Havana Twist

by Lia Matera

  “And the Cubans who had their passports? Did they say anything?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing, no. They are not required to defend themselves in our criminal proceedings, and they did not.”

  “You’ve already tried them?”

  “Yes. They have been sentenced to fifteen years in prison. But they have not spoken of how they obtained the passports.” His brows pinched. “We are one of the few nations that will not coerce information from prisoners.”

  Amnesty International disagreed, but I let it go. “Do you think they’d talk to us? Now that their trial’s over and they’ve been sentenced, do you think they’d tell us anything?”

  Mr. Radio Havana shrugged, his eyes glinting as he considered the possibility. “Perhaps it can be arranged. I will contact el combinado del este”—the prison “Ernesto” called Throw Away the Key— “and I will let you know.”

  With fifteen-year sentences to serve, the pair would be crazy to tell us anything they wouldn’t want their jailers to know. But Mother had taught me long ago that showing interest in prisoners helps protect them.

  God, I missed her.

  Don and I turned to go upstairs to our room.

  As we climbed the cement steps, I considered that the room had only one bed. I grew more nervous than I’d been on the road to the women’s prison.

  30

  I needn’t have worried. Within minutes, there was a knock at the door.

  Nothing will cool your ardor faster than middle-of-the-night company in a country that’s previously deported you. There was no question of ignoring the knock.

  Martin Marules stood in the doorway making the sign of the cross. “Thank God!” he said. He looked pale and tired, as anyone might be at three in the morning. “Thank Mary and Jesus I have reached you in time!”

  Don stepped backward, letting Marules in.

  “I have disturbed you.” Marules made the understatement of the year. “But it is urgent, very urgent.” He was dressed as if for work in a dark suit and white shirt. He carried the suit jacket, and his top shirt buttons were undone. The muggy night was having its effect. His olive cheeks glistened, his thick hair looked damp. “May I sit?”

  Don motioned him onto the bed, which took up virtually all the room’s floor space. He said, “You should know the room’s bugged.”

  “Ah.” Marules looked around. “Are you certain?”

  “No harm in assuming so,” Don said. “Do you want to take a walk? Talk outside?”

  Marules sat on the bed, legs splayed, shoulders rounded, hands on his knees. He looked too weary to rise. But he said, “Yes.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet and passport. He held them aloft, apparently instructing us to bring ours along.

  Not a good sign. I started looking for my shoes. As I slipped them on, I noticed Don scowling at Marules.

  Jamieson and Travolta had accused Marules of killing Alicia Mendoza and Agosto Diaz. And by his receptionist’s account, they were monitoring his computer entries. Were they lying about him? Or had he completely fooled me, only appearing to grieve the loss of Agosto as if he were a son?

  Whatever Don made of it, this wasn’t the place to talk. He tucked in his shirt and slipped his shoes on. And, with a sigh of profound frustration, he looked at me.

  The glance was like lightning. I had forgotten this feeling.

  When we left the room, I noticed that one of the doors between us and the staircase was ajar. When we passed it, a man said, “Pardon.”

  He wore a guayabera shirt and pants that were shiny with age. He was gaunt and dark-skinned, his hair nearly white. He said, “It is very late. If you have a problem perhaps I can help you.”

  We’d found our night-shift minder.

  I said, “We don’t need anything.”

  He stepped out of the room, his perturbation almost palpable. “It is not good for tourists to go out so late. Perhaps you are not aware of the hour?”

  At this point, punchy from lack of sleep, I was very well aware of the hour.

  “You work for the government.” I stated the obvious.

  “I have been asked to ensure that all goes smoothly for you,” he agreed.

  “We’re going out briefly to have a private conversation. You don’t have to follow us or notify anybody. We’re coming right back.” Not that I thought he’d take my word for it.

  His shoulders drooped. It was clear we were making a great deal of work for him. But there was nothing he could do to stop us, short of grappling with us in the corridor.

