The Cat King of Havana

by Tom Crosshill

  “Hijos de puta,” she said.

  Yolanda pulled away as if embarrassed by the attention. “Guys, this is Lisyani. Lisyani, this is Rick and Ana.”

  “Nice to meet you,” we both said.

  We stood in a living room with old floorboards that sagged under every step. The paint on the walls, once a bright green, had faded in uneven patches. There was a ratty brown sofa and some chairs. Near the middle of the room, two upright wooden beams had been rigged to support the ceiling.

  Between the beams there stood a plastic bucket with a layer of water in it. As I watched, a heavy drop splashed down from a wet patch on the ceiling.

  “The kids wanted to see the real Cuba,” Yolanda said.

  Lisyani grimaced, gestured at the bucket. “This is it all right. Come, sit down.”

  Ana and I sank onto the sofa. It gave so much I thought I might fall through. Instead, my downward progress was stopped by a spring poking into my butt. Lisyani sat on the windowsill, which creaked alarmingly. Yolanda leaned against the wall, the only solid structure around.

  “Aren’t we going shopping for hospital supplies?” Ana asked.

  “In a bit,” Yolanda said.

  “I don’t get to chat with foreigners much,” Lisyani said. “What do you think of Cuba?”

  Ana frowned. I scratched my head.

  “Come on.” Lisyani took a long drag on her cigarette, blew the smoke out the window. “I’m sure you have an opinion.”

  Ana looked between Yolanda and Lisyani warily. “We do.”

  Lisyani smiled. “That’s good. That’s smart.”

  “I’m getting a feeling this isn’t about hospital supplies,” I said.

  “A few weeks ago, when we talked about the situation in Cuba, you said you wanted to help,” Yolanda said. “What did you mean?”

  Ana had made that particular offer, so I let her field the question. She made as if to speak, then stopped. Seemed to consider for a while.

  “Cuba is a very different place than I thought,” she said. “It’s clear the system isn’t working. Everything’s falling apart. But if you’re asking if we oppose the Revolution, then that’s not something I—”

  “We don’t care what you think about the Revolution,” Yolanda said. “We care about our friend. About Miranda.”

  Lisyani cut her off. “I’m not sure—”

  “Miranda?” Ana asked. “What’s happened to her?”

  Lisyani and Yolanda locked stares, as if arguing without words.

  “Look,” I said, “you’re clearly no good at this hush-hush stuff. Tell us what’s going on.”

  Yolanda shrugged at Lisyani. “It’s your choice.”

  “That’s the trouble with situations like this,” Lisyani said. “Asking questions can’t possibly prove something one way or the other. Yolanda, if you trust these kids, I trust you.”

  Yolanda nodded. Sighed. “This has to be a secret. You can’t tell anyone—not Juanita, not Yosvany, not even Benny. You understand?”

  We did.

  “Okay,” Yolanda said. “Yesterday, Miranda got kidnapped. They grabbed her off the street. Pulled her into a car right in front of us.”

  I stared at her. Miranda . . . that gaunt woman with those piercing eyes, gone. . . .

  Unbidden, my hand shot up to my cheek, to the place where the bruises appeared on Yolanda’s. “So that’s where . . .”

  Yolanda nodded. “I tried to fight them off.”

  “That’s horrible,” Ana said. “Did you call the police?”

  Lisyani laughed, a short, bitter sound. But it was Yolanda who replied. “They were government. They didn’t have uniforms or anything, but I recognized the guy in charge. He’s MININT.”

  I took a careful breath. Even I knew about the notorious Ministry of the Interior. It had featured in some of Mom’s bogey stories growing up.

  So that’s why Yolanda had been so jumpy on the street. That’s why she’d worn that big hat. She was hiding from Castro’s secret police. Perhaps taking the two of us along had been a disguise too.

  I suddenly felt guilty for suspecting Benny.

  “Was it the blog?” I asked.

  “Did she post something big?” Ana asked. “Something counterrevolutionary?”

  Lisyani snorted. “Counterrevolutionary. Right. Miranda used to write about gay rights and no one cared, no big deal, not with Mariela Castro fighting the same fight. Recently she started covering living conditions in Havana. The state of our hospitals. The collapsing buildings all across town. Her last post was about how she spent two weeks trying to buy a new sink for her apartment. If complaining about that is counterrevolutionary, you’d better lock the whole country up.”

  “She’s not a household name like Yoani Sánchez,” Yolanda said. “That would have given her some protection at least. But she hadn’t had the time to build a following yet. Miranda Galvez means nothing to most Cubans. She can disappear and no one will care.”

  Ana started to say something, stopped, pressed her lips together. At last she said, “That’s horrible. But what can we do?”

  “When do you leave?” Lisyani asked.

  “That’s the problem,” Yolanda said. “Not for another month.”

  Lisyani shook her head. “That’s too long.”

  “Come on.” Ana leaned forward, intent. “What do you want from us?”

  I could pretend I was as eager as she, but the truth was, I was shaking in my pants—literally. There were little shivers running up and down my body, as if I were out in the arctic cold instead of enveloped by the heat of a Caribbean morning.

  “We need to get this out of the country.” Lisyani dug about in her pocket, took out a little silvery USB stick. “It’s a video I took of the kidnapping. The world needs to know Miranda was kidnapped by her own government. But it can’t wait a month.”

  “Oh,” Ana said.

  I stared at that flash drive, my mouth dry.

  “I thought maybe . . . ,” Yolanda said. “I mean, I don’t have any other yuma friends in town right now.”

  Lisyani bit her lip. “We might have to take a risk, approach someone—”

  “I can do it,” I said.

  They all stared at me.

  My legs were fighting to do the polka against my will.

  “You don’t understand,” Lisyani said. “Who knows what will happen with Miranda in a month.”

  “I’ll do it today,” I said. “I’ll upload it from my laptop.”

  “Olvídalo,” Yolanda said. “The government watches everything you do online.”

  “You’re forgetting who you’re talking to,” I said. “I’m Rick Gutiérrez.”

  Lisyani and Yolanda looked at me blankly.

  “The Cat King of Havana?” Ana suggested.

  I grinned. “Exactly. This is a challenge worthy of my talents.”

  “You mustn’t do anything that could get you caught,” Yolanda said.

  “I don’t think Cat Kings get diplomatic immunity,” Ana said.

  “But is this the right thing to do?” I asked her.

  Ana considered for a long while. At last she nodded, a curt motion. And I saw that she believed I could pull it off.

  That was almost enough to calm my chattering teeth.

  Almost.

  In a spy movie, a storm might have rolled in over Havana that afternoon. I might have taped my laptop to my body and put on a black trench coat over it. Ana might have said good-bye to me at the door, whispered “be careful” and given me a soft, ever so brief kiss on the lips. It might have left me with the aftertaste of peaches, that kiss.

  I might have stridden down the cloud-darkened Havana streets, fighting my way against the gusts of the storm. A car might have backfired and made me jump. I might have watched every doorway for the shadow of a man and the glint of a gun. The mournful cry of a dog in the distance might have filled my soul with an existential longing for that day, long in the future, when I could lay down the heavy burden placed on my
shoulders and come in from the cold.

  It seemed, however, that we didn’t live in a spy movie. We got delayed at the apartment because Juanita had fried up some banana chips—“You’re not running off again without a proper lunch in your belly.” Ana insisted she’d come along—“to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.” Yolanda had me put on khaki shorts and a backpack, and draped her prized DSLR camera around my neck—“so you look as yuma as possible.”

  So attired we descended onto the mean streets of Havana. The trip to the Hotel Parque Central—the closest place with Wi-Fi—featured some fifteen offers of taxis, cigars, and restaurants. Every time I started to worry about the video file sitting on my hard drive, another cheerful, “Hi, friends, friends, where are you from? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” reminded me we looked a lot more like cash cows than secret operatives. At the corner of Neptuno and Galiano we passed a pair of cops, but they looked past us, smoking and chatting idly.

