t here. Difficult as it was to turn down the musician, if Elena were here it would be even harder. Twenty years apart, she and Seeley had studied with the same professor at Harvard, the legendary Felix Silver, and although Elena had her pick of New York law firms when she graduated, Silver told her to take Boone, Bancroft’s offer. He told her that she would have her choice of partners, too, but that she should grab onto Seeley and not let go. Elena hadn’t yet complained that in her time working with him Seeley had not taken a single pro bono case for a hard-pressed artist. But if he didn’t represent one soon, Seeley knew that she would find a partner, or a firm, more promising.
Reynoso hadn’t answered his question. “What kind of help do you need?”
The musician lifted the suitcase to his lap. Where the varnish had worn away and the tweed print faded, the cardboard pilled like an old sweater. Again the musician pressed the suitcase to his chest.
Seeley said, “Unless you’re carrying body parts in there, you might as well open it up and show me what you have.” If there were legal documents that needed translation, they would have to wait for Elena. Seeley corrected himself: they would have to await another lawyer and another firm.
It took almost a full minute for Reynoso to decide. He set the valise on the desk, carefully squared it with a corner, snapped open the old-fashioned locks, lifted the top, and tilted the case so that its contents spilled out: sheaves of sheet music; a bursting collage of spidery staves, bars, notes, and clefs; packets of staff-lined pages, some tied with faded ribbon, others with fraying twine; CDs and tape cassettes; even a dozen or so black vinyl 45s with their donut-center holes. There was a vague tobacco smell, but Seeley didn’t know if it was from Reynoso or the accumulated scent of the contents. From the bottom of the suitcase, the musician took a manila envelope that had suffered a lifetime of foldings and unfoldings, but he didn’t undo the brown shoelace tie or add the envelope to the pile on the desk.
Long musician’s fingers slid over the pages. “My friends and I made this music in the nineteen forties and fifties,” Reynoso said. “We were just street musicians in Havana. We played in restaurants and clubs for tips when they let us. These were black clubs, not where the American tourists went.”
The two decades, the forties and fifties, were the giveaway. Seeley instantly understood what Reynoso wanted. The musician and his friends had signed away their rights long ago, and now they wanted the music back. For that instant, Seeley felt trapped, and adrenaline pounded through him. He could do this. He had to. He, not one of the volunteer lawyers. Seeley caught himself. This was always how he got into trouble. He remembered the conditions on which his partners had taken him back into the firm. Seeley said, “There are a dozen other lawyers in New York who can get your songs back for you.”
“Mr. Devlin said you are the best.”
“For this kind of work, best doesn’t matter.” Any competent copyright lawyer could draft, execute, and record the necessary termination documents for Reynoso and later negotiate with his American publishers. “I’m sure there are Cuban lawyers who can do this.”
“No. Mr. Devlin said it must be you. My friends and I trust him. In those days, you didn’t see whites at the black clubs, but Herbert Devlin was always there. He told us we were not just musicians. He said we were composers.” The words tumbled out, as if opening the suitcase had released a catch inside Reynoso, too. “None of us wrote music, so Herbert Devlin brought a man from New York to write out the music for us. He arranged for American publishers to buy our songs. Record labels to record us.”
Devlin was Harry to everyone Seeley knew, but the name on the Los Angeles lawyer’s doorplate was in fact Herbert, and it seemed natural for Reynoso, so formal in manner, to refer to him by his given name.
Reynoso stopped to catch his breath, but instead of then continuing he moved away from the desk and adjusted his shoulders as if to take a blow.
Seeley said, “You didn’t have to bring all of this. A list would have been enough.”
Reynoso swatted the observation away like a bothersome fly. “Mr. Devlin said you are not afraid to fight big companies.”
Seeley pushed the tapes, CDs, and 45s to the side and, untying the ribbons and twine, sorted through a packet of sheet music. The paper was fragile, almost crumbly, and behind the tobacco smell it had the musty, closeted odor of old books. The titles were from another world. “Cara a Cara,” “¿Por Qué Me Siento Triste?” “¿Dónde Estabas Anoche?” “Somos Differente.” So were the names of the composers—Rubén Fornet, Justo Mayor, Onelio Bustamante.
Seeley put down the music. “Buena Vista Social Club.” Seeley had seen the movie when he was still married. Clare had loved the music, he the musicians.
