Cuba Libre

by Elmore Leonard

  "Why?" Amelia said.

  She watched him concentrating on a news item to make her wait--something he'd been doing almost the entire year they'd been together. She wondered what the satisfaction was in making her repeat herself. "Rollie?" "What?"

  "Why is he being held?"

  "The marine? They believe he's a spy."

  "That's impossible. He didn't leave the ship till he was blown off the deck."

  "Cher, I'm not saying he's a spy, they are."

  "How'd you find out where he is?"

  "I was asking about the two that brought the horses. Remember? Charlie Burke and the other one?"

  "Ben Tyler," Amelia said.

  "That's right, Tyler," Boudreaux said, turning his head to look right at her for the first time, "the cowboy. I asked Lionel Tavalera--you remember Lionel, that Civil Guard officer? Tall for a Spaniard and fairly good-looking if you don't mind them more than a bit swarthy."

  "The way I remember him," Amelia said, "is on the station platform at Benavides."

  "That's right, when he shot those two boys. My Lord, but that must've been an awful shock to your system; you'd only left New Orleans a few days before. That's why I want to get you away from here, before there's a chance of your being exposed to any more violence. Anyway, I asked Lionel if they were still holding the cowboy and the old man, as I'd been out in the country awhile and had lost track. I remember they were in all the papers when the cowboy shot that officer and they were under investigation of aiding the enemy, running guns or some such activity. We came back from the estate and I don't recall reading any more about them; it was all the Naval Court of Inquiry and how their investigation was coming along. I said to Lionel, "We're in the middle of negotiating for a string of mustangs and you throw the horse traders in prison. What am I suppose to do now, I have the horses?" He got a kick out of that. He said, "Keep the horses if you want them." By the way, that dun you were riding last week, in the country? That's the cowboy's; I didn't buy that one, but I guess it's milxe now."

  He turned back to the newspaper he was still holding upright in front of him.

  "Rollie?"

  He made her wait a few moments before finally saying, "What?"

  "You haven't answered my question," Amelia said, in no hurry, never letting her irritation show. "I asked how you found out about the marine, where he is."

  "And I told you, he's in Atars, that old fort."

  "You found out from the Civil Guard officer?"

  "Yeah, Tavalera."

  "Well, what happened to the cowboy and his partner? You said you were asking about the two that brought the horses?"

  "Charlie Burke, the old man," Boudreaux said, looking at the paper as he spoke, "came down with a serious case of dysentery, if you'll pardon my saying so, and wore himself out sitting on the bucket. Lionel says he's buried in the Colon cemetery."

  "And what happened to the cowboy?"

  Boudreaux turned his head for the second time to look right at her.

  "Tyler? He's hanging on."

  "Where do they have him?"

  "In Ataros, with the marine. Lionel says he'll be there till they locate the shipment of guns he brought, and then he'll be in La Cabafia the rest of his life." Boudreaux turned to the paper, but then turned back again to Amelia. "Lionel says that's if they don't send him to Africa or shoot him."

  Amelia lay there for several minutes staring at the ceiling, until Boudreaux said, "Cher, bring me one of my cigars, if you'd be so kind?"

  She got one out of his humidor, nipped the end off with her front teeth before Rollie, calling her name, could stop her. "You know I like it cut with my penknife." Amelia paid no attention. She found a match to light the cigar, got it going good, handed it to Rollie and crossed to the armoire, where she took off the robe and hung it up. She stood there naked deciding what to wear this afternoon, fairly sure Rollie was watching.

  "You going out?"

  He was watching. But wouldn't ever hint about having sex unless she showed an inclination first, touching, kissing or looking at him a certain way. He would never risk appearing to be in heat and come off as having natural inclinations. Not that much passion was ever expressed in this union. When they did go to bed he'd begin kissing and fondling and Amelia would wonder if they were ever going to get to it. He seemed experienced enough, but too self-conscious to bring any real fun to the bed. He never ever perspired.

