Escape to Havana

by Nick Wilkshire

  “Señor Hillier.”

  He sat upright as he recognized the voice. “Señor Ruiz?”

  “I hope I am not interrupting something important.”

  “No, not at all. I was just catching up on my email.”

  “I was thinking about our discussion the other night, about your embassy’s needs,” Ruiz said. “I may have a site that is suitable for you.”

  Charlie was leaning forward in his chair now. “Well, I’d certainly be interested in hearing more.”

  “I propose that we meet as soon as possible. Are you available this week?”

  “Of course,” Charlie replied, unaware of his schedule, but certain that it could be rearranged to accommodate any meeting to discuss a new embassy site.

  “I’ll have my assistant contact you with the details of the meeting.”

  Before he had a chance to get any more information, Charlie found himself listening to a dial tone. Just as he set the phone down, it rang again, but instead of Ruiz’s assistant calling with a firm meeting time, he recognized the voice of the ambassador’s executive assistant, reminding him about a staffing report that Stewart needed before the end of the day.

  “He’ll have it,” Charlie said, hanging up with a sigh. He had hoped Stewart’s absence next week to attend a conference would have gotten him a reprieve from what looked like a time-consuming, not to mention boring, exercise. Still, his day was relatively free, and perhaps by the time he finished, he would have news about the meeting with Ruiz. Fortifying himself with a sip of the potent coffee, Charlie pulled out the staffing folder and set to work.

  “Is that you, Charlie?” Stewart’s words boomed from the recesses of his spacious office. Charlie stiffened at the voice. With no sign of the ambassador’s assistant by four o’clock, he’d had no choice but to deliver the staffing report himself. He didn’t relish the prospect of a cross-examination on the contents of his work.

  “Yes, sir. It’s me,” he replied, poking his head around the door. Stewart was seated at his desk, a broad smile on his face.

  “Come in, have a seat.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any word on the meeting?” Stewart put down his fountain pen and leaned back as Charlie settled in one of the two chairs facing the ambassador’s expansive desk. He had mentioned the call from Ruiz at an early afternoon briefing, and had instantly regretted doing so before a meeting was confirmed.

  “I’m sure they’ll call tomorrow.”

  “Excellent. We have to get them, and keep them, engaged. We don’t want to lose this one, Charlie.”

  “Absolutely.” He noticed the collective we, though he had a hard time imagining Stewart would be doing much from his week-long Americas Summit in Panama City. “I’ll make sure you’re copied on any important correspondence while you’re away.”

  “That reminds me,” Stewart said, snapping his fingers. “Katherine’s decided to join me for the week, and I really hate leaving Teddy with the housekeeper.” Stewart was silent for a moment as Charlie sat there wondering whether he was expected to say something. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to look after him for a few days? It would mean so much … to Katherine.”

  “Um, sure,” Charlie heard himself saying.

  “It’s just that yours is the only other house with a big yard, and it’s in the neighbourhood, so it would be just like home for Teddy. He can be such a big baby.” Stewart grinned. “We’re going to meet some friends in Costa Rica after the conference. Just for a few days.”

  “I, uh, don’t know much about dogs,” Charlie said, realizing that the term of his dog-sitting assignment had just been subtly extended.

  “Oh, not to worry.” Stewart waved a hand. “He’s a piece of cake.”

  “Should I pick him up in the morning?” Charlie asked. At least he would enjoy one more night of peace before being stuck with the official mutt.

  “Best you come by tonight. Around seven would be good.” Stewart shuffled some papers into a file folder. “I’d have him dropped off, but it will be so much less upsetting for him to have you appear on his turf, so to speak.”

  “Right.”

  “My goodness, is that the time?” Stewart looked at his watch. “I’m never going to get everything done at this rate.”

  Charlie realized he had been dismissed, and started for the door.

  “So, seven sharp then?” Stewart looked up from his papers and smiled. “We’ve got to be at a reception by eight, you’ll understand.”

  “See you at seven.”

  “Thanks again, Charlie.”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  “It’s Michael.”

  Charlie pulled into the driveway of the official residence and gave a friendly wave to the security guard, remembering that a little hut would soon be installed outside his own place, and that from then on, he, too, would officially be under diplomatic guard. It would feel strange, he thought, to have his very own guard. The guy outside the ambassador’s residence emerged from his hut looking decidedly drowsy, and Charlie wondered whether his arrival had interrupted an early-evening nap.

  “He’s here for the dog,” came a woman’s voice from the direction of the house. Charlie turned to see Katherine Stewart standing by the open door as the guard gave a lethargic wave and returned to his post.

  “This is so good of you, Charlie,” she said, as he arrived at the door. She tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes before adding: “I certainly hope Michael didn’t pressure you to do this, because that just wouldn’t be …”

  “Of course not,” Charlie lied. “I love dogs.”

  As if on cue, Stewart stepped aside and Charlie heard the sound of barking and claws skittering across tile. He stood there frozen in place, with a grin pasted to his face and his guts clenched in fear as the big lab careened toward him.

  “There’s my big baby!” Stewart said, grabbing the dog by the collar at the last second, intercepting its lunge at the doorstep.

