Murder in Havana Read online

  It turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant evening. Schumer, “the accountant,” was a good-looking, slightly overweight man with a full head of hair—mildly annoying to the thinning-haired Pauling—and an amiable table companion. He told a good story and got everyone laughing with a few tales of former clients who’d decided they could beat the tax system and ended up as guests of the federal penal system. Schumer picked up the tab, which Pauling considered appropriate.

  He’d taken a taxi from the private airport to the house, and they drove to the restaurant in Schumer’s white Lexus. As they stood in the parking lot waiting for an attendant to fetch the car, Schumer said, “You’re leaving in the morning?”

  “Yes,” said Max. “An early start.”

  “It must be satisfying flying your own plane, avoiding those commercial flights—with commercial waiting.”

  “It does have advantages,” Pauling said.

  “I’ll pick you up at your motel and drive you to the airport,” Schumer offered.

  “I don’t want to put you out.”

  “I’d do it but I’m tied up with an early meeting,” Doris said.

  “No problem for me,” Schumer said. “I have a racquetball date first thing. What time do you want to go, Max?”

  “Seven too early?”

  “Perfect.”

  They dropped Pauling at his motel, said good-bye, and left him pondering the evening over a drink at the bar. He was glad he’d made the stop. Seeing that his family was healthy and secure was important. But ambivalence reigned.

  On the one hand, he was pleased that the new man in his sons’ lives seemed to be okay. No, that’s not fair, he told himself as the bartender indicated last call. Schumer was more than that, a decent enough fellow, kind and caring, and who seemed to have forged a good relationship with Robert and Richard. And he was obviously successful; they wouldn’t be missing any meals. There were moments during the evening when he toyed with the idea of calling Gosling, bowing out of the assignment, and hanging around Pittsburgh for some extra days with the boys. But as gracious as Schumer and Doris had been, he felt very much the outsider, an intruder into a family that once had been his. Better to get on with his new life and let them get on with theirs.

  He carried a drink to his room where thoughts of his family were replaced by the reason he was passing through Pittsburgh, namely, to meet Gosling in Miami and then proceed to Cuba. So far so good. Jessica hadn’t been angry at his decision to take the assignment and be away for a month—at least she’d been savvy enough to not display any anger that might have existed. And he didn’t have to worry about his ex-wife and sons. No wonder the CIA and other intelligence agencies preferred that their undercover operatives be unmarried, preferably without children, parents, grandparents, significant others, or friends. Having to worry about anyone other than yourself could get you killed.

  Daniel Schumer was in front of the hotel precisely at seven. Pauling threw his small bag into the back and got in the front passenger seat.

  “Sleep good?” Schumer asked as he pulled away.

  “I always do,” Pauling replied. He almost asked whether Schumer had slept peacefully next to Doris but didn’t especially want to know.

  Pauling gave Schumer directions, and they drove in silence until Schumer spoke. “You’re flying to Miami, you said?”

  “Right.”

  “Vacation? Business?”

  “Strictly vacation,” Pauling said.

  “I enjoy Miami but not in the summer. Hot as hell this time of year.”

  “I enjoy the heat.”

  “Doris told me you used to be with the CIA. Hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course it is. That was before. I’m not involved with the government anymore.”

  “Must have been exciting, being with the CIA, and all.”

  “It had its moments.”

  Pauling tired of the conversation and would have preferred to talk about something accounting related—double-entry bookkeeping or even tax shelters. “I enjoyed your stories last night about clients who’ve ended up in jail,” he said, hoping it would prompt another tale.

  Schumer laughed. “People do really dumb things out of greed,” he said. “My job is to keep them out of trouble but sometimes they won’t listen. They know better. I’m also a lawyer.”

  “Really?”

  “Tax attorney. I don’t practice law but it comes in handy.”

  “I imagine it does.”

  They entered a small parking lot next to the side of a shack featuring peeling yellow paint that served as the airport’s operations center. Schumer turned off the engine and turned to face Pauling. “I really enjoyed meeting you, Max,” he said. “Frankly, I was a little nervous.”

  “No need to be,” Pauling said, smiling to reassure. “You’ve married a hell of a good woman and inherited two fine boys.”

  “I know, I know. I wish my daughters could have been with us last night. They’re with their mother.” He pulled a wallet from his hip pocket, extracted a small color photo, and handed it to Pauling. Two teenage girls, one with braces, smiled up at him.

  “They’re beautiful,” he said.

  “I know. I’m really proud of them. They get along great with Robbie and Rich.”

  The use of his sons’ familiar names stung Max for a second.

  “I just want you to know, Max,” Schumer said, returning the photograph to his wallet, “that I love Doris and the boys very much and will do everything I can to be a positive force in their lives.”

  It was time to leave.

  “I’m sure you will, Daniel. It was great meeting you. Have a good racquetball game. And thanks for the lift.”

  “It was my pleasure, Max.”

