Murder in Havana Page 26

  “Alive, or otherwise,” Nichols said.

  “He said that?”

  “Yeah, he said that.”

  “You’ve got everybody possible out there looking for him?”

  “The word’s out, Bobby. Every CDR on our payroll is looking. I put up a hundred bucks.”

  “A hundred?” Brown smiled. “You’re getting generous in your old age.”

  “For a hundred, they’ll be up all night looking in every alley, café, and Dumpster in Havana.”

  “If the Cubans find him first, do we have anybody inside who might play ball with us?”

  “Sure. But this is too big, Bobby. Let’s just hope Pauling decides he needs us and walks through the door.”

  “Think that’s likely?”

  Nichols shrugged and said, “I haven’t the slightest idea.” He drew a deep breath and shook his head. “You ever work with Pauling, Bobby?”

  “No.”

  Nichols’s laugh was good-natured. “He was good, Bobby. Brilliant. I mean, in the sense of improvising his way out of trouble. And an idealist.”

  “I thought idealistic agents didn’t last long,” said Brown.

  “Depends on what the ideals are. With Max … well, his ideals said that when you put an agent in harm’s way, you don’t let the suits back in Langley jeopardize the agent or the mission. Politics, bureaucrats … they meant nothing to him. That’s why he was always on the carpet. But know what?”

  “What?”

  “They may have put reprimands in his file, but they never pulled him from the field. He was too damn good at what they asked him to do, needed for him to do.”

  “Why’d he pack it in?”

  “Ideals. He had a buddy eliminated in Moscow, and not by the Russians.”

  Brown’s frown asked the question.

  “He was convinced our people did it. His buddy was involved with a Russian woman. What rule does that break, number three thousand? I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve been told that the death of his buddy was what finally pushed him out the door. That, and a beauty named Jessica.”

  They shared a few moments of silence.

  “I hope he makes it,” Nichols said softly.

  Entering his hotel was out of the question. Although there did not seem to be any discernible police activity in its vicinity, Pauling knew he couldn’t take the chance. He ran through a mental inventory of what he’d left in his room. Nothing of importance. Everything he needed was contained in the twenty-six pockets of his photojournalist’s vest.

  What the vest didn’t offer, however, was a safe place for him to hole up for the night. He needed some sleep to clear his mind and enable him to formulate a further plan of action to carry through to midnight the following night, when he was to meet Nico. But as he thought about that, two problems loomed large.

  First, there was the matter of the twenty thousand dollars he’d promised the young Cuban. He had two sources. One was the Cuban office of Cali Forwarding, the Colombian company for whom he’d flown supplies into Cuba, located near José Martí International Airport. Gosling had told him to contact an individual there who would advance him up to twenty thousand after he’d properly identified himself.

  The second source of funds was Banco Financiero Internacional. Gosling had said Pauling could use his Canadian MasterCard there to take an advance up to five thousand dollars, only a quarter of what he’d promised Nico.

  The choice was simple, provided that he even bothered going after money to pay Nico. The bank was out of the question. What would he do, stroll in there and lay down the credit card with his name on it? It was an invitation to an arrest.

  That left Cali Forwarding, providing he could find a way to get there. But that meant trusting the contact at the company—trusting Vic Gosling, for that matter—and he still wasn’t of a mind to trust anyone at the moment. He decided to defer that decision until morning. Finding a safe place to sleep was primary.

  He left the park and walked away from the hotel, again sticking to back streets. He pulled the candy from a vest pocket and consumed the contents in a few anxious bites. He was hungry and tired.

  He reached an intersection that was residential except for a brightly lit café on one corner. He checked the other corners; no kiosks with his picture displayed. No PNR cops either.

  He crossed to the café and walked past it, glancing inside as he went. There were a dozen people at the bar and small tables, both men and women. Mambo music and pungent food odors reached his ears and nose as he passed, stopped, turned, and gave the area a final look. Should he chance it, go inside and have something to eat? Given a choice, he would have opted for a steak and salad with Jessica on their deck in Albuquerque, but that wasn’t in the cards. Maybe in a couple of days, if his luck held out. Luck! He reached in his pocket, fingered the necklace, the collar, sold to him by the street vendor, and entered the café.

  As he moved past the bar and through the small, chipped, yellow Formica-topped tables, he remembered how he looked. The bruises on his face had faded somewhat, but it wasn’t his face that captured the attention of other patrons. He now wore a wide-brimmed reed hat—he had thrown away the bright red hatband—and the flowing white embroidered guayabera shirt, hardly the way a yanqui tourist would dress. Nor was it the sort of place frequented by tourists. Still, it was better than being bareheaded, he reasoned, pulling the brim of the hat down even lower over his eyes and taking a chair at a vacant table that positioned him with his back against the wall and a clear view of the door. He looked to the bartender, an older man with a shiny bald head and tufts of gray hair at his temples, who was busy serving other customers. Pauling didn’t know whether he’d be served at the table, or was expected to go to the bar and order. Because there was no sign of a waitress, he soon decided to get up and approach the bartender. But before he could, a woman who’d been sitting at the bar slowly swung around on the stool, sent a wide, inviting smile in his direction, stood, and sauntered to his table. She was light skinned, a mestizo, one of eleven million Cubans of European, African, and indigenous ancestry, although Pauling thought he detected a faint Oriental cast to her features. She was ripe bodied and walked with a slow, deliberate sway to her hips, causing her red miniskirt to provocatively follow her movements. Her blouse was black and low cut. In the time it took for her to cover the distance between the bar and his table, Pauling pegged her to be anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, older than most prostitutes he’d been approached by. She had a round, pleasant face; her makeup was more subtle than that of the jineteras, the teenage sex jockeys working the streets.

