The Cuban Affair Read online

  “With what onboard?”

  He leaned toward me. “About sixty million dollars of American currency. Two of which are yours to keep.”

  “Five.”

  Carlos looked at me. “You’ll have to negotiate that with my clients.”

  “Okay. And how’s my first mate compensated?”

  “That’s up to you.” He informed me, “Mister Colby does not need to risk his life, and therefore does not need to know many of the details.”

  “Who else is risking their lives?”

  “A few others.”

  “You?”

  “No. I am persona non grata in Cuba.”

  “Right.” Well, I’d promised myself in the hospital that I’d be more careful in the future. But . . .

  Carlos glanced at his Rolex. “I think I’ve given you enough information for you to decide if you’d like to hear more from my clients, who are available now.”

  I thought about that. The mission briefing. I’d volunteered for dangerous missions because it was for my country. This was for money. A lot of it. And maybe it wasn’t as dangerous as Carlos thought. For Carlos, a Miami lawyer, driving back to Miami after dark was dangerous. But for me, the danger bar was so high that even now, four years after Afghanistan, I felt there wasn’t much I couldn’t handle. But maybe that’s how I wound up in the hospital.

  Carlos said, “My client, who will fly with you to Havana, can speak to you tonight. She will be very honest with you.”

  She?

  “Also, to be honest, we are interviewing others for this job.”

  “Take the lowest bidder.” I stood. “And please take care of the bill.”

  Carlos stood. “I can have my two clients at your boat in fifteen minutes. You should hear what they have to say.”

  “I’ve heard enough.”

  He looked very disappointed. “All right. I’ll let my clients know. Or . . . I have an idea. You can let them know yourself. Can we charter your boat for a sunset cruise tonight? What do you charge for that?”

  Carlos was slick. Or thought he was. I should have said, “Adios,” but I said, “Make me an offer.”

  “Two thousand.”

  “How many people?”

  “Three, including me.”

  “Meet me at my boat in half an hour. What do you drink?”

  “Cuba Libre.” He smiled.

  “See you later. Give the barmaid a good tip.”

  I walked through the noisy barroom, waved to Amber, and went out to Whitehead. Close by was the Zero Mile Marker for U.S. Highway One, the literal end of the road that started in Maine. I’ve had a lot of profound thoughts about that, usually fueled by a few beers. And I just had another thought: A journey of a hundred miles to Havana begins with a single misstep.

  CHAPTER 4

  Key West is only about a mile wide and four miles long, so walking or biking is a healthy way to get around, especially if drinking is in your plans. I’d walked to the Green Parrot from my rented bungalow on Pine Street, so I began walking to the marina. There was a nice breeze blowing through the palms, and it was a clear day, so it should be a two-thousand-dollar sunset.

  I texted Jack, who was supposed to be getting the boat cleaned up in case the Cuban guy had wanted to see it: Got 3 customers for sundowners. Cuba Libres, ASAP.

  Well, if nothing else, I made two thousand bucks tonight. What would I do with a couple million anyway?

  I turned onto Duval, Key West’s main street, which is a mile of bars, drag shows, T-shirt shops, boutique hotels, and a street scene that makes Mardi Gras look tame. I especially enjoy Fantasy Fest on Duval in the week leading up to Halloween, when lots of ladies wear nothing but body paint—which I’d miss this year if I was in Cuba.

  I got a text back from Jack, who has a flip phone and just learned how to text on it: This the Cuban guy you met at Parrot?

  I replied, Yes. And stop asking the captain questions.

  I wanted to get to my boat before my customers, so I flagged a cab to take me to Charter Boat Row.

  Key West has about twenty-five thousand people, excluding tourists, but it feels like a smaller town and the full-time residents tend to know each other, and I knew the cabbie, Dave Katz, who used to drive a taxi in New York. He asked, “You sailing tonight?”

  “Sunset cruise.”

  “Good. How’s business?”

  “Picking up.”

  “I hope.” He said, “When they open Cuba, we’re all screwed.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Tourists are gonna fly to Havana. Cruise ships won’t even stop here any more.”

  I reminded him, “Two nations, one vacation.”

  “Bullshit. We’re screwed.”

