Havana Harvest (23 page)

“Casas sent me a note. It said ‘Bon Voyage, Daddy.’ It was signed ‘Dorothy,’ which is my daughter's name, and had one big
X
and two small
x
's—you know for kisses—before the signature. The
x
's did not have a circle around them.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Don't you remember, Mr. Hotshot? He and I have a simple code.
X
's with no circles are St. Stephen's Basilica in Pest,
X
's with circles, St. Mathias Church in Buda. Circles mixed with no circles means the Catholic Church in Óbuda, a suburb of Budapest on the Buda side. So the message means that I have to meet him during the twelve o'clock mass at the Basilica.”

“How do you know it's the twelve o'clock mass?”

“Simple. After the signature, big
X
means ten, little
X
's mean one each. One big and two small
X
's mean twelve o'clock.”

“Have you and Casas met in Budapest often?”

“Sure. It's convenient. I'm known in numismatic circles the world over and the Hungarians are great coin collectors and dealers. I can come and go here as I please, more so now that Canadians don't need visas any more. The authorities leave me alone. I deal with the National Museum, and they know it. I mean money to them.”

“And Casas?”

“For him it's convenient too. The Cubans and Hungarians are officially political friends. There is cultural exchange, you should pardon the expression, between the two countries.” Schwartz winked at Lonsdale.

“What kind of cultural exchange?”

“On St. Margaret's Island, the island which is in the middle of the Danube, there is a nightclub in the Thermal Hotel that they call the Havana Club.”

“So?”

Schwartz looked toward heaven for assistance. “ ‘So,’ he asks me.” He faced Lonsdale. “Are you sure you're half Jewish?”

Lonsdale laughed. “Yes, I told you I was.”

“For a half-Jew you're dumb.”

“What do you mean?”

Schwartz was shaking his head in disbelief. “Oy, have we got an innocent here.” He was laughing, too. “What do you think they do in a night club already, dance the ballet? Maybe perform Swan Lake?”

“Meaning?”

“I mean they have a nice, old-fashioned Cuban burlesque show there every night except Sunday. And you should see the girls. They're
zoftig.”

“What's ‘zoftig’?”

“Rubenesque, ample, big.” Schwartz used both his hands to outline the shapes.

Lonsdale looked at his watch. It was only ten in the morning. _“It's always a pleasure to listen to you, Mr. Schwartz, but I don't think it's a good idea for me to hang around here for the next couple of hours. It's too risky.” He dampened a facecloth and wiped his face. “Let me sneak out of here and meet you later in the Basilica. By the way, any particular area?”

“In the back of the left nave there is a chapel. You can see it as you—” The door buzzer cut him off, and Lonsdale's gut tightened.

“Are you expecting someone?”

Schwartz dismissed the question with the wave of a hand. “Just the room-service waiter,” he said and switched off the water. “I ordered something to eat.”

He left the bathroom. Lonsdale closed the door, grabbed his hat and coat, switched off the light, stepped into the bathtub and drew the shower curtain.

“Who is it?” he heard Schwartz call out.

“Room service,” a muffled female voice answered, and Lonsdale heard Schwartz open the door. There was a clatter of dishes and cutlery as the waitress pushed the table through the door. “Good morning, Mr. Schwartz,” she called out.

“Here, let me help you,” Schwartz said. The door slammed shut and the clatter receded toward the window.

“Where would you like me to set up the table?” the female voice asked in remarkably good, slightly accented, English.

“By the window please,” more clatter, then Schwartz's voice “This will do just—” The familiar plop-hiss-plop-hiss, the kind of noise a silencer-equipped automatic makes, cut Schwartz off in mid-sentence and jolted Lonsdale as hard as if he had been the one to be hit.

Rigid with fear, he stood unarmed and dead still in the bathtub, straining to hear what the assassin was doing next door and cursing himself for having been careless, for having allowed Schwartz to answer the door even though Schwartz did say he'd ordered food.

