Fifty Grand

21 FINCA VIGÍA

Cheap handcuffs. Cheap cologne. On either side of me cheap suits. The empty highway from the airport. Morning mist. Women with bundles on their heads, Africa style. Negros de pasas, blanquitos, all the same. In Cuba everybody walks. Kids carrying broken bicycles, old men pulling donkey carts, hitchhikers putting their hands down when they see it’s a cop car.

Where are we going?

Not the ministry. Not the meat-hook basements in the MININT building, ten floors below Che’s beard.

“Where are we going?”

“Shut up.”

The southern suburbs. Shanties, tin towns. Unmetaled roads, hurricane-fucked streets.

I don’t recognize this neighborhood at all. Is this where the DGI has its torture house?

A hill. A Spanish colonial village turned into slums. Pigs rooting in the street. Old men sleeping in gutters.

The beginning of sunrise.

Climbing.

This area a little more familiar.

“Is this San Francisco de Paula?”

“We told you to shut up.”

Four of us. A driver and these two DGI goons.

San Francisco de Paula. I haven’t been here for years.

A turn off a dirt road, the Lada slewing in mud. A big gated nineteenth-century hacienda on a hilltop.

G5 and DGSE guards at the gate, snoozing under bougainvillea.

The Lada honks its limp-dicked horn, and as if to compensate our bull-necked driver shouts obscenities through the window.

A soldier in green fatigues opens the gate.

A long driveway lined with jacarandas and mango trees. Parrots, tocororos, and yellow-necked finches roosting in the branches. And above them frigate birds with scimitar wings hanging eerily in the air.

The house is a one-story Spanish colonial. Outside the embassy area all these homes are falling to pieces, but this one has a new roof and a fresh lick of cream-colored paint. Parked outside is a black 1950s Chrysler New Yorker.

“What is this place?”

“Mira, chica, how many times do we have to tell you to shut up?”

The Lada stops. The driver helps me out. A young man in a blue uniform I don’t recognize approaches the car and puts a finger to his lips.

“What is all this?”

“Quiet. He’s still sleeping,” the young man says.

“Who?”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“What? Yes.”

I start to walk toward the house. The shutters are open and you can see through from one side to the other, and all the way to Havana.

“No, over here,” the young man says and leads me to a shack at the back of the house. Seven or eight tables. A half dozen MININT men drinking coffee.

“Alex, spare another cup, this one’s just got in from Mexico.”

Alex, an old guy with white hair, muy negro, produces a coffee cup and leads me to a table away from the MININT men.

He smiles at me, looks at them, and mutters “Vermin” under his breath.

He returns with a pot of coffee and a bowl of sugar.

“We’ve got nothing to eat, I’m sorry,” he says.

“That’s ok. Where are we?”

He looks at me in amazement for a moment. “Finca Vigía,” he says and walks off.

The name rings a bell, but I can’t quite place it. I pour coffee in the espresso cup and add a cube of white sugar. Before it’s fully dissolved I take a sip. Cuba does two things well, cigars and coffee. Local beans, local sugar, local water. And strong. The hit is instantaneous and even in this state of incipient panic I can’t help but smile.

My head feels clear for the first time in days. I lean back in the white plastic chair and breathe out.

Ok, Mercado, why don’t you try to figure out what’s going on?

We’re in some kind of garden. A beautiful one. Hibiscus, oleander, Indian laburnum, blossoming hydrangea. The scent heady and overpowering. Under the trees there are half a dozen species of orchid and a small scudding sea of Cuba’s national flower, the brilliant white mariposa. There are a score of security guards but that’s it, which means this is not Jefe’s house. The Beard’s gotten even more crazy as he’s gotten older and doesn’t go anywhere without half a battalion of soldiers surrounding him. One of the other ministers, perhaps, or an ambassador from the-

Inside the house a clock dings the hour six times.

I hear someone stir.

My legs start trembling. I’m wearing tight black American jeans and low-heeled black pumps, not exactly designed for making a break for it through the garden and over the wall.

I pour myself another cup of coffee.

