Fifty Grand

by Adrian McKinty

  Inside the house a clock dings the hour six times.

  I hear someone stir.

  My legs start trembling. I’m wearing tight black American jeans and low-heeled black pumps, not exactly designed for making a break for it through the garden and over the wall.

  I pour myself another cup of coffee.

  The young man in the blue uniform returns. He has very long eyelashes and a nice smile.

  “He wishes to see you. Please come,” he says.

  Who?

  He leads me around the front, past a pool, and in through a set of double doors.

  The house is a museum. Old-fashioned furniture, a range in the kitchen. No modern appliances. When I see the hunting trophies all over the walls I remember what Finca Vigía is. We’re in Casa Hemingway. Preserved the way Hemingway left it in 1960. I haven’t been here before but I’ve read about it. The large open-plan hacienda, the immaculate pool, the expansive garden, the shutters open to the dawn and the early morning mist and distant sea. But for the trained assassins waiting outside, a truly charming spot.

  Along the walls ibex and antelope heads and more dead animals on the floor. White-painted bookcases overflowing with volumes. Desks covered with magazines: The Field, The Spectator, a New Yorker from November 1958. Bullfight posters. Paintings by Miró and Paul Klee. An armoire with a cheetah skin draped languidly across it. A Picasso of a bull’s head. And the pièce de résistance, there, sitting on the edge of a twin bed, as freaky and unreal as the Picasso, in his pajamas and a black silk dressing gown, Raúl Castro.

  What’s left of his hair has been dyed. Tanned leathery skin hangs loose on his face and under his neck. There are bags around his yellow eyes, but unlike Fidel he has his own teeth and even this early he looks a lot younger than his brother.

  When he sees me he puts a finger to his lips and points at the bed. A girl with him, sleeping still. It’s not a scandal. For although Vilma Espín only recently passed away, Raúl had been separated from the mother of his children for two decades.

  He points to the kitchen. The house is all on one floor with rooms bleeding into one another. Only the kitchen has a big thick door that closes.

  “This way,” Raúl whispers.

  Two DGI men slip outside as we enter.

  Raúl gently closes the door, leans on a pine table, and opens the shutters.

  “What time is it?” he asks.

  “Six-fifteen,” a voice from outside mutters.

  Raúl yawns and looks through the window. “Coffee,” he says.

  He sits down at the table and motions for me to sit too.

  “This can’t take long, we’ll have to have the house open for tourists by ten.”

  “I don’t know what this is.”

  Raúl smiles and rubs his jaw. In every other Cuban that gesture is a discreet reference to the Beard, but for him it’s just an assessment of his stubble.

  A coffeepot is passed through the shutters, along with two cups and a bowl of sugar. Raúl pours himself an espresso and adds no sugar. That explains the teeth.

  “This, this, Comrade Mercado, is an interrogation.”

  Fear. Great pulsing sine waves of the stuff. Worse than the ice lake. Worse than the hangman himself. All those DGI and ministry men outside but Raúl is going to do this himself.

  “Would you like a cup?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  He takes a sip. “Not bad. Are you sure you don’t want one?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who I am?” he asks.

  “Of course.”

  “I am the deus ex machina of your little adventure, Mercado. I am the person who will finally get things done right.”

  “I don’t under—”

  “Who killed your father, Comrade Mercado?”

  I try not to appear taken aback. “I don’t know, I have no idea. It was a hit-and-run in La Yuma.”

  Raúl shoots me a puzzled frown. He obviously isn’t up on his subversive slang.

  “La Yuma. The United States, in a place called Fairview, Colorado,” I clarify.

  “Who killed him?” Raúl asks again.

  “I don’t know.”

  Raúl sighs and looks out at the garden. The smell of hibiscus drifts through the window.

  “You came in through the front of the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that Ava Gardner swam naked in that pool?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who Ava Gardner was?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I think I’ve heard the name.”

  “Young people. What do you think of me sleeping in Hemingway’s home? In his very bed?” Raúl asks.

  “I don’t think anything.”

  “You don’t consider it profane?”

  “No. It’s just a house.”

  Raúl grins. “Yes, I suppose so. It is just a house like any other. My brother never sleeps in the same house two nights running. He is afraid that the CIA is still trying to kill him. For a while it was the KGB too. But now only the CIA.”

  His brother. Jefe the unkillable, the immortal. I mask my nervousness and fix an expression of polite interest.

  “Do you know why I sleep here, in this house?” Raúl asks.

  “No.”

  “We are the past, the present, and the future of the Revolution. We must be safe. In Iraq U.S. pilots were not allowed to hit cultural, historical, or religious buildings. Perhaps I am paranoid, but I feel safe here and I like it.”

  “It’s a nice place,” I agree.

  Raúl sighs. “I met Comrade Hemingway twice. Once at a fishing competition in Havana and once at Floridita. Have you been in Floridita, Comrade Mercado?”

  “Only to arrest someone. It’s too expensive to drink there.”

  “You should treat yourself sometime.”

  “Sure.”

  “Yes, I like it here. Surrounded by books and artifacts. Genuine history.”

