Cuban Death-Lift (15 page)

And then I put two and two together.

Nowhere does rumor travel as fast as among a platoon of soldiers. They had probably heard all about my run-in with Zapata, and, from the looks on their faces, they thought it a pretty funny story. I was the Americano who had embarrassed their captain. And I imagined Zapata to be something less than a popular officer—even before the incident.

Now he had become a joke.

I looked at Zapata standing in the shadows, smiled—and got a glare for my trouble.

It was something to keep in mind.

I turned to Lobo. “You never did say, Captain, what your people were shooting at.”

The grin edged with sneer again. “That's right,
Capitán.
I did not. But we have no secrets—despite what your newspapers say about us, huh?” He didn't wait for an answer. He continued, “A very foolish man, an escaped criminal, tried to swim to an American boat tonight. It was foolish because, as you have seen, our beaches are well guarded and he had no chance of success. Unfortunately, one of our navy's officers ordered the guards to—how do you say it?—‘open guns' before they had a chance to see
which
boat he was trying to swim to. So now we are all awake because of an officer
muy estúpido.
”

I didn't have to turn around and look at Zapata to know which officer Lobo was talking about. Poor Captain Zapata had had one very bad day.

“The man got away?”

Lobo made a noncommittal gesture with his hands. “The guards say the man went underwater and did not come back up—but who is to say? It is very dark, no? And we have found no body. So now we search.”

“You're welcome to look around my boat if you like.”

For a microsecond, the mask of congeniality disappeared from Lobo's face—and I saw just what a ruthless son of a bitch he really was. He said, “Thank you,
Capitán,
but we do not need your permission to search this boat.”

He signaled the soldiers waiting on the gunboat, and three of them came aboard, their AK-47s ready.

While two of them looked over the engine compartment with flashlights, Captain Lobo went below with the third. They would make a thorough search—but for a man. Nothing else.

Or so I hoped.

I moved over closer to the woman. She had her head down, as if tired. But then I realized that she had her head down for a reason—she was looking at something. Zapata still glared at me. Slowly, nonchalantly, she turned away from him. I put my arm around her, holding tight, telling her with the firmness of my grip that I did not want her to pull away. It was a reassurance and a question in one; a question she answered by letting the robe open briefly, then pulling it tightly around her.

And then I knew what she had been looking at.

On her T-shirt, low and off to the left where she had cradled the head of Ovillo Gomez, was a black blotch of blood.

I patted her shoulder and said nothing, thinking all the while:
You'd better come up with something good, MacMorgan—just in case. If they see that bloodstain, both of you are going to spend the next forty years playing one-on-one with ratshit in some Cuban prison. . . .

Lobo came out of the cabin preceded by the soldier. In his hand he held something, and then in the glare of the searchlight I saw it: Androsa's snubnose .38.

He came up to me, almost sauntering, the damp bulk of him sliding across my deck.

“I am wondering, Capitán MacMorgan, why you thought it necessary to come to Cuba with such a weapon,” he said, holding the handgun up for my inspection.

And I was about to give the weak explanation that I used it for sharks, when Androsa cut in, speaking in fast Spanish—too fast for me to understand.

Lobo tilted his head, listening, seemingly entertained by what she had to tell him. When she was finished, he turned to me. “
Capitán,
do you know what this woman says? She says that she brought this little gun because she did not trust you.”

I tried to look shocked. “What?”

He chuckled; a lecherous laugh. “But I think you are not the kind of man to remain a stranger to any woman, eh?”

I still had my arm around Androsa's shoulder. His inference was obvious. I shrugged and said nothing.

Waving his hand, Lobo ordered his men back aboard the gunboat. And he was about to step across himself when Zapata, looking meaner than ever, stopped him with a harsh burst of Spanish. Lobo answered briefly, then waited stoically while his fellow officer let go with another emotional tirade.

Captain Lobo turned back to me, saying, “My friend here says that I have been remiss in my search.”

“Is that so?”

“Perhaps. He says that we did not look up on your flybridge.”

I sighed, relieved—but tried not to show it. And then: “He says that I also failed to check your . . .
individuo
. . . the clothes on your back, eh?”

I lifted my hands theatrically. “The body is in my back pocket, Captain. I must confess.”

Dry laugh without humor. Lobo didn't like jokers. “No, of course not.” He motioned with the woman's revolver. “But you might have another of these, yes?”

“No, but you're welcome to look.”

While a soldier scampered up the ladder to have a look around the flybridge, Lobo frisked me. His hands were fat, stubby, and they pounded down my sides like little bricks.

“Convinced?”

“
Sí!
For now.”

I wanted to do something, anything, to make them forget about searching the woman.

But it was too late. Zapata was already vectoring in on her, giving her orders in sharp Spanish. I felt all eyes turn toward the woman. She was beautiful, unbelievably so, and all of the soldiers wanted to see what she wore beneath the robe.

She backed away from Zapata, clutching the bulky cloak around her, moving toward me instinctively.

“You're not going to let that creep take her clothes off, are you? She's naked underneath—”

Lobo punched me solidly in the stomach with his elbow, and I had to grit my teeth to keep from showing any pain. “You must learn, gringo, to show proper respect for a Cuban officer.” He never took his eyes off the woman as he spoke.

So it was show time. It had been a long night for Castro's toy troops. They had gunned down an unarmed man and had worn themselves out searching for the corpse. Now it was time for a little recreation. Time to force the pretty senorita to strip.

She bumped into me and stopped. End of the trail. Zapata came up, standing toe to toe with her. He grabbed the lapel of robe and she knocked his hand away.

The soldiers on the gunboat roared with laughter. See the beautiful woman fight the big strong
capitán!

