The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [204]
“I could love that woman.”
Clark advised Sam, “Go for it. As the great Bob Dylan says, ‘Love and only love. It can’t be denied.’ Georgette says Annie’s in love with that Miami cop.”
“Hart. Dan Hart. He’s after Jack. How’s Jack?”
“Jack escaped and probably isn’t even dying anyhow.”
Sam smiled as she fell back asleep with Teddy snuggled beside her. “Jack always exaggerated.”
Chapter 51
Under Two Flags
The drive from Puerto Esperanza to Havana was only 112 miles and didn��t take long at the speed at which Raffy’s elderly uncle Oswardo Ramirez drove his (also old) cavernous pink Cadillac coupe de ville. Round-faced, friendly, sweating, Oswardo swerved dangerously as he pointed out landmarks of the glamorous seedy city of Havana. With his rapid speech and flurry of hand motions it was as if he were rushing to finish a tour before his car, spitting and groaning, gave out on him. He hurried them past the Capitol Dome, past the monument of the revolutionary hero José Martí, past the huge stone fortress of Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro as fast as the Cadillac could maneuver in the heavy traffic.
Holding his guitar case, Raffy sat silent in the back seat beside Annie. He said too many memories were sweeping over him. He hadn’t driven around Havana since his early teens, for on his one trip with Jack he’d been arrested before even reaching land. All he’d seen of Havana had been the very small view from a jail cell window.
By the time they rattled past the high curved sea wall of the Malecón, Raffy was in tears.
In Habana Viejo, streets changed from asphalt to wine-red cobbled bricks. Lanes curved away under low arches of amber stucco. On either side of the avenues, the tall elegant pastel colonial buildings greeted them like ruined monuments to antiquated and neglected triumphs.
Oswardo took them to the Plaza de Armas, near the hotel into which they’d been told they should register even though they would leave before nightfall. It was across the square from the bank. The long pink sedan rattled to a jiggling stop and let out Oswardo’s passengers—Annie and Dan and Raffy. Annie carried the Queen of the Sea, which lay wrapped at the bottom of a paper shopping bag. The contact person would have an identical shopping bag.
Raffy left them to go look at the outside of the Ramirez jewelry store, which was only a few blocks away. He confessed he might not go inside. He wasn’t quite ready to make himself known to his mother. No matter what, he’d be back at the hotel in an hour to take them to the bank. The bawdy hand of time, he said, showing them his watch, was now three hours past the prick of noon.
“You show up, imbecil!” Dan told him.
“Pito. ¡Vaya!” Carrying his guitar, Raffy quickly danced away into the congestion of a city that always sounded to him like music.
Annie and Dan checked into the Hotel Santa Isabel. They looked like what they claimed to be—a young Toronto couple on vacation, in their white T-shirts with khaki slacks and their friendly smiles. The clerk took their Canadian passports and their euros without comment. The room was large and had the same neglected grandeur as the Cadillac. The bed was beautiful.
Later, carrying the Queen with them in the shopping bag, they walked to a late lunch at an outdoor café at a side-street corner of the square, not far from the bank where it had been arranged for Annie to meet Raffy’s cousin, the assistant manager, in 2 1/2 hours, just before the bank closed. Over lunch she kept looking around the Plaza, hoping to see the coppery-haired woman, Helen Clark, at one of the other outdoor cafés. Her eagerness was curiously blended with dread.
They had finished their tapas when suddenly Dan startled her by clapping his hands together. “Got it! Your dad said ‘our picture.’ ‘Our picture.’ He meant yours and his. The one I saw your phone number on the back of.”
Annie knew instantly what Dan meant, and knew that he was right. It was the Breakers picture of her