I stood up. I was a little bit stiff from sleeping on my face, but other than that I felt surprisingly good, as well as hungry, which was not surprising. I went to the window and opened the curtains. It was still bright daylight, but the sun had moved off to one side and calmed down a little, and I stood looking out at the harbor and the seawall and the large sidewalk that ran along beside it filled with people. None of them seemed in any hurry; they were strolling rather than going anywhere, and groups of them collected here and there for talking, singing, and, from what I could gather from some of the visible activity, advice to the lovelorn.
Farther out in the harbor a large inner tube bobbed in the swell, a man dangling through its center and holding what looked to be a Cuban yo-yo, which is a spool of fishing line with no reel or pole. And farther still, just on the inside of the horizon, three large ships were steaming past, whether freighters or passenger liners I couldn’t tell. The birds wheeled above the waves, the sun sparkled off the water; all in all it was a beautiful sight, and it made me realize that there was absolutely nothing to eat at the window, so I found my room key on the bedside table and headed down to the lobby.
I found a very large and formal dining room on the far side of the elevators from the front desk, and tucked into a corner beside it was a dark wood-paneled bar. They were both very nice, but not really what I was looking for. The bartender told me, in perfect English, that there was a snack bar in the basement, down the stairs at the far side of the lobby, and I thanked him, also in perfect English, and headed for the stairs.
The snack bar was decorated in tribute to the movies, and I had a bad moment until I saw the menu and realized they served more than popcorn. I ordered a Cuban sandwich, naturally, and an Iron Beer, and sat at a table contemplating lights, camera, and action with just a trace of bitterness. Weiss was somewhere nearby, or about to be, and he had promised to make Dexter a big star. I did not want to be a star. I much preferred toiling in shadowy obscurity, quietly compiling a record of flawless excellence in my chosen field. This would soon be utterly impossible unless I managed to stop Weiss, and since I was not really sure how I planned to do that, it was a very distressing prospect. Still, the sandwich was good.
When I had finished eating, I went back up the stairs and, on a whim, down the grand marble staircase and outside to the front of the hotel, where a line of taxis stood guard. I walked aimlessly by them and up the long sidewalk, past a row of ancient Chevys and Buicks, and even a Hudson—I had to read the name off the front end. Several very happy-looking people leaned against the cars, and all of them were eager to take me for a ride, but I smiled my way past them and headed for the distant front gate. Beyond these was an untidy heap of what seemed to be golf carts with brightly colored plastic shells attached to them. Their drivers were younger and not quite so high end as those attending the Hudson, but they were equally eager to prevent me from having to use my legs. Nevertheless, I managed to get through them as well.
At the gate I paused and looked around. Ahead of me was a crooked street that led past a bar or nightclub. To my right a road led downhill to the boulevard that ran along the seawall, and to my left, also down a hill, I could see what looked like a movie theater on the corner and a row of shops. And as I was contemplating all this and trying to decide which way to go, a taxi stopped beside me, the window rolled down, and Chutsky called to me urgently from inside. “Get in,” he said. “Come on, buddy. In the cab. Hurry up.” I had no idea why it was so important, but I climbed in and the cab took us on up to the hotel, turning right before the front door and pulling into a parking lot that butted up against one wing of the building.
“You can’t be wandering around out front,” Chutsky said. “If this guy sees you, the game’s over.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling slightly stupid. He was right, of course; but Dexter was so unused to daytime stalking that it had not occurred to me.
“Come on,” he said, and he climbed out of the cab, holding a new leather briefcase. He paid the driver and I followed him through a side door that led past a few shops and right to the elevators. We went straight up to our room with nothing else to say, until we got inside. Chutsky threw the briefcase on the bed, flung himself into a chair, and said, “Okay, we got some time to kill, and it’s best to do it right here in the room.” He gave me a look that one might give to a very slow child and added, “So this guy doesn’t know we’re here.” He looked at me for a moment to see if I understood him and then, apparently figuring out that I did, he pulled out a battered little booklet and a pencil, opened the book, and began to do Sudoku.
