by Paul Vidich
Mueller saw Graham’s eyes become fervent, the eyes of a man too much in his own mind, too long on a bayonet border, too close to disillusionment. It was something Mueller knew, and in knowing it he recognized it.
“America is a wonderful place,” Graham said, “but one mistake I don’t make, nor should you, if you’re thoughtful, and I know you are—more thoughtful than most—is to mistake patriotism for love of country. Chest-thumping patriotism is all the fashion on Capitol Hill. It’s a sloppy mix of fear and ignorance worn self-righteously. Patriots embrace freedom and democracy like they are God-given and yet here and in Guatemala—places I’ve got experience of—those patriots prop up men like Castillo Armas, men like Batista. These eloquent defenders of democracy embrace dictators.”
Graham paused. “Be careful of Pryce. He doesn’t believe, or refuses to admit, that for every boy Batista kills two more join the rebellion. Dictators fall. They always do. Batista’s days are numbered. What does he do? He stands in front of José Martí’s portrait and thinks how to improve the lighting. Goddamnit, George, that’s what you need to see.”
Mueller wasn’t so much disturbed by Graham’s outburst as he was startled by it. Every agent in the field was vulnerable to the corrosive effects of the work, and the hypocrisies, but you learned to keep those thoughts to yourself.
Graham grew quiet. He leaned forward. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get out without them making your life miserable.”
Mueller saw something in Graham’s eyes he’d never seen before. Was it fear? Mueller looked away. When he turned back he met Graham’s gaze. “They need to believe you are loyal. That you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
Mueller glanced at the bar where the Cuban Graham had pointed out continued to quietly observe them, but he looked away when Mueller stared.
Mueller smiled. “They say Hemingway comes in here.”
“That’s what they say. What the owner wants you to believe.” He nodded at the rank of sailors at the bar. “Good for business. You know what they say about him. What he would like you to believe. We are all moved by his novels and fascinated by the macho legend he’s made of himself. Three daiquiris, yes, but it’s a big lie that he’s not an alcoholic. He believes the myths about himself. Batista suffers the same way.” Graham looked at Mueller. “You get your interview with him?”
“No.”
“On the phone you said it was a done deal.”
“I thought it was.” Mueller contemplated how much to say. “I telexed him before I came down. He said come down. Now I can’t get him on the phone.”
“He’s avoiding you.”
“It would seem so.”
“He probably found out you don’t drink. He doesn’t like a writer who doesn’t drink. He doesn’t want a long conversation with a sober man who keeps him from his daiquiris.”
They never did order drinks at El Floridita.
Graham suggested they leave to get away from the undercover policeman. They performed a tradecraft routine they had successfully pulled over in Vienna when they’d wanted to escape an NKVD agent, splitting up, forcing the agent to make a choice, and then the one who’d lost the tail doubled back and created a distracting disturbance for the other. They pulled it off again, and found in their success a measure of boyish camaraderie.
“You’ve gained a few pounds,” Graham said, throwing himself into a dark door beside a breathless Mueller as they watched their SIM tail run by. “But you haven’t lost the touch. You should get back in the game. Pair up with me.”
Mueller laughed at Graham’s sarcasm. He’d gotten that offer once before, a memorable cold night in Vienna, but it was a different circumstance, a different danger, waiting to meet their “blind date” at the corner of Dorotheergasse and Stallburggasse. It was a good meeting place, at least for the KGB walk-in who’d chosen it—the center of the Innere Stadt, near the Graben, with its statue to the victims of the great plague, and far from any American outposts. She was a pretty Soviet agent and Mueller had taken to her, and he’d let himself believe that she wanted to defect. He’d arrived by tram with her, but on the square, in the open, she had stepped back. Suddenly, Graham had rushed from an alley and gone for the girl, tripping Mueller, who fell, and the sniper’s bullet missed. Graham had saved Mueller’s life, but he didn’t know if it had been inadvertent. He never asked. Graham had done something for him and that created a tie. Was it friendship? He didn’t think it was. But there was a tie and with it came a peril.