“Buena Vista is good,” Reynoso said, “if you like tourist music. This”—his gesture took in the haystack of paper and plastic—“is not for tourists. It is more than music. But do you know what they do to our work in America? Frozen tacos! They use our music to sell frozen tacos. Mexican food!” The dark fingers scrambled through the paper sheets until they stopped at a yellowed folio. “My friend, Justo Mayor. This is his work: ‘ Tu Mi Delirio.’ A work of art. Do you watch television?” Anger flared behind the thoughtful eyes. “My niece who lives here says, day and night, they play ‘ Tu Mi Delirio.’ For what? To sell shaving cream!”
“And the reason you want your music back,” Seeley said, knowing that it would inflame Reynoso, “is that these people, these taco sellers, aren’t paying you enough.”
Reynoso’s hands went to the pile on the desk, as if to protect it. “This is not about money!”
“Then what is it about?”
Reynoso looked up and past Seeley’s shoulder.
Seeley turned. Elena was at the door, flushed and out of breath, her arms around a stack of binders, yellow Post-its beetling the pages like feathers on a boa. The deposition transcripts for Seeley’s trade secret trial in Boston in two weeks. Seeley shook his head to let Elena know this wasn’t the time to explain why she was late, then introduced her to Reynoso, who gave a courtly bow.
She nodded in return. “Mucho gusto.”
Reynoso said, “Es un placer conocer a una mujer tan encantadora.”
Seeley didn’t understand the words, but he was certain that Elena’s flush deepened. To Reynoso he said, “If it isn’t for money, why do you want your music back?”
Reynoso stared at them, not blinking, as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Por favor,” Elena said to him, “es necesario que nos diga, para que le ayudemos mejor,” and, to Seeley, “I told him that we must know if we are to help him.” Elena’s English had no accent, but when she spoke Spanish, even just a word or a name, she turned it into something exotic. The effect matched her looks. She was small and fine-boned, and her hair was as black and thick as a wild woman’s.
The air in the office grew still. Finally, Reynoso said, “This is about history. My people’s history. I cannot explain it to you.”
“Then explain it to Miss Duarte.”
“No. It is not the language. You must be a Cuban to understand. This is about la cultura. Mr. Devlin will tell you.”
“He will tell me the reason?”
“No,” Reynoso said. “He will tell you why it cannot be explained.”
The composer’s expression was contrite, and a glance from Elena told Seeley to let it go. Seeley opened a second packet of music, then another, as if the answer to his question might be secreted among the brittle pages. In the fourth packet, all of the folios had Reynoso’s name in the upper-right corner of the cover page.
“Mr. Devlin said there is little time.”
The composition on top, “Ron de la Habana” was published in 1950. Even if Reynoso was twenty when he wrote the song, that would make him more than eighty today, at least a decade older than he looked. Seeley made a quick calculation. “You have six months, maybe a year, to get your music back.”
Reynoso said, “But you can do that? For my friends, too?”
Elena watched Seeley expectantly.
Seeley paged through another handful of compositions. Publication dates spanned the early 1940s through the late 1950s. “For some of the music, yes, it is still possible for a lawyer to get your rights back for you. Maybe most of it. But, for the music before 1950, it’s already too late.”
Under lizard eyelids, the intelligent eyes sharpened. “But you can fix that.” Reynoso looked at Elena for support, but she shook her head.
“No,” Seeley said. “The law says that for those songs it is no longer possible to get back your rights. No one can fix it.” He checked his watch. If he left now, he would miss the Volunteer Lawyers lunch but still get there in time to give his talk. The hypocrisy of entertaining a crowd of morally ambitious young lawyers with war stories about the great cases he won for struggling artists depressed him.
Seeley looked again at the cover page of Reynoso’s “Ron de la Habana.” The publisher was Ross-Fosberg Music, a longstanding client. When sorting through the songs of the other composers, he recognized the names of other publishers, too. Several were small family companies that had liquidated years or even decades ago, their contracts taken over by one or another of the large American music publishers still in business. Even if he decided to take on Reynoso as a client, any one of those publishers could object to his working for him.
“Your publisher is one of my clients. So are some of the others. We have a rule in America about conflicts of interest.”
“Yes. Of course. Mr. Devlin said you would have this conflict of interest. He has this conflict also. That is why he cannot help us. But he said your clients will trust you.” Reynoso clapped his hands. “And my friends and I trust you. So, you see, there is no problem.”
Seeley still had his partners to appease, but what if a publisher client, just one in a weak moment, waived the conflict and let him represent Reynoso and the others? The possibilities opened like an unfolding parachute. “I’ll talk to the publishers and see if they’ll waive the conflict—”
“What does this mean, ‘waive’? ”
“I’ll see if they’ll let me be your lawyer.” The publishers were loyal clients, but they were demanding, and none had a good reason to let him represent an adversary in negotiations over their rights to the music. Still, if there was even the smallest chance that one of them would give him a waiver, he would never forgive himself for not asking.
