by Stuart Woods
“Okay. What else do I need to know?”
“Well, just to make you feel a little better, my guy from the States, the guy you’re replacing, will be there somewhere. He’s six feet, a hundred and eighty pounds, sandy hair cut short, badly pockmarked skin. He’ll keep an eye on you, but don’t speak to him or pay him any attention; it’s important that you not seem connected with anybody, understand? You’re down here on your own.”
“I understand.”
“When the meet is over, finish your drink, wait until the show is over, go back to your room, and call me at home.” He gave Cat the number. “Any other questions?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Cat hung up, called the roof nightclub, and made the reservation. He went to the front desk and asked for his case from the safe. An assistant manager led him into the vault and turned his back while Cat took two banded packs of one hundred hundred-dollar bills from the briefcase and relocked it He returned to his suite and tried to get in a nap. It didn’t work.
At nine o’clock he took the elevator to the top floor and gave his name to the headwaiter. “A friend of Mr. Vargas,” he reminded the man.
“Of course, señor,” the headwaiter replied, “I understand.”
Cat was led to a table in a corner of the room, far from the stage. A small musical group was listlessly playing rather old-fashioned American dance music, and one or two couples were dancing. The room was filling rapidly. A waiter took his drink order and left a menu. He might as well eat, he thought, and ordered a steak and half a bottle of the Chilean wine he liked so much. He glanced idly around the room and immediately spotted Gomez’s man at a table alone, near the stage. The pockmarked skin stood out even from across the room.
The music stopped and the musicians were replaced by a more gaily dressed group, who launched into a spirited Latin number. Immediately, the atmosphere of the room changed; the dance floor was suddenly packed with swaying couples, women in low-cut dresses and men in tightly tailored suits, dancing with a combination of aplomb and abandon. Cat smiled in spite of himself. It had been more than twenty years since he had seen a group of adults having so much fun on a dance floor, doing the mambo.
His steak came, and it was excellent. By the time he had finished it, the musicians had stopped and were being replaced by an even more gaudily dressed group. A moment later the music had started again, and the stage was filled with the Cuban troupe, dancing wildly and singing at the tops of their lungs. They finished their number and one of the girls, the most beautiful one, stepped to the center of the stage and began a steamy ballad. She was a knockout, Cat thought, and he felt a stirring and a longing for Meg. Where the hell was she? The show went on for an hour, and Cat became gradually absorbed by it, forgetting why he was there.
Then, suddenly, it was over, and people were leaving. The waiter came and placed a check on the table. Cat ordered a brandy, and the waiter went, reluctantly, to get it. It was obvious that he wanted Cat’s table. People were beginning to arrive for the midnight show. Cat suddenly wondered if he should have come later. He had booked for the earlier show without thinking. His brandy came. Gomez’s man, he noticed, had ordered another drink, too.
Abruptly, two men, Latinos, sat down at Cat’s table. They were both dressed in business suits, conservative, for Bogotá. One was in his early thirties, hefty, blunt-looking; the other was closer to Cat’s age, with sharp features and small eyes.
The older man placed a small, leather wallet on the table and opened it, revealing a badge.
Cat’s insides froze. “Yes?” he managed to say.
“May I see your passport, please,” the man said in accented English. It was not a request.
Cat produced his passport and passed it to the man, looking quickly around the room. Gomez’s man was gone. Nobody who seemed to be Vargas was in sight. His heart was slamming against his chest.
“What is the purpose of your visit to Bogotá, Mr. Ellis?” the policeman asked, placing Cat’s passport on the table and covering it with his hand.
“I am here on business,” Cat said. His meet was blown, he knew. Nobody would approach him now. He resisted the urge to swear and pound on the table.
“And just what is your business?”
“I sell computer equipment. I’m hoping to open a new market in Colombia for our products.”
“Let me see some other identification,” the man said.
Cat gave the man his wallet, containing his Ellis driver’s license and credit cards. What was he going to do now? Would Vargas arrange another meet after he had seen Cat rousted by the police? Surely, he was watching all this.
