The Crook Factory

by Dan Simmons

“Goddammit, Maria!” I yelled.

  “Oh, José, José,” cried the whore, throwing open the door and rushing out to throw herself into my arms.

  I pulled the Luger out of her hand and clicked on the safety before allowing her to collapse against my chest. I had the urge to knock her across the room. It was one thing to die an absurd death in a gunfight with Cuban National Police goons, quite another to be mistakenly shot to death by a Cuban whore. I was not sure which would have amused my old friends in the Bureau more.

  I told her what Hemingway had said to them, and that Caballo Loco and his little locos were gone for the day and probably for good. She remained hysterical.

  “No, José, no, no!” she cried, wadding my shirtfront into a wet mass. “They will be back. They will return. They will come for me. Tomorrow you and Señor Hemingway and the little ones and the smelly sailors and all the rest will go away on Señor Hemingway’s boat and then no one will be left here to watch over me except Ramón the cook, who is crazy, and Juan the chauffeur, who wants to take me to bed but does not like me otherwise, and then Caballo Loco will return and they will rape me and then kill me for something that I did not do, that Caballo Loco himself did, and you will return but I will not be waiting in the cottage for you as I have done each night and you will wonder, Where is Maria? But Maria will be dead and cold and—”

  “Maria,” I said softly, squeezing her arms. “Maria, darling. Shut the fuck up.”

  She looked at me in shock.

  “I’ll talk to Señor Hemingway,” I said softly. “He will take you with us on the boat.”

  “Ah, José!” cried the whore, hugging me so tightly that my bruised ribs almost gave way.

  THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON was busy and instructive. Hemingway invited Maria to the main house for lunch, and blushing wildly, the young whore accepted the invitation and rushed up to Grade A to get into her finest dress. She was flustered when I told her that I wasn’t going to join them for lunch—Hemingway had not invited me—but pleased when I said that I would pack her things in the same travel duffel that I was carrying. Before going across the hill to lunch, Maria set out her few borrowed pieces of clothing, her hairbrush and modest makeup kit, and her extra pair of sandals. After she left, I packed it all away carefully and then looked through the small box where she kept her things. There was nothing of importance left.

  Then I spent the better part of an hour wandering the grounds—checking the “corpse well” up the hill, the old outbuildings beyond the overgrown tennis court, the shed where the swimming pool supplies were stored, the garage and storage lean-to behind the garage, and then back to Grade A, where I wandered through the dairy barns and clambered into the lofts. Lieutenant Maldonado and his boys were nowhere in sight. But under moldering hay in the back corner of the loft, I found a long package wrapped in canvas. I brought it with me when I went into Cojímar to check out the Lorraine and to load it with supplies. We had planned to do this later in the evening, when the Pilar returned, but Hemingway had decided that it would be a better idea for me to take the speedboat out while it was still light and leave it at a private dock in the old seaside town of Guanabo, about ten miles up the coast.

  Juan drove me to Cojímar since he then had to drive up to Guanabo and pick me up. The driver was sullen and silent, which suited me fine since I had my own reasons for silence. It was a thoughtful drive. When we arrived at Shevlin’s private dock, I told Juan to relax in the shade of the car while I emptied the stuff from the back seat and the trunk and loaded the boat.

  The Lorraine was a beautiful boat, a 22-foot runabout handcrafted of mahogany and chrome, fitted with leather cockpit seats and other expensive materials, built in the States by the Dodge Boat Works during the late ’20s when craftsmanship in small boats was at its height. Luckily, Shevlin had replaced almost all of the mechanicals with updated equipment: the Lycoming V-8 engine was only two years old and as clean as an engine could get, the steering mechanism had been modernized, the hull had been cleaned of barnacles recently, there was a brand-new magnetic compass on the dash, and a powerful searchlight had been mounted next to the windshield. Shevlin had modified the boat for the comfort of his passengers by moving the engine compartment farther aft and combining the two cockpits into one spacious, leather-lined space.

