Fifty Grand

Through Paco’s report.

Sunlight finally breaks through the mist, sending yellow beams through the house. Parrots start screeching on the rooftop. Soon all the other birds will begin too.

“You discovered that Jack Tyrone killed your father but you did not kill him?” Raúl asks.

“No. I didn’t kill him.”

I wait for the other shoe to drop. It drops.

“Why?”

“I killed the man who covered it up. I drowned him in a lake in Wyoming. I killed the police officer who helped him cover it up. I let Tyrone go. He was drunk. He didn’t even remember the accident. And afterward he did what they told him to do. He followed his lines, he played his part. He’s an actor. He’s not a… He’s not evil.” Raúl’s face is twitching with anger as I continue my explanation. “I told him I’d be watching him. I told him that if he didn’t lead an extraordinary life, an exemplary life, that I’d be back. I’d be back to kill him then.”

Raúl cocks his head, as if mercy is known to him only as a theoretical concept, not one that he’s seen in practice. “You killed the men who covered it up but you let Tyrone go?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t like the answer. His face reddens. He smacks his hand down hard on the kitchen table. The coffee cups jump. A goon looks in through the window.

“It wasn’t your call to make!” Raúl shouts.

“I don’t-”

“Don’t speak! It wasn’t your call, Mercado. I sent you there. I sent you. I sent you to do a job for me! Juan Mercado belonged to us, not the Yankees! We… I made the decision to spare his life and someone else overruled me!”

In the black books, in the samizdats, they quote the Jesuit schoolmasters who taught the Castro boys. Fidel was wild, aggressive, a bad loser, a prodigy. Raúl was the levelheaded one, unemotional, slow to anger. I always believed that but the books were wrong. Raúl’s face is scarlet. He’s shaking. Spittle on his lips. His hands have become fists. He’s capable of anything. If he said the word one of those DGI men would take me outside to the jasmine trees and put a bullet in my head.

He stands and stares at me for so long that I begin to think he’s had a stroke. But then his yellow eyes glaze and he calms down.

“It wasn’t your call to make,” he mutters again.

Finally he sits, takes a sip of coffee, breathes.

“Why did you go to America, if not to kill the man who killed your father?” he asks in a quiet tone.

It’s not an unreasonable question. It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself. “For the same reason I joined the PNR. The truth. Do you remember the truth?”

“Don’t get smart with me, Officer Mercado. I could have you and your captain and your brother and your mother thrown into a dungeon for fifty years. Your whole solar. Everyone you know.”

I look at my feet. Save yourself. Save yourself. You did it on the ice. Do it now. “I beg your pardon, Comrade Castro. I spoke hastily.”

He grunts. “Apology accepted, Comrade Mercado.”

A long silence.

The guards muttering. Someone warming up the car. Parrots and macaws screeching as they walk along the tree branches.

The question has been hanging here the whole time, but I can’t ask it. Not yet. Why are you so interested in my father, Comrade Raúl?

“Do you like Hemingway?” Raúl asks in a stern pedagogic voice.

“I haven’t read much. The Cuba novels in school. The Island of Streams, The Old Man in the Sea.”

“Islands in the Stream, The Old Man and the Sea,” Raúl corrects.

“Of course.”

“For the chief it was always For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway wrote that book in the Ambos Mundos in Habana Vieja and he bought this very house with the first royalty payment. The book is about the necessity of killing one’s enemies. Killing without favor or malice or mercy. But you have killed, Comrade Mercado. Four men.”

The watery eyes boring into me.

“Four in a little over a week. How does that make you feel?”

“Sick.”

“I myself have never killed anyone.”

I can’t help but raise my eyebrows. He sees, grins. “But I have signed the warrants on many. I signed the warrant on your father at his trial in absentia.”

“I know.” And that’s the opening I want. Now is the time. “If I may ask, Comrade Raúl, why-”

“Your father worked for me. Juan Mercado was a DGI officer. G6.”

“He was a ticket taker on the bay ferry.”

Raúl smiles. “Wasn’t he, though? I’ll bet he met everyone in Havana at one point or another. He was with us right from the start. From boyhood. The early days.”

“Not once did he talk to us about the Revolution,” I say, my voice trembling, my composure going.

“No. He wouldn’t.”

“It’s not true.” Desperation. For all his faults, Dad was no rat.

Raúl regards me, lifts his cup, waits. There’s no point in saying anything. We both know he’s not lying.

“Why?” I manage.