Havana Run (20 page)
“Interesting,” the man behind the desk said. He’d told them his name was Markson. He wore dark glasses of the horn-rimmed variety. His black suit was a size too small, the lapels too narrow, the featureless tie too thin. He looked like he’d been dressed by a sitcom writer for a sixties show.
He was turning the listening device Driscoll had given him around and about in his fingers like a none-too-bright high school science teacher examining an insect casing or a seed pod one of his eager students had brought in.
“What is it supposed to be?” he said, glancing brightly up at Driscoll and Leon.
This was the second guy they’d talked to. The third, if you wanted to count the surly young jarhead in the guard booth outside. How did they treat the people they
wanted
to see, Driscoll wondered idly. Then he corrected himself. There was no one who fell into
that
category.
They were on the second floor of the building, however. Making progress. He pointed to the phone on the man’s desk. A couple of decades less antiquated, but still oddly out of time.
“Let’s get Vines in here, let him explain it to you.”
The man cocked his head in a mantislike way. “Vines?” he asked. “I’m afraid we have no one here by that name.”
“Maybe he’s calling himself John F. Kennedy, now,” Driscoll said. “I’m talking about the guy who walked into Belfry Associates in Boca Raton, Florida, twelve days ago…”
He broke off to consult a tiny spiral-bound notepad he’d pulled from his shirt. “…And purchased two dozen of those clever little wads of gum you’re holding in your hand. He was using the name Vines at the time. Five days ago he checked into the Key West Hyatt under the name of Paul Fisher.” Driscoll reached into his pocket, replacing the pad, then tossed a grainy photograph down on the blotter in front of Markson. “That came off the hotel’s surveillance camera. Even spooks show up on video.”
“I don’t know how or where you got your information, Mr. Driscoll…” Markson began, in a been-there, heard-that tone.
But Driscoll didn’t pause. “A night or two later, there’s an old fart named Lennie Markowitz who lives in the Sea View Condominiums on Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West. Couldn’t sleep because he heard noises, so he got up to take several photographs of a prowler beneath his balcony. He didn’t want to use a flash because that would have tipped the prowlers off, right? But he got a couple that actually came out when Vines followed John Deal into the next-door apartment. This Markowitz is bat-shit, but he owns a pretty good camera.” Driscoll fanned some snapshots like a three-card monte dealer, then dropped them deftly back in his pocket.
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with this office…” Markson tried, but Driscoll wasn’t listening.
“Copies of all this and more are in the possession of Ellis Dobbins as we speak,” Driscoll said, tapping his shirt pocket. “You probably never heard of Mr. Dobbins, since it looks like you live in some other dimension, but Dobbins happens to be the most mad-dog, publicity-hungry attorney to walk the planet. He makes Al Sharpton seem level-headed. Even if you kill him, he’ll find a way to get you.”
Driscoll cut a glance at Russell Straight and seemed satisfied with the glowering gaze he was sending Markson’s way. “The fact is this: If I do not return to Miami, along with my clients Russell Straight and John Deal, within a reasonable time, Ellis Dobbins will build a pile of stink so big it will bury every spook in South Florida. It’ll be years before you’re able to conduct normal business again.”
There was a pause as Markson tented his fingers and stared up in a thoughtful way. “What would constitute a reasonable time, Mr. Driscoll?” he asked.
Driscoll turned to Russell with a see-there look. “You’re something else, Driscoll,” Russell said.
“It’s a gift,” Driscoll told him.
A buzzing sound emanated from the phone on Markson’s desk, and the man turned to press a button. “All right, Markson, I’m coming in now,” a voice sounded over a tinny intercom.
“Yes, Mr. Vines,” Markson replied.
And soon enough, he was there.
“His name is not really Machado,” she told Deal as they waited across the boulevard from the Hospital Nacional for the light to change.
“I didn’t think so,” Deal said. He picked up the identification tag that had been brought to the apartment, along with the lab coats and scrubs they now wore. The picture of himself was little more than a dark smudge above the Russian name they’d given him.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Everyone’s ID looks like that. If the quality were any better, they would most certainly be fakes.”
“What if someone speaks to me in Russian?” he asked.
She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re a doctor. You don’t have to answer.” She gave him a wan smile. “Just because they’re not paid anything over here, it doesn’t mean everything is different, you know.”
Deal nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. They’d come this far on the back of a pair of Vespa motor scooters driven by two young men whose names he had never learned. A few blocks before they’d been dropped off, he’d seen a young man dressed much like himself standing at the curbside, trying to hitch a ride from the river of passing traffic. He’d been trying to imagine a hitchhiking M.D. in the States ever since.
“His real name is Zeneas,” she said, stepping down from the curb as the light changed. “José-María Zeneas. He is the head of the secret police and a man who very much enjoys his work.”
Deal was at her shoulder, nodding, feeling the wash of headlights across his face as they walked before the lanes of waiting vehicles. Was it strange that the lights seemed hot, he wondered? The two of them made it as far as the center island before the light changed and the traffic began to flow again.