  “Hi, Teddy,” Charlie said, trying very hard to keep the wobble out of his voice as he removed his hands from over his crotch, where they had instinctively wandered, and extended one toward the dog, as though over a vat of bubbling nuclear waste. “Good boy.”

  Letting the dog go, Stewart looked on with a smile as Teddy lurched forward, sniffing Charlie and wagging his tail furiously as he emitted a series of grunts and barks.

  “Look, he adores you,” she said, just as the dog’s sniffing zeroed in on Charlie’s groin.

  “Ah, there you are.” Michael Stewart arrived at the door just as Teddy was completing his inspection of Charlie’s privates. “José’s bringing his things around,” he added, looking at his watch.

  “So, Charlie,” Mrs. Stewart said, “I take it Michael’s told you everything?”

  Charlie looked to the ambassador, who was ready to jump in.

  “Yeah, so he gets one of the big scoops a day of the dry food, and a half can of the other stuff, and he goes through a couple of bowls of water a day.”

  “And whatever you do,” Mrs. Stewart added as the gardener appeared with a wheelbarrow laden with an enormous bag, a case of dog food, some bowls, and a blue rubber bone, “don’t let him outside.”

  Charlie nodded, then realized the implications of this information. “You mean if I take him for a walk?”

  “I mean, at all,” Mrs. Stewart said, the smile gone from her delicate features. “There’s a long lead that you can stake down in your backyard for when he does his business, but other than that, he’ll be inside.”

  I have to keep this thing inside my house for the next two weeks?

  “Don’t worry,” the ambassador added quickly. “He’s house-trained.”

  Charlie stepped out into the driveway to open the trunk of his car and, while the gardener loaded the food and para­phernalia, Stewart clipped the lea
sh onto the dog’s collar.

  “Thanks again, Charlie. We’d really better hurry, Katherine.”

  “No problem,” Charlie mumbled, opening the back door and watching the dog leap in. It occurred to him that the tan fabric inside his recently arrived car might not be the best choice for chauffeuring animals.

  “And don’t forget to take him out at least three times a day,” Katherine Stewart said, standing by the car as Charlie got in.

  “But he’s house-trained, right?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s just … better that way.”

  Is the fucking dog house-trained or not?

  “Bye, Teddy,” she said with a wave, as Charlie pulled away. The dog had jumped into the front seat before he had left the driveway.

  “Down, boy,” Charlie said, looking around the mass of fur for oncoming traffic and trying to ignore the smell of putrefying meat coming from Teddy’s panting mouth.

  Chapter 5

  Charlie lay in bed staring at the slow rotation of the ceiling fan blades, the only sound a low, rhythmic murmur from the large mound of golden fur curled up on the floor by the side of the bed. After an uneventful ride home, he had introduced the dog to his temporary home, and it had seemed content to sniff around. It was only when Charlie decided to go for a swim and tied the dog’s leash to the railing by the back door that all hell broke loose. Teddy had barked non-stop for fifteen minutes, destroying the peaceful dip that Charlie had in mind, and forcing him to retreat inside before the neighbours sent out a hit squad. He wondered what other traits, apart from maniacal barking, the Stewarts had neglected to mention.

  Charlie sighed as he caught sight of the time on his clock radio: it was past one in the morning and he was wide awake. He switched on the reading lamp and reached for the home repair book he had picked up at a second-hand bookstore in Ottawa, just after moving into his apartment. Charlie had never been particularly handy, and hadn’t bothered to acquire any do-it-yourself skills in his years with Sharon. It had never really mattered to him before, and even Sharon’s occasional teasing hadn’t fazed him. But her ditching him for a younger man had made him consider his un-handiness in another light, perhaps as a sign of a more fundamental deficiency in his manhood. He scanned the index and flipped to the section on electrical fixtures, and he was intrigued by the instructions for basic wiring, and the importance of the grounding wire. No wonder he had almost burned down the house in Ottawa, he thought. He looked at the diagrams and wondered whether he should take a shot at fixing the light in the basement. It looked pretty easy in the pictures, and he knew where the main switch was. There would be enough light down there during the day to work. What the hell, he thought. He had nothing planned for the morning.

  He skimmed through a few more sections of the book before setting it back on the night table and switching off the light. He found himself comforted by Teddy’s deep, rhythmic breathing, and decided that maybe having a dog around for a couple of weeks wouldn’t be so bad. After all, apart from a collegial friendship with Landon, who was more than twenty years his junior, Teddy was all he had. Lying there in the dark, it occurred to him how alone in the world he really was. He could literally slide off the face of the planet and who would care? Not Sharon, that was for sure. He wondered whether she would have even the slightest twinge of remorse on reading his obituary broadcast over the departmental email system. Colleagues will be saddened to learn of the passing of Charlie Hillier, a … He couldn’t even imagine the text that would follow. On paper — and in all honesty, in reality — his career over the past twenty years sounded dismal, and he could only hope the communications people who wrote those things were pretty creative. He considered his legacy beyond work and felt even worse. Charlie leaves behind ex-wife Sharon … No, they didn’t usually mention ex-spouses, especially ones whose extramarital closet-humping had been so spectacularly discovered. And with no kids to mention, who was left? Charlie leaves behind Teddy, a Labrador retriever he babysat for a couple of weeks before he weighted himself down and wandered into Havana Bay….

