A Billion Ways to Die (7 page)

Every financial action comes with risk. But the biggest risk was being too static. The cyber bloodhounds who paid attention to these things looked for too much activity or too little. It was best to convey the appearance of normal day-to-day commerce. Whether I’d followed a wise strategy, or success thus far had been a lucky illusion, I still had most of the money I’d accumulated since slipping into a shadow world of my own making.

We were going to need it.

“W
HAT
ARE
you thinking?” Natsumi asked when she opened her eyes and saw me staring at the ceiling.

“Our captors gave us a priceless lesson in asymmetrical conflict.”

“Which is?”

“The more powerful always win. You can’t hide from them forever. We’re tricky and resourceful, but their capabilities are overwhelming. Partly because they can do things we can’t even know and probably never will.”

“That’s bleak.”

“There’s good news. They confirmed that my dead guy status is still intact. For now.”

“Which is why you’re worried?” she asked.

“They have my fingerprints, DNA and crystal clear photos. It’s only dumb luck the fingerprints and DNA have never found their way into anyone’s database. As for the photos, I might think I look a lot different from how I used to look, but not to a computer loaded with facial recognition software.”

“You’re saying they have all the dots, they just haven’t connected them to Arthur Cathcart,” she said.

“And when they do, it’ll lead directly to fraud, embezzlement, extortion, international terrorism and murder.”

“That’s all you’re worried about?”

The open hotel window looked out over the broad beach and light green ocean beyond. Hot, dry, salt-soaked air blew in and mussed up the gauzy curtains. I had come to an agreeable accommodation with warm climates, at odds with a lifetime in cold, cranky places like Connecticut, Boston and Philadelphia. Being aware of any kind of weather—searing sun, mists, winds and willful cloudbursts—was a new thing for me, a person whose attention was once rarely diverted from the printed page, the computer screen or a legal pad covered with equations.

I’d loved that world of the abstract and remote, the feast of facts, oceans of knowledge too vast ever to be entirely known. I hadn’t chosen to leave it; the impetus was a bullet passing through the outer neighborhoods of my brain’s frontal and parietal lobes. Somewhat mangled, I still managed to live, something the neurologists at the time said was incredibly lucky, a word I still had a hard time reconciling with the actual experience.

Unless it was this newfound ability to notice the outdoors. To possess, however fleetingly, a Buddhist’s mindfulness in lieu of a state in which one is merely full of one’s own mind.

But I knew life in the virtual world was no guarantee of survival in the material. And looking over at Natsumi, with the sheet pulled up to just below her eyes and waves of jet black hair spread out across the pillow, I also knew that simple survival was in itself a form of death sentence.

“I want to go back,” I said. “All the way.”

“To Connecticut?”

“To being Arthur. My own name, with my own face and my own passport.”

“What about your girl?”

“With her, too.”

“She was never in that world. She’s only of this one. The fake one.”

“Not a problem. I’ll introduce you around. You and Omni.”

“What you want is impossible,” she said.

“I know.”

“But you’re going to try anyway.”

I sat up so that I could look her full in the face.

“There’s no choice. That’s the lesson. We’ll never be truly safe until we’re truly free.”

“You can’t be both. You know that. They’ll put you away forever,” she said.

“The only way out is through.”

“Uh?”

“Robert Frost. Big with Vietnam vets and recovering addicts.”

“And recovering fugitives?”

“Right.”

T
HE
FIRST
thing I did that morning was e-mail a ninety-nine-year-old man. Raul Preciado-Cotto was professor emeritus of European history at the
Universidad Complutense
in Madrid. His command of twentieth-century history was enhanced by having seen most of it, as an undercover investigator, journalist and intellectual bon vivant. His specialty was Spanish political movements and all things expressed with a Spanish accent.

“I know nothing about Latin American mercenaries,” he wrote back in response to my inquiry. “But I know a person who may.”

I thanked him and promised to provide the vintage French brandy as requisite compensation. He demurred, citing a new regimen of healthy consumption and regular aerobic exercise.

“I’ve been advised you’re never too young to attend to your physical fitness,” he wrote.

In the time it took Natsumi and me to eat breakfast on the narrow balcony above the Atlantic glare, he’d made the connection and written back.

“I am told the person most likely to know the people you seek frequents the
Tocororo Loco
in Hialeah. I am further advised that only gringos with faint regard for personal safety would venture there.
Tenga cuidado
.”

With the rest of the day to spend before heading for the mercenary saloon, I started up the computer and began charting out the next digital passage. Natsumi had other plans.

“You’re wearing a bikini,” I said.

“We’re in Miami. What else should I wear?”

“Does this mean you’re going to the beach?”

“It’s right outside the door. You should come with me.”

“To do what?”

I grew up not far from the public beaches of Stamford, Connecticut, though I’d never sat on the sand. Having seen people from a distance lounging, passed out and pretending to enjoy the temperature shock from abrupt immersion in the icy Long Island Sound, I could merely surmise the purpose. My parents were too harried by the need to earn money in an expensive place with few marketable skills to attend to their children’s recreational needs. Fortunately, my sister and I needed nothing more than access to the Stamford public library and the astonishing freedom made possible by our parents’ benign neglect.

