“Looks can be deceptive,” said Alo. He loosened the neck of the drawstring bag and took out a purple thousand-dollar plaque. “There are nineteen more like this one in the bag. You take this to the cash desk at the Montmartre, and they’ll give you your money. Simple as that, my kraut friend.”
The neoclassical Montmartre on P Street and Twenty-third was just a short walk from the National. Formerly a dog track, it occupied a whole block and was the only casino in Havana open twenty-four hours a day. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and the Montmartre was already doing a brisk business. At that early hour, most of the gamblers were Chinese. But they usually are, at any hour of the day. And they couldn’t have looked less interested in the evening’s big
For me, on the other hand, Europe already seemed a little nearer and more attractive as I walked away from the cash window with forty pictures of President William McKinley. And the only reason I hadn’t turned Lansky’s offer of a full-time job down flat was that I hardly wanted to tell him I was leaving the country. That might have made him suspicious. Instead I was hoping to deposit my money with the rest of what I’d saved in the Royal Bank of Canada and then, armed with my new credentials, leave Cuba as soon as possible.
I felt a spring in my step as I went back through the gates of the National Hotel to get the car I was planning to give Yara as my leaving-her present. I hadn’t felt quite so optimistic about my prospects since being reunited with my late wife Kirsten in Vienna, during September of 1947. So optimistic that I felt I might even go see Captain Sanchez and discover if there wasn’t something I could do for Noreen Eisner and Alfredo Lopez after all.
At the end of the day, optimism is nothing more than a naive and i ll-informed hope.
THE CAPITOLIO WAS BUILT in the style of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., by the dictator Machado, but it was too big for an island the size of Cuba. It would have been too big for an island the size of Australia. Inside the rotunda was a seventeen-meter-high statue of Jupiter, which looked a lot like an Academy Award, and certainly most of the tourists who visited the Capitolio seemed to think it was a good picture. Now that I was planning to leave Cuba I was thinking I might have to take a few photographs of my own. So that I could remind myself of what I was missing when I was living in Bonn and going to bed at nine o’clock at night. What else is there to do in Bonn at nine o’clock at night? If Beethoven had lived in Havana-especially if he’d lived around the corner from the Casa Marina-it’s almost certain he’d have been lucky to write just one string quartet, let alone sixteen of them. But you could live all your life in Bonn and not even notice that you were deaf.
The police station on Zulueta was a few minutes’ walk from the Capitolio, but I didn’t mind the walk. Only a few months before, outside the police station in Vedado, a Havana University professor had been killed by a car bomb when rebels had mistaken his 1952 black Hudson for an identical model driven by the deputy head of the Cuban Bureau of Investigations. Ever since, I had been careful never to leave my Chevrolet Styleline outside a police station.
The station itself was an old colonial building with a peeling white stucco facade and louvered green shutters on the windows. A Cuban flag hung limply over the square portico like a brightly decorated beach towel that had fallen from one of the upper-floor windows. On the outside, the drains didn’t smell so good. On the inside, you barely noticed it as long as you didn’t breathe in.
Sanchez was on the second floor, in an office overlooking a small park. There was a flag on a pole in the corner, and on the wall, a picture of Batista facing a cabinet full of rifles in case the parade-ground patriotism of the flag and the picture didn’t pay off. There was a small, cheap wooden desk and a lot of space around it if you had a tapeworm. The walls and ceiling were dust-bowl beige, and the brown linoleum on the warped floor resembled the shell of a dead tortoise. An expensive rosewood humidor that belonged on a presidential sideboard sat on the desk like a Faberge egg in a plastic picnic set.
“You know, it was quite a stroke of luck, me finding that drawing,” said Sanchez.
“There’s an element of luck in most police work.”
“Not to mention your murderer being dead already.”
“Any objections?”
“How could there be? You solve the case and at the same time you take the loose ends and make a bow. Now, that’s what I call detective work. Yes indeed, I can see why Lansky thought you were the man for the case. A real Nero Wolfe.”
“You say all that like you think I chalked him up for it, like a tailor.”
“Now you’re being cruel. I’ve never been to a tailor in my life. Not on my salary. I own a nice linen guayabera, and that’s about it. For anything more formal I usually wear my best uniform.”
“Is that the one without the bloodstains?”
“Now you’re confusing me with Lieutenant Quevedo.”
“I’m glad you mentioned him, Captain.”
Sanchez shook his head. “Such a thing is not possible. No one with ears is ever glad to hear the name of Lieutenant Quevedo.”
“Where might I find him?”
