The Golden Havana Night

by Manuel Ramos

  We climbed into the van and began our trek from the airport into the city. Alberto and I sat in the back. Lourdes sat up front, giving directions to Carlito. Her legs straddled a crimson canvas bag. I assumed the money was in the bag and she would give it to us along with our instructions on where and when we were to deal with Hoochie.

  The clean van, obviously past its prime, chugged and wheezed at about fifty miles an hour. I guessed that it was Russian, or Eastern European.

  Carlito talked a mile a minute to Lourdes. She answered brusquely, sometimes with a snarl, sometimes with a smile. I caught pieces of the conversation, everything from baseball predictions to the lack of vegetables in the city markets to the horrendous condition of the roads.

  Cuba rolled past, and I drifted with the green scenery and powder blue skies. Tropical vegetation lined the edge of the highway. There was traffic but nothing like congested Denver. Carlito drove like a pro, never losing much speed as he maneuvered around slow-moving trucks or horse-drawn wagons. He avoided most of the potholes, but occasionally he’d hit one and we’d all jerk and hang onto our seats.

  Lourdes looked back from her seat. “About twenty minutes and we’ll be at the house where you two are staying. It’s in the city, not far from the hospital for foreigners. It’s comfortable. But you have to be out in a week. You need to get this business done quickly.” She turned without waiting for any response.

  Alberto sat next to me, quiet. He stared at his sister. The glad-hand, even cheery guy I’d talked with at LAX now sullenly waited for whatever his former home had in store for him.

  Wooden shacks and royal palm trees lined the edge of a narrow stretch of highway. Carlito slowed down for a blind curve. As he made the turn I saw a police car parked at an angle to the road. Four men in uniforms stood near the car. One of the men signaled for Carlito to pull over.

  “What’s this?” Alberto asked. He clutched his briefcase.

  “They want to check Carlito’s papers,” Lourdes answered. “It’s nothing. He must show that this is the taxi he’s licensed for. Everything’s in order. It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  She sounded sure of herself, but I also heard a touch of concern in her voice.

  Carlito grabbed a thick binder from the van’s center console. He flipped through the plastic filing sheets until he found what he wanted. He pulled out an official-looking yellow document from one of the sheets and exited the van. He said, in Spanish, that he would leave the van running because the starter was acting up.

  The four men were heavily armed. One of the men scratched at the collar of his shirt as though he was not comfortable in the clothes. Another gripped his semi-automatic like he was afraid he might drop it.

  “I don’t like this,” I said.

  “It’s nothing,” Lourdes repeated. “They’re traffic police.”

  “They have a lot of guns for traffic police,” Alberto said.

  Carlito was halfway to the men when the guy with the itchy neck shot him with five, quick bursts. Lourdes screamed. The other three aimed their weapons at the van and fired. Bullets rocked the van, shattered windows. Lourdes bled from her right shoulder. Alberto dove to the floor.

  Bullets pounded into the side of the van that faced the shooters. During the barrage I could hear the engine chugging. I jumped to the front and jammed the van into gear. I backed up full speed, turned the wheel with all I had while I stomped on the brakes. The van swayed and tilted but it turned in the opposite direction. The thin tires screeched around the curve. Alberto rolled on the floor and Lourdes fell to my side. She pressed her left hand to her shoulder. Her fingers and blouse were covered in blood.

  I pushed the van for all it was worth, but the cop car rapidly gained on us.

  “They’re going to catch us,” Lourdes said. She sounded out of breath, each word passed through gritted teeth.

  “Who are they?” I asked, my eyes on the pot-holed asphalt.

  “Who knows? They could be Hoochie’s men, or Hoochie’s enemies.”

  “Why would he shoot us? We’re bringing him the money.”

  “It’s about more than money,” she answered.

  “What else is there?”

  She didn’t answer. I glanced at her. Blood flowed freely from the wound in her shoulder. Her eyes were closed. I could see her chest move slightly, so I guessed that she had passed out.