“You are a good lawyer,” Reynoso said, not moving. “You will explain to the publishers why it is right for you to help us.”
“Let’s see,” Seeley said, even as he regretted raising Reynoso’s hopes. “I need a list of your friends if I’m going to ask for waivers.”
Beaming, Reynoso handed Seeley the much-folded manila envelope that he had taken from the bottom of the suitcase. Inside were sheets of paper neatly ruled in pencil, and on each line, also in pencil in a plain but elegant hand, were the names and addresses of the composers and, for some, a telephone number. Behind Seeley, Elena picked through the pile of sheet music.
One name on Reynoso’s list had no address. “What about Maceo Núñez?”
Reynoso hesitated. “He is in prison. It is not always possible to speak with him.”
“What does a composer have to do to get himself put in prison?”
“I am sure that he wants his music back.”
Seeley waited. Reynoso’s English was too good for him to have misunderstood the question, and the old composer’s evasions were beginning to wear on Seeley. Reynoso looked away. “He played his music. He performed it in public.”
“Do you still perform?”
“Not for many years.” The smile faded. “I used to play some guitar, bass, piano.”
Sooner or later, most of Seeley’s clients lied to him, but few about something so unimportant. If Reynoso had stopped playing, the calluses would have disappeared from his fingertips in a month or two, not years.
“Are you sure the other composers want their music back?”
“Some of them think it is wrong to break a contract. They think, once you sign a contract, you must honor it.” Reynoso studied his fingernails. “Herbert Devlin said you could come to Havana and explain to them why this is not a wrong thing to do. That in America this is the way business is done.”
“Oh my God!” It was Elena. Her hands rapidly sorted through the music. “I don’t believe this.”
Seeley shot her a hard look and turned back to Reynoso. “Even if the publishers waive the conflict, there is no way I can go to Havana. I told you, a Cuban lawyer could do this work. You didn’t have to come here.”
“You are afraid to leave this fine office of yours.”
“You couldn’t find a Cuban lawyer who would do this, could you? There’s someone in Cuba who doesn’t want you and your friends to get your music back.”
Reynoso brushed the words away, and Seeley glimpsed anger as well as bravado in the dismissal. The gesture drew Seeley’s eyes to the straw hat on the bookshelf. A neat pucker creased the crown and the front of the narrow brim was snapped down gangster-style. The hat was as plain as the rest of the man’s clothes, except for a bright madras ribbon around the base of the crown that could have been plucked from a young girl’s hair.
Elena was arranging the sheet music into two piles, one taller than the other.
“Mr. Devlin said it must be you who represents us. No Cuban lawyers.”
“Is it your government that doesn’t want you to get your music back? Are you in danger, just coming to see me?”
Reynoso’s smile was sly and followed another wink. “There is no danger. Mr. Devlin says we are so old that we are ghosts more than we are flesh and blood. He says we pass through buildings and airports and no one sees us—they only feel a cold wind.”
Of course. That’s how the two of them crossed illegal borders so easily. They were ghosts. “It’s my job to help my clients, not to make their situation worse.” I have ghosts of my own, Seeley thought, and again regretted his promise to ask the publishers for waivers.
“I made a mistake,” Reynoso said. “I am sorry to take your time. Herbert Devlin told me you are someone who fights for artists. But I suppose he was wrong.”
The attempt at manipulation was so obvious that Seeley felt embarrassed for Reynoso. Elena, absorbed in her sorting, didn’t hear. He looked at Reynoso’s list. “Is your telephone number here?”
Reynoso rose. “My niece has a telephone.”
“In Cuba?”
“No. New York. Queens.” Pride lit Reynoso’s eyes. He had a niece who lived among royalty. The musician fumbled a stub of pencil from an inside jacket pocket and, on the legal pad that Seeley handed him, wrote his name and a telephone number with the same easy strokes as on the list of composers. “I am staying with my niece.”
Seeley began placing the spilled contents into the suitcase, and nodded to Elena to do the same.
“No,” Reynoso said. “You keep this. You are our lawyer now. That is why I brought it.” He nodded in the direction of the suitcase. “This music is older than the revolution. My friends and I trust you to keep it safe.”
Safe from what, Seeley wondered.
Reynoso’s smile opened to a grin and he patted Seeley lightly on the arm. “It is hotter on your streets than in Havana, and your client is an old fellow. You don’t want to send him out like a mule with a pack, do you?” He drew closer and with a darting gesture reached up and twisted Seeley’s ear. “I know you are going to take good care of Héctor.”
