Mendoza. She paid him to collect embarrassing material about Mendoza, so she could force Mendoza into a good settlement."
"How did Clury get hold of the sex photos?"
"Mrs. Mendoza gave them to him."
"You're certain?" "She told me so."
"You didn't note any of this down?" Tania smiled. "I didn't keep a diary, if that's what you're asking."
"Did you know Carl Washington?"
Her mouth tightened. "Yes."
"Did you arrange meetings between the Mendozas and the boxers?"
Tania looked extremely uncomfortable, but she answered. "Three of them.
Washington, Royalton and Peiia. But not Metaxas, or that other man-what was his name?"
"Tate."
Tania nodded. "I never met him and never paid him.
Not him or Metaxas. The others-well, I did what Mrs. Mendoza told me.
She explained that the games were to Mr. Mendoza's taste, not hers, and that he forced her to join in. She told me Clury had placed a hidden camera in the studio, and that she went along with Mendoza's pleasures in order to get pictures to embarrass him."
"So, there wasn't any blackmail?"
Tania laughed. She looked relieved that they were done talking about her complicity.
"That was so stupid! I kept reading that people thought Clury was blackmailing the Mendozas, when actually it was Mrs. Mendoza who was going to blackmail her husband. The money she paid Clury was for his investigation." She turned solemn, met Janek's eyes. She wanted to convince him. "I think Mendoza found out what she was up to. I think he had his wife killed and Clury, too. I can't prove it. But I can tell you I didn't have anything to do with Metaxas. Never! So, if he's the one killed Mrs. Mendoza, it wasn't the way it said in that note… Janek spent the rest of the morning trying to tear apart her story. He asked long, complicated, sympathetically phrased questions, then short, jabbing queries designed to confuse and/or unnerve her. He pressed her on specific details, and, when she claimed she couldn't remember them, demanded to know why her memory was so selective. He forced her to separate what she knew from what she thought. He helped her to finesse her worst inconsistencies and attacked those portions of her account about which she seemed most certain. He complimented her on her composure and needled her for her disloyalty to her mistress. He was kind and cruel, subjecting her to glances of skepticism, snarls of ridicule and, when, suddenly, she dropped her head and began to weep, nods of humane compassion. In the end he thought that she had stood up well, that her story, as he forced her to refine it, was credible and that the lapses in it were justified by the passage of time. In short-he believed her.
"I have never witnessed such an examination," Luis said as they descended the stairs of the house. "You are a master of interrogation, Frank."
Janek shrugged. "Shucks..
Luis looked at him, admiration clouded by confusion. "What is this 'shucks'?"
"It means I can't handle compliments." He looked at Luis. "What do you say I buy you lunch?"
They drove to an oceanfront restaurant a few miles east of Havana, where, at Janek's insistence, they ordered lobsters. They were the only customers. While they waited, Janek asked Luis what Tania did at the Ministry of Finance.
"She's an economist."
"Does she have a degree?" Luis nodded, "And she calls herself a bureaucrat."
"She is a modest woman."
Janek smiled. "A hard woman. A modest woman. A maid who arranged sex parties, now turned government economist. You know what I'd call her, Luis? I'd call her a very interesting woman."
When the lobsters arrived, Janek was amazed. Their tails were so large they literally fanned out of their shells. They were delicious, too.
"This is the sweetest, most tender lobster I ever ate," Janek said.
Luis, who had been eating very slowly, looked up. His eyes were sad.
"Do you know how long it's been since I ate one?"
Janek shook his head.
"Twelve years. I remember the occasion very well." Luis set down his fork. "I had just gotten out of the army. My father arranged a celebration at Las Americas at Veradero Beach. It was a wonderful evening. Near the end, when we were almost finished, a convoy of vehicles pulled up and a very special person walked in. It was Fidel.
The only time I had seen him that close. Of course I was thrilled. My father got up and approached his bodyguards. They let him through.
Then I saw him whisper into Fidel's ear. A few moments later he brought the president to our table. I stood and Fidel looked me in the eye.
Then, very emotionally, he embraced me. ' is for young people like you that we made the revolution,' he said. As his arms grasped me and his beard grazed my cheek, I felt as if some of his strength, his incredible power, was flowing directly from him to me. It was a fine moment-standing there before my family, on the brink of manhood, embraced by our leader, this man who had single-handedly recreated Cuba, delivering us from oppression and corruption. Even now, twelve years later, if I close my eyes I can feel the pressure of his hands."
Luis paused. He removed his glasses. His large, brown liquid eyes seemed even sadder than before.
"But you see, and I must say this very carefully, Frank when I open my eyes I can no longer feel that strength. When I open my eyes now I see the truth, which is that that man, who has done so many remarkable things for our country and whose every word so moved me when I was young, has held on to power far too long. The regimes in Eastern Europe have fallen like matchsticks, but he tells us we must die before we allow the slightest change in ours. If there is no fuel for our tractors, so be it, he tells us-we shall plow our fields with oxen. And if there is no food for us to eat, so be it, he tells us-we shall suffer hunger for the glory of our revolution."
Luis shook his head.
"The world has passed him by, but he does not know it because he believes he is like a god. I think he is mentally disturbed, Frank, and that he is turning this poor, tired country into an asylum to harbor his madness… and the madness of his failed dreams." It was an eloquent, anguished, heartfelt speech. Janek was moved b it, and, he could see, Luis felt better for y having made it. Janek also knew that by sharing his perception of Fidel, Luis had given him a gift. He has given me his trust.
After lunch they drove quietly to a large, drab, gray building-headquarters of the Havana Police. It was an ominous, labyrinthine place of echoing footsteps-long corridors lined by bureaus with frosted-glass doors. Yet the faces of the people who roamed its halls reminded Janek of the faces in the halls of any precinct house in New York-anguished victims, frightened witnesses, worried d relatives, bantering cops. The buzz was the same and the smell was similar: stale coffee, stale cigarette smoke, the bad air that is generated wherever there is a gathering of people concerned with crime and punishment. It was, he recognized, the universal smell of law enforcement, no different in Havana than in New York.
They passed through an archway beneath the word HOMICIDIO inscribed in ornate letters-as if homicide were an elegant thing. Past this point the noise dropped off. Luis explained that in Cuba murder was not a common event. Most homicides were committed within families and required little investigation. But still the word had a certain mystique.
"People always feel a chill when they walk in here," he said.
He led Janek to an empty, dusty room with a high ceiling, unwashed windows and mold-stained walls. Here an ancient black Royal typewriter sat upon a bare wooden table. He brought Janek a chair, then left him alone. Janek sat down, pondered for a while, then began to pound out a summary of his interview.