So the audience was with us, not him. It might make a difference. I might be able to make a move, and they might laugh instead of shoot, and . . .

Zapata was yelling at Androsa, now—furious. He was tired of being made a fool of. He kept nodding at me as he spoke, and it became clear what he was accusing her of—being a whore for the big blond gringo. It was the old sexual taboo, a light-skinned person sexually intimate with the darker-skinned. And that seemed to make him madder than anything.

This Zapata was a jerk, all right.

And I prayed the opportunity would come for me to even the score.

Tired of having his orders scorned, he grabbed the woman and ripped the robe back. And just as quickly, she pulled it tightly around her and, with her free left hand, slapped him a loud stinger across the face.

More laughter from the gunboat.

“Puta!”
he screamed. His face was crimson from the slap. He touched the swelling area, hesitated, then slapped her in return, jerking her head back. I caught her in my arms.

It was time to make my move; to take care of Zapata before he forced the robe open and saw the bloodstain. And I knew what I was going to do. Cold-cock the skinny bastard, then assume the roll of the gringo clown, hoping the soldier-audience would laugh instead of shoot—

But I didn't have time to try it. With a low animal screech, she launched herself at Zapata, using hands and fingernails at his face, backing him up. Then she brought that left hand of hers from waist high in a sizzling uppercut. Zapata was in the absolute worst position for it. He was bent at the waist, head down, trying to protect his eyes.

So the lancing fist caught him flush on his bird nose. There was a surprisingly loud
thwack,
an explosion of cartilage and blood, and it sent him wheeling backward.

And he didn't have far to go.

The transom caught him thigh-high, and he went tumbling ass-end first into the black water.

There was a tense moment; a moment of indecision for the soldiers. And then Lobo led the way. His laughter—loud and genuine—detonated the glee of the others. They roared in spasms, holding their stomachs, pounding the deck of the gunboat. By the time they had regained sufficient control to remember their fallen captain, he had floundered his way back to the surface. He screamed threats at the world. He singled the woman out again and again, pointing dreadful promises at her with his index finger.

And he meant every one of them.

When the gunboat finally rumbled away, I pulled the woman close to me. She was shivering noticeably.

“We're going to have to watch out for that one from now on,” I said.

“Yes, I know. I was probably very stupid.” Her dark eyes were glazed with the shock of what she had done; of how close we both had come to capture.

“It wasn't stupid,” I said. “In fact, I was going to punch him if you didn't. It was our only chance.”

She said nothing, just leaned there trembling against me; the shock coming in low swells, flowing through her body. “Hey,” I said. “It's over. You can relax now.”

She slid around so that she faced me, her arms around me, small hands low on the base of my back. A satin wisp of hair covered her left eye. I reached down, brushed it away, and when I did she touched my hand with her lips.

“There's only one way I can relax now, Dusky.”

Her lips were moist, slightly parted, and the mahogany eyes seemed to bore into mine. “Please, Dusky. I . . . I don't want to be alone tonight. Not down there. Not where he . . .”

I kissed her gently, a searching kiss, asking her if she wanted only companionship, to be held—or more. Her mouth opened, tongue communicating without words. Her long legs pressed, then curled around mine, and I lifted her up into my arms, still caressing her lips with mine. I said her name softly, a whisper: “Androsa Santarun. You are quite a woman, Androsa Santarun.”

Her response was a weary smile. She frowned for a moment, as if trying to remember something, and then I heard her words like an echo of my own. “Yes,” she said. “I'm something. I'm a real goddam ace. . . .”

The next morning, several hours before the radio informed Androsa that immigration authorities wanted to see her in Havana, I spent the glowing dusky dawn time alone engaged in the idle musings of a man who has seen his life of the-straight-and-narrow dissolve into a strange existence of cricks, crinks, and clashes in the fast lane.

It was an airy blue morning. Molten gold in the east: the sun spinning hard toward a billion tiny lives in the western hemisphere.

A brash night wind had come down out of the mountains of Mesa de Mariel and blown the factory smog away. It cleaned the air and made the harbor seem almost pristine. Even the rattiest among the thousands of American boats in the harbor looked clean and white in that morning light, and you could see the little thatched-roof village on the plateau of distant cane fields plainly.

It was a good morning for breaking rules, so I cracked a rare bottle of Heineken dark and sipped at it while I dressed. Put on clean khaki fishing shorts, soft and stained with the blood of many good fish. Add the old leather belt with the brass anchor, strap on the Gerber knife in its oil-blackened case, and, just for the hell of it, check the blade. Sharp enough to shave blond hair off the left arm—but it could be sharper. A good way to spend the morning: sip at the beer, work on the knife with honing oil and ceramic stone and watch the morning filter across the Cuban landscape.

I pulled on a white cotton shirt, then poked my head into the veeing of master berth.

Androsa was asleep. Her hair fanned out beneath her head like a black satin pillow, and her nose flared slightly with every inhalation. The white sheet was pulled up just over her pelvis, and the outline of hips was a shadowed curve with the soft lift of inner thigh tapering toward long legs. Her thin ribs were alternately visible and invisible with every breath, and her right arm curved up under the delicate chin, flattening the right breast, showing only a portion of the dark-brown aureola of nipple.

Funny how intimate contact sharpens your attention, focuses your eyes. You notice the little anatomical variants that you did not see before.

There was a tiny white fingernail of scar below her left cheek. And just the slightest hint of lines at the corner of her eyes, sun-furrowed. Confident of her natural beauty, she wore no makeup and did not employ the little cosmetic tricks most women use. So her eyebrows were in light disarray, and her lips were pale, without lipstick. Her skin was the color of sandalwood, sun-darkened, with thin white bikini marks around her breasts.

Gently, I kissed her on the forehead.