“What I felt was evil. Real evil. Not DUIs and pot possession and all the other things we deal with every day. You can feel evil from another room. It’s an entity. If there is such a thing as absolute evil, then there is absolute good, too. I feel it in church, in temple, or when I read scripture. I refuse to believe that the universe is so unjust that there can be evil like that without there being a corresponding good.”
“Wow. I thought you’d say something totally different.”
“Like what?”
“Like you were raised Mormon, so you’re just Mormon, too.”
They got off the freeway a block from the church. The brown-brick building had a spire, and the parking lot was full. Mindi parked in a space across the street, and they walked inside. It was well lit, with a painting of Jesus Christ in the foyer. They took their seats in the large auditorium where the sacrament meeting was held. This meeting was the Mormon equivalent of mass. Stanton glanced at Mindi, who was wide-eyed.
As the first speaker delivered a sermon about following the Ten Commandments, Stanton leaned over to Mindi and whispered, “You didn’t grow up going to church, did you?”
“My parents were rabid atheists, so no. They thought religion was for weak people who couldn’t deal with death.”
“Do I seem weak to you?”
She grinned. “No, you don’t.”
When the service was over, they got back into the Jeep. They rode in silence for a few moments before Mindi said, “Okay, so that wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be.”
“Glad you enjoyed it.” There was a message on his phone, which he’d left in the Jeep. It was Marty asking him to call right away. “Marty just called and said he has an emergency.”
“You want me to call him?”
“No, I got it… huh? It went straight to voicemail.”
17
Bill James stepped off the plane in Havana, Cuba, and stood for a moment on the mobile staircase, inhaling the salty air. It’d been too long since he’d been here. Cuba had a way of freshening his soul. If only the damn Communists would go away, he could buy a home and retire there, then find a nice, young Cuban girl and have several children in his late sixties. Not having children had always been his biggest regret.
A car was waiting for him. It wasn’t a limo or even a Lincoln Town Car, but an old Buick that looked like as though it belonged in the 1960s. That was the thing about Cuba: it hadn’t progressed a single day since the revolution. The moment capitalism ended, so did its forward momentum.
“Hola,” he said to the driver.
“Hola.”
“English?”
“Si.”
“Is Salvatore meeting me in person?”
“Si.”
James nodded as he looked at the backseat of the car. For every meeting he had ever had with Salvatore, he placed his chances of surviving the encounter at around ninety percent. Right now, he wasn’t sure if his odds were that high.
He got into the backseat, and the driver pulled away from the tarmac. The vegetation surrounding the airport was something out of a jungle movie, and almost nothing obstructed the views of the city and mountains. The ocean wasn’t far off, and he looked forward to spending some time fishing. After reading Hemingway’s words about fishing in Cuba as a teenager, he’d been hooked ever since. When he finally had the opportunity to really do it, he wasn’t disappointed. The sea was calm, the beer didn’t stop flowing, the old fisherman he had chartered the boat from had fascinating story after fascinating story, and the sky was open and blue. It was, as far as he could recall, the greatest time of his life.
He pulled out a Graham Greene novel from the one suitcase he had brought with him and began to read. He glanced up after he had read five chapters and saw that they had arrived in downtown Havana. It was a unique city, where pristine churches that could’ve been torn out of the Middle Ages mingled with modern, pre-revolution office buildings and beautifully designed amphitheaters and hotels.
But there was another side to the city. James saw it in the eyes of its inhabitants as he rode past them. There was hatred there, and discontent, unfocused and wild, like a rampant energy shooting out of them. These people stood on the corners, much as their counterparts did in the States. They huddled in the filthy back alleys, fifty men waiting to rob anyone foolish enough to go down there alone. They sat on porches, hoping for jobs that would never come. They stood on sidewalks, watching people walk by, not out of curiosity, but because they simply had absolutely nothing else to do.
“You look good,” the driver said, turning at an intersection and nearly running over a man on a bike. “Skinny and tan.”
“Have we met?”
He laughed. “My name is Roberto. I was a child last time you were here. I used to shine shoes for Mr. Salvatore. Now I drive his cars. Soon, I will do more.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
They pulled up to the front of the Santa Isabel. James had always thought it was not only the finest hotel in the city, but perhaps the finest building in the city. It was built in the eighteenth century and had required little renovation since. It overlooked the entire city and, more importantly, the Plaza de Armas.
James got out and walked through the massive double doors. He waved away bellhops and greeters. He knew where he had been summoned to go. The building had elevators, but he never trusted them. He avoided Communist workmanship at all costs, especially if his life was on the line. He remembered visiting the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. He was smuggling in grain at a four hundred percent profit. He’d asked one of his distributors there what life was like. “We pretend to work,” the man had said, “and they pretend to pay us.”
The climb to the top floor took a while, and about halfway up, he stopped and sat in a leather armchair in the stairwell, looking out gothic windows at the city below. When he had caught his breath, he continued to the top floor.
The suite took up almost the entire top floor. Of the floor’s twelve rooms, Salvatore was leasing ten of them on a month-to-month basis. James went all the way to the end of the hall and looked out the window at the fountain in the courtyard below before he knocked on the door.
A woman in a white tank top and white workout pants answered. Her bright blonde hair was pulled back. She was obviously American or British.
“I’m here to see Jorge.”
“You must be William,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Celeste, Jorge’s wife.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand, “and please, call me Bill.”
She turned and walked inside, and he followed, shutting the door behind him. The suite was massive, far larger than his suite at the hotel in Vegas. At least a dozen windows looked out in every direction, and a hot tub took up one of the smaller guest rooms to the side. The furniture was all leather, and fresh flowers graced every table. A breeze was blowing in through the balcony’s double doors. James could see Jorge on the balcony, sitting at a table with another man, arguing about something.
Jorge was wearing a white Polo sweater with white pants and leather shoes with no socks. Aviator sunglasses were pushed up into his hair. Though the outfit probably cost at least two or three thousand dollars, James thought he looked like everything else in the country: antiquated.
Jorge saw him and smiled. He curtly dismissed his other guest and waved for James to join him outside. The other man walked in, hat in hand, a defeated expression on his face, and averted his eyes from James.
Jorge stood up and hugged James as he stepped outside. He kissed James on both cheeks then offered him a seat across from him.
“How are you, my friend?” he said in his thick, grainy voice with the hint of a European education.
“I’m doing well, Jorge. How you been?”