  I also reminded Dave, “They don’t have Fantasy Fest in Havana.”

  Dave laughed, then said, “In five years, Havana will look like it did before Castro. Sex shows, gambling, teenage prostitutes, cheap rum and cigars. How we gonna compete with that?”

  “I don’t know, Dave. Haven’t thought about it.”

  “You should. The Cubans know how to make money. Look at Miami. They own the place. Soon as the Commies are gone, Havana will be like Miami. But with gambling. And cheaper. We’re screwed.”

  Fortunately it was a short ride to Charter Boat Row, and I gave Dave a twenty and some advice. “Buy a fifty-six Buick and move to Havana.”

  “Not funny, Mac. You’ll see. People’ll be fishing out of Havana for half what you charge. You’ll be cutting bait, working for the Cubans.”

  I might already be working for the Cubans. “Adios, amigo.”

  “Screw that.”

  The sign outside the marina said: HISTORIC CHARTER BOAT ROW. EXPERIENCED CAPTAINS. That’s me.

  I walked along the finger dock and a few captains and crew, experienced and otherwise, called out greetings while knocking down the suds, so they weren’t sailing tonight. But business should pick up. It always does. And I had a bank payment due on The Maine. And an engine overhaul bill. Maybe I’d be happier cutting bait in Havana. Or maybe it was time to go home.

  I had intended to sail The Maine to Portland in September to explore that possibility, but I didn’t. So now I was thinking about calling my father to talk about that. But like most down Easters, my father was a man of few words. If I’d gotten killed overseas and he had to put my obit in the Portland Press Herald at twenty dollars a word he’d be Yankee frugal and Maine taciturn and just say: Daniel MacCormick died. If it had to be a six-word minimum he’d show his practical side and add: Car for sale.

  Well, maybe I’m being hard on the old man. He was proud of me when I joined the Army, and before my second deployment to Afghanistan he advised, “Come back.” Well, I did, and he seemed pleased about that, but a bit concerned about my physical injuries, though not so much about post-traumatic stress, which he doesn’t believe in. He liked to say he came back from Vietnam the same as when he left, which, according to my mother, is unfortunately true.

  Regarding war, the MacCormicks have fought for their country since they arrived in the New World in the early 1700s, killing Indians, Frenchmen, Brits, Confederates, Germans, Japanese, and assorted Commies without regard to race, religion, or ethnic background. My older brother Web fought in the second Iraq war, so we also have dead Arabs on the family hit list, and I knocked off a few Afghanis to ensure true diversity. But if you met my family or knew my ancestors, I’m sure you’d think they were all fine, peaceful people. And we are. But we’ve always done our duty to God and country, which sometimes means somebody has to die.

  After I killed my first Taliban, the men in my company gave me a T-shirt that said: “The Road To Paradise Begins With Me.” Jack loved that shirt so I gave it to him. He has an interesting collection.

  My father, Webster senior, is a weekend sailor and a weekday certified financial planner, very risk averse with his clients’ money and tight as a crab’s ass with his own. I’d love to sail home with a few million in the bank and flip the o
ld man half a million to invest for me. My mother, June, a Bedell, is a third-grade teacher at a private elementary school, though she doesn’t particularly like children, including maybe her own. Most of the MacCormicks and Bedells are college grads and according to my father the youngsters have all been educated beyond their intelligence. He may be right.

  Like a lot of New Englanders, my family’s politics are a mixture of progressive and conservative. We believe in taking care of the less fortunate, but we don’t want that to cost us money. As for me, I am apolitical, and as for Yankee frugality, I missed that class. If I had, for instance, two million dollars I’d buy drinks for the house at the Green Parrot and take Amber on a long cruise. My financial advisor is Jack Colby, who likes to say, “I spent most of my money on booze and broads and I wasted the rest of it.”

  Well, I guess it goes without saying that Portland and Key West, though connected by the same ocean and the same road, are different places. And it also goes without saying that unlike my father, I am not the same man I was when I left home. But we are all One Human Family, fishing for peace. Meanwhile, I’d listen to what Carlos and his clients had to say about fishing for money. Costs nothing to listen. Better yet, I was getting paid for it.