  “It’s, uh, special. I suppose I should have visited before now.”

  “You should have. When were you born, Comrade Mercado?”

  “May twenty-sixth, 1980.”

  “When did your father, the traitor, defect to the United States?”

  “1993.”

  “When you were thirteen. Hmm. Thirteen. Before your quince.”

  I grimace. Two years before my quince. My fifteenth birthday—the most important day in any Cuban girl’s life. “I was his only daughter but he never saw it. My uncle Arturo said Dad would send money for the party. But he didn’t. He didn’t even send money,” I blurt out.

  Raúl nods. As a father of daughters and granddaughters he knows just how important the quince is.

  “Have coffee, Officer Mercado.”

  “I had some, already. A whole pot.”

  “In Mexico City?”

  “No, here.”

  “Real coffee.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, good. Now I think you’ll admit that despite your father’s defection we have been very generous to your family,” Raúl says.

  “Generous?” Ricky, my mother, and I got the same rations as everyone else. We all lived in the same crumbling apartments. Mom’s place didn’t even have hot water.

  Raúl nods. “Generous. Despite your father being a traitor, we let your brother, Ricardo, travel there to dispose of his remains.”

  Gooseflesh on my back. Leave Ricky out of this.

  “Ricky’s a Party member, a former president of the National Students Union, an executive member of the National Union of Journalists,” I say quickly.

  “Yes, yes,” Raúl agrees dismissively.

  “Ricky has been out of the country many times. He’s traveled to Russia, to America, to Mexico. He has always returned. He’s proved himself many times to—”

  Raúl puts his hand up like a white-gloved transit cop. “Enough,” he says.

  “What have you done with Ricky? Have you arrested him? Where is he?”

  Ra�
�l seems amused that I have the effrontery to question him.

  “I have no idea where your brother is. More than likely in the bed of some newspaper editor or a Chinese diplomat or one of our generals.”

  Mierde. He even knows about Ricky’s counterrevolutionary tendencies. Of course he does. They know everything. One person in every twenty-five is a chivato like Sergeant Menendez.

  He waits a beat. “And your mother, did she know of your mission to America?”

  Hesitantly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t go to America. I went to Mexico City. I’m applying to the university to study criminology.”

  Raúl snaps his fingers. One of the DGI goons leans his head in through the window. “The file,” Raúl says.

  The DGI man goes away and comes back quickly with a small green folder. Raúl snatches it out of his hand. “You flew to Mexico City last Tuesday. The day you arrived you had a tour of the university and were interviewed by a Professor Martín Carranza in the Department of Criminology. On Tuesday evening you checked repeatedly for tails and obviously you found our man. You took the subway to Coyoacán. You went to the house of Leon Trotsky.” Raúl puts the file down and smiles at me. “You have a sense of humor, Officer Mercado, I like that . . . Let me see . . . Ah yes, you entered the house but did not leave. Somehow you exited without us noticing. I have been to that house, Comrade Mercado. It’s a walled fortress, not easy to slip out of there.”

  “No.”

  “You escaped our tail and found a coyote to take you across the border. You went to the United States to investigate your father’s death.”

  “No.”

  “Who killed your father?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “You went to America to investigate the death of your father,” Raúl insists.

  “No, that’s not true. I’ve never been to America.”

  “Your boss, Captain Hector Ramirez, recommended that we deny you an exit permit. He said you wanted to go to Mexico but he suspected you might be a risk for defection.”

  Hector sold me out.

  “Well?”

  “Captain Ramirez thought as much, yes.”

  Raúl Castro sips his coffee and examines me like an M.E. performing a difficult autopsy. After a while he smiles, not unkindly.

  “We overruled him,” he says. “We. The DGI.”

  “What?”

  “The Foreign Ministry denied your application to travel to Mexico, but we overruled them.”

  My head spinning. “The state security police got me the exit permit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though you knew I was going to go to America?”

  “Ah, so you admit you went to America?”

  Damn it. The only way in Cuba was to deny, deny, deny. For years if necessary.

  “I didn’t go to America,” I say again, quieter now.

  A dog starts barking in the garden.

  “Someone take him for a walk!” Raúl yells.

  “Your dog?” I ask desperately, trying to change the subject. Raúl nods. “What type?”

  “A mutt. All other breeds are bourgeois,” he says smugly.

  “As bourgeois as that big black Chrysler outside.”

  Raúl grins. “You saw my car. There’s a story behind that vehicle that, alas, must be saved for another time. Now, I’ll ask again, what is the name of the person who killed your father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Raúl taps the table, rubs his chin. He decides to try a different tack.

  “How do you think we’ve survived for nearly fifty years on this island, mano a mano with the most powerful country on Earth? We are a poor country, with few resources. How did the Revolution survive with so much stacked against it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because, Comrade Mercado, we are smart. Everyone underestimates us. Again and again. You did well in Mexico City, you suspected that we would put a tail on you and you were right. What you did not appreciate was my personal involvement in this case. You did not appreciate that the DGI would anticipate your caution.”

  “What do you mean?” I wondered.