The movement was so unexpected, yet so astonishingly familiar, that if not for the tingling left by the callused fingers, Seeley would have questioned that it happened. He led Reynoso to the door and asked his secretary to show him to the elevator, then went back to his desk to collect the notes for his lunch talk. He unclenched his jaw. The last half hour hadn’t been a client interview. It was more like the cross-examination of a difficult but life-or-death witness.
From behind the piles of sheet music, Elena said, “Do you know what this is?” Her breathlessness was that of an excited child.
“I don’t have time.” Seeley started out the door. “I was supposed to be at Volunteer Lawyers ten minutes ago.”
“The music in this pile?” Elena lifted her hand from the shorter stack. “Every one of them is a standard. The classics they play on all the Spanish-language stations. All the Latin groups today record them. Los Van Van, Orquesta Melaza, Los Tainos. You can’t turn on the radio and not hear these songs.”
“Or buy a frozen taco,” Seeley said, “or lather up your cheeks with shaving cream.”
“This is your case, right? I want to work on it.”
“It’s not a case,” Seeley said.
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing. There’s a conflict with our publisher clients.” Seeley added numbers in his head. If Elena was right, between performance royalties and advertising licenses, Reynoso and his friends’ songs were bringing in millions of dollars a year, and would continue to do so for the next thirty or forty years. With that kind of money at stake, there was no chance that the publishers would let him represent Reynoso. If anything, the publishers would want to hire him to find a way to stop the Cubans from reclaiming their music.
Elena said, “But if they waive, I can work on it?”
Seeley nodded, just to be able to leave.
Elena said, “Héctor looks like he’d be fun to work with.”
Seeley thought back over the last forty minutes of feints and evasions, winks and handclaps. “Sure,” he said on his way out the door, “like juggling razors.”

Copyright © 2012 by Paul Goldstein

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Excerpts

1

The man could have climbed from the frame of an ancient newsreel: a sharecropper escaping the Depression-era South with the last scraps of his possessions; a skin-and-bones survivor fleeing yet another sub-Saharan catastrophe. His suitcase, scuffed and worn, was a cardboard imitation of tweed and leather straps, but the way the old man clutched it to his chest, the valise held his most precious belongings. Black but light-skinned, erect as a recruit, he waited inside the office doorway, intelligent eyes darting about, undecided between entering and escaping. Was it apprehension that Michael Seeley detected, or just curiosity? Fear that Seeley wouldn’t take him as a client, or that he would?
Seeley rose and glanced a second time at the yellow message slip on the corner of his desk.Héctor Reynoso. Musician. Havana. Ref’d by H. Devlin.
“Mr. Reynoso.”
The trim straw hat was a shade or two darker than the suitcase, and Seeley waited while the musician carefully set it on the bookshelf before extending his hand. Reynoso’s gray hair was cropped close and the fingertips against Seeley’s palm were callused.
“Mr. Herbert Devlin said that you can provide me with legal assistance.” The inflection, measured and serious, gave no sign of indecision. Whatever doubts Reynoso had in the doorway, he had made up his mind.
Seeley indicated the client chair and dialed the number for Elena Duarte, one of the three young associates assigned to him. He had asked her to come to the meeting in case he needed translation. Her Spanish was perfect and, he now thought, her good spirits and lively mind might put Reynoso at ease.
Even seated, Reynoso held on to the handle of the suitcase. The musician wasn’t so much thin, as Seeley first thought, as he was narrow: his wrists were sturdy, like a farmer’s, and, in his neatly pressed cotton jacket and khaki pants, he looked taut as a cable. Repeated laundering had worn the jacket white at the seams. The pants had a razor-edge crease and the starched white shirt, tieless but buttoned to the top, was frayed at the collar.
Elena didn’t answer, and Seeley replaced the receiver. “How did Mr. Devlin say I could help you?”
Green eyes measured the office from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. The beginning of a small smile played at the corners of the musician’s mouth. “Muy caro,” he said.
Seeley guessed at the meaning of the phrase, and wondered what Reynoso saw. The furniture was either rented or borrowed, and the office wasn’t half the size of the one, a floor above, that he had occupied for years, before the partners at Boone, Bancroft, & Meserve forced him from the firm. It was only five months since they’d readmitted him to the partnership, and following Reynoso’s admiring gaze as it traveled around the small room gave Seeley the same feeling as when he stopped drinking more than a year ago: that his life had become infinitely precarious.
