and his cousin Peggy went on camping trips.
Like many things in Havana, the Hotel Nacional was definitely a blast from the past. It had been built in the ’30s by the famous New York architects McKim, Meade and Wright, and bore a strong resemblance to the Breakers, the Beaux-Arts hotel in Palm Beach. It wasn’t surprising since the Breakers architects, Shultze and Walker, were contemporaries with McKim, building such well-known hotels as the Pierre, the Waldorf-Astoria and the Sherry Netherland.
Stepping into the narrow lobby, its high ceiling done in dark coffered oak, the walls a pale creamy yellow, Holliday was uneasily reminded of the scene in
The Shining
when Danny Torrance was rumbling down the halls on his Big Wheel, Stanley Kubrick’s camera looking over his shoulder.
They booked the Rita Hayworth two-bedroom suite and settled in. It was no five-star hotel as advertised, but it wasn’t too bad; somewhere above a Best Western but not as good as the Waldorf. The suite had a balcony that looked out over the Maleconseawall to the ocean, and that was certainly something. Eddie did a cursory check for electronic bugs—usually not used in places like the Nacional according to Eddie—unless the Special Brigade had some interest in you, in which case it would have been likely they’d be taken to the dungeons under Morro Castle on the other side of the harbor and fed to the few remaining rats in the city—you don’t have rats where there is nothing for them to eat. When Eddie was satisfied they ordered a bottle of Havana Club Rum, some ice and some Cokes and a Cohiba Behike 52, if they had it. When the rum, the Cokes and the cigar arrived on its own small silver serving platter with a cutter and a small silver receptacle full of matches, Holliday and Eddie sat out on the balcony to watch the sun go down and figure out the next step in the plan to find Eddie’s brother, Domingo.
“You must remember, Doc, this is not the Cuba of my youth,” cautioned Eddie, puffing on the aromatic cigar. He sipped his rum and stared thoughtfully out over the Malecon and the darkening sea beyond. “In my early days, when I was in the Pioneers, they were my best days, you understand? Everything was ahead of us. We went out into the fields each year to gather vegetables and to cut the cane and pick the fruit and it meant something. Fidel would lead us to better times, better days ahead. Everything was about the future, and for a while it was true. Before Fidel ablack man could never have gone to university. Most didn’t even go to school at all, but now we were equal, all of us, men, women, black, white, mulatto…none of that mattered…as long as we listened to Fidel and to Che.”
“So, what happened?” Holliday asked, enjoying the faint but cooling onshore breeze coming up from the ocean and riffling the curtains behind them.
“The lies began. Fidel would blame the ‘embargo’ for everything…there was a food shortage because of the ‘embargo,’ a clothing shortage ‘embargo,’ always the same, but we could see it—a ten-ton truck packed with tomatoes rotting in the sun because no one had organized transportation or distribution…. There were rumors that all was not well among
El Comandante
and his friends. Have you ever heard the name Manuel Piñeiro Losada?”
“I don’t think so.” Holliday shrugged.
“He was Fidel’s head of the Dirección General de Inteligencia, DGI. Cuban intelligence. Between Losada and Fidel they convinced Che that the next step in the socialization of the Americas lay in Bolivia, of all places. Bolivia is more than four thousand kilometers from Cuba—what did it have to do with us? But Fidel and Losada told him the Bolivian Communist Party would rise to his aid. It wasn’t true, just like it wasn’t true for the poor
bastardos
at the Bay of Pigs. He left Cuba with his little group of less than twentymen in the middle of February, and by April he was dead, his guerrilla force
Like many things in Havana, the Hotel Nacional was definitely a blast from the past. It had been built in the ’30s by the famous New York architects McKim, Meade and Wright, and bore a strong resemblance to the Breakers, the Beaux-Arts hotel in Palm Beach. It wasn’t surprising since the Breakers architects, Shultze and Walker, were contemporaries with McKim, building such well-known hotels as the Pierre, the Waldorf-Astoria and the Sherry Netherland.
Stepping into the narrow lobby, its high ceiling done in dark coffered oak, the walls a pale creamy yellow, Holliday was uneasily reminded of the scene in
The Shining
when Danny Torrance was rumbling down the halls on his Big Wheel, Stanley Kubrick’s camera looking over his shoulder.
They booked the Rita Hayworth two-bedroom suite and settled in. It was no five-star hotel as advertised, but it wasn’t too bad; somewhere above a Best Western but not as good as the Waldorf. The suite had a balcony that looked out over the Maleconseawall to the ocean, and that was certainly something. Eddie did a cursory check for electronic bugs—usually not used in places like the Nacional according to Eddie—unless the Special Brigade had some interest in you, in which case it would have been likely they’d be taken to the dungeons under Morro Castle on the other side of the harbor and fed to the few remaining rats in the city—you don’t have rats where there is nothing for them to eat. When Eddie was satisfied they ordered a bottle of Havana Club Rum, some ice and some Cokes and a Cohiba Behike 52, if they had it. When the rum, the Cokes and the cigar arrived on its own small silver serving platter with a cutter and a small silver receptacle full of matches, Holliday and Eddie sat out on the balcony to watch the sun go down and figure out the next step in the plan to find Eddie’s brother, Domingo.
“You must remember, Doc, this is not the Cuba of my youth,” cautioned Eddie, puffing on the aromatic cigar. He sipped his rum and stared thoughtfully out over the Malecon and the darkening sea beyond. “In my early days, when I was in the Pioneers, they were my best days, you understand? Everything was ahead of us. We went out into the fields each year to gather vegetables and to cut the cane and pick the fruit and it meant something. Fidel would lead us to better times, better days ahead. Everything was about the future, and for a while it was true. Before Fidel ablack man could never have gone to university. Most didn’t even go to school at all, but now we were equal, all of us, men, women, black, white, mulatto…none of that mattered…as long as we listened to Fidel and to Che.”
“So, what happened?” Holliday asked, enjoying the faint but cooling onshore breeze coming up from the ocean and riffling the curtains behind them.
“The lies began. Fidel would blame the ‘embargo’ for everything…there was a food shortage because of the ‘embargo,’ a clothing shortage ‘embargo,’ always the same, but we could see it—a ten-ton truck packed with tomatoes rotting in the sun because no one had organized transportation or distribution…. There were rumors that all was not well among
El Comandante
and his friends. Have you ever heard the name Manuel Piñeiro Losada?”
“I don’t think so.” Holliday shrugged.
“He was Fidel’s head of the Dirección General de Inteligencia, DGI. Cuban intelligence. Between Losada and Fidel they convinced Che that the next step in the socialization of the Americas lay in Bolivia, of all places. Bolivia is more than four thousand kilometers from Cuba—what did it have to do with us? But Fidel and Losada told him the Bolivian Communist Party would rise to his aid. It wasn’t true, just like it wasn’t true for the poor
bastardos
at the Bay of Pigs. He left Cuba with his little group of less than twentymen in the middle of February, and by April he was dead, his guerrilla force
Similar Books
Endless Chain
Emilie Richards
Gods Go Begging
Alfredo Vea
Ghostwriting
Eric Brown
The Stone Demon
Karen Mahoney
The Tamarack Murders
Patrick F. McManus
Touch the Sky (Young Underground #8)
Robert Elmer
A Painted Doom
Kate Ellis
The Unquiet
Patricia Gaffney, J. D. Robb, Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, Mary Kay McComas