Damn, damn, damn!

He heard nothing for about a minute, which, to him, seemed an eternity. Suddenly, the bathroom door flung open, the light came on and the woman marched past him to the toilet. She lifted the top and swept the food on the plate she was holding into the bowl. Then she left, but was back a few seconds later with a second plate to repeat what she had done before.

When she returned for the third time Lonsdale thought that, for him, the end had surely come.

He sensed that the woman was standing in the middle of the room, examining something. Was she facing him, or was her back to him? Did she have her weapon with her or was she unarmed? Had she seen or heard something suspicious or was she just following routine?

Lonsdale's mind raced.
What to do, what to do?
He was unarmed and at a total disadvantage. There was still hope, though. Had the woman suspected that there was someone in the bathroom she wouldn't have come by twice with the plates. She would have shot first and done the dishes later.

Why the hell is she so still. Why doesn't she do something?

It suddenly dawned on Lonsdale that the assassin must be looking at herself in the mirror, perhaps even fixing her hair or her makeup. As if to confirm his thoughts he heard her put something on the counter, a comb or brush perhaps. The hiss of a vaporizer followed, and Lonsdale could smell perfume.

It's now or never!

Lonsdale burst from behind the shower curtain and drove his shoulder into the woman's kidney in a flying tackle. She doubled over and sank to one knee, but she was a seasoned veteran and somehow rolled away from him in spite of the intense pain. He went after her and she aimed a kick at his groin that Lonsdale managed to parry with a last-second half turn.

She scrambled to her feet while he struggled to regain his balance and reached for her automatic lying next to the sink. Lonsdale hammered down on her wrist with his right fist and the weapon slithered along the counter toward the toilette bowl. They both reached for it and the woman got there first. But by then Lonsdale had his arm around her neck so she drove her elbow into his ribs. Lonsdale hung on and when she tried to make the pistol bear he broke her neck with an instinctive, savage tug, just as he had been taught to do during basic training on the Farm.

Lonsdale laid the woman's body out on the floor. Well-endowed, she appeared to be in her mid-thirties, dark haired, latina-looking, dressed in a maid's uniform. He searched the body and found no identification. He lifted it into the bathtub, drew the shower curtain, and allowed himself the luxury of leaning against the wall. Legs trembling from relief, he thanked the Fates for his good fortune, for sparing his life once more. “So you do care after all, you burnt-out old man,” he whispered. “All it takes is a close call to make you want to go on living. Not that you deserve to, you heartless, conniving bastard.”

He let a minute go by, and then sat down on the toilet to rub his legs vigorously to ease the cramps and stop the trembling. When he stood up, he caught a glimpse of his ashen face in the mirror, and it nauseated him. He threw up in the washbasin.

It took him another couple of minutes of deep breathing to pull himself together, to clean up, and confront what he had to do.

He walked into Schwartz's room and looked around. The place looked like a typical hotel room. The bed was made, and the drapes were half drawn. Schwartz's large sample case was on top of the desk, his alarm clock on the night table. A paperback lay in one of the armchairs near the window. Schwartz had apparently dropped it when he had gone to open the door for Lonsdale. Nothing out of the ordinary could be seen anywhere, certainly not to the casual observer, such as a room supervisor who might look in to ensure that everything was in order.

But Lonsdale was not a casual observer. He knew what had happened and where Schwartz's body would likely be. He double-bolted the door and went to check. As expected, the assassin had maneuvered Schwartz into the space between the bed and the wall near the window by pushing the table gently, but firmly toward the old man who kept backing up to accommodate.

When she had him where she'd wanted him—against the wall— she shot him twice through the heart.

Schwartz, mortally wounded, had slid down into a sitting position. The assassin had doubled him over so that the bed would hidehis body from view. The poor old man's body lay in a twisted heap, mostly on his side, shirt soaked with blood, eyes wide open in surprise, hands clutching his chest where the bullets had hit. There was no exit wound in his back. The bullets that killed him were low velocity, high impact, very efficient, and highly destructive.
A real pro job
Lonsdale concluded as he carefully searched the body.

