North of Havana df-5 Read online

  "Underwater, you mean."

  "Yes. An underwater mountain. Not that you could tell it was there, but the fishermen, they knew. They claimed that every year sea turtles and manta rays came there by the thousands. They could see them on the surface, understand. And they weren't making it up. I confirmed it. Biologists are still researching it, but the fact that the mountain contains large deposits of iron ore probably has something to do with the migration. Turtles and rays both have great navigational abilities; fragments of iron in the mastoid area, like a built-in compass. Some people think it has to do with that."

  Dewey said, "Man, I've got to pull things out of you." Like: Why didn't you ever tell this story before?

  I was enjoying talking about it; pleased that I could neutralize the subject so easily. That, plus it was nice being honest for a change. "I spent nearly a year in Africa," I said, "studying freshwater sharks on the Zambezi River. Later, I studied the same shark-bull sharks, we call them-on Lake Nicaragua, more than a hundred miles from the sea. Only now the Japanese fin industry has all but exterminated them."

  "And this company paid you to do this. Like one of the really big conglomerates."

  "The parent company, yeah. But the group that hired me was very small. You've never heard the name. No one has."

  "Hoping you might discover something and they could make a lot of money off it."

  "Or contribute to their overall knowledge. The sea products industry is a huge global business. It had to do with that."

  Dewey had finished her beer. Hatuey, in a can. She crushed the can with one hand-her jock side showing- and thought about it before saying, "I can see why you liked it, but I can see why you quit, too. All those places you mentioned, wasn't there always a lot of fighting going on? Like revolutions and stuff? Panama, Nicaragua, Masagua, that's all you ever read about."

  I didn't like the direction the conversation was headed. I said, "That was the great thing about being a marine biologist. A credentialed researcher. The world's scientific community takes pains to be nonpolitical. No one much notices us. I could come and go as I pleased."

  "Still," she said, "you'd think the company would have sent you to places that were safer. Africa? Wasn't there fighting there?"

  I was nodding, eager to be done with it. "Yeah, it started getting dangerous. You're right. That's why I quit."

  She said, "I don't blame you. Jesus, Ubangis with guns. You're lucky to be alive."

  That was true, too.

  After the jungles of Central America, after the space and light of the Caribbean, western Cuba looked barren, un-tended-like some massive ranch that had been worked too hard then abandoned. Treeless hills on a treeless windscape etched with dirt roads that seemed to originate from the sea and traveled architect-straight to nowhere. No cars, no movement, no people. The jetliner's pressurized silence assumed the silence of the land beneath us. Then we were descending and Cuba accumulated life-but not much light-as we neared Havana. I looked away when I saw the bluffs and basin of Mariel Harbor… looked again and saw the blanketing gray suburbs and high rise hotels along the beach and lichen black Morro Castle bonded to rock above Havana and the sea… then we touched down fast and heavy on the tarmac, but contrary to Latino custom, no one applauded upon landing, and I wondered if my fellow passengers were subdued by our destination or simply exhausted with gratitude at having survived the flight.

  As we waited in line at immigration, Dewey said, "Christ-o-mighty, it's hot, huh?" She thought about that for a few seconds before smiling. "Hey, it is hot. Two days before Christmas, they're freezing up in Florida but it must be like eighty-five down here in Havana town. And Bets is stuck in New York!" Very pleased with herself; she had talked herself into a vacation in the tropics and was already enjoying it.

  Good. Dewey was no actress. For me to be convincing as a tourist, Dewey had to be convincing. It had to be real.

  "Doc, know what I think I'll do? We find Tomlinson, get checked into our hotel, I think I'll go down to the beach and bake a little bit. I haven't been really warm in about a month. Maybe send Bets a post card and rub it in."

  Her mind still in New York, up there with snow and smoking chimneys… and her lover.

  "Wait and call her when you get back. That would be faster. A card out of here would take a couple of weeks. Maybe a month."

  "I don't care. I want her to get it and picture me down here on the beach. Up there freezing her ass off and she goes to the mailbox and there it is."

  I smiled. "Because you're friends."

  Received a catty smile in return. "Yeah, because we're friends."

