Havana Run

by Les Standiford

  “As in where?” Russell asked, but Driscoll’s gaze had traveled over his shoulder. It was clear he’d stopped paying attention.

  A smile had taken over the ex-cop’s features, and he seemed almost transported as he stepped down off the curb in the direction of the approaching Cadillac. “Mother of Mary, would you look at this?”

  He reached for the door handle before the car had quite halted and slid into the front seat alongside Tomás. “Hot damn, Tomás, I do admire your taste in cars.” He glanced back at the curb where Russell still stood.

  “What are you waiting for?” he called, then turned back to Tomás. “We need to go to the American embassy,” Driscoll said.

  Tomás gave him a stony stare. “There is no American embassy in Havana,” he said.

  Driscoll snapped his fingers. “My mistake. Let’s go to the Interests Section, then.”

  Russell had climbed into the backseat by now, and Tomás turned to give him a questioning look. “It is very difficult to get inside there,” Tomás said, as much to Russell as to Driscoll.

  “Yeah, well you can leave that part to me,” Driscoll said.

  Tomás turned his gaze back to the front seat. He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. He gave a shrug of his massive shoulders then, and off they went.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Later that evening

  “This is Jorge Pozzo,” Angelica said, ushering a heavyset man in what looked like a work uniform into the dimly lit living room where Deal had been waiting. It was another walk-up apartment she had taken them to, this one somewhere deep within the vast sprawl of Centro Habana, the district where, once upon a time, he and Russell had eaten a pleasant dinner. Only a couple of nights before, he knew, but it seemed like the stuff of a distant dream.

  Several floors below where he now sat, there had been a young man to swing open a wooden door set in the building’s façade the moment they’d arrived. In seconds the tiny car was parked inside the building’s courtyard, the door swung shut and locked in their wake. Only four or five flights up this time, though, and apparently safe enough. They’d spent their time there since, a good portion of it continuing what had started inside that tiny car in a ruined parking lot on what he had since learned were the outskirts of Vedado, the neighboring district where a fair amount of construction had gone on when the Russians were still handing out largesse.

  What had passed between them, though, was more like combat than sex, as much flat-out aggression as tenderness. Nothing they’d be touting in Cosmo any time soon, he supposed, but nonetheless it had boiled up out of them both like lava, just as dangerous, just as impossible to stop.

  Nor did the concept of stopping seem to have much currency in his mind any longer. He had given himself over to this course of action, mind and body, along with whatever he had left of a soul. This was what he was now. This series of actions, which he would continue until the intended conclusion, or until something cut him down.

  There’d been more, of course, including considerable time devoted to their planning: furtive phone calls made by Angelica from neighboring apartments, a series of visitors in and out, translated versions of the conversations to follow for Deal’s benefit.

  “Jorge is the one who took the pictures,” Angelica said, guiding Jorge Pozzo to a seat in the tiny living room. “Your father entrusted his ring to Jorge’s care.”

  Her gaze held Deal’s for a moment. He wasn’t sure what to read there, but it didn’t matter. He’d given up trying to read her some time back. He glanced down, saw he’d been twisting the heavy gold signet around and around on the ring finger of his hand and forced himself to stop.

  “I speak some little English,” the fiftyish man before him said. He cast his gaze down for a moment, then regained himself. “You are the son, they say.”

  “I am the son.” Deal nodded.

  “Your father is a good man. I know him from before, many years ago when I was still a fisherman.” He cast a sidelong glance at Angelica, then continued. “A very strong man, still.”

  Deal said nothing. What was there to say? The man before him was the one with the information to be heard.

  Pozzo leaned forward, his hands clasped. “They are not so good to him in there in the Castillo Atares. Not to anybody.” He paused, as if deciding something, then pulled himself up. “The one they call Machado is the worst. He is the one there to make you talk, you understand?”

  Deal nodded again. “Perfectly,” he said. There was something stinging his eyes, but he ignored it. Bad light. Too little sleep. He’d have to do something about all of it, soon.