  I frantically scanned the countryside as I pushed the van for everything it had. Finally, I saw it: an exit about a hundred yards ahead. The unpaved road disappeared into palm trees and ferns. I figured our chances on the open road were zero to none. Maybe we could lose them in the dense growth. It was all I had as far as ideas.

  I waited until the last second, twisted the steering wheel with a grunt and a prayer. The van slid onto the dirt road. We hit rocks and deep ruts, I bounced on my seat like a loose spring. I tried to control the van without slowing it down, but it had taken on its own agenda. It crashed through reeds and grasses. I saw trees, fences and cows rush by. A plume of dust trailed us. It had to be visible for miles. So far, I hadn’t seen the cops in the rearview mirror.

  I didn’t see the ox until we were only a few feet from it. The animal raised its head as we barreled down the road. Its red eyes glared, and its ears stood straight up. I tried the brakes—nothing. I struggled with the steering wheel, but couldn’t turn the van. We crashed full-speed into the ox. The animal screamed, the van twisted and crazily turned. I think Alberto hollered something. I saw the roof at my feet. The van crashed to its side and I smashed my head into the driver’s door. Something heavy, soft and wet held me there. The last thing I thought as I slipped into unconsciousness was that Lourdes must have landed on me.

  — Chapter 7 —

  THE PINCHE PROBLEM

  I woke up in a white room. Walls, chairs, lights—all white. I was even stretched out on a white bed. A tall, black man dressed in red, white and blue stood in the corner. He stared at me for what felt like an eternity, then left the room. I tried to sit up, but my wrists were shackled to the bed. My head ached like the ox had sat on it. A wrap of gauze circled my forehead. My shirt was gone but I still had my pants. A milky haze floated around my brain, disconnecting my thoughts.

  A few minutes of silence passed. No windows. Nothing except the bed.

  I began to drift off in the whiteness of the room, but I was suddenly assaulted by color. The red-white-and-blue black man returned to the room, followed by a brown woman wearing jeans and a wrinkled blue blazer over a black T-shirt. My eyes and brain finally worked together. I realized the black man was a U.S. Marine in his dress blues.

  “Good, you’re awake,” the brown woman said. “Put this on. Your shirt is a lost cause.” She tossed me a gray sweatshirt. “Johnson, take the restraints off. Sorry, Gus, but we weren’t sure how you would act when you came to. That was quite a ride, right? And that ox! Where the fuck did that come from, right?”

  The Marine unlocked the handcuffs and retreated to his corner. I threw the sweatshirt over my head and grunted. A large bruise on my shoulder stung with a sharp pain when I turned my torso. The woman doing the talking stood next to the bed, hands clasped behind her back. She grinned, stupidly, I thought.

  “Where am I? What . . . ?”

  “You’re in the U.S. Embassy clinic. We brought you here from the wreck. You’re a lucky man, Gus. We got to you before the Cuban police. That would’ve been bad.”

  “Who are you? Where are the people I was with? What . . . ” A needle of pain wormed upward through my arm and silenced me.

  “Careful, Gus. You’re pretty banged up. Just take it easy and I’ll explain everything.”

  I sat back on the bed and waited.

  “Eduarda Ventura,” she said. “Call me Eddie. Special Assistant to the Consulate. Fancy name for secretary, really. You’ve been assigned to me, Gus. I’m to take care of you. Make sure you get back home in one piece.” She nodded at the Marine. “Eventually,” she added.

  “Wh
at’s that mean, you’re assigned to me?”

  “I’m gonna level with you, Gus.”

  She was the second person in a few days who assured me they were going to level with me. And yet, I was still lost in the valley.

  She cleared her throat. “We know all about your . . . what’ll we call it? Job? Contract? Payoff to Hoochie Almeida?”