  They shook hands. Pauling got out of the car and walked to the ops center without looking back. It took him fifteen minutes to file an IFR flight plan to Miami. When he exited the building, Schumer was still parked in the lot. Schumer waved. Pauling returned it, went to where his plane was tied down, and did his walk-around inspection of the exterior. Satisfied, he said to the line attendant, “Thanks for topping her off.”

  “Yes, sir. She’s a nice plane.”

  “My baby,” Pauling said, climbing up into the left seat. When he’d completed his preflight checklist, started the engine, and begun to taxi to the end of the only runway, he noticed that Schumer was still there.

  What the hell is he waiting for, to see me crash? he wondered.

  He didn’t know that Daniel Schumer was watching him with interest and envy. Doris’s new husband had been more nervous meeting Max than he’d admitted. He’d felt inferior to this steely-eyed pilot and former undercover agent for the CIA. Doris had described Max as obsessive about staying in shape, one with little patience for those who didn’t.

  He watched the Cessna roll down the runway and lift off. A minute later, the plane disappeared into low clouds. He touched his belly that pressed against the seat belt and grimaced. He’d better do more than play an occasional game of racquetball with other overweight professionals before Max Pauling visited again.

  And as Pauling flew toward Miami with a clear mind about those in his personal life, Daniel Schumer, CPA and licensed attorney who played sports poorly, worried whether he paled in Doris’s eyes in comparison to her macho ex-husband.

  That afternoon he signed up with a gym just a block away from his office.

  James L. Walden was known as a man and a politician who held his cards close to the vest, literally and figuratively. On this night, the final evening at the presidential retreat after a much-needed weekend away from Washington and the White House, he sat at the table with fellow poker players and peered down through half-glasses at the five cards in his hand. He’d drawn only two. Others looked to him for a clue as to what he held. President Walden was not known as a risk taker, although he’d bluffed skillfully enough in a previous hand to force a couple of players out of the game even though they had held stronger hands than he.
/>   To his left sat Mackensie Smith, a law professor at George Washington University. Smith and Walden had been friends since Walden ran for governor of California as a liberal Democrat—and won. He next won the White House. Smith, who had served on a number of panels and committees at the president’s behest, had become one of his closet “advisors”; read, poker buddies. Like every powerful leader, Walden needed to be surrounded with men and women who did his bidding for the most part without mounting undue challenges. Smith, along with a handful of others, fulfilled a second need. They were good company and they also spoke their minds to the president, always respectfully, of course. But their careers were not dependent upon his reactions. Their advice meant something.

  “Well, Mr. President, are you seeing me or raising me?” Price McCullough asked from across the table. He’d been a five-term senator from Texas until retiring, citing the appalling lack of civility in that hallowed chamber. McCullough had gone on to pursue business interests, the largest of which was BTK Industries, a biotech company with significant investment in the development of new monoclonal antibody anticancer drugs. A few eyebrows had been raised—but only a few—when he left government to become chairman and CEO of the company that had benefited for years from his votes in Congress. BTK Industries had also realized gains from McCullough’s chairmanship of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, plus the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Subcommittee on Education, both of which wielded considerable oversight of the pharmaceutical industry. That he went from being financially comfortable to multimillionaire status virtually overnight prompted the predictable resident cynics to cry foul, but their voices proved weak and momentary. Price McCullough’s congressional colleagues congratulated him and wished him well, and some were not above hoping that such criticisms and good fortune loomed in their futures.

  Walden took in the others over his glasses, exhibited a rare grin, picked up chips from a pile in front of him, and tossed them into the center of the table. “I’ll see you and raise you a dollar,” he said.

  “Larry?” McCullough asked the governor of Massachusetts.

  “Former player,” Lawrence Scott said, tossing his cards facedown on the table.

  “Mac?”

  “I’ll see you and match the raise.”

  The only other player, White House chief of staff Charles Larsen, had folded after drawing three useless cards and commenting on them with words containing four letters.

  Mac Smith displayed his hand—a pair of kings.

  The president showed a full house, aces high.

  McCullough shook his head and put down his five cards, one at a time, three tens, an ace, and a jack.

  “I win,” Walden said, laughing and scooping up the chips from the middle of the table. “Hell, I always win. I’m the president of the United States. I’m supposed to win.”

  “Harry Truman used to say he didn’t mind losing a card game,” McCullough said. “Elections were another matter.”

  “All set for your trip to Cuba, Price?” Governor Scott asked.

  “I believe so.”

  “Maybe you can get Castro in a card game and win the freaking island,” Charlie Larsen said.

  “He’s a chess player,” Smith offered.

  “And superstitious,” said Walden. “He has a favorite number, twenty-six, and makes important decisions only on that day of the month.”

  “He’s a head case,” Governor Scott said.

  “A shrewd head case,” Walden said. “Don’t sell him short.”

  “Kennedy sure did,” Scott said.

  “Did Kennedy really buy up every Cuban cigar he could find before our embargo prohibited Cuban products from coming into the country?” Larsen asked.

  Walden laughed. “He sent Pierre Salinger out to corner the market. Salinger bought Kennedy every Petite Upmann in the country, thousands of them. Then he signed the embargo.”

  There was much laughter around the table.

