Deal nodded. It crossed his mind to ask Vedetti what the significance of the gum wad now affixed to the back side of the huge image was, but the giddy thought passed. Contenting himself with the thought that he was becoming proficient as a spy, and that in any case, he’d soon be rid of Vines’ devices, he forced himself back to the moment.
There were hundreds of pins on the map, only a handful of them white, green or yellow. “What about the red ones?” he asked.
Vedetti gave his wan smile. “You are familiar with the concept of
triage
, I presume?”
“That’s where the dude’s still breathing, but he won’t be too much longer, not without a hell of a lot of work,” Russell Straight cut in.
Vedetti’s smile sagged a notch, but he nodded agreement.
“Then it looks like this whole city is on life support,” Russell offered.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Vedetti said, with something of a sigh. He turned back to Deal. “We are very near the endgame, from an architectural standpoint, at least. We do everything we can, of course, but meanwhile I keep praying for some miracle.”
“And it will come,” Fuentes said, clapping his hand on Vedetti’s shoulder. “You are a miracle worker yourself, and others will follow in your footsteps.” He paused to send Deal his all-knowing gaze, before turning back to the architect. “But we have stolen enough of your valuable time, Señor Vedetti.”
“It is my pleasure,” Vedetti said, and to Deal it sounded like he meant it. “Men of your stature have the capacity to be of great assistance to our cause,” he added.
Deal shot another glance at Fuentes. A notorious international money launderer and a Miami building contractor by default. If Vedetti truly had his hopes pinned on the likes of them, he feared that Russell Straight’s assessment of the situation was accurate after all.
“What you’re involved in is wonderful,” Deal managed, extending his hand to Vedetti. “I’ll be glad to help any way I can.”
Vedetti clasped his hand as if it were a lifeline. “Your very presence is already of great help. Mr. Deal.” He paused and lowered his voice, even though they were the only ones in the gallery. “Señor Fuentes has shared something of his intentions,” Vedetti said solemnly. “And your place among the members of his team means much.”
Deal turned to Fuentes, about to protest, but found the man engrossed in the study of an architectural rendering. What the hell, Deal thought. No need to air such details in front of Vedetti. Given what he was up against, the poor guy needed all the encouragement he could get. Let him think it was the next thing to Donald Trump and I. M. Pei dropping by for a visit, then. Deal could have it out with Fuentes later.
“It’s been a pleasure, not to mention an education,” Deal said, gesturing at the images that surrounded them.
Russell Straight nodded his agreement. “Good luck,” he added.
Vedetti gave them a gracious bow. “I wish you both a most pleasant and rewarding stay in Havana,” he said.
“We can find our way out, Carlo,” Fuentes said, his hand on the curtain that shrouded the rear passageway.
Deal gave a last glance at the pin-studded map, then turned to follow the others out. He caught Vedetti’s sincere gaze again as he was about to duck behind the curtain, and paused to wave. A good man, he thought. Someone he would enjoy talking with more.
“Maybe you’ll come to Miami one day,” he said.
“We will meet again.” Vedetti smiled back. “Of that much I am sure.”
Deal heard the door grinding open at the end of the passage, then. He returned Vedetti’s smile, then the curtain dropped, and he was gone.
“Joseíto has been to talk with you, I see.”
The voice reached the old man as if from the distant rim of a deep well. Light up there, he saw. The promise of a life.
He was lying with his cheek pressed to the gritty floor, he realized. He didn’t think he had simply fallen asleep that way. His head throbbed, more so than usual, and his tongue probed a spot where he felt certain there had been a tooth not long ago.
“Joseíto assures me you know nothing,” the voice came again.
For a moment it appeared to the old man that there were several bearded, fatigue-clad men sitting on the edge of his cot and speaking to him. After a moment the images resolved into one. He tried to push himself up from the floor, but his arm would not cooperate. Broken, he assumed. Perhaps gone altogether, came another thought, though a downward glance assured him it was not the case.
In a bit, he felt a prickling return to the balky limb and realized it had only gone to sleep from the awkward position he had tumbled into. He also saw that his trousers were bunched at his knees, his underwear ripped and tossed aside.
Joseíto had been there, yes. He remembered now. A tractor battery trundled in, balanced on the lip of a handcart, a set of jumper cables clamped to the terminals. Joseíto had donned a pair of linesman’s rubber gloves and held the cables in display. A clump of steel wool in the jaws of each cable, and what a shower of sparks when he brushed the wiry clumps together.
“
Cojones
,” Joseíto had crooned, as others had torn at the old man’s clothes. He had leaned down, then. “You think you have big balls.”
***
Feeling had returned to the old man’s arm, and along with sensation came the pain. Still, he managed to fasten his trousers about his waist and push himself back to his place against the wall. He blinked and glanced about the cell. Just one bearded man sitting there, yes, an unlit cigar between his fingers, watching.