  No one but Juan watched me unload the car. In addition to the canvas package, I was lifting out heavy boxes of food, six five-gallon containers of potable water, three large boxes of hand grenades—what Hemingway insisted on calling “frags”—and two Thompson submachine guns in their sheepswool-and-leather cradles. Hemingway had insisted on bringing a dozen extra clips for the niños, and I dutifully carried them aboard and set them in place. I locked all of these things away in the starboard aft compartment that Shevlin had told us about. If one did not know the long panel behind the cockpit cushions was there, it would never be found.

  In the portside compartment, I loaded two of the sombreros científicos from the Pilar, a couple of green tarps, a tan tarp, a hundred feet of clothesline, several nautical charts rolled into cardboard tubes, canvas jackets, extra boat shoes, and some other clothing. I also packed away a military first aid kit, a separate bundle of sealed surgical dressings, my .357 Magnum and sixty rounds of ammunition locked away in a waterproof pouch, a box of Hershey bars, two bottles of insect repellent, two sets of binoculars from the finca, two powerful flashlights, a small Leica camera, two hunting knives, a couple of canvas bags with carrying straps, and a pump gun filled with Flit.

  I went up to the dock and rigged two wide boards as a ramp down to the Lorraine, and then called Juan to help me roll the two fifty-gallon drums of gasoline down into the cockpit. The chauffeur grumbled, but he helped me get the drums in place against the sternboards without scratching the mahogany or staining the leather cushions. Juan went back to the car to smoke a cigarette while I used some of the rope to lash the drums into place, making sure that they were secured well enough to stay in place come hell or high water. The heavy gasoline drums ruined the perfect trim of the little craft, making her ride too low at the stern, but there was nothing for it.

  When I was sure that everything was loaded and secured, I waved to Juan, took Shevlin’s silver key out of my pocket, and started the speedboat with a satisfying roar of its 125-horsepower Lycoming engine. Letting it idle, I cast off the bow and stern lines myself, settled into the luxurious leather seat, swung the beautiful wooden showroom stock Duesenberg auto steering wheel hard aport, and grumbled out through evening traffic of returning fishermen who looked at the speedboat with a mixture of disdain and envy.

  Once beyond the rocks of the breakwater, I opened her up to within a tick of a red line on the tachometer. She immediately jumped up on plane and sliced through the rows of easy swells like a bullet through soft cotton. There was the sound of the hull pounding, but no bad vibration at all. I throttled back a bit, but let her continue to fly with her bow free. The rush of air was exhilarating after the hot, sultry days ashore with almost no breeze. If I had an unlimited amount of fuel, I realized, I could hold her at thirty-five knots all day on a sea like this. I throttled back until her lovely bow came down and set my course east along the coast.

  The hills and fields near Hemingway’s Finca Vigía were arid, dusty, and mostly treeless where orchards had not been planted, but this section of coastline east of Cojímar looked like a tropical paradise from half a mile out to sea: a long stretch of white beaches, the crests of sand dunes catching the setting sun and throwing shadows on the sea grapes and other shrubs, fluttering lines of coconut palms glowing gold and green in the sunset. There was no real harbor at Guanabo, but a lovely curve of bay with the old town huddled under palm trees at the apex of the curve and lines of white bungalows in the trees near the points. The cottages had been built in the 1920s and 1930s to handle the growing number of Norteamericano tourists, but now their paint was peeling and most sat empty and boarded up, waiting for the end of the war.

  I tied
up at a private dock on the eastern end of the bay. The Lorraine had a canvas tarp that covered the cockpit, and it took a few minutes for me to figure out how to rig it properly with its myriad of chrome snaps and elastic loops. Hemingway knew the old man who owned the pier and the fishing gear shack on it, and the old fellow assured me that the beautiful speedboat would be there when we wanted it the next day. I paid him Señor Hemingway’s compliments and a dollar bill. Juan and the Lincoln arrived eventually, and we rode back to the finca in silence broken only by the rumble from approaching thunderclouds in the twilight.

  Maria was excited to see me, excited about the next day’s adventure, and mostly excited about her long lunch and conversation with Señor Hemingway. The writer had just left to meet his boys and buddies at Cojímar, so Maria and I had a light meal at the Grade A cottage and watched the heat lightning flash to the west. Despite her excitement, she admitted that she was still terrified that Maldonado might return, and she jumped every time thunder rumbled. After the dinner dishes were washed and the lanterns were lit, she went to the door.

