Free Havana by Stephen Hunter Page A

recoiled, stepped back, and looked away from the screen.
    Jesus Christ, don’t this take it all! This old coot come a thousand miles from Washington, D.C., to look at a smoker on a movie screen in a theater.
    He looked around and realized the place was full and the other watchers in the dark wouldn’t be paying any attention to anything except what was on screen.
    He slipped back out to the car.
    â€œIt’s okay. The boys are watching the movies and the movies aren’t like nothing playing in Washington, D.C. Mr. Congressman, you sure you want to go into this place? It don’t smell very clean.”
    â€œWhy, Earl, I must go where duty takes me.” And with that he rose into the orange electrical glow, and with Lane hustled into 205 Zanja.
    Earl smoked an orange cigarette and blew orange smoke while the boys had their fun. They were in there for almost an hour while he lounged on the fender of the Cadillac, and eventually, they came out.
    â€œAin’t never seen a thing like that. Where do you suppose they find the gals? Earl, you are a po-liceman. You would know such things. Where would they find the gals?”
    â€œThem gals looked pretty broke-down to me,” Earl said. “Old whores, can’t walk the streets no more, don’t know nothing else, that’s what I’m betting.”
    â€œWhoo-ee,” said the boss, “that was a thing to do, and now I am all up and ready for the next step. Shall we see what other adventures we might get into?”
    Earl knew: he was looking for a woman. He said nothing to express his discomfort, but kept looking back, his eyes flicking quickly to the rear as he examined what lay back there.
    â€œWe being followed, Earl?” Lane wanted to know.
    Earl wanted to say yes, for he felt something. A presence, an attention, something somehow concentrating on them. But it was only that feeling and that alone; nothing emerged to his vision to confirm the suspicion.
    â€œI don’t think so,” said Earl. “But if we are, he’s a damn better man than I am.”
    â€œDidn’t think there were no better men than you, Earl.”
    â€œThere’s plenty. But no, I don’t think there’s anyone back there. Maybe it’s just my old imagination heating up.”
    â€œEarl, have a drink, relax. A little drink wouldn’t harm you a bit.”
    Actually, Earl knew it would. He be back on the bottle full-time.
    â€œNo thank you, sir,” he said to Lane.
    Earl checked the rearview mirror again just in case. No, nothing. Here, in this human tide of hustlers and grifters, whores and low-rent crime dogs, it was the bottom of the Havana pool. It reminded Earl a little of Hot Springs in 1946, that sense of a town gone mad for pleasures; but the Spanish twist to it also called up Panama City and its whores’ paradise from 1938 when he’d done a tour down there, and every weekend the boys would head off for cheap beer and cheap women. Earl was no saint; he’d had a big share of each on the principle that if war came he’d not survive it and so he should take what he could buy now. He had no regrets, but now, married, with several wars under his belt, he somehow couldn’t connect with it. He didn’t need it.
    â€œNow there,” said the boss, “goes a right fine piece of pootie.”
    She was a right fine piece of pootie, too.
    â€œShe sure is,” said Lane. “Yes, sir, that she is.”
    â€œSi, señor,” said Pepe, who immediately got what was going on.
    â€œIs she a nigra, do you suppose, Lane?” asked the boss.
    â€œWell, sir, she does have a caramelly skin and that behind of hers shakes just like a negro gal’s. I’ll bet she rattles around in bed like a negro gal, too. Don’t you, Earl?”
    Earl had examined the flowing clothes of the señorita only briefly, pausing not at the quivering abundance of the flesh of shoulders and rather