Havana Run

by Les Standiford

  She had seemed formidable enough with a pistol in her hand, Deal thought. Right now she seemed downright scary. The blaring of horns from behind them, in the meantime, had become apocalyptic. “Please, Angelica,” he said. “Drive on.”

  “You are certain?”

  “I’m certain I don’t want that motorcycle cop to come back here,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

  She flashed her gaze at him once more, then jammed the Fiat into gear. A good thing the trucker hadn’t made the mistake of climbing out of his cab to confront her, Deal was thinking as they rejoined the river of traffic.

  They had gone through some of the explanation before, back at the apartment, talking quickly while she picked up broken crockery and he flipped through the short series of photographs, trying to convince himself that the impossible was indeed true. His father gone for thirteen years now, long presumed dead, turned up like the ghost of Robert Vesco and locked in a Cuban jail.

  His suicide had been staged, Angelica had explained, though it had been some years before she had realized that not even Barton Deal’s family knew that he was still alive. He had done it to save their lives, she had learned. There were men who would have stopped at nothing if they had learned of Barton Deal’s existence. She’d never understood just why, only that Barton Deal had lived with the profound sadness of this truth. Of that much she was certain.

  Even if most of what she’d told him had been manufactured for reasons impossible to fathom, Deal could not suppress the sense that at its core the story added up. The more he strained to re-create the events of the night he’d found his father’s body, the louder came an insistent voice from somewhere in the recesses of his brain.

  “Of course,” the knowing voice intoned, “the perfect Barton Deal exit. Business going south, marriage a sham, a government spook named Talbot Sams breathing down your neck and threatening to put you behind bars, or worse…Why not? Why not fake your own death and jump on board the Havana Express? Cut a sweet enough deal, so to speak, with El Comandante, you could live out your years in peace and tranquillity…minus any bothersome family, of course.”

  “I don’t suppose he ever talked about us,” Deal said, as she turned off the major thoroughfare at last, starting down a narrower, tree-shaded street.

  “In time I learned things,” she said. “His heart was broken to be apart from you, that much I am certain of. He left the money, of course, but that was nothing compared to the guilt…”

  Deal stifled a bitter laugh. “Money? My old man left us with a bare cupboard, sweetheart. I’ve been trying to dig DealCo out of that hole ever since.”

  She turned, a look of surprise on her face. “I am sure of it. It was the one thing that he prided himself on, having left his family well provided for…”

  “If you bought that, then he’s a better actor than you are,” Deal said. A flush came to her cheeks and she turned away, at the same time the all-knowing voice returned to insinuate itself into his thoughts:

  “And who is to say it wasn’t true? Who is to say that Talbot Sams didn’t help himself to that supposed pot of cash, Johnny-boy? Or, maybe your old man needed the help of one of his cronies on the force to stage that sudden exit. If there was someone like that involved, someone who knew about a cache of money that could never be claimed…Maybe that’s why you never got any wind of what happened, everything buried under the wake that stolen money leaves behind…”

  In any case, it was hardly the thing to dwell upon now. There were far larger issues looming before him.

  “Look,” he said. “Let’s put aside my family problems. It’s been a hell of a night and day, that’s all.”

  She gave him a look. “You’re not the only one who’s mourning, you know. At least your father is alive.”

  It stopped him like a slap, the terrible image suddenly blooming again in his mind: her brother turning just as the heavy blade swung down, the awful sound that echoed through the trees…At least he’d been spared the knowledge of what had happened all these years. Angelica and her family had lived on the brink of calamity all that time and more. Despite everything, he could grant her that much.

  She had turned the Fiat off the street they’d been traveling on, and he saw that they had emerged upon the far reaches of a parking lot that seemed to be transforming itself back into the field it had once surely been. Giant potholes dotted the gone-to-gray asphalt, and clumps of sawgrass erupted here and there like nightmare weeds. There were a few cars parked in the lot, but those seemed half a mile away.

  In the even farther distance rose a featureless multistoried concrete building, with bulky rounded shoulders and narrow windows like slitted eyes, the thing looming over the flattened landscape like a giant fossilized slug. “What is it?” he asked her.

  “The Hospital Nacional,” she said. “A gift from the Soviet Socialist Republics.”

  “It seems in keeping,” he said. Just a glance at the place was enough to make you fall ill.

  “He is in there,” she added. “That is where they have taken him. At the orders of the comandante himself. He believes your father may be feigning the injuries he received at the Marina Hemingway. At the very least, he is to have his faculties restored through the miracle of state-run medicine.”

  Deal gave her a glance, then turned to stare out the grimy windshield in the direction of the distant place. “It’s not a prison hospital?”

  She shook her head. “Were he still in the Castillo Atares, it would be a waste of time to even think of freeing him.”

  He turned back to her and began to speak, not seeking answers so much as reciting what his reasonable self had come to. It seemed ludicrous even to apply such a concept as reason to the events of the past twenty-fours hours, of course; more sensible to dismiss it all as a drug-induced nightmare. But he’d seen half a dozen men die, had watched her brother’s head nearly hacked off before his eyes. There was some terrible truth buried in all this, and he would learn what it was; that much he had decided.

  “Here’s what I think, Angelica, and you can spare me the histrionics, no matter how it sounds to you. The first thing is this. You already have it figured I didn’t know anything about my old man being alive. If you told me it was anybody else in the world in there—Judge Crater, Jimmy Hoffa, JFK—I wouldn’t believe you, no matter how good you were. But Barton Deal, he’s another story altogether. It just might be possible. And maybe you’re even telling me the truth about how he got there, and about how selfless and other-directed you and everyone who works with you really are.”

  He paused for a moment, something in him heartened by the fact that she’d simply sat and listened and hadn’t tried to interrupt. “But I also know this much. If my old man was on the way out of this country, he was doing it on his own terms, no double-crosses involved, and he would have made sure his money made it out before he did. No matter what he might have told you or anybody else about what he was giving to whom, he’d have seen to it there was only one person who could open the chute where the rat pellets and the coins fall out, and that would be him. So that has to color my thinking, no matter what you say.” He saw the color rising in her cheeks again, but he held up a hand to stop her from getting any ideas.

  “On the other hand, here you come, telling me you want to give me my father back, so how can I not listen? How can I not find out if it’s true? How can I not run this thing out to the end?”

  There was a silence then. It was steamy inside the car, he realized…no A/C in here either. He could see sweat collecting in the hollow above her breastbone, smell the tang of it, and his own sweat too. It reminded him of something, but he wasn’t going to let himself go any further than that.

  “Are you finished?” she said, finally.

  “For now,” he told her.

  “Good,” she said. “Because all I want for him is to see him out—out of that place; out of this country; off to somewhere he can live his last days in peace and dignity
. I love him as if he were my own father. I don’t care if you believe me or not. It does not matter.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He stared at her for a moment, her gaze boring back into his. It seemed as if the tiny car were humming, levitating just slightly off the ground. “When you fucked me,” he said, “was it like you were fucking him?”

  She hit him hard with her fist, not a slap but a straight-out punch that caught him on the cheek and slid across the corner of his mouth. He saw it coming but he didn’t dodge the blow.

  He felt his lips fatten, and blood begin to flow from the tear a tooth had made inside his cheek. The back of his head bounced off the glass of the passenger door so hard he was surprised it didn’t break.

  On the rebound, he caught her with a backhand right—the heavy ring still on his finger there. Her head snapped sharply sideways.

  She gasped, but she’d been expecting it—she’d had the pistol leveled at his gut, after all—but she hadn’t flinched either. When she turned to face him again, there was a trickle of blood leaking from one nostril.

  He saw a quiver in the hand that held the pistol, but he was well past fear. He saw the hand go up and come his way, but there wasn’t the hint of a threat.

  He felt the press of steel at the back of his neck as she pulled him down. He felt lips and teeth and salty slipperiness. He felt that the little car might have caught on fire.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  José Martí Airport The following day

  “Hey, look here,” Vernon Driscoll said, as he emerged through the wooden door of Cuban Customs. “This could be an airport.”

  “You should see the other terminal,” Russell Straight said, glancing around the dimly lit, fifties-style lobby of this satellite field. “That’s where the real airplanes land. I had to bust my ass getting over to this crop-duster place in time.”

  “Two airports in Havana?” Driscoll said. “Who would have ever thought?”

  “It’s all domestic out of here,” Russell said. He pointed at a family in jeans and rustic peasant wear camped around a stack of crates in which small furred and feathered creatures stirred. “Just that and the puddle jumpers to and from the U.S. and Cancún.”

  “Puddle jumpers is right,” Driscoll said. “But it’s American Airlines, you know that? I give the ticket to the clerk and ask her if I’m gonna get frequent flier miles. She tells me it’s really a charter and the embargo don’t permit it. I say I’m flying American, aren’t I, but anyways…” He broke off when he saw that Russell wasn’t listening.

  There was a big man waiting by the glass doors of the low-ceilinged terminal, his hands folded in front of him, glowering like the heavy from a James Bond movie. “That’s Tomás,” Russell said to Driscoll. “He works for Fuentes.”

  Driscoll nodded. “Fuentes is a bad actor, all right. I been doing my homework since you called.”

  “He knows his stuff, though. Got your ass right over here, no questions asked.”

  Driscoll shrugged. “I didn’t say the guy lacked suck. I’m traveling on a research permit, did he tell you? Soon as I get a chance, I need to drop by the government’s citrus canker labs.” He turned to the big man waiting for them by the doors.

  “You’re Tomás, right? I’m Driscoll. You speak pretty good English, I’m guessing. All my stuff’s in here.”

  He lifted up a small soft-sided valise that looked like it had been in storage since the Eisenhower era, then thrust his other hand toward Tomás, who caught it as easily as he might a cobra’s head coming his way. Russell watched the two men stare each other down, wishing he had a chunk of coal to toss between those two clasped palms. He’d seen Superman squeeze his hands together like that once, afterward handing Lois Lane a diamond.

  The two men finally broke, and they all walked outside, the warm air washing over them like a wave. “Just like Miami,” Driscoll said, glancing around. “Only old.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Russell assured him.

  “I will bring the car,” Tomás said.

  “Atta boy,” Driscoll said.

  “Take it easy,” Russell said as Tomás started off.

  “Guy liked to break my knuckles,” Driscoll said, shaking his free hand. “You see him start to sweat?” he added.

  “Maybe I missed it,” Russell said. “In case you haven’t noticed it yet, we’re not exactly in the ’hood. We need all the help we can get.”

  “Don’t put your faith in scumbags, Russell. That’s rule number one. Where’s that bug you were telling me about?”

  Russell glanced around in disbelief. “You want to look at it right here?”

  Driscoll followed his gaze. Twenty feet away there was a taxi driver nodding off while he slouched against his ancient hack, and a few yards farther along the shattered sidewalk was a gnarled-up guy in a ragged woven hat vending oddly colored drinks from big jugs on a rolling cart. “You’re right to suspect these men,” he said to Russell. “Now give me the fucking thing.”

  Russell reached into his pocket and opened his fist over Driscoll’s outstretched palm. The thing landed gum-side up.

  “Looks tasty,” Driscoll said. He snapped his wrist and the thing flipped over, exposing its paper backing. “These things activate when you peel the paper off,” he said, glancing up at Russell. “Wonder who’s listening.”

  “You mean now?” Russell said, his voice rising.

  “I mean when you take the paper off,” Driscoll said.

  “How do you know all this?” Russell’s tone was doubtful.

  “A pal of mine runs an outfit up in Boca,” Driscoll said. “He contracts out, listens to what the government can’t. He showed me some things like these a couple of months ago. I’m not sure what the range is, though.” He glanced around at the dusty hills surrounding the airport.

  “You found this in Deal’s hotel room, you say?”

  “On the floor,” Russell said. “Could have been someone in the Cuban government trying to listen to him, I guess.”

  Driscoll lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “This gizmo right here is pretty high-tech stuff,” he said to Russell. “The way I get it, since the Ruskies pulled out, this outfit’s been having a hard time keeping the lightbulbs lit, never mind keeping up with this kind of thing.”

  “Where’d it come from, then?”

  Driscoll shrugged. “Maybe the last guy who stayed there dropped it.”

  Russell shook his head. “Get real.”

  “Or maybe it was your buddy Fuentes, wanting to keep an eye out on Deal.”

  “For what?”

  “Hey, paranoia runs deep. Particularly when you run in the circles Fuentes does. Maybe you and I know Deal’s Mr. Straight Arrow, but how can a scumsucker like Fuentes be sure?”

  “I suppose…” Russell said, but his tone was skeptical.

  “Did you check your own room for one of these?”

  Russell gave him a blank look. He hadn’t, of course. The thought of Fuentes, or anyone else for that matter, listening in to what had been going on in his room two nights before froze him in place.

  “Why the guilty look, Russell?” Driscoll asked.

  “Nothing,” Russell said. “Don’t lay that cop shit on me, now. That’s not what you came here for.”

  Driscoll shrugged. “Old habits die hard. We’ll take a look around your room later on.”

  Russell nodded, feeling vaguely like a schoolboy. Why hadn’t he thought to check out his own room, anyway? And what was it about Driscoll that always made him feel so uncertain of himself? If this old tub of guts thought Tomás had a grip…

  He shook his head then, forcing such thoughts away. There were far more important matters to attend to. Driscoll had been a cop, a good one by all accounts. He was happy to have him here, he told himself. He would have to be.

  “The other thing to consider,” Driscoll was going on, “maybe there’s a pa
rty involved we’re not even thinking about.”

  “If not the Cubans and not Fuentes, then who?”

  Driscoll gave his characteristic, all-purpose shrug that seemed to implicate just about everyone still drawing breath. “You mentioned that squeeze who worked downstairs from Deal’s Key West office, for instance.”

  Russell glanced up. “What about her?”

  “I stopped in Key West to have a word with her.”

  “And…”

  “She’s gone. Her place cleared out. Nobody’s seen her in days. The landlord says she first showed up two weeks ago, paid first and last month, that’s all he knows about her.” He registered Russell staring at him and shrugged again. “It’s Key West, okay?”

  “How about the people she works for?”

  “What people?” Driscoll said. “That title company’s been out of business for six months.”

  “There was some guy named Rayfield or Ray Bob…”

  “That’s right, Ray Bob Watkins, current address Starke, Florida. Oldest living marijuana smuggler in state custody.”

  “Oldest?”

  “He’s seventy-four.”

  “This woman said she was going with him.”

  “She’d be the first in quite a while. Ray Bob is gay.”

  “Damn,” Russell said. “You think she was setting Deal up for something?”

  “I try to keep my speculations to a minimum, Russell.”

  “Who could she be working for…?”

  “Like I say,” Driscoll told him, raising a warning finger.

  “So what’s next? Check out the hotel?”

  “In due time,” Driscoll said. “There’s someplace we need to stop at first.”