And although it was very odd to hear this rough version of my lifelong creed from my sister’s boyfriend, sitting on the bed in a hotel room in Havana, it once again made me appreciate Harry, both for being ahead of his time and also for being able to say all this in a way that didn’t make me feel like I was cheating at Solitaire. But I still couldn’t warm to the idea of using a gun. It just seemed wrong, like washing your socks in the baptismal font at church.
But Chutsky was apparently very pleased with himself. “Walther, nine-millimeter. Very nice weapons.” He nodded and reached into the briefcase again and pulled out a second pistol. “One for each of us,” he said. He flipped one of the guns to me and I caught it reflexively “Think you can pull the trigger?”
I do know which end of a pistol to hold on to, whatever Chutsky might think. After all, I grew up in a cop’s house, and I worked with cops every day. I just didn’t like the things—they are so impersonal, and they lack real elegance. But he had thrown it at me as something of a challenge, and on top of everything else that had happened, I was not about to ignore it. So I ejected the clip, worked the action one time, and held it out in the firing position, just like Harry had taught me. “Very nice,” I said. “Would you like me to shoot the television?”
“Save it for the bad guy,” Chutsky said. “If you think you can do it.”
I tossed the gun on the bed beside him. “Is that really your plan?” I asked him. “We wait for Weiss to check in to the hotel and then play O.K. Corral with him? In the lobby, or at breakfast?”
Chutsky shook his head sadly, as if he had tried and failed to teach me how to tie my shoes. “Buddy, we don’t know when this guy is going to turn up, and we don’t know what he’s going to do. He may even spot us first.” He raised both eyebrows at me, as if to say, Ha—didn’t think of that, did you?
“So we shoot him wherever we find him?”
“The thing is, to just be ready, whatever happens,” he said. “Ideally, we get him off someplace quiet and do it. But at least we’re ready.” He patted the briefcase with his hook. “Iván brought us a couple of other things, just in case, too.”
“Like land mines?” I said. “Maybe a flame thrower?”
“Some electronic stuff,” he said. “State-of-the-art stuff. For surveillance. We can track him, find him, listen in on him—with this stuff we can hear him fart from a mile away.”
I really did want to get into the spirit of things here, but it was very hard to show any interest in Weiss’s digestive process, and I hoped it wasn’t absolutely essential for Chutsky’s plan. In any case, his entire James Bond approach was making me uncomfortable. It may be very wrong of me, but I began to appreciate just how lucky I had been so far in life. I had managed very well with only a few shiny blades and a hunger—nothing state-of-the-art, no vague plots, no huddling in foreign hotel rooms awash with uncertainty and firepower. Just happy, carefree, relaxing carnage. Certainly it seemed primitive and even slapdash in the face of all this high-tech steel-nerved preparation, but it was at least honest and wholesome labor. None of this waiting around spitting testosterone and polishing bullets. Chutsky was taking all the fun out of my life’s work.
Still, I had asked for his help, and now I was stuck with it. So there was really nothing to do but put the best possible face on things and get on with it. “It’s all very nice,” I said, with an encouraging smile that did not even fool me. “When do we start?”
Chutsky snorted and put the guns back in the briefcase. He held it up to me, dangling it from his hook. “When he gets here,” he said. “Put this in the closet for now.”
I took the briefcase from him and carried it to the closet. But as I reached to open the door I heard a faint rustling of wings somewhere in the distance and I froze. What is it? I asked silently. There was a slight inaudible twitch, a raising of awareness, but no more.
So I reached into the briefcase and got my ridiculous gun, holding it at the ready as I reached for the closet’s doorknob. I opened the door—and for a moment I could do nothing but stare into the unlit space and wait for an answering darkness to spread protective wings over me. It was an impossible, surreal, dream-time image—but after staring at it for what seemed like an awfully long time, I had to believe it was true.
It was Rogelio, Chutsky’s friend from the front desk, who was going to tell us when Weiss checked in. But it certainly didn’t look like he was going to tell us much of anything, unless we listened to him with a Ouija board. Because if appearances were any guide at all, judging by the belt so tightly wrapped around his neck and the way his tongue and eyes bulged out, Rogelio was extremely dead.
