“Fredo’s right,” said Noreen. “It’s not safe for you to go back into Havana tonight, Gunther. It might be better if you stayed here tonight.”
“I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble,” I said.
“It’s no trouble,” she said. “I’ll go and tell Ramón to fix you up a bed.”
She turned and walked away, humming quietly to herself, scooping up a cat, and placing her empty glass on the terrace as she went.
López watched her behind in retreat for longer than I did. I had time to observe him doing it. He watched her with the eyes of an admirer and possibly the mouth as well: he licked his lips while he was doing it, which made me wonder if their common ground wasn’t just political but sexual, too. And, thinking I might prompt him to reveal something of his feelings for her, I said, “Quite a woman, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” he said, absently. “She is.” Smiling, he added, quickly, “A wonderful writer.”
“I wasn’t looking at her backlist.”
López chuckled. “I’m not quite so ready to believe the worst of you. Despite what Noreen said back there.”
“Did she say something?” I shrugged. “I wasn’t listening when she insulted me.”
“What I mean to say is, thank you, my friend. Thank you indeed. Tonight you have undoubtedly saved my life.” He fetched the briefcase off the seat of the Oldsmobile. “If I had been caught with this, they would certainly have murdered me.”
“Will you be safe driving home?”
“Without this? Yes. I’m a lawyer, after all. A respectable lawyer, too, in spite of what you might think of me. No, really. I have lots of famous and wealthy clients here in Havana. Including Noreen. I drew up her will. And Ernest Hemingway’s. It was he who introduced the two of us. If you ever have need of a good lawyer, I would be happy to act for you,
señor
.”
“Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Tell me. I’m curious.”
“In Cuba? That might not be healthy.”
“The pamphlet I gave you. The militia didn’t find it?”
“I threw it away in the bushes at the bottom of the drive,” I said. “Like I told you before. I’m not interested in local politics.”
“I can see Noreen was correct about you, Señor Hausner. You have a great instinct for survival.”
“Has she been talking about me again?”
“Only a little. Despite any earlier evidence to the contrary, she has a high opinion of you.”
I laughed. “That was maybe true twenty years ago. She wanted something then.”
“You underestimate yourself,” he said. “Quite considerably.”
“It’s been a while since anyone said that to me.”
He glanced down at the briefcase in his arms. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I could prevail on your kindness and courage one more time.”
“You can give it a try.”
“Perhaps you would be good enough to bring this briefcase to my office. It’s in the Bacardi Building.”
“I know it. There’s a café there I go to sometimes.”
“You like it, too?”
“Coffee’s the best in Havana.”
“I don’t think there’s any great risk in your doing this, being a foreigner. But there might be some.”
“That’s honest, at any rate. All right. I’ll do that for you, Señor López.”
“Please. Call me Fredo.”
“Okay, Fredo.”
“Shall we say eleven o’clock, tomorrow morning?”
“If you like.”
“You know, it may be that there’s something I can do for you.”
“You can buy me a cup of coffee. I don’t want a will any more than I want a pamphlet.”
“But you will come.”
“I said I’ll be there. And I’ll be there.”
“Good.” López nodded patiently. “Tell me, have you met Noreen’s daughter, Dinah?”
I nodded.
“What did you think of her?”
“I’m still thinking.”
“Quite a girl, isn’t she?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
“If you say so. The only thing I know about young women in Havana is that most of them are more efficient Marxists than you and your friends. They know more about the redistribution of wealth than anyone I’ve ever met. Dinah strikes me as the type of girl who knows just what she wants.”
“Dinah wants to be an actress. In Hollywood. In spite of everything that’s happened to Noreen with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The blacklist. The hate mail. I mean, you can see how all that might upset Dinah.”
“I got the impression that wasn’t what’s worrying her.”
“There’s any number of things to worry about when you have a daughter as headstrong as Dinah, believe me.”
“It sounded like just the one thing to me. She mentioned something about Dinah’s being in with the wrong crowd. Anything in that?”
“Friend, this is Cuba.” López grinned. “We’ve got wrong crowds like some countries have different religions.” He shook his head. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk some more. In private.”
