Jack and Susan in 1953 Read online

  “Thank you for coming,” said Susan. “My husband and I—”

  Richard Bollow smiled a tight smile at Jack, and there was a hesitant, awkward shaking of hands.

  “—We’ve been looking for you,” said Jack. “High and low, in fact.”

  “Dreadful accident,” said the lawyer, glancing toward the grave. “May we go somewhere else please?”

  Near the lawyer’s office was a bar called McGinty’s. Jack and Susan had been there twice in search of Richard Bollow, but they had never sat down in the place; not that it was perceptibly dirtier than any other Havana bar. Bollow led them through a maze of empty tables and unoccupied chairs toward a remote corner of the place, where neither sun nor breeze of ceiling fans ever reached. Bollow took a seat with his back to the corner of the bar, leaning his head against the smoke-stained wall with a small smile of satisfaction—as if now assured of his protection from attack from behind. He ordered a daiquiri, glanced at Jack and Susan, who nodded. He held up three fingers, and after a few minutes, the bartender maneuvered through the empty tables and chairs with a tray of drinks.

  Bollow glanced at Jack, and Jack paid.

  When the waiter went away, Susan said, “It was not an accident. My uncle was murdered.”

  “Oh yes,” said Bollow blandly. “A terrible murder.”

  “It would have been very helpful,” said Jack evenly, “if we had had your assistance in the past few days. After all, we’re strangers here in Cuba, and you were acquainted with Mr. Bright’s affairs. We had no way of finding you.”

  “I was away,” said Bollow. “On business for your uncle, in fact. When I heard…”

  He finished his daiquiri, but not his sentence. Richard Bollow was obviously a man who did not like to give too much of himself away at first encounter.

  Jack and Susan had not touched their drinks. Bollow eyed the filled glasses. Susan pushed hers closer to him, and he smiled a small smile of gratitude.

  “We could have used your assistance with the police, for one thing,” said Susan.

  “They haven’t arrested you,” Bollow pointed out. “That would have been dreadful. Don’t get arrested here,” he added, as if he were giving a piece of excellent and totally unheard-of advice. “In fact, the best thing you could do would be to return to New York immediately.”

  “How do you know we came from New York?” Jack asked.

  “Mr. Bright often spoke of his charming niece,” said Bollow smoothly. “Besides, it is no secret how you got here. Am I wrong in so assuming?”

  “No,” said Susan. “We came from New York—and we would like to return, as soon as possible. But I want to stay until I’m certain that my uncle’s things are in order.”

  “Yes,” said Bollow. “I would certainly advise that.”

  Bollow glanced at Jack’s daiquiri.

  “Go ahead,” said Jack. “I don’t like to drink in this heat.”

  Bollow smiled, and pulled Jack’s glass toward him. He raised it to his lips and touched his tongue to it as if he didn’t know quite what taste to expect.

  “When had you planned for the reading of the will?” Jack asked.

  Bollow glanced up over the rim of the glass.

  “What will are you speaking of?” he asked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “MY UNCLE’S WILL,” said Susan slowly.

  “There’s no will that I know of,” said Bollow. “Maybe your uncle had a will, but he did a lot of things without consulting me or requesting my assistance. He may very well have written a will, had it witnessed properly, and hid it somewhere. I have never seen such a document, however,” said Bollow. He finished off Jack’s daiquiri, his third.

  The newlyweds glanced at each other.

  “Let’s have another round,” said Jack. “Let’s have two rounds—I think I’ll have one myself.”

  Susan nodded, and Jack caught the bartender’s eye and ordered.

  “He told me he had made out his will,” said Susan, looking at the small-boned, dark-skinned lawyer with a mistrust that she didn’t bother to disguise.

  “Then I’m sure you are right,” said the lawyer, “and if you have reason to believe that you would benefit by it, then I would suggest that you try to get hold of it. Have you been out to The Pillars?”