The young man in the blue uniform returns. He has very long eyelashes and a nice smile.

“He wishes to see you. Please come,” he says.

Who?

He leads me around the front, past a pool, and in through a set of double doors.

The house is a museum. Old-fashioned furniture, a range in the kitchen. No modern appliances. When I see the hunting trophies all over the walls I remember what Finca Vigía is. We’re in Casa Hemingway. Preserved the way Hemingway left it in 1960. I haven’t been here before but I’ve read about it. The large open-plan hacienda, the immaculate pool, the expansive garden, the shutters open to the dawn and the early morning mist and distant sea. But for the trained assassins waiting outside, a truly charming spot.

Along the walls ibex and antelope heads and more dead animals on the floor. White-painted bookcases overflowing with volumes. Desks covered with magazines: The Field, The Spectator, a New Yorker from November 1958. Bullfight posters. Paintings by Miró and Paul Klee. An armoire with a cheetah skin draped languidly across it. A Picasso of a bull’s head. And the pièce de résistance, there, sitting on the edge of a twin bed, as freaky and unreal as the Picasso, in his pajamas and a black silk dressing gown, Raúl Castro.

What’s left of his hair has been dyed. Tanned leathery skin hangs loose on his face and under his neck. There are bags around his yellow eyes, but unlike Fidel he has his own teeth and even this early he looks a lot younger than his brother.

When he sees me he puts a finger to his lips and points at the bed. A girl with him, sleeping still. It’s not a scandal. For although Vilma Espín only recently passed away, Raúl had been separated from the mother of his children for two decades.

He points to the kitchen. The house is all on one floor with rooms bleeding into one another. Only the kitchen has a big thick door that closes.

“This way,” Raúl whispers.

Two DGI men slip outside as we enter.

Raúl gently closes the door, leans on a pine table, and opens the shutters.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“Six-fifteen,” a voice from outside mutters.

Raúl yawns and looks through the window. “Coffee,” he says.

He sits down at the table and motions for me to sit too.

“This can’t take long, we’ll have to have the house open for tourists by ten.”

“I don’t know what this is.”

Raúl smiles and rubs his jaw. In every other Cuban that gesture is a discreet reference to the Beard, but for him it’s just an assessment of his stubble.

A coffeepot is passed through the shutters, along with two cups and a bowl of sugar. Raúl pours himself an espresso and adds no sugar. That explains the teeth.

“This, this, Comrade Mercado, is an interrogation.”

Fear. Great pulsing sine waves of the stuff. Worse than the ice lake. Worse than the hangman himself. All those DGI and ministry men outside but Raúl is going to do this himself.

“Would you like a cup?” he asks.

I shake my head.

He takes a sip. “Not bad. Are you sure you don’t want one?”

“No.”

“Do you know who I am?” he asks.

“Of course.”

“I am the deus ex machina of your little adventure, Mercado. I am the person who will finally get things done right.”

“I don’t under-”

“Who killed your father, Comrade Mercado?”

I try not to appear taken aback. “I don’t know, I have no idea. It was a hit-and-run in La Yuma.”

Raúl shoots me a puzzled frown. He obviously isn’t up on his subversive slang.

“La Yuma. The United States, in a place called Fairview, Colorado,” I clarify.

“Who killed him?” Raúl asks again.

“I don’t know.”

Raúl sighs and looks out at the garden. The smell of hibiscus drifts through the window.

“You came in through the front of the house?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that Ava Gardner swam naked in that pool?”

“No.”

“Do you know who Ava Gardner was?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I think I’ve heard the name.”

“Young people. What do you think of me sleeping in Hemingway’s home? In his very bed?” Raúl asks.

“I don’t think anything.”

“You don’t consider it profane?”

“No. It’s just a house.”

Raúl grins. “Yes, I suppose so. It is just a house like any other. My brother never sleeps in the same house two nights running. He is afraid that the CIA is still trying to kill him. For a while it was the KGB too. But now only the CIA.”