“What’s in your briefcase?” I said, mostly because I was a little irritated.
Chutsky smiled, pulled the case toward him with his steel hook, and flipped it open. It was full of cheap souvenir percussion instruments, most of them stamped CUBA.
“Why?” I asked him.
He just kept smiling. “You never know what might turn up,” he said, and turned back to his no-doubt-fascinating Sudoku puzzle. Left to my own devices, I pulled the other chair in front of the television, switched it on, and watched Cuban sitcoms.
We sat there peacefully enough until very close to dusk. Then Chutsky glanced at the clock and said, “Okay, buddy, let’s get going.”
“Going where?” I said.
He winked at me. “Meet a friend,” he said, and he would say no more. He picked up his new briefcase and headed out the door. So even though it was a little bit disturbing to be winked at, I had no real choice, and I followed meekly along out of the room, out the hotel’s side door again, and into a waiting taxi.
The streets of Havana were even busier in the fading light. I rolled down my window to see, hear, and smell the city, and was rewarded by an ever-changing but never-stopping surge of music, seemingly coming from every door and window we passed, as well as from the many groups of musicians clustered on the street. Their song rose and fell and mutated as we drove through the city, but somehow it always seemed to come back to the chorus of “Guantanamera.”
The cab followed a tortured path over rough cobbled streets, always through crowds of people singing, selling things, and, strangely, playing baseball. I lost all sense of direction very quickly, and by the time the cab stopped at a barrier of large iron globes in the middle of the road, I had no idea what direction we had come from. So I followed Chutsky up a side street, through a plaza, and into an intersection in front of what seemed to be a hotel. It was bright orange pink in the light of the setting sun, and Chutsky led me in, past a piano bar and a number of tables spread with pictures of Ernest Hemingway that looked like they’d been painted by elementary school children.
Beyond these was an old-fashioned elevator cage at the far end of the lobby, and we went over to it and Chutsky rang the bell. As we waited I looked around me. Off to one side was a row of shelves containing merchandise of some kind and I wandered over for a look. There were ashtrays, mugs, and other items, all containing a likeness of Ernest Hemingway, in this case done by someone a bit more skillful than the grade school artists.
The elevator arrived and I walked back to get in. A massive gray iron gate slid open to reveal the inside, complete with a grim old man operating the controls. Chutsky and I got in. A few more people crowded in with us before the operator slid the iron gate shut and cranked the handle into the up position. The cage lurched and we began to move slowly upward, until we reached the fifth floor. Then the elevator operator yanked the handle and we thumped to a stop. “The room of Hemingway,” he said. He pulled the gate open and the rest of the people on board skittered out. I glanced at Chutsky, but he shook his head and pointed up, so I stood and waited until the gate slid shut again and we jerked our way up two more flights before staggering to a halt. The man slid the gate open and we stepped gratefully out into a small room, really no more than a roof over the elevator and the top of a flight of stairs. I could hear music playing nearby, and Chutsky, with a wave of his hand, led me out onto the r
oof and toward the music.
A trio was playing a song about ojos verdes as we walked around a trellis to where the musicians were set up, three men in white pants and guayaberas. A bar was against the wall beyond them, and on the other two sides there was just the city of Havana spread out below us in the orange light of the setting sun.
Chutsky led the way to a low table with a cluster of easy chairs around it and he nudged his briefcase under the table as we sat down. “Pretty nice view, huh?” he said.
“Very pretty,” I said. “Is that why we came here?”
“No, I told you,” he said. “We’re gonna meet a friend.”
And whether he was kidding me or not, that was apparently all he was going to say on the subject. In any case, the waiter appeared at our table at that point. “Two mojitos,” Chutsky said.
“Actually, I think I’ll stick to beer,” I said, remembering my mojito-induced nap a little earlier.