“Come on. Give. I just saved you from a late night out with the militia.”
“The militia’s not the only dangerous dog in town.”
“Meaning?”
There was a squeal of tires at the bottom of the drive. I looked around as yet another car purred up to the house. I say a car, but the Cadillac with its wraparound windshield was more like something from Mars—a red convertible from the red planet. The sort of car on which the built-in fog lamps might easily have been heat rays for the methodical extermination of earthlings. It was as long as a fire truck and probably as well equipped.
“Meaning, I think you’re about to find out,” said López.
The Cadillac’s big, five-liter engine took a last breath from the four-barrel carburetor and then exhaled loudly through dual exhausts that were built into the bumpers. One of the rakish cut-down doors opened, and out stepped Dinah. She looked great. The drive had stirred her hair a little and made her look more natural than before. Sexier, too, if such a thing was possible. There was a stole over her shoulders that could have been honey-ranch mink, but I wasn’t looking anymore. I was too busy noticing the driver stepping out on the other side of the red Eldorado. He was wearing a well-cut, lightweight gray suit with a white shirt and a pair of flashing gem cuff links that matched the car. He stared straight at me with a mixture of amusement and deliberation, as if noting the changes in my face and wondering how I might have come by them. Dinah reached his side after a long pilgrimage around the farthest point of the car and eloquently threaded one arm through his.
“Hello, Gunther,” said the man, speaking German.
He had a mustache now, but he still looked like a pit bull in a bucket.
It was Max Reles.
6
S
URPRISED TO SEE ME?” He chuckled his familiar chuckle.
“I guess we’re both surprised, Max.”
“As soon as Dinah told me about you, I started thinking, It couldn’t be him. And then she described you, and well. Christ Almighty. Noreen won’t like my being here, but I just had to come down to take a look for myself and see if it really was the same fucking pain-in-the-ass guy.”
I shrugged. “Who believes in miracles anymore?”
“Jesus, Gunther, I thought you must be dead for sure, what with the Nazis and the Russians and that smart fucking mouth of yours.”
“These days I’m a little more close-lipped.”
“Only bullshit shoots its mouth off,” said Reles. “What’s genuine in a man stays silent. Jesus, how long has it been?”
“Must be a thousand years. That’s how long Hitler said his Reich would last.”
“That long, huh?” Reles shook his head. “What the hell brings you to Cuba?”
“Oh, you know. Getting away from it all.” I shrugged. “And by the way, my name is Hausner. Carlos Hausner. At least, that’s what it says on my Argentine passport.”
“Like that, huh?”
“I like the car. I guess you must be doing all right. What’s the ransom for a one-man motorcade like that?”
“Oh, about seven thousand dollars.”
“The labor rackets must be good in Cuba.”
“I’m out of that shit now. These days I’m in the hotel and entertainment business.”
“Seven thousand dollars is a lot of bed and breakfast.”
“That’s just your copper’s nose twitching.”
“It does that sometimes. But I don’t pay it any mind. These days I’m just a citizen.”
Reles grinned. “That covers a lot in Cuba. Especially at this house. There are citizens here who make Joseph Stalin look like Theodore Roosevelt.” While he spoke, Reles was looking coldly at Alfredo López, who nodded a farewell at me and then slowly drove away.
“You two know each other?” I asked.
“You could say that.”
Dinah interrupted us, speaking in English. “I didn’t know you spoke German, Max.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, honey.”
“I sure as hell won’t tell her anything,” I told him, in German. “Not that I’ll have to. I expect Noreen has done that already. You must be the bad crowd of people in Havana that she was telling me about. The one Dinah’s got herself involved with. I can’t say I blame her, Max. If she was my daughter I’d be worried myself.”
Reles smiled wryly. “I’m not like that anymore,” he said. “I’ve changed.”
“Small world.”
Another car came up the drive. It was getting to be like the front door at the National Hotel. Someone was driving Noreen’s Pontiac.
“No, really,” insisted Reles. “These days I’m a respectable businessman.”