“Where is Joseíto?” the old man asked.
“Would you like me to call him down?”
“Do as you please,” the old man said.
“Joseíto was troubled that I would not permit him to join us,” the bearded man said. “He feared that you intended me harm.”
The old man stared at him. “He should have told you about the lice in that mattress you’re sitting on.”
The bearded man paused, then glanced down at his side.
“Fire up that stogie, why don’t you. Maybe it’ll chase the bastards away.”
The bearded man had regained his composure. “I’ve dealt with lice before,” he said, bringing his gaze back to level.
The old man nodded. “Me, too.”
They stared at each other for a moment. “Joseíto suggests that you are of no further use to us,” the bearded man said finally. “He feels that you are occupying space better employed in more worthwhile pursuits.”
The old man considered this in silence, then nodded. “So you’ve decided to let me go.”
It brought a tolerant smile from the man sitting on his bed. “You haven’t lost your sense of humor, old man. I always appreciated that in you.”
“The higher up you go, the harder it is to laugh,” the old man said.
The man on his cot studied him for a bit. “I suggested to Joseíto that you had truly been injured in that blast,” he said. “I reasoned that perhaps there were doctors who might help.”
“An explosion?” the old man said.
The bearded man continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Joseíto considers himself more able than any surgeon, of course. If a rock had thoughts, Joseíto could coax them forth.”
“And turn a blind man lame,” the old man said. There was the faint tinge of scorched flesh still hanging in the room. But strangely, pain was not so much an issue. When everything throbbed, no single ache could rise above the clamor.
The bearded man stood, brushing at the seat of his pants. “We have excellent medical facilities,” the bearded man said. “Equal to the best anywhere.”
The old man nodded. He felt his head begin to sag. “Where are we, anyway?” he asked.
But when he looked up, the bearded man was gone.
Nearing six now, Deal saw, as he followed Fuentes and Russell away from the gallery entrance and down the still-crowded narrow lane. Fuentes had his arm about Russell’s broad shoulders and seemed to be pointing out features of interest as they moved along. Fuentes’ lips moved rapidly and Russell’s head was nodding in time, the two of them dodging the oncoming foot traffic like a sack-race team.
Deal heard the sound of a hiccupping motor a few feet behind him and turned to see a young woman on a motor scooter weaving through the foot traffic as easily as an eel through bottom grass. He stepped onto the narrow sidewalk as the scooter zipped past, the driver exposing no small amount of her healthily tanned thighs. He turned, about to hurry after the others, and nearly collided with a wizened little man bearing several days’ growth of beard and missing his top dental plate.
“Cigars!” the little man barked at Deal in a rasping voice. “Monte Cristos, Cohibas, Romeo y Julieta…”
It took Deal a moment to realize what was going on. “I don’t think so,” he said.
The old man shook his head and moved closer. “Rum!” he added, and nodded in the direction of the departing motor scooter. “
Chiquitas
, too.”
One-stop shopping, Deal thought, a smile crossing his face.
“Come,” the old man said, pressing a grimy card into his hand. “I show you something…”
“
Vamos, abuelo
,” Deal heard at his ear. It was Fuentes appearing from the crowd, Russell at his side.
Deal turned back, but the old man had already melted away into the crowd.
“He was begging?” Russell asked.
“He wanted to sell me some cigars,” Deal said, “or rum, or a girl. My choice.”
Russell nodded. “Maybe we ought to get him back here.”
Deal had a look at the card the man had given him. On one side was a drawing of a woman in a Betty Grable-like pose he assumed was intended to be provocative, along with some printed Spanish he couldn’t decipher. On the other side something had been scrawled in pencil. “I am your friend,” it said, in quite legible English. Deal glanced off in the direction the hustler had taken, a question forming in his mind.
Probably just your typical hustler’s gamesmanship, he thought, but then again…
“You’ll get a lot of that,” Fuentes said, joining them. “But there’s no danger.”
Deal slipped the card into his pocket, still uncertain. Spies slipping him secret messages, glimpses of Angie on crowded street corners. He
did
need rest.
Russell, meanwhile, gave Fuentes a look that suggested danger was the farthest thing from his mind, but Fuentes seemed not to notice. “Your hotel,” he said, pointing across the crowded lane. “It’s just there.”
Deal followed Fuentes’ gesture toward an unpretentious entryway just a few yards catty-corner from where they stood. A series of shuttered, wrought-iron balconies studded the building’s cut-stone face, many of them bearing flower boxes that spilled bright color through the railings.
“There are the grander hotels farther out along the Malecón,” Fuentes said, “but I prefer it here in the Old City.” He stared at Deal from behind his tiny glasses like a seabird with obsidian eyes.
The man was seeking approval, Deal realized, and he lent it with a nod. “It looks fine,” he said, and meant it.
