by Jose Latour
“Ay, macho, come with me. You are the best! I’m almost there … Ay, coñóooo!”
Watching Victoria thrust herself against his groin, hearing her singing his praises, and ranting at the height of her sexual ecstasy proved too much for Pardo as well. He ejaculated profusely. After a few moments he began to lose his erection and pulled his finger out. She left her clit alone. Feeling exhausted, both collapsed in bed trying to get their breath back. A minute went by.
“How was it?” he asked.
“Oh, great, macho, just great.”
“Next time I’ll put cold cream on my finger.”
“Yeah, that would be best. And also …” Victoria paused, then laughed herself silly.
“What’s the matter?” Pardo asked, smiling uncertainly.
It took her nearly a minute to regain control and wipe away the tears sliding down her temples. “I was thinking that if you grew your fingernails as long as the Chief does, I wouldn’t let you.”
Pardo chuckled. Millions of Cubans, aghast at the length of the man’s perfectly manicured fingernails, joked that he was competing with Snow White’s stepmother. “Don’t worry. You know I always do my nails on Sunday mornings. From now on I’ll pay special attention, have them short and filed for you whenever you want them.”
“Way to go, my man, waaay to go,” feeling proud of the lover she had created.
For a while nothing was said. Then Victoria turned her head to her husband. “Shouldn’t we scale down the loan somewhat?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Pardo responded. “The equation has too many variables.”
“You sound so mathematical.”
“But it’s true. We don’t know how long we may be forced to stay there, if we have to take a roundabout route to Paris, how many plane tickets we may need, if we have to bribe someone.”
Victoria took a moment to reflect on the evening’s operation. “You think Steil will buy your cockamamie story?” she asked.
“Probably not. But it doesn’t matter. You said he just has to tell her the date, right? Everything else is irrelevant.”
“It’s so annoying to play dumb,” she moaned.
Pardo turned his head to stare at his wife. “Well, darling, you brought him into the picture. I suppose you have a valid reason for it.”
Victoria kept her gaze on the ceiling. “The reason is that a backup man is always essential. I have the guy to learn what needs to be learned and do what needs to be done. But what happens if he dies on us? Or crashes his car and becomes paraplegic? Or is arrested?”
Pardo thought she was being overly negative one more time, but refrained from telling her. “I see. Well, I’m sorry if you don’t like my yarn. It’s not so bad.”
“It’s lousy. Let’s rehearse it one last time.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“I feel like a nap.”
“Now, Major,” after giving him a peck on the cheek.
…
Sitting behind the Mitsubishi’s wheel for several minutes, Steil stared through the windshield and reflected on what he had just witnessed. He had done all he could. Even though money would not improve Natasha’s condition in the least, it would ease her parents’ suffering and keep all three well fed and clothed for a couple of years. Their combined income as retirees was less than twenty dollars a month and a pound of ground beef cost three dollars, a bottle of cooking oil two. He forced himself to push the drama out of his mind and turned the ignition.
Rolling around the corner, he drove to the Polytechnic Institute in which he had taught English for seventeen years. Nobody would be there on a Sunday, which was perfect. He had decided against paying a visit. On one hand, party members on the staff would not welcome him; sure as shooting they had been told that he had illegally emigrated “to the Empire.” On the other hand, if some colleagues greeted him in a friendly manner, they might be reprimanded for welcoming a “traitor.”
Steil was pleasantly surprised when, from a block away, he noticed that the huge building had been recently painted. Getting nearer, he observed that the windows that had been broken and boarded-up when he left were repaired now. Or were they new? He eased the vehicle on the other side of the street and turned off the ignition. As far as he could tell, the former Catholic school had never before been refurbished. Inside and out? He could not tell. Maybe the urinals and toilets stolen in the seventies had been refitted; maybe there were new blackboards and erasers, too. On its roof a billboard proclaimed, THANK YOU, COMMANDER IN CHIEF. Steil clicked his tongue, shook his head, and smiled sadly. After forty years of neglect, such praise for renovating the excellent school built by the Brothers of the Virgin Mary in the fifties seemed excessive.
“Hey, mister, Chiclets?” someone said in English.
An extremely handsome light-skinned black boy, twelve or thirteen years old, had approached the driver’s door and was leaning on the window frame. Big brown eyes, wavy black hair, a Roman nose, full lips blessed with a luminous smile. A textbook example of how racial mixture bears the most beautiful humans.
“Knock it off, Champ. We’re birds of a feather,” Steil said in somewhat dated Cuban slang.
“You Cuban?”
“What do you think?”
The boy made a U with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, took it to sucked-in lips, and whistled shrilly. “The dude’s Cuban,” he shouted, waving in quick come-on gestures.
Such news brought two other boys of approximately the same age to the driver’s door. One was a textbook example that racial mixing doesn’t always bear beautiful people: mulatto, short, overweight, slightly cross-eyed, a chipped front tooth. The other was white, green-eyed, scrawny, with a lock of blonde hair over his forehead. All three had on ragged clothes and scuffed trainers.
“You Cuban?” the white boy asked suspiciously, eyeing Steil’s foreign attire.
“Aha.”
“How come you drive rented wheels?”
“’Cause he flew the coop, you dickhead,” the handsome boy said to his pal. “You live in Miami, right?” addressing Steil.
“Yeah, I do.”
For Steil this offered fresh confirmation that Cubans living in their homeland still could not rent cars from state-owned rental companies. The catch was that no u-drive private companies were in existence. He also corroborated that one thing had remained the same from the time he left: All kids believed that if a Cuban resided abroad, it had to be in Miami. He shook his head and smiled.
“You’ve got Chiclets or don’t you?” Chipped Tooth demanded a straight answer. The Chiclets brand from Adams, the American company, had dominated the market in precommunist Cuba to the extent that it became synonymous for chewing gum. Like Frigidaire for refrigerator, Canada Dry for ginger ale, Delco for the device that sends electricity to the spark plugs. The rather long list of Anglo brand names substituting for the correct term in Spanish made purists of the national language angry.
“No, I don’t have Chiclets, but I can buy some for you guys.”
“Cool,” Chipped Tooth said. “A fiver will do,” reaching his hand out for the money. Handsome gave a wink and a sly smile to Blondie, who shook his head reprovingly.
“Now, wait a minute,” Steil said, theorizing that perhaps Chipped Tooth had the sharpest mind. “You think I’m a shit-eater? Five foolas for Chiclets? Stop buggering me.”
Disappointment shone in six eyes.
“Take me to the nearest ‘shopping,’” Steil suggested, meaning the dollars-only store. “I’ll buy you some Chiclets and a soda.”
Chipped Tooth dashed around the hood, pulled open the passenger door, and sat alongside the driver. It took Handsome and Blondie an instant more to slide into the backseat. Steil started the car.
“Straight ahead for three blocks,” Chipped Tooth said, “then take a right.”
Steil pressed the gas pedal. “What grade are you guys in?” he asked.
“Sixth,” they said in unison.
“Same class?”
“Yeah,” Handsome said.
“You like your humanities teacher?”
The kids howled, rolled their eyes, and lolled their tongues.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steil asked.
“You know,” Blondie said. “She’s a dish. Big caboose, melon-sized tits, great face.”
“Man’s ape shit about her,” Chipped Tooth said.
“Oh, really? Am I? And who was jerking off in class the other day?”
“I don’t jerk off in class!”
“You were, I saw you. The day she came with the blue miniskirt.”
“I wasn’t jerking off!”
“Shut up,” Steil commanded. “How old is your teacher?”
The three boys exchanged questioning glances.
“She’s pretty old,” Handsome said, “like twenty-five or so.”
Steil suppressed a smile. To this crowd he was Methuselah. In his mind’s eye, he could see the beautiful teacher’s predicament. Pubescent pupils, their hormones starting to stir. Girls wanting to copy her in every respect; boys drooling all day long; males on the staff making passes. You have to love the profession. It was not wise to wear a miniskirt to class, though.
“Take a right on this coming corner,” Chipped Tooth instructed.
The store was small yet well stocked. Steil bought a fair-to-middling pair of sneakers, two polyester pullovers, and baggy shorts for each kid. They slurped six Cokes, split among them two dollars’ worth of chewing gum, were refused packs of Salem. Steil drove them back to their block feeling, for the first time ever, like Santa Claus.
“Hey, mister, what do you have to do to move to Miami?” Handsome asked from the passenger door after Chipped Tooth shut it.
Steil realized his mistake. The feeling of self-satisfaction left him. What could he say that would not smack of propaganda?
“First you have to grow up, then seek your parents’ permission.”
“Is that what you did?” Blondie wanted to know, sounding suspicious.
“That’s what I did. Got to go now. Take care, guys.”
“Thank you, mister,” all three said simultaneously, clutching their plastic bags with one hand, perkily waving from the sidewalk.
…
Even before leaving Miami, Steil had been disinclined to visit the Havana apartment building in which he had dwelled for over twenty years. It was Sunday, everybody’s day off, and his homecoming would create a stir. New tenants aside, he expected that most of his former neighbors would be glad to see him, but Steil felt certain that party members would not welcome him. He had decided to go on Monday. He smiled as he imagined the reaction of Sobeida, the black retiree who had bought his groceries for several years. She would probably shout, jump, cry, laugh, embrace him, kiss him, and make the sign of the cross on his forehead.
Then he thought about visiting Susana Vila, the economist with whom he had had a four-year open relationship. Had she remarried? Moved? Did she still have her job as cashier in the supermarket? He could find out; not on a Sunday afternoon, though. Besides, fire sleeps beneath the ashes, and he was against resurrecting old love affairs. Well, maybe she would shut the door in his face. After all, they had had sex two days before he vanished into thin air and had never told her about his project. He had not communicated with her in eight years, either.
A huge yawn reminded Steil that he had not caught a wink in thirty-six hours. The adrenaline rush elicited by Hart and McLellan’s blackmail had worn off. The depressing experience at Natasha’s had acted as a real downer, too. So he steered the car to his hotel and handed over the keys to the parking valet at 7:25 P.M.
In his room he considered getting supper. He was not in the mood to go out, not tonight. Room service maybe? Not hungry, either. He brushed his teeth and, yawning several times, undressed and crawled in bed at five minutes to eight. One minute later someone knocked at the door. Frowning, Steil threw back the cover, got up, and strode barefoot to the threshold.
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Steil, we haven’t met,” a man’s voice, in Spanish. “I beg you to please give me a few minutes of your time. I need to talk to you concerning past business dealings between the firm you work for, IMLATINEX, and my firm, XEMIC Corporation.”
Steil was too surprised to react. A few seconds slipped by. In the hall, Victoria gave a nod and a wink to her husband.
“Mr. Steil?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“I … ah … yes. But … I’m here on a private visit, not a business trip. Besides, as far as I know, your firm, what did you say its name was?”
“XEMIC Corporation.”
“Is that a Cuban firm?”
“Mr. Steil, pleeease. Your discretion is prudent but unnecessary. The late Mr. Scheindlin was our business partner for many, many years. He talked very highly of you. Please let us in. I can’t tell you what the matter is from the hallway. I assure you it’s of the gravest concern to my firm.”
Elliot’s mind, churning at top speed, flew back to the Miami airport office fifteen hours earlier. Again he saw Hart, McLellan, and Tony Soto, their voices overlapping in his memory. The guy out there knew that his boss had passed away. Elliot knew that IMLATINEX’s Panamanian subsidiary did business with XEMIC. He had not considered the possibility that the FBI’s demand could be related to his firm’s dealings with Cuban business concerns. Everything seemed to be interconnected; fate was threading a pattern too complex for him. Had the man said, “Let us in”? How many were with him?
“Mr. Steil?”
“Are you alone?”
“A subordinate is with me.”
