Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

“This way,” Raúl whispers.

Two DGI men slip outside as we enter.

Raúl gently closes the door, leans on a pine table, and opens the shutters.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“Six-fifteen,” a voice from outside mutters.

Raúl yawns and looks through the window. “Coffee,” he says.

He sits down at the table and motions for me to sit too.

“This can’t take long, we’ll have to have the house open for tourists by ten.”

“I don’t know what this is.”

Raúl smiles and rubs his jaw. In every other Cuban that gesture is a discreet reference to the Beard, but for him it’s just an assessment of his stubble.

A coffeepot is passed through the shutters, along with two cups and a bowl of sugar. Raúl pours himself an espresso and adds no sugar. That explains the teeth.

“This, this, Comrade Mercado, is an interrogation.”

Fear. Great pulsing sine waves of the stuff. Worse than the ice lake. Worse than the hangman himself. All those DGI and ministry men outside but Raúl is going to do this himself.

“Would you like a cup?” he asks.

I shake my head.

He takes a sip. “Not bad. Are you sure you don’t want one?”

“No.”

“Do you know who I am?” he asks.

“Of course.”

“I am the deus ex machina of your little adventure, Mercado. I am the person who will finally get things done right.”

“I don’t under-”

“Who killed your father, Comrade Mercado?”

I try not to appear taken aback. “I don’t know, I have no idea. It was a hit-and-run in La Yuma.”

Raúl shoots me a puzzled frown. He obviously isn’t up on his subversive slang.

“La Yuma. The United States, in a place called Fairview, Colorado,” I clarify.

“Who killed him?” Raúl asks again.

“I don’t know.”

Raúl sighs and looks out at the garden. The smell of hibiscus drifts through the window.

“You came in through the front of the house?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that Ava Gardner swam naked in that pool?”

“No.”

“Do you know who Ava Gardner was?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I think I’ve heard the name.”

“Young people. What do you think of me sleeping in Hemingway’s home? In his very bed?” Raúl asks.

“I don’t think anything.”

“You don’t consider it profane?”

“No. It’s just a house.”

Raúl grins. “Yes, I suppose so. It is just a house like any other. My brother never sleeps in the same house two nights running. He is afraid that the CIA is still trying to kill him. For a while it was the KGB too. But now only the CIA.”

His brother. Jefe the unkillable, the immortal. I mask my nervousness and fix an expression of polite interest.

“Do you know why I sleep here, in this house?” Raúl asks.

“No.”

“We are the past, the present, and the future of the Revolution. We must be safe. In Iraq U.S. pilots were not allowed to hit cultural, historical, or religious buildings. Perhaps I am paranoid, but I feel safe here and I like it.”

“It’s a nice place,” I agree.

Raúl sighs. “I met Comrade Hemingway twice. Once at a fishing competition in Havana and once at Floridita. Have you been in Floridita, Comrade Mercado?”

“Only to arrest someone. It’s too expensive to drink there.”

“You should treat yourself sometime.”

“Sure.”

“Yes, I like it here. Surrounded by books and artifacts. Genuine history.”

“It’s, uh, special. I suppose I should have visited before now.”

“You should have. When were you born, Comrade Mercado?”

“May twenty-sixth, 1980.”

“When did your father, the traitor, defect to the United States?”

“1993.”

“When you were thirteen. Hmm. Thirteen. Before your quince .”

I grimace. Two years before my quince . My fifteenth birthday-the most important day in any Cuban girl’s life. “I was his only daughter but he never saw it. My uncle Arturo said Dad would send money for the party. But he didn’t. He didn’t even send money,” I blurt out.

Raúl nods. As a father of daughters and granddaughters he knows just how important the quince is.

“Have coffee, Officer Mercado.”

“I had some, already. A whole pot.”

“In Mexico City?”

“No, here.”

“Real coffee.”

“Yes.”

“Good, good. Now I think you’ll admit that despite your father’s defection we have been very generous to your family,” Raúl says.

“Generous?” Ricky, my mother, and I got the same rations as everyone else. We all lived in the same crumbling apartments. Mom’s place didn’t even have hot water.

Raúl nods. “Generous. Despite your father being a traitor, we let your brother, Ricardo, travel there to dispose of his remains.”

Gooseflesh on my back. Leave Ricky out of this.

“Ricky’s a Party member, a former president of the National Students Union, an executive member of the National Union of Journalists,” I say quickly.

“Yes, yes,” Raúl agrees dismissively.

“Ricky has been out of the country many times. He’s traveled to Russia, to America, to Mexico. He has always returned. He’s proved himself many times to-”

Raúl puts his hand up like a white-gloved transit cop. “Enough,” he says.

“What have you done with Ricky? Have you arrested him? Where is he?”

Raúl seems amused that I have the effrontery to question him.

“I have no idea where your brother is. More than likely in the bed of some newspaper editor or a Chinese diplomat or one of our generals.”

Mierde . He even knows about Ricky’s counterrevolutionary tendencies . Of course he does. They know everything. One person in every twenty-five is a chivato like Sergeant Menendez.

He waits a beat. “And your mother, did she know of your mission to America?”

Hesitantly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t go to America. I went to Mexico City. I’m applying to the university to study criminology.”

Raúl snaps his fingers. One of the DGI goons leans his head in through the window. “The file,” Raúl says.

The DGI man goes away and comes back quickly with a small green folder. Raúl snatches it out of his hand. “You flew to Mexico City last Tuesday. The day you arrived you had a tour of the university and were interviewed by a Professor Martín Carranza in the Department of Criminology. On Tuesday evening you checked repeatedly for tails and obviously you found our man. You took the subway to Coyoacán. You went to the house of Leon Trotsky.” Raúl puts the file down and smiles at me. “You have a sense of humor, Officer Mercado, I like that… Let me see… Ah yes, you entered the house but did not leave. Somehow you exited without us noticing. I have been to that house, Comrade Mercado. It’s a walled fortress, not easy to slip out of there.”

“No.”

“You escaped our tail and found a coyote to take you across the border. You went to the United States to investigate your father’s death.”

“No.”

“Who killed your father?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You went to America to investigate the death of your father,” Raúl insists.

“No, that’s not true. I’ve never been to America.”

“Your boss, Captain Hector Ramirez, recommended that we deny you an exit permit. He said you wanted to go to Mexico but he suspected you might be a risk for defection.”

Hector sold me out.

“Well?”

“Captain Ramirez thought as much, yes.”

Raúl Castro sips his coffee and examines me like an M.E. performing a difficult autopsy. After a while he smiles, not unkindly.