“You do not find Lieutenant Quevedo. Not if you had any sense. He finds you.”
“Surely he can’t be that elusive. I saw him at the funeral, remember?”
“It’s his natural habitat.”
“A tall man. Buzz-cut hair, with a sort of clean-cut face, for a Cuban. What I mean is, there was something vaguely American about his face.”
“It’s as well we only see the faces of men and not their hearts, don’t you think?”
“Anyway, you said that I was working not just for Lansky, but also for Quevedo. And so-”
“Did I say that? Perhaps. How shall we describe someone like Meyer Lansky? The man is as slippery as chopped pineapple. But Quevedo is something else. We have a saying here in the militia: ‘God made us, and we wonder at it, but more especially in the case of Lieutenant Quevedo.’ Mentioning him to you as I did at the funeral, I intended only to make you aware of him as I would perhaps draw your attention to a venomous snake. So that you could avoid him.”
“Your warning is noted.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
“But I’d still like to speak to him.”
“About what, I wonder.” He shrugged and, ignoring the expensive humidor, lit a cigarette.
“That’s my business.”
“In point of fact, no, it’s not.” Sanchez smiled. “Certainly it is the business of Senor Lopez. Perhaps in the circumstances it is also the business of Senora Eisner. But your business, Senor Hausner? No, I don’t think so.”
“Now it’s you who looks like chopped pineapple, Captain.”
“Perhaps that’s only to be expected. You see, I graduated from law school in September 1950. Two of my contemporaries at university were Fidel Castro Ruz and Alfredo Lopez. Unlike Fidel, Alfredo and I were politically illiterate. In those days the university was closely tied to the government of Grau San Martin, and I was convinced that I might help to effect democratic change in our police force by becoming a policeman myself. Of course, Fidel thought differently. But after Batista’s coup in March 1952, I decided I was probably wasting my time and resolved to be less strenuous in my defense of the regime and its institutions. I would try to be a good policeman only and not an instrument of dictatorship. Does that make sense,
“Strangely enough, it does. To me, anyway.”
“Of course, this isn’t as easy as it might sound.”
“I know that, too.”
“I have had to make compromises with myself on more than one occasion. I have even thought of leaving the militia. But it was Alfredo who persuaded me that perhaps I might do more good by remaining a policeman.”
I nodded.
“It was I,” he continued, “who informed Noreen Eisner that Alfredo had been arrested and by whom. She asked me what was to be done, and I told her I could think of nothing. But, as I’m sure you know, she is not a woman who gives up easily, and, aware that you and she were old friends, I suggested that she ask you to help her.”
“Me? Why on earth would you say that?”
“The suggestion was not entirely serious. I was exasperated with her, it’s true. I must confess I was also exasperated with you. Exasperated and, yes, a little jealous of you, too.”
“Jealous? Of me? Why on earth should you be jealous of me?”
Captain Sanchez shifted on his chair and smiled sheepishly.
“A number of reasons,” he said. “The way you solved this case. The faith that Meyer Lansky seems to have in your abilities. The nice apartment on Malecon. Your car. Your money. Let’s not forget that. Yes, I freely admit it, I was jealous of you. But I am not so very jealous that I would let you do this thing that you are thinking of. Because I must also freely admit that I like you, Hausner. And I couldn’t in all conscience allow you to put your head into the lion’s mouth.” He shook his head. “I told her I was not serious about this suggestion, but evidently she did not believe me and spoke to you herself.”
“Maybe I’ve put my head in a lion’s mouth before,” I said.
“Maybe. But this isn’t the same lion. All lions are different.”
“We’re friends, right?”
“Yes. I think so. But Fidel used to say you shouldn’t trust someone merely because he is a friend. It’s good advice. You should remember that.”
I nodded. “Oh, sure. And believe me, I know. Looking out for number one is usually what I do best. I’m an expert in survival. But from time to time I get this stupid urge to do a good turn for someone. Someone like your friend Alfredo Lopez. It’s been a while since I did anything as selfless as something like that.”
“I see. At least I begin to think I do. You think that by helping him you’ll be helping her. Is that it?”
“Something like that. Perhaps.”
“And what do you think you can tell a man like Quevedo that might persuade him to release Lopez?”
“That’s between me and him and what I rather quaintly used to call my conscience.”
Sanchez sighed. “I did not take you for a romantic. But that is what you are, I think.”
“You forgot the word ‘fool,’ didn’t you? But it’s more what the French call ‘existential’ than that. After all these years I still haven’t quite admitted my own insignificance. I still believe what I do