  “Churchill smoked Cuban Romeo y Julietas,” Walden said. “Cuba gave him ten thousand as a gift during World War Two.”

  “Another hand?” McCullough asked.

  “Not for me,” Walden said, standing and twisting his torso against a pain in his back. “Volleyball and swimming this afternoon did me in. A meeting with the attorney general didn’t help.”

  Gentle kidding had accompanied the president’s announcement after dinner that a poker game was about to commence, men only.

  “This is like a scene from a 1940s movie,” Charlie Larsen’s wife had said lightly.

  “Cigars and cognac for the men, a knitting competition for the women,” said another wife, also uttered lightly so as not to appear seriously offended.

  “As long as you win,” the president’s wife, Sheila, told him, ending the debate.

  While the men wagered at the round, green, felt-covered table, the women in their lives had retreated to an expansive screened porch where no winners emerged in their animated discussion of current political events, recently published books, and other stimulating topics. Now, with candles on tables providing the only light and a faint breeze moderating the warm, humid evening, the men joined them on the porch. The shadows of Secret Service agents could be seen.

  “Who won?” Sheila Walden asked.

  “Who else?” Scott said. “Your husband.”

  “Good,” she said. “We can eat for another day.”

  “Can we?” Annabel Reed-Smith, Smith’s wife, asked.

  “Afraid not,” Smith said. “The president took every cent I have.”

  “That’s what they say about you in Congress, Mr. President.” Scott said this while settling on a white wicker love seat next to his wife.

  Chief of Staff Larsen said, “That’s the president’s political philosophy. Take it from Congress before they take it from you.”

  After another ten minutes of small talk, President Walden’s announcement that he and Sheila were calling it a day caused the others to stand and make similar pronouncements. Except for Mac and Annabel Smith. “I think we’ll sit up a while,” Smith said.

  “No necking on the couch,” said Walden. “You never can tell when there’s somebody out there with a long lens.”

  “We’ll try to control ourselves,” Annabel said brightly.

  “The hell we will,” Mac mock growled.

  When the others were gone, Annabel said to her husband, “What a lovely weekend.”

  “It’s good to see the president get away if even for a few days. He’s been looking exhausted lately.”

  “No wonder, with all the turmoil around him: a hostile Congress, the Middle East, the Far East, the fight over the Supreme Court nomination, Cuba. It never stops.”

  “Did you have a pleasant time with Sheila and the others?” he asked.

  “While you were bonding?” She laughed. “We had a lovely time. Sheila’s devotion to funding the arts in public schools is inspiring. She asked me to join the foundation.”

  “You will, of course.”

  “I will. Of course.”

  He took her hand and they sat in silence.

  Annabel was tall—five eight—trim except where she wasn’t supposed to be. Additional advantages included a creamy complexion and a mane of copper hair. Her eyes were, of course, green as if ordained, and large. Her ears, nose, and mouth had been created with a stunning sense of proportion. She was, in Mac’s eyes—which were a lighter green, the color of Granny Smith apples—at least the most beautiful woman in the world, a view shared by other men who’d pursued her. But Mac Smith was the one who’d won her hand, for which he was eternally grateful.

  Smith was equally handsome by any standard, slightly taller than medium, stocky and strong, hair receding slowly and within acceptable limits, face without undue defects. When they’d taken their vows in Washington National Cathedral’s Bethlehem Chapel those ten years ago, Annabel had prompted laughter when asked the question, “Will you have this man to be your husband?
” She had replied in a loud, cheery voice, “Oh, yes, I certainly will.”

  Smith had been widowed when he met Annabel. His first wife and only child, a son, fell victim to a drunk driver on the Beltway. That vast loss created in him a whole new way of viewing life. He decided to close down his lucrative criminal law practice and took a position as professor of law at George Washington University.

  When Annabel met Smith at an embassy function, she, too, had been considering a change in her life. She was a matrimonial attorney in D.C., and a good one, but years of dealing with warring couples and their inability, or unwillingness, to forge peaceful dissolutions of their marriages had worn her down. Her true personal passion had long been pre-Columbian art. With her husband’s encouragement, she closed her law offices and opened a storefront gallery in Georgetown that eventually grew in size and stature.

  “I envy you your trip to Cuba,” she said quietly.

  “In the summer? It would be worth envying if it were January.”

  “Speaking of heat, while you guys were male-bonding we were discussing why the president is taking so much of it these days from Congress over his Cuba policies.”

  “The Castro hard-liners won’t let go, Annabel. They can’t accept the idea that the main thing the embargo has accomplished lately is the impoverishment of the average Cuban, and the strengthening of Castro’s image—him against the mighty aggressor ninety miles off his shores.”

  “Well, it should be an interesting trip,” Annabel said.

  “Should be. I was pleased when the president asked me to be part of it as one set of eyes and ears.”

  “How many in Price’s delegation?”

  “Twenty, last I heard—sixteen men and four women.”

  “The usual ratio.” She sighed. “Cuba,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I wish I’d seen it before Castro, when it was the playground of the rich and famous.”