“The names change but nothing else seems to,” she said, staring into the darkness above the passing cars. “The real Machado ruled in the 1920s. His death squads killed so many they had to close the harbor to the fishermen.” She waved her hand in the vague direction of the distant headlands. “They liked to throw their victims from the walls of Morro Castle. There were even women who did such things for La Porra.”
“La Porra?”
“It means ‘the truncheon,’” she told him, her eyes fixed ahead. “You still hear the term used.”
He nodded, staring back at her chiseled profile, the resolute jut of her jaw. Perhaps her morals were opposed to those of the women she referred to, but he knew where the genes had come from.
She reached to take his hand as the light changed, and he glanced down at where their fingers touched. “Perhaps you should give me the ring,” she added, as they stepped down from the curb.
“Why?” he asked, puzzled.
“It is very noticeable,” she said, “and unusual, even for a doctor.”
He nodded then and slipped the ring off his finger, handing it over to her. “I’ll see that you get it back,” she said, and touched his cheek briefly. In any other world, he thought, it might have seemed a gesture of tenderness.
***
“It is not normally your assignment, then?” Angelica was saying. Deal thought her voice was a bit loud, but maybe it was just his nerves. He’d been fine out on the street, had barely wasted a supercilious glance on the bored guards in the hospital lobby. But here, in the cramped confines of the staffing lounge, he had begun to feel closed in, the seriousness of the situation suddenly magnified.
The young woman Angelica had been speaking to—Dr. Cristina Aponte, according to her name tag—shook her head. Deal sought some resemblance to Jorge Pozzo in her fine features, but it was like comparing a teacup to a bowling ball. This woman might have weighed a hundred pounds. Her eyes were pale blue, her hair light brown, almost blond, her cheekbones painfully thin beneath pellucid skin. She’d studied in Russia, Deal recalled. One of her parents must have been part of that bridge.
She gave a faint smile. “I am a gynecologist,” she said. “My path and that of
neurológico
rarely cross.”
“Is that going to be a problem?” Deal asked.
“I think it is a general oversight of medicine,” the young woman said. “But as to the matter at hand, the hospitals and the schools work because they leave us alone, Mr. Deal. It is late and the staff reduced. I can assure you. No one will question my appearance on the floor, nor will they question anyone with me, for that matter.”
There was a hulking young man wearing green scrubs and with a surgical cap wrapped about his bushy head of hair, watching from a corner. That one, with his broad shoulders and thick arms folded before him, seemed more the stuff of the Pozzo clan. In any case, he’d be handy to have along if anything went wrong.
“How’s my father doing, Doctor?” Deal asked. “Do you think he’s up to this?”
She gave him a frank look. “As I say, neurology is not my specialty. And it would not have been wise to have expressed an inordinate interest in the case.” She shrugged. “Some of my colleagues may profess a greater degree of loyalty to the current regime than I.” She paused, sharing a brief glance with Angelica.
“I have managed a look at the charts, but without a closer observation and further testing, who can say?” Her gaze softened at the expression on his face. “It would seem that your father is suffering the effects of some major trauma, but this is only guessing. It is also possible that he may simply be a very cagey man.”
“
That’s
something he always was,” Deal said.
“We have to get him out of here,” Angelica said.
Aponte nodded. “And then?”
Deal said. “Leave that to me,” he said. He thought it sounded authoritative. He hoped he could be as good in the doing.
“No one has said anything to him of what we intend?” Angelica cut in.
The doctor gave her a helpless look. “How could we? If he lacks the command of his faculties, he might blurt out anything, at any time.”
Deal nodded. “There’s a nurses’ station up there?”
“Yes, but the cousin of Miguel is tonight in charge there.” She glanced at the hulking young man in the corner. “There will be no questions there.”
“And there are guards?”
“Two,” the doctor said. “One approaches competence, but he is afflicted with a weakness of the flesh. There is an aide on the floor in whom this man has shown a particular interest.” She broke off to glance at her watch. “It will not be long before his fondest fantasies begin to take their shape.”
“And the other?” Angelica asked.
The doctor shrugged. “He is a fool who would likely be asleep in any case. Tonight he will drink the tea that is brought to him, then dream like a child.”
Deal glanced at his own watch. “I guess we’re just about ready, then.”
Dr. Aponte nodded. “I will make the call,” she said. Her gaze met Deal’s steadily, then swung with the same assurance toward Angelica.
“We are ever indebted to you,” Angelica said.
Deal nodded his agreement.
“It is nothing,” the doctor said. “We do what must be done.”
“I wish I could be of help, gentlemen,” Fuentes was saying. He raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Whatever has happened to John Deal, I can assure you that none of it is my doing.”
He gave Vines a mild look from across the stateroom of the
Bellísima
. He had perched himself on the edge of the big table where Russell had grazed a groaning buffet only days before. Now it had been set up as a conference table, with notepads and pens laid out in readiness for a meeting of seven or eight.