“Have you a business card?”
Cat gave the man a card.
The man looked at it closely. “Are you armed?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“Open your jacket, please.”
Cat unbuttoned his jacket and held it open.
“What is in the left inside pocket of your jacket, Mr. Ellis?”
Cat flinched, involuntarily. If these policemen saw the money, he was bound to be arrested. Nobody would carry that much cash but a drug dealer. “An envelope,” Cat replied.
“What does it contain?”
He looked around for help, but there was no one to help him. “My travelling expenses.”
“Place it on the table, please.”
Cat took out the fat envelope and put it before him. The man ripped it open, raised his eyebrows, and thumbed the money. He put the envelope in his own coat pocket, then shoved Cat’s passport and wallet back across the table.
“Is this a robbery?” Cat asked. “Is that what the police do in this country?”
The man smiled thinly. “I am Vargas,” he said. “Be at the bar at Parador Ticuña, in Leticia, the day after tomorrow, at five in the afternoon. Bring nine hundred thousand dollars with you.” Without another word, the two men got up and left.
Cat finished his drink and tried to calm his nerves. It had not been what he had expected. He signed the check and went back to his suite. He closed the door and dialled Gomez’s number. “It’s Catledge,” he said.
“Are you all right?” Gomez asked, worriedly. “My guy said you were rousted by the cops.”
“It was Vargas,” Cat said. “I’m to be at a place called Parador Ticuña, in Leticia, the day after tomorrow, at five P.M., with the rest of the million.”
“What questions did he ask you?”
“Just to identify myself and my business here. He looked at my ID pretty closely. Nothing else.” Cat glanced across the room at the bedroom door. It had been open when he left, and the maid had already been in to turn down the bed. Now it was closed.
“Good,” Gomez said. “Get a good night’s sleep and come to the embassy tomorrow morning at nine. Ask for Bergman. We’ll do some planning then.” He hung up before Cat could say anything else.
Cat stared at the bedroom door. No light came from beneath it. He had left the bedside lamp on earlier. His small canvas bag lay on the living-room desk. He went to it and found Bluey’s .357 magnum, checked to see it was loaded. He went back to the phone and, without lifting the receiver, dialled 0. “Hello, operator? I want to place a call to the United States.” He spoke a number. “Yes, I’ll hold on.” He slipped out of his shoes and walked quickly to the bedroom door, his breathing rapid. Knowing that if he hesitated, he wouldn’t be able to do it, he shoved open the door, the gun held out in front of him.
There was someone sitting on the bed in the darkened room, a woman. Cat found the light switch and turned it on, pointing the gun at her. The overhead light illuminated the room, and he found himself pointing the pistol at the head of the lead singer/dancer of the Tropicana review. He froze, too astonished to speak.
“For Christ’s sake,” a voice to his left said.
Cat spun left, the pistol still held out before him. Standing in the door of the bathroom, a towel in her hands, was
Meg.
He let the pistol fall to his side. “What is going on?” he asked. “Where have you been?” His happiness at seeing her was overwhelmed by his anger at her for disappearing.
“Busy,” she said. She walked to him, took the pistol, and laid it on a chest of drawers. “Didn’t Barry Hedger give you my message?”
“What message?” He was still breathing hard.
“Oh, I see what’s happened,” she said. She walked to the bed and sat down. “When you got jumped by the cops at the airport, I called Hedger.”
“I know about that,” he said, sitting down on the opposite bed. “Thanks; it would have been even more unpleasant otherwise.”
“There wasn’t anything I could do myself, so I waited outside the jail until Hedger came with the ambulance and took you away. The next morning I called to see how you were. Hedger said you had been pretty badly beaten up, and you would be in the embassy infirmary for a few days.”
“He never told me you had called the second time. Why didn’t you leave me a note, or something?”
“I thought I’d be back here before you got out of the infirmary. I’m sorry, you must have been worried about me.”
“Yes, I damn well was.”
“Oh, forgive me,” Meg said. “Cat, this is my friend, Maribel Innocento.”