They stepped from the shadows of the alley free men. The evening was alive. Brassy music drifted from open bars and mixed with the easy laughter of couples strolling in the heavy air of a tropical night, fanning themselves. Mueller was beginning to like Havana, the edgy, adventurous feel of the city, the exotic moods of its people. Habaneros, they called themselves, a people of passion and intellect.
The two men strolled together, each alone in his thoughts, but from time to time the sensual movement of a woman alone among the crowd drew their restless eyes, and everywhere the romantic closeness of couples.
A cleansing sea breeze removed the smell of the city’s sewers and mixed with rich aromas of spicy foods on sidewalk tables. One restaurant’s advertisement for pork on the menu was a freshly cut hog’s head stuck on a spike in the window.
Upon passing the end of one street they came upon a line of women in short skirts, loose tops, and stiletto heels. As Graham passed the line of prostitutes the bold ones blew an air kiss, or motioned with a come-hither finger, and expectant energy charged the air. Graham nodded at one, acknowledging the solicitation, and to Mueller, a half step behind, he said in a whispery baritone, “The shame of this country is that it hasn’t found a way to stop selling itself.”
At one point in their stroll Graham turned onto a leafy street of Beaux Arts homes. They had entered from a broad avenue and were now stopped at an iron gate that opened into a garden. The two-story pink mansion was dark.
“I got it for a bargain,” Graham said. “I could never afford the rent but the owner is an American executive whose wife was worried about the war. She insisted he be transferred back to Chicago. I got it month-to-month for a pittance. Comes with a maid and gardener.”
It was cool outside, but warm in the second-floor living room even with the French doors open to the balcony. A gentle sea breeze entered, but there was still sticky humidity in the room’s confined air.
Graham pulled a bottle of Benedictine from the liquor cabinet hidden within a huge colonial breakfront that dominated a wall.
“What is it?” Mueller asked, taking a glass.
“Taste it. Doesn’t matter what it is. It’s how it tastes.” Graham poured himself a glass and then he proceeded to strip down to his boxer shorts. He sat at a little ceramic tile table on the balcony, bare legs crossed, naked chest, and sipped his liqueur. “Monks make it. It cools you off. That’s what it does. A pleasant way to end a hot day.” He looked at Mueller. “To us.”
Mueller lifted his glass. It wasn’t how he thought the evening would unfold, to find himself sitting on a balcony under the moonless sky with Graham in his underwear. He wondered if Graham was going to come on to him, but that never happened. Mueller didn’t join Graham in his state of undress, nor did he feel any pressure to do so, and he came to think getting down to white boxer shorts was Graham’s quirk.
They talked about nothing in particular for an hour, or nothing Mueller could later remember, and the conversation drifted in that way until Mueller said, “Some people thought you were dead.”
Graham laughed. “Some people wish I were dead.” Then out of the blue, “So, George, what brought you down?”
“I thought I answered that.”
“What did you say?”
“They’re worried about you.”
“Right. Good to know I’m on their mind. The danger comes when they’ve forgotten about you.”
Mueller sipped the liqueur in his sn
ifter glass. “You should be careful of Pryce. But then you already know that, don’t you.”
Graham sipped. “I do. Is there something you know?”
“He thinks you’re planning a coup.”
Graham laughed dismissively. “He doesn’t know how to dance.” Graham saw that he had confused Mueller. “It’s more poetic in Spanish. A man who can’t dance is dull, flatfooted. Keep your eyes open so he doesn’t step on your toes.”
Graham enjoyed the last of his drink. He pointed beyond the balcony to a pale mansion diagonally across the street surrounded by graceful, mature trees. Lights in the second floor were on, a curtain was open, and a naked woman in silhouette was visible.
“Just by coincidence I found myself neighbors to Jack Malone and his wife, Liz. You know her, don’t you? Know her well?”
It was the way Graham looked at Mueller that led him to think, as one does when a question comes suddenly and surprises, and is, by its having been asked, something to make one curious, that he realized they’d come to the point of the evening. Later, his memory would summon Graham’s question, and he’d ponder the intensity of Graham’s curiosity, disguised within the cloaking casualness of an offhand remark.