Reynoso’s eyes stopped at the empty picture hooks on the opposite wall, then dropped to where three frames rested against the baseboard, images facing the wall. The pictures were black-and-white still lifes of apples and pears that the artist had fussed up with garish pastels. The stagy colors weren’t the only reason Seeley had turned the pictures to the wall; it was the very idea of ruining a perfectly acceptable photograph that way. When Seeley looked at Reynoso, the old man winked, as if to communicate that he sympathized with Seeley’s taste. Was the wink a feint, or just a tic? Without seeing the pictures, how could Reynoso possibly know why Seeley had removed them?
“Very rich,” was Reynoso’s final appraisal. “Mr. Devlin informed me that you represent artists with not so much money … how do you say…”
“Pro bono publico,” Seeley said. “But I haven’t done that for a long time. Not now.”
Seeley once represented as many impoverished artists as he did paying clients. That wasn’t why his partners fired him, but the dwindling billable hours hadn’t helped. Since his return to the firm he had stayed close to the arts, taking an art gallery to court for gouging on its commission to a painter and suing a corporate collector that thought that owning a painting entitled it to reproduce the work on the cover of its annual report. He settled a case for a screenwriter, forcing a film studio to change the way it shared profits with writers. But these were wealthy clients, and they paid six-figure fees and more for Seeley’s time. Today if an artist seeking free legal representation called, Seeley would plead overwork and refer him to one of the volunteer lawyer organizations in the city. In the increasingly frequent moments when he let himself think about it, the absence of these struggling artists from his life felt like missing a limb.
“Herbert Devlin said that you are the right man to be our lawyer.”
“Well, he was wrong,” Seeley said. He resented Devlin for setting up two people for disappointment, Reynoso and Michael Seeley himself, and mentally scrolled down a list of other lawyers who might help Reynoso. In twenty minutes he had to be across town to give a lunch talk to Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. There would be dozens of lawyers there glad to represent Reynoso. But they would want to know why he needed a lawyer. “You didn’t tell me what your problem is.”
“Not a problem. Mr. Devlin said it is an opportunity.” Reynoso let go of the suitcase handle. He tilted his head and clapped his hands once. “We know each other for many years. Before Fidel. Mr. Devlin came to the clubs where my friends and I played. Always he had a good-looking woman on his arm.” Reynoso’s smile revealed stained but even teeth. “No women today. Only business and music. Noamericanoloves our music like he does.”
Why would Devlin risk his law license by traveling to Cuba? And how had Reynoso contrived not only to leave Cuba but to enter the United States?
“Mr. Devlin promised you would help us.”
Seeley glanced at the phone. Elena was never late for a meeting, but he was glad she wasn’t here. Difficult as it was to turn down the musician, if Elena were here it would be even harder. Twenty years apart, she and Seeley had studied with the same professor at Harvard, the legendary Felix Silver, and although Elena had her pick of New York law firms when she graduated, Silver told her to take Boone, Bancroft’s offer. He told her that she would have her choice of partners, too, but that she should grab onto Seeley and not let go. Elena hadn’t yet complained that in her time working with him Seeley had not taken a single pro bono case for a hard-pressed artist. But if he didn’t represent one soon, Seeley knew that she would find a partner, or a firm, more promising.
Reynoso hadn’t answered his question. “What kind of help do you need?”
The musician lifted the suitcase to his lap. Where the varnish had worn away and the tweed print faded, the cardboard pilled like an old sweater. Again the musician pressed the suitcase to his chest.
Seeley said, “Unless you’re carrying body parts in there, you might as well open it up and show me what you have.” If there were legal documents that needed translation, they would have to wait for Elena. Seeley corrected himself: they would have to await another lawyer and another firm.
It took almost a full minute for Reynoso to decide. He set the valise on the desk, carefully squared it with a corner, snapped open the old-fashioned locks, lifted the top, and tilted the case so that its contents spilled out: sheaves of sheet music; a bursting collage of spidery staves, bars, notes, and clefs; packets of staff-lined pages, some tied with faded ribbon, others with fraying twine; CDs and tape cassettes; even a dozen or so black vinyl 45s with their donut-center holes. There was a vague tobacco smell, but Seeley didn’t know if it was from Reynoso or the accumulated scent of the contents. From the bottom of the suitcase, the musician took a manila envelope that had suffered a lifetime of foldings and unfoldings, but he didn’t undo the brown shoelace tie or add the envelope to the pile on the desk.
Long musician’s fingers slid over the pages. “My friends and I made this music in the nineteen forties and fifties,” Reynoso said. “We were just street musicians in Havana. We played in restaurants and clubs for tips when they let us. These were black clubs, not where the American tourists went.”