  She slipped on a kimono and walked to the window again to see, three floors below, the coaches lining the street, the beggars, the children with swollen bellies, mounted soldiers passing by. Across the street rows of folding chairs faced the center of the park and the statue of a queen where, several nights a week, military bands played on and on in the brilliant glow of electric streetlights. Amelia raised her gaze to twin spires on the far edge of the Old City.

  "I thought I'd drop by the cathedral." "You've seen Columbus's tomb, haven't you?" "It's Easter Sunday. I thought I might go to Mass." "You're thinking about it, or yes, you're going?" "I'm going."

  "Won't you have to go to Confession?"

  "I won't have to, but I may."

  He had lowered the paper and was staring at her now. He said, "Your Church allows you to fuck all week and then go to Mass on Sunday?" in that quiet, condescending tone of his.

  She said, "Rollie, when have you ever wanted to fuck all week?"

  She watched him raise his eyebrows.

  "I don't believe I've ever heard a woman use that word."

  "It must be you've lived a sheltered life," Amelia said, not caring what he thought, "you only know your own kind." She said, "After Mass I'll go say good-bye to Lorraine. She's leaving tonight."

  "What do you mean by my own kind?"

  "People who have everything they want." She returned to the armoire and stood looking in. "Don't bother calling Novis, all right? I'd rather have Victor take me."

  "Novis isn't your kind, uh?"

  "I don't have anything I want to say to him."

  "You get back," Boudreaux said, "I want to hear more about my sheltered life." He disappeared behind his newspaper.

  They rode to AtarSs in an open coach. "A twenty-cent ride," Fuentes said, "from the hotel and the gardens of the Parque Central to the most depressing sight in Havana. And there it is, the field called the Death Hole."

  Amelia was aware of shod hooves on paving stones and the sound of iron tires and the squeak of springs as they approached the walls of the Castillo de AtarSs.

  "Last year," Fuentes said, "the bodies of people that Weyler killed with famine and disease were brought here, thousands of them during those months, and left for the carrion to mutilate and devour."

  He had wanted to open an umbrella to protect Amelia from the sun, but she said no and held the brim of her sun hat, staring at the desolate field, a wide depression off the left side of the road, the field stretching all the way to the scarred stone-and-mortar walls of the fortress.

  "It was always a place of death. Forty-seven years ago, when I was sixteen," Fuentes said, "a patriot by the name of Narcisso Lopez came with four hundred men to join with insurgents already fighting the Spanish." He said to Amelia, "You've heard of an American patriot by the name of Crittenden?" She said she wasn't sure and Fuentes said, "He came with Narcisso Lopez as the second in command, as half the men with them were Americans. But they had very bad luck. They landed at Mariel during a storm, so all their powder was wet when the Spanish attack them and Crittenden and fifty of his men were brought here. You see the drawbridge? Crittenden was crossing it to enter the fort and the Spanish soldiers couldn't wait any longer, they shot him down on the bridge. His men were taken to the field, chained together in three groups and they were shot down. I was sixteen years old."

  Amelia turned to Fuentes, an old man in a white suit holding the umbrella between his knees.

  "You were here?"

  "I was with Narcisso Lopez. Not on the boat, but with the ones already here, and I was with them when th
e Spanish came and we had no dry powder to use. Narcisso Lopez was taken to the Morro and made to perish by the garrote, strangle to death, God rest his soul. One hundred were sent to Spanish dungeons in Africa and some of us were kept here to wait to be tortured. I think of it that way, because to wait makes it worse. The Spanish hung us on a wall, the iron ring twelve feet from the floor, sometime upside-down, and beat us with cane, our wrists bound so tight our hands swell to twice their size," Fuentes said, showing Amelia his hands with their yellowed, cracked nails. "Others were seated in the chair with the iron collar, the garrote; a single turn of the screw from behind will strangle the person, crushing his neck. They like to break legs, too, and leave the person to perish from starvation.

