Murder in Havana (6 page)

Walden took in the others over his glasses, exhibited a rare grin, picked up chips from a pile in front of him, and tossed them into the center of the table. “I’ll see you and raise you a dollar,” he said.

“Larry?” McCullough asked the governor of Massachusetts.

“Former player,” Lawrence Scott said, tossing his cards facedown on the table.

“Mac?”

“I’ll see you and match the raise.”

The only other player, White House chief of staff Charles Larsen, had folded after drawing three useless cards and commenting on them with words containing four letters.

Mac Smith displayed his hand—a pair of kings.

The president showed a full house, aces high.

McCullough shook his head and put down his five cards, one at a time, three tens, an ace, and a jack.

“I win,” Walden said, laughing and scooping up the chips from the middle of the table. “Hell, I always win. I’m the president of the United States. I’m
supposed
to win.”

“Harry Truman used to say he didn’t mind losing a card game,” McCullough said. “Elections were another matter.”

“All set for your trip to Cuba, Price?” Governor Scott asked.

“I believe so.”

“Maybe you can get Castro in a card game and win the freaking island,” Charlie Larsen said.

“He’s a chess player,” Smith offered.

“And superstitious,” said Walden. “He has a favorite number, twenty-six, and makes important decisions only on that day of the month.”

“He’s a head case,” Governor Scott said.

“A shrewd head case,” Walden said. “Don’t sell him short.”

“Kennedy sure did,” Scott said.

“Did Kennedy really buy up every Cuban cigar he could find before our embargo prohibited Cuban products from coming into the country?” Larsen asked.

Walden laughed. “He sent Pierre Salinger out to corner
the market. Salinger bought Kennedy every Petite Upmann in the country, thousands of them.
Then
he signed the embargo.”

There was much laughter around the table.

“Churchill smoked Cuban Romeo y Julietas,” Walden said. “Cuba gave him ten thousand as a gift during World War Two.”

“Another hand?” McCullough asked.

“Not for me,” Walden said, standing and twisting his torso against a pain in his back. “Volleyball and swimming this afternoon did me in. A meeting with the attorney general didn’t help.”

Gentle kidding had accompanied the president’s announcement after dinner that a poker game was about to commence, men only.

“This is like a scene from a 1940s movie,” Charlie Larsen’s wife had said lightly.

“Cigars and cognac for the men, a knitting competition for the women,” said another wife, also uttered lightly so as not to appear seriously offended.

“As long as you win,” the president’s wife, Sheila, told him, ending the debate.

While the men wagered at the round, green, felt-covered table, the women in their lives had retreated to an expansive screened porch where no winners emerged in their animated discussion of current political events, recently published books, and other stimulating topics. Now, with candles on tables providing the only light and a faint breeze moderating the warm, humid evening, the men joined them on the porch. The shadows of Secret Service agents could be seen.

“Who won?” Sheila Walden asked.

“Who else?” Scott said. “Your husband.”

“Good,” she said. “We can eat for another day.”

“Can
we
?” Annabel Reed-Smith, Smith’s wife, asked.

“Afraid not,” Smith said. “The president took every cent I have.”

“That’s what they say about you in Congress, Mr. President.” Scott said this while settling on a white wicker love seat next to his wife.

Chief of Staff Larsen said, “That’s the president’s political philosophy. Take it from Congress before they take it from you.”

After another ten minutes of small talk, President Walden’s announcement that he and Sheila were calling it a day caused the others to stand and make similar pronouncements. Except for Mac and Annabel Smith. “I think we’ll sit up a while,” Smith said.

“No necking on the couch,” said Walden. “You never can tell when there’s somebody out there with a long lens.”

“We’ll try to control ourselves,” Annabel said brightly.

“The hell we will,” Mac mock growled.

When the others were gone, Annabel said to her husband, “What a lovely weekend.”

“It’s good to see the president get away if even for a few days. He’s been looking exhausted lately.”

“No wonder, with all the turmoil around him: a hostile Congress, the Middle East, the Far East, the fight over the Supreme Court nomination, Cuba. It never stops.”

“Did you have a pleasant time with Sheila and the others?” he asked.

“While you were bonding?” She laughed. “We had a lovely time. Sheila’s devotion to funding the arts in public schools is inspiring. She asked me to join the foundation.”

“You will, of course.”

“I will. Of course.”

He took her hand and they sat in silence.

Annabel was tall—five eight—trim except where she
wasn’t supposed to be. Additional advantages included a creamy complexion and a mane of copper hair. Her eyes were, of course, green as if ordained, and large. Her ears, nose, and mouth had been created with a stunning sense of proportion. She was, in Mac’s eyes—which were a lighter green, the color of Granny Smith apples—at least the most beautiful woman in the world, a view shared by other men who’d pursued her. But Mac Smith was the one who’d won her hand, for which he was eternally grateful.

Smith was equally handsome by any standard, slightly taller than medium, stocky and strong, hair receding slowly and within acceptable limits, face without undue defects. When they’d taken their vows in Washington National Cathedral’s Bethlehem Chapel those ten years ago, Annabel had prompted laughter when asked the question, “Will you have this man to be your husband?” She had replied in a loud, cheery voice, “Oh, yes, I certainly will.”

Smith had been widowed when he met Annabel. His first wife and only child, a son, fell victim to a drunk driver on the Beltway. That vast loss created in him a whole new way of viewing life. He decided to close down his lucrative criminal law practice and took a position as professor of law at George Washington University.