  So we went downstairs with no illusions we were sneaking off.

  When we reached the lobby, the desk clerk leaped to his feet. When we passed him without stopping, he called out to us. “May I direct you—? Where are you—? Señores, Señorita, please wait!”

  We hurried outside, ignoring him.

  A tourist cop erupted from a parked car. “Is there a problem?” he asked us.

  “We’re taking a walk,” Marules informed him. “Please do not disturb us.” The cop seemed perplexed by the Mexican accent. “Allow us to pass,” Marules insisted, though he was by no means blocking our path.

  The policeman slid into his car, fiddling with a radio.

  We walked on. Marules had turned toward the Malecon, but I thought we’d be too conspicuous along that empty stretch of sea wall. I grabbed his arm, nodding toward the neighborhoods. We would be conspicuous there, too. And there were revolutionary watch committee headquarters every few corners. But at least there were corners to turn and shadows to hide in. If it came to that.

  We walked hastily down a block of colonial manors, their stone and plaster facades noticeably pitted even in the dark. Though many windows were open or broken out, there was no noise inside the houses. At this hour, with no lights to turn on or extra candles to burn, most residents had chosen to sleep.

  The air was damp and close here in the middle of the city, with the breezes blocked by buildings. The street smelled of decaying garbage overgrown with blossoming vines. If we’d been walking at night in America, a dog would have been barking. But I had yet to encounter a dog in Cuba. I supposed it was too hard to justify feeding a pet when neighbors scrambled and prayed for food.

  As we passed one of the houses, I looked through the windows. A beam had collapsed into the middle of a huge room. Because of it, the house appeared to be empty, with no cloth tacked over any upstairs windows.

  “Let’s go in here,” I suggested.

  Marules, better prepared than we, clicked on a penlight as we navigated the overgrown walkway. The thin shaft of light caught the flutter of small moths and big mosquitoes.

  The house must have been magnificent, circa 1850s. The steps and porch had been marble, though huge chunks were now missing, perhaps recut to patch other porches and floors. Inside, the dust from the collapsed beam had long settled. As Marules ran the light over it, I could see how splendid the wall behind had once been. The remaining wainscot was elaborately carved. Shreds of silk wallpaper hung there. A golden finial glinted on the floor.

  Don pulled me over so I couldn’t be seen from the door. Marules and he stood between me and the broken beam.

  Don said, “Kill the light.”

  Marules did. After the luxury of a look around, the place seemed darker and spookier than before.

  “What’s this about?” Don demanded. “We’ve made ourselves completely conspicuous at this point. We’ve announced our intention to troop out here and have a private conversation. So they’re good and paranoid now—not that they needed any more reason than we’ve given them already.”

  I could see Marules, taller than Don, lean closer to him. “I have learned from my friend Juan Emilio that there is dissension regarding your motives for being here. There is a belief taking hold that Willa’s mother is not the true
object of your search. That, in fact, she is not missing at all. That she is not in Cuba at all.”

  I hoped this theory was based on some information, some facts the Cubans hadn’t shared with us. “Why do they think my mother’s not here?”

  “They believe she is in the United States. That, indeed, she preceded her tour group, leaving the night before their departure. They are quite sure she is fine.” He repeated, “Fine.”

  Nothing concrete; I was disappointed. “She’d have gotten in touch with her family and friends.” I didn’t want to go into the possibility Don and I had discussed earlier, that her messages to us had gone undelivered. “And if the Cubans had any real information to support this, they wouldn’t have let me back into the country to keep looking for her.”

  “Ah, but they did not wish for you to come! It was my assurance that your friend’s police skills could prove useful that led to this rather grudging favor.”

  “So what’s the point?” Don wondered. “You came all the way to Cuba to tell us the brass doesn’t necessarily believe Willa’s mother is still here?” He sounded exasperated. “Because I’ve got to say it’s obvious that’s one of the possibilities. It wasn’t worth the trip, if that’s all you have to say.”