Cat turned to the woman sitting on the other bed. “How do you do? I saw your performance this evening,” he said. “You were wonderful.” She smiled at him blankly. “Qué?”
Meg translated, and she smiled again. “Thank you very much,” she said in heavily accented English.
Meg introduced Cat in Spanish to Maribel.
“Where did the two of you meet?” Cat asked Meg.
“I was in Havana three years ago for an interview with Fidel Castro. I stayed at the Tropicana, and Castro kept postponing the interview, so I was there for a couple of weeks, and we met on the beach. We became close.”
“So you’re having a little reunion, then?”
“Not exactly,” Meg replied. “Not just a reunion, that is. Maribel is defecting from Cuba.”
“Defecting to Colombia?”
“No, to the United States.”
Maribel smiled brilliantly at Cat.
She really was gorgeous, he thought. Coal-black hair, lovely skin, and startlingly white teeth. For the first time, he noticed she was wearing a dressing gown. It was tied loosely, and a lot of her breasts were showing. “I don’t understand,” he said to Meg. “How can she defect to the United States in Bogotá?”
“I’m working on that,” Meg said. “Her father is in Miami. He got out of Cuba years ago and has been trying ever since to get Maribel out, too. I’ve been in touch with the American Consul at the embassy. He wouldn’t make any promises in advance, but he hinted heavily that, if she did actually leave the company and officially express a desire to go to the United States, that something might be arranged. She’s a very big star in Cuba. The Reagan administration would make quite a show of her defection, I think.”
“What’s the next step, then?”
“We have to get her out of the hotel and into the embassy.”
“You make it sound as if she has to be smuggled out in a laundry basket. Can’t she just go downstairs and take a cab?”
Meg sucked her teeth and looked at the ceiling.
Cat had a sinking feeling. “Well?” he demanded.
“It’s a little more complicated than that. You see, there are four Cuban secret policemen travelling with the troupe, just to prevent this sort of thing.”
Oh, shit, he thought. “How did you get her away from them?”
“That was fairly easy. The troupe is housed two floors down. I was visiting backstage, and when the show was over, and everybody was going downstairs, I managed to get her into an elevator alone, and we got off on this floor.”
“Jesus, didn’t the four policemen notice that?”
“They all got onto one elevator just ahead of us. We were only a few seconds behind them, so I don’t think they could see which floor the elevator stopped on. They probably think we’ve left the hotel.”
As she spoke there was a knock on the door of the suite.
Cat jumped. “Probably,” he said.
Meg spoke rapidly in Spanish to Maribel, and they both headed for the bathroom. “Get rid of whoever that is,” Meg said to Cat, and closed the bathroom door.
Cat picked up the .357 magnum and stuck it in his belt, in the small of his back. When he opened the door, a heavyset Latino spoke to him in Spanish.
“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Hotel security,” the man said in English. “We are looking for two women who robbed a customer in the roof restaurant. I must search your room.”
“I’m afraid . . .” Cat was saying, but the man had already shoved past him. He looked quickly around the sitting room, then in the kitchen, then headed for the bedroom. “Hey, wait,” Cat shouted, following after him and trying to sound authoritative. “My wife’s in there.”
The man didn’t even slow down. He walked to the bathroom door and snatched it open. Meg was standing before the mirror in Maribel’s dressing gown, a towel wrapped around her head, and her face smeared with a white cream. She immediately launched into a tirade of irate Spanish.
Surprised, the man stepped back, and Cat got in front of him. “All right, out!” Cat shouted at him as Meg continued her abuse of the man. Cat kept his arms at his sides, but bumped the man, hard, with his chest. “Get out of my room now, or I’ll call the police!”
The Cuban turned and fled. Cat double-locked and chained the door after him and leaned against the door, his face in his hands. What else could happen to him in one evening? He calmed himself and went back into the bedroom. “What’s that on your face?” he asked Meg, following her back into the bathroom. “I’ve never seen you use that sort of stuff.”