  CHAPTER 5

  I came to the end of the dock where The Maine was tied. The bank and I own a beautiful 42-foot Wesmac Sport Fisherman, built in 2001 by Farrin’s Boatshop in Walpole, Maine. The original owner had custom outfitted the boat with a tuna tower, a hydraulic bandit reel, two fighting chairs, and other expensive boy toys. The Maine is powered by a Cat 800-horsepower diesel, and even with the tuna tower and other commercial extras she cruises at about twenty-five knots, which gets her out to the usual fishing spots quickly.

  If Cuba was in her future and mine, she could make Havana in under five hours, burning thirty gallons of diesel an hour, which was about a quarter of her six-hundred-gallon fuel capacity. She’d burn about three hundred gallons getting to Cayo Guillermo, then an unknown amount of fuel for the six-day tournament, so she’d have to take on fuel before heading back to Key West. But to keep her light and fast, only enough fuel to get us home. And how much does sixty million dollars weigh?

  But why was I doing that math? Well, because I was thinking that you shouldn’t turn down two million dollars before you’ve heard the deal.

  I jumped aboard and saw that Jack wasn’t back yet with the rum and Coke.

  I went below to the galley and got myself a bottled water from the fridge. The galley and cabin seemed shipshape and I used the head, which looked like it could pass an inspection from the Cuban lady. Jack is, if nothing else, neat and clean, a holdover from his Army days.

  The Maine has a wide beam—16 feet—so there’s room below for two decent-sized staterooms that sleep four, as I told Carlos, though a ten-day sail with provisions onboard could be a bit tight. And where was I going to stow sixty million dollars? I guess that depended on the denomination of the bills and how much room they took up. I’m sure we’d figure it out. Or, better yet, I’d just tell Carlos, “You need a bigger boat. Find someone else.”

  I went into the cabin and checked out the electronics, which had all been updated about a year ago at great expense. To stay competitive in this game you needed the best and the latest in chart plotters, radios, radar, sounder boxes, and all that. Plus I had a flat-screen TV in the cabin, a DVD player, stereo, and four new speakers. I don’t even have that stuff in my crappy house.

  I bought this boat—formerly named the Idyll Hour—from a rich guy from Long Island named Ragnar Knutsen, who had discovered that a pleasure boat was not always a pleasure. He’d sailed to Key West with his buddies for a fishing trip four years ago, then put a FOR SALE sign on his boat at Schooner Wharf. Someone at the Parrot knew I was looking and told me to check it out. I did, and made a deal with Ragnar for three hundred thousand, though the boat, new, had cost him about twice that—which should have been my first clue that I was buying a bottomless money pit. But I already knew that from growing up in Maine.

  I also knew, as did Ragnar Knutsen, that the two happiest days of a man’s life are the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it. Ragnar, though, hid his happiness and told me he was practically giving me the Idyll Hour in thanks for my service to the country.

  My father, of course, thought I was making a bad investment, a bad career choice, and an immature decision. I knew he was right, so I went ahead with the deal.

  The bank liked the deal more than my father did, and for fifty thousand down—my Army separation pay and savings—I was able to sign a quarter-million-dollar note, and rechristen the boat as The Maine. With luck, I could get two-fifty for it, pay off the loan, and get a job back on Wall Street. Or I could go home and live on my disability pay. Or, holy shit, learn the financial planning business. Or, better yet, go back to school for a graduate degree in something. Never too old to waste time in school. I went to Bowdoin, as I said, the oldest college in Maine and one of the oldest in the country. When I was there, it was ranked the fourth best liberal arts college in the nation, but more importantly the second best drinking college. We got beat by Dartmouth, though I don’t know why. I did my part.

  Anyway, grad school was also an option, and the Army—as a way of saying sorry about that Taliban RPG that almost blew your balls off—would pick up some of the tab.

  Or . . . I could listen to what Carlos and his amigos had to say. As I used to say to my men, you gotta die someplace. And Cuba was as good a place to die as Afghanistan. And maybe that was better than wasting away here in Margaritaville, or on Wall Street, or in Portland. Lots of options. None of them good. Except maybe the Cuba option. Maybe this was my lucky day. Maybe not.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jack wheeled a cart alongside The Maine and called out to me, “Are those Beaners onboard yet?”

