Fifty Grand (46 page)

A policeman asks me if I am ok.

“Fine. Too many people,” I tell him.

“You should have seen it last week, the holy day of Guadalupe is December twelfth.” He waves at the plaza. “There were two million out here.”

The subway.

Basilica to Martín Carrera to Consulado to the airport.

My plane is at four.

The airport. The special Cuban line. The ticket.

A delay. Newsstand. A headline in the December 18
Miami Herald:
“Wire Service Report: Fidel Hints at Retirement.”

The plane. Cubana flight 131. Take off over the glittering city. Circle to gain altitude, and already the lights are lost beneath the nighttime haze; only the beacons on Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl peeking through the dark.

East across the forests of Yucatán.

I take out the image of the Virgin María. For a while we shared a name, you and I.

I rest my eyes, even sleep a little.

I feel the plane descend and a stewardess asks me to return my seat to the upright position.

I open the window shade.

When Columbus saw Cuba for the first time the landmass was so large that he knew he had made it to one of the islands of Japan. He landed near Gibara and brought the astonished Taino Indians gifts and respectful greetings for the Japanese emperor. When the shogun refused to show up, Columbus gave the
Indians instead the cross and slavery and smallpox and death. Cortés took the cross from Cuba to Mexico. The old gods fell and the father god took their place. Wise Cuba threw off the shackles of all the religions, found truth in Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Fidel Castro. The very first thing we learned in school was that religion was the opium of the masses.

And yet.

I am copied in your eye, lady of Guadalupe, lady of the moon.

Accept this candle for another, blessed mother, generous to virgins . . .

Havana.

The bay surrounded by mist.

A pink sea.

The plane descends.

I put María in my pocket.

Dark when we took off and not quite morning when we land at José Martí.

Yawns, a smattering of applause.

The Jetway is broken and takes a long time to dock to the plane. I thank the pilot and the stewardess and walk down the ramp back into
la patría
.

As soon as I enter the terminal building and before I even make it to the metal detectors I spot Sergeant Menendez, the DGI spy in Hector’s office.

He nods to two men in blue suits.

“Chivato cabrón,”
I say under my breath.

They arrest me.

“What’s the charge?” I ask them as they lead me outside into the dark, warm, drizzly Havana rain.

“Treason.”

Treason. Yes. The great catchall. And one of the many, many offenses in Cuba that carries the death penalty.

“Come on. Get in.”

I get in the car, a Russian police Lada.

The engine turns over.

The lights come on.

The engine dies.

“Everyone out,” the driver says.

The rain again.

A gun in my face.

“Help us push.”

“No.”

“Do it or I’ll shoot you.”

“You won’t shoot.”

The smell of earth. Fruit rotting in the fields. The sea.

“Forget it then.”

The men push, the car moves, the clutch slips, the engine catches, the men jump in, and, having no alternative, forward into the day we ride together.

C
heap 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?”