“Know her? Yes. Know her well? I suppose I do.”
Mueller gave the details of their acquaintance—having met through Jack. Mueller said there were things he didn’t like about Jack, but he respected him for having the good sense to marry someone like Liz to soften his rough edges. Mueller saw Graham listen intensely. The eager listening encouraged Mueller to say more than he intended, describing husband and wife.
“He’s a bit of a social bully,” Graham said.
Mueller met Graham’s eyes. “Did you know him in college?”
“No. Different houses. I was on scholarship.” Graham added, “Liz confided in me.”
“Oh, really.” Knowing that Graham had an established interest in Liz didn’t bother Mueller, but it wasn’t something he was going to forget.
“Small world,” Graham said. “Jack called me. He heard you were looking for me and on the pretense that we had some history together, or were from the same college, if that counts as history, he asked me to join a little group he was forming for tomorrow night at the casino.”
7
* * *
SANS SOUCI
MUELLER STOOD inside the Spanish villa entrance and marveled at the Sans Souci’s opulence, listening to Jack’s exuberant description of all there was. Shiny slot machines lined the wide mosaic tile hall and elegant couples wandered with dazzled eyes.
“It’s French,” Jack said. “Means without care. And if you don’t care about losing your shirt you can have a good time gambling. They’ve got roulette, craps, blackjack, and a poor man’s carnival game with eight dice and a board. Players have a one-in-a-thousand chance of winning, but the croupier’s job is to convince you otherwise. A Manhattan doctor lost twenty-five thousand last week. It’s run by the mob. No one cheats.”
The two men were alone at the base of gracefully curved stone steps that had brought them to a patio with milling drinkers who stood among groomed palms. Prominently in the center was a majestic fountain where crystal water, illuminated by rainbow lights, cascaded level to level. Perfume of tropical flowers infused the hint of brackish waste from beyond the casino’s walls. An energetic Afro-Cuban band played a wild Caribbean mambo and a couple moved in quick orchestrated steps. They were obviously from the show—she in flamboyant dress and a flower hat, he an athletic man in tuxedo—and then a dozen men and women from the milling crowd joined in. These tourists dressed in banded straw fedoras, guayabera shirts, and flowery smocks bought in the street to enhance their claim on the spirit of the country. A surplus of waiters hustled among the array of tables, giving energy to the sparse crowd. Long tables radiated out from the stage like spokes on a wheel and each was heaped with bottles of white rum, spiny lobster tails, blackened ham, and beans served over rice.
Mueller sensed a precarious air to the partygoers’ carefree liveliness—the possibility that the evening would be suddenly interrupted by a gunshot in the street, or a bomb. Tourists willed themselves into bliss until a wailing siren put an end to the night.
Jack nodded at the stage where two heavyset thugs in suits stood guard. “That’s where the pigs came out. Ten huge hogs. Pandemonium. One woman from Cincinnati had to get a tetanus shot.” Jack waved over the young Cuban woman who had started the evening’s dancing. “Her name is Ofelia. Let me introduce you.”
Jack presented the woman. Her strapless dress swayed at her ankles and her head was crowned with an elaborate nosegay. She was slight, with narrow hips, pearl skin, and raven hair, and had the quality of handmade beauty coveted in the commerce of casino floor shows.
“This is my friend George Mueller.” Then, to Mueller, “She’s a wonderful dancer. She wants to work Las Vegas, but immigrant visas are tough to get. There is a waiting list. You know people. Maybe you can help.”
Mueller saw her eyes widen hopefully. “The people I know are gone. I don’t know anyone in the embassy.” He put forward his hand to greet her, but lowered his hand when he saw her disappointment. Her eyes impaled his coldly. The awkward moment lingered.
She turned to Jack. “You are full of empty promises. I must change. The show starts.” Her eyes darted to the shadows of the room and she became agitated. “We can’t speak to customers. Nunca. They see us.” She swung around and headed toward a stage door marked No Entrada.