The two decades, the forties and fifties, were the giveaway. Seeley instantly understood what Reynoso wanted. The musician and his friends had signed away their rights long ago, and now they wanted the music back. For that instant, Seeley felt trapped, and adrenaline pounded through him. He could do this. He had to. He, not one of the volunteer lawyers. Seeley caught himself. This was always how he got into trouble. He remembered the conditions on which his partners had taken him back into the firm. Seeley said, “There are a dozen other lawyers in New York who can get your songs back for you.”
“Mr. Devlin said you are the best.”
“For this kind of work, best doesn’t matter.” Any competent copyright lawyer could draft, execute, and record the necessary termination documents for Reynoso and later negotiate with his American publishers. “I’m sure there are Cuban lawyers who can do this.”
“No. Mr. Devlin said it must be you. My friends and I trust him. In those days, you didn’t see whites at the black clubs, but Herbert Devlin was always there. He told us we were not just musicians. He said we werecomposers.” The words tumbled out, as if opening the suitcase had released a catch inside Reynoso, too. “None of us wrote music, so Herbert Devlin brought a man from New York to write out the music for us. He arranged for American publishers to buy our songs. Record labels to record us.”
Devlin was Harry to everyone Seeley knew, but the name on the Los Angeles lawyer’s doorplate was in fact Herbert, and it seemed natural for Reynoso, so formal in manner, to refer to him by his given name.
Reynoso stopped to catch his breath, but instead of then continuing he moved away from the desk and adjusted his shoulders as if to take a blow.
Seeley said, “You didn’t have to bring all of this. A list would have been enough.”
Reynoso swatted the observation away like a bothersome fly. “Mr. Devlin said you are not afraid to fight big companies.”
Seeley pushed the tapes, CDs, and 45s to the side and, untying the ribbons and twine, sorted through a packet of sheet music. The paper was fragile, almost crumbly, and behind the tobacco smell it had the musty, closeted odor of old books. The titles were from another world. “Cara a Cara,” “¿Por Qué Me Siento Triste?” “¿Dónde Estabas Anoche?” “Somos Differente.” So were the names of the composers—Rubén Fornet, Justo Mayor, Onelio Bustamante.
Seeley put down the music. “Buena Vista Social Club.” Seeley had seen the movie when he was still married. Clare had loved the music, he the musicians.
“Buena Vista is good,” Reynoso said, “if you like tourist music. This”—his gesture took in the haystack of paper and plastic—“is not for tourists. It is more than music. But do you know what they do to our work in America? Frozen tacos! They use our music to sell frozen tacos. Mexican food!” The dark fingers scrambled through the paper sheets until they stopped at a yellowed folio. “My friend, Justo Mayor. This is his work: ‘ Tu Mi Delirio.’ A work of art. Do you watch television?” Anger flared behind the thoughtful eyes. “My niece who lives here says, day and night, they play ‘ Tu Mi Delirio.’ For what? To sell shaving cream!”
“And the reason you want your music back,” Seeley said, knowing that it would inflame Reynoso, “is that these people, these taco sellers, aren’t paying you enough.”
Reynoso’s hands went to the pile on the desk, as if to protect it. “This is not about money!”
“Then what is it about?”
Reynoso looked up and past Seeley’s shoulder.
Seeley turned. Elena was at the door, flushed and out of breath, her arms around a stack of binders, yellow Post-its beetling the pages like feathers on a boa. The deposition transcripts for Seeley’s trade secret trial in Boston in two weeks. Seeley shook his head to let Elena know this wasn’t the time to explain why she was late, then introduced her to Reynoso, who gave a courtly bow.
She nodded in return.“Mucho gusto.”
Reynoso said,“Es un placer conocer a una mujer tan encantadora.”
Seeley didn’t understand the words, but he was certain that Elena’s flush deepened. To Reynoso he said, “If it isn’t for money, why do you want your music back?”
Reynoso stared at them, not blinking, as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Por favor,” Elena said to him, “es necesario que nos diga, para que le ayudemos mejor,” and, to Seeley, “I told him that we must know if we are to help him.” Elena’s English had no accent, but when she spoke Spanish, even just a word or a name, she turned it into something exotic. The effect matched her looks. She was small and fine-boned, and her hair was as black and thick as a wild woman’s.
The air in the office grew still. Finally, Reynoso said, “This is about history. My people’s history. I cannot explain it to you.”
“Then explain it to Miss Duarte.”
“No. It is not the language. You must be a Cuban to understand. This is aboutla cultura.Mr. Devlin will tell you.”