  It wouldn’t have done me any good to deny what she said, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Kino Machaco is a very special person, someone who gets very special attention from people like me. Know what I mean?” Her smile never wavered. “We are quite interested in what he’s up to. Him, you must’ve guessed, his family and friends. So when someone who works for him comes to Cuba with his screwed-up brother . . . well, that gets everyone in a cold sweat, all excited like, here at the Embassy. Know what I mean?” She looked at her Marine and they both smiled. “You were the main topic of conversation these last couple of days. Colorful history. Even a prison stretch.”

  She winked at me. I thought that was strange.

  “We know all about you, Gus.”

  Perspiration trickled down my ribs. The sweatshirt was too heavy for the warm room. I needed to take it off. I needed water. Food. Sleep. What I didn’t need was Eddie Ventura gloating about how she knew everything about me and my mission. I didn’t need Eddie, period.

  Johnson moved back to my side. He handcuffed me to the bed again, tighter than before.

  “However, we must clear a few things up,” Eddie said. “You understand that—bottom line, you—individually, are not important, right? Our main concern is national security. Integrity of the U.S. The easiest way to explain it is: we want information from you, you give it to us and you can go home. Or . . . we can send you to my friend, detective Federico Solís of the Havana police, right now. His men are looking for answers to the puzzle of a bullet-ridden taxi van and a slaughtered ox. They’d be pleased as rum punch to learn that an americano on an illegal money-exchanging trip to their homeland was involved in the wreck.”

  She licked her lips, which I personally thought showed a lack of professionalism.

  “Killing an ox is very serious. That alone is enough for at least three years in the local prison. Much different from the joint in Colorado where you did time.”

  My torso twisted in an awkward position because of the handcuffs. I tried to stretch my arms, but it was impossible. My fingers quit tingling and became numb. My shoulder felt like someone had ripped out my rotator cuff.

  With clenched teeth I asked, “What are you? CIA? Military? NSA?”

  She finally quit smiling. “Nah. Like I said, you ain’t that important, Gus. I told you, I’m a simple Special Assistant. But I do have the power to do what I’m telling you. You better believe that.”

  I hadn’t believed most of what she told me, especially that she was a “simple Special Assistant.”

  “What do you think I know?” I said. “I can tell you what happened out there on the road, but that’s not too hard to figure out: the taxi was ambushed by men dressed as police, the driver was killed, one of the passengers was wounded. I tried to escape through the field and I crashed into that damn ox. Now you know everything I know. And, by the way, what happened to the others? Are they okay?”

  Eddie strutted to the edge of the bed. She looked down at me with gleaming eyes. She seemed to be enjoying herself—way too much, I thought.

  “There’s the rub, Gus. That’s the whole pinche problem, man. The only body we retrieved from the van was yours. No driver, no other passengers. Plenty of blood, including yours, I guess. We know you and Machaco met Lourdes Rivera, and we know none of you were driving when you left the airport. You see, homie, I gotta ask you: Where the hell are they?”

  She sounded ridiculous. For some reason, she used Chicano slang on me—pinche, homie—as if we were carnales from the hood, but obviously she wasn’t a Chicana. She’d apparently watched too many American movies where cholos were the bad guys and they still talked like lowriders from the 1960s. She put her hands behind her back again and leaned to within six inches of my face.

  “But more importantly, Gus, and I mean that sincerely, where the hell is the money?”

  She kept at me for what seemed like hours. Every so often she’d let me have a drink of water, but for most of the time she asked dumb questions and I played dumb with my answers. Her focus stayed on the money, while mine was solely on the others in the van.

  I asked why the Embassy would go out on a limb for me, if I was as bad as Eddie insinuated. Why not give me to the Cubans and walk away from the Gus Corral affair? She kind of laughed.

  “Politics, amigo,” she answered. “Plain and simple. You and the Machaco brothers have the potential to embarrass the U.S., which ain’t all that easy these days, considering all the stupid shit that’s happened the last couple of years. But there you are, Gus.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mira. My boss would just as soon avoid the headlines and the urgent red-eye flight to D.C. to explain in person what the hell is going on, know what I mean?”

  I nodded.

