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 party 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.”
“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.
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 that from now on, he thought. It seemed right for what lay ahead.