  The Pillars was the very un-Spanish name that James Bright had given his house on the coast, and the name that, by extension, was accorded the entire estate.

  “No,” said Susan, “we were hoping to get things settled here before we went down.”

  The drinks were brought. Both Susan and Jack now took swallows of the daiquiris.

  “I’d advise making a trip out there,” said Bollow. “If the will exists, then the will is there.”

  “What happens,” asked Jack, “if we don’t find the will? Doesn’t the money go to the next of kin?”

  The lawyer looked around the room for a few moments.

  “In theory, yes,” he said at last.

  “Meaning?” Jack prompted.

  “Did you know that your uncle had given up his American citizenship?” said Bollow.

  “No,” said Susan, surprised. “Why on earth would he have done that?”

  “Some little misunderstanding with the powers that be,” said Bollow, with the air of having said less than he might on that subject. “He became a Cuban eight years ago. I handled the business myself—though I must tell you, I did advise against it.”

  “And this means…?”

  “This means that if you do not find a will, the estate will be thrown into the Cuban courts. And, I must warn you, that it is harder to get out of a Cuban court than it is to get out of a Cuban jail. Sometimes estates disappear very much the way that people do. They are…absorbed.”

  “Then there’s only one thing to do,” said Jack.

  The lawyer glanced up.

  “We have to find the will,” said Susan simply.

  Bollow said he would do what he could in Havana: trace the bank accounts, search out the investments, go through his files and documents, start the process through the legal system with the assumption that the will would be located, do all that he could for them. He suggested that Jack and Susan remain one more day in Havana, consulting with him the following afternoon, and then drive out to The Pillars. He’d even take care of renting a vehicle for them, mark maps, telegraph the servants at The Pillars.

  In short, Mr. Bollow suggested that he would do the things a good lawyer would do in such a case.

  Susan was certain this was a screen. She didn’t trust him. She wasn’t even certain, she confided to Jack on their way back to the hotel, that he was her uncle’s lawyer.

  “I don’t trust him either,” said Jack. “Do you think that he has the will and is suppressing it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Susan. “There would be no one to suppress the will in favor of.”

  “No one except Batista,” Jack suggested quietly.

  Jack was right, Susan realized. President Fulgencio Batista had been in power in Cuba for almost all of the past twenty years, and the government had an endless capacity for corruption. Perhaps that was what Bollow had meant when he said that estates that fell into the court system were “absorbed.” Absorbed by judges, government lawyers, clerks of the court, and Batista’s relatives—and perhaps the president himself.

  They talked about it over dinner in the hotel restaurant. Just as at McGinty’s, they were seated in a distant corner, protected from eavesdropping by a sea of empty tables and chairs.

  “This is not the regime to get on the wrong side of,” Susan pointed out.

  “We could go back to New York. Just pack up and go. Put Woolf on a leash, buy him a seat on the airplane, and take off. Abandon all this.”

  “Is that the advice of Mr. Beaumont the financial consultant, Jack the concerned husband, or little Johnny who’s afraid that somebody might grab him at the entrance of a dark alley?”

  “It’s not my advice at all. In fact, I wo
uld advise taking the truly stupid course of action.”

  “Which is?”

  “To stay right here in Cuba and try to find out, not only where the will is, but who murdered your uncle. The police are looking for a nine-year-old boy, not so well-dressed, who murders rich foreigners in broad daylight without motive. I don’t think that they’re going to get very far with that line of investigation. Which means that it is up to us to find the persons responsible for your uncle’s death and at least to deposit them on justice’s doorstep.”

  “And the will?”

  “Your uncle left you that money and he wanted you to have it. Even if this fellow we talked to this afternoon really is Richard Bollow, and even if Richard Bollow really was your uncle’s lawyer, I don’t think that your uncle would have wanted his entire fortune to go to him—and I certainly don’t think your uncle would have wanted his money to line the pockets of the Batista regime. So I think that you have an obligation to find the will, and claim the fortune. Besides,” he added with a small shrug, “if you don’t, we’re pretty much broke.”