His brother. Jefe the unkillable, the immortal. I mask my nervousness and fix an expression of polite interest.

“Do you know why I sleep here, in this house?” Raúl asks.

“No.”

“We are the past, the present, and the future of the Revolution. We must be safe. In Iraq U.S. pilots were not allowed to hit cultural, historical, or religious buildings. Perhaps I am paranoid, but I feel safe here and I like it.”

“It’s a nice place,” I agree.

Raúl sighs. “I met Comrade Hemingway twice. Once at a fishing competition in Havana and once at Floridita. Have you been in Floridita, Comrade Mercado?”

“Only to arrest someone. It’s too expensive to drink there.”

“You should treat yourself sometime.”

“Sure.”

“Yes, I like it here. Surrounded by books and artifacts. Genuine history.”

“It’s, uh, special. I suppose I should have visited before now.”

“You should have. When were you born, Comrade Mercado?”

“May twenty-sixth, 1980.”

“When did your father, the traitor, defect to the United States?”

“1993.”

“When you were thirteen. Hmm. Thirteen. Before your quince.”

I grimace. Two years before my quince. My fifteenth birthday-the most important day in any Cuban girl’s life. “I was his only daughter but he never saw it. My uncle Arturo said Dad would send money for the party. But he didn’t. He didn’t even send money,” I blurt out.

Raúl nods. As a father of daughters and granddaughters he knows just how important the quince is.

“Have coffee, Officer Mercado.”

“I had some, already. A whole pot.”

“In Mexico City?”

“No, here.”

“Real coffee.”

“Yes.”

“Good, good. Now I think you’ll admit that despite your father’s defection we have been very generous to your family,” Raúl says.

“Generous?” Ricky, my mother, and I got the same rations as everyone else. We all lived in the same crumbling apartments. Mom’s place didn’t even have hot water.

Raúl nods. “Generous. Despite your father being a traitor, we let your brother, Ricardo, travel there to dispose of his remains.”

Gooseflesh on my back. Leave Ricky out of this.

“Ricky’s a Party member, a former president of the National Students Union, an executive member of the National Union of Journalists,” I say quickly.

“Yes, yes,” Raúl agrees dismissively.

“Ricky has been out of the country many times. He’s traveled to Russia, to America, to Mexico. He has always returned. He’s proved himself many times to-”

Raúl puts his hand up like a white-gloved transit cop. “Enough,” he says.

“What have you done with Ricky? Have you arrested him? Where is he?”

Raúl seems amused that I have the effrontery to question him.

“I have no idea where your brother is. More than likely in the bed of some newspaper editor or a Chinese diplomat or one of our generals.”

Mierde. He even knows about Ricky’s counterrevolutionary tendencies. Of course he does. They know everything. One person in every twenty-five is a chivato like Sergeant Menendez.

He waits a beat. “And your mother, did she know of your mission to America?”

Hesitantly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t go to America. I went to Mexico City. I’m applying to the university to study criminology.”

Raúl snaps his fingers. One of the DGI goons leans his head in through the window. “The file,” Raúl says.

The DGI man goes away and comes back quickly with a small green folder. Raúl snatches it out of his hand. “You flew to Mexico City last Tuesday. The day you arrived you had a tour of the university and were interviewed by a Professor Martín Carranza in the Department of Criminology. On Tuesday evening you checked repeatedly for tails and obviously you found our man. You took the subway to Coyoacán. You went to the house of Leon Trotsky.” Raúl puts the file down and smiles at me. “You have a sense of humor, Officer Mercado, I like that… Let me see… Ah yes, you entered the house but did not leave. Somehow you exited without us noticing. I have been to that house, Comrade Mercado. It’s a walled fortress, not easy to slip out of there.”

“No.”

“You escaped our tail and found a coyote to take you across the border. You went to the United States to investigate your father’s death.”

“No.”

“Who killed your father?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You went to America to investigate the death of your father,” Raúl insists.

“No, that’s not true. I’ve never been to America.”

“Your boss, Captain Hector Ramirez, recommended that we deny you an exit permit. He said you wanted to go to Mexico but he suspected you might be a risk for defection.”

