Havana Best Friends (18 page)

“What’s he holding?” Lawson asked.

“Their hearts,” came the answer.

The roll of film and the prints had been intercepted by a Guatemalan Army press officer who doubled as a CIA operative. Lawson knew what he was supposed to do and what he had to do. He was supposed to show repugnance and he had to get rid of the culprit. As a Special Forces captain and Vietnam veteran, he remembered vividly the effect that similar pictures had had worldwide during the Southeast Asia quagmire. The U.S. Army didn’t need such publicity in the 1980s, he reasoned. But Lawson also knew he ought to meet this guy. It might come in handy to know a born killer. So he sent for Truman and had a long, rather fatherly chat with him, dealing mostly with photography. Two weeks later the sergeant was flown home.

After resigning his commission, Truman returned to East St. Louis. The neighbourhood had changed substantially, all the big shots who knew him had moved, either up or down. He became a bartender in the red-light district, where the only job
requirements were to know how to uncap beers, pour straight shots of bourbon, and bounce unruly drunks. On the side, however, Truman gave beatings in nearby towns for $500, pushed a little cocaine, collected sports bets on the phone for a percentage, and, also for a percentage, directed clients to a brothel. All in all he was making between $40,000 and $50,000 a year, which was not bad. He was unhappy, though. His lifestyle didn’t seem conducive to a great future.

In 1991, Bruce Lawson retired from the army. He was immediately approached by friends who said they needed a manager for an early retirement plan: $75,000 a year, clean hands, just a middleman. Lawson asked only one thing: would he be allowed to cancel his contract – he didn’t like the word
retirement
applied to himself – after ten years? It took the man at the top one week to send his reply; or maybe he was abroad, Lawson never knew, but he was finally assured that in ten years he would be permitted to pull out of the early retirement business.

Several uneventful years passed. Lawson’s duties included the submission of candidates for the company’s staff, and one day in 1995, he learned that a young pathologist, soon to be a witness in a New Hampshire trial, had to retire prematurely by reason of ill health. Lawson, who had his philosophical moments, mused,
Imagine, a pathologist, a guy who opens chests and pulls out hearts on a daily basis
. And Ernest Truman came to mind.

He flew to East St. Louis and from a pay phone got ready to call the thirty-three Trumans in the directory. He tracked Ernie down on the eighth call. There was some reminiscing about the good old days before they sat down to talk business. When an agreement was reached, Lawson handed Truman a fat envelope containing seventy-five hundred-dollar bills, all of them a little
limp, some a little greasy as well. It was half the agreed sum; the other half would be delivered once the job was carried out.

Since then, Ernest Truman had killed for Lawson on five occasions: two in the States, one in Canada, one in Paris, and the last in Havana. But over the years Truman had developed a few notions of his own. He was doing a dirty, dangerous job and getting the crumbs that fell from Lawson’s table. He wasn’t getting any younger, either. And the Cuban contract was the weirdest, most promising of them all.

His heartfelt initial refusal had been fortunate. Had he accepted Lawson’s first overture, he wouldn’t have learned what it was all about. “No way, Captain,” he said, as categorically and courteously as he could. “Last I heard, Cuba is under Communism. I get nailed there, I can’t have due process of law, defence attorney, nothing. No friends there to pull strings, lend a hand. I’ve heard prisons here are Disney World compared to prisons down there. No thanks. You want a friendly piece of advice? Don’t mess with those guys.”

He remained absolutely adamant. Lawson argued a lot before realizing that, lacking a stronger, yet believable motivation, the former sergeant wouldn’t join the team. And of all the people he knew, Truman was the best and most dependable. So, he revealed as much of the Consuegra story as he deemed prudent, emphasizing total value. He promised that, should he find the wares, the killer’s cut would be a minimum of a quarter of a mil, a maximum of half a mil. And this whether he had to cap someone or not.
In-fucking-credible! Fan-fucking-tastic!
Truman thought. He’d be set up for life. For such a payoff he was willing to go to Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, or Hell itself.

But Truman couldn’t stomach his exclusion from the second
trip, the impossibility of checking whether Lawson hit the jackpot. Why? he wanted to ask. Suppose something goes wrong and you need me? Yet, he didn’t push it; on the contrary, he pretended to go along all the way and trust Lawson implicitly. As a streetwise kid he had learned a few guiding principles. In this particular operation, four repeatedly flashed in his mind like neon signs: don’t trust anyone; don’t reveal your suspicions; don’t alert potential enemies; don’t put yourself at a disadvantage. So he agreed to join the recon squad, ice whoever needed to be iced (should it be necessary, Lawson stressed), then wait until Lawson recovered the merchandise on the second trip,
if
in August he hit pay dirt.

He got a ten-thousand-dollar advance from Lawson, fulfilled his part of the deal, kept the Canadian passport that Lawson gave him for the recon, and, on returning to East St. Louis, spent two weeks trying to figure how better to look after his interests. The only useful piece of information he had was the name Bruce Lawson had adopted for the Havana expedition: Sean Abercorn.

On July 3 he flew to Toronto and visited the travel agency where Lawson had bought the three tickets for the first trip. He explained to the manager that his elder brother was involved with a cheap hooker who threatened to break up his twelve-year marriage to a decent woman. They had flown to Havana in late May, on tickets sold by this agency. He suspected a second trip to Cuba, probably in August, and was hoping to persuade his brother not to go. Truman added that he would be immensely grateful if the manager could give him the date of the flight as soon as the reservation was made.

