The Girl from Guantanamo

by Donald Lloyd Roth

  Pilar had never been there at night before, and she was mesmerized by all the fancy people and ritual involved in gaining entry. Once inside it was like she was in a different world and, while it was fascinating, now she was a little cowed. She pushed her fear down, however, as the importance of her mission left no time for trepidation.

  The second bouncer led Pilar through a vestibule with a red carpet that matched the wallpaper. The hatcheck girl wore mesh stockings that were all that covered her from her six-inch high heels to her crotch. A similarly scantily clad cigarette girl had a tray draped from her neck, and tuxedoed waiters carried cocktails on silver trays.

  The bouncer took her to a dimly lit, semicircular booth in the back corner of the lounge. The booth had the only empty seats in the lounge. Every table was taken by well-dressed people seeming to enjoy themselves. Pilar sat down, and a waiter immediately descended on her table. She ordered a Coca-Cola with lime which seemed to come almost as fast as she asked for it.

  Salazar arrived dressed in a white suit with a black shirt open at the neck that revealed his hairy chest. He looked different with his dark hair slicked back. He reached out to take Pilar’s hand and kissed it.

  He slid into the booth. “What an unexpected pleasure, Pilar.”

  The seventeen-year-old girl smiled. “I need help,” she said, thinking it best to come right to the point.

  Although he had a good idea of what Pilar was about to tell him, a concerned look came across Salazar’s face. He waved the waiter off and moved closer to Pilar. “What is it my dear?” he asked.

  Pilar had rehearsed what she was going to say. She told him that Miguel had been detained by the US authorities, but was refusing to cooperate by giving names of people with anti-Batista leanings. Because Miguel would never tell them anything, Miguel was afraid that the FBI might arrest Maria and Pilar and insisted that they leave the US for Cuba immediately.

  Salazar listened to the story, processing what Pilar was telling him.

  “Damn those G-men,” he said. “I warned your father about his loose talk around the gym. There are some unsavory types hanging around that place. Somebody must have ratted him out to the feds.”

  Since his own credibility was still somewhat on the line with the FBI, Salazar realized the disappearance of Miguel’s wife and daughter would make Miguel look like he had something to hide from the FBI—and therefore make it appear even more likely that he really had fingered the right guy.

  “Say no more. Of course I will take you and your mother,” Salazar said.

  Salazar gave Pilar detailed instructions to meet him at a snack shop near the marina where his boat was docked. Meeting them at the snack shop would make it easier to confirm that no one was following them. But that was only the first of his precautions and the beginning of his plan to ensure his own safety and make himself a substantial sum of ill-gotten money along the way.

  Pilar regretted that it would be impossible to say goodbye to Teddy. She took comfort in her belief that somehow his father would find a way to let him know she hadn’t simply abandoned him.

  Salazar left the club shortly after Pilar and took a cab to the marina where his boat, the Montecristo, was nestled between two great white yachts. Designed by a legendary builder, the thirty-six foot 1954 Chris-Craft Corvette had a full deep V mahogany hull that was painted white, like the superstructure. The only visible signs of wood were the trim of the gunwales running all the way around and the gleaming decks. The boat could comfortably sleep six and was in fact his only home in Miami. It was equipped with a VHF radio, a radar, a depth finder, and a shortwave radio/police scanner. He was especially pleased with the upgraded upholstery, a royal blue that gorgeously complemented the mahogany decks and trim.

  Salazar spent the next few hours preparing for the voyage. His mental checklist included food and wine for the lunch and dinner, plus a little extra just in case the weather or current caused delays. He topped off the 175-gallon tank with diesel fuel and checked the water tanks. After grabbing a few hours of shut-eye on the Montecristo, he headed for the snack shack to wait for his passengers.

  Pilar and Maria arrived just after seven o’clock the next morning. Salazar had told Pilar that they should both eat breakfast to avoid getting seasick, but to pack light so that if the boat was stopped by the Coast Guard they could claim they were on a day trip. Maria was carrying a small suitcase, and Pilar had a satchel bag over her shoulder. Inside Pilar’s bag, wrapped in her clothes, was Miguel’s Smith & Wesson revolver and a paper bag filled with extra bullets. She wasn’t sure exactly why she brought it, but she knew that it would do no one any good sitting in a drawer in their house.