“What is it, buddy?” Chutsky said.
“I think Weiss has already checked in,” I said.
Chutsky lumbered up from the bed and over to the closet. He stared for a moment and then said, “Shit.” He reached his hand in and felt for a pulse—rather unnecessary, I thought, but I suppose there’s a protocol for these things. He felt no pulse, of course, and mumbled, “Fucking shit.” I didn’t see how repetition would help, but of course he was the expert, so I just watched as he slid a hand into each of Rogelio’s pockets in turn. “His passkey,” he said. He put that into his pocket. He turned out the usual junk—keys, a handkerchief, a comb, some money. He looked carefully at the cash for a moment. “Canadian twenty here,” he said. “Like somebody tipped him for something, huh?”
“You mean Weiss?” I said.
He shrugged. “How many homicidal Canadians you know?”
It was a fair question. Since the NHL season had ended a few months ago, I could only think of one—Weiss.
Chutsky pulled an envelope out of Rogelio’s jacket pocket. “Bingo,” he said. “Mr. B. Weiss, room 865.” He handed the envelope to me. “I’m guessing it’s complimentary drink tickets. Open it up.”
I peeled back the flap and pulled out two oblongs of cardboard. Sure enough: two complimentary drinks at the Cabaret Parisien, the hotel’s famous cabaret. “How did you guess?” I said.
Chutsky straightened up from his ghoulish search. “I fucked up,” he said. “When I told Rogelio it was Weiss’s birthday, all he could think was to make the hotel look good, and maybe pick up a tip.” He held up the Canadian twenty-dollar bill. “This is a month’s pay,” he said. “You can’t blame him.” He shrugged. “So I fucked up, and he’s dead. And our ass is deep in the shit.”
Even though he had clearly not thought through that image, I got his point. Weiss knew we were here, we had no idea where he was or what he was up to, and we had a very embarrassing corpse in the closet.
“All right,” I said, and for once I was glad to have his experience to lean on—which was assuming, of course, that he had experience at fucking up and finding strangled bodies in his closet, but he was certainly more knowledgeable about it than I was. “So what do we do?”
Chutsky frowned. “First, we have to check his room. He’s probably run for it, but we’d look really stupid if we didn’t check.” He nodded at the envelope in my hand. “We know his room number, and he doesn’t necessarily know that we know. And if he is there—then we have to, what’d you call it, play O.K. Corral on his ass.”
“And if he’s not there?” I said, because I, too, had the feeling that Rogelio was a farewell gift and Weiss was already sprinting for the horizon.
“If he’s not in his room,” Chutsky said, “and even if he IS in his room and we take him out—either way, I’m sorry to say it, buddy, but our vacation is over.” He nodded at Rogelio. “Sooner or later they find this, and then it’s big trouble. We gotta get the hell out of Dodge.”
“But what about Weiss?” I said. “What if he’s already gone?”
Chutsky shook his head. “He’s got to run for his life, too,” he said. “He knows we’re after him, and when they find Rogelio’s body, somebody will remember them together—I think he’s already gone, heading for the hills. But just in case, we gotta check his room. And then beat feet out of Cu
ba, muy rápido.”
I had been terribly afraid he would have some high-tech plan for getting rid of Rogelio’s body, like dipping it in laser solution in the bathtub, so I was very relieved to hear that for once he was speaking sound common sense. I had seen almost nothing of Havana except the inside of a hotel room and the bottom of a mojito glass, but it was clearly time to head for home and work on Plan B. “All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Chutsky nodded. “Good man,” he said. “Grab your pistol.”
I took the cold and clunky thing and shoved it into the waistband of my pants, pulling the awful green jacket over it, and as Chutsky closed the closet door I headed for the hallway.
“Put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door,” he said. An excellent idea, proving that I was right about his experience. At this point it would be very awkward to have a maid come in to wash the coat hangers. I hung the sign on the doorknob and Chutsky followed me out of the room and down the hallway to the stairs.
