Stewart grunted and shifted his weight in the chair, eyeing Charlie with what could only be interpreted as suspicion. Charlie reminded himself that he hadn’t lied to Stewart, exactly. He had failed to mention the cocaine-infused doggie-paddle and the fact that it coincided with Teddy’s loss of bladder control, but that didn’t change the fact that Charlie had been treading in the official mutt’s massive crap piles since day one. He used this knowledge to reach down for some genuine outrage.
“I assure you, I did my best to look after him.”
“Of course you did,” Stewart said, with a flash of his charming smile. “And Katherine and I are very grateful. Which reminds me,” he said, slapping his knee and getting up. He pulled something out of his desk drawer and returned to the sitting area, handing Charlie a brightly wrapped parcel about the shape and size of a rolled-up magazine.
“What’s this?”
“A token of our thanks.”
Charlie sat there staring at it.
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?”
Charlie nodded and gently tore away the wrapping, puzzled to find what looked like a cloth fajita.
“Don’t look so surprised Charlie. It’s a hat.”
He unrolled it to confirm Stewart’s statement. “A Panama hat?”
“Always retains its shape,” Stewart said, grinning. “The perfect item for the traveller. I got one myself.”
Charlie shook it loose and was surprised to see that it did, in fact, instantly morph from fajita into hat. “You didn’t have to bring me anything,” he said, feeling a surge of guilt.
“Thank you, Charlie,” Stewart said, repositioning himself on the chair and signalling the imminent end of the meeting. “And I’ll keep you posted on this investigation,” he added, getting up.
“I’d appreciate that.”
“By the way, I understand they’ve given you extra guards. I hope you still feel comfortable there?”
“Yes, it’s fine.” The truth was, the news that the former occupant of his house had ended up dead had made him feel distinctly uncomfortable, but telling Stewart about it wasn’t going to help, so he rolled up his hat and headed for the door.
“Oh, and Charlie?”
“Yes?” He stopped at the door.
“Do have a look for that rubber bone will you? Katherine’s convinced that it’s the only thing that will salvage the rest of the flooring.”
Charlie was returning from the front entrance, having just escorted the Cuban property delegation out when he saw Sanchez and Gray seated at a table by the pool.
“You want a coffee?” Gray asked, heading toward the little cantina.
“Sure,” he said, taking a seat opposite Sanchez. “Where’s Bruce?”
“Gone to do some emails.”
“So, that went very well,” Sanchez commented as he lit a cigarette.
“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. The Cubans had requested a couple of minor drafting changes, but were otherwise ready to sign the legal documents as soon as Ruiz returned, in a week’s time. “I just hope it’s not too good to be true.”
“What do you mean?” Sanchez said, as Gray emerged from the cantina delicately balancing three espresso cups.
“Thanks,” Charlie said, getting up to relieve her of his coffee before continuing. “Just that, from what I’ve heard, things aren’t supposed to go so smoothly in Cuba.”
“That’s true,” Sanchez said, “but they do seem genuinely motivated to do this deal.”
“Have a little faith, Charlie,” Gray said, smiling.
“You’re right.”
“And take some credit,” Sanchez added, patting him on the shoulder. “You’ve accomplished in a few weeks what several of your predecessors couldn’t manage in an entire posting.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” Charlie joked as they drank their coffees.
“Sam told me about Javier Garcia,” Gray said, changing the subject.
“You left before I could tell you everything,” Sanchez said. Charlie was instantly curious. Suddenly, everything about Javier Garcia had become required knowledge.
“I’m all ears.”
“He was quite a ladies’ man, apparently. I don’t know if that explains why no one at the embassy wanted to discuss him.”
“What do you mean?” Charlie sipped his coffee.
“Maybe he was fooling around with the wrong women,” Sanchez said. “It wouldn’t be the first time — this is Havana after all.” Charlie was thinking back to the odd visits just after he had moved into his house and that they now made more sense. “A few years back,” Sanchez continued, as Gray leaned over and took one of his cigarettes, “there was a Swedish diplomat who was recalled suddenly … and I mean suddenly. It turns out he had been sleeping with the wife of a government official who had made it known that he wanted the guy at the bottom of Havana Bay.”
Charlie’s mind was flooded with uncomfortable images of Sharon and the Swedish Meatball in that broom closet. If it hadn’t been winter, he might have considered tossing Lars Whatshisface into the Rideau Canal himself. He looked up and caught Gray’s eye. She said nothing, but seemed to sense his discomfort, though she couldn’t know its cause. Perhaps she was thinking, as he had when he first heard of Javier Garcia’s sudden death, that it was somehow related to the drugs found under his floor.
“Then again, I’ve been to Venezuela, and the roads really are lethal. It probably was just an accident,” Sanchez said, tapping his cigarette in the ashtray and gathering his bag. “What time shall we meet in the morning?”
“The next presentation is here at eleven. I don’t think we need any prep.”
“All right, I’ll be here.”
“Thanks, Sam,” Charlie said as the lawyer made his way toward the front gate. Gray sat there for a moment, looking at him.