“He will tell me the reason?”
“No,” Reynoso said. “He will tell you why it cannot be explained.”
The composer’s expression was contrite, and a glance from Elena told Seeley to let it go. Seeley opened a second packet of music, then another, as if the answer to his question might be secreted among the brittle pages. In the fourth packet, all of the folios had Reynoso’s name in the upper-right corner of the cover page.
“Mr. Devlin said there is little time.”
The composition on top, “Ron de la Habana” was published in 1950. Even if Reynoso was twenty when he wrote the song, that would make him more than eighty today, at least a decade older than he looked. Seeley made a quick calculation. “You have six months, maybe a year, to get your music back.”
Reynoso said, “But you can do that? For my friends, too?”
Elena watched Seeley expectantly.
Seeley paged through another handful of compositions. Publication dates spanned the early 1940s through the late 1950s. “For some of the music, yes, it is still possible for a lawyer to get your rights back for you. Maybe most of it. But, for the music before 1950, it’s already too late.”
Under lizard eyelids, the intelligent eyes sharpened. “But you can fix that.” Reynoso looked at Elena for support, but she shook her head.
“No,” Seeley said. “The law says that for those songs it is no longer possible to get back your rights. No one can fix it.” He checked his watch. If he left now, he would miss the Volunteer Lawyers lunch but still get there in time to give his talk. The hypocrisy of entertaining a crowd of morally ambitious young lawyers with war stories about the great cases he won for struggling artists depressed him.
Seeley looked again at the cover page of Reynoso’s “Ron de la Habana.” The publisher was Ross-Fosberg Music, a longstanding client. When sorting through the songs of the other composers, he recognized the names of other publishers, too. Several were small family companies that had liquidated years or even decades ago, their contracts taken over by one or another of the large American music publishers still in business. Even if he decided to take on Reynoso as a client, any one of those publishers could object to his working for him.
“Your publisher is one of my clients. So are some of the others. We have a rule in America about conflicts of interest.”
“Yes. Of course. Mr. Devlin said you would have this conflict of interest. He has this conflict also. That is why he cannot help us. But he said your clients will trust you.” Reynoso clapped his hands. “And my friends and I trust you. So, you see, there is no problem.”
Seeley still had his partners to appease, but what if a publisher client, just one in a weak moment, waived the conflict and let him represent Reynoso and the others? The possibilities opened like an unfolding parachute. “I’ll talk to the publishers and see if they’ll waive the conflict—”
“What does this mean, ‘waive’? ”
“I’ll see if they’ll let me be your lawyer.” The publishers were loyal clients, but they were demanding, and none had a good reason to let him represent an adversary in negotiations over their rights to the music. Still, if there was even the smallest chance that one of them would give him a waiver, he would never forgive himself for not asking.
“You are a good lawyer,” Reynoso said, not moving. “You will explain to the publishers why it is right for you to help us.”
“Let’s see,” Seeley said, even as he regretted raising Reynoso’s hopes. “I need a list of your friends if I’m going to ask for waivers.”
Beaming, Reynoso handed Seeley the much-folded manila envelope that he had taken from the bottom of the suitcase. Inside were sheets of paper neatly ruled in pencil, and on each line, also in pencil in a plain but elegant hand, were the names and addresses of the composers and, for some, a telephone number. Behind Seeley, Elena picked through the pile of sheet music.
One name on Reynoso’s list had no address. “What about Maceo Núñez?”
Reynoso hesitated. “He is in prison. It is not always possible to speak with him.”
“What does a composer have to do to get himself put in prison?”
“I am sure that he wants his music back.”
Seeley waited. Reynoso’s English was too good for him to have misunderstood the question, and the old composer’s evasions were beginning to wear on Seeley. Reynoso looked away. “He played his music. He performed it in public.”
“Do you still perform?”
“Not for many years.” The smile faded. “I used to play some guitar, bass, piano.”
Sooner or later, most of Seeley’s clients lied to him, but few about something so unimportant. If Reynoso had stopped playing, the calluses would have disappeared from his fingertips in a month or two, not years.
“Are you sure the other composers want their music back?”
“Some of them think it is wrong to break a contract. They think, once you sign a contract, you must honor it.” Reynoso studied his fingernails. “Herbert Devlin said you could come to Havana and explain to them why this is not a wrong thing to do. That in America this is the way business is done.”
“Oh my God!” It was Elena. Her hands rapidly sorted through the music. “I don’t believe this.”
