by Lia Matera
We entered a building that resembled a suburban junior high school, minus fresh paint or anything electrical. Through partially open doors, we glimpsed people working on manual typewriters.
Finally, the minder knocked at a closed door. As she did so, she straightened her spine and shook out her hair. When she heard, “Entrar,” she put on a wide smile.
“Señor Emilio,” she said, her voice all honey, “may I present—”
He cut her off with the barest flick of the fingers. She motioned us to enter, but didn’t follow us in.
Señor Emilio’s curls fell softly over his ears and his collar to his shoulder blades. His dark brows met in a cranky frown, and he looked as if he were sucking in his cheeks. He wore a purple polo shirt. His jeans looked stone-washed. His sneakers looked new. He rose from his chair, every inch the young urban Marxist.
He looked down at Don, who was perhaps five-ten to his six-three. He took in the details of Don’s attire—gray twill slacks, a blue cotton polo shirt that strained at the biceps, black leather shoes—with apparent envy. He spared me only the briefest glance.
To Don he said, in a rapid Cuban mumble, “You are a lieutenant of the San Francisco police, I am told. An important and respected man with many men working for you. And now you have insisted upon coming here. As if you believe that your gadgetry and technology make you a detective superior to our own, capable of solving problems which have eluded our primitive abilities.”
“Señor,” I tried to interrupt.
He waved for me to be quiet—waved as if I were a gnat buzzing at his elbow. The revolution’s New Man.
“So what is it you can do for us here? What marvels of modern detection do you bring us? What miracles will you work for your monkey neighbors?”
“He doesn’t speak Spanish,” I said, with gnatlike satisfaction.
He made a disgusted sound. “And he has come to Cuba to solve his problem?” He turned away, shaking his head.
As he returned to his chair behind a huge desk, Don murmured to me, “I gather he didn’t say, ‘Good to meet you?’”
I quickly conveyed the gist of the Señor Emilio’s statement: “You’re not so smart, nyah nyah.”
Don glanced around the room, then grabbed two folding chairs to position near the desk. We sat in them, though Señor Emilio looked as if he might behead us for it.
Don said, “Translate as I go, can you?”
“We’ll find out.”
Pausing often so I could mangle his meaning, Don told him, “I gather you don’t think highly of me. That’s fair. You don’t know me. But I hope you’re going to give me a fair chance because we’ve both got a problem here, not just me. I know I can find June Jansson if you cooperate, if you don’t hamstring me.” (Like I would really know the Spanish word for “hamstring.”)
“And how do you suggest that I cooperate? Shall I drive you and your translator to the tourist stores? Shall I take you to the beaches where the old lady tourists go wading?” He slapped his hand on the desktop. “Where can you go that we Cubans have not been? What will you ask that we have not already asked?”
I boiled it down: “What are you going to do that he hasn’t?”
Don slapped the desktop, too. “Who do you think you’re talking to? A politician like yourself? An amateur? I’ve been heading up the Homicide Division in one of the biggest cities in America since you were in diapers. You think I can’t help you? Bullshit!”
I translated faithfully, though I considered substituting, Mine is bigger.
“Do you think we have no police here?” But at least Emilio wasn’t shouting now.
Don countered with, “How big is this city? How much crime do your policemen see? Your people aren’t used to this. I am.”
“It is true our crime rate is very low. But you do not know that a crime has taken place, Mr. Police.”
“Of course there’s been a crime. Americans don’t go native in Cuba. Something happened to June Jansson.”
I translated, then added, “She’s my mother. You’ve met me before.”
He frowned and tucked his head back, looking affronted that I’d spoken. Sexism, the universal language.
I continued, “I came here with two reporters. They asked you about Lidia Gomez. Now they’re missing, too.”
His nostrils flared. He turned to Don and said, “With whom am I conducting business, Mr. Police? With you or with your woman?” To me, Don said, “I gather he’s immune to your charms.”
“He won’t talk to me.”
“Let it go,” Don said. “This is too important. No ego.”
Yeah, sure, the tao of dickhood.
He turned to Señor Emilio. “I’ll need maps, and I’ll need some police officers. I prefer creative people, problem-solvers.”
I translated like a good geisha.
“And with these people you will then do what?”
“I want to search your tunnels. I want to run a motorboat around the coast. And I want to go out to your villages, the smaller the better.”
“And what will this accomplish?”
“We call it a dragnet. It’s a standard approach. It gets results.” As I translated, Emilio’s scowl relaxed slightly.
“How many people would you presume to require?”
“You tell me,” was Don’s response. “Or better yet, let me work with a police official who can tell us both.”
“Now that,” Emilio said, “is the best thought that I have heard from you. Yes, I will let you speak with your equivalent here in Havana. He can tell me what he thinks of your plans and what will be appropriate.”
Don didn’t seem satisfied. “I can find June Jansson. Don’t let anybody convince you I can’t.”
If nothing else, Señor Emilio seemed impressed to find a man with an ego as grand as his own. (He’d obviously never been bar-hopping.)
For now, we had no choice but to leave it at that.