  “Where are you going, Maria?”

  “Just for my evening walk, José.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of Caballo Loco?”

  She smiled at me but glanced nervously out at the darkened courtyard.

  “Besides,” I said, “don’t we have better things to do than a walk? We might not be alone again for several days.”

  Maria’s eyes widened at this. Bedtime initiatives had almost invariably been hers. “José,” she whispered.

  I walked to her, closed the door, and carried her back to our shoved-together cots.

  23

  THE TRIP BEGAN MERRILY, like a family outing on a sunny day. Before it was over, one of our party would be dead on the ocean and I would be busy digging bullets out of a dead man’s spine.

  Hemingway got the Pilar under way shortly after sunrise on Wednesday morning. All of his crew except me were in high spirits—with Maria and Hemingway’s two boys aboard, the trip had the feel of a weekend jaunt. That impression was augmented by the pack of fishermen and buddies who showed up at the dock to wave the Pilar off. The group included Roberto Herrera; his brother, Dr. Herrera Sotolongo; Sinsky the Sailor; Fernando Mesa; and the other former crewmen left behind, as well as the Black Priest, Don Andrés; and a cluster of Cojímar regulars who were having Bloody Marys for breakfast at La Terreza.

  Maria loved the boat but was terrified of the sea. She confided in “Papa” that she could not swim, that her youngest brother had drowned while working out of the Port of Santiago on a fishing boat, and that she was happiest sitting in the precise middle of the Pilar and would be saying many prayers to the Virgin Mary for good weather during our trip.

  “Yes, Daughter,” said Hemingway, “you say the prayers and I shall consult the barometer. We want good weather for our voyage.”

  Once out to sea, Patrick and Gregory took charge of the young whore—I do not think they had any idea where Maria was from or what her background was, only that she was “another pretty friend of Papa’s”—and they competed in showing off the boat’s capabilities, the outriggers, the fishing tackle on board, and their own spearfishing gear. Their Spanish was rough in spots, but the occasional lapse in grammar or syntax was compensated for by their obvious enthusiasm.

  “Once we get to Cayo Confites,” I overheard Patrick telling her, “I will take you spearfishing.”

  “But I cannot swim,” said Maria.

  Patrick laughed, and I realized that the boy—just like his younger brother—was probably smitten. “Nonsense,” he said, “the water is so salty there and the waves so small inside the reef that you couldn’t sink. All you have to do is take this mask and put your face in the water.”

  “You could wear a life jacket, if you wish,” said Gregory, joining the conversation despite his brother’s scowls and obvious signals to piss off. “Although it’s harder to swim around that way,” continued the younger boy, also obviously enjoying Maria’s company.

  “Are there not sharks?” said the young woman.

  “Oh, yes, scores of them in the area,” said Gregory brightly, “but they rarely come across the reef around Cayo Confites, and then only at night. And I’ll be there to protect you.”

  “With grunts strung on the belt of his swimming trunks,” said Patrick, “to attract the sharks.”

  Gregory glared at his older brother, but Maria only smiled and said, “And aren’t there barracuda?”

  “Barracuda never bother us,” said Patrick, regaining control of the conversation. “They’d only hit you if the water was very muddy or too roily. Or if they just got a glimpse of you and struck by mistake. We don’t go spearfishing when the waters are that roiled up.”

  “Barracuda are really curious,” added Gregory, “and they swim around us all the time, but they always go away. They never attack us.”

  “Unless you were swimming with fish on a stringer,” said Patrick, still needling his younger brother. “Or on your belt. But who would be stupid enough to string bleeding fish on his belt?”

  Gregory ignored him. “But you can swim between Mouse and me, Maria. Nothing will bother you that way.”

  The young whore laughed and shook her dark hair. “Thank you, thank you both. But I do not swim and will stay on the island and watch you catch fish and cook them for you when you bring them in.”

  “It isn’t an island,” said Patrick, obviously still miffed at his brother and angry that the woman was not planning to swim with him. “It’s a little pissant of a key.” He had said “pissant” in English.

  Maria nodded and smiled.

  THE PILAR PAUSED just beyond the bay at Guanabo while Hemingway took me in to the dock in the Tin Kid. The little outboard sputtered and popped but kept running as the dinghy cut through the lines of small waves and then seemed to float across the transparent waters of the bay.