  I was less aware of the heat than of the three men watching us-a customs officer in naval blue and two soldiers in khakis. Baby shit brown, Tomlinson had described it. Not shy about staring at us, either. Ruddy faces, short black hair and with eyes you expect to find behind mirrored sunglasses. Looking right at us and not looking away when my eyes briefly met theirs. Forty-some people in line-still outside on the tarmac beneath a sign that read "Welcome to Jose Martf International"-and they had singled us out.

  I touched Dewey's arm. "Give me a kiss."

  She said, "Huh?"

  "Give me a kiss. Like you mean it."

  Privately, our relationship had changed. But publicly, Dewey was still Dewey. She was a nudger and a rough-houser, not a hugger or toucher. Public displays of affection were as out of character for her as they were for me. She said, "Knock off the mush, Ford. Not in front of all these people."

  I gave her a tender smile, turned my back to the men and formed the words: "We-are-being-watched."

  Received a quizzical expression-she'd missed it. Listened to her whisper, "Truthfully, 'bout the only time I like to kiss is when we're screwing. No offense," as I touched my lips to her ear and said, "Don't look. Those guys in uniform are staring at us."

  She pulled away… stole a peripheral glance… grinned at me and said in a much louder voice, "Darling, when we get to the hotel, I'm going to give you a Christmas present you won't ever forget," then smothered me with a passionate stage kiss.

  Well, maybe she was an actress. Just not a very good one…

  Out of the corner of my eye, though, I could see the soldiers were laughing-See the Yankee couple? I heard one of them say, "Mother of God, her body! You think he'll know which end to use when he gets her in bed?" He said it loud enough that I knew he assumed I didn't understand Spanish. I listened to the other soldier say, "Men with money. They get all the beautiful women," which gave me pause-did they know I was wearing a belt loaded with carefully folded hundred dollar bills? But then heard him add, "If he was rich, of course, he would have come by yacht. Not on Cubana!" Which got a laugh.

  I relaxed a little. They had been staring at Dewey, not at me. Couldn't blame them. She was wearing what she called her Lipstick outfit: sandals, small shoulder pack rather than a purse, and a burnt orange sundress that showed her legs, that turned her skin to copper, and made her blue eyes glow. Back in Panama, when she'd asked, "How do I look?" she'd blushed a little when I replied, "Healthy and fertile."

  Now she wrapped her arm around my waist-part of her act-and said, "You're paranoid. They're just hanging out."

  "Maybe so. We'll find out pretty soon." Meaning the two checkpoints we had to pass through.

  At the immigration window, a dour woman checked a computer screen, caught my eyes for a second-a sharp, officious appraisal-before slipping a green visa card into my passport. No stamp for Americans. Then signaled for Dewey to come next. Customs gave us the same fast treatment. No search, no questions. We were gringos bringing money into the country. The official position seemed to be leave the tourists alone.

  Outside, after Dewey had collected her luggage-I had only my carry-on-we walked across the street to a rental car stand: a tiny block house in a dusty yard beneath mango trees. Havanauto. I expected to find Soviet-made Ladas or Moskvitches. Instead there was a line of beat-up Nissan subcompacts that were not much bigger than golf
carts. I went through them pretty carefully. Found a brown one that had a good emergency brake and a decent spare tire. There was no negotiating. Prices were fixed; it would be the same at the rental car agencies downtown. So I paid way too much in cash for the car; way, way too much for a liter of gas. A couple of teenage prostitutes with ripped skirts and dirty ankles watched the attendant pour the gas into the empty tank. Their reverence added a ceremonial flair. Cuba was out of petroleum. Something as valuable as a bottle of gas demanded their attention.

  As we pulled out onto the boulevard, headed north, Dewey said, "See? All that worrying for no reason." I was looking in the rearview mirror… saw the customs officer who had been watching us step out into the street… saw him pause to look after us… saw him take a notebook from his shirt pocket and jot something down… watched him disappear in the direction of the Havanauto building.

  I thought: Damn.

