Cuban Death-Lift (12 page)

I nosed
Sniper
uptide, and before I went forward to drop the hook, I turned to the woman.

“You're right,” I said. “Giving that Zapata character snuff was a rotten joke. And I promise I'll never do it again. But you have to admit—it
was
kind of funny. Did you see him start to sweat and hold onto the table like the boat was spinning? I thought he was going to break a leg trying to get out of that cabin. . . .”

Androsa turned abruptly away from me and walked back toward the starboard fighting chair.

I watched her trying hard to repress a smile as she went.

 

And so the waiting began.

We were just one of fifteen hundred American boats in Mariel Harbor waiting on some word of the relatives we wanted to take back to America.

Androsa Santarun knew all the steps in the procedure after her talk with Captain Lobo. First, her triplicate papers with her father's name would go to the Cuban immigration authorities. They would process the papers and decide if he was eligible to go to America—“eligible” meaning that he was not of military age, that he was not a physician or government employee, and that he was not an “enemy of the people.”

The last requirement was pretty vague, of course. And could be used to stop anybody from leaving that they damn well didn't want to leave.

After the papers were processed and okayed, the relatives supposedly would be sent to the waiting boats.

But the woman said she knew otherwise. She said it was a lot more complicated than that. She told me about it at dinner that night, in the longest conversation we had had the whole trip. That's one thing about a boat. People crammed together in close quarters long enough either turn murderous, or they find a common plateau of conversation and acceptance that will at least make the trip bearable.

Happily enough, she had chosen the latter alternative.

I had spent the hot afternoon leaning into the narrow confines of the engine room, puttering with this, changing that, adding seals and new belts where they were needed. Every now and then I'd break for a cold beer, wipe my face with a towel, and sit in the shade to watch the Cuban patrol and taxi boats idle between anchorages. The woman had changed from pants and blouse to a striking white bikini that had men on the boats nearest ours running for their binoculars. As aloof as Androsa Santarun was, she seemed totally unconcerned with the impact of her physical appearance.

And the impact was considerable.

She was a woman of length and curves: long black hair streaming toward the ripe flexure of high, round buttocks and the grace of long legs. The white suit emphasized the darkness of her, and her ribs undulated promisingly toward the wide, firm impetus of breasts, barely covered by the skimpy top.

It was all I could do not to stare at her when she walked past me to rummage in the cabin for a book, or a cold drink, or a towel.

But I made myself; forced myself to act oblivious to her sexuality, knowing that if she did feel my eyes upon her—and she would—that I would be dismissed as just one more horny son of a bitch.

And that's when I knew that she had me.

Any time you start measuring your reactions to please or impress someone, then you know their effect on you is something other than commonplace.

I really didn't know
why
I was playing little games for her approval.

Maybe it was the way she had acted when she saw the man with his throat cut on
Storm Nest.

Maybe it was that hint of vulnerability beneath the black ice of her eyes in that singular moment. Or the way she had leaned against me for support. Or the smallness of her beneath my hands, or . . . hell, I just didn't know.

So I worked hard all afternoon in the sun. And tried to ignore the vision in the white suit. And tried harder to force the urge to seek her favor from my head.

Across the harbor, half a mile of water and several hundred boats away, I could hear the voice of Cuban authority over a big PA system somewhere north of the Naval Academy. On the beach of the peninsula, only a hundred yards away, the guards still patrolled the area with their AK-47s and their shepherds, watching for Cubans who might try to make a swim for one of the American boats.

The place didn't exactly exude friendliness.

For supper that night, I had thawed out four sizable lobster tails. I had caught plenty the season before, and now was a good time to enjoy them. Mariel Harbor, it was easy to see, didn't offer much else in the way of luxury.

At sundown, I went for a short swim, toweled off, and then went below to set water to boiling for the lobster. In another pot, I dumped in a stick of real butter and set the alcohol burner on dead low.

Lobster and what else? I thought for a moment. If I was alone, what else would I fix?

Garlic bread, toasted. Maybe a salad. That's all. And if the woman didn't like it, she could fix her own supper.

I cleaned off the galley table and added plates. Then I went to work on the salad, cutting plenty of sweet onion into it.

“How was the water?”

She came down the cabin stairs, all long legs and swell of womanhood beneath the suit. Her high Indian cheeks were bronzed by the sun, and her hair was shiny with tanning oil.

“Water's dirty—too damn dirty for swimming.”

She grabbed a chunk of onion as she swept past me and chewed it while she spoke. “I thought about going in, but . . . well, I was afraid there might be sharks around.”

“Sharks?” I looked down into her mahogany eyes. For the first time, she looked relaxed. Even sleepy. “I imagine most of the sharks in this harbor left when they heard you were here. No, the most dangerous thing about that water is staph infection. When I got out, I washed my ears with some of that cheap rum under the sink.”

“So that's what I smelled.”

“And you just thought I was drunk again, right?”

She fished out another piece of onion from the salad. “Isn't that the way you charterboat captains live? You make enough money to get good and drunk, and then you don't go back to work until the booze runs out. That's what everyone says, anyway.”

I dropped the four lobster tails into the sputtering water, added a little salt, then covered them. “Right. It's all true. Nothing I like better than getting hopelessly drunk. How about you?”

“Do you have to work at being so sarcastic, Mr. MacMorgan? Or does it just come naturally?”

“It depends on who I'm talking to. And you're supposed to call me Dusky. Remember?”