  Salazar greeted the ladies outside the snack shack and took their bags. After exchanging pleasantries and cursory small talk, the three walked to the dock. When they reached the boat, Salazar, after looking back down the pier, proudly declared, “The Montecristo.”

  Pilar could sense his pride in the boat. “She’s beautiful,” Pilar said.

  The high tide made the gangway slightly unstable, but Pilar jumped onto the deck without any help. As Maria struggled a bit with the climb, Salazar took hold of Maria’s hand and gently helped her onto the deck.

  Salazar pointed to the blue bench running across the back of the boat. “Welcome aboard, ladies,” he said. “Please have a seat while I get us underway.”

  Salazar backed the Montecristo away from the pier and slowly shifted the dual 415-horsepower engines from back to half speed ahead.

  While Maria firmly gripped the side of the bench, Pilar jumped from the bench along the stern, bounded up and leaned against the companion seat on the port side of the cockpit. “How do you use the engines to steer?”

  “That comes with experience. I’ll let you try later.”

  Once out into the short channel leading to open seas, he pointed to the green, flat coastline on the right. “That’s Fisher Island,” he said. “When we clear Fisher Island, I’ll turn right—we call that to starboard—and we’ll be in the Atlantic, heading south. We’ll stay close to land; as we pass Key Biscayne we stick close to the shores of the Keys until we’re near Marathon.”

  “How long will it take to get to Santiago?” she asked.

  “We won’t be there until tomorrow,” he answered. “It’s not safe to go directly there. Who knows, there’s a chance that the authorities will go back to your house this morning and discover you are gone. Surely they would put out an all-points bulletin for the two of you that would include the marinas and the Strait to Cuba.

  “Besides, the Coast Guard patrols the direct route. Just in case there is a problem, we’re going to take a circuitous route and stop at my friend’s in Haiti for the night. It’s safe there, and then we’ll have just an hour’s trip to Santiago in the morning.”

  Pilar was put more at ease, thankful that they were with Salazar, whom she had known for so long. She believed that he would keep them safe because of his friendship with her dad. But what Pilar didn’t know, and could never have realized, was that Salazar had no intention of ever taking them to Cuba. He had other plans for them, and their paranoia played perfectly into the story he had manufactured about the authorities possibly looking for them. He had turned the detour, rather than being an unwanted surprise, into a completely logical and sensible route—a step that he appeared to be taking out of an abundant concern for their safety.

  By cutting through the Bahamas south of Freeport, Salazar stayed east of Cuba. When he reached the southern end of Grand Turk Island, he would head straight toward Haiti. That would take them to the home of a gambling acquaintance named Lucien Acelhomme in the oceanside town of Port-de-Paix. Though Salazar was adding some miles to the trip, he hoped that avoiding the Gulf Stream would help him make up some of the time.

  Salazar increased speed by a few knots. The sky was cloudless, and the Montecristo cut through the flat sea. They would reach Haiti well before sunset.

  “It will be boring for a while, not
hing but water ahead,” Salazar told Pilar. “Why don’t you go below, check out the food, and decide what you and your mother would like for lunch. But best not to eat too much because my friend Lucien will pull out all the stops for dinner.”

  Pilar slid out of her seat and looked to where Maria comfortably lounged on the stern bench. Seeing her mother nod, she lowered herself down the ladder and disappeared below to prepare lunch.

  From the night they had met at the Caribe Hilton in nearby San Juan, Puerto Rico over a year ago, Lucien Acelhomme had been a person of great interest to Salazar. They had bumped into each other at the bar ordering the same eighteen-year-old rum. Lucien, of West Indian descent, was six-feet-two and muscular, despite his slightly protruding belly. At his elbow had been a stunning black woman whose straightened hair fell in a stylish curl on her bare shoulders. Her singular focus was her escort.

