The only time I had seen him that close. Of course I was thrilled. My father got up and approached his bodyguards. They let him through.
Then I saw him whisper into Fidel's ear. A few moments later he brought the president to our table. I stood and Fidel looked me in the eye.
Then, very emotionally, he embraced me. ' is for young people like you that we made the revolution,' he said. As his arms grasped me and his beard grazed my cheek, I felt as if some of his strength, his incredible power, was flowing directly from him to me. It was a fine moment-standing there before my family, on the brink of manhood, embraced by our leader, this man who had single-handedly recreated Cuba, delivering us from oppression and corruption. Even now, twelve years later, if I close my eyes I can feel the pressure of his hands."
Luis paused. He removed his glasses. His large, brown liquid eyes seemed even sadder than before.
"But you see, and I must say this very carefully, Frank when I open my eyes I can no longer feel that strength. When I open my eyes now I see the truth, which is that that man, who has done so many remarkable things for our country and whose every word so moved me when I was young, has held on to power far too long. The regimes in Eastern Europe have fallen like matchsticks, but he tells us we must die before we allow the slightest change in ours. If there is no fuel for our tractors, so be it, he tells us-we shall plow our fields with oxen. And if there is no food for us to eat, so be it, he tells us-we shall suffer hunger for the glory of our revolution."
Luis shook his head.
"The world has passed him by, but he does not know it because he believes he is like a god. I think he is mentally disturbed, Frank, and that he is turning this poor, tired country into an asylum to harbor his madness… and the madness of his failed dreams." It was an eloquent, anguished, heartfelt speech. Janek was moved b it, and, he could see, Luis felt better for y having made it. Janek also knew that by sharing his perception of Fidel, Luis had given him a gift. He has given me his trust.
After lunch they drove quietly to a large, drab, gray building-headquarters of the Havana Police. It was an ominous, labyrinthine place of echoing footsteps-long corridors lined by bureaus with frosted-glass doors. Yet the faces of the people who roamed its halls reminded Janek of the faces in the halls of any precinct house in New York-anguished victims, frightened witnesses, worried d relatives, bantering cops. The buzz was the same and the smell was similar: stale coffee, stale cigarette smoke, the bad air that is generated wherever there is a gathering of people concerned with crime and punishment. It was, he recognized, the universal smell of law enforcement, no different in Havana than in New York.
They passed through an archway beneath the word HOMICIDIO inscribed in ornate letters-as if homicide were an elegant thing. Past this point the noise dropped off. Luis explained that in Cuba murder was not a common event. Most homicides were committed within families and required little investigation. But still the word had a certain mystique.
"People always feel a chill when they walk in here," he said.
He led Janek to an empty, dusty room with a high ceiling, unwashed windows and mold-stained walls. Here an ancient black Royal typewriter sat upon a bare wooden table. He brought Janek a chair, then left him alone. Janek sat down, pondered for a while, then began to pound out a summary of his interview.
As he typed, the room echoed with shifts and returns, an old squad-room sound he hadn't heard since the introduction of computers. But no matter how hard he hammered the keys, his words were barely imprinted on the paper. When he examined the ribbon he understood why-it was so old, so used, that in many places it was torn all the way through.
When the affidavit and translation were done, Luis dropped Janek in front of his hotel. He would take the documents to Tania for approval, take her before a Cuban judge for the swearing-to ceremony, then return.
Back in his room, Janek took off his clothes and again inspected his body in the mirror. Although there were still a few sore spots, the blue marks had nearly faded.
He lay down on the bed. He didn't want to think about his experience with the Seguridad. He needed to think about Mendoza. is it possible, he asked himself, that Timmy faked the Metaxas letter and pressured Pefla to commit perjury? The thought was so chilling, he put it out of his mind. Then he fell asleep.
At nine that night Luis was back, treasures in hand. The executed documents, sworn to by Tania in the presence of official witnesses, bore a variety of flamboyant signatures, indented seals and one big red wax seal securing a piece of multicolored ribbon to the paper.
"These are beauties!" Janek said. He embraced Luis. "Thank you.
You've really saved my ass!"
Since neither one was hungry, they decided to take a walk. Luis led the way from the boisterous atmosphere of La Rampa to a well-kept area of suburban blocks nearby. Here old-fashioned lamps lit silent shady streets and the air was perfumed with the aroma of night-blooming shrubs.
They talked about police work-what they liked about it and what they didn't, the boredom and the pleasures of it, the exhilaration that always came when an investigation began to break open a case. They talked about detectives who solved crimes by the numbers, and others, like themselves, who worked more by hunch and touch.
"I usually go in the way you go into a labyrinth," Janek said, "trying to feel my way around. Sometimes I'm clumsy. I run into the walls. Other times I get completely lost.
In the end, if I manage to get to the center of the thin it's because on some level or other I felt it. Know what I mean?"
Luis nodded. "A sixth sense about people, what they are like, what they are likely to do."
"Right," Janek said. "So, let's talk about that. What did you feel about Tania?"
"My professional opinion?"
Janek shook his head. "Your gut reaction." Luis paused. "I felt she was a very strong woman."
"But maybe not so strong as she wanted you to believe."
"Perhaps not."
"So, what do your instincts tell you about her, Luis? Did she lie to me?
Did she tell me everything?"
Luis thought again before he answered. A parrot, his cage secured to the railing of a porch, screeched shrilly as they passed.
"She is safe here, the case is old, so she has nothing to gain by lying.
Still, she is human. She could be holding something back or leaving something out."
"Why?"
"Perhaps to make herself look better in our eyes."
"Or in her own. That's something I've learned about stories, Luis.
People have to live with themselves, so they interpret what they've done in ways that make them feel good."
Luis nodded.
"Thing is," Janek continued, "if Tania set up the final date with Metaxas, she'd have to bear some responsibility for what he did. She doesn't want to bear any responsibility for it. That may be why she ran-"
"Do you think she lied about that?" A dog howled in the distance.
"I'm not sure it makes much difference. She says she screamed a lot when she saw Mrs. Mendoza hanging in the studio. That's something we didn't know. We didn't know she'd gone over there that night. But I'm certain she's telling the truth."
"How can you be?"
"A neighbor called our emergency number, nine-one-one, to report screams just after seven o'clock. That's when Tania says she arrived to clean the place up. All these years we've assumed that the neighbor heard death's screams, something we couldn't reconcile with the fact that our people found her gagged."
Luis spread his arms. "Well, there you are-Tania was truthful. "
"About that, yeah. But I still have a problem with Metaxas. He was slow-witted, known for being sweet and well mannered, except of course when in the ring. Suppose Tania did set up the date with Metaxas, like he wrote in his note. Does that mean the note couldn't have been faked or forged?" Janek shook his head. "There're too many other things that don't fit-like why would Mendoza risk a face-to-face meeti
ng with a hired killer and why would sweet Gus use a woman's body as a punching bag? If he was capable of that, why would he feel remorse about it afterwards? There are four things that tie Metaxas to the murder: his suicide; his note; the five-thousand-dollar money order to his mother;
Peiia's testimony. All four could have been manipulated. It would have been difficult, but it could have been done. What Tania has to say has little bearing on that… if she lied a little or left a few things out. But suppose Tania told us a very big lie." He glanced at Luis.
"Suppose she brokered the whole deal for Mendoza, not just the date but the killing instructions and the murder fee, too. Suppose she hired Pefia, the only other likely hit man, then ran away with enough money so she could buy a plane ticket here and set herself up when she arrived.
Did Jake Mendoza pay her off Was part of the deal that she run down here to divert attention? That script might work." He paused.
"It certainly isn't impossible."
"But only if she told a very big lie," Luis added.
"Right… " Janek paused. "For me the issue isn't whether Mendoza arranged the killing of his wife. I'm pretty sure he did. The issue is whether my old friend, Timmy Sheehan, decided that if he couldn't legally nail Mendoza, he'd fake up a chain of evidence using sweet, dumb Gus Metaxas as his fall guy. That, Luis, is such a horrifying possibility, it makes me sick to think about it."
"I understand. But what's the answer? Do you think Tania was telling a big lie or not?"
"I don't think she was, but I can't be sure."
As they approached La Rampa and the hotel, Janek explained how he was going to proceed.
"Even with my tapes and documents, they'll ask me about Tania's demeanor. That'll put me in a position where I can skew what she said."
"Skew?"
"Slant it. Put a spin on it."
Luis looked worried. "How will you skew it, Frank?" "I'll act like I believe everything she told me. I'll put her statement out, then sit back and watch what people do."
"YOU believe someone will do something and give himself away?"
"I hope so. If someone gets provoked, it might answer a lot of old questions."
At the Habana Libre they stood in silence by the door. Janek turned to Luis. "You've helped me so much. Is there some way I can repay you?
Anything I can send you from the States?"
Luis shook his head. "Perhaps one day I will come see you in New York."
Janek nodded. The pride of the man continued to impress him. "Have you been to America?" Luis said that he had not, but that he had relatives there among the exiles, as did his wife.
"Most Cuban families do. In that way the revolution was expensive for us-it split us up. Now we wonder what will happen if things change here and our exiles come home.
Will they try to dismantle our medical and educational systems, demand their old property back? It is better for us not to think about such things, better to simply go on as we have for thirty years. And if we have no paper or fuel and barely enough to eat-well, then, at least we know we are defending our revolution. That, Frank, is the beauty in our pain, the luxury of it. Do you understand?"
Janek understood. He also understood what Luis was really telling him-that because he did not share this total belief, the suffering he and his family endured on account of the shortages was neither beautiful nor luxurious, it was simply pain.
They embraced a final time, then Luis got into his car. Janek came around to the driver's window.
"Good luck," he said.
He slept well. In the morning, he took a dollars-only taxi to the airport. There were few cars, lots of bicycles, the usual throngs waiting glumly before the bus shelters. He passed a group of joggers and then a convoy of military trucks. On the outskirts he was struck by the way the early morning light cut through the sugarcane that lined the road and painted the worn asphalt splendidly with bars.
At the airport, when he passed through immigration, a supervisor stepped in to examine his documents.
"Ah, the labor organizer!" the supervisor said. Then he laughed.
"Good news, senora. Due to unforeseen circumstances this morning's flight for Mexico City will depart on time." Half an hour later, as his plane soared upward, Janek stared down at Cuba glittering below. It seemed to him that the country looked quite beautiful from the sky-a long, thin, verdant island set in an emerald sea. In his five days there he had experienced some of the worst moments of his life, had been blindfolded, stripped, beaten and humiliated. He knew he would never return.
Gelsey's Special He always called it "playtime" when he coaxed her to join him alone down in the maze. He was always tender with her there.
She adored their games, and, when his caresses became too ardent, she would simply turn away, face the mirrors, then watch her dream-sister and the Leering Man perform inside the glass… Gelsey was evoking him again, the Leering Man in the mirrors, the man she had drawn, painted and sculpted so many times. She thought she knew who he was and what he meant to her and why she felt compelled to re-create him. What she did not understand was why she could never seem to get him right.
But this morning was different. She had awakened with a new idea, had been working on it since dawn. Now, standing back from her easel, seeing the way the fragmented mirror portrait was taking shape, she felt exhilarated by the process. Perhaps this time I'm really on to something, she thought.
She used the skylit end of the loft as her studio. The space had been her father's workshop; it was here that he had constructed the many parts which, when joined, had become the fabulous mirror maze below.
Here, amid his old benches and tools, she kept her easels, paints, brushes and canvas, her supplies of pastels, charcoal, paper, plywood, mirrored glass and clay. She loved the fresh, clean smell of unused art materials and the feel of them in her hands. She remembered something an old art teacher had once said in class: "Every bucket of clay has the potential to become a work of art. In every fresh tube of paint there is a masterpiece waiting to be released."
She had started that morning to paint the outline of Leering Man onto an irregular slab of mirror. Then she had covered this mirror with a towel and smashed it carefully with a mallet. Now she was reassembling the shards onto a plywood board coated with glue. But rather than fitting the pieces back together the way they'd been, she was rearranging them into a more expressive order.
She knew what she was doing: She was putting Leering Man through her own personal "Fragmentation Serpent," then packing her image of him with her rage.
When she was finished, a viewer would look at the portrait and, confronted by bits of himself reflected in the shards, be caught in the web of her art.
At noon she paused briefly to eat an apple, then went back to work, gluing the shards on faster, with greater concentration, thinking that if she applied herself, she might complete the portrait by night.
Just before five, she heard a roll of thunder. She paused, looked outside, saw storm clouds forming in the east. She shrugged and began to put away her tools. A few minutes later sheets of rain began to sweep across Richmond Park. She stopped all work, sat by the window, watched the water spray the glass then run down in rivulets. As she listened to the rain pounding the metal roof, a new compelling need took hold.
Tonight, she knew, she would drive into the city, seek out a mark and take him down.
She did not linger too long in the maze. A few steady gazes at herself standing nude in the endless mirrored galleries, then she returned to the loft to disguise herself and to dress. At eight-thirty, wearing a conservative navy business suit, a classic pearl strand with matching earrings and a well-cut red-haired wig, she was on the rain-streaked highway heading for New York.
Because she had barely eaten that day, she felt gripped by pangs of hunger. But she didn't stop. It makes me feel powerful to feel hungry, she thought. She rarely ate before a foray, preferring to work with an edge, then treat herself afterward to ice cream. Sel
f-discipline followed by satiation, taking down a mark then receiving a reward-the sequence made her feel like a warrior.
She was just emerging from the Holland Tunnel when the notion of infringement struck. The rain was still coming down, though not so forcefully as before. She smiled when she thought of driving to a hotel, working a hotel bar and thus encroaching on Diana's territory. If doing that meant going to war against Diana, then so be it, she would be prepared to fight.
Instinctively she wheeled her car toward lower Manhattan. She would make a hit against the Savoy, the new hotel across from the World Financial Center. She found a parking space near Battery Park City in sight of the twin towers. She checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, wished her mirror-sister luck, then locked her car, opened her umbrella and strolled to the hotel entrance.
There was a convention in progress. Men and women, well lubricated with alcohol, were pressed together conversing loudly in the lobby. They all had red "Hello! I'm badges stuck to their lapels. Gelsey eased her way through the throng, checked her raincoat and umbrella, found the lobby lounge and entered.
No ebullient conventioneers in here; the mood was dour. The customers, nearly all male, sat by themselves in gloomy booths. She sat down, looked around: dim lighting, dark carpeting, chairs and tables finished in black lacquer. A long, curving modernistic bar, with a dark, mottled mirror behind, carried out the Deco-style motif Gelsey had forgotten how mournful a hotel bar could be, so different from the stoked-up gaiety of the neighborhood joints she was used to working. But sitting there brought back memories of her days with Diana, when she was still learning the game. It was the particular lonely qualities of hotel lounges, Diana had taught her, that favored their special work: all those out-of-town businessmen sitting alone after dinner waiting for their fantasy strangers to appear. Someone young, attractive and mysterious who would hold out the promise of an erotic adventure.
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