25
We were ushered into a small office in a building in central Havana. It was probably built in the fifties, when the whole world was in love with high-rises. Now, with electricity in short supply, the design must have been a nightmare. Keeping an elevator running probably sucked up enough power to keep a neighborhood lit for a week.
A man in green military fatigues stood to greet us. He looked to be in his early sixties, slim, mixed race, with sunken cheeks, sharp eyes, tight gray curls, and a long beard. His office reeked of cigar smoke. His walls were covered with maps—well-drawn originals, nothing mass-produced. His desk was stacked with papers, a rare sight here.
He extended his hand. We were surprised to hear him speak English.
“Hello. Hello. I am General Miguel. Please take a chair. I have spoken to compañero Emilio. Please sit down. Do you like coffee?” He smiled at our surprise. “I have been to college many many years ago in Massachusetts. I have even played professional baseball for you. Ha!” He had a bark of a laugh.
We sat facing the general.
“You are here to find this lady’s mother.” He smiled at me, showing nicotine-stained teeth. “This will be now the fourth attempt that we make.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “When she did not leave with the American ladies, we looked for her. When this lady”—he nodded at me—”came to seek her, again we undertook to search. When we are asked by your government to do so, we forgave the insolence of the request.” He leaned toward me. “Because we know your government does not speak for your people. We have met too many Americans to confuse the actions of your Mafia and your senators with the feelings of the real people. For the sake of a woman, your mother, who has come to Cuba to admire our struggle, we ignore our anger. And now”—a broad shrug— “now we will try again another time. It is better to try one time too many than one time short of success.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Don told hi
m. “I’d like to do a dragnet that includes your tunnels. Someone would have spotted her in a neighborhood, even a tourist area. So she’s either in the tunnels, or she’s someplace so remote nobody’s run into her. I mean, nobody your investigators talked to.”
“You are correct, I believe,” the general commented, “to say that if the lady was in the city of Havana we would know this already.” He nodded. “But you refer to tunnels?”
“The tunnels beneath Havana.” Don stated it as if it were common knowledge.
“Why do you say so?”
Don didn’t glance at me. Nor did I think it would be a good idea to bring up my foray beneath the city.
“I’ve read it in Associated Press accounts,” Don said blandly. “And I’ve been told so by members of the U.S. government.”
“Really? Which branch?”
Don went for it: “The CIA.”
“Ah, you have spoken to someone in your Cia?” He pronounced CIA as a two-syllable word, seeya.
“Yes, we have,” Don confirmed.
“Your Cia, I’m afraid, is not reliable. You are a student of history, I hope?”
“To some extent.”
“Then you know this is the case.”
“But in this instance, I talked to someone who was born in Havana and knows it well. He spent the last two years here. Are you denying you have tunnels?”
“Of course.” He nodded vigorously. “It is ridiculous. You have been misinformed.”
The men looked at each other as if trying to guess their respective suit sizes.
Finally Don said, “If you won’t let me search the tunnels, I’ll have to hope you’ve done it yourself. That you’ve done it thoroughly. That you can absolutely rule it out.”
The general didn’t reply.
Don sighed. “Then let’s talk about outlying areas. Is it possible to hide out in the mountains?”
“For some people, yes. For an American lady, no.” He smiled wolfishly. “I have stayed hidden myself, from Batista’s men. But in those days, it was easy. No one worried for the fate of shoeless men subsisting on land that could not produce money for the gringos. If the land could not be planted with tobacco or cane for sugar and rum, it mattered to no one. That is my point.” He leaned back, putting his big black military boots onto his desk. No more shoelessness for him. “Now we care for everyone.” He pulled a cigar out of his pocket. “My father worked like a slave for the American cigar companies.” He held the cigar aloft. The end was cinched like a candy wrapper. “He could not afford to smoke the fine products he created. He was permitted to roll for himself only a cheap blend, this one, with the end left rough as you see here. A Havana Twist, it is called. Now Cuba owns the factories, and the workers earn the same as doctors or professors. They can smoke what they please. But I prefer the Havana Twist in respect for my father and the generation which did not live to see the revolution. To remind myself how far we have come.”
Don nodded. “My father immigrated from Italy with next to nothing.” He left it at that, apparently finding it counterproductive to mention that the family parlayed its nothing into a banking fortune. No Italia Twists for Don. “Let me tell you what I have in mind,” he continued. “And you tell me if you’ll let me have the manpower.”
Don outlined what was, in essence, an island-wide dragnet.
The general listened, showing no surprise. Then he stood, saying, “I will consider the matter.” He waved his cigar to forestall Don’s next comment. “I will send a car when I am ready with an answer.”
I don’t know how our minder knew the interview had ended, but she was at the door within seconds.
Don tried to reinitiate conversation, but she got between him and the general, all but pushing him out of the office. As she did so, she effusively thanked the general, assuring him he need only phone when he was ready.
I glanced back at him. His expression was sly and cynical, and his eyes were cold. He’d seen a great deal since his days as a mountain guerrilla and had plenty of reason to hate America. But his face told me he’d lied about not blaming U.S. citizens for their government’s policy.