  “No, no,” Marules assured him, “I am not here to discuss this theory with you. I am here to tell you there are those who would view it as a mere pretext. Who would attempt to cast your actions in the most suspicious light.”

  “Are you saying we’re in danger?” I asked him.

  “Yes. Juan Emilio would not phone me on a mere whim. Reading between the lines, he is saying that you may be arrested. He is telling me to come for you. As a favor, he is warning me.”

  We stood in silence for a long moment. Except for a breeze stirring the shrubs near the glassless windows, it was silent outside.

  “Are you sure?” Don said finally. “Sure it rises to that level? Maybe he’d just as soon see us gone, and he’s asking you to give us a nudge.”

  “No.” Marules sounded positive. “I believe you will be taken into custody. I believe an international incident may result, to the detriment of our hopes to reduce tensions between Cuba and your country.”

  “They had the opportunity to detain us tonight,” I told Marules. They could rightly have said we’d bribed, rather than “hired,” our driver. “But they didn’t.”

  “What reason?” His voice was hushed with worry. “Something has happened? I have been so anxious to convey my message that I have not thought to ask you.”

  “No,” Don said. “Nothing happened. Just what you’d expect. Conversations with some officials, things they arranged over the course of the day and the evening. They could have taken us aside any time. They didn’t.”

  So we were keeping Marules out of the loop? Don hadn’t seen him the day after Agosto’s death, so he had less reason to trust his sincerity than I did. And I wasn’t exactly bowled over by my faith in Marules right now.

  “Why didn’t Emilio just send us a message?” I wondered. “Save you the hassle of a trip?”

  “But no.” Marules sounded modest. “I do not begrudge a day of my time. Not for something like this. Bad enough that I have lost …” He didn’t speak Agosto’s name. But his breathing became heavy, as if he were trying to calm himself. “I was given a premonition, you know, when Agosto asked me to send him to San Diego. I had a vision of him with blood on his brow.” Even in the darkness, I could see Marules crossing himself. “But it seemed a foolishness, too embarrassing to admit, something a woman such as my wife would fear, not a journalist like myself. I have never been a religious man. But now I have vowed not to throw away the gift of fear. When I feel it—as I do now—I will respect that it has come from a force in the universe that must command my respect. Do you understand?”

  “You have a feeling we’re in trouble,” Don said flatly. “That much, I’d go along with.”

  “I have made arrangements, and Juan Emilio has agreed, in order to avoid a worse situation. We may leave Cuba in a few hours’ time, as if we were passengers on a plane which is landing now for additional fuel. It will leave shortly, its passengers having remained in the customs-cleared room. There is a way, with the help of Juan Emilio, that we may enter that room and then take up empty seats on the plane.”

  “And Emilio’s going to explain this to everyone tomorrow? Tell them we left with his blessing?” Don’s voice was low and calm.

  “It will be clear that a high official has helped us to leave. But it must not be known that it was compañero Emilio.”

  “What else would they think?” I countered. “You come here, we leave with you, no one sees us again … and you’re a friend of Emilio’s. It won’t take a genius to figure it out. Did he really tell you not to implicate him?”

  “He has arranged an alternative explanation,” Marules said.

  “He’s framing someone else?” Don asked him.

  “No, no.” Marules sounded shocked. “He is offering another scenario. I did not question him about it.”

  I could well believe the mighty Emilio would not be pinned down.

  “What if they catch us?” I asked Marules. “What if someone comes to the airport and sees us there? Then we’ve broken the law for real. Then they’ve got a reason to arrest us.”

  “If Juan Emilio says he has made arrangements, I think we may have confidence.” But there was an undercurrent of fear in Marules’s voice.

  Outside, car headlights lit the street. Don moved closer to me. None of us spoke until the car made a slow pass down the street. Tourist police searching for us?

