Fifty Grand

his job when he worked for me,” he says, his eyes narrowing at the half joke, the skin fold under his chin jiggling.

He coughs, clears his throat. “In any case, when your brother asked to travel to Colorado to bury your father, we let him go without making any difficulty. Your brother is a good reporter. When he brought back many documents and gave them to you, we knew you were going to go too. We knew you were going to find the man who killed him and that you were going to exact a child’s revenge.”

“I don’t think-” I begin, but Raul puts his finger to his lips.

In Hemingway’s bedroom the girl is stirring.

Raul appears startled. “Quickly, get up. If she sees you here there will be a holy row. These officers will take you back to your apartment.”

Warily, I get to my feet. “I’m free to go?”

“As a bird.”

I look at the tame parrots walking on the balcony rail. “You clip their wings.”

Raul smiles. “Only the songbirds, Comrade Mercado. You’re not a songbird, are you?”

“No.”

A voice from the bedroom. “Raul!”

“Coming. Just taking care of something!” Raul shouts and leads me outside.

He leans on the black Chrysler and taps me on the shoulder.

“Big changes are coming, Mercado. Sooner than you would think.”

I raise an eyebrow. He points at Casa Hemingway. “All of this will be a luxury. They won’t allow me to sleep anywhere that isn’t reinforced against the Yankee bunker-buster bombs, despite my talk of cultural protections.”

I’m not following him.

He frowns. “You see, that’s why we have to take care of all of the unfinished business now. In a few months I will have bigger fish to fry.”

“Yes,” I say, still confused.

My obtuseness is starting to irritate him. He sighs and changes the subject. “What should we do with you now, Comrade Mercado?” he whispers.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to join the DGI?”

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to go back to my old job.”

“Then go.”

Raul signals the guards to bring the Lada.

“Comrade Castro, can I, may I ask you a question? Two questions?”

Raul looks inside the house. “Quickly. Quickly. Estelle is very un-Cuban in her attitude to infidelity.”

“What do I tell Hector? I mean Captain Ramirez.”

“Tell him the truth. You spent a week in Mexico City. You saw the pyramids, you prayed at the shrine of the Virgin. Your second question?”

“Will I see Paco again?”

Raul looks puzzled, but then he understands. “Paco. Paco? Oh, Francisco. Yes. I picked that name for him. There is an old joke that Hemingway was fond of. Do you wish to hear it? I will tell you: A father in Madrid puts an advertisement in El Liberal: ‘Paco, meet me at Hotel Montana, noon today, all is forgiven-Father.’ The Civil Guard has to come to disperse the crowd of eight hundred Pacos who respond to the ad.”

“His name is not Francisco?”

“No.”

I should be angry but I’m not. I lied to him. He lied to me.

“And I doubt that you will see him again. He lives in Miami.”

Raul offers me a hand.

I shake it.

“Good luck, Officer Mercado. I hope to never see your name in any future report that crosses my desk.”

“You won’t.”

“Now, go.”

The goons show me to the car.

They drive me into town and drop me on the Malecon.

I walk to O’Reilly.

Outside the solar there’s a dead dog on the porch, a border collie. Flies around her eyes. Belonged to the family on the top floor.

Up the stairs.

A note on my apartment door from the landlord. My room has been broken into while I was away. They changed the locks.

I go down to the basement and bang on the landlord’s door. He appears with a baseball bat. I give him an IOU for a five-dollar bill.

Up the four flights. New key in the new lock.

Yeah, broken into, and not by the DGI-they don’t let you know they’ve been. This place has been ransacked. Thugs. The TV gone, my twenty-kilo bag of rice gone, my clothes gone. Poetry books gone.

I sit on the edge of the bed and cry.

Hector was right.

What was it he told me that Pindar said? The gods give us for every good thing two evil ones. Men who are children take this badly but the manly ones bear it, turning the brightness outward.

Yes. Something like that.

I sit there and cry myself out.

The sound of rats. The sea. Clanking camel buses. American radio.

I need a drink. The man down the hall makes moonshine in his bath. I knock on his door and buy a liter bottle for another IOU. I pour a cup. It burns. I go downstairs.

“Use your phone?” I ask the landlord.

I call Ricky. Oh, Ricky, I was so stupid. To think that I could outwit them. To think that I could do anything right.

“You’re alive,” he says.

“Yes.”

“I was so worried.”

“Don’t be.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I think so.”

A pause.

“I believe I’m being followed,” he says in a whisper, as if that will fool the DGI bug.

“No, that’s all over. You won’t see them again,” I assure him.

Another pause while he takes this in.

“You’re alive, big sister.”

“Yes. I’m alive. And that’s something.”

22 A HAIR IN THE GATE

I wasn’t there. Airtight alibi. I was working a case in the Vieja-a dead German tourist, a dead prostitute, a