The manager countered by saying he was very sorry but he couldn’t betray the privacy of his clients. Truman, his eyes moist, placed a thousand U.S. dollars on the manager’s desk and pleaded
with him. A grand would more than compensate the loss of the agency’s commission should he be able to persuade his brother to cancel the trip. Wouldn’t the manager help save a three-kid family from disaster? Maybe even the life of his elder brother, who might blow his brains out when the slut dumped him, as she undoubtedly would, after squeezing him dry?

The manager recognized that a man facing such a moral dilemma deserves all the help his closest relatives can provide. As a family man himself, he would collaborate, the man assured Truman as he reached for the stack of fifty-dollar bills and counted them faster than a counting machine.

It was a very long shot, but it paid off. Using the same passports, Lawson contacted the travel agency and Truman learned the day of the flight and the Havana hotel where the couple would be staying. At a different travel agency he bought a plane ticket for the same day, departing from Toronto six hours later. By the time his DC-10 was flying over Raleigh, North Carolina, Ernest Truman had checked one more time the long list of unknown factors he faced, the trouble with going in blind like this. He snuggled down in his seat and closed his eyes to sleep the rest of the way. Feeling comfortable made him remember the hardness of the pews at the church of Santa Rita de Casia.

Marc Scherjon was angry with himself. Out of his deeply ingrained belief that financial responsibility is essential in life, he had reserved a seat in business class. Why the fuck did he do it if all his expenses were covered by the client? Had he chosen first class, he probably wouldn’t have seen her.

Her
was the flight attendant who cared for him and other passengers on the right aisle of Air France’s Paris-Havana Flight 3672. The most breathtakingly beautiful woman Scherjon had ever seen. Around five-feet-eight in her black pumps, she had dark, shoulder-length hair combed back and gathered in a bun covered by a turquoise handkerchief identical to the one she wore around her neck. Wide, unlined forehead, dreamy brown eyes, high cheekbones, marvellous lips blessed with a seductive smile. Delicate makeup, natural grace, sweetness of character. And although her deep-blue jacket and skirt were not revealing, neither did they conceal the perfect proportions of her body. Medium-sized breasts, small waist, nice hips. Ideal by his standards. Fashion designers had different criteria. They would have dismissed her by reason of age (she appeared to be in her late thirties) and judged her arms and legs a trifle too full. But what do fashion designers know about staggeringly gorgeous women?

Being bewitched and bewildered bothered Scherjon. He was of medium height, sixty-six years old, plump, and had an overbite. Rimless bifocals stole whatever expression his green eyes projected, his thin lips formed a straight, indifferent line, and he held himself too erect, like a store mannequin. To accentuate his insipidity, he wore a charcoal-grey jacket over a white dress shirt, baggy trousers, and black loafers. He was one of the best diamond appraisers in the city of Amsterdam, and in the overhead compartment he had stored a strange-looking leather container too small and slim to classify as a carry-on, too large and wide to be termed a briefcase.

Two weeks earlier Scherjon had been approached by one of his colleagues in Amsterdam who asked whether he would be
interested in flying to Havana to inspect five or six faceted gems and verify their authenticity. He didn’t have to weigh them or estimate their value, just certify that they were bona fide diamonds. He would be paid $2,000 and all travel expenses. Scherjon asked if he could sleep on it and give his final answer the following morning. His colleague said fine.

That evening he had considered the matter. The whole thing wouldn’t take long, maybe a couple of hours, and he had never made a thousand dollars an hour. On the other hand, over the years he had heard a lot of conflicting reports about the biggest island in the Caribbean and was curious. Spending a few days in Havana might not be an unpleasant experience, Scherjon reasoned.

There were a few oddities to the deal. He was supposed to reserve a room at a certain hotel and await an invitation to join the client in another room in the same hotel by a phone call during which a prearranged phrase would be said. He should also suppose that the rooms were bugged, avoid inquisitive strangers, and keep the true purpose of his visit to himself. If Havana customs officials asked about the tools of his trade inside the unusual container, he would disclose what he did for a living and declare his intention of mixing business with pleasure by visiting a few jewellery stores in Havana and maybe buying a few gems if the price was right. He should devote a day to that anyway, thus assuaging any concerns the Cuban authorities might have.

His father and grandfather had been diamond appraisers, and since childhood Scherjon had learned that discretion and secrecy were everyday requirements in the world of diamonds. He was accustomed to both, and actually liked the adventurous flavour they added to what, for him, after forty-two years appraising
diamonds, had become a rather boring profession. So, the following morning he had called his friend and said he would do it.

Marc Scherjon sighed deeply and extracted from its plastic bag the blindfold provided by the airline, slipped it on, and tried to erase the flight attendant from his mind by sleeping until the plane landed.

While Marc Scherjon suffered in silence at thirty thousand feet and five hundred miles an hour, Ernest Truman was leaving Havana’s Terminal 3 behind the wheel of a Mitsubishi Lancer, Sean was revealing to Marina the things she would learn anyway in a few hours and making promises, and twelve blocks away Elena Miranda was sitting on a curbstone, hoping to get her ration of beef at the butcher’s. As she waited, she heard a neighbour telling another customer that “the second turn of the dog” had arrived. Fine. Suddenly, she smirked. It meant that the first consignment of hot-dog sausage had been insufficient for all ration cards and a second shipment had been received. Sometimes there were second turns of poultry, fish, or ground beef mixed with soybean. “The first two weeks of sugar” meant that, of the monthly ration of six pounds, only three were available at the beginning of the month; the rest was “the second two weeks.” The same thing happened occasionally with salt or beans.