name was Captain Mackay, and as well as his questions there was his breath to contend with. Every time he pushed his squashed, bespectacled face toward mine I was enveloped in the sour aura of his tooth decay, and after a while I started to feel like something chewed up but only half digested deep inside his Yankee bowels.
Mackay said with ill-disguised contempt, “This story of yours, that you never met her until a couple of days ago, it makes no sense. No sense at all. You say she was a chica you were involved with; that you asked her to come away on your boat for a few weeks, and that this accounts for the considerable sum of money you had with you.”
“That’s correct.”
“And yet you say you know almost nothing about her.”
“At my age, it’s best not to ask too many questions when a pretty girl agrees to come away with you.”
Mackay smiled thinly. He was about thirty, too young to find much sympathy for an older man’s interest in younger women. There was a wedding band on his fat finger, and I imagined some wholesome girl with a permanent wave and a mixing bowl under her chubby arm waiting for him back home in some Erector Set government housing on a bleak naval base.
“Shall I tell you what I think? I think you were headed for the Dominican Republic to buy guns for the rebels. The boat, the money, the girl, it all adds up.”
“Oh, I can see you like the addition, Captain. But I’m a respectable businessman. I’m quite well-off. I have a nice apartment in Havana. A job at a hotel casino. I’m hardly the type to work for the communists. And the girl? She’s just a chica .”
“Maybe. But she murdered a Cuban policeman. Very nearly murdered one of mine.”
“Perhaps. But did you see me shoot anyone? I didn’t even raise my voice. In my business, girls—girls like Melba—they’re one of the fringe benefits. What they get up to in their spare time is—” I paused for a moment, searching for the best phrase in English. “Hardly my affair.”
“It is when she shoots an American on your boat.”
“I didn’t even know she had a gun. If I’d known that, I would have thrown it over the side. And maybe her, too. And if I had any idea that she was suspected of murdering a policeman, I would never have invited Senõrita Marrero to come away with me.”
“Let me tell you something about your girlfriend, Mr. Hausner.” Mackay stifled a belch, but not nearly enough for my comfort. He took off his glasses and breathed on them, and somehow they didn’t crack. “Her real name is María Antonia Tapanes, and she was a prostitute at a casa in Caimanera, which is how she came to steal a sidearm belonging Petty Officer Marcus. That’s why he recognized her when he saw her on your boat. We strongly suspect she was put up to the assassination of Captain Balart by the rebels. In fact, we’re more or less sure of it.”
“I find that very hard to believe. She never once mentioned politics to me. She seemed more interested in having a good time than in having a revolution.”
The captain opened one of the files in front of him and pushed it toward me.
“It’s more or less certain your little lady friend has been a communist and a rebel for quite a while now. You see, María Antonia Tapanes spent three months in the National Women’s Prison at Guanajay for her part in the Easter Sunday conspiracy of April 1953. Then, in July of last year, her brother Juan Tapanes was killed in the assault on Moncada Barracks led by Fidel Castro. Killed or executed, it’s not clear which. When María got out of prison and found her brother dead, she went to Caimanera and worked as a chica to get herself a weapon. That happens a lot. To be honest, quite a few of our men use their weapons as currency for buying sex. Then they just report the weapon stolen. Anyway, the next time the weapon turns up it’s been used to kill Captain Balart. There were witnesses, too. A woman answering María Tapanes’s description
Lexy Timms, B+r Publishing, Book Cover By Design