It was very, very strange to feel myself stalking something in the brightly lit hall, no moon churning through the sky over my shoulder, no bright blade gleaming with anticipation, and no happy hiss from the dark backseat as the Passenger prepared to take the wheel; nothing at all except the lump-thump of Chutsky’s feet, the real one and the metal one alternating, and the sound of our breathing as we found the fire door and climbed up the stairs to the eighth floor. Room 865, just as I had guessed, overlooked the front of the hotel, a perfect spot for Weiss to place his camera. We stood outside the door quietly while Chutsky held his pistol with his hook and fumbled out Rogelio’s passkey. He handed it to me, nodded at the door, and whispered, “One. Two—three.” I shoved the key in, turned the doorknob, and stepped back as Chutsky rushed into the room with his gun held high, and I followed along behind, self-consciously holding my pistol at the ready, too.
I covered Chutsky as he kicked open the bathroom door, then the closet, and then relaxed, tucking the pistol back into his pants. “And there it is,” he said, looking at the table by the window. A large fruit basket sat there, which I thought was a little ironic, considering what Weiss was known to do with them. I went over and looked; happily, there were no entrails or fingers inside. Just some mangoes, papayas, and so on, and a card that said, Feliz Navidad. Hotel Nacional. A somewhat standard message; nothing at all out of the ordinary. Just enough to get Rogelio killed.
We looked through the drawers and under the bed, but there was nothing at all there. Aside from the fruit basket, the room was as empty as the inside of Dexter on the shelf marked SOUL.
Weiss was gone.
THIRTY-THREE
AS FAR AS I KNOW, I HAVE NEVER SAUNTERED. TO BE completely honest, I doubt very much that I have even strolled, but sauntering is far beyond me. When I go somewhere, it is with a clear purpose in mind, and although I hesitate to sound boastful, more often than not I tend to stride.
But after leaving Weiss’s empty hotel room and stepping into the elevator, Chutsky spoke as he stuffed the guns back into the briefcase and impressed upon me the importance of looking casual, unhurried, and unworried, to such an extent that as we stepped into the lobby of the Hotel Nacional, I believe I actually did, in fact, saunter. I am quite sure that’s what Chutsky was doing, and I hoped I looked more natural at it than he did—of course, he had one artificial foot to deal with, so perhaps I really did look better.
In any case, we sauntered through the lobby, smiling at anyone who bothered to glance at us. We sauntered out the door, down the front steps, and over to the man in the admiral’s uniform, and then sauntered behind him to the curb as he called up the first taxi in the row of waiting cars. And our slow and happy meanderings continued inside the cab, because Chutsky told the driver to take us to El Morro Castle. I raised an eyebrow at him, but he just shook his head and I was left to puzzle it out for myself. As far as I knew, there was no secret tunnel out of Cuba from El Morro. It was one of the most crowded tourist destinations in Havana, absolutely overrun with cameras and the scent of sunscreen. But I tried to think like Chutsky for a moment—which is to say, I pretended to be a conspiracy buff—and after only a moment of reflection, I got it.
It was precisely the fact that it was a popular tourist spot that led Chutsky to tell the driver to take us there. If the worst happened, and I had to admit that’s the way things were going right now, then our trail would end there, in a crowd, and tracking us down would be just a little bit harder.
So I sat back and enjoyed the ride and the splendid moonlit view and the idea that I had absolutely no idea where Weiss would go now and what he would do next. I found some comfort in thinking that he probably didn’t know, either, but not enough to make me really happy.
Somewhere this same soothing glow of happy laughing light from a pale moon was shining on Weiss. And perhaps it whispered the same terrible, wonderful things into his inner ear—the sly and smiling ideas for things to do tonight, now, very soon—I had never felt such a strong pull on the tidal pool of Dexter Beach from such a paltry moon. But there it was, its soft chortles and chuckles filling me with such a static charge that I felt like I had to burst into the darkness and slash the first warm-blooded biped I could find. It was probably just the frustration of missing Weiss again, but it was very strong, and I chewed my lip all the way up the road to El Morro.
