“All right.” My voice sounded like an animal’s in the darkness. Or perhaps an orisha of the forest from the world of Santería.

I threw away the cigar and went back inside. Noreen met me halfway, which was generous, and we embraced fondly. Her body still felt good in my arms and reminded me of everything it was supposed to remind me of. Level six. She still knew how to affect me, that much was certain. She laid her head on my shoulder, but with her face turned away, and let me inhale her beauty for a while. We didn’t kiss. That wasn’t yet required. Not while we were still on level six. Not while her face was turned away. After a moment or two she broke away and sat down again.

“You said something about Dinah’s being in with the wrong crowd,” I said. “That it was one of the reasons you asked me here.”

“I’m sorry I put it so badly. That’s not like me. After all, I’m supposed to be good with words. But I do need your help. With Dinah.”

“It’s been a long time since I knew anything about nineteen-year-old girls, Noreen. And even then, what I knew was probably hopelessly wrong. Short of spanking her, I don’t see what I can do.”

“I wonder if that might work,” she said.

“I don’t think it would help her very much. Of course, there’s always the possibility I might enjoy it, which is another reason to pack her off to Rhode Island. But I agree with you. The Barracuda Club is no place for a nineteen-year-old girl. Although there are much worse places in Havana.”

“Oh, she’s been to them all, I can assure you. The Shanghai Theater. The Cabaret Kursaal. The Hotel Chic. And those are just the match-books I’ve found in her bedroom. It might be even worse than that.”

I shook my head. “No, it doesn’t get any worse than them. Even in Havana.” I fetched my drink off the glass table and poured it safely away in my mouth. “All right, she’s wild. If the movies are right, then most kids are these days. But at least they’re not beating up Jews. And I still don’t see what I can do about it.”

Noreen found the Old Forester and refilled my glass. “Well, maybe we can think of something. Together. Like in the old days, remember? In Berlin? If things had worked out differently, we might even have made a difference. If ever I’d written that article, we might even have put a stop to Hitler’s Olympiad.”

“I’m kind of glad you didn’t write it. If you had, I’d probably be dead.”

She nodded. “For a while, we made quite an investigative team, Gunther. You were my Galahad. My knight of heaven.”

“Sure. I remember your letter. I’d like to tell you I still had it, but the Americans reorganized my filing system when they bombed Berlin. You want my advice about Dinah? I reckon you should fix a lock on her door and put her under a nine o’clock curfew. That used to work back in Vienna. When the Four Powers were in charge of the city. Also, you might think about not lending her the car whenever she asks for it. If it was me wearing those heels she had on, I might think twice about walking nine miles into the center of Havana.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Me wearing high heels? Sure, I’m a regular at the Palette Club, although they know me better there as Rita. You know, it’s not a bad thing that children should frequently disobey their parents. Especially when you consider the mistakes the parents made. Especially when they’re as grown up as Dinah obviously is.”

“Perhaps if I gave you all the facts,” she said, “you might understand the problem.”

“You can try. But I’m not a detective anymore, Noreen.”

“But you were, weren’t you?” She smiled a cunning smile. “It was me who got you started. As a private detective. Or maybe you need reminding.”

“So that’s your angle.”

She curled her lip with displeasure. “I certainly didn’t mean it to be an angle, as you put it. Not in the least. But I’m a mother who’s running out of options here.”

“I’ll send you a check. With interest.”

“Oh, stop it, for Pete’s sake. I don’t want your money. I’ve got plenty of money. But you might at least shut up for a minute and do me the courtesy of hearing me out before opening fire with both cannons. I figure you owe me that much. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“All right. I can’t promise to hear anything. But I’ll listen.”

Noreen shook her head. “You know, Gunther, it beats me how you ever survived the war. I’ve only just met you again, and already I want to shoot you.” She laughed scornfully. “You want to be careful, you know. This house has more guns than the Cuban militia. There are nights when I’ve sat here drinking with Hem, and he had a shotgun on his lap for taking potshots at the birds in the trees.”

“Sounds dangerous for the cats.”

“Not just the fucking cats.” Still laughing, she shook her head. “ People, too.”

“My head would look good in your bathroom.”

“What a horrid thought. You looking at me every time I took a bath.”

“I was thinking of your daughter.”

“That’s enough.” Noreen stood up abruptly. “Damn you, get out,” she said. “Get the fuck out of here.”

I went into the house again. “Wait,” she snapped. “Wait, please.”

I waited.

“Why are you such a hard-ass?”

“I guess I’m not used to human society,” I said.

“Please, listen. You could help her. You’re about the one person who can, I think. More than you know. I really don’t know who else to ask.”

“Is she in a jam?”

“Not exactly, no. At least, not yet. There’s a man, you see, whom she’s involved with. Who’s much older than her. I’m worried she’s going to end up like-like Gloria Grahame in that movie. The Big Heat. You know, where that sick bastard throws boiling hot coffee in her face.”

“Didn’t see it. Last film I saw was Peter Pan.”

We both turned around as a white Oldsmobile came up the drive. It had a sun visor and whitewall tires and sounded like the motor bus to Santiago.

“Damn,” said Noreen. “That’s Alfredo.”

The white Olds was followed by a two-door red Buick.

“And, it looks like, the rest of my guests.”

THERE WERE EIGHT OF US FOR DINNER. Dinner was prepared and served by Ramón, Hemingway’s Chinese cook, and René, his Negro butler, which only I seemed to find amusing. It certainly wasn’t because I had anything against the Chinese or Negroes. But it struck me as ironic that Noreen and her guests were all solemnly prepared to avow their communism while other men did all the work.

There was no denying what Cuba and its people had suffered, first at the hands of the Spanish, then the Americans, and then the Spanish again. But as bad as any of these perhaps had been the Cuban governments of Ramón Grau San Martín and now Fulgencio Batista. Formerly a sergeant in the Cuban army, F.B.-as most of the Europeans and Americans in Cuba called him-wasn’t much more than an American puppet. So long as he danced to Washington’s tune, American support seemed likely to continue, no matter how brutishly his regime behaved. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to believe that a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls the state-owned means of production was, or ever could be, the answer. And I said as much to Noreen’s left-leaning guests:

“I think communism’s a much greater evil to inflict upon this country than anything that could be conceived and administered by a minor despot like F.B. A small-time thug like him might inflict a few individual tragedies. Perhaps several. But it hardly begins to compare with the rule of genuine tyrants like Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. They’ve been the manufacturers of national tragedies. I can’t speak for all the Iron Curtain countries. But I know Germany pretty well, and you can take it from me that the working classes of the GDR would love to change places with the oppressed peoples of Cuba.”