  “What I don’t like about this,” Don said, “is that I think I know who Emilio’s after.”

  “After?” Marules said. “He is not after anyone. He is trying to help us.”

  “Do you know General Miguel?” Don persisted.

  “No. Of course I know of him—he is a Hero of the Revolution.”

  “On first acquaintance, he also seems like a stand-up guy, a cop with a complicated city to watch over. I wonder if your Juan Emilio isn’t trying to sweep out a few more members of the old guard. Like Castro did with General Ochoa.”

  “But Juan Emilio was correct to recommend Ochoa’s execution,” Marules defended him. “Cuba cannot tolerate the drug trade. That would be no different from a return of your Mafia. There would be dollars, yes. But also weapons, unrest, flesh sold on the street. Thirty years and more of dignity would be lost, would mean nothing.”

  “I’m not happy about helping to set up the general, if that’s what Emilio’s doing,” Don complained. “I don’t know what the man’s politics are, so I don’t know if it ends up being a good thing or a bad thing overall. Internal politics aside, I’d just as soon stick around a little longer. Let this play out, wherever it’s going.”

  “But no,” Marules protested. “Surely not if it is going toward your arrest? Toward an international incident? You cannot be serious?”

  “That’s quite an if. I don’t see any support for it. Just Emilio’s hints to you. And we don’t know what his agenda is.”

  “On the other hand …” I was getting sick of being the voice of cowardly reason. “Things could get messed up very damn fast if Emilio needs them to.”

  “But how have you gotten this bad impression of Juan Emilio?” Marules fretted. “Surely he has done you no harm or disservice?”

  “Let’s get out of here, Don. If Emilio’s right, we’re already marked. And if this is a smoke screen, there’s no telling what he’ll do to put us in the middle of something. Either way, we’re not safe.” And my mother might not be here anyway, not if we had things figured right. “We’re not getting the kind of cooperation and help we’d need to find Mother. So what’s the point of staying?”

  “It’s your call.” Don didn’t put any warning or whining into the statement. But it was obvious he di
sagreed.

  Standing in the dark with the two men, I wished I could feel Marules’s certainty in this course, or Don’s suspicion of it. I wished I could feel that my decision—either way—was right.

  “Then, please, let us go now.” Marules was almost begging. “I have only to make a telephone call, and Juan Emilio will send us a car. Let us find a telephone.”

  We left the abandoned house, Marules briefly flashing his pen light so we wouldn’t stumble into a gap in the pillaged marble porch.

  We barely made it to the sidewalk before a car whipped around the corner, lights catching us like deer on a highway.

  Marules’s knees buckled as if he might faint. Don was right behind him, grabbing his arms. Marules seemed to be murmuring a prayer in Spanish.

  The car jerked to a stop in front of us. The logo on the doors was impossible to read in the backwash of the headlights. There were two people in front and one in back.

  Both passenger doors were flung open. The men who emerged wore military fatigues, pant legs tucked into laced boots. One of them had a Fidel hat and a long beard.

  “I am to get no rest tonight,” General Miguel lamented. “You are most troublesome.” He held the kind of machine gun you see in prints of Che Guevara. But he wasn’t pointing it at us.

  “General Miguel,” Don said, “this man is ill. He’s having a heart attack—he needs help.”

  I hoped Don was improvising, lying to get us out of a jam. Marules’s knees had buckled, but I hoped it was from fear.

  Whatever the truth, Marules clutched his chest, sinking to the ground as Don held him from behind.

  “He’s having a heart attack,” Don repeated. “He runs a goddamn newspaper in Mexico City, and if he dies on the street because you’re pissed that we went walking at night, you’re going to look like a vulture.”

  Marules was making gasping noises. I stood a few paces behind the men, frozen with fear. Please let this be a ploy, I prayed. And let it be an unnecessary one.

  “Ignacio,” the general said to the soldier beside him, “help us get this man into the car. Go with him to the hospital.”