Seeley shot her a hard look and turned back to Reynoso. “Even if the publishers waive the conflict, there is no way I can go to Havana. I told you, a Cuban lawyer could do this work. You didn’t have to come here.”
“You are afraid to leave this fine office of yours.”
“You couldn’t find a Cuban lawyer who would do this, could you? There’s someone in Cuba who doesn’t want you and your friends to get your music back.”
Reynoso brushed the words away, and Seeley glimpsed anger as well as bravado in the dismissal. The gesture drew Seeley’s eyes to the straw hat on the bookshelf. A neat pucker creased the crown and the front of the narrow brim was snapped down gangster-style. The hat was as plain as the rest of the man’s clothes, except for a bright madras ribbon around the base of the crown that could have been plucked from a young girl’s hair.
Elena was arranging the sheet music into two piles, one taller than the other.
“Mr. Devlin said it must be you who represents us. No Cuban lawyers.”
“Is it your government that doesn’t want you to get your music back? Are you in danger, just coming to see me?”
Reynoso’s smile was sly and followed another wink. “There is no danger. Mr. Devlin says we are so old that we are ghosts more than we are flesh and blood. He says we pass through buildings and airports and no one sees us—they only feel a cold wind.”
Of course. That’s how the two of them crossed illegal borders so easily. They were ghosts. “It’s my job to help my clients, not to make their situation worse.” I have ghosts of my own, Seeley thought, and again regretted his promise to ask the publishers for waivers.
“I made a mistake,” Reynoso said. “I am sorry to take your time. Herbert Devlin told me you are someone who fights for artists. But I suppose he was wrong.”
The attempt at manipulation was so obvious that Seeley felt embarrassed for Reynoso. Elena, absorbed in her sorting, didn’t hear. He looked at Reynoso’s list. “Is your telephone number here?”
Reynoso rose. “My niece has a telephone.”
“In Cuba?”
“No. New York.Queens.” Pride lit Reynoso’s eyes. He had a niece who lived among royalty. The musician fumbled a stub of pencil from an inside jacket pocket and, on the legal pad that Seeley handed him, wrote his name and a telephone number with the same easy strokes as on the list of composers. “I am staying with my niece.”
Seeley began placing the spilled contents into the suitcase, and nodded to Elena to do the same.
“No,” Reynoso said. “You keep this. You are our lawyer now. That is why I brought it.” He nodded in the direction of the suitcase. “This music is older than the revolution. My friends and I trust you to keep it safe.”
Safe from what, Seeley wondered.
Reynoso’s smile opened to a grin and he patted Seeley lightly on the arm. “It is hotter on your streets than in Havana, and your client is an old fellow. You don’t want to send him out like a mule with a pack, do you?” He drew closer and with a darting gesture reached up and twisted Seeley’s ear. “I know you are going to take good care of Héctor.”
The movement was so unexpected, yet so astonishingly familiar, that if not for the tingling left by the callused fingers, Seeley would have questioned that it happened. He led Reynoso to the door and asked his secretary to show him to the elevator, then went back to his desk to collect the notes for his lunch talk. He unclenched his jaw. The last half hour hadn’t been a client interview. It was more like the cross-examination of a difficult but life-or-death witness.
From behind the piles of sheet music, Elena said, “Do you know what this is?” Her breathlessness was that of an excited child.
“I don’t have time.” Seeley started out the door. “I was supposed to be at Volunteer Lawyers ten minutes ago.”
“The music in this pile?” Elena lifted her hand from the shorter stack. “Every one of them is a standard. The classics they play on all the Spanish-language stations. All the Latin groups today record them. Los Van Van, Orquesta Melaza, Los Tainos. You can’t turn on the radio andnothear these songs.”
“Or buy a frozen taco,” Seeley said, “or lather up your cheeks with shaving cream.”
“This is your case, right? I want to work on it.”
“It’s not a case,” Seeley said.
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing. There’s a conflict with our publisher clients.” Seeley added numbers in his head. If Elena was right, between performance royalties and advertising licenses, Reynoso and his friends’ songs were bringing in millions of dollars a year, and would continue to do so for the next thirty or forty years. With that kind of money at stake, there was no chance that the publishers would let him represent Reynoso. If anything, the publishers would want to hire him to find a way to stop the Cubans from reclaiming their music.
Elena said, “But if they waive, I can work on it?”
Seeley nodded, just to be able to leave.
Elena said, “Héctor looks like he’d be fun to work with.”
Seeley thought back over the last forty minutes of feints and evasions, winks and handclaps. “Sure,” he said on his way out the door, “like juggling razors.”

Copyright © 2012 by Paul Goldstein