Rafi turned to look over the room, though with little interest; he drum-rolled his fingernails on the polished wood of the stand. The woman’s voice came on. “Rafi?”
“Yes.” He turned his back to the room again.
“It’s a jewelry store, that address, and there is no Mary Delaney in Miami Beach.”
“Hiding something,” Rafi said, pleased. “Can you look her up some other way?”
The woman’s voice said, “I have directories-what do you think I am, the FBI?”
He could see the woman, imagine her sitting in her room that was like a gallery of photographs of important people: some of the pictures framed and enscribed, “To La Perla, with love,” or “fondest regards,” though most of the pictures, the ones in color, had been cut from magazines twenty or thirty years ago. La Perla had written about parties and scandals and was said to have been an intimate of Porfirio Rubirosa, the world’s greatest lover. Now she sold pieces of her past and somehow remained alive.
“You have to see this one,” Rafi said. “Anyone who looks like she does has to be somebody. I think I’ve seen her picture, but I’m not sure. I don’t have your memory, like a recording machine.”
“What does she look like?”
“An ice cream. I had a spoon I would have eaten her,” Rafi said. “Listen. Be at Mesón de la Cava, nine o’clock, you’ll see her.”
“You’re taking me to dinner?”
“Sit at the bar. Look at her and tell me who she is.”
“I have to take a taxi there, five pesos,” the woman said, “for you to buy me a drink?”
“I’ll pay for the taxi,” Rafi said. “You can have two drinks.”
“I hope I don’t become drunk,” the woman said.
“Tell me what would make you happy,” Rafi said.
“I want three daiquiris, at least,” the woman said, “and I want the large shrimp cocktail.”
“If she’s somebody, you can have a flan, too. Nine o’clock,” Rafi said, looking at his watch. He hung up and walked over to a blackjack table where the dealer, a light-skinned Dominican who wore the casino’s gold jacket and vacant expression, stood alone waiting for players. Rafi hooked his leg over a stool and gave the dealer a ten-peso note for ten pink chips. As they began to play Rafi touched his chin and worked his jaw from side to side.
“My face hurts from smiling.”
“All the sweetness gone out of it,” the dealer said. “You want a hit?”
“Hit me… That’s good.” He watched the dealer turn over his cards, totaling fifteen. “Take one yourself.”
“I know how to play,” the dealer said, putting a card down. He went over twenty-one and paid Rafi his chips.
“I’m letting it ride,” Rafi said. “Deal.” They continued to play, Rafi winning again. “You think of her husband’s name?”
“Who?”
“Who have we been talking about? Luci Palma.”
“I still don’t remember it,” the dealer said. “They live in Sosua. That’s all I know.”
“I don’t like her having a husband,” Rafi said. “She have a good-looking sister?”
“Some brothers.”
“Pay me again. I’m letting it ride,” Rafi said. “I know she has brothers. Hit me. It was a brother I talked to. He knew the one who was with her that the Marine shot. I think I need a younger sister if I don’t find a good Luci Palma.”
“You’re crazy,” the dealer said, paying him for the third straight time.
“How do you know? Have I told you anything?”
“I don’t want to know,” the dealer said.
“Hit me,” Rafi said. “Does the Marine come in here?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“Again… What about the woman that’s with him?”
“I don’t know his woman.”
“You haven’t seen her? Once more. You’re missing it. She’s an ice cream. Butter almond. I look at her…”
“You wish you had a spoon,” the dealer said.
“I think I need a girl about twenty. Very beautiful, very innocent. I mean with the appearance of innocence. I don’t have that in my stable right now.”
“Your girls look like the hotel maids,” the dealer said, paying Rafi for the fourth straight time.
“I’m riding one hundred and… seventy pesos,” Rafi said, holding out his original ten. “If I win this one then I’m going to win something else very big, maybe the jackpot of my life… Come on, give it to me.”
The dealer gave him an ace and a queen. Blackjack.
“There,” Rafi said, like there was nothing to it.
He watched the dealer turn up his own cards. Another ace, another queen. The dealer raised his eyes.
“The thing about it is,” Rafi said, “you have to know what is a sign and what isn’t. You can be wrong about signs, sometimes interpret them the opposite of what they mean.”
“You’re still crazy,” the dealer said.
Rafi used restraint. He said, “Am I?” and left the dealer with that, a secret smile that told nothing because it had nothing to tell. At least for the time being.
He would have to be more attentive in reading signs.
The Cat Chaser’s notice in the paper and the business about it on the radio had alerted Rafi, immediately captured his interest. He talked to people who referred him to others who had taken an active part in the rebellion and there it was, once he put the pieces of the story together: an approach, a way to play a feature role in this, using an old knife scar to represent a bullet wound. He saw in his mind a crude scenario that went:
RAFI: I’m the one you shot sixteen years ago.
MARINE: Oh, I’m so sorry. What can I do to make amends?
RAFI: Please, nothing.
MARINE: I insist.
RAFI: Well, as one businessman to another (assuming the marine was now a businessman), I could tell you about a most unusual investment opportunity…
Something, in essence, like that. Make it up, get his check; gone. But now the mystery woman had entered the picture and the scenario was changing before Rafi’s eyes, the woman the Marine called Mary emerging to become, possibly, the key figure. So far it was only a feeling Rafi had. But to a man who lived by signs and instinct, what else was there?
THEY DESCENDED a spiral iron stairway fifty feet into the ground to dine in a cave, a network of rooms and niches like catacombs where tables were set with candles and white linen and Dominican couples danced to the percussion sounds of merengues. The old city and this place, no Coca-Cola or Texaco signs, Rafi said. This is Santo Domingo.
He told them he had begun to make inquiries about Luci Palma, but so far had learned nothing. It might take a little more time.
Moran tried to convince him it wasn’t important, but Rafi insisted; he was curious about Luci now himself. What could have happened to her? He ventured the possibility she had become a full-time revolutionary and fled the country. Like Caamaño, who had led the revolt in ’65; he left the country, returned and was shot. It happened.
They talked about that time sixteen years ago, the situation. Moran said it had been impossible to understand, being here in the middle of it. The rebels kept saying to them, “Can’t you tell your government we aren’t Communists?” It didn’t begin to make sense. Almost all the people were friendly; still, guys he knew were getting killed. He read about the situation later and decided they had helped the wrong side-just as they’d been helping the wrong side in Latin America for eighty years. Like Nicaragua, helping that asshole Somoza against the Sandinistas, the good guys. Except look at the good guys now. They just shut down a newspaper for criticizing them; they were doing the same thing Somoza did. What happens to good guys once they get control?
Mary said they have the right to make mistakes like anyone else. Don’t assume anything; don’t label people. She said, What if a skid-row bum asks you for a handout? Are you going to qualify him, give him the money only if he promises not to spend it on booze? No. Once you give him the money-and it’s your choice whether you do or not-then it’s his, with no strings. He can spend it on anything he wants. He can screw up or not screw up, that’s his choice. Unless you’re buying him. That’s something else.