It was midnight, and dark had overwhelmed the city when Arkady wasn't looking. A power outage arranged by Luna, or was his imagination expanding in the dark? There were no streetlamps on the Malecon, only a couple of faint headlights like the sort on luminescent fish found in an ocean trench. Although he latched the shutters closed and lit a candle, darkness continued to seep into the room with a solid, tarry quality.

A car horn woke him. The horn blared until he opened the balcony doors and saw that the morning had started hours before. The sea was a brilliant mirror to a huge sky, the sun high and shadows reduced to mere spots of ink. Across the Malecon a boy flipped small, silvery bait out of a net up to a partner standing on the seawall with a pole. Another boy gutted his fish on the sidewalk and threw the entrails up to a hovering gull. Directly below the balcony was a streamlined cloud of chrome and white, Hemingway's Chrysler Imperial convertible with George Washington Walls at the wheel and John O'Brien in a golf cap and Hawaiian shirt.

"Remember, we were going to talk about possible employment," Walls called up.» And show you some famous sin spots."

"You can't just tell me?"

"Think of us as your guides," O'Brien said.» Think of it as a Grand Tour."

Arkady looked to Walls for any sign that Isabel had reported her midnight visit and he looked to O'Brien for an indication that word of the AzuPanama papers reached him via Osorio, but all he saw shining up from the car were bright smiles and dark glasses. Employment in Havana? That had to be a joke. But how could he dare to miss learning more about AzuPanama and John O'Brien? Besides, he thought, what could happen in Hemingway's car?

"Give me a minute."

The desk drawer had envelopes. Into one Arkady fit all his worldly evidence: Rufo's house key, Pribluda's car key, AzuPanama documents and the photo of the Havana Yacht Club. Arkady taped the envelope to the small of his back, put on his shirt and coat, a man equipped for all climates and occasions.

The car even rode like a cloud, the warm upholstery adhesive to the touch. Arkady noticed even from the backseat the push-button transmission, how could anyone miss that? They breezed along the Malecon while Walls gossiped about other famous cars, Fidel's penchant for Oldsmobiles and Che's '60 Chevrolet Impala. Arkady looked around.» Have you seen Luna?"

"The sergeant is no longer associated with us," Walls said.

"I think the man's unhinged," said O'Brien.

Walls said, "Luna is one funky dude." He dipped his glasses from his blue eyes.» When are you going to dump the coat?"

O'Brien said, "It's like driving around with Abe-Fucking-Lincoln. It is."

"When I get warm."

"You read Hemingway in Russia?" Walls asked.

"He's very popular there. Jack London, John Steinbeck and Hemingway."

"When writers were bruisers," said O'Brien.» I'd have to say I think of The Old Man and the Sea every time I see the fishing boats go out. I loved the book and the film. Spencer Tracy was magnificent. A better Irishman than Cuban, but magnificent."

"John reads everything," Walls said.

"I love movies too. When I get homesick I put on a video. I have America on videotapes. Capra, Ford, Minnelli."

Arkady thought of Vice Consul Bugai and the $5,000 deposit in Bugai's name at O'Brien's Panama bank.

"Do you have any Russian friends here?"

"There aren't that many. But to be honest I have to say I steer clear, as a precautionary measure."

"Pariahs," said Walls.

"The Russian Mafia would love to get in here. They're already in Miami, Antigua, Caymans, they're in the neighborhood, but Russians are such a sore subject with Fidel there's no point in being associated with them. But more than that, they're stupid, Arkady. No offense."

"None taken."

"A Russian wants money, he says, I'll kidnap someone rich, bury him up to his neck and demand a ransom. Maybe his family will pay and maybe they won't. A short-term proposition either way. An American wants money, he says, I'll do a mass mailing and offer an investment with an irresistible rate of return. Maybe the investment pays off or maybe it doesn't, but as long as I have lawyers those people will be paying me for the rest of their lives. After they're dead I'll put a lien on their estate. They'll wish I had buried them up to their necks."

"That's what you did?" Arkady said.