In Spanish, in which the final vowel generally defines gender, subordinada is feminine. A woman mixed up in this conundrum? “Let me put something on. I was already in bed.”
Elliot took his time donning the slacks and polo shirt he had worn after the midday shower. How the fuck had these people found him? Who told them he was here? Cuban State Security? Was he becoming a reluctant go-between for the FBI and the State Security? What the hell was going on? Should he admit to these people that IMLATINEX had been doing business with Cuba for over twenty years? Definitely not. He could say he had never been informed about such deals. Yeah, he would do that. And from then on, improvise. He put on his loafers, ran his hands over his hair, approached the door, and turned the handle.
Steil eyed the smiling pair warily before motioning them in. The ungainly guy appeared to be in his late forties, was of his same height, twenty or twenty-five pounds leaner. He had lines on his forehead, sunken brown eyes, long teeth, and a protruding Adam’s apple. The man extended his right hand and Steil felt forced to shake it. The short woman, several years younger than her escort, gave him a bashful smile, as though embarrassed for invading his privacy, and proffered her hand, too. Brown straight hair cut to her shoulders, green eyes behind plastic-framed glasses, thin lips, firm chin. She wore a cream-colored blouse, brown knee-length skirt, high-heeled shoes, and held a purse and an attaché case. Both smelled nice. The Cuban obsession with perfume.
After closing the door behind him, Steil noticed that the man, who was gazing around the room, walked with both feet turned out at a hundred-degree angle. She was narrow-hipped, had a scraggy behind; not much of a knock off, he thought. Both appeared to be neat, pleasant, forthcoming, and unremarkable. No Hart and McLellan these two. Steil waved them to the two wood-and-vinyl armchairs by the picture window.
“Can I offer you something?” he said, pointing at the small refrigerator. It behooved him to be polite, he thought.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Pardo said.
“No, thank you,” Victoria declined as she placed her purse atop the coffee table separating both armchairs and put the attaché case on the floor. She tugged on the hem of her skirt.
There were no other seats, so Steil sat on the edge of his bed and crossed his legs, resting his forearms just
above his knee. “My name is Elliot Steil, I’m Cuban, I’ve been living in Miami since 1994, and I work for IMLATINEX. Now, may I inquire who you are?”
“Of course,” Pardo said. He extracted a business card from his wallet and presented it to Steil. It read Carlos Capdevila, Vice President, XEMIC Corporation.
“Very well,” Elliot said pocketing the card. “But could I see IDs, please?”
“Sure.”
The billfold reappeared and the tourist was handed a XEMIC plastic identification card with the visitor’s photograph. It specified that Mr. Capdevila was vice president in charge of procurement. “Thank you,” Steil said, giving back the ID. “May I see yours, Miss?”
“Absolutely.”
Elliot learned that Berta Arosamena was XEMIC’s general director of procurement for the American continent.
“What can I do for you?” he said as he gave back her ID. Victoria cast a questioning glance at her husband: the pliant deputy asking her boss’s permission to proceed. Pardo nodded his approval.
“As you know, Mr. Steil,” she began in a soft tone, “IMLATINEX has been doing business with XEMIC Corporation for almost twenty years. During that time …”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Ms. Arosamena. What you just said forces me to—” Steil said and immediately regretted it. Would he ever learn? But it was too late to backtrack. “It’s news to me that my employer has been doing business with your firm. I’ve never seen a document that supports your allegation. In point of fact, U.S. federal law forbids …”
Victoria nodded and smiled condescendingly before barging in. “We are well aware of all the laws, rules, and regulations that the United States has enacted to implement the criminal blockade against the first free territory of the Americas, Mr. Steil.”
Oh, my God, she’s going to read me the Gospel, Elliot thought. Victoria stole a glance at Pardo, who, according to the script, slightly shook his head to say, “Skip the politics.”
“But we didn’t come to discuss that,” she added, picking up the attaché case and clicking it open. “The firm you work for is the parent company of Trans-Caribbean Trading, right?” she asserted.