“It was built as the palace of a duke in the early 1800s,” Fuentes said, ushering them across the street. “Now it has been restored as a hotel.”
“One of Carlo Vedetti’s projects?” Deal asked. A pair of doormen in casual dress flanked the entryway, watching them without appearing to watch. An unarmed policeman ambled by, his baton crooked at his elbow, his gaze lighting upon them, them moving on.
Fuentes shook his head. “One of the few private projects I mentioned,” he said, showing them through the door. “Come, I think you’ll find it more than satisfactory.”
He ushered them into a cool marble lobby that by Deal’s standards could certainly have served as the entryway for a duke’s palace. He motioned for the two of them to wait, then stepped into an adjoining room to confer briefly with an attendant who stood behind an elegantly carved reception counter.
“This is more like it,” Russell observed. “Take a look at that.”
Deal followed his gesture into a spacious atrium that lay beyond. Dominating the center of the area was an ornate fountain, surrounded by several little conversation islands where upholstered sofas and chairs had been clustered. Soft light filtered down from a stained-glass skylight some thirty feet above, and the occasional cry of a macaw echoed from somewhere in the surrounding foliage.
“How do you square this with what we saw this afternoon?” Russell said, uncharacteristic awe in his voice.
“I’m not sure,” Deal said, marveling at the cool elegance before him.
“More evidence of what I’ve been telling you all along,” Fuentes’ voice came to them. He was back from the reception desk now, two middle-aged bellmen tagging in his wake. “Your rooms are ready, your bags already taken up,” he announced, before taking a glance at his watch.
“I’d intended that we have dinner together,” Fuentes continued. “But I’m afraid something’s come up. I’d like us to have breakfast together, if that’s all right. Some of the people we’ll be doing business with would like to meet with us in the afternoon, and I’d like to go over a few particulars beforehand…”
“You told Vedetti I was already on board this project?” Deal cut in.
Fuentes paused, waving the suggestion away. “Carlo is an enthusiast,” Fuentes said. “I assure you…”
“How about these people we’re meeting tomorrow?” Deal pressed on. “Do they think I’m on board, too?”
Fuentes sighed softly, glancing at the bellmen who waited at a respectful distance. If they had the slightest interest in what was being discussed, there was no way of telling. “I will introduce you to these men from Havana as John Deal,” he said, “son of the legendary Barton Deal and a rising star of capitalism in his own right.”
“Fuentes…” Deal tried, but the man was sailing unflappably on.
“I will tell them that if everything that
they
propose finds merit in your eyes, then perhaps they will have the privilege of entrusting their most ambitious undertakings to your hands.”
Deal fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Let’s just be sure that you and I are on the same page, here. I agreed to come to Havana and have a look around, talk to few people,
then
I’ll let you know what I think. Are we together on that?”
“Of course,” Fuentes said, affecting surprise. “I understand your wishes perfectly. But,” he said, lowering his voice and drawing closer, “no purpose is to be served by suggesting that you and I are anything but united in our goals. Do you follow me, Mr. Deal?”
Deal glanced at Russell, who stared on impassively. “If you want me to let these people—whoever they are—think that you and I are partners, I’ll play along, up to a point. But make no mistake—I’ll make up my own mind about where you and I go after that.”
Fuentes smiled and reached to clap him on the shoulder. “I have no fear as to what your decision will be,” he said, indicating their surroundings with a sweep of his arm. “How many men are given the opportunity to rebuild an entire country, after all, particularly one as magnificent as this?”
Deal nodded, wondering briefly if his old man had ever listened to such proposals. “I’m ready for a shower now,” he told Fuentes. “We can talk some more at breakfast.”
“Of course,” Fuentes said. “I’ve made dinner reservations here at the hotel, and Raúl”—he broke off to point back toward the reception area where, Deal realized, their driver was perched in an overstuffed chair leafing though a newspaper—“will return with the car at your disposal for the evening. You’ll find him a most knowledgeable guide,” he said, with a meaningful glance at Russell.
“You mean he knows where all the good cigars are?” Russell asked, his expression blank.
“All that and more,” Fuentes said, equally deadpan.
Something occurred to Deal then. “Then you’re not staying in this hotel?” he asked.
“Alas, no.” Fuentes shook his head. “But I will see you in the morning, though not too early. I will call you first.” He paused then and gave them each a birdlike nod. “Have a most enjoyable evening,” he added.
He turned then, giving an inaudible snap of his fingers that Raúl had already anticipated. The driver had folded his paper under his arm and was already moving smartly toward the door to usher his employer out.
“The dude’s got an act, you have to give him that much,” Russell observed, as the two disappeared into the stream of foot traffic outside.
Deal nodded absently. He’d been thinking much the same thing, in fact. Whatever Fuentes was, and whatever eventuated from it all, this act
was
a great one. It was the sort of thing Barton Deal would have loved.