  I was taken to the parade ground, all open, and put in stocks. You know what I mean by stocks? They hold you by the neck and the wrists, like in the old pictures you see of your Puritans. But this one they put you in face-up to the sun and leave you there all day. They said it was worse than the garrote, looking at the sun like that, and always the person couldn't stand it and became blind and insane. I shut my eyes as tight as I could squeeze them shut and still I could see the brightness of the sun through my eyelids. So I prayed to St. Francis of Assisi, because I remember from when I was a boy, a priest telling me St. Francis was a friend of Brother Sun, he called it, and Sister Moon. He liked all the animals, birds rested on his shoulders and he never stepped on insects. You know of St. Francis?" Amelia told him yes, of course, and Fuentes said, "I prayed to him, asking if he had any friends that were clouds, and you know what happened?"

  "It rained," Amelia said.

  "Listen, it rained for six days and six nights," Fuentes told her, "in the spring, before the big season of rain. It rained so much they put me in a cell and forgot about me for three years, when they said that was enough and gave me a pardon."

  They were approaching the drawbridge now. It was down and the sally port was open to show the parade grounds inside and a Guardia with a carbine slung from his shoulder.

  "In there, straight across the grounds," Fuentes said, "are the torture rooms. To the right, past an outside stairway, is the entrance to the dungeons they use. Rudi Calvo say the Guardias released some people, reconcentrados, and told him now they the only ones, a squad of Guardias. Rudi Calvo thinks eight of them on duty to guard the three prisoners;

  Tyler, the United States marine and the officer from El Morro, Lieutenant Molina. They took his uniform away from him."

  "I liked him," Amelia said. "Maybe that's why I'm not surprised he's here."

  "Rudi Calvo thinks they'll send him to Africa."

  Amelia said, "Victor," and then waited as she heard him speaking to the coachman, who brought the team around in the cobblestone road to start back to Havana. "Do you still pray to St. Francis?"

  "I don't believe in God anymore," Fuentes said. "Well, sometimes, but not always. I do believe in St. Francis, but I don't use him anytime I want or for small favors. No, I pray to him only when it becomes life or death."

  "Do you remember a year ago," Amelia said, "the train station at Benavides, the Guardia and the two men on the platform?"

  Fuentes began to nod. "Wanting to hang the two cane cutters, but could find nothing for them to stand on. Yes, of course I remember. So the Guardia shot them."

  "That time, did you pray to St. Francis?"

  Fuentes said, "No, I didn't," and seemed surprised. "I didn't think of it and I don't know why." He seemed to be thinking a]out it now, squinting his eyes to look back on that time at Benavides. "No, I believe what I imagined doing was shooting Tavalera and then seeing his men shoot me to pieces. All that instead of praying for the two men to be saved. But there you are. If there is no prayer to answer, what's St. Francis suppose to do?"

  "When the Vizcaya arrived," Palenzuela said to Rudi Calvo, "I was in the party that went out to greet the ship. There were small boats everywhere, people shouting "Long live Spain! Long live our navy!" People on the wharf shouting it, people on the ferry from Regla, everyone taking pride in who we are, and not offering one word of anti-American sentiment. The launch passed within ten meters of what can be seen of the Maine and there were no cheers, as I've heard before, or expressions of approval. Aboard the Vizcaya, an armored cruiser heavy with guns, I heard nothing discussed that would resemble a feeling of hostility."

  They rode in the chief's personal carriage, two bodyguards up on the box acting as coachmen, his matched pair of palominos in harness. The route they took from police headquarters, near the channel, followed San Lfizaro along the north shore to the outskirts of Vedado and the home occupied by Palenzuela's mistress, Lorraine.

  "It doesn't matter," Rudi Calvo said, "what you feel or what you want or don't want, there's going to be a war. All you have to do is read the American newspapers."

  "Yes, but everything they write is inflammatory."

  "Of course, because they want war."

  Rudi speaking bluntly to his boss, without choosing his words, something he had never done before.

  "Did you see," Palenzuela said, "Pope Leo is thinking of requesting an armistice?"

  Rudi felt like suggesting to his boss, Oh, for God's sake, use your head. But he resumed his place again and what he said was, "Excuse me, but do you think an American president is going to follow the wishes of the Catholic Church?"

