The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [129]
At a stoplight, she studied his nervous face. “We’re just going to talk, Raffy. Don’t worry. And I’ll even buy you a drink.”
He looked sadly out the car window. “Gracias, no. I’m eight months into my recovery. Alcohol was once a personal problem of mine.”
“Just goes to show you. Problems get solved.”
***
Under the big Miami moon, Annie walked her dog around the Hotel Dorado pool gardens. Raffy had to hurry to keep up as they trotted along the bougainvillea-banked path. Back in the lobby, she handed him Malpy. “Okay. Now talk to me about this Cuban bank where my dad says these jewels are.”
His story was inevitably a long one, punctuated with quotes, but what she distilled was that there was a secured account at a branch of the Banco Central in old Havana near the Plaza de Armas. Jack Peregrine had been renting a bank drawer there for years under a foreign passport. Only Jack or his designated heir would be allowed to open it. Moreover, to do so they would need not only proof of personal identity but knowledge of two passwords. Annie knew those passwords. Annie could fly a small plane. So for both reasons, with Jack incapacitated, they needed Annie to go to the bank for them and it was unfortunately in Havana.
She asked, “And inside this bank drawer?”
The four biggest emeralds from the crown of La Reina Coronado del Mar, each one worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Plus a 135-carat ruby worth many times that much.
Annie scoffed. “And these alleged jewels actually belong to…?”
“Jack,” Raffy insisted with conviction. “But getting hold of them?”
They moved to the bar and found a table by a window that looked out to the ocean. Annie neatly set her phone and her Blackberry down beside her.
Raffy looked around carefully. “Jack is sadly, well, and so am I, temporarily paisano non grato with a number of people living in Miami and, well, also in Cuba.”
“Let me guess. That number of people includes the Miami police, as well as the glitzy couple in the Mercedes outside Golden Days, correct?”
“There’s also the PNR. Policía Nacional Revolucionaria. Cuban police?” Raffy offered her a placating smile. “Also, the police in some other American cities where…Jack honestly does not like to be closed up in a cell.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t have gone in for a life of crime.”
“It’s more a philosophical point of view.” Raffy sipped at his soda. “I didn’t mind jail so much; it’s a quiet place to think things over. ‘I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world and vice versa.’ That was one of the speeches your dad tried to teach me. Richard the Fifth, I believe.”
Annie nodded. “Richard the Second.” She hesitated. “Maybe Third.”
She knew Raffy was not exaggerating her father’s fear of imprisonment; Sam had told her of his being punished by being locked in a closet. She remembered how he had always left doors of rented rooms wide open whenever he could; he’d kept bathroom doors open as they slept, with the lights on.
“Raffy, have you ever,” she asked, “actually seen this so-called ‘Queen of the Sea’?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I never saw the Empire State Building either. Or for that matter, Jesus the Savior Christ that my mother was always telling my padre to believe in, which he did not, not that he went to synagogue either. How about a mojito for you? All you drink is water.”
“Water’s good for you. Sit still, I’ll be right back.”
Leaving Raffy in the bar, she took Malpy upstairs to her room and waited till the maid left after turning down her sheets and putting chocolates on her pillows. The maid had turned on the television. After Annie collected the metal case, she clicked through channels on the TV remote, searching for news headlines.