Chutsky shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Try a Crystal, it’s pretty good.”
I nodded at the waiter; if I could trust Chutsky for anything at all, I was pretty sure it would be beer selection. The waiter nodded back and went to the bar to get our drinks and the trio launched into “Guantanamera.”
We’d had no more than one sip of our drinks when I saw a man approaching our table. He was very short and dressed in brown slacks and a lime-green guayabera, and he carried a briefcase that looked very much like Chutsky’s.
Chutsky jumped up and held out his hand. “Ee-bangh!” he yelled, and it took me a moment to realize that Chutsky was not experiencing a sudden attack of Tourette’s syndrome, but only the Cuban pronunciation of the newcomer’s name, Iván. Ee-bangh held out his hand, too, and embraced Chutsky as they shook hands.
“Cahm-BEYL!” Ee-bangh said, and again it took a moment—this time because I hadn’t really remembered that Chutsky was Reverend Campbell Freeney. By the time all the gears had meshed, Ivan had turned to look at me with one raised eyebrow. “Oh, hey,” Chutsky said, “this is David Marcey. David, Iván Echeverría.”
“Mucho gusto,” Iván said, shaking my hand.
“Nice to meet you,” I told him in English, since I was not sure whether “David” spoke any Spanish at all.
“Well, sit down,” Chutsky said, and he waved at the waiter as Iván sat. The waiter hurtled over to our table and took Iván’s order for a mojito, and when it arrived, Chutsky and Iván sipped and talked cheerfully in very rapid Cuban Spanish. I could probably have followed along if I had really worked at it, but it seemed like an awful lot of hard labor for what seemed to be a private conversation made up mostly of fond memories—and in truth, even if they had been discussing something far more interesting than What Happened That Time, I would have tuned it out; because it was full night now, and coming up over the rim of the roof was a huge, reddish-yellow moon, a bloated, simpering, bloodthirsty moon, and the first sight of it turned every inch of my skin into a chilled carpet of goose bumps, all the hairs on my back and arms stood up and howled, and running through every corridor of Castle Dexter was a small and dark footman carrying orders to every Knight of the Night to Go Now and Do It.
But of course it was not to be. This was not a Night of Letting Go; it was very unfortunately a Night of Clamping Down. It was a night to sip rapidly warming beer, pretend I could hear and enjoy the trio; a night to smile politely at Ee-bahng and wish it was all over and I could get back to being happy homicidal me in peace and tranquillity. It was a night to endure, and hope that someday soon would find me with a knife in one hand and Weiss in the other.
Until then, I could only take a deep breath, a sip of beer, and pretend to enjoy the lovely view and the wonderful music. Practice that winning smile, Dexter. How many teeth can we show? Very good; now without teeth, just the lips. How far up can you make the corners of your mouth go before it looks like you are in very great internal pain?
“Hey, you all right, buddy?” Chutsky called some twenty minutes later. Apparently I had let my face stretch past Happy Smile and into Rictus.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just, ah—fine, really.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, though he didn’t look convinced. “Well, maybe we better get you back to the hotel.” He drained his glass and stood up, and so did Iván. They shook hands, and then Iván sat back down and Chutsky grabbed his briefcase and we headed for the elevator. I looked back to see Iván ordering another drink, and I raised an eyebrow at Chutsky.
“Oh,” he said. “We don’t want to leave together. You know, at the same time.”
Well, I suppose that made as much sense as anything else, since we were now apparently living in a spy movie, so I watched everyone else carefully, all the way down in the elevator, to make sure they weren’t agents of some evil cartel. Apparently they weren’t, since we made it safely all the way down and into the street. But as we crossed the street to find a taxi, we passed a horse and buggy waiting there, something I really should have noticed and avoided, because animals don’t like me, and this horse reared up—even though he was old and tired and had been placidly chewing something in a nose bag. It was not a very impressive maneuver, hardly a John Wayne moment, but he did get both front feet off the ground and make a noise of extreme displeasure at me, which startled his driver nearly as much as it did me. But I hurried on by and we managed to get into a taxi without any clouds of bats swarming out to attack me.