  Charlie rolled over and cringed at the grating squeak from the bed frame as his weight shifted. It was annoying at the best of times, more so in the midst of a sleepless night. Even the dog had stirred, but as it put its head back down and resumed snoring, Charlie’s thoughts turned to Sharon. As much as he hated her for what she had done, he couldn’t help missing her, and wondering if everything would have continued as normal if it hadn’t been for that stupid Christmas party. Maybe he just needed to get laid, to give himself a little perspective. Since the split, Charlie had had precisely two sexual encounters, neither of which had been particularly satisfying for anyone involved. He rolled over again in frustration, eliciting the same metallic screech. This time it travelled from his ears down the length of his spine.

  Bolting out of bed, Charlie dragged the metal bed frame sideways a couple of feet, creating another grating noise that could only be bad news for the hardwood floor, but he was beyond caring. He fell back on the bed and rolled around heavily before satisfying himself that the squeak was gone. On his back again, he closed his eyes to the big fan blades, but it was hopeless. He got up and walked over toward the bathroom, but didn’t get more than a foot before stubbing his toe on something hard and sharp. A stream of expletives emerged from his mouth, as he looked down and spotted the protruding edge of a floorboard. Charlie clutched his bleeding toe and hopped the rest of the way to the bathroom, wincing in pain.

  It took him a while to staunch the bleeding and apply a bandage, and when the pain had subsided to a dull throbbing, he came back out to investigate the floorboard. He realized that it had been covered by the bed, but now lay on the direct path to the bathroom. Charlie stood there and sighed, considering whether he might be better off just putting the bed back to its original position. But the board was obviously the source of the squeaking.

  Eeny, meeny, miny, mo …

  With his toe still throbbing, Charlie made his choice and was about to start dragging the bed back when a thought occurred to him. He set off in search of his toolbox and returned a few minutes later to find the dog awake and looking at him with an air of puzzlement.

  “Sorry, Teddy. This won’t take long.”

  He opened his home repair book to the section on flooring, but was disappointed to find no quick fix. Rather, the only proper solution for a warped board seemed to be replacement, and in order to do that, he would have to pull up two other rows of planks, back to the wall, and he didn’t have a replacement board anyway. It occurred to him that he might be able to switch boards, relocating the warped one closer to the wall and out of harm’s way, but it all seemed like a lot of work. He sat staring at the floor for a while, then at his home repair book and, finally, at the clock.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” he said, as the dog wagged its tail, but he decided to see how easily he could pry up the moulding and was surprised when it came free on the first try. Within minutes, he had pulled up the first row of planks and, as he made his way back to the area of the warped floorboard, he noticed something odd. Instead of the white plastic underlay that he found everywhere else, there appeared to be a dark spot as he approached the warped board. He had to remove the third row to be sure, but he soon found himself staring at a hole about a foot across. Instinctively, he reached in and retrieved a plastic bag wrapped around something heavy and rect­angular, about the size of a large brick.

  “What have we got here, Teddy?”

  Charlie carefully removed the plastic cover, to reveal another layer of clear plastic, around something off-white in colour. He used his screwdriver to puncture the plastic lining, and froze when a puff of powder emerged from the hole in the tight wrap. After a few seconds of staring at the package, Charlie wet his index finger, dabbed it in the powder, and placed it in his mouth. He felt suddenly dizzy.

  What the fuck are you doing?

  He rushed to
the bathroom and rinsed his mouth with bottled water, then swallowed a couple of mouthfuls to try to dilute whatever he had ingested. As he stood over the sink, he looked into the mirror and saw the terror in his own eyes. Cuba was no place to be caught with a couple of pounds of narcotics in your possession. He returned to the bed and stared at the plastic-wrapped brick. Despite the fact that he wouldn’t know cocaine from baking soda — his big screen–inspired taste test being of no help — he knew this had to be coke, or possibly heroin. And this was no recreational-use baggie, either. He picked up the brick and guessed its weight at a couple of kilos before setting it back on the pillow as though it were infected with the Ebola virus. His first thought was to call the embassy’s head of security, or the police, or both, right away. That was what you were supposed to do, right? Then again, it was almost two in the morning. It could probably wait until first thing tomorrow. As he sat there staring, he realized that his hands were shaking.

  Charlie headed toward the bedroom door; then, fearing Teddy might try to eat it, he returned for the brick and took it with him. He made his way down to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Scotch from one of the cabinets and poured himself a double. As he sipped, he told himself to relax, that he would place a call first thing in the morning and let the embassy security officer take care of everything. He was beginning to calm down when a thought occurred to him. What if the house was under surveillance and the cops showed up the following morning, only to find him curled up with a couple of pounds of coke and half his bedroom floor missing? They might think he had no intention of disclosing his stash, or that he was moving it from one hiding place to another. Images from Midnight Express flooded his mind and he decided that he might be better off making the call right away.