  “I do what is possible, you know?” Pozzo continued. “Maybe a little extra water now and then. Or I pretend I forget to keep the light on. But I must be careful. Everyone is watching. You understand. I am just to clean there.”

  “Of course,” Deal said. He glanced at Angelica, who took a look at his face, then hurried to the kitchen for water. She came back with a glass for each of them. Pozzo drank his gratefully. Deal watched him, then followed suit.

  “This one time Machado had come down early,” Pozzo said. “By himself he went in, which is not supposed.”

  Deal nodded, glancing away momentarily. Machado, he was thinking. A poetic name. He heard Pozzo’s voice continuing, but it seemed strangely far away.

  “I was the only one, because it was so early, you know. So I saw what happened.”

  Deal heard something in that distant voice and blinked himself away from the precipice where he’d just found himself. “What was that?” he managed.

  Pozzo nodded, eager to tell this tale. “There was something first, I don’t know, maybe Machado making noise to wake your father up or something, but anyway he is not looking when it happens.”

  “When what happens?”

  A smile crossed Pozzo’s broad features suddenly. “I saw it, though. It was like this,” he said, thrusting his hand upward suddenly, like a man snatching a bundle of grapes. His eyes danced as he made a savage wrenching motion with his hand.

  “The other guards heard Machado all the way in the other place. Screams like a bull. They come to help, but somehow the door to the cell got closed.” Pozzo shrugged. “It was a long time for them to find some keys.” He smiled again. “Your father squeezing all the time.”

  Deal glanced up at Angelica, who stood watching, her face impassive. Deal turned back to Pozzo, allowing himself a smile. “It must have cost him,” he said.

  Pozzo gave a little shrug. “Maybe. But then is when the comandante himself started coming. Things got a little better after that.” Pozzo shook his head. “That Machado, he is an evil man.” He turned to Angelica then. “¿Señorita? ¿Poquito más agua, por favor?”

  She picked up both glasses and went into the kitchen. Deal leaned back in the chair where he’d been sitting, his gaze on Pozzo. “I appreciate your telling me these things,” he said. “I am very grateful for what you did for my father.”

  “De nada,” the man said with a dismissive gesture.

  Angelica was back, then, with the water. “Jorge is the one who overheard where they were taking him as well,” she said to Deal. “He has cousins who work in the Hospital Nacional.”

  “Six cousins,” Pozzo nodded proudly. “One is a doctor. She studied in Russia.”

  Deal glanced up at Angelica, who gave a quiet nod in return. Pozzo drained his second glass of water, then stood to extend his hand to Deal. “I am wanting to help,” he said. “It is good to meet you.”

  Deal rose to grasp Pozzo’s hand. Thick and callused, as he knew it would be. “I am glad to meet you,” he said. “You have already been a great help.”

  Angelica showed Pozzo to the door at the rear of the apartment then, the two of them conversing in quiet Spanish as they went. Deal reached for a drink of his own water then, fixing hard on that image of his father’s steely grip crushing the balls of a man named Machado. He’d hold fast to tha
t from now on, he thought. It seemed right for what lay ahead.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Interesting,” the man behind the desk said. He’d told them his name was Markson. He wore dark glasses of the horn-rimmed variety. His black suit was a size too small, the lapels too narrow, the featureless tie too thin. He looked like he’d been dressed by a sitcom writer for a sixties show.

  He was turning the listening device Driscoll had given him around and about in his fingers like a none-too-bright high school science teacher examining an insect casing or a seed pod one of his eager students had brought in.

  “What is it supposed to be?” he said, glancing brightly up at Driscoll and Leon.

  This was the second guy they’d talked to. The third, if you wanted to count the surly young jarhead in the guard booth outside. How did they treat the people they wanted to see, Driscoll wondered idly. Then he corrected himself. There was no one who fell into that category.

  They were on the second floor of the building, however. Making progress. He pointed to the phone on the man’s desk. A couple of decades less antiquated, but still oddly out of time.

