“So Uncle Johnny gets the money?” Alex asked.
“And his extended family,” Paul answered. “It’ll be spread around wisely. They deserve it. They spent their lives in this infernal place living under a Marxist regime. To them it’s a fortune. Things will thaw in the next few years, probably during an Obama second term, if there is one. The family will have some seed money to start over with. I pray to God that the next regime is kinder than the ones that have preceded it. God knows the Cuban people deserve better.”
“Agreed,” she said. They walked back to the white Nissan.
“Get in the car if you want,” Paul said to Alex. “I need to take care of the men. Then I’ll join you.”
Alex hesitated, then went back to the Nissan while Paul walked back to his crew. Warily, she opened the rear door but did not enter. She held one hand on her Walther, still wary of trouble. She checked the sky but saw no aircraft. She looked back at Paul. His faithful diggers huddled around him. Paul carefully withdrew an envelope from under his shirt and paid the men for their night’s work. It was the same envelope that she had seen in his belongings, she realized, the one with the stack of hundred dollar bills.
Alex watched him count out ten to each of them, and fifteen to the thug who drove the Nissan. It was a fortune in Cuba, a thousand dollars of hard currency. Paul thanked each man with a handshake and a hug. A voice inside Alex suggested that Paul might have been a distant Corleone relative, working the street, building his organization from the ground up, dispensing largesse.
The men looked ecstatic, thanking Paul with effusive smiles, bows, and hugs. Alex realized that Paul was buying loyalty and silence also. De tal palo, tel astilla: like father, like son. The apple rarely falls far from the tree.
With payday complete, the men piled into the truck, and the drivers returned to their wheels. Alex slid into the backseat of the Nissan behind the driver. Paul slid in across from her. Both engines started. The truck pulled away.
“Wait! Give him half a minute,” Paul said in Spanish to the driver. “Two cars together will look suspicious at this hour. We don’t want police.”
Paul drew his gun and held it across his lap.
The driver grunted a profanity. He was itching to leave. When the truck turned the corner and was out of view, Paul spoke again.
“Okay,” he said. The Nissan moved forward with a small lurch. Paul turned to Alex and spoke in English. “Lock your door and keep your gun ready,” he said. He gave her hand a squeeze of appreciation, then released it.
“Expecting trouble?” Alex asked.
“No. Just in case.”
She drew her weapon and held it in her left hand.
They drove through the sleeping city, down narrow backstreets where there were no lights from residences and only an occasional street lamp. There was no traffic, only an infrequent stray dog or cat crossing a dimly lit street. At one moment a police car pulled up next to them at a stop sign. A tense moment passed as the cops eyed their car. But Paul, confident, gave the cops a friendly gesture, a wave combined with a thumbs up. The cops were satisfied. They continued on.
“I have a question,” Alex asked in English. “Those men who did the digging. I saw a few weapons. Were they all armed?”
“I imagine so,” Paul said. “You don’t get doctors and school teachers to come out in the middle of the night to do a job like that. I assume they all had pistols and knew how to use them.”
“Then what stopped them from turning on you once the money was out of the coffin?” she asked. “They could have shot you and split the money.”
Paul laughed slightly and smiled. “Oh, I was keeping an eye on them. They wouldn’t have dared,” he said.
“Why?” she asked. “Because your name is Guarneri and your family is still known here?”
“You could say that. Cubans respect the past. And they look forward to the future.”
“What’s the future? A restoration of old property and old influence?”
He laughed again. “If I knew the future, I’d know what horses to play and what stocks to pick,” he said. “But I don’t. One can only hope.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“I thought I did,” he said.
“A restoration of old property and old influence?” she said again. “You’re looking to a personal future as well as attending to the past. Putting things in order, establishing loyal organization at street level as you filter in and out of Cuba. Those men, they know your name, who your father was, and they know you’ll be back. They wouldn’t mess with a Guarneri even after all these years. Is that it?”
“If you want to see it that way, I can’t stop you,” he said. “But as I said, who knows what the future holds?”
She looked out the window and watched as they passed a block with small shops with metal gates drawn across doorways.
She turned back. “You know, against my better judgment, I like you, Paul,” she said. “But you’re a crown prince of evasiveness. Deep down, you have a dark streak. You can be a bit of a rat. I don’t like that part.”
“It’s late,” he said, dismissively. “We can talk in the next couple of days. Eventually everything makes sense … except when it doesn’t.”
Their driver returned them to Old Havana. Paul had secured a small apartment for the occasion. They went to Paul’s address first. It was only a block from Alex’s posada. The driver stopped.
“Come on up,” Paul said to her. “We can have something to drink and celebrate. Then I’ll walk you back to your place.”
“Paul, it’s past 4:00 a.m.”
“You can sleep tomorrow. I need the extra gun right now.” He looked her eye to eye. Then he gave her a flirtatious wink. “Come on,” he said. “Live on the edge for a couple more hours.”
After a moment, maybe due to fatigue, “Okay,” she said.
They stepped out of the car. Paul dismissed the driver. They looked both ways, then walked quickly to Paul’s door. He kept his hand on his Browning.
They went through an outer door for which Paul had a key. No problem. They entered a dark courtyard, and Paul turned on a timed light. No one else was there. He signaled with his head, and they crossed the courtyard quickly, found a staircase, and climbed. Paul unlocked his door with a second key and entered with his gun drawn.
Alex came in behind him and pushed the door shut. He reached past her and threw the bolt. The apartment was small, two rooms and a primitive kitchen, high ceilings, battered furniture, and fading wallpaper. Guarneri checked both closets and under the bed. Then he allowed himself to relax. They were alone. He put his gun away. He flopped down on an old sofa in the living room and shook his head.
“What do you know?” he said. “We did it.”
She flopped down next to him. She leaned back and exhaled a deep breath. For the first time, she realized how thoroughly exhausted she was. She felt her breath was as heavy as her eyelids. She responded to him with silence.
“I know,” he said. “I’m not a complete philistine. That was nasty stuff this evening. Unpleasant and horrible. But we got it done! Let’s do some rum; it will help us wind down.”
“Sure,” she said.
He reached to her, put an arm around her, and gave her an embrace. He kissed her, and out of fatigue and ambivalence and overall relief, she allowed it. Then he rose. “I’ll get something to drink,” he said.
“Sure,” she said again.
He was gone for several minutes. She slid sideways on the old sofa, intending to nap for a few seconds. But she crashed harder than expected and was sleeping soundly before he returned.
FIFTY-EIGHT
On the sofa Alex blinked her eyes open and looked at her watch.
It was barely past 7:00 a.m. She shook herself into consciousness for the new day and sat up.