  “Yes,” agreed Susan, “that is stupid advice—but I think I’ll take it. All we need now is to get charged with the murder ourselves. I can’t imagine why the police haven’t done that yet.”

  “One more thing to consider,” said Jack seriously. “Whoever killed your uncle may now come after you.”

  “I had considered that,” said Susan. “And have therefore resolved to keep Woolf by my side from this moment on.”

  They took coffee, and made a plan of action. That evening Jack would write a long letter asking the advice and counsel of one of his old Harvard roommates, who was a lawyer in Philadelphia now. In the morning, after registering their presence, telling their story, and detailing their plans to the American embassy, they’d get in touch with the Englishman who’d attended James Bright’s funeral and ask him what he knew about the dead man’s affairs. Specifically, they’d try to find out if the Englishman had recognized Bollow as Susan’s uncle’s lawyer. It was fortunate, Susan told Jack, that the man had presented her with his card.

  Whether or not they’d ascertained anything, they would meet Bollow in the afternoon, insisting that it be at the lawyer’s office—not in a bar or other public place. That would give them a better idea of the man. Then, if nothing intervened, they’d start out for The Pillars on Friday morning, a little over a week after their arrival in Cuba.

  They returned to their room, and Jack immediately sat down and wrote the letter to his lawyer. Susan helped. They read it over, made several changes, and then Jack wrote it out again. At the hotel desk they purchased airmail stamps, and decided that they’d take it to the post office themselves in the morning. It was odd how this business had generated in them a sort of general distrust of everyone and everything, for it had even occurred to them as a possibility that their mail might be stolen, opened, read, and destroyed.

  By ten o’clock they were finished. Susan felt invigorated by the sense, at last, of having done something. Jack lay on the bed, and Susan gently massaged his wrist that was aching from an unaccustomed bout of penmanship.

  “Do you realize,” she said, “that we’ve been here for five days and we haven’t spent one evening out?”

  “We’ve been in mourning for your uncle,” Jack pointed out gently.

  “Yes,” said Susan, “and there have been other things as well…”

  Jack smiled. It was surprising what one could do, even with one broken arm.

  “And I still am in mourning,” Susan went on, “but don’t you think we could just put on some clothes and go out for just a little while?”

  “Would you like to go to the casino?” Jack asked. Since the legalization of gambling the year before, all hotels in Havana had hastily opened casino rooms with roulette wheels and blackjack tables. Gambling had been widespread before in Cuba, but the governmental rake-off of the proceeds from illegal lotteries, gambling rooms, cockfights, and dog races had proved insufficient for the rapacity of the current regime, so these pastimes had been institutionalized for the more efficient collection of revenues.

  “No,” said Susan, “remember what happened last time we went to a casino? You nearly got killed.”

  “Libby nearly got killed.”

  “I don’t like gambling,” said Susan. “Let’s waste our little stock of pesos on a nightclub instead.”

  The Internacional had a nightclub as well as a casino, but Jack and Susan decided that they’d spent enough time in the hotel. After Susan had bathed and dressed, she helped Jack slit the sleeve of his best jacket in order to accommodate his cast, and they sauntered out into the warm evening, walking the two blocks to the Hotel Nacional. The difference between the Nacional and the Internacional was not readily apparent, since both looked like Miami Beach hotels, and both were filled with American tourists who had come to drink and gawk and gamble.

  Jack and Susan entered the nightclub, called the Varadero Room, between shows, and were seated at a minuscule table near the back from which they were able to see very little. They were served large, fruit-infested and expensive drinks, and were generally assaulted with a multitude of accented English that ranged from Midwest twang to New England quaver to Southern drawl.

  The floor show, when it exploded out from behind a deep velvet curtain at the front of the room, was energetic, noisy, and brash. The women were all very tall, with enormous busts and hips, and they seemed to be wearing miles of crepe paper in colors that Susan had seen before only on cheap postcards. They pranced and chattered and sang songs that seemed—even to Susan’s accustomed ears—to be composed principally of nonsense syllables strung together in an obscure but precise arrangement.