Hector sold me out.

“Well?”

“Captain Ramirez thought as much, yes.”

Raúl Castro sips his coffee and examines me like an M.E. performing a difficult autopsy. After a while he smiles, not unkindly.

“We overruled him,” he says. “We. The DGI.”

“What?”

“The Foreign Ministry denied your application to travel to Mexico, but we overruled them.”

My head spinning. “The state security police got me the exit permit?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you knew I was going to go to America?”

“Ah, so you admit you went to America?”

Damn it. The only way in Cuba was to deny, deny, deny. For years if necessary.

“I didn’t go to America,” I say again, quieter now.

A dog starts barking in the garden.

“Someone take him for a walk!” Raúl yells.

“Your dog?” I ask desperately, trying to change the subject. Raúl nods. “What type?”

“A mutt. All other breeds are bourgeois,” he says smugly.

“As bourgeois as that big black Chrysler outside.”

Raúl grins. “You saw my car. There’s a story behind that vehicle that, alas, must be saved for another time. Now, I’ll ask again, what is the name of the person who killed your father?”

“I don’t know.”

Raúl taps the table, rubs his chin. He decides to try a different tack.

“How do you think we’ve survived for nearly fifty years on this island, mano a mano with the most powerful country on Earth? We are a poor country, with few resources. How did the Revolution survive with so much stacked against it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because, Comrade Mercado, we are smart. Everyone underestimates us. Again and again. You did well in Mexico City, you suspected that we would put a tail on you and you were right. What you did not appreciate was my personal involvement in this case. You did not appreciate that the DGI would anticipate your caution.”

“What do you mean?” I wondered.

“We wanted you to see the tail. We wanted you to see him. And we allowed you to think that you’d got rid of him, but you missed the real tail, Comrade Mercado. You’re good, but you’re just a police officer and we are the Guardians of the Revolution. We are the DGI.”

A second tail.

No. He’s bluffing. He’s trying to trick me.

“I, I don’t believe you,” I tell him.

“We followed you to Terminal Norte, where you took a bus to Gomez Palacio. You found a coyote and you went across the desert that night. You had an unexpected and unpleasant episode at a place called Bloody Fork-don’t you love those English names?-and our operative says you did very well at that encounter. In fact, after that episode he recommended that we continue the family tradition and recruit you.”

Family tradition. Our operative. Pick a question.

“Your operative?” I ask.

Raúl yawns, the big jowly fold of skin under his neck swaying from side to side.

“Our operative in the coyote van.”

Our operative in the coyote van.

My Guardian Angel.

Oh my God.

Paco.

An agent for Cuban intelligence.

The phony trips to Denver, his skill with the rifle; the man in the rental car, Mr. New York Plates-his contact. Now it all makes perfect-

“I see by your face that you understand,” Raúl says.

Best course now is the truth. Fast. To save my life. To save Ricky, Mom. Truth.

“Yes. I went to America.”

He nods. “Take off your hat,” he says. “I want to see.”

I take off the beret. He looks at the bandage above my ear.

“A graze. Don’t think you’re special, Mercado. I once saw a man who was shot between the eyes. The bullet exited through his lower jaw and two weeks later he was back fighting with us in the mountains,” he says.

“He was lucky.”

“Yes and no. Later we had to hang him for rape… Now, who killed your father, Officer Mercado?”

“A man called Youkilis, a-”

“My patience has its limits,” he interrupts. “I’ll ask that question once more and this time, if you do not tell me the truth, I’ll consider it a crime against the state. A conspiracy that involves your whole family. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Comrade Castro.”

“Who killed your father, Officer Mercado?”

“It was, it was… It was an actor, a Hollywood actor called Jack Tyrone. He lived in Fairview, Colorado. He was driving home drunk, he hit Dad and knocked him into a ravine, and then he drove off. In America they call that a hit-and-run.”

“I heard the death was unpleasant. If it’s not too painful I’d like to know the full details. How did your father die?”