  They rode past soldiers in summer uniforms along the avenue, Rudi seeing them as boys away from home for the first time, enjoying themselves for now, having adventures in a strange city, experiencing the offer of exotic sins. In a few months some of them would be dead, some would be in hospitals burning with fever. But if you told them this they wouldn't believe you. Their mothers would. Rudi Calvo had one child left out of four, a boy who had survived his mother's death at his birth and made it through early childhood, the boy now ten, a gift Rudi was determined not to lose. His sister took care of the boy when he was absent, away on police business. He gave his sister money and told her, "If you don't see me again, please take care of the boy as you would your own." His sister didn't say anything, but he could see in her eyes she understood. Later, when she would have time to be herself, she would allow herself to cry.

  "It crept up on us during the forty days of Lent," the police chief said, "when we weren't looking." He said, "What can hold back the tide of war?"

  He might have made that up, or thought he did.

  "Nothing can," Rudi said.

  "I told Lorraine it won't last long. I told her if she remained in Vedado she might not even notice the war. Still, being an American citizen she would be viewed by some as an enemy of this land and her life here could be made intolerable, subject to vile insults, if not placed in grave danger."

  Perhaps:, Though it was Rudi's belief his chief was sending Lorraine home because he was tired of her, because a mistress had to be worth the trouble of leading a double life. Once the trouble exceeded the pleasure and the mistress became as familiar as the wife, what was the point?

  Palenzuela would say good-bye to her and in an hour or so Rudi would escort Lorraine to the wharf where a launch would take her out to the naval supply ship Fern at anchor, and that would be that. He doubted he would ever see her again, and that was too bad. In the past months he hades corted Lorraine to places out of the city to meet the police chief and he could tell she was beginning to enjoy his company. She told him one time, "I can relax with you, Rudi, not have to worry about who sees us." He had been thinking lately of taking her to bed, but now...

  "I'm afraid you can't accompany her in this coach," the police chief said.

  "No, I'll arrange to hire one."

  "The last day of this," the police chief said.

  This what, he didn't say.

  "I have to tell you something," Rudi said. "This is also my last day. I mean with the police."

  His chief said, "Of course, I saw it coming and have been thinking about it. But I won't ask what you plan to do."

  So Rudi kept qu
iet and seemed interested in something out the window, looking up the street they were passing to see the Gulf of Mexico a block away.

  "When you turn in your badge," the police chief said, "they'll ask you the reason and what you're going to do."

  Rudi said, "Oh," not concerned, because he had no intention of turning his badge in; he was going to use it for something.

  "Your pistol, of course, is your own."

  Rudi listened to the horses' hooves, the sound one sound to him, continuous, never varying.

  His chief said, "Well, I imagine you'll be leaving the city." "I think so," Rudi said. "You don't know?"

  "Do you want me to tell you exactly what I'm going to do?" Again speaking to his superior in a way he never had before.

  The police chief said, "Certainly not."

  "No, you don't want that responsibility," Rudi said, and was silent until they reached the house in Vedado and saw the carriage standing by the entrance, Fuentes and the young woman, Amelia Brown, waiting for them.

  "Your friend Victor," Palenzuela said as they were about to get out of the coach. "Is this also his last day?"

  It wasn't a question Rudi had to answer. It wasn't a question at all, it was the chief reminding him he knew what was going on. Or believed he did. Once they were out of the coach, Palenzuela greeted the young woman, Amelia Brown, and gestured for them all to come in the house. In the first courtyard, the outer one, he said to Rudi, "H1 have a servant bring you and your friend a refreshment."

  "You know Victor Fuentes, but you've never met him," Rudi said.

  Palenzuela shook his head. Not once did he look at Fuentes, but took the young woman by the arm into another part of the house, leaving Rudi and Fuentes alone.

  Rudi shrugged and Fuentes said, "It's just as well. Sometime later if he has to be can say no, we never met. Did you tell him?"

  "Yes, and he asked if this was also your last day."

  "You're not concerned about him?"

  "Why? What he knows actually is that he doesn't know anything."

  A servant brought them cups of coffee and they sat down. Rudi Calvo raised his cup and Fuentes raised his. "Tomorrow," Rudi said. "Or is there a reason to wait?"