26
We sat together on the bed in our hotel room. Don’s lips brushed my ears. I could feel his breath. But his words were difficult to make out even at a few millimeters’ distance. There was no help for it—the microphone in the overhead fixture might be powerful. There might be others closer to the bed. A satellite mic might be pointed through the windows.
And so while my viscera danced at his touch, my brain strove to fill in missing words.
“I’m not sure what their agenda is, letting us come here. But I don’t think they’re going to let us look around. I think they’re going to keep us busy, divert us.”
“They might go for your dragnet idea,” I whispered.
“No, I was just blowing smoke. I need them to think I have a plan—they’d never trust a man without a plan. But it’s just show, and it wouldn’t work. They’d be crazy to go along. I wouldn’t, not if some yahoo came to San Francisco and tried to deploy my men.”
Just show? I’d believed him. Worse, I’d let myself take comfort in his plan, invest some hope in it.
“I was just looking for a way to get us here.” For a moment, he let his lips rest on my ear. “Now we’ve got to get away from all these ears and eyes. Do you think you could find the building where the tunnel came up?”
“Yes. I mean, I don’t know what it is, but I remember what it’s near, and what it looks like.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do—leave the hotel, and start there.” He was clearly not hung up on achieving consensus.
“I don’t suppose you’d like my opinion?” I whispered.
He grinned. “That’s what Krisbaum always says. But I don’t see any alternative. They’ve for sure got people watching the lobby. But they’ve given us a window out back, through the bathroom.”
I must have shown my alarm.
“Don’t worry, there are vines covering the walls. They’ll hold us.”
Considering he was built like a minotaur, this seemed a little optimistic. “If we get caught?”
“We’re not under hotel arrest. No one told us to stay inside.”
“Then let’s just go out the front door. If they follow us, they follow us.”
“We’ve got more options if we’re on our own,” he persisted. “And it’s no use getting ushered from one tough guy’s office to another. If we can get hold of something, anything, with wheels … I’d go alone if I could.”
“I’d let you,” I agreed.
With a sigh, he stood up. He yanked me to my feet and led me into the bathroom. A small window opened to the viney wall of an air shaft.
There was no one below. Presumably, the Cubans didn’t think we were stupid enough to try to human-fly our way down the ivy. And they were right about one of us.
I was relieved when I heard a knock at the door.
Don preceded me out of the bathroom. “Who is it?” he asked.
“Teresa. You are awake?”
Considering it wasn’t yet dinnertime, that was a safe bet.
When I emerged from the bathroom, she was standing in the room fingering her microphone cum necklace.
“Señor Emilio has asked that you be taken to the Women’s Prison West.”
I backed up. “As a visitor.” I didn’t dare express it as a question.
“Yes, yes, but it is not a short drive,” she fretted. “We must leave without delay.”
The prisoners wouldn’t be there if we tarried? “Why are we going?”
“The warden wishes to speak with you. She says that she has met you before.” Teresa seemed astonished this could be so. “You have been to Women’s Prison West?”
As if I might have met the warden elsewhere, at a little barbecue I’d had
last week. “Yes.”
“Then you know it is some distance. Let us please hurry.” She was clearly nervous. Would the Yum King have her guillotined for tardiness?
We followed her out to the Moskvich and climbed into the back seat. Our natty driver again traced the Malecon—apparently the state-sanctioned route to anyplace.
We passed big houses with fresh paint and obviously operational cars—the diplomatic district. I half listened as Teresa pointed out various embassies and residences. A glance at Don told me he was paying enough attention for both of us.
I stared at garden walls showing tops of huge exotic blooms. Evening was falling, bringing the relief of cooler air.
Could Mother be hiding in a foreign embassy?
I sighed. Why would they take her in? Why wouldn’t they notify the United States? And what the hell would she be doing there anyway?
What could an American woman do in Cuba for almost six months?
No, not any American woman. My mother was Superlefty. She was indefatigable and passionate if her heart was touched and her outrage roused. She’d suffered seventeen arrests, fourteen trials, eleven sentencings, and scattered months of jail time because of it. Mother wasn’t capable of seeing distress without wanting to fix it, to organize or picket or walkathon it away.
But what would she do—what could anyone do?—to help Cuba? Something embarrassing to both Cuba and the United States, Don had guessed. Something neither country wanted brought to light.
It grew dark out, but still I couldn’t think of anything. If Mother had attempted some elaborate errand of mercy, I couldn’t imagine what it might have been. And I hoped this trip to the women’s prison wasn’t going to give me an unwelcome answer.
Don scooted closer, putting his arm around me.
I felt the cooling air on my face and the tension of muscle in Don’s arm. I tried to focus on that.
A hormone rush made it surprisingly easy.
27
We sat in the warden’s office sipping syrupy coffee (which I’d missed). She looked nervous, to say the least. She kept squirming in her light brown military uniform, glancing at the smiling woman who’d accompanied her last time. Again, I had the impression that the smiling woman, despite her pains to remain in the background, was pulling the strings.