“Dad’s pelvis and legs were broken. His rib cage was shattered. He tried crawling back up to the road but couldn’t make it. Blood filled his lungs. He drowned in his own blood. Slowly. It took him hours to die and when they found him his face was frozen.”

A flicker as he tries to conceal a reaction. He nearly succeeds, but not quite. He waits for a beat or two to feign casualness.

“A Hollywood actor called Jack Tyrone.”

“He’s young. Thirty. Up and coming. You won’t have heard of him.”

“No, I am familiar with him. Not, of course, through his films.”

Through Paco’s report.

Sunlight finally breaks through the mist, sending yellow beams through the house. Parrots start screeching on the rooftop. Soon all the other birds will begin too.

“You discovered that Jack Tyrone killed your father but you did not kill him?” Raúl asks.

“No. I didn’t kill him.”

I wait for the other shoe to drop. It drops.

“Why?”

“I killed the man who covered it up. I drowned him in a lake in Wyoming. I killed the police officer who helped him cover it up. I let Tyrone go. He was drunk. He didn’t even remember the accident. And afterward he did what they told him to do. He followed his lines, he played his part. He’s an actor. He’s not a… He’s not evil.” Raúl’s face is twitching with anger as I continue my explanation. “I told him I’d be watching him. I told him that if he didn’t lead an extraordinary life, an exemplary life, that I’d be back. I’d be back to kill him then.”

Raúl cocks his head, as if mercy is known to him only as a theoretical concept, not one that he’s seen in practice. “You killed the men who covered it up but you let Tyrone go?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t like the answer. His face reddens. He smacks his hand down hard on the kitchen table. The coffee cups jump. A goon looks in through the window.

“It wasn’t your call to make!” Raúl shouts.

“I don’t-”

“Don’t speak! It wasn’t your call, Mercado. I sent you there. I sent you. I sent you to do a job for me! Juan Mercado belonged to us, not the Yankees! We… I made the decision to spare his life and someone else overruled me!”

In the black books, in the samizdats, they quote the Jesuit schoolmasters who taught the Castro boys. Fidel was wild, aggressive, a bad loser, a prodigy. Raúl was the levelheaded one, unemotional, slow to anger. I always believed that but the books were wrong. Raúl’s face is scarlet. He’s shaking. Spittle on his lips. His hands have become fists. He’s capable of anything. If he said the word one of those DGI men would take me outside to the jasmine trees and put a bullet in my head.

He stands and stares at me for so long that I begin to think he’s had a stroke. But then his yellow eyes glaze and he calms down.

“It wasn’t your call to make,” he mutters again.

Finally he sits, takes a sip of coffee, breathes.

“Why did you go to America, if not to kill the man who killed your father?” he asks in a quiet tone.

It’s not an unreasonable question. It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself. “For the same reason I joined the PNR. The truth. Do you remember the truth?”

“Don’t get smart with me, Officer Mercado. I could have you and your captain and your brother and your mother thrown into a dungeon for fifty years. Your whole solar. Everyone you know.”

I look at my feet. Save yourself. Save yourself. You did it on the ice. Do it now. “I beg your pardon, Comrade Castro. I spoke hastily.”

He grunts. “Apology accepted, Comrade Mercado.”

A long silence.

The guards muttering. Someone warming up the car. Parrots and macaws screeching as they walk along the tree branches.

The question has been hanging here the whole time, but I can’t ask it. Not yet. Why are you so interested in my father, Comrade Raúl?

“Do you like Hemingway?” Raúl asks in a stern pedagogic voice.

“I haven’t read much. The Cuba novels in school. The Island of Streams, The Old Man in the Sea.”

“Islands in the Stream, The Old Man and the Sea,” Raúl corrects.

“Of course.”

“For the chief it was always For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway wrote that book in the Ambos Mundos in Habana Vieja and he bought this very house with the first royalty payment. The book is about the necessity of killing one’s enemies. Killing without favor or malice or mercy. But you have killed, Comrade Mercado. Four men.”

The watery eyes boring into me.