“Toothpaste,” Meg said, splashing water on her face. “It was all that was handy.” She said something in Spanish, the sliding glass door across the bathtub opened and Maribel stepped out, naked, and quite unself-conscious about it. The two women laughed and embraced.
Cat retreated to the living room, but he had a hard time taking his eyes off Maribel’s astonishing body. The two women followed him. Maribel’s robe had been restored to her, but she had tied it only loosely, and Cat still found her distracting.
Meg said soothingly, “Tomorrow morning we’ll find a way to get her to the embassy. She can stay here tonight, can’t she? There are two beds. You and I can have one, and she can have the other.”
Cat was shaking his head. “All this is getting too crazy for me. It’s all out of control.”
“Look,” Meg said, “I know you’re worried about Jinx—I am, too. But this won’t slow us down.”
“You don’t know what’s happened since I saw you. I have a lot to bring you up to date on.”
“Do we have to do anything about it tonight?”
“Well, no, but . . .”
Meg placed a hand on his cheek. “Cat, we’ve got to get Maribel back to her father. I think you can understand how important that is to both of them, can’t you?”
Cat nodded wearily. “Yeah, sure, okay,” he said. “Jesus, what a day!”
“So what’s happened while I was gone?” Meg asked.
Cat poured them all a brandy and brought Meg up to date.
“So we’re going to Leticia?” Meg asked.
“I’m going to Leticia,” Cat replied.
“Listen, Cat,” she said firmly, “get used to this, now. Where you go, I’m going, too. You go to Leticia, I go to Leticia. It’s as simple as that. You don’t speak the language, remember? You still need my help. Anyway, I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”
Cat tossed off his brandy and poured them all another one. “God knows, I’d rather go with you than without you. I wouldn’t have gotten this far on my own.” He stood up. “Listen, I’ve got to get some sleep
. I’m whipped.” He went into the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed quickly, out of modesty. He always slept naked, didn’t own a pair of pajamas.
He was dozing off in no time, and the whispers and giggles of the two women did not disturb him. He was too tired to think about Vargas, or Maribel, or Hedger, or Bergman, or Gomez. The hell with all of them. If he was going to hold together, he needed sleep.
25
CAT STOOD WITH HIS BACK AGAINST THE ELEVATOR WALL AND looked at the two women opposite him. Maribel wore pale makeup and lipstick, and her hair had been drawn severely back into a knot, so tightly that Cat wondered how she could blink. She wore a heavily rimmed pair of tortoise-shell glasses, sensible shoes, and her spectacular figure was hidden under a demure raincoat. Meg had come up with enough accoutrements to transform her into a not-very-interesting-looking woman, no small feat, as far as Cat was concerned.
Meg, on the other hand, resembled Carmen Miranda, without the fruit. Her makeup was florid, her hair wild, her dress tight, and her sunglasses extravagant. She didn’t really look like Maribel, but the effect was riveting.
The elevator reached the ground floor. Cat took a deep breath, and preceded the women out of the car. He walked quickly to the corner of the elevator bank and peered into the lobby. He picked out the three Cuban policemen quickly. While they were not actually standing in the main entrance of the hotel, they were positioned so that they could be in a flash. He found the fourth of the group lounging near the second entrance, near the airline office.
Cat turned and nodded to Meg, who took a deep breath and started across the lobby, toward the main entrance, hurrying, nearly at a trot. The effect on the Cubans was galvanizing. As Meg rushed toward the revolving door, they converged on her from all sides. Meg let out a shriek and hit one of them with her heavy purse, staggering him.
The fourth Cuban abandoned his post and rushed to the aid of his compatriots, no doubt fearful of missing out on the action and on the credit for recapturing a defector.
Cat, with Maribel on his arm, emerged from the hallway containing the elevators and walked casually, arm in arm, toward the second entrance. As they passed the middle of the lobby, both of them, as planned, gawked at the commotion made by Meg and the four policemen. They would have looked very odd, indeed, if they had not. In a moment they were out of the hotel, climbing into a taxicab.