  Salazar’s sources could only tell him that Lucien was from a seacoast town in northwest Haiti named Port-de-Paix. He showed up frequently, always with an attractive woman, and usually spent a substantial pile of cash. He was well-dressed, well-mannered, and gave the impression that the amounts he lost were of no great concern. Lucien mentioned to Salazar that he would have preferred the Havana Yacht Club, the opulent destination of the elite. It was such an exclusive, purebred club that because he was of mixed-race descent, even President Fulgencio Batista had been denied membership there.

  The Club’s bar was the place where deals were made. Wealthy, well connected foreigners would tie up their yachts at the cement docks and spend a couple days sunning at the pool and looking for business opportunities in Cuba. Someday perhaps a black Haitian like Lucien with plenty of money and excellent taste would be welcome. But for now the ultra-elegant Caribe Hilton, available to anyone who could afford it, in US-governed Puerto Rico would have to suffice.

  The two men became friends over the course of a couple of long nights of drinking, but they never discussed their business pursuits. Finally, on the third night they boozed it up, Lucien asked Salazar to lunch the following day. “I’m in the import-export business, and I want to make you a proposal,” Lucien said.

  The two met to talk business the following day at noon. Lunch was on an outdoor terrace overlooking an azure sea which provided cool, salty breezes. Salazar and Lucien ate what the club claimed were the world’s best Angus steak burgers and fries.

  Lucien stirred the limes in his iced tea. “My friends tell me you are well connected in Miami,” Lucien began.

  “I’m always on the lookout for new ways to make good money,” Salazar jumped in. “If you don’t mind my asking, you seem to be onto something. I’d love a chance to participate even if in a small way.”

  “There’s nothing complicated about what I do. I help unfortunate young women have a better life by arranging for them to move on to more appealing habitats.”

  Salazar lifted his brows and met Lucien’s gaze. Lucien lit a Chesterfield and took a deep drag. “Sometimes these girls don’t even have enough to eat, or they lose the beauty of their youth by getting fat from eating the wrong things.”

  “Sounds like you work for the United Nations.”

  Lucien smiled coyly. “Sounds like you might be a smart-ass.”

  “Could you give me some examples? Say, your two most recent ‘humane’ projects?” Salazar pressed.

  “They both involved homeless girls living on the streets of Portau-Prince,” Lucien said. “One was a prostitute that had just been released from prison. She had no home to go to. She now resides in a palace in Saudi Arabia, and the other, a little better off, but also a prostitute, went to Thailand, I think to a resort community named Phuket.”

  Salazar, his initial fascination now tinged with revulsion, said: “You think? You don’t know where you send these girls? How do you get them there? A magic carpet?”

  Lucien laid it out for Salazar. He was a “source” paid by three distributors in South America: one in Panama, one in Colombia, and one in Caracas. They pick up the girls from me at my place by boat or by plane, sometimes a seaplane, and they have buyers around the world.

  “How much do they pay, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “That depends,” Lucien replied. “There are lots of variables. Younger is better, the body counts for extra points. Skin color means a lot, the lighter the better. White is supremely desirable. Bring me an English-speaking white girl with a great body and you hit the jackpot.”

  “OK, I get it,” Salazar said, realizing that Lucien was a slave trader. “I don’t think that bringing girls to you is something I would want to do on a regular basis, but it is interesting. And you never know, maybe I’ll show up some day with a young lady or two.”

  That conversation had taken place about twelve months ago. Salazar, who had spent most of the year living on his boat in Miami, had never seriously contemplated taking Lucien up on his offer. Nevertheless, he had kept in touch with him. One never knew when someone like Lucien could be helpful—and that time had now come for Salazar.

  Circumstances had changed. Salazar, with his fancy boat, was running through money faster than he could make it. He was scrambling just to keep his head above water, often borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. The FBI had also trimmed his under-the-table pay because he wasn’t delivering enough on his commitment, and the in-roads he was trying to make with the CIA hadn’t yet paid any dividends.

  And now, by turning Miguel’s name in, Salazar had finally set himself up for a nice payday, one that was about to get even better. He had already been paid a couple of hundred dollars by Maria for the trip to Santiago, and he made the decision to drop Pilar and Maria off at Lucien’s and take whatever money he could get for the beautiful young girl and her attractive mother. Whatever happened to them was not his business. He never even thought about his shattering the life of his “amigo” Miguel.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Montecristo arrived at Lucien’s dock just as the sun was hitting the horizon. Salazar docked the sleek craft next to a beaten-up fishing boat, its painted wood flecked with bare spots. Beyond the dock was a grassy lawn, lined on both sides by thirtyfoot trees, leading to a French country estate.

  Lucien had chosen the location carefully. It offered secluded access by highway, airplane, seaplane or boat. The property fronted on a protected natural inlet just southwest of Port-de-Paix, Haiti, which had its own small airport. Running right alongside the inlet was a flat stretch of coastal Highway 151 heading toward the town of Jean-Rabel. With no trees or neighbors on either side of the road, small planes could easily land and take off from the highway unnoticed, providing an even better landing strip than the public airport. Or seaplanes could land in the water and taxi right up to Lucien’s private dock.

  As Salazar tied up the boat, Lucien came bounding down the dock to greet his guests. “Welcome to Port-de-Paix,” he said, his arms open in a welcoming gesture. “I hope your passage was smooth.” A dark-skinned young woman with a gorgeous figure trailed behind him. “This is Maryse. She speaks only Patois.”

  Pilar and Maria rose from the back bench and made their way to the edge of the boat. Pilar liked Lucien immediately. His kindness reminded her of Salazar’s.

  “Thank you so much for having us,” Pilar said.

  “Oh, please, it is my pleasure,” Lucien countered. “Any friend of Salazar’s is welcome at my house any time.”

  Pilar noticed that the girl, Maryse, who seemed to be in her late teens, was shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Though she was smiling, she was clenching her teeth and squinting her eyes. Perhaps it is the language barrier, Pilar thought.

  Lucien led the group to the house, as he gave them the history of the property. The house had originally been a voodoo sanctuary, but his family had taken it over in late 1835 when voodoo became punishable by Haitian law. “We buried all the trinkets, so there is no need to be alarmed,” he said with a grin.

  The house had a large front porch with wooden rocki
ng chairs facing out over the lawn. The windows were fifteen feet high and had thick plantation shutters. The interior was furnished with French country-style furniture in light pastel colors featuring beige, blues, and greens.

  Lucien announced that dinner would be served in an hour. Maryse showed Pilar and Maria upstairs to their rooms so they could wash up.

  Lucien invited Salazar into the study and closed the door. The windows facing the sea to the south allowed refreshing breezes to sweeten the room, and a ceiling fan whirred overhead. Lucien poured two tumblers of rum, and the two sat down to discuss the business at hand.

  Salazar filled Lucien in on the details of his passengers’ plight and informed Lucien that he would like to leave the island tonight after dinner. Salazar wasn’t interested in facing the women when they realized his betrayal; he wanted to be back in Miami by the time they understood the situation he had put them in.

  Lucien agreed that it was best for Salazar to depart. He picked up the phone and called his contact in Caracas, a man named Diego Gonzalez. The two men talked about the “cargo” and agreed on a price. The short conversation concluded.

  “Diego has no interest in the mother, but he will fly over in the morning for Pilar,” Lucien said. “We can feed Maria to the sharks.”

  Lucien then went to the oversized safe on the wall across from his desk. He opened it to reveal large stacks of cash, and pulled out a roll of US dollars. He placed the money in a wooden cigar box and handed it to Salazar. Salazar was stunned by what he had seen in his brief glimpse at the open safe. Although he had no idea the exact amount he was being paid, he was certain the fat roll contained more than he expected, and his desire to be in good standing with Lucien made him feel it would be a weak move to ask. As Lucien handed Salazar the cigar box, he smiled and said, “Market price.” That was just fine with Salazar, who was glowing inwardly.