  She didn’t ask whether she could join him, simply pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “American?”

  “Yes. How do I get a drink and something to eat?”

  She caught the bartender’s eye and waved him to the table.

  “What do you have?” Pauling asked.

  The bartender shrugged: “No hablo inglés,” he said.

  The woman said to Pauling, “They have ajiaco. It is a stew with meat and vegetables.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No. People do not come here to eat. It is a place to drink.”

  Pauling nodded at the bartender. “All right,” he said, “give me some of the stew.”

  “Ajiaco,” the woman said. To Pauling: “You would like a drink?”

  “Sure, a beer, any beer.”

  “You will buy me a drink?”

  “All right.”

  She moved in her chair so that her hip touched his. Her perfume was delicate, another difference from those Cuban women who seemed fond of dousing themselves with heavy scents.

  “I like what you wear,” she said.

  Pauling looked down at his shirt, and up at the brim of his hat. “This?” he said. “I like to blend in.”

  “Blend in?”

  “Look like a Cuban.”
>
  She laughed. “You do not look like a Cuban.”

  “I try. What’s your name?” he asked, his eyes on the door.

  “Isabella. Who are you?”

  “Smith. Joe Smith.”

  “Señor Joe Smith,” she said, dropping her hand on top of his thigh. “You are here on business?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “What business?”

  “Ah, oil. I’m in oil.”

  “Oh. You must be very rich.”

  “Rich? No, I’m—” Flashing lights in the street stopped him. He tensed, and pressed his right hand against the bulge of the Glock in the vest. The police vehicle passed the café and disappeared from view.

  He turned to her. “I have some money.”

  “Would you like to spend the night with me, have some fun?” she asked, her full, red lips an inch from his ear.

  He looked into eyes that were a little too close together above a prominent nose, but light blue, which surprised him considering her dusky skin.

  “We can go to your hotel. What hotel are you at?”

  “I’m not,” he said, again turning his attention to the door. “I checked out.”

  “That is not a problem. My home is close to here.”

  “Yeah?”

  The bartender delivered a small, steaming bowl of stew and placed it in front of Pauling.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Pauling asked Isabella.

  She shook her head and squeezed his thigh. “Hurry up,” she said. “I want to make you happy.”

  He tasted the stew. It had a heavy, oily, onion taste, but felt good going down. He took a drink of beer and processed the situation. Obviously, he could cut a deal with her to spend the night, which appealed to him, not for what she was selling, but for the four walls she could offer. He wondered why she was in this joint, rather than at one of the fancy hotels catering to foreign businessmen with hefty expense accounts.

  “Do you work here all the time?” he asked, indicating the café with his hand.

  “I come here after work,” she said. Her English was good; she’d obviously been educated. Celia had told him that the literacy rate in Cuba was almost 100 percent, the result of a concerted effort by Castro to raise the educational status of citizens, along with supplying universal health care.

  “Where do you work?” he asked, dipping stale bread into the stew.

  “I work for the organic farming association,” she said.

  “What do you do there?”

  “I am a secretary.”

  He paused before asking, “But then you do this.”

  “This?”

  “Offer to make a man happy—for money.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Not if it doesn’t bother you.”

  “Perhaps you do not want to be with me tonight.”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean anything like that.”

  “We are a poor country.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you still wish to come home with me?”

  “Yeah, I do. How much?”

  “It depends on how long you wish to stay with me.”

  “All night?”

  She nodded. “Fifty American.”

  It was shockingly low compared to what he’d expected. He’d have given her a hundred.

  “All right,” he said.

  “Leave money on the table,” she said, pulling a small mirror from her purse and checking her hair and makeup.

  Pauling laid dollars on the table. She looked at the money and said, “More. Leave more or he might make trouble.” She nodded in the bartender’s direction.

  Pauling left another five dollars on the table, which satisfied her. He followed her out the door and to the street.

  “This way,” she said, slipping her arm into his as though they were man and wife, leading him away from the café and around a corner onto a quiet street lined with ceiba trees. Their graceful, wide-spreading boughs formed a comforting canopy above.

  She lived on the first floor of a pleasant, narrow, three-story building that had been freshly painted. She took a key from her purse, opened the door, and allowed Pauling to precede her inside. Low-wattage bulbs in two floor lamps provided dim, romantic lighting. Classical music was barely heard from unseen speakers. The lady was good at setting the scene, Pauling thought as she closed the door.

  “Rum?” she asked.