“You look like you could use some cheering up.”
He saw her smile, and suddenly the troubling thoughts that had been cluttering his mind all day disappeared.
“I feel better already.”
Chapter 31
Charlie lay in bed with Gray, his breathing still laboured, and their bodies stuck together by a film of sweat.
“Mmmm,” Gray moaned softly, sliding off him and rolling onto her back, running a hand through her hair while her other arm fell against Charlie’s torso. “What is that music?”
“Hmm?” He put his arms over his head and adjusted the pillow. “Someone local. She was singing at a restaurant the first week I was here. You know how they go around afterward with the donation basket and a couple of copies of their CD.”
“And there you were, fresh off the boat.” She nudged him in the ribs and he laughed.
“Off the plane, actually, but yeah … she wasn’t going anywhere until I bought one.”
“She’s good.”
They lay together in silence for a while, listening, until Gray rolled over and pulled herself onto her elbows.
“I’m going to miss these nights,” she said, looking up at him. He had been trying not to think of it — the fact that none of this was meant to last. He knew Havana itself was only for a few years, and he was fine with that. It was exactly what he had wanted. But Gray wasn’t part of his plan, and what had started as a fling seemed to be turning into something else. The only problem was, her time in Havana was limited to a couple more days, after which she would return to her life in Ottawa. As much as he told himself that becoming involved with another woman was the last thing he wanted, Charlie couldn’t help himself, and he was beginning to dread how he would feel after she had gone.
“How long can you stay?” he said, looking out the window as the wind picked up. Soon, it would be hurricane season. Even with most of his meals either prepared for him or eaten in paladares, Charlie already felt as though he had consumed a lifetime supply of ch
icken and beans, and the shortages at the grocery store hadn’t even started.
“I’ve got to be back in the office on Monday, so I guess I’ll have to leave Sunday afternoon. I’ve already changed my flight and my room’s available for the weekend.”
“Why pay for a hotel room when you can stay here?”
“I don’t know. It’s bad enough Redden knows about us, without me staying at your place. I’m sure he’ll be blabbing it all over the office on Monday. Asshole. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s told everyone around here, too.”
“Who cares?”
“Easy for you to say, you’re in the land of mojitos and salsa. This is what you’re supposed to be doing.”
They were sharing a laugh when a loud bang at the window jolted them.
“It’s the shutters again.” Charlie got up and secured them to the side of the house, and closed the window halfway. “Boy, it’s really getting wild out there,” he said, hopping back onto the bed. “I hope the weather’s okay for the weekend. We should do something special for your last couple of days.”
“Don’t go to any trouble.”
“Hey, maybe your flight will be cancelled and you’ll be trapped here until after the hurricane season’s over.”
“Sounds nice,” she said, laying her head across his chest. “Say, Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“About Javier Garcia. I didn’t know Sam was going to go digging up information. I certainly didn’t ask him to.”
“It’s fine,” he said, running his hand down her spine, feeling the little notches as he went.
“I’m glad he did though, aren’t you?” She looked up at him. “I mean, it sounds like his death was an accident, but if it wasn’t, it was most likely a jealous husband who got to him, not …”
“Not some drug dealer he stiffed out of a couple of kilos of coke?”
“You don’t sound convinced,” she said, as he continued to stroke her hair. When he didn’t answer, Gray pressed on. “You have another theory?”
“Remember the discussion we had about importing construction materials for the project, when we were drafting the purchase agreement?”
“Yeah.” She leaned onto her side, propped up on one elbow.
“You said you’d heard of projects where other stuff came in under diplomatic cover, right?”
“You think what you found under your bed came in under—” She stopped at the sight of Charlie’s finger over his mouth, or maybe it was the way he had straightened up when she had spoken those words. He couldn’t blame her. He had brought it up, without really thinking that someone could be listening to their every word. He got up and walked over to the CD player and hit the play button. As the music resumed, he lay back on the bed, leaning in close to Gray.
“It would be a good way for it to come in, wouldn’t it?” he whispered. “And it would explain why I saw that Medina guy at SI’s offices.”
Gray put her mouth right to his ear before speaking again, in a whisper so low he could barely make it out. “You think Medina used Garcia to import dope in the shipments of construction materials for the Venezuelan embassy?” She pulled back to see him nod, and then it was his turn to lean in to her.
“What if Garcia got greedy, and decided to keep some of Medina’s stuff for himself?”
They both lay there, contemplating their whispered exchange in the darkness for a while, neither one saying what they were both thinking — that with every passing second, their theory was sounding more plausible than the one Sanchez had offered this afternoon. And a lot more ominous for Charlie.