When the lobster was done, I butterflied them and set slivers of fresh lime on the table. The woman surprised me by asking for beer every time I got up to get one. It wasn't a meal for forks and knives and the dainty attack those things imply. It was a meal to eat with your hands, with hot butter and garlic bread; it was a meal that required plenty of napkins.

When we had finished, Santarun surprised me by gathering the dishes and pots together in the sink and putting water on to boil—for coffee and dishwater.

She saw the way I raised my eyes at that.

“Are you surprised that I'm volunteering to work?” she said, knowing full well that I was.

“Shocked might be a better word.”

“Actually, I want to do the dishes as a show of good faith; good faith because I'm about to tell you something that really might shock you.”

“Hold off telling me until the end of the trip. That way you can do all the dishes as a sign of good faith.”

“I'm afraid I have no desire to show that much good faith.” She laughed lightly. I studied to see if the sudden friendliness was forced, and decided—probably because of the four beers she had had—that it wasn't. “Actually, Dusky, it has to do with my conversation earlier with that Cuban soldier—Captain Lobo.”

And that's when she told me about the preliminary steps it took to get a relative out of Cuba.

“But once the papers have been processed, and my father has been approved, I'm sure they're not going to just bring him down to this boat and wave goodbye,” she continued.

“What makes you think that?”

She hesitated for a moment while she squirted soap into the dishwater and went to work on the plates. “For one thing, I've been listening to other Cuban-Americans talking on your radio. Some of them have been over here before, and they've talked with the refugees in Key West. Once the relatives have been approved, the first thing the Castro regime does is confiscate their homes and their property. And then they send them to refugee camps—”

“Which, I imagine, are more like concentration camps.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, that's not completely unexpected. I mean, Castro isn't exactly known as a humanitarian.” I nodded toward the stack of dishes. “So why the unexpected goodwill gesture?”

“Wait,” she said. “There's more. You don't have to listen to that radio for long to realize that we're in for a long stay here. That's the point I was trying to make. Castro's people are holding the refugees in those concentration camps for a reason. This afternoon, while you were working on the engine, I watched them loading the refugees through your binoculars. The dock's across the harbor—Captain Lobo called it Pier Three. Do you have any idea how many boats they loaded in eight hours?”

I shook my head. “You can herd a lot of people onto a deck in eight hours.”

“You could—but they didn't. Only two boats were loaded. That's what I'm trying to get at. Castro
wants
it to be slow.
I
think he wants us all to stay here until we've eaten all our food and spent all our money.”

Suddenly it dawned on me. “So now I see why you're being so nice all of a sudden—”

“If that's an insult, I'm afraid—”

I smiled at her. “Face it, Santarun. You haven't exactly been Miss Congeniality on this trip. But now you're afraid I'm going to get tired of waiting around here in Mariel Harbor after a week or so, pull anchor, and head back to Key West. So now you're trying to charm me into some verbal agreement—”

“I am not! I'm just trying to tell you the facts!”

She glared at me. It was getting so I liked that glare. She had pulled on a baggy blue shirt over her swim suit, and she had her hands on her hips, leaning toward me like an angry kid.

“And you're trying to cover the facts with all the sugar and spice you can.”

“MacMorgan, you are so pigheaded! I was just trying to explain to you that we might have to stay here in Mariel a little longer than we had planned, but you have to read all sorts of devious motives into it.”

“But you
do
want me to agree to stay until your business is finished—right?”

“Yes!”

“Even if it takes a month or more?”

“Of course!”

“And even if we run out of food?”

“You were paid to bring me here, then take me back when I was done . . . when I had my father!”

She had slipped and she knew it. Quickly, she busied herself with cleaning up the galley. She had played the role of the daughter seeking her father so well that, for a time, I had wondered if she really did have a father still in Cuba. Now was the time to blow her cover—and mine—if I wanted. Why not get things out in the open? After all, couldn't we work better as a team?

I thought about it. I really did. And I came damn close to putting all my cards on the table.

The only thing that stopped me was my promise to Norm.

He had ordered me to stay neutral. I was supposed to watch and report back. If things got too rough for the woman I could step in—but then and only then.

I got up from the booth, stretched, then reached over and put my hand on her shoulder. I expected her to flinch, but she didn't.

“I'm sorry, Androsa.”

She kept her head down, running a dishcloth around the little alcohol stove. “It's okay. You're right. I have been pretty nasty to you.”

“That's true.”

She gave me a warning glance that said, “Do you want to argue some more?”

I didn't, so I hurried on, “All the lockers are filled with canned goods. We have ten pounds of rice, plenty of fish, and ten cases of beer. When the food is all gone—and we probably have enough for five or six weeks—then we go. Agreed?”

She reached as if to give my hand a sisterly pat, but stopped halfway.

“Agreed,” she said.

Outside, the sky was blurred with smog from the factories, and the military had big runway searchlights scanning the harbor. Boats in the distance stood out in blue silhouette in the vacillating darkness, and, standing on the aft deck, I could hear snatches of rapid Spanish drifting across the water. Somewhere, calypso music played from a radio. It seemed out of place in the somberness of Mariel Harbor.

I reached into my shirt pocket, took an after-dinner dip, then collected a blanket, pillow, and flashlight and climbed up to the flybridge and lay down.

I had only gotten about three hours of sleep after the long run from Key West. And I was tired. Damn tired.

But across the harbor, I knew, were thousands of people even more tired than I. They were the refugees, homeless in their camps, all hopes fixed on the dream of America.