  “We wanted you to see the tail. We wanted you to see him. And we allowed you to think that you’d got rid of him, but you missed the real tail, Comrade Mercado. You’re good, but you’re just a police officer and we are the Guardians of the Revolution. We are the DGI.”

  A second tail.

  No. He’s bluffing. He’s trying to trick me.

  “I, I don’t believe you,” I tell him.

  “We followed you to Terminal Norte, where you took a bus to Gomez Palacio. You found a coyote and you went across the desert that night. You had an unexpected and unpleasant episode at a place called Bloody Fork—don’t you love those English names?—and our operative says you did very well at that encounter. In fact, after that episode he recommended that we continue the family tradition and recruit you.”

  Family tradition. Our operative. Pick a question.

  “Your operative?” I ask.

  Raúl yawns, the big jowly fold of skin under his neck swaying from side to side.

  “Our operative in the coyote van.”

  Our operative in the coyote van.

  My Guardian Angel.

  Oh my God.

  Paco.

  An agent for Cuban intelligence.

  The phony trips to Denver, his skill with the rifle; the man in the rental car, Mr. New York Plates—his contact. Now it all makes perfect—

  “I see by your face that you understand,” Raúl says.

  Best course now is the truth. Fast. To save my life. To save Ricky, Mom. Truth.

  “Yes. I went to America.”

  He nods. “Take off your hat,” he says. “I want to see.”

  I take off the beret. He looks at the bandage above my ear.

  “A graze. Don’t think you’re special, Mercado. I once saw a man who was shot between the eyes. The bullet exited through his lower jaw and two weeks later he was back fighting with us in the mountains,” he says.

  “He was lucky.”

  “Yes and no. Later we had to hang him for rape . . . Now, who killed your father, Officer Mercado?”

  “A man called Youkilis, a—”

  “My patience has its limits,” he interrupts. “I’ll ask that question once more and this time, if you do not tell me the truth, I’ll consider it a crime against the state. A conspiracy that involves your whole family. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Comrade Castro.”

  “Who killed your father, Officer Mercado?”

  “It was, it was . . . It was an actor, a Hollywood actor called Jack Tyrone. He lived in Fairview, Colorado. He was driving home drunk, he hit Dad and knocked him into a ravine, and then he drove off. In America they call that a hit-and-run.”

  “I heard the death was unpleasant. If it’s not too painful I’d like to know the full details. How did your father die?”

  “Dad’s pelvis and legs were broken. His rib cage was shattered. He tried crawling back up to the road but couldn’t make it. Blood filled his lungs. He drowned in his own blood. Slowly. It took him hours to die and when they found him his face was frozen.”

  A flicker as he tries to conceal a reaction. He nearly succeeds, but not quite. He waits for a beat or two to feign casualness.

  “A Hollywood actor called Jack Tyrone.”

  “He’s young. Thirty. Up and coming. You won’t have heard of him.”

  “No, I am familiar with him. Not, of course, through his films.”

  Through Paco’s report.

  Sunlight finally breaks through the mist, sending yellow beams through the house. Parrots start screeching on the rooftop. Soon all the other birds will begin too.

  “You discovered that Jack Tyrone killed your father but you did not kill him?” Raúl asks.

  “No. I didn’t kill him.”

  I wait for the other shoe to drop. It drops.


  “Why?”

  “I killed the man who covered it up. I drowned him in a lake in Wyoming. I killed the police officer who helped him cover it up. I let Tyrone go. He was drunk. He didn’t even remember the accident. And afterward he did what they told him to do. He followed his lines, he played his part. He’s an actor. He’s not a . . . He’s not evil.” Raúl’s face is twitching with anger as I continue my explanation. “I told him I’d be watching him. I told him that if he didn’t lead an extraordinary life, an exemplary life, that I’d be back. I’d be back to kill him then.”

  Raúl cocks his head, as if mercy is known to him only as a theoretical concept, not one that he’s seen in practice. “You killed the men who covered it up but you let Tyrone go?”

  “Yes.”

  He doesn’t like the answer. His face reddens. He smacks his hand down hard on the kitchen table. The coffee cups jump. A goon looks in through the window.

  “It wasn’t your call to make!” Raúl shouts.

  “I don’t—”

  “Don’t speak! It wasn’t your call, Mercado. I sent you there. I sent you. I sent you to do a job for me! Juan Mercado belonged to us, not the Yankees! We . . . I made the decision to spare his life and someone else overruled me!”

  In the black books, in the samizdats, they quote the Jesuit schoolmasters who taught the Castro boys. Fidel was wild, aggressive, a bad loser, a prodigy. Raúl was the levelheaded one, unemotional, slow to anger. I always believed that but the books were wrong. Raúl’s face is scarlet. He’s shaking. Spittle on his lips. His hands have become fists. He’s capable of anything. If he said the word one of those DGI men would take me outside to the jasmine trees and put a bullet in my head.

  He stands and stares at me for so long that I begin to think he’s had a stroke. But then his yellow eyes glaze and he calms down.

  “It wasn’t your call to make,” he mutters again.

  Finally he sits, takes a sip of coffee, breathes.