I gave her a tender smile, turned my back to the men and formed the words: "We-are-being-watched."
Received a quizzical expression-she'd missed it. Listened to her whisper, "Truthfully, 'bout the only time I like to kiss is when we're screwing. No offense," as I touched my lips to her ear and said, "Don't look. Those guys in uniform are staring at us."
She pulled away… stole a peripheral glance… grinned at me and said in a much louder voice, "Darling, when we get to the hotel, I'm going to give you a Christmas present you won't ever forget," then smothered me with a passionate stage kiss.
Well, maybe she was an actress. Just not a very good one…
Out of the corner of my eye, though, I could see the soldiers were laughing-See the Yankee couple? I heard one of them say, "Mother of God, her body! You think he'll know which end to use when he gets her in bed?" He said it loud enough that I knew he assumed I didn't understand Spanish. I listened to the other soldier say, "Men with money. They get all the beautiful women," which gave me pause-did they know I was wearing a belt loaded with carefully folded hundred dollar bills? But then heard him add, "If he was rich, of course, he would have come by yacht. Not on Cubana!" Which got a laugh.
I relaxed a little. They had been staring at Dewey, not at me. Couldn't blame them. She was wearing what she called her Lipstick outfit: sandals, small shoulder pack rather than a purse, and a burnt orange sundress that showed her legs, that turned her skin to copper, and made her blue eyes glow. Back in Panama, when she'd asked, "How do I look?" she'd blushed a little when I replied, "Healthy and fertile."
Now she wrapped her arm around my waist-part of her act-and said, "You're paranoid. They're just hanging out."
"Maybe so. We'll find out pretty soon." Meaning the two checkpoints we had to pass through.
At the immigration window, a dour woman checked a computer screen, caught my eyes for a second-a sharp, officious appraisal-before slipping a green visa card into my passport. No stamp for Americans. Then signaled for Dewey to come next. Customs gave us the same fast treatment. No search, no questions. We were gringos bringing money into the country. The official position seemed to be leave the tourists alone.
Outside, after Dewey had collected her luggage-I had only my carry-on-we walked across the street to a rental car stand: a tiny block house in a dusty yard beneath mango trees. Havanauto. I expected to find Soviet-made Ladas or Moskvitches. Instead there was a line of beat-up Nissan subcompacts that were not much bigger than golf carts. I went through them pretty carefully. Found a brown one that had a good emergency brake and a decent spare tire. There was no negotiating. Prices were fixed; it would be the same at the rental car agencies downtown. So I paid way too much in cash for the car; way, way too much for a liter of gas. A couple of teenage prostitutes with ripped skirts and dirty ankles watched the attendant pour the gas into the empty tank. Their reverence added a ceremonial flair. Cuba was out of petroleum. Something as valuable as a bottle of gas demanded their attention.
As we pulled out onto the boulevard, headed north, Dewey said, "See? All that worrying for no reason." I was looking in the rearview mirror… saw the customs officer who had been watching us step out into the street… saw him pause to look after us… saw him take a notebook from his shirt pocket and jot something down… watched him disappear in the direction of the Havanauto building.
I thought: Damn.
Dewey was still talking, telling me with her tone that she'd been right all along. "Know what your problem is, Doc? You think too much. Most people, I'd say it was their imagination. But not you. With you, it's your brain. The whole package." Her knees were jammed up against the dashboard and she was trying to find a comfortable position. It was an absurdly small car. She said, "What we're going to do is treat this like a vacation. Get some food in you, a couple of cold beers. Everything's going to be a lot simpler than you think. Find Tomlinson, that'll make you feel better."
But it wasn't simple finding Tomlinson. At the Hotel Nacional-marble floors, El Greco paintings, marble columns-a uniformed desk clerk told me he'd checked out two days before. We walked up the crowded street, as all the Cuban girls we saw, age twelve to maybe thirty, ignored Dewey and tried to sell themselves to me with their pointed looks.
"They're either crazy or they're desperate," Dewey fumed. "Don't they have any self-respect?"
I said, "To be with a gringo who has money?" She was shaking her head, just couldn't understand it when I told her, "It's not because they're crazy."
We found the Havana Libre. It looked just as I remembered it. And discovered that a man fitting Tomlinson's description had been at the bar the last couple of nights but that he had never checked in.
9
The Havana Libre was located downtown on Calles L and 23rd, a few blocks south of the sea and just to the west of Havana Harbor-one of the few tourist strongholds in a city that was imploding beneath the pressure of its own withering poverty.
The hotel was a beige domino stood on end, five hun-dred-and-some rooms, balconies, outdoor pool with private dressing cabanas on the mezzanine, conference facilities, a two-story domed lobby in which there was a garden bar and outdoor patio, plus two restaurants-though only one was occasionally open. "Closed for repairs," a sign on the door read. More likely, food rationing dictated limited hours.
A bottle of beer, Hatuey or Cristal, cost more than the bartender made in two weeks. A gristly hamburger was equal to the average Cuban's monthly salary. Not that Cubans could have purchased either even if they had the money. They were banned from entering hotels or the few restaurants. Castro didn't want his people's ideology polluted by outsiders.
I booked a room, then decided to splurge and get a suite. Dewey is a big woman. The prospect of our stepping over each other, banging into things, didn't appeal to me.
Pretty nice suite: fourteenth floor with ocean view, tile floors, bedroom, kitchenette with stove and refrigerator, neither of which worked, and furnished in fifties deco, like the suite in a Bogart movie, or as if time had stopped when Castro marched into Havana.
"I'll be go to hell," Dewey said. "A Russian television." She was fiddling with the thing, exploring the suite while I unpacked. "It's like something from the I Love Lucy days, man. Old black-and-white tube… Hey, check this out, Doc."
On the screen, a bottle-nosed dolphin was tail-walking; clicking and squeaking.
"It's Flipper. They get Flipper down here! See-he's trying to tell Chip and Ranger Rick something."
I watched for a moment. The Ranger and his son were speaking Russian to the dolphin over Spanish subtitles. American broadcasts that featured animals were once a favorite of Soviet media pirates. Less translation, less work.
"I've seen this one. Flipper's trying to lead them to a torpedo, I think." She seemed delighted by something that was both strange and familiar-yep, she was in Cuba, no doubt about it. She said, "You ever see anything so weird? Those boy actors, Chip and Sandy. They must be what, now? Probably forty-some years old? Down here, though, they're still kids. Teenagers in cutoffs, never aged a bit while the rest of the world got older." Then as she changed channels: "What're the chances we get ESPN? There's a Virginia Slims tournament on later I wouldn't mind seeing."
No doubt. Probably because Bets was playing.
I said, "I don't think the chances are good."
"Guess not… Christ, only three stations. Everything in goddamn Spanish."
Dewey with her sweet, sweet face and locker-room mouth.
I watched her plop down on the couch, then stand again and suddenly strip the orange sundress over her head. She stood there in translucent bra and bikini panties, thinking about something, scratching absently at belly and corn-silk pubic hair. Sensed me looking at her, turned, and said, "I'm not in the mood right now, big boy. Let's do it later; help us get loosened up before we run."