  Dewey was still talking, telling me with her tone that she'd been right all along. "Know what your problem is, Doc? You think too much. Most people, I'd say it was their imagination. But not you. With you, it's your brain. The whole package." Her knees were jammed up against the dashboard and she was trying to find a comfortable position. It was an absurdly small car. She said, "What we're going to do is treat this like a vacation. Get some food in you, a couple of cold beers. Everything's going to be a lot simpler than you think. Find Tomlinson, that'll make you feel better."

  But it wasn't simple finding Tomlinson. At the Hotel Nacional-marble floors, El Greco paintings, marble columns-a uniformed desk clerk told me he'd checked out two days before. We walked up the crowded street, as all the Cuban girls we saw, age twelve to maybe thirty, ignored Dewey and tried to sell themselves to me with their pointed looks.

  "They're either crazy or they're desperate," Dewey fumed. "Don't they have any self-respect?"

  I said, "To be with a gringo who has money?" She was shaking her head, just couldn't understand it when I told her, "It's not because they're crazy."

  We found the Havana Libre. It looked just as I remembered it. And discovered that a man fitting Tomlinson's description had been at the bar the last couple of nights but that he had never checked in.

  9

  The Havana Libre was located downtown on Calles L and 23rd, a few blocks south of the sea and just to the west of Havana Harbor-one of the few tourist strongholds in a city that was imploding beneath the pressure of its own withering poverty.

  The hotel was a beige domino stood on end, five hun-dred-and-some rooms, balconies, outdoor pool with private dressing cabanas on the mezzanine, conference facilities, a two-story domed lobby in which there was a garden bar and outdoor patio, plus two restaurants-though only one was occasionally open. "Closed for repairs," a sign on the door read. More likely, food rationing dictated limited hours.

  A bottle of beer, Hatuey or Cristal, cost more than the bartender made in two weeks. A gristly hamburger was equal to the average Cuban's monthly salary. Not that Cubans could have purchased either even if they had the money. They were banned from entering hotels or the few restaurants. Castro didn't want his people's ideology polluted by outsiders.

  I booked a room, then decided to splurge and get a suite. Dewey is a big woman. The prospect of our stepping over each other, banging into things, didn't appeal to me.

  Pretty nice suite: fourteenth floor with ocean view, tile floors, bedroom, kitchenette with stove and refrigerator, neither of which worked, and furnished in fifties deco, like the suite in a Bogart movie, or as if time had stopped when Castro marched into Havana.

  "I'll be go to hell," Dewey said. "A Russian television." She was fiddling with the thing, exploring the suite while I unpacked. "It's like something from the I Love Lucy days, man. Old black-and-white tube… Hey, check this out, Doc."

  On the screen, a bottle-nosed dolphin was tail-walking; clicking and squeaking.

  "It's Flipper. They get Flipper down here! See-he's trying to tell Chip and Ranger Rick something."

  I watched for a moment. The Ranger and his son were speaking Russian to the dolphin over Spanish subtitles. American broadcasts that featured animals were once a favorite of Soviet media pirates. Less translation, less work.

  "I've seen this one. Flipper's trying to lead them to a torpedo, I think." She seemed delighted by something that was both strange and familiar-yep, she was in Cuba, no doubt about it. She said, "You ever see anything so weird? Those boy actors, Chip and Sandy. They must be what, now? Probably forty-some years old? Down here, though, they're still kids. Teenagers in cutoffs, never aged a bit while the rest of the world got older." Then as she changed channels: "What're the chances we get ESPN? There's a Virginia Slims tournament on later I wouldn't mind seeing."

  No doubt. Probably because Bets was playing.

  I said, "I don't think the chances are good."

  "Guess not… Christ, only three stations. Everything in goddamn Spanish."

  Dewey with her sweet, sweet face and locker-room mouth.

  I watched her plop down on the couch, then stand again and suddenly strip the orange sundress over her head. She stood there in translucent bra and bikini panties, thinking about something, scratching absently at belly and corn-silk pubic hair. Sensed me looking at her, turned, and said, "I'm not in the mood right now, big boy. Let's do it later; help us get loosened up before we run."

  I was smiling.

  She said, "Is that okay?"

  "First thing I have to do is go from hotel to hotel and track down Tomlinson. Even if you were in the mood."

  "Always trying to trick me into bed-you're so good for the ego, Ford."