Fuentes glanced about the empty places at the table, then back at Vines, who stood just inside the doorway that led out to the darkened decks. He crossed a leg and plucked at the razored crease of his slacks before continuing.
“My sources report no knowledge of this disappearance, no alarm raised within the government, nothing. But then again, I am sure you already know as much.” He gave Vines another glance.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Fuentes,” Vines responded. “I’m just tagging along, trying to lend a hand to some fellow citizens.”
“Spare me, Mr. Vines,” Fuentes said. He turned to Driscoll and Russell Straight, who were standing together near a teak-faced bar that took up most of one wall of the room. “Your helpmate maintains a network of well-paid informants within this country. Some of them are double agents. Others are schemers who would say anything so long as they are paid. A few might provide useful information, but they tend to be so addled by their rancor toward the current regime that it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Vines?”
“Why don’t you tell us about your own sources, Fuentes?” Vines responded.
Fuentes smiled. “I consult with certain business interests within Cuba, that is all. These men rely upon my discretion, of course. That is why we are able to do business together.”
“Why don’t we cut the Spy versus Spy crap, gentlemen,” Driscoll cut in. He put the glass of soda water he’d been toying with down and stepped away from the marble bar top.
“Russell’s already made it clear why Fuentes brought Deal over here.” Driscoll glanced at the man, then turned back to Vines. “And my guess is that you’d do just about anything to find out the names of the ghosts who are supposed to be sitting around this table right now.” He picked up one of the notepads, glanced at its blank face, then tossed it back on the table.
“None of that is my concern, though. I want to know where John Deal is, that’s all.”
He paused, fixing them in turn with his no-nonsense stare. “Let’s just assume for a second that both of you are telling the truth, so far as that’s constitutionally possible. If neither one of you knows what’s happened to him, and if it’s true that he’s not on the government’s radar screen, then who the hell does know?”
“Deal could have simply gone off on his own for some reason,” Vines said. He checked his watch. “If we were in the States he wouldn’t have been gone long enough to warrant an official investigation.”
Russell started forward at that, but Driscoll held him back. “Yeah, and pigs are dive-bombing Guantánamo while we speak,” Driscoll told Vines.
He turned to Fuentes. “Who else might want to get their hooks into Deal over here?”
Fuentes shook his head. “If we were in Mexico or Guatemala, I might theorize the possibility of a kidnapping ring, but that sort of thing is unheard-of in Cuba.”
Driscoll glanced at Vines, who nodded corroboration. “Say what you will about the current regime, domestic crime and terrorism are not issues.”
“There is the Vedado Project,” Fuentes offered.
“The what?” Driscoll said, turning to him.
Fuentes made a gesture with his hands. “Nothing the current regime is proud of. It is a loosely knit group dedicated to the eventual formation of a democratic government in Cuba.”
“University professors, disgruntled ideologues, workers’ groups and other grassroots organizations,” Vines chimed in. The disdain in his voice was palpable.
“Real people, huh?” Driscoll said to Vines. “What’s your beef with them?”
“This is hardly a group poised to help the country with the massive task of rebuilding itself,” Fuentes said.
Driscoll nodded. “No fat cats, in other words.”
Fuentes shrugged, and Driscoll turned back to Vines. “Let me guess. This is just a bunch of annoying people who’ll probably demand a say in how things go down here once El Jefe gets the heave-ho.”
Vines stared, apparently stumped for a comeback. Fuentes glanced away, as if impatient for this to end.
Driscoll regarded them in silence for a moment, then finally shook his head. “Whoever these people are, they must be doing something right.”
“What makes you say that?” Vines asked.
Driscoll shrugged. “Because there’re three groups of assholes they already managed to piss off.” He ticked off the count on his fingers. “So tell me, who’s in charge of this bunch you’re talking about? Who keeps tabs on what they’re up to?”
“Don’t ask
him
,” Fuentes said, glancing at Vines. “He couldn’t tell you what house Castro was sleeping in tonight.”
Vines shrugged. “These are not kidnappers, Driscoll. These are people who have meetings and
talk
about things. They circulate
petitions
.”
“They sound like idiots, all right,” Driscoll said. “Tell me, does anybody get in trouble for any of this?”
“Any number have been imprisoned,” Fuentes said. He lifted his palms upward. “Deaths have been rumored, but who can say?”
“Not the ones who are dead, that’s for sure,” Driscoll said. And yet for all his disdain for the two men in front of him, he couldn’t fathom what interest such a group as they had told him about might have in Deal, or vice versa. He broke off, glancing at his watch.
“There’re a couple of places Russell and I want to check out yet this evening, Fuentes. You mind if we make use of the car?”
“Tomás is at your service,” Fuentes said.
“I’ll be glad to come along,” Vines added, pushing away from the door where he’d been leaning.
“That’s all right,” Driscoll said. “Russell’s kept his eyes open. We’ll be just fine on our own.”
He gestured to the big man at his side then, and the two of them were out into the night.