"I'm not saying that's what I did, I'm saying what's done in the States." He raised his hand and his biggest grin.» Not lying. I have testified in district court in Florida and Georgia, federal court in New York and Washington and I have never lied."

"That's a lot of courts to tell the truth in," Arkady said.

"The fact is," said O'Brien, "I prefer happy investors. I'm too old to be stalked by unshaven, angry men or have to duck subpoenas from men who can stand outside a door for the rest of their miserable lives. Hey, we're here!"

Walls swung across oncoming traffic to the curb of an airy high-rise hotel, an angled tower of blue balconies that nestled at its base the separate dome in mottled colors. Arkady had passed the hotel before without fully registering how its architecture was pure American fifties. And they'd arrived in the perfect car, gliding to a stop under a cantilevered entrance by a statue of, perhaps, a seahorse and siren carved from the largest of all whale bones. John O'Brien had visited before, judging by the doormen's zeal.

"The Riviera," O'Brien explained in a hush to Arkady, as if they were about to enter the Vatican.» The American Mafia built other hotels here, but the jewel was the Riviera."

Arkady asked, "What does this have to do with me?"

"A little patience, please. It all fits."

O'Brien removed his cap as a mark of respect before they climbed the stairs and entered glass doors to a low lobby of white marble under inset ceiling lights spaced as irregularly as stars. Sofas as long as boxcars reached across the floor toward a skylit grotto of elephant-ear ferns. Along one side was the tidal murmur of a bar, at the far end a staircase suspended on wires wound around a stabile of black stone, and a bright haze that was plate glass leading to a pool. O'Brien glided at a reverent pace across the lobby, tassels of his shoes flopping.» Everything deluxe. Kitchen like a cruise ship, beautifully appointed rooms. And the casino?"

One step ahead of O'Brien, Walls opened the brass doors to a convention hall emblazoned with the colorful, forceful logos of Spanish, Venezuelan, Mexican banks. Knockdown displays and charts on easels forecast Caribbean economic trends. Business cards and four-color brochures littered the carpet. O'Brien stopped at a particularly outsized booth with a row of chairs facing a giant monitor.

"It's pathetic," O'Brien said.» Market projections, rates of interest, capital protection, all languages spoken. Look at this." He tried to turn on the monitor at the screen.» Hell, it doesn't even work."

"Maybe this does." Arkady picked up a remote control from the booth counter and pushed on. At once, images of serious men and women in expensive suits marched across the screen. Dollars, pesetas, deutsche-marks flowed from them like lines of electricity.

"Right," O'Brien said.» They know how to put your money to work for your benefit around the world, sure they do. The only trouble, this isn't the world. This is Cuba. You know what Fidel says about capitalists. First, all they want is the tip of your little finger, then the finger, then the hand, then your arm and piece by piece all the rest of you. He's made up his mind. So the banks didn't come all this way to make their presentations to Fidel, think about that. Thank you, Arkady."

Arkady turned the remote off.

"Anyway," O'Brien said, "the banks have it backwards. Nowadays people are not interested in a slow accrual of assets. What they want is a jackpot, the lottery, payday. Look around, you can still see it." He called Arkady's attention to walls of baroque cream and gold, pointing out how the dropped ceiling hid the dome overhead. They were in the painted dome they had seen from outside. If the Riviera was the Vatican, this was the Sistine Chapel. As O'Brien removed his dark glasses and made a slow, complete turn a small miracle happened, the lines on his fine-as-an-eggshell forehead seemed to smooth away and Arkady saw a hint of the redhead O'Brien once had been.» The Gold Leaf Casino. You have to imagine the way it was, Arkady. Four roulette tables, two seven-eleven, one baccarat, four tables for blackjack with mahogany rails, the nap brushed twice a day. Not an ash. Pit manager on a bishop's chair. It was a meeting of two classes, the rich and the mob. The French have a word for it: frisson. A little charge and, by God, it sparkled. Chandeliers lit like bubbling champagne glasses. Women wearing diamonds from Harry Winston, I mean rocks. Movie stars, Rockefellers, you name it."