  “Let’s get Vines in here, let him explain it to you.”

  The man cocked his head in a mantislike way. “Vines?” he asked. “I’m afraid we have no one here by that name.”

  “Maybe he’s calling himself John F. Kennedy, now,” Driscoll said. “I’m talking about the guy who walked into Belfry Associates in Boca Raton, Florida, twelve days ago…”

  He broke off to consult a tiny spiral-bound notepad he’d pulled from his shirt. “…And purchased two dozen of those clever little wads of gum you’re holding in your hand. He was using the name Vines at the time. Five days ago he checked into the Key West Hyatt under the name of Paul Fisher.” Driscoll reached into his pocket, replacing the pad, then tossed a grainy photograph down on the blotter in front of Markson. “That came off the hotel’s surveillance camera. Even spooks show up on video.”

  “I don’t know how or where you got your information, Mr. Driscoll…” Markson began, in a been-there, heard-that tone.

  But Driscoll didn’t pause. “A night or two later, there’s an old fart named Lennie Markowitz who lives in the Sea View Condominiums on Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West. Couldn’t sleep because he heard noises, so he got up to take several photographs of a prowler beneath his balcony. He didn’t want to use a flash because that would have tipped the prowlers off, right? But he got a couple that actually came out when Vines followed John Deal into the next-door apartment. This Markowitz is bat-shit, but he owns a pretty good camera.” Driscoll fanned some snapshots like a three-card monte dealer, then dropped them deftly back in his pocket.

  “I don’t see what any of this has to do with this office…” Markson tried, but Driscoll wasn’t listening.

  “Copies of all this and more are in the possession of Ellis Dobbins as we speak,” Driscoll said, tapping his shirt pocket. “You probably never heard of Mr. Dobbins, since it looks like you live in some other dimension, but Dobbins happens to be the most mad-dog, publicity-hungry attorney to walk the planet. He makes Al Sharpton seem level-headed. Even if you kill him, he’ll find a way to get you.”

  Driscoll cut a glance at Russell Straight and seemed satisfied with the glowering gaze he was sending Markson’s way. “The fact is this: If I do not return to Miami, along with my clients Russell Straight and John Deal, within a reasonable time, Ellis Dobbins will build a pile of stink so big it will bury every spook in South Florida. It’ll be years before you’re able to conduct normal business again.”

  There was a pause as Markson tented his fingers and stared up in a thoughtful way. “What would constitute a reasonable time, Mr. Driscoll?” he asked.

  Driscoll turned to Russell with a see-there look. “You’re something else, Driscoll,” Russell said.

  “It’s a gift,” Driscoll told him.

  A buzzing sound emanated from the phone on Markson’s desk, and the man turned to press a button. “All right, Markson, I’m coming in now,” a voice sounded over a tinny intercom.

  “Yes, Mr. Vines,” Markson replied.

  And soon enough, he was there.

  Chapter Thirty

  “His name is not really Machado,” she told Deal as they waited across the boulevard from the Hospital Nacional for the light to change.

  “I didn’t think so,” Deal said. He picked up the identification tag that had been brought to the apartment, along with the lab coats and scrubs they now wore. The picture of himself was little more than a dark smudge above the Russian name they’d given him.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Everyone’s ID looks like that. If the quality were any better, they would most certainly be fakes.”

  “What if someone speaks to me in Russian?” he asked.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re a doctor. You don’t have to answer.” She gave him a wan smile. “Just because they’re not paid anything over here, it doesn’t mean everything is different, you know.”

  Deal nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. They’d come this far on the back of a pair of Vespa motor scooters driven by two young men whose names he had never learned. A few blocks before they’d been dropped off, he’d seen a young man dressed much like himself standing at the curbside, trying to hitch a ride from the river of passing traffic. He’d been trying to imagine a hitchhiking M.D. in the States ever since.