  “All right.” He followed her to the kitchen, cramped but functional. There was a small refrigerator and a two-burner gas stove. A door led to the outside.

  “Do you live alone here?” he asked.

  “Most of the time,” she said as she took down two glasses and filled them with light rum. “My sister, she lives here, too, when she is in Havana. She works in a cigar factory in Santiago de Cuba. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “A nice place, but so hot. It is on the south coast of Cuba, a large city. It has its own airport.”

  “Uh-huh,” Pauling said, leaving the kitchen and going to the living room where he pulled back curtains on a rear-facing window. He could see nothing in the pitch black outside. She came to him and handed him his drink. “Salud!” she said. “Cheers, you say.”

  “Cheers,” he repeated, touching his rim to hers.

  She tasted her drink, placed it on a table, and pressed herself close to him, kissing his neck and moving her body against his. He stayed pressed to her for a moment, then stepped back. Her expression asked why.

  “Look,” he said, “I’ll pay you as we agreed. More. But there’s no need for you to do what you assume you were going to do. What I would like is to stay here for the night.”

  “You don’t find me attractive?”

  “I find you very attractive, and I’m sure you’ve noticed my reaction to you. But I think—”

  “You have someone else.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She sighed, picked up her drink again, and sat in a small, stuffed chair, one of a pair. There was no couch. “And you are in trouble,” she said without inflection or meaning.

  “Me? No, I’m not in trouble.”

  Pauling took the other chair. “Is it all right that I stay here without making love? If it’s not—if it offends you—I’ll leave.”

  “I am not offended. I am disappointed. I like you. You are a handsome man.”

  “And you’re a beautiful woman. Do we have a deal? I’ll pay you for being able to stay here.”

  “How long?”

  “Until morning. Maybe later. I’ll be gone by tomorrow night.” He pulled bills from his pocket, reached, and placed them on her lap.

  “Yes. It is all right.”

  They said little to each other as the evening progressed. She had wanted to turn on the TV but Pauling asked her not to.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I don’t like television. Besides, I don’t speak very much Spanish.”

  She didn’t argue. He stayed in his chair while she busied herself ironing and mending. Later, she took a break and sat next to him.

  “I asked you why you worked in that café,” he said. “I would think you’d work your other job at some big hotel where you’d find customers.”

  “I do,” she said, “when I leave my work at the association. I work only by appointment. I worked at Hotel Plaza earlier this evening. A Canadian man, very nice, very generous.”

  “And you figured you might as well have another customer before going home.”

  “That’s right. The café where we met is close to here. My friends go there. I did not expect to meet you, to find another customer. I was not looking for that.”

  “I understand.”

  They fell silent again as she went back to her chores. An hour later, she announced she was going to bed.

  “Good night,” he said. “And thank you.”

  “I will be in there if you change your mind,” she said, indicating one of two doors off the living room. “The other
room is used by my sister, but she is not here. You can sleep in there.”

  “All right.”

  He sat up in the living room for two hours after she’d left him alone. At first he feigned sleep to see what would happen. He didn’t want to fall asleep but realized he was losing that battle. His head kept falling forward, then snapped back to wakefulness. If there had been a couch, he would have stretched out and closed his eyes for a moment. Since there wasn’t, he slowly got up and went to the door to Isabella’s room, which she’d left open a crack. There was no sound. He went to the sister’s room, propped pillows up against the iron headboard, and sat up against them, his eyes on the living room where the lights were still on, and where the soothing music—was it Mozart?—continued to play.

  He was asleep in less than two minutes.

  Pauling awoke with a start.

  “Isabella?”

  He was still propped up against the pillows and headboard, his hat on the bed next to him. He blinked several times to clear his vision, swung his legs over the bed’s edge, and focused his hearing. No sound came from the rest of the apartment.

  He stood and twisted his neck against tightness. It was early morning; the light coming through the window said dawn.

  “Isabella?” he called again when he reached the bedroom door.

  The door to her bedroom was open. Her bed was empty, but neatly made.

  He went to the kitchen. On the counter was a plate containing two sugar-coated donuts, a glass of orange juice, a carafe half-filled with coffee, and a piece of paper, which he held up to light coming through the window.

  Mr. Oil Man—I went to work. These things are for you to eat. Come to see me again.

  Isabella

  He didn’t like having her leave without his knowledge, but it was too late to worry about that now. He had no reason to distrust her, a naïve attitude to be sure, but a necessary rationalization for having fallen asleep.

  He decided there was no rush to leave. He sat at the counter and consumed the breakfast she’d left for him. He was glad he’d slept. He’d needed it, and felt refreshed. He went to the window overlooking the street, carefully parted the curtains, and looked out. All was peaceful. Few people passed the house, only a young woman pushing a baby stroller. It was a quiet area of Havana. Stopping in that café had proved to be fortuitous. He’d found a temporary safe haven in which to buy some time and to be able to do some clear thinking. It was almost over. Yes, there were still problems to be overcome—getting the money for Nico, making his way to their rendezvous, and getting out of Cuba. But none seemed insurmountable at that tranquil moment.