The man driving the Pontiac stepped out of the car and silently got into the passenger seat of the car Reles had been driving. Suddenly the Cadillac looked very small. The man’s eyes were dark, and his face pale and puffy. He was wearing a loose white suit with big black buttons. His hair was curly and black and gray and plentiful, as if there had been a sale of wire wool at the dollar store on Obispo. He looked sad, perhaps because it was probably several minutes since he’d eaten anything. He looked like he ate a lot. Roadkill probably. He was smoking a cigar the size and shape of an armor-piercing shell, but in his mouth it was like a sty on an eyelid. You looked at him and thought of
Pagliacci
with two tenors in the part of Canio instead of one: a tenor down each trouser leg. He looked about as respectable as a roll of quarters in a boxing glove.
“Respectable, yeah.” I eyeballed the big man in the Cadillac. I let Reles see me doing it and said, “I suppose that ogre is really your bookkeeper.”
“Waxey? He’s a
babke
. A real sweet cake. Besides, I have some very big books.”
Dinah sighed and rolled her eyes like a petulant schoolgirl. “Max,” she complained, “it’s rude to carry on a conversation in German when you know I don’t speak the language.”
“I can’t understand that.” Reles spoke in English. “Really I can’t, when your mother speaks such excellent German.”
Dinah pulled a face. “Who wants to learn German? The Germans murdered ninety percent of the Jews in Europe. Nobody wants to learn German these days.” She looked at me and shrugged ruefully. “Sorry, but that’s how it is, I guess.”
“That’s okay. I’m sorry, too. It was my fault. For speaking German to Max, I mean. Not for the other thing. Although obviously I’m sorry for that, as well.”
“You krauts are going to be sorry for a long time.” Max laughed. “We Jews are going to make sure of that.”
“Very sorry. Believe me, I was only obeying orders.”
Dinah wasn’t listening. She wasn’t listening, because it wasn’t something she was good at. Although, to be fair, Max had his nose in her ear and then his lips on her cheek, which could have distracted anyone who hadn’t had all their shots.
“Forgive me,
honik
,” he murmured to her. “But you know it’s been twenty years since I saw this
fershtinkiner
.” He left off tasting her face for a moment and looked at me again. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“That she is, Max, that she is. What’s more, she has her whole life ahead of her, too. Unlike you and me.”
Reles bit his lip. I sort of fancied he’d preferred it to have been my neck. Then he smiled and wagged his finger at me. I smiled back, like it was a game of tennis we were playing. I was hitting the ball at him hard. Harder than he was used to, I imagined.
“Still the same awkward bastard,” he said, shaking his head. The big face on the front of it had always been square and pugnacious, but now it was tanned and leathery, and there was a scar on his cheek as big as a luggage label. I wondered what Dinah could see in a man like him. “Still the same old Gunther.”
“Now, there you and Noreen seem to be in agreement,” I said. “You’re right, of course. I am an awkward old bastard. And getting worse all the time. Mind you, it’s the old part that really pisses down my trouser leg. The fascination I once felt at the contemplation of my own physical excellence is now matched by the horror I find in the evidence of my own advancing middle age. My belly, bowlegs, thinning hair, shortsightedness, and receding gums. By anyone’s reckoning, I’m past it. Still there is one consolation, I suppose: I’m not as old as you, Max.”
Reles kept on grinning, only this time he had to take a breath to keep on doing it. Then he shook his head and looked at Dinah and said, “Jesus Christ, will you listen to this guy? In front of you he insults me to my face.” He let out a laugh of amazement. “Isn’t he beautiful? That’s what I like about this bum. Nobody has ever talked to me the way this guy talks to me. I love that about him.”
“I don’t know, Max,” she said. “Sometimes you’re a very weird kind of guy.”
“You should listen to her, Max,” I said. “She’s not just beautiful. She’s very smart, too.”
“Enough already,” said Reles. “You know, let’s you and me talk again. Come and see me tomorrow.”
I stared at him politely.
“Come and see me at my hotel.” He put his hands together, like he was praying. “Please.”
“Where are you staying?”