“Four in a little over a week. How does that make you feel?”

“Sick.”

“I myself have never killed anyone.”

I can’t help but raise my eyebrows. He sees, grins. “But I have signed the warrants on many. I signed the warrant on your father at his trial in absentia.”

“I know.” And that’s the opening I want. Now is the time. “If I may ask, Comrade Raúl, why-”

“Your father worked for me. Juan Mercado was a DGI officer. G6.”

“He was a ticket taker on the bay ferry.”

Raúl smiles. “Wasn’t he, though? I’ll bet he met everyone in Havana at one point or another. He was with us right from the start. From boyhood. The early days.”

“Not once did he talk to us about the Revolution,” I say, my voice trembling, my composure going.

“No. He wouldn’t.”

“It’s not true.” Desperation. For all his faults, Dad was no rat.

Raúl regards me, lifts his cup, waits. There’s no point in saying anything. We both know he’s not lying.

“Why?” I manage.

“We needed men in the exile community in Miami. A mass defection has always been the best way of inserting agents. Your father was well known, well liked. We knew he would go far. We arranged the whole thing. Your father was one of half a dozen agents on that boat. Of course we knew that as soon as they landed in America, they would all be given U.S. citizenship with only the briefest of background checks. And Juan’s record was clean. Ah, yes. I ran that operation personally. It was the last one I did before I retired. I was proud of it.”

“What did he do for you in America?”

“Oh, he got a job. He joined the right groups. He gave money to the right causes. He knew the right people. He was as popular in Miami as he was in Havana. We were grooming him. He could have gone far.”

“Could have gone?”

Raul blinks rapidly, sighs. “He met a woman, a younger woman.”

“Karen.”

“Karen, yes. She was at the University of Miami, studying for her teaching license, but she was from North Dakota. When she finished her degree she went back to North Dakota. He followed her. They got married. North Dakota is of no use to us. There are no Cubans in North Dakota. We had six good agents on that ferry. One died of AIDS. Two came back to Cuba. One ended up in an American prison for dealing cocaine. And one found Jesus Christ. Your father was the last one from that insertion. I did not want him to leave Miami. We ordered him not to leave Miami, but he went.”

“You must have more than one agent in America?”

Raúl laughs. “Dozens. But for me this was personal. This was my operation. This was my man. I told him to return to Miami or we would kill him. It was clumsy. We could have accommodated her… enough money will soothe most people… I made a mistake, I spooked him.”

Raúl looks out the window and holds up the empty coffeepot. Almost instantly, another one is brought, along with sweet cakes and dry black bread. Raúl offers me a cake but I decline.

“You should eat. After this interview who knows when your next meal will be, Officer Mercado,” Raúl says.

Sound advice. I eat the cake. And besides, I’m on the hook. I want to see where the story goes. “What happened next?”

“He disappeared. We lost him. Our hit teams could not find him, and after a while I called them off. My family is from Sevilla, and there they have a saying, ‘You hunt the wolf for a year and a day and then you must let him go.’ We put out the word that all was forgiven, but your father didn’t trust us. For five years he stayed hidden until he turned up dead in Colorado with a Mexican passport.”

I look at Raúl to gauge his reaction. “You were glad?”

“Glad? No. Not at all. But I was curious. A ratcatcher in Colorado? Perhaps that was the only job he could get. Perhaps he had lost none of his sense of humor. In a manner of speaking, that had been his job when he worked for me,” he says, his eyes narrowing at the half joke, the skin fold under his chin jiggling.

He coughs, clears his throat. “In any case, when your brother asked to travel to Colorado to bury your father, we let him go without making any difficulty. Your brother is a good reporter. When he brought back many documents and gave them to you, we knew you were going to go too. We knew you were going to find the man who killed him and that you were going to exact a child’s revenge.”

“I don’t think-” I begin, but Raúl puts his finger to his lips.

In Hemingway’s bedroom the girl is stirring.

Raúl appears startled. “Quickly, get up. If she sees you here there will be a holy row. These officers will take you back to your apartment.”