“You could read a book,” said Natsumi. “Or examine the local fauna and flora.”

She really didn’t expect me to go, so I surprised her by printing out a stack of reading material, dressing up in appropriate beach-going apparel and sticking a rolled-up bath towel under my arm.

“Into the fray,” I said to her.

I survived the day reasonably well. It occurred to me, as I tried to read through the loose printouts fluttering in the wind, that Natsumi wanted to keep me close without appearing to. She was worried about the
Tocororo Loco.

That was confirmed when we got back to the room, sunbaked and windblown.

“I’m concerned about tonight,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“You should have backup.”

“No time to set that up. I’ll have my smartphone ready to ping you at a tap on the screen.”

“To do what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Swell.”

She knew the truth. There was nothing we could do if things went wrong. All I could do was stay alert and all she could do was stay in the hotel and worry.

As the day drifted into dinnertime, I dressed in khakis and a simple guayabera shirt, and put on a Miami Marlins baseball cap. I brought along the driver’s license that matched the name on our hotel registration, Frascuelo Rana, and a roll of cash. As promised, I had my smartphone preset to three options: A speed dial to her phone that meant call the cops. An e-mail that said, “Everything A-Okay.” And a text that read, “Run like hell.”

I kissed her on the lips and took a cab over to Hialeah. As we drove, I practiced my Spanish with the cabdriver. He’d been an orthopedic surgeon in Havana before an indiscreet blog posting had prompted a midnight boat trip to Port-au-Prince and subsequent slide into Miami, so he had little trouble with my fancy Castilian syntax and word choice. I’d taught myself Spanish before meeting Florencia, something that greatly helped to cement the relationship, but I was never able to conform to her native-born vernacular.

Consequently, it was clear I’d go about as unnoticed at
Tocororo Loco
as Sir Laurence Olivier riding one of Gilley’s mechanical bulls.

The cabby noted as much when we pulled up to the curb.

“I can show you other restaurants where you might be more comfortable,” he said, helpfully.

“Can I call you when I’m ready to leave?” I asked.

He looked noncommittal, but gave me his card and said, “Sure. Call and we’ll see what we can do.”

Inside,
Tocororo Loco
looked like it had been assembled from a collection of disparate parts. Near the storefront window was a long counter, like you find in any mid-twentieth-century American greasy spoon, though with freshly upholstered swivel stools, paintings of Cuban street scenes on the wall and a gigantic espresso machine towering in the rear corner. A few old men were at the counter crouched over plates of rice, beans and chicken,
cortaditos
coffee and ashtrays emitting smoke plumes. Jazz was on the jukebox and a scrawny woman with dyed hair tied at the top of her head held the command position behind the counter. She saw me come in and without hesitation pointed to a double door at the back of the place that opened into a dark bar. I didn’t know whether to take this as a good sign or bad, but walked through the doors anyway.

This section was much darker, filled with rattan tables and chairs and younger, far noisier people. There was a small service bar in one corner, though the principal purpose here was eating from large plates filled with
pan con bistec
and
ropa vieja.
There were only two stools set up at the bar. I sat in one.

“I was told there was another bar here,” I said in Spanish. “Perhaps I’m mistaken.”

“Mistakes happen,” said the bartender. “But I am certain I can help with your thirst.”

He was a tall man with cool, blue eyes, receding silver hairline and thin, delicate hands. He reminded me more of a priest than a bartender, though to many that’s a slight distinction. He showed me a Hatuey from a cooler behind the bar and I nodded.

“Do you need a table?” he asked.

“Maybe later. I’m still wondering about that other bar.”

He put both hands on the bar, one holding a wet rag.

“We have a special dining area in the back. You must mean that.”

“Probably.”

“What part of Spain are you from, if you don’t mind me asking,” he said, burying any pretense I had about disguising my pretentious accent.

“Madrid. Though I’ve lived in America for many years. It rubs off.”

“Of course.”

“I’m traveling here on business. An associate told me I had to visit
Tocororo Loco
.”

“They have excellent taste. They surely mentioned our
moros y cristianos
? People from Miami prefer it to their own.”

“It sounds delicious, but my taste runs more toward
armas y balas
.” Guns and bullets.

“A very dangerous diet,” he said. “Is your doctor aware?”

“Yes. In fact, he sent me here to fill a prescription. Although perhaps you have limited supplies.”

He might have smiled, though I might have imagined it. He made another superfluous wipe across the bar, dropped a menu in front of me, then left through a door behind the bar. I drank the Hatuey and pretended to read the menu. Fifteen minutes later he stuck his head through the door.

“I might have the medicine you ordered, if you don’t mind following me,” he said, opening the door a bit more. I got up off my barstool, came around and followed him through the door into a dimly lit room barely the size of a walk-in closet. The door closed behind me and once again I was the helpless object of muscular hands.

It was easy to imagine they were the same people who manhandled us in the Caribbean. They had the same irresistible strength and professional finesse. But this time a brief frisking was followed by an all-out strip search.

“Whoa,” I said. “How ’bout it?”

No one answered while they peeled off my shirt, patting around my exposed torso, then shucked my sandals one at a time, followed by my pants. In no time I was naked as a baby and feeling no less helpless.