When Annabel met Smith at an embassy function, she, too, had been considering a change in her life. She was a matrimonial attorney in D.C., and a good one, but years of dealing with warring couples and their inability, or unwillingness, to forge peaceful dissolutions of their marriages had worn her down. Her true personal passion had long been pre-Columbian art. With her husband’s encouragement, she closed her law offices and opened a storefront gallery in Georgetown that eventually grew in size and stature.

“I envy you your trip to Cuba,” she said quietly.

“In the summer? It would be worth envying if it were January.”

“Speaking of heat, while you guys were male-bonding we were discussing why the president is taking so much of it these days from Congress over his Cuba policies.”

“The Castro hard-liners won’t let go, Annabel. They can’t accept the idea that the main thing the embargo has accomplished lately is the impoverishment of the average Cuban, and the strengthening of Castro’s image—him against the mighty aggressor ninety miles off his shores.”

“Well, it should be an interesting trip,” Annabel said.

“Should be. I was pleased when the president asked me to be part of it as one set of eyes and ears.”

“How many in Price’s delegation?”

“Twenty, last I heard—sixteen men and four women.”

“The usual ratio.” She sighed. “Cuba,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I wish I’d seen it before Castro, when it was the playground of the rich and famous.”

“And the infamous. Corrupt to the core,” Mac said. “A gangster paradise.” He chuckled. “I remember a comment by one of our ambassadors there during Batista’s reign. A reporter asked him why the Mafia was so welcome in Havana. The ambassador said it was the only way to have well-run casinos that paid off. That’s how corrupt Batista was.”

Annabel yawned. “I’m too tired to be corrupt.”

“Shame,” Smith said. “Let’s hit the hay anyway, Annie.”

The first lady sat in bed reading a novel. Her husband hadn’t changed for bed. Walden sat at a small desk in their bedroom, leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on the edge of the desk.

“It’s been a lovely weekend,” she said, laying the book on the bed.

“Always good to get away. Whoever invented vacations and long weekends deserves a medal. Good book?”

“If you like romance novels, which I do on occasion. Occasions like this. Makes the escape from officialdom that much more complete.”

He turned at the sound of someone knocking gently on the door, went to it, and faced an aide. “The senator is waiting, Mr. President.”

Walden left the room without a word to his wife. As the aide led him to a secluded wooded area a hundred yards from the house, two Secret Service agents fell in behind, maintaining a discreet distance. Former senator Price McCullough sat on a wooden bench next to a small fountain, the water flowing gently into a copper urn that spilled its contents each time it filled. Walden joined his friend on the bench.

“I caught you dealing from the bottom of the deck, Mr. President,” McCullough said in his soft drawl.

Walden laughed quietly. “Sometimes you have to do that in this business, Price.”

“I’m well aware of that, Mr. President. I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning. I need time back home before going to Cuba. I want you to know how much I appreciate this opportunity.”

Walden waved away his comment. “I never liked Ayn Rand’s politics, Price, but her take on what’s self-serving makes sense. We do things for selfish reasons, but that’s okay because others benefit. Like the definition of a ‘good deal.’ If you personally benefit from your trip, that’s okay because this nation will benefit, too. It’s a good deal. Everyone comes out ahead.”

“Any last-minute words of Walden wisdom?”

“No. Just make it work. The time is right. If we can get
them to see that there’s the possibility of more open trade beyond medicine and agricultural products, a real political dialogue might follow.”

“Hinting that there’s the potential of lowering the embargo isn’t destined to impress Castro, Mr. President,” the burly, white-haired McCullough said. “It gives him his best platform to point the finger at us for all his failures with the economy. But I’ll do my best.”

“The time is right, Price. Castro knows he’ll have to give it up one of these days. Hell, he’s got three hundred million dollars stashed away in Spain, according to some intelligence estimates. His kid brother, Raúl, will never cut it as the successor, and Fidel knows it. Everything points to growing unrest since the Soviets pulled the plug on aid.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “You’ll be there for his birthday.”

“That’s right.”

“Know why Castro considers twenty-six his lucky number, won’t make major decisions on any other day?”

“I read the briefing papers.”

Walden continued as though McCullough hadn’t. “He claims he was born in 1926, although some say it was ’27. At any rate, his father owned twenty-six thousand acres, and Fidel was twenty-six when he launched his revolutionary attack on Moncada on July twenty-sixth.”

“Interesting,” McCullough said, not wanting to remind the president he already knew all about Castro’s superstitions.

“Yes, interesting. The time is right, Price. Make the most of it, in your meetings—and out of them.”

All set?” Annabel asked as he brought his suitcases from the bedroom to the foyer.

“I think so.”

“Time for another cup of coffee?”

Smith checked his watch. “Sure. Car’s not due for a half hour.”

They sat at a small glass-topped table on the terrace of their Watergate apartment and looked down over the Potomac. Crews from George Washington University, where Smith taught, practiced their strenuous extracurricular activity on the rippling water. Two luxury yachts slowly passed the sleek sculls from upriver. It was nine in the morning. The temperature was over eighty degrees in the nation’s capitol; the city’s infamous humidity had already wilted the clothing, hair, and spirits of the citizens who moved along the sidewalks as though pushing medicine balls.

“Wow!” Annabel said, dabbing at her upper lip with a napkin.

“Washington,” Smith said. “On days like this I think of the character E. G. Marshall played in
Twelve Angry Men
. You know, the one who never broke a sweat in that stiflingly hot jury deliberation room.”

Annabel said, “If you’re thinking of practicing that
feat, wait until you come back from Havana. I read the weather there this morning. A hundred.”

He squinted as he looked into the sun rising across the river.

“Yes?” Annabel asked, aware that his expression meant he was thinking of something.

“The trip,” he said. “The president has been talking about it conceptually for months. All of a sudden it’s reality. I wonder why it had to be now.”