  “You forgot to load this yesterday,” said the writer, patting a long object wrapped in two rain slickers.

  I pulled away one end of the closest slicker. One of the two BARs. Hemingway kicked an ammo can of ammunition with his foot. I nodded, resigned to carrying the heavy weapon with us.

  “You’ll get to Confites before us unless there’s shitty weather,” said Hemingway. “Just be sure that you don’t go scouting Point Roma by yourself.”

  “No,” I said.

  Hemingway squinted back at the Pilar, its green paint gleaming as the larger boat bobbed beyond the point. The boys were showing Maria how to fish from the stern chair. “I’d feel better if you were bringing Xenophobia down in the Lorraine.”

  “I offered,” I said. “She’s too afraid of the water to come in the small boat. And I thought you weren’t going to call her Xenophobia any longer.”

  Hemingway shrugged. He brought us up to the dock, and the old-timer there chatted amiably with Hemingway while I got the cover off the speedboat, secured the BAR, still wrapped in its rain slickers, set the can of ammo away, double-checked the hoses and pump for the auxiliary gasoline drums, and cast off the stern line.

  Hemingway lifted the loop off the bow line and stood looking down at me. He was wearing an old African safari shirt, rolled up and buttoned at the sleeves, open most of the way down the front. Sweat glimmered on his forearms and chest hair. He was very brown.

  “What did you tell the girl about this trip?” he said.

  “Nothing. Just that she could come with us.”

  The writer nodded. “I’ve got two of the big canvas tents in the Pilar. Gregorio will pitch them when we get into Confites and she and the boys will stay there while Wolfer and the others do… scientific business.”

  I nodded and looked back at the Pilar again. The canvas that rose to the waist height around the flying bridge had been laced on, and the two long boards were hanging on either side amidships, proclaiming MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY in twelve-inch-high letters.

  “Keep Saxon awake,” I said. The Marine had the habit of
dozing off in the heat of the radio room, and I didn’t want him missing possible transmissions.

  “Yeah.” Hemingway squinted to the east. It was still a beautiful morning. “We’ll get them going early tomorrow—Wolfer and the others—out on sub patrol to the northwest of Confites. We don’t want them intercepting the real sub.”

  I smiled at that thought.

  Hemingway tossed the coiled bow line to me. “Don’t break Tommy’s boat, Lucas,” he said, and walked back to the Tin Kid.

  I brought the Lorraine out of the bay at a conservative speed and swung the bow east just beyond the point. Hemingway was halfway back to the Pilar. Patrick, Gregory, and Maria waved at me from the stern of the bigger boat as I opened the throttle a bit and brought the Lorraine up on plane. They looked like three happy, sunburned children out on a boat ride.

  THE CUBAN LIEUTENANT and his men were happy to have company that evening and shocked that a woman was visiting their key. All of the men disappeared into their shack while Fuentes and the rest of us set up the old safari tents, and when the soldiers returned, they were still in rags but now in their best and cleanest rags. Maria was gracious and chatted with them in rapid-fire Cuban Spanish while we carried in boxes of food and cooking materials.

  The lieutenant had seen no enemy activity during the previous week and only a few turtle boats. A broadcast had come from Guantánamo that a PBY out of Camagüey had engaged an enemy submarine off the west coast of Bimini three days earlier, and the lieutenant had put his men on alert and Cayo Confites on defensive status, but there had been no sightings. Hemingway thanked the lieutenant and his men for their diligence and invited them to our evening cookout.

  After the sun set and a wind had come up to blow the worst of the mosquito clouds toward the southwest, Fuentes built a large driftwood fire and began grilling large steaks. There were baked potatoes and fresh salad enough for everyone, and this time Wolfer had not forgotten the beer. The mate had baked a Key Lime pie for dessert, and after that whiskey bottles were handed around to everyone, including the boys and Maria. The Cubans turned in around midnight, but the rest of us sat and lay against driftwood logs for another hour or more, watching the sparks rising from the campfire go drifting among the constellations and talking about submarines and the war. When we spoke in English, Maria showed little understanding, but she never ceased smiling and seemed to be enjoying herself very much.