  “It makes Havana look different, doesn’t it,” Ana said. “Knowing the things that go on.”

  “My mom said it was like this,” I said. “She said you’re always afraid, even if only a little. You can’t quite trust anyone, not all the way. It was just words to me back then.”

  “In a way, I’m relieved it was those guys who hurt Yolanda,” Ana said. “I know it sounds bad, but if it had been—”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  There was a difference between getting attacked by an oppressive government and getting attacked by someone you loved.

  Back at the apartment, we’d watched Lisyani’s video in Ana’s room with the door closed, just us three. The clip was shaky handheld footage. It showed three burly men wrestling with Miranda while Yolanda beat at them with her fists. Yolanda’s face never showed clearly in the grainy video, but I recognized her stocky form. At last they shoved her to the ground and wrestled her friend into a Lada. The car sped off. Yolanda ran after it for a few futile steps, then slowed to a halt.

  “I’d never felt so helpless,” Yolanda had said to us. “One moment Miranda was right there, and then they took her, and I couldn’t do a thing. It was like those guys didn’t notice I was there. I don’t think they even cared who I was. I mean, there’s no way they did, or there’d be trouble by now, for Juanita and for me.”

  The Hotel Parque Central was a posh, recently renovated place. There was a spacious lobby inside, an open courtyard under a pyramid-shaped glass roof. It featured a long, well-appointed bar and restaurant; elsewhere in the lobby palm trees overlooked scattered tables. Everything looked new and clean and expensive, from the classical white columns rounding the courtyard to the wicker armchairs and the tiled marble floor.

  The air here rang with foreign tongues. Every Cuban face belonged to someone in an employee’s uniform. It made me wonder what it must feel like, living someplace like Lisyani’s apartment and working here—serving yumas who treated this like nothing extraordinary.

  We climbed to a second floor section that overlooked the lobby and found a comfortable couch. Nobody was close enough to eavesdrop or look over my shoulder. Ana went to buy a Wi-Fi card—these guys charged a princely five CUC an hour for dial-up speeds. I fired up my laptop and prepared the file.

  I’d compressed the video so the one minute of footage only occupied a few megabytes. I’d written up a text document with instructions for publishing the video. Then I’d encrypted both files with Serpent-Twofish-AES, a jumbo pack that even the NSA should take a while to crack.

  You might wonder—how do I know all this stuff about encryption? If so, you’ve never faced the wrath of a cat fancier. Calling a cat flop-eared shouldn’t be a capital offense, should it? Didn’t stop love_my_leo_73 from sending me death threats. That’s when I looked into securing my data. I didn’t want no crazy showing up at my door with foot-long grooming shears and a Cheshire grin.

  Which is to say, encrypting the video wasn’t a problem. But I needed to send the file to someone who could open it and publish it. Someone who would know the password without me having to tell them.

  I explained this quietly to Ana while I got online.

  “Do you know someone you can trust?” she asked.

  “I know Lettuce Igorov,” I said.

  I’d texted him before we left for the hotel, told him to get to a computer. Now I logged into Gmail and messaged him. Hey, dude.

  Five seconds later, there came the response. Riiiick!!! Wazzupp???

  I blinked to clear my stinging eyes—my body’s defense mechanism against a message like that. Oh, the usual. Sun, sand, and girls, you know.

  It’s more like Xbox, chicken wings, and vaseline over here.

  Ana says hi, I wrote. Because, you know, she’s here. Next to me.

  Ana poked me in the ribs.

  It’s strictly for medicinal purposes, Lettuce wrote.

  What’s for medicinal purposes?

  Hey, did I tell you about the BlueNuts? We’re going on tour.

  Ana says she doesn’t want to hear about your blue nuts.

  This time Ana punched me in the ribs. While I was wheezing, she took over the keyboard. Ana here. Tell me all about your nuts.

  Ask Rick, Lettuce replied. He knows. He’s the captain of my fan club.

  I’ll merge it with the cat site, I wrote. You get a built-in audience, but you’ll need to adjust your style. A lot more meowing.

