Another very long silence. I could hear a sound, like a file drawer being opened, then the sound of papers being moved. Knew that, in his businessman's mind, this was final payment on a very old debt. "In that case," Armando said-and he gave me a name.
An hour later, General Juan Rivera's secretary-not that he identified himself-supplied me with another.
That night at dinner, I tried to explain to Dewey why she couldn't leave with me in the morning for Cuba.
"I'll be down there and back," I said. "A couple of days-unless I sail to Key West with Tomlinson. It's not like you're missing anything."
"Bullshit, Ford. You'll have to do better than that."
"Let me put it this way: I don't want you to go."
I was rewarded with a coy mock-smile. "I can see you're undecided, sweetie. Perhaps we should sleep on it." As if she might get me in bed, use sex as leverage.
"I don't know how else to put it."
"Well," she said, not kidding now, "you might try telling me the truth."
We had driven my twenty-foot Hewes Light Tackle flats boat north through Pine Island Sound to the restaurant on Cabbage Key. It was a cold and blustery night for boating, but Dewey had insisted. So now we sat by candlelight on the back porch of the old inn looking out at the heavy foliage of banyan trees, air roots twisting down. Every few minutes, Kim, the blond bartender, would come cruising by-"Need another beer? How's the grouper?"-and we could hear Jerry Shell on the keyboard playing Jimmy Buf-fett in the bar.
I said, "What do you mean tell the truth? What makes you think I'm lying?"
"Because you keep saying no and can't give me a good reason. You're the logical one. You always have a reason for everything you do." She didn't say that very kindly.
I looked across the table at her-handsome face suspended above candle flame, blond hair bright as platinum spilling onto the black turtleneck sweater she wore. I said, "It bothers you that I try to be logical?"
She folded her fingers together and rested chin on hands. "Sometimes it bothers me that you let it run your life… but I'm just realizing it bothers me a hell of a lot more when you aren't. Logical, I mean. That's what I'm saying: Give me one logical reason. You're going to go off, leave me here all alone for Christmas? You can be a shit, Doc, but you're usually not this big a shit."
I picked up my can of beer, sighed, settled back. "Okay… I'll tell you."
"Then there is a reason." Nodding like, See, I was right.
"Because it could be dangerous. I mean it. It's because I might be a dangerous traveling companion." When I saw that she was unconvinced, I added, "This won't be my first trip down there. Cuba, I'm talking about."
"I know that. You mentioned it once before. Some reference-'The time when I was in Cuba.' A long time ago. So?"
I cleared my throat. "The first time was in nineteen seventy-three-"
"Jesus," she said, "you were practically a kid-"
"Close to it. The United States sent a baseball team to Havana-actually, two baseball teams to play in an amateur world series. I was a bullpen catcher. The only time I played was in this exhibition game. Only got a couple of at-bats, didn't even get a hit."
"Cubans don't like Americans who are bad hitters? That's why it's too dangerous-?"
"Give me a chance to explain it. It's involved. See"- I wanted to word it carefully-communicate details without communicating the truth-"during the exhibition game. The one I played in? As a goodwill gesture, the teams switched pitchers. It was a meaningless game. The coaches played; one of their military people, a guy named Ochoa, was at second base. A very gifted officer and a first-rate man…" I caught myself. She didn't need to know about Arnaldo Ochoa… now the late Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa. I said, "The point is, Castro pitched two innings for our team."
I watched her eyes widen. "Fidel Castro? You were Castro's catcher? Damn, Doc, you never told me this before." Like I had been holding out on her. She leaned forward on her elbows. "How was he? Any good?"
"He was terrible. Worse than terrible. At the time, he was like forty-four, forty-five years old. Even so, I could tell the man had never been any good. Zero velocity, no control, clumsy motion. If a guy really played, he can pick up a ball twenty years later and you can tell, right? Just the way he handles himself."
Dewey was taking it in-she understood sports. She said, "The same with tennis. Exactly the same."
I said, "So there I am catching Fidel Castro and I'm calling pitches-nothing but fastballs, because he can't throw anything else, but he keeps shaking me off. He wants to throw the curve. Understand, he's pitching against his own guys who, of course, keep striking out. A ball over their head, they swing. Two feet outside, they swing. Like they're praying they won't hit the ball by accident and offend the Maximum Leader-which is what he likes to be called.
"Finally, he waves me to the mound. Castro with the beard, wearing this floppy uniform that says Sugar Kings on the front. In the stands-this was the main stadium in Havana-there are at least thirty thousand people and he's trying to act like he's not pissed off, but he's fuming. When I get close enough, he grabs my shoulder and whispers, 'I think you are calling a terrible game; a shitty game-"'
"He said that?"
"In English, too. Pretty good English. He says, 'I think I will call my own pitches. No more signals from you!' "
"Yeah? What did you say?"
I had to smile, remembering it. "I said what a catcher is supposed to say in that situation. I said, 'Pitchers aren't supposed to think. First time you cross me up, I'll make you look like the rag arm you are.' "
Dewey's expression described shock and delight. "You really said that?"
Had I? Something similar-"Be quiet or I'll make you look worse than you are." Pretty close. Nodding, I said, "He was so mad he was shaking. But what could he do? All those people in the stands, watching us. So he pitches the rest of the inning, never says another word."
"And you didn't call a single curveball."
"No, I called three. Just to make him happy."
"You're telling me that's it? That's why you're dangerous; why you can't go back to Havana again?"
I had to say the next part very carefully. Could I tell her about Mariel? No… there was no way to disguise what had occurred in Mariel. I said, "That and something else that happened. When Castro called me out to the mound, turns out some guy in the stands chose that moment to drop a gun he'd been hiding. Dropped it right in front of one of the security people. Bad timing."
"Yeah, but what's that have to do with you?"
I said, "This guy, the one with the gun, was a Cuban-American in the country illegally. Somehow he'd slipped in, like he was a member of the team or something." Trying to remember what Junior Santoya had looked like-I'd met him only once-I said, "Later, some people claimed they'd seen me talking to the guy. That's why the State Department made me and a couple of other players take a special plane home. That the guy and I had been seen together the night before, drinking beer at a hotel called the Havana Libre."
"Were you?"
I said, "Maybe. It's a busy bar. What matters is, they believed I was. Plus, their president wasn't a fan of mine after our conference on the mound."
"Like this guy was planning to shoot Castro."
"That's what they apparently thought."
"And you think they're still after you… what? Twenty-some years later." Her tone said: I don't buy it.
"They'd still have my name on file. You can be sure of it." Not my real name. I'd never used my real name in Cuba, but I didn't tell her that. In 'seventy-three, I'd gone as…? It took me a moment to recall the last name I'd used-an absurdly ironic choice, as it turned out.
Dewey said, "What's so funny?"
I said, "Nothing, just something I remembered. So you see why you can't go."