  "Yeah, well… He couldn't have gone far. He was low on money. I'll check the cheaper places."

  "He should have left a message."

  "He would have. That's what bothers me."

  "There's a phone book. Why don't you use the phone?"

  "Have you tried it?"

  "You mean it doesn't work?"

  "That's right."

  "Nothing in this whole damn place works." She stretched, yawned, showing me she was tired. "You want me to come along?" Not wanting to, but offering.

  No, I didn't want her along. Even before I tried to find Tomlinson, I needed to make a stop at the Masaguan Embassy. Dewey couldn't be a part of that.

  I pulled her forehead to me, kissed it. "Take a nap. Or watch Flipper. I won't be gone for more than a couple of hours."

  She was digging into one of her suitcases. "I show you this? What I think I'll do is go down to the pool"-she was now holding up what appeared to be two tiny pieces of red silk-"and get some sun."

  "That's a bathing suit?" I'd seen her in many swimsuits, always competition Speedos or triathlon latex.

  "The tiniest little bikini I could find." She was holding it in front of her, modeling it. "I got it in Madrid, the next morning after finding Bets. This, and I got a pair of these lacy little panties, the kind I always used to hate. They're jade colored, kind of shiny. Only I'm not going to show you. I'm going to wear them tonight, let you do some exploring for a change." She looked up. "Like my suit? It's the new me."

  I almost said, "I liked the old you just fine." Instead, I kissed her again and said, "Just don't catch cold. And Dewey?"

  "Yeah?"

  "If someone knocks on the door, keep the chain on until you're sure who it is. Ask for identification. The word is identification. Easy to remember."

  Her expression said you're-being-paranoid-again. When I didn't react, she said, "You're serious?"

  "Yeah. Humor me, okay?"

  She was unsnapping her bra, her mind already down there at the pool. "If you want." Then she said, "I mean, this place seems so dangerous and all," as I locked the door behind me.

  I'd been on the streets for less than twenty minutes before I was absolutely certain that I was being followed.

  I hadn't had any problems driving to or from the Mas-aguan Embassy, so it took me by surprise.

  But comforting, in its w
ay. The good ones, the professionals-the small and elite group I was really worried about-are not so easily spotted. If they were tailing me, they would have worked in a kind of wolf pack; a lot of complicated switches and handoffs so that it was unlikely I would have seen the same person, or car, twice. Which is why I had looped and backtracked my way to Embassy Row. Even had to stop and fill up with black-market gas to finish the long trip.

  But no, these were amateurs. Not very good amateurs at that. Two of them: a man and a woman, early twenties, dressed a little better than other Cubans on the busy streets, both black-the man onyx colored; the woman cinnamon skinned-and both trying way too hard to appear disinterested, as they tracked me down 23rd to Paseo where I checked at the desk of the Caribbean-no Tomlinson or Julia DeGlorio listed-then stepped back out into the December heat.

  Now they were on the other side of the street, pretending to read a billboard: a rough painting of a devilish Uncle Sam being taunted by a Cuban soldier. The caption read: Imperialistas! We Have No Fear of You.

  Standing there as if they'd never noticed it before-this old Cold War billboard that had been there in '80 during Mariel. I'd seen it.

  I watched them in window glass and from the corner of my eye as I made the rounds-the shabby Inglaterra and the Kohly-calculating their motive as I did. Made a wide detour from the hotel area, past the sports center, the Ciudad Deportiva. Looked at the empty baseball diamond, picturing Fidel out there in his baggy Sugar Kings uniform; pictured myself in catcher's gear twenty years younger, harder, certainly colder, but never naive.

  The couple was still with me. I looked at the knee-high grass in the outfield and thought about the situation. Probably careful scam artists who wanted to get a sense of my habits before they tried to set me up. Figure out why I was on the streets before they made their pitch. Maybe I was looking for black-market cigars… or young girls. Less likely was that they knew that I had come to Havana carrying ten thousand or more American dollars to bail out a friend's boat. The problem was, I wanted to find out. I could have lost them easily enough-established a pattern of entering and exiting hotels by the front, then left by the back-but I would have learned nothing. If Tomlinson's story had spread, if I'd already been singled out, I needed to know.