Warily, I get to my feet. “I’m free to go?”

“As a bird.”

I look at the tame parrots walking on the balcony rail. “You clip their wings.”

Raúl smiles. “Only the songbirds, Comrade Mercado. You’re not a songbird, are you?”

“No.”

A voice from the bedroom. “Raúl!”

“Coming. Just taking care of something!” Raúl shouts and leads me outside.

He leans on the black Chrysler and taps me on the shoulder.

“Big changes are coming, Mercado. Sooner than you would think.”

I raise an eyebrow. He points at Casa Hemingway. “All of this will be a luxury. They won’t allow me to sleep anywhere that isn’t reinforced against the Yankee bunker-buster bombs, despite my talk of cultural protections.”

I’m not following him.

He frowns. “You see, that’s why we have to take care of all of the unfinished business now. In a few months I will have bigger fish to fry.”

“Yes,” I say, still confused.

My obtuseness is starting to irritate him. He sighs and changes the subject. “What should we do with you now, Comrade Mercado?” he whispers.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to join the DGI?”

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to go back to my old job.”

“Then go.”

Raúl signals the guards to bring the Lada.

“Comrade Castro, can I, may I ask you a question? Two questions?”

Raúl looks inside the house. “Quickly. Quickly. Estelle is very un-Cuban in her attitude to infidelity.”

“What do I tell Hector? I mean Captain Ramirez.”

“Tell him the truth. You spent a week in Mexico City. You saw the pyramids, you prayed at the shrine of the Virgin. Your second question?”

“Will I see Paco again?”

Raúl looks puzzled, but then he understands. “Paco. Paco? Oh, Francisco. Yes. I picked that name for him. There is an old joke that Hemingway was fond of. Do you wish to hear it? I will tell you: A father in Madrid puts an advertisement in El Liberal: ‘Paco, meet me at Hotel Montana, noon today, all is forgiven-Father.’ The Civil Guard has to come to disperse the crowd of eight hundred Pacos who respond to the ad.”

“His name is not Francisco?”

“No.”

I should be angry but I’m not. I lied to him. He lied to me.

“And I doubt that you will see him again. He lives in Miami.”

Raúl offers me a hand.

I shake it.

“Good luck, Officer Mercado. I hope to never see your name in any future report that crosses my desk.”

“You won’t.”

“Now, go.”

The goons show me to the car.

They drive me into town and drop me on the Malecón.

I walk to O’Reilly.

Outside the solar there’s a dead dog on the porch, a border collie. Flies around her eyes. Belonged to the family on the top floor.

Up the stairs.

A note on my apartment door from the landlord. My room has been broken into while I was away. They changed the locks.

I go down to the basement and bang on the landlord’s door. He appears with a baseball bat. I give him an IOU for a five-dollar bill.

Up the four flights. New key in the new lock.

Yeah, broken into, and not by the DGI-they don’t let you know they’ve been. This place has been ransacked. Thugs. The TV gone, my twenty-kilo bag of rice gone, my clothes gone. Poetry books gone.

I sit on the edge of the bed and cry.

Hector was right.

What was it he told me that Pindar said? The gods give us for every good thing two evil ones. Men who are children take this badly but the manly ones bear it, turning the brightness outward.

Yes. Something like that.

I sit there and cry myself out.

The sound of rats. The sea. Clanking camel buses. American radio.

I need a drink. The man down the hall makes moonshine in his bath. I knock on his door and buy a liter bottle for another IOU. I pour a cup. It burns. I go downstairs.

“Use your phone?” I ask the landlord.

I call Ricky. Oh, Ricky, I was so stupid. To think that I could outwit them. To think that I could do anything right.

“You’re alive,” he says.

“Yes.”

“I was so worried.”

“Don’t be.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I think so.”

A pause.

“I believe I’m being followed,” he says in a whisper, as if that will fool the DGI bug.

“No, that’s all over. You won’t see them again,” I assure him.

Another pause while he takes this in.

“You’re alive, big sister.”

“Yes. I’m alive. And that’s something.”