  “So,” she continued, “you admit what you were doing. Tell us where the money is, and you’re square, maybe just get a warning or some bullshit like that even. Someone higher up on the scale than me talks to Kino, scares the crap out of him, and I can turn in my report. Done and done, brother.”

  Her irritating smile returned.

  “Wish I could help you, Eddie. Tell you what. Give me some food, a few hours of sleep, a flight to Miami and a nice strong drink, and maybe I’ll figure out what you’re talking about. But, ¿sabes qué? Right now, at this moment, I don’t have a clue.”

  We danced around like that until she finally called it quits. I’d expected her to forget about asking questions and to turn to rougher methods of persuading me to talk, but other than a few lame slaps in the face, she hadn’t touched me by the time she walked out the white door, followed by her black Marine.

  I slept, if you can call it sleep when your body is filled with pain, jet lag, hunger and confusion.

  — Chapter 8 —

  ¡EL MARTILLO!

  It must have been an hour later when Eddie returned. She marched in the room making as much noise as possible. She’d changed clothes and looked like she’d showered. She probably ate, too, I thought. Maybe she talked to her boss. Her sidekick tagged along carrying a red toolbox.

  “Wake up, Gus,” she shouted. “No more playing around. You’re telling me where the money is or it’s going to get real ugly in here.”

  The Marine dropped the toolbox on the floor. He opened it and I could see various pliers, saws, wires and other industrial-looking objects that I supposed were meant to terrorize me into answering questions.

  I didn’t believe that Eddie had it in her to torture me. She hadn’t shown that she was cold-blooded enough to inflict pain. Plus, she was only somebody’s assistant, right? A “Special Assistant,” to be sure, but still an assistant. How far could she really take this on her own? And why hadn’t anybody else talked to me about Kino, the money, Lourdes or Alberto? There had to be more official interest in the incident, even if it was only because a super-star sports celebrity was distantly involved.

  But on the other hand I worried that Eddie would take it upon herself to force me to talk as a way of impressing her higher-ups, whoever they were. And knowing Eddie like I did by that time, she would botch the job, and I would pay the price of her incompetence in interrogation.

  I went back and forth like this while she stood next to the toolbox, deciding which piece of metal to take out.

  “¡El martillo!” she shouted.

  Johnson grabbed my arm and twisted it against the edge of the bed. He placed his knee in the crook of my elbow and started to push. I had no doubt that he could break my arm, perhaps wreck it permanently if he chose.

  My wrists ached from the handcuffs that cut into my skin.

  Eddie reached into
the box and pulled out a shiny ball-peen hammer. She held it over my arm.

  “Does your boss know you’re doing this?” I shouted. “You’re representing the United States. You sure you want to do this?”

  Something wasn’t right about the whole scene.

  “Talk, motherfucker. Or you leave me no choice. One way or another, you’re telling me tonight where that bag of money is stashed. I know you know.”

  My arm felt like it was already broken. With every word, Johnson leaned more on the elbow. My hands had gone completely numb.

  “I’ll hit you right in the crease. Your arm will hang limp beside you for the rest of your life. You want that?”

  She raised her arm and held the hammer over her head. Her eyes sparkled with the light bouncing off the white surfaces.

  “Jesus!” I shouted. “Stop, stop. Okay, okay. I’ll show you where the goddamn money is. I’ll take you there. Don’t hit me with that hammer.”

  Johnson released his grip on my arm and held up his hand to stop Eddie.

  “You’re not showing me anything,” she said. “Just tell me where it is.”

  “I buried the bag out there by where we crashed into the ox. I tried to run but I didn’t get far. That’s when you found me.”

  “You had time to hide the money?”

  “Yeah. There was a hole in the ground, under an old dead palm tree. I threw the money inside and rolled pieces of the palm over it. Then I must have passed out. I can’t tell you where exactly, but I know I can find it again. It’s all yours. I don’t care about the money. I’m only a hired hand without a dog in this fight. You want the money, you can have it. Take me back to where the accident happened, and I’ll get the money for you.”