“What message?” He was still breathing hard.
“Oh, I see what’s happened,” she said. She walked to the bed and sat down. “When you got jumped by the cops at the airport, I called Hedger.”
“I know about that,” he said, sitting down on the opposite bed. “Thanks; it would have been even more unpleasant otherwise.”
“There wasn’t anything I could do myself, so I waited outside the jail until Hedger came with the ambulance and took you away. The next morning I called to see how you were. Hedger said you had been pretty badly beaten up, and you would be in the embassy infirmary for a few days.”
“He never told me you had called the second time. Why didn’t you leave me a note, or something?”
“I thought I’d be back here before you got out of the infirmary. I’m sorry, you must have been worried about me.”
“Yes, I damn well was.”
“Oh, forgive me,” Meg said. “Cat, this is my friend, Maribel Innocento.”
Cat turned to the woman sitting on the other bed. “How do you do? I saw your performance this evening,” he said. “You were wonderful.” She smiled at him blankly. “Qué?”
Meg translated, and she smiled again. “Thank you very much,” she said in heavily accented English.
Meg introduced Cat in Spanish to Maribel.
“Where did the two of you meet?” Cat asked Meg.
“I was in Havana three years ago for an interview with Fidel Castro. I stayed at the Tropicana, and Castro kept postponing the interview, so I was there for a couple of weeks, and we met on the beach. We became close.”
“So you’re having a little reunion, then?”
“Not exactly,” Meg replied. “Not just a reunion, that is. Maribel is defecting from Cuba.”
“Defecting to Colombia?”
“No, to the United States.”
Maribel smiled brilliantly at Cat.
She really was gorgeