North of Havana Page 9

  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 hundred-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 identificatión. 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 Masaguan Embassy, so it took me by surprise.

  But comforting, in its way. 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.

  I slowed my pace. Walked down to the Malecón—Havana’s busiest street, the old promenade that ribbons along the sea. Did some rubbernecking: big gringo tourist taking in the sights, looking at the lovers petting on the seawall, seeing waves break over the stone foundation of a city four hundred years old, watching the riverine flow of loafers and whores and thousands of Chinese bicycles—Flying Pigeons—that were the Maximum Leader’s answer to the gas crisis. It reminded me of Asia: Cambodia and Vietnam. Straw hats hunched over handlebars. Why was it that people with nowhere to go were always on the move?

  Behind me, the couple stopped, waited. I thought: If they don’t make a move it’s because they know about the money. I wanted them to think—hey, here’s our chance. So stood looking out at the Gulf Stream…

  Land, sea, or air, ninety miles is ninety miles, except when describing the waterspace between Havana and Key West. It is a distance protracted by a generation of despair. I thought about men and women who had taken to launching inner tubes beyond the landfall beacon off Morro Castle and paddling north. Crossing the Florida Straits in a luxury liner is one thing, but attempting it in a rubber donut, one’s legs fluttering through the bright skin of the abyss, is a whole different proposition. In Cuba, desperation framed crazy optimism, or there was no optimism at all.

  I wondered about the couple tailing me. How desperate were they?

  Beyond the flow of bicycles, the sea was inflated with gray light I could smell the sea and the heated asphalt and there was the odor of sargasso weed on wet rock. A streak of indigo marked the Gulf Stream’s edge—it swept in close to Havana Harbor—and there were men in inner tubes fishing the rim of the Stream as if fishing the bank of a river. There was no fuel for boats, so they floated out in inner tubes. More and more of them just kept going.

  I turned and stared at the couple full faced for the first time. The woman—she looked more like a girl now that they were closer—averted her eyes, then seemed to gather courage. She gave me a bawdy wink, then puckered her lips as if kissing. It was the standard come-on of the jinetera, a street prostitute, but I got the impression she hadn’t had much practice at it. I smiled, looked around, then pointed to my own chest: Me?

  She winked again and I signaled her over. Watched the man give her a little nudge to get her going.

  In Spanish, she said, “If you are looking for a good time, mister, perhaps I can be of help.” A very formal approach for a whore.

  I said, “Huh?” looking down at her. She was pretty in the way that parochial school girls are pretty. The uniform was in her face, her eyes, even though she wore tight jeans, a ruffled blue blouse. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  She said, “I will be very nice for you.”

  I shrugged, grinning foolishly. “I don’t hab-la the Espan-yol, Sen-yor-rita,” I said.

  The girl turned helplessly to the man. Concerned, but trying to appear friendly, he came up, clapped me on the shoulder and said in Spanish, “I attend university with this lady. She likes you very much. But she is badly in need of money. Perhaps you and she could step int
o that private place”—he motioned toward the shadows of a nearby park—“and get to know each other better.”

  I said, “Huh? Parque? Sorry, buddy, I don’t com-pren-dough.”

  Listened to the girl say, “Carlos, he doesn’t understand a word you’re saying. Must we do this?”

  Carlos was nodding—relax; everything was going to be okay—as he said, “We’ve talked about it; it’s what we’ve decided. We know he’s a Yankee, just as I said. What does he care about the price?”

  That gave me pause. He could have meant a couple of things by that. I decided I had to see it through. I touched the girl’s shoulder. Felt her cringe before reconsidering and then she leaned heavily against me. “Carlos, I’m not certain I can do this.”

  Carlos said, “Do we have a choice?”

  “Perhaps we should find someone else. He’s so big, maybe he’s dangerous.”

  “That’s why we followed him, to make certain. He’s a tourist. He seems respectable and clean. Lena, it’s what we have to do.”

  Lena. The girl had a name.

  Carlos smiled at me as he created a circle with thumb and index finger, then poked a finger through the hole. International sign language. Then he flipped his fingers at me twice: twenty bucks.

  I let Carlos watch me think about it before reaching into my pocket and handing him the money. Then I took Lena by the hand and led her off to a little private hollow created by frangipani trees and hibiscus. When I turned to face her, she moistened her lips then got up on tippy-toes and tried to kiss me. Got a faint whiff of cornstarch before I stopped her by holding up my palm.

  She said, “Is something wrong?” Started to say, “What do you want—?” before she remembered that I didn’t understand.

  I was listening; I wanted to see if Carlos and maybe friends were going to come through the bushes and jump me. If he or they had, I would have run. I would have assumed there was a possibility he knew about the money and that’s all I needed to know. But there was only the sound of bike traffic on the Malecón and parrots in the trees. It was just Lena and me; Carlos out there waiting for us to be done.