to the inevitable.
Slater and Wilson departed in their underwear with a pile of uniforms on Wilson’s arm. When we were alone, I asked Erikson a question that had been bothering me. “What’s Wilson telling these people to account for the Cuban uniforms and American dollars?”
“We’re supposed to be a group infiltrating from Miami. Chico says everyone in the house is anti-Castro because they have to live underground since his decree outlawing brothels. Most have also had a relative chewed up in the People’s Republic machinery.”
He crawled into a bunk and I followed suit.
I flaked out almost before I had eased stiff, sore muscles into a semicomfortable position.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The sound of voices woke me.
When I opened my eyes, I could see daylight around the edges of the drawn curtains. Erikson was seated on his cot in his underwear, drinking coffee. On the next cot sat a girl with high-cheekboned, Indian features and long black hair that streamed down her back. She wore the single garment that seemed to be the uniform of the establishment.
Chico Wilson came bounding into the room, his handsome face flushed. “There you are, Melia!” he exclaimed. He took the girl by the arm. “Come on. I’ve been looking for you.”
I thought the girl hesitated for a second, but she rose and accompanied him. “I will send coffee,” she said in English to me.
“Where did she learn the language?” I asked Erikson as the pair disappeared down the corridor.
“In convent school. Melia was working as an airline receptionist until her father joined one of the anti-Castro factions and got caught at it. She had an aunt who got caught in the wringer, too. Castro’s militarists took over the old city prison at Twenty-ninth and C streets, just eight blocks from here. The aunt had an apartment a block from the prison in which one window overlooked part of the outside prison yard where the drum-head court martials took place. Melia says that oftentimes her aunt’s reports were all the knowledge they had of what had happened to some of their people.”
Erikson began to dress. For the first time I noticed that our freshly laundered uniforms were spread out on a cot. “Then the aunt got caught at it, and Castro has been systematically hunting down all branches of the girl’s family ever since. This is the only place in Cuba where she’d be safe.”
“Why here?”
“The men running this brothel pay off a couple of top Castroites. The military rank-and-file are told to close their eyes. It’s one of the few places in Havana where everyone doesn’t have to show papers to military types a dozen times a day.” He looked at me. “Get dressed and round up the others. Your turn at bat is coming up now.”
I found Slater three rooms down the hall. He was seated on a chair, naked. His hirsute bulk overflowed it. His glazed eyes were on the bed where three nude girls were entangled in a fleshy mass. Their average age appeared to be about fifteen. Slater didn’t hear me come in. I tapped him on the shoulder. “Time for business,” I told him.
He removed his gaze from the bed. “Yeah,” he agreed. He rose and looked for his underwear. He reached out and gave a fatherly pat to a blocky-looking bare behind as it rose momentarily above the forest of entwined limbs. “How d’you like these squirmers?”
“Very acrobatic,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Wilson and Ramirez were arguing beside a bed on which Melia was sprawled on her back. The girl’s dark eyes expressed such sheer malevolence that I took a second look at her. Wilson flung away angrily from the powerful-looking Cuban. “He wants more money, goddamn him,” he exclaimed. “He knows I go for her.”
“Council of war,” I said. “Right now.”
Wilson accompanied us reluctantly. We sat down in close order on the cots. “Where’s the money, Slater?” Erikson asked.
“In the National Museum,” Slater said, as though he had been expecting the question. “In the basement packed in jars of earth. There was a Pan American celebration once in which Spanish-speakin’ countries contributed soil from their own land to the museum. The jars used to be on display in the main hall of the museum, but even before my time in Havana they’d been moved out of the limelight into the basement. Nobody’s thought about ‘em for years. That’s where we buried the cash.”
“The National Museum,” Erikson said thoughtfully. He looked at me. “As bad as a bank?”
“It could be. I’ll have to look it over.”
“How far away is it?” Erikson asked Wilson.
“Fifteen, eighteen blocks. Walkin’ distance. Maybe tomorrow we can—”
“This afternoon,” Erikson cut him off. “If Drake says he can handle it, we’ll go for it tonight.”
“What the hell’s the rush?” Wilson protested.
“Because I say there’s a rush,” Erikson bit off. “If we—”
He stopped as Melia entered the room carrying a tray. On it were two steaming tureens, a stack of plastic bowls, and a few plastic spoons. The girl swiftly ladled the contents of the tureens into the bowls. One contained a creamed rice with tiny bits of meat, the other a thick bean soup, fiery against the palate. Melia sat down with us, closest to Erikson. Wilson glared at her.
“What about the National Museum, Melia?” Erikson asked her.
“You are hardly in a position to be
“Make arrangements with our landlords for you and Drake to go out for a couple of hours,” Erikson directed Wilson when Melia departed with the dirty dishes.
I was ready when Wilson returned. We negotiated the two sets of steel-plated doors and stepped out onto the street. Wilson set a brisk pace. His mood seemed a sullen one. The few automobiles in sight looked like a U.S. antique car rally. The majority of the militarized vehicles seemed only slightly better preserved. Soldiers were everywhere, strolling idly. Most wore sidearms.
“There you are,” Wilson said at the end of a twenty-minute walk. I looked across the street. We had moved out of the area of jammed-together apartments. The five- or six-story sandstone building covered a whole block. The lawn had been allowed to turn brown.
We circled the block. The ground-floor windows had heavy grills and window bars. On the back side, on the street with the least traffic, a row of tamarind trees that reached almost to the second floor ran the length of the building.
We continued around the building to the front entrance. We met no one on the broad entrance walk, which had a marble mosaic of the Cuban seal in its center. Inside the front door there was a heavy grill in a track that enabled it to be moved in front of the entrance after closing hours. There were only two guards visible, both elderly men. It figured when I thought about it. Castro would have the young ones in the fields working as
Only a middle-aged man and woman were looking at the pictures on the ground floor. I sent Wilson to talk to the guards while I looked at the entrance more closely. I cheered up a little when I saw that the alarm system was of U.S. make. I cheered up a lot when I noticed the badly peeling window foil and corroded elements, which had obviously made the alarm system inoperative. Lack of maintenance had had no effect on the grills, unfortunately.
“The basement is off limits,” Wilson reported when he left the guards. “There’s only two of ‘em on duty nights, too.”
That was accommodating of the People’s Republic. I moved in for a closer look at the locks on the inside of the barred windows, then backed away. “I’ve seen enough,” I said.
Wilson looked surprised. Out on the street we made another circuit of the building while I took a second look at the rear of it. Evidences of neglect were everywhere. Two cornices looked ready to crumble. “All right,” I said at