We rode back to the hotel in silence. Chutsky sat with his briefcase on his lap and looked out the window, and I tried not to listen to that fat overwhelming moon. But that didn’t work very well; it was there in every postcard view of Havana we drove through, always bright and leering and calling out wonderful ideas, and why couldn’t I come out to play? But I could not. I could only smile back and say, Soon. It will be soon.
Just as soon as I could find Weiss.
THIRTY-TWO
WE GOT BACK TO OUR ROOM WITHOUT INCIDENT AND with no more than a dozen words between the two of us. Chutsky’s lack of wordiness was proving to be a really charming personality trait, since the less he talked, the less I had to pretend I was interested, and it saved wear on my facial muscles. And in fact, the few words he did say were so pleasant and winning that I was almost ready to like him. “Lemme put this in the room,” he said, holding up the briefcase. “Then we’ll think about dinner.” Wise and welcome words; since I would not be out in the wonderful dark light of the moon tonight, dinner would be a very acceptable substitute.
We took the elevator up and strolled down the hall to the room, and when we got inside, Chutsky put the briefcase carefully on the bed and sat beside it, and it occurred to me that he had brought it with us to the rooftop bar for no reason I could see, and was now being rather careful of it. Since curiosity is one of my few flaws, I decided to indulge it and find out why.
“What’s so important about the maracas?” I asked him.
He smiled. “Nothing,” he said. “Not a single damn thing.”
“Then why are you carrying them all over Havana?”
He held the briefcase down with his hook and opened it with his hand. “Because,” he said, “they’re not maracas anymore.” And sliding his hand into the briefcase, he pulled out a very serious-looking automatic pistol. “Hey, presto,” he said.
I thought of Chutsky lugging the briefcase all over town to meet Ee-bangh, who then came in with an identical briefcase—both of which were shoved under the table while we all sat and listened to “Guantanamera.”
“You arranged to switch briefcases with your friend,” I said.
“Bingo.”
It does not rank among the smartest things I ever said, but I was surprised, and what came out of my mouth was “But what’s it for?”
Chutsky gave me such a warm, tolerant, patronizing smile that I would gladly have turned the pistol on him and pulled the trigger. “It’s a pistol, buddy,” he said. “What do you think it’s for?”
“Um, self-defense?” I said. r />
“You do remember why we came here, right?” he said.
“To find Brandon Weiss,” I said.
“FIND him?” Chutsky demanded. “Is that what you’re telling yourself? We’re going to FIND him?” He shook his head. “We’re here to kill him, buddy. You need to get that straight in your head. We can’t just find him, we have to put him down. We’ve got to kill him. What’d you think we were going to do? Bring him home with us and give him to the zoo?”
“I guess I thought that sort of thing was frowned on here,” I said. “I mean, this isn’t Miami, you know.”
“It isn’t Disneyland, either,” he said, unnecessarily, I thought. “This isn’t a picnic, buddy. We’re here to kill this guy, and the sooner you get used to that idea the better.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“There ain’t no but,” he said. “We’re gonna kill him. I can see you have a problem with that.”
“Not at all,” I said.
He apparently didn’t hear me—either that or he was already launched into a preexisting lecture and couldn’t stop himself. “You can’t be squeamish about a little blood,” he went on. “It’s perfectly natural. We all grow up hearing that killing is wrong.”
It kind of depends on who, I thought, but did not say.
“But the rules are made by people who couldn’t win without ’em. And anyway, killing isn’t always wrong, buddy,” he said, and oddly enough he winked. “Sometimes it’s something you have to do. And sometimes, it’s somebody who deserves it. Because either a whole lot of other people will die if you don’t do it, or maybe it’s, get him before he gets you. And in this case—it’s both, right?”