  Well, if they were, they’d take offense and leave. Jack Colby does not embrace political correctness, cultural diversity, gender equality, or whatever is in fashion at the moment. He’s okay, though, with Key West’s gay and transgender population. “Everybody’s gotta get laid,” he believes.

  Jack and I unloaded the cart, and I saw he’d scored two bottles of contraband Cuban rum—a liter of Ron Caney and a liter of Ron Santiago. He’d also bought Coca-Cola, limes, a bag of ice, and God-awful snacks. The Maine is not a party boat, per se, but I’ve had some interesting charters over the years, including a few drunken orgies. The captain and mate can’t drink, of course, but we can get laid at anchor. This job does have its moments.

  We stowed everything below and Jack went topside, sat in the fighting chair, and lit a cigarette. He asked, “Who are these people?”

  I opened a can of Coke and sat in the opposite chair. “The guy I met in the Parrot is a Miami lawyer named Carlos. There are two other people. One is a woman.”

  “Why did this guy want to meet you at the Parrot just to talk about a sunset cruise?”

  “He wanted to see the famous Green Parrot.”

  “Yeah?” Jack took a drag on his cigarette. After three years of working for me, he knows he asks more questions than I care to answer, but before the Cubans arrived I’d tell him about the fishing tournament. And the other job.

  Jack Colby was about seventy, tall, lanky, and in pretty good shape. His thinning brown hair was long and swept back, he had a perpetual three-day stubble, and his skin looked like it had been left in the toaster oven too long. Jack always wore jeans and sneakers, never shorts or flip flops, and today he’d chosen his favorite “I Kill People” T-shirt.

  I suggested, “The Maine T-shirt I gave you would be good tonight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He doesn’t mean “yes,” and he doesn’t mean “sir.” He means “Fuck you.” Sometimes he calls me “Captain,” and I never know if he’s using my former Army rank or my present title as a licensed sea captain. In either case he means “Asshole.”

  Jack had been an enlisted man in the Army, and no matter how short a t
ime you served, the military pecking order stays with you all your life, and as Jack would sometimes remind me, “You are an officer and a gentleman by an act of Congress, but an asshole by choice.”

  The military also discourages fraternization between officers and enlisted men, and that, too, stays with you, but Jack and I share the unbreakable bond of combat—same mud, same blood—and though we rarely socialize, we’re friends.

  Jack asked, “How much did you clip them for?”

  “Two thousand.”

  “Good score.”

  “I’ll split it with you.”

  “Thanks. I hope this Cuban broad is a looker.”

  “She’s a Cuban American lady. And what do you care? You’re so fucking old, the only thing you can get hard is your arteries.”

  Jack laughed. “Yeah? And I think you spent too much time in the foxhole with your gay soldiers.”

  I think we’ve been together too long, and I notice that when I’m around Jack, I use the F-word more than I usually do, and I mimic his wiseass attitude. I hope he’s not rubbing off on me. I’ve got enough problems.

  When Jack Colby first came aboard The Maine looking for a job, wearing a T-shirt that said: “Wounded Combat Vet—Some Reassembly Required,” he said he’d heard I was ex-Army, and in lieu of a résumé he showed me his DD-214—his Army discharge paper—which he kept neat and safe in a plastic case, as it was an important document, loaded with military acronyms that defined his service. Box 13a told me that he’d been honorably discharged in 1969, and another box showed me he’d served a year overseas. Among his decorations, medals, and commendations was the Vietnam Service Medal, the Combat Infantry Badge, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. I recalled that his home of record was Paterson, New Jersey, and that his last duty station had been Fort Benning, Georgia. Jack’s service number had an RA prefix, indicating Regular Army, meaning he’d volunteered for a three-year stint. His MOS—Military Occupation Skill—was 11-B, meaning infantry, and his Related Civilian Occupation said, “None.” Same as mine. He’d attained the rank of Private First Class, which is not much rank after three years and a tour in Vietnam, and I deduced that he’d either been busted or he had a problem with authority. Probably both. But he had received the Bronze Star for valor and a Purple Heart, so I hired him.