Charlie drove back along Fifth Avenue, his being the only car on the road apart from the occasional taxi near the hotel. The dashboard clock read 2:00 a.m., and as he put the window down a strong gust of warm wind blew in, shaking the car on its shocks. He wondered when the first storm would hit, and what his first hurricane season held in store to welcome him to Cuba. The previous year had apparently been relatively calm, but he remembered at least two storms, both beginning with the letter F, making the news in Ottawa in the past five years or so. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, he thought he saw the glint of headlights far behind him, but when he looked again they were gone. He felt suddenly exposed out on the deserted avenue in the middle of the night. What would he do if someone tried to pull him over now? Hit the gas pedal, most likely, and hope he didn’t end up in the slammer as a result. As he turned onto his quiet street, he felt a wave of relief at the sight of the hut outside his house, with one of the guards sitting inside and another standing out front smoking a cigarette. Safe. For tonight anyways.
Charlie waved as the guard tossed his cigarette aside and opened the gate for him.
“Gracias,” he said, getting out of the car and walking toward the front door.
“Buenas noches, Señor.”
“Buenas noches.”
Charlie locked the front door behind him and tossed his keys on the hall table. He kicked off his sandals and walked to the kitchen for a glass of water. He was parched. As he stood there in the dim fluorescent light drinking his water, all he could think of was Gray. He missed the warmth of her smile and touch already. As he caught sight of the bowl he had used for Teddy’s water, still sitting on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, he even found himself missing the stupid dog.
He put the glass in the sink and headed upstairs to bed. Thank God the first meeting wasn’t until eleven. As he hit the upstairs landing, he decided he would make a point of sleeping in a little in the morning, and then he caught sight of the rumpled bedsheets and felt another pang of loneliness. They had agreed it would be best not to risk having Redden see him dropping her off early in the morning at the hotel. Redden was leaving on the afternoon flight, and then they would be free to be together as much as they wanted until Gray had to leave on Sunday. Charlie planned to make the most of it, and he was thinking of where he might take her on Saturday when he noticed something that made him freeze in his tracks.
The baseboard below his bed was crooked.
He just stood there staring at it for a moment — as if to confirm that it was out of place — before turning his mind to possible explanations. He hadn’t noticed anything before he left to drop Gray off at her hotel; but then again, he hadn’t really been looking, either. After all, in the half-light of the room, it would easily go unnoticed. But it had struck him like a bolt of lightning the moment he had turned his eyes to the floor.
He scolded himself for being paranoid, but he couldn’t rationalize it, as hard as he tried. The strip of baseboard was definitely out of place. Had someone been in here in the last thirty minutes? He felt a shiver of fear run down his spine as he looked toward the open door of his closet. He knelt down and fumbled under the bed for the nine-iron he had been keeping there since the night of the break-in. Gripping the handle of the club tightly in his left hand, he made his way to the closet, reached in, and flicked the switch. He waited a split second, then jumped in front of the doorway, the club raised and ready to go.
Nothing.
Charlie spun around at the flapping of the curtains. He switched on the bedside lamp on his way over to the open window. The wind was bending the tops of the trees and whipping the bushes at the perimeter of the yard back and forth, sending a shower of little leaves and twigs into the pool below. Rain was beginning to spit in through the window, so he pushed it shut and engaged the latch. He turned to look at the floor by the head of the bed and got his pocketknife out of the drawer in his bedside table. Kneeling by the wall, he wedged the knife blade under the baseboard and pried it up. A minute later, he had pulled up the floorboards. He moved his flashlight over the hole where he had uncovered the illicit cache and found it empty. As he replaced the boards and tapped the baseboard gently into place, Charlie glanced up at the rumpled sheets on the bed where he and Gray had been chatting just an hour earlier.
&n
bsp; What had she said exactly?
He pictured her lying there in his mind’s eye, and her exact words returned to him, as clear as when she had first uttered them: “You think what you found under your bed came in under …”
There was no getting around it, Charlie thought as he sat on the floor looking at the lamps on either side of the bed, the ceiling fan, the light switches — all places where surveillance microphones could be easily concealed. Someone had been listening to their conversation. How else, in the brief window of opportunity afforded by Charlie’s dropping Gray at her hotel, could someone have entered his house and known which couple of square feet to search out of a couple of thousand? Or had the baseboard always been crooked? Was he going crazy?
Charlie got up and went downstairs, creeping into the darkened living room and peering out through the rain at the guard hut. He could see cigarette smoke coming from the window, where the two men would be sheltering from the weather. Gord Connors had told Charlie before leaving the embassy that they had scaled back to two guards again, and Charlie had thought nothing of it. Now, as he looked out at the hut, he knew the guards had to be in on it.
Somewhere, he realized, someone had been listening to Charlie and Gray from the moment they had walked in the door. Charlie felt unsettled at the thought of this person eavesdropping on their entire evening, from conversation to more intimate acts, just waiting for some tidbit of information. And it had come, and initiated an organized break-in on very short notice. It was even creepier to think that they were still listening. Could they be watching as well?
He returned to the bedroom, washed his face, and lay on the bed. The wind raged outside and the room felt hot. What should he do? Tell Connors first thing tomorrow?
Tell him what? He lay there for a good hour, trying to make sense of what had happened. No one could have gained such easy access, and on such short notice, if the guards weren’t in on it. In fact, it might very well have been one of the guards who came in to do the quick search, replacing the baseboard imperfectly in his haste to get out.
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