“No offence intended,” Alex said, “but it’s written all over you. Look where we’re having dinner, for example. I feel like I’m on the set for The Sopranos.”
Guarneri stared at her coldly for a moment, then shook his head and laughed.
“See?” Federov said to his friend. “I warned you.”
But by now, Alex was intrigued.
“Okay, I’ll give you some of the rest of it, Alex,” Guarneri said, opening up. “My father was a part owner of a racetrack and a gambling casino near Havana. He also owned a couple of strip clubs,” he said. “When Fidel Castro took over the country, my dad had to get out of Cuba fast. He was holding a lot of money at the time. Half a million dollars in US currency. But it was all in small denominations. Fifties. Twenties. Tens. Fives. There was no way that he could take it with him to the airport. The police or the army or Castro’s soldiers would have taken it from him.” Guarneri paused. “So he buried it.”
“He buried it?”
Guarneri nodded.
“And that’s the ‘property’?”
“Yes.”
“Hidden?”
“Yes.”
“And you know where?”
“I think I know where,” he said. “If I could get back into Cuba, I think I could find the money.”
“You said, ‘back,’ ” Alex said. “You’ve been there?”
“I was born in Havana in 1955,” Guarneri said. “My mother was my father’s mistress in Cuba. She was a dancer at one of his clubs.”
Guarneri thought for a moment. He then reached to his wallet and opened it. He produced a pair of pictures, one of his mother as a leggy casino-style showgirl from a chorus line in what he said was 1957. The second was a grainy picture of himself with his mother, a faded color shot, from Long Island in 1966.
“So your mother got out of the country too?” Alex said.
“She was able to leave in 1961,” Paul Guarneri said. “My father had a wife and family here, but he did the decent thing for me and my mother. He smuggled us out. I remember it happening. My mother came and got me in the middle of the night. She wrapped me in a blanket, and we were taken to a car. She told me it was time to leave, and we couldn’t bring anything. We drove without headlights and went to a boat. The boat went to a seaplane, and we flew to Florida. I’m told we flew eighty miles at three hundred feet. I slept through it. When I woke up the next morning we were in an apartment in Key West. Then came the Bay of Pigs, the American invasion at Playa Giron. It was harder to get anyone out of Cuba after that. Years went by. My father always fretted over the thought of those greenbacks slowly rotting in the Cuban earth. But he was shot to death first and never got back to Cuba.”
“I assume previous attempts have been made to recover this ‘lost property,’ ” Alex said.
“Yes, but not by me,” Guarneri said.
“Then by whom?” she asked. Guarneri glanced at Federov.
“I traveled to the island twice,” Federov said. “I have a Ukrainian passport. I can go in and out whenever I want. But I was of no help.”
Alex turned to Guarneri. “Taking into account the fact that much of the wealth before Castro was accumulated by friends of a repressive government with links to American gangsters,” Alex said, looking him squarely in the eye, “I wouldn’t think your position in Cuba would be a very popular one.”
“So you’re not encouraged that I’d be able to recover anything? Cash or any other assets.”
The coffee arrived and so did a small tray of sweets for dessert. The espresso was scalding hot. She sipped carefully. As the caffeine hit, it was a punch in the nose. So much for easy sleep tonight.
Alex waited till the waiter had departed until she spoke again. “Generally no,” she said. “And the bottom line is that restitution of property will be the sovereign decision of the new Cuban government, which can set any rules it likes.”
Federov grinned to the side.
Guarneri blinked. “Is there any sort of historical precedent,” he asked, “for recovery of property?”
“I remember that with East Germany and its reunification with West Germany, restitution of property led to a multitude of competing claims in the German courts as well as some Swiss, Czech, and Austrian courts. Look, Paul. Suppose a sugarcane farm was nationalized in the early sixties and the owners fled to Miami. By now, there are probably a half-dozen potential heirs who may well not agree on how the pie should be divided. You will have relatives coming out of the woodwork, second and third cousins whom you didn’t even know existed, claiming that they own part of the money. And that’s even if Cuban courts will award a claim to a foreigner. More likely, they will award it to people who have been on the island for most of their lives, for the reasons I already mentioned.”
The discussion took a break as the bill for dinner arrived. Guarneri was treating. He peeled off some cash and laid it on the table. Over the course of the evening, Alex had now watched her acquaintance enrich the city’s restaurant economy by close to five hundred dollars.
“So what you’re saying, Alex,” Guarneri said in closing, “is that it would be more effective for me to go directly into Cuba, grab what’s mine, and get out again?”
“If it’s a pile of money, yes, sure. That might work,” Alex said simply. “And it might not. You might get your head blown off by local police. And you might find that the stash disappeared fifty years ago. Equally, a Cuban prison would be a pretty horrible place to spend ten years if your visit hit any snags. So be forewarned.”
“I understand,” he said. But he said this in such a way that it suggested more.
“Was there something else?” she asked.
The two men exchanged a glance.
“Well, there’s my actual offer to you,” Guarneri said.
“And what’s that?”
“I’m going to make a trip into Cuba. I need to be accompanied by a woman who will pose as my wife or an adult daughter. I need a woman who is politically savvy, intelligent, able to think on her feet in dangerous situations, and is fluent in Spanish. I’m under no illusions as to how risky such a trip would be.” He paused. “Yuri suggested you.”
She looked back and forth between the two of them, then laughed.
“The two of you,” she said, “you’re both quite charming and completely out of your minds.”
“Will you go with me?” Guarneri asked.
“No. That’s a flat-out no. I don’t even have to think about it.”
“A woman who can handle a gun would be particularly useful,” Guarneri said.
“Ask around in this room,” she said. “I’m sure someone knows someone and can hook you up with a Lara Croft clone.”
“Again, Yuri suggested you.”
“Yuri’s full of bad ideas, Paul. This would be one of them.”
“Think about it,” Guarneri said. “A day will come when you might want to consider my offer.”