Schwartz's jacket yielded a mercifully undamaged Canadian passport and a bloodied, bullet-riddled but beautiful crocodile wallet containing pictures of a somewhat overweight woman and her two children. “Dorothy,” Lonsdale whispered. He kept the passport and replaced the wallet. In Schwartz's left trouser pocket he found a thick wad of hundred dollar bills and Hungarian paper money. He took most of the money except for a couple of thousand Forints and three hundred dollars.

Searching further he also found a small key in the same pocket, which, he correctly guessed, opened the coin dealer's sample case. This contained some laundry, which Lonsdale removed and placed in a drawer, and six coin demo albums, each with spaces for twenty-four coins of various sizes. Lonsdale estimated that about half of the slots were filled.

He went back to the body, removed Schwartz's glasses and tried them on. Surprisingly, not only did they fit, but he could also actually see with them. He decided to keep them. Schwartz's black cashmere overcoat was in the closet. It, too, fit Lonsdale. But Schwartz's hat, a distinguished looking Homburg, was too big. Lonsdale fixed the problem by stuffing toilet paper behind the headband.

He retrieved his own hat and coat from the bathtub and stuffed them into the sample case, used a damp washcloth to wipe all surfaces he remembered touching, put on Schwartz's hat and coat, then with washcloth and sample case in hand, left the room after pushing the breakfast trolley out the door and aligning it against the wall. He carefully wiped the doorknob behind him and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on it.

No need for room service to go looking for the table in Schwartz's room.

Lonsdale turned up his coat collar and boldly took the elevator down. He hurried through the lobby with his head down, and stepped out into the cool, late October sunshine.

The doorman saluted. “Have a nice day, Mr. Schwartz,” he said and waved. Lonsdale half-turned and waved back. The disguise had worked.

Sunday Noon
Budapest, Hungary

Lonsdale walked along the Danube's embankment toward the Forum Hotel. As he approached the building, he began to feel weak. His teeth started to chatter, and his vision blurred. He was sliding into shock again; the morning's events were catching up with him.

He almost missed the Café Vienna sign before it registered. Hot chocolate, his favorite, was what he needed.

The café was on the mezzanine floor. Lonsdale blinked, took a second look and shook his head to force his rapidly numbing brain cells to believe what he was seeing.
I've fallen through the looking glass, and I'm living in the thirties
, he thought then pulled himself together and strode purposefully toward the newspaper rack. He unhooked a Hungarian language daily and barely beat a smartly dressed matron to the last available table.

The Café Vienna was bustling with life. Elderly ladies and gentlemen dressed in their Sunday best were enjoying their elevenses: a cup of powerful espresso with something sweet such as a brioche or a piece of Viennese pastry. Women in tweed suits with fox-fur boas clutched matching muffs. Though nothing fancy, almost every woman wore pearls. The men, way outnumbered by their female companions, squirmed uncomfortably in stiff, starched shirts and ill-fitting, heavy suits.

The café itself was essential art deco: all chrome, glass, mirrors, and
fer forgé
. It seemed everyone was smoking. Lonsdale took in the scene at a glance through the thick haze, then, placing the paper on the table, turned toward the counter, which displayed an amazing variety of pastries. He half raised his arm to attract a waitress's attention, and when she came over he ordered a double hot chocolate. He took off his hat and coat, placed the sample case on the floor beside him, and legs trembling, carefully lowered his body into a chair.

The daily was strung onto a wicker reading rack to make turning the pages easier. It allowed him to hide behind the spread-out newspaper while waiting for his drink to arrive. Mercifully, the girl brought him his hot chocolate within minutes. He gave her a tired smile and he watched her leave. Slowly, very carefully, willing his trembling fingers to hold steady, he took a gulp of the hot, sweet liquid, and then another, and another.