Jack turned to Mueller. “Her English is better than you think. We found her in Camagüey and I got her this job.”
“What did you tell her I could do for her?”
“I said you had connections. She’d be grateful for whatever you can do. Tell her you’ll ask around. I know it’s tough. Do me that favor. Give her some encouragement.”
Jack wrapped his arm around Mueller’s shoulder, dismissing the discussion, and smiled broadly. “Aren’t you glad you came?” He waved at the opulence. “Nothing like this in New Haven. You’d have to go to Paris to get this decadence, but they don’t have beaches and no floor shows. Not like this. You’ll see.” He pointed to customers gathering at tables. “It’s a good crowd, given the bombs. Those men there are the beef buyers I’m entertaining. Good men who fill in their partying with a few hours of work. They came to see the prize steers we’re selling. They left their wives and manners at home.”
Jack took a gratis Macanudo from a waiter’s open box and grabbed a champagne flute from a passing tray. “Drink, George. There’s Coca-Cola too. I’ve never liked its candied sweetness unless it was cut with rum. Come on. Do me the favor.”
Jack pulled Mueller to the stage door and blithely ignored the big yellow sign prohibiting entry. Mueller found himself in a dimly light hallway alive with people clinging to the walls. Half-dressed dancers, men and women, who suddenly stopped talking when the two Americans passed, and then resumed their chatter a moment later. Jack knocked twice lightly on a frosted glass pane of a dressing room, and he pushed the door open before there was a response from inside.
Ofelia sat across the tiny dressing room. She was seated at the large, arched vanity mirror with her back to them, wearing a bra. Before her, a clutter of creams, wigs, perfume, combs, brushes, and a jumble of bras. Mueller saw the back of her head, her black hair loose to her neck, and then he saw her looking directly at him through the reflection. She spun around. “Que?” She stared at Jack. “Who is he?”
Mueller almost laughed. Ofelia lifted articles of clothing from the vanity and began throwing them to the floor, looking for one thing, and not finding it, she dropped a scarlet blouse, a flowered shirt, a confining carnelian top, silver rhinestone brassiere, and as she did she swore in an angry soprano, examining one thing, then another. She rejected each and then as suddenly as her search had begun, it stopped. She turned to Mueller. “I know you. We just met.”
She stood and quickly wrapped herself in a terry cloth bathrobe, pulli
ng the neckline closed. “I am late. Todo está desorganizado. Mi vida. My costume.” Ofelia again stared at Mueller, but this time she looked at him as if trying to see inside his mind.
Mueller thought: Who is this woman? Not yet twenty, he thought. Wild. Insulting. He saw the whole of her life in her pleading eyes. Her smooth hands revealed her privilege. Her fair skin unmasked her age. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
A quick gasp of breath spoke her surprise. Her tears gave away her gratitude. She foreswore all callous pretense. Emotion triumphed and broke through in a fragile voice. She kissed his hand. “Gracias! Gracias!” Her eyes sparkled.
Jack and Mueller were again in the hall passing the other dancers, who stepped back to let the two men pass.
“What did I agree to?” Mueller asked.
“Nothing,” Jack said. “She’s grateful. That’s enough. Immigrant visas are impossible now. You made her feel better. She won’t be happy on this island. Her eyes are wide for the world. She wears ambition like a curse.”
• • •
“We thought we’d lost you,” Katie yelled.
Mueller heard his name called as he stood beside Jack at the cascading fountain. Liz and Katie approached, laughing brightly, each holding a colorful drink. Their exuberance contained Jack’s big personality and the women smiled, claiming the moment with mocking eyes.
Katie turned to Jack. “You look startled to see us.” She poked him with her finger and turned to Mueller. “This is what you do in Havana. You see the shows. Dancing. Food. Liquor. You won’t believe what they do onstage. I had to convince Liz to come. She’s not sure she wants to be here.”
Liz smiled unhappily. “Anything for you. I’m sure I’ll tolerate the nudity.”