  You can give me voice lessons, Lettuce said.

  At which point I figured any government spook who had managed to get past Gmail’s encryption would decide to stop wasting his time.

  I looked up from the laptop. No one was watching us. A hotel security guy stood at the railing overlooking the courtyard, some thirty feet away. Everything seemed quiet.

  My stomach gave a lurch.

  Hey, listen, I typed, we need a favor.

  What kind?

  It’s a surprise for someone. Which was, in a way, true. Like that time we organized a birthday party for Rob Kenna and invited all those cheerleaders, remember?

  A long pause. Sure.

  Good. He didn’t ask what the hell I was talking about—so he must be getting it. I’ll email you a self-extracting archive with instructions. You’ll need a password to open it.

  Okay.

  The password is Rob Kenna’s special name.

  What? After a moment, Oh. All right.

  “Who’s Rob Kenna?” Ana asked. “And what’s his special name?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” I looked around meaningfully.

  Ana nodded.

  In truth, it wasn’t just that I didn’t want to risk being overheard. It was that some levels of profanity aren’t fit for conversation with a girl you like—or fit for print either. Rob Kenna’s special name involves poodles, pigs, and the creative use of human anatomy. Lettuce and I knew the name well because in tenth grade we’d spent a month playing a game called Name the Kenna. I’d won by a landslide.

  I sent Lettuce the file. The lazy connection struggled with it, the progress indicator crawling along. But then it was done.

  Got it, came Lettuce’s reply. Five minutes later, Dude.

  Yeah, I wrote.

  No, dude.

  I know, I know, I wrote. It’s a big favor.

  No, man, this is, like, an honor, Lettuce wrote. Leave it to me.

  At which point Ana tugged at my elbow. A large man was coming toward us. He wore the dark suit of hotel security.

  My heart raced. I minimized the chat window, fired up Facebook.

  The man stopped at the foot of our couch. He was beefy and light-skinned, and wore a professional-looking, empty smile. “Good afternoon,” he said in English.

  “Hi,” we said, both of us stupidly cheerful.

  The man leaned toward us. His smile faded. His eyes shot from side to side, scanning the room.

  Ana’s hand found mine, squeezed it tight.

  “You want marijuana? I can get you some. Cheap, cheap, okay?”

  I sagged back o
n the seat. Sighed. Ana let loose a little laugh.

  The man frowned.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I mean, we’re not in the mood.”

  Ana nodded. “Thank you for the offer.”

  “I have cigars,” the man said hopefully. Then, looking at me, “Chicas?”

  “No.”

  The man shrugged. Turned. Sauntered off.

  “What a fancy place,” Ana muttered.

  I opened the chat window. There was a message from Lettuce waiting. Working on it now, it said—nothing more.

  I deleted the video from my hard drive and overwrote it with random data to keep anyone from recovering it. Then we walked home, taking the scenic route. We strolled down leafy Prado and stopped to admire street art, two tourists out sightseeing.

  “Do you think it will work?” Ana asked.

  I shrugged. I’d told Lettuce to upload the video to YouTube from an anonymous account, using Tor to cover his tracks, and then to post the link to every major Cuba-related blog. “It’s the internet. One day it’s all truth and justice. The next some dude posts a GIF of bacon taped to a cat, and, well, forget about it.”

  “Your competition?” Ana asked.

  “I launched a cat-with-food campaign after that post went big. I made a bundle.” I grinned. “You should leverage your competition, not fight it.”

  “You know, Rick, I used to think you were this hopeless nerd.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, I don’t think you’re hopeless,” Ana said.

  That might have been a tinge of admiration in her voice.

  When we got home, Yosvany pulled me into our room and shut the door. He looked tired but charged up, like he’d been running around doing something exciting.

  “So?” he asked. “Are you ready for the big night?”

  I had to think for a bit before I understood. It had been a long day.

  When I did understand, there was no doubt. Not after what Ana had said to me earlier.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  A hopeless nerd would have chickened out. I wasn’t that, not anymore.