  But after what they’d been through, the noise and the light and the prancing women and the shouting, guffawing, hysterical Americans seemed innocent and bright. Jack and Susan sipped at the vile drinks, and held hands beneath the table. For a little while they did not think about murdered relatives and stolen fortunes and dictatorships that persisted for decades.

  They drank too much, but sometimes too much to drink is just what the doctor ordered. They sat through two shows, which were exactly alike, down to the last chattering nonsense syllable, and then rose uncertainly to make their way back to the Internacional. Susan even prepared a little smile for the couple that was waiting to take their place at the relinquished table.

  Prepared a smile, but didn’t use it, because the couple waiting to take their place was Rodolfo García-Cifuentes and his newlywed wife, Elizabeth St. John Mather García-Cifuentes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THERE WAS AN understandable, to say the least, awkwardness in the encounter. And why was it, Jack wondered, that whenever something like this happened, he’d always had a little too much to drink?

  The sheer momentum of having gotten to their feet after having sat so long at the table carried Jack and Susan past Rodolfo and Libby. But before they’d gotten very far, Jack and Susan glanced at each other, eyes wide, and swung back around in a single motion.

  What had gone through their minds was this: James Bright’s telegram to Susan in New York two weeks before had suggested that Rodolfo’s family had somehow been behind the attempts to murder him. James Bright was now dead, his murder seemingly unmotivated, his killers unknown—and here was Rodolfo.

  It wouldn’t do to press the Cuban down into a chair, shine the forty-watt bulb from the tiny pink table lamp in his face, and say, “Spill it, Rodolfo.” Jack and Susan would have to play a part, and hope that Rodolfo—if he knew anything—would somehow, in some manner, betray himself.

  But what part? Jack and Susan both suddenly felt quite sober.

  “What a surprise!” Susan gushed, not realizing how good an imitation she was making of Libby herself.

  Jack smiled a smile that he hoped would pass for genuine in the dim light and held out a hand to Rodolfo. The Cuban took it with only a moment’s hesitation.

  “We have to f
ind more chairs,” said Susan, even before Libby could respond to her first greeting. “We have to hear everything,” she added, deciding that the best thing she could do was take the offensive. Better to advance across unfamiliar ground than be forced to retreat across it. “Do you know what happened?” she said, placing her hand on Libby’s arm. “Do you know what happened? Jack actually went into the church and saw you and Rodolfo getting married! You were wearing a veil, and he thought it was me, and he went right out and got drunk, but everything worked out fine—didn’t it, darling?—and we got married…when, Jack? When was it you and I got married?”

  “A week ago today,” said Jack, finding an empty chair nearby and bringing it to the table with his one good arm. Rodolfo was getting another. In another moment the two couples were seated at the cramped table, peering into one another’s faces over the dwarf pink lamp.

  “Libby,” exclaimed Susan, “I have never heard you so silent! And you have so much to tell us! Jack and I still have not been able to figure out just how you two got together, and decided so suddenly to get married.”

  “Yes,” said Jack, taking his cue from Susan and looking directly into the eyes of his former fiancée, “I had the distinct impression that I was engaged to you, and Susan thought that she was engaged to Rodolfo.”

  “What are you two doing here?” said Libby in quiet bewilderment. “You’re married? To each other?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Susan. “Married on shipboard. Wonderfully romantic. And now of course we’re desperately happy. We fight constantly—we always did, you know—but we wouldn’t fight with anyone else.”

  “Congratulations,” said Rodolfo in a voice that showed little strain. “I am very happy for you.”

  “Oh, Rodolfo,” said Susan, “you’re the one who deserves congratulations. Marrying Libby. I’m so happy for both of you.”

  “We’re on our honeymoon too,” said Rodolfo.