The driver let us out by the entrance to the fortress, where a great crowd swirled about waiting for the evening show, and a number of vendors had set up their carts. An elderly couple in shorts and Hawaiian shirts climbed into the cab as we got out and Chutsky stepped over to one of the vendors and bought two cold green cans of beer. “Here you go, buddy,” he said, handing me one can. “Let’s just stroll down this way.”
First sauntering and now strolling—all in one day. It was enough to make my head spin. But I strolled, I sipped my beer, and I followed Chutsky about a hundred yards to the far end of the crowd. We stopped once at a souvenir cart and Chutsky bought a couple of T-shirts with a picture of the lighthouse on the front, and two caps that said CUBA on the front. Then we strolled on to the end of the pavement. When we got there, he took a casual look around, threw his beer can into a trash barrel, and said, “All right. Looks good. Over here.” He moved casually toward an alley between two of the old fort buildings and I followed.
“Okay,” I said. “Now what?”
He shrugged. “Change,” he said. “Then we go to the airport, get the first flight out, no matter where it’s going, and head for home. Oh—here,” he said. He reached inside the briefcase and pulled out two passports. He flipped them open and handed me one, saying, “Derek Miller. Okay?”
“Sure, why not. It’s a beautiful name.”
“Yeah, it is,” he said. “Better than Dexter.”
“Or Kyle,” I said.
“Kyle who?” He held up his new passport. “It’s Calvin,” he said. “Calvin Brinker. But you can call me Cal.” He started taking things out of his jacket pockets and transferring them to his pants. “We need to lose the jackets now, too. And I wish we had time for a whole new outfit. But this will change our profile a little. Put this on,” he said, handing me one of the T-shirts and a cap. I slipped out of my awful green jacket, quite gratefully, really, and the shirt I had on as well, quickly pulling on my brand-new wardrobe. Chutsky did the same, and we stepped out of the alley and stuffed the Baptist missionary outfits into the trash.
“Okay,” he said, and we headed back to the far end, where a couple of taxis were waiting. We hopped into the first one, Chutsky told the driver “Aeropuerto José Martí,” and we were off.
The ride back to the airport was pretty much the same as the ride in. There were very few cars, except for taxis and a couple of military vehicles, and the driver treated it like an obstacle course between potholes. It was a little tricky at night, since the road was not lighted, and he didn’t always make it, and several times we were bounced severely, but we got to the airport eventually without any li
fe-threatening injuries. This time the cab dropped us at the beautiful new terminal, instead of the gulag building where we had come in. Chutsky went straight to the screen showing departures.
“Cancún, leaving in thirty-five minutes,” he said. “Perfect.”
“And what about your James Bond briefcase?” I asked, thinking it might be a slight inconvenience at security, since it was loaded with guns and grenade launchers and who knew what.
“Not to worry,” he said. “Over here.” He led the way to a bank of lockers, shoved in a few coins, and stuffed the briefcase inside. “All right,” he said. He slammed the locker shut, took the key, and led the way to the AeroMéxico ticket counter, pausing on the way to drop the locker’s key into a trash bin.
There was a very short line, and in no time at all we were buying two tickets to Cancún. Sadly, there were no vacancies outside of first class, but since we were fleeing from the repression of a communist state, I thought the extra expense was justified, even poetically fitting. The nice young woman told us they were boarding now and we must hurry, and we did, pausing only to show our passports and pay an exit tax, which was not as bad as it sounds, since I had expected a little more difficulty with the passports, frankly, and when there was none, I didn’t mind paying the tax, no matter how ridiculous the idea seemed.
We were the last passengers to board, and I am sure the flight attendant would not have smiled so pleasantly if we were flying coach. We even got a glass of champagne to thank us for being wonderful enough to arrive late in first class, and as they closed and locked the cabin door and I began to think we might really get away, I found that I actually enjoyed the champagne, even on an empty stomach.
I enjoyed it even more when we were finally up in the air, wheels up, and headed for Mexico, and I probably would have had more when we landed in Cancún after our short flight, but the flight attendant didn’t offer me any. I suppose my first class status had worn off somewhere along the line, leaving just enough to earn me a polite smile as we left the plane.