  “His real name is Zeneas,” she said, stepping down from the curb as the light changed. “José-María Zeneas. He is the head of the secret police and a man who very much enjoys his work.”

  Deal was at her shoulder, nodding, feeling the wash of headlights across his face as they walked before the lanes of waiting vehicles. Was it strange that the lights seemed hot, he wondered? The two of them made it as far as the center island before the light changed and the traffic began to flow again.

  “The names change but nothing else seems to,” she said, staring into the darkness above the passing cars. “The real Machado ruled in the 1920s. His death squads killed so many they had to close the harbor to the fishermen.” She waved her hand in the vague direction of the distant headlands. “They liked to throw their victims from the walls of Morro Castle. There were even women who did such things for La Porra.”

  “La Porra?”

  “It means ‘the truncheon,’” she told him, her eyes fixed ahead. “You still hear the term used.”

  He nodded, staring back at her chiseled profile, the resolute jut of her jaw. Perhaps her morals were opposed to those of the women she referred to, but he knew where the genes had come from.

  She reached to take his hand as the light changed, and he glanced down at where their fingers touched. “Perhaps you should give me the ring,” she added, as they stepped down from the curb.

  “Why?” he asked, puzzled.

  “It is very noticeable,” she said, “and unusual, even for a doctor.”

  He nodded then and slipped the ring off his finger, handing it over to her. “I’ll see that you get it back,” she said, and touched his cheek briefly. In any other world, he thought, it might have seemed a gesture of tenderness.

  ***

  “It is not normally your assignment, then?” Angelica was saying. Deal thought her voice was a bit loud, but maybe it was just his nerves. He’d been fine out on the street, had barely wasted a supercilious glance on the bored guards in the hospital lobby. But here, in the cramped confines of the staffing lounge, he had begun to feel closed in, the seriousness of the situation suddenly magnified.

  The young woman Angelica had been speaking to—Dr. Cristina Aponte, according to her name tag—shook her head. Deal sought some resemblance to Jorge Pozzo in her fine features, but it was like comparing a teacup to a bowling ball. This woman might have weighed a hundred pounds. Her eyes were pale blue, her hair light brown, almost blond, her cheekbones painfully thin beneath pellucid skin. She’d studied in Russia, Deal recalled.
One of her parents must have been part of that bridge.

  She gave a faint smile. “I am a gynecologist,” she said. “My path and that of neurológico rarely cross.”

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Deal asked.

  “I think it is a general oversight of medicine,” the young woman said. “But as to the matter at hand, the hospitals and the schools work because they leave us alone, Mr. Deal. It is late and the staff reduced. I can assure you. No one will question my appearance on the floor, nor will they question anyone with me, for that matter.”

  There was a hulking young man wearing green scrubs and with a surgical cap wrapped about his bushy head of hair, watching from a corner. That one, with his broad shoulders and thick arms folded before him, seemed more the stuff of the Pozzo clan. In any case, he’d be handy to have along if anything went wrong.

  “How’s my father doing, Doctor?” Deal asked. “Do you think he’s up to this?”

  She gave him a frank look. “As I say, neurology is not my specialty. And it would not have been wise to have expressed an inordinate interest in the case.” She shrugged. “Some of my colleagues may profess a greater degree of loyalty to the current regime than I.” She paused, sharing a brief glance with Angelica.

  “I have managed a look at the charts, but without a closer observation and further testing, who can say?” Her gaze softened at the expression on his face. “It would seem that your father is suffering the effects of some major trauma, but this is only guessing. It is also possible that he may simply be a very cagey man.”

  “That’s something he always was,” Deal said.

  “We have to get him out of here,” Angelica said.

  Aponte nodded. “And then?”

  Deal said. “Leave that to me,” he said. He thought it sounded authoritative. He hoped he could be as good in the doing.

  “No one has said anything to him of what we intend?” Angelica cut in.

  The doctor gave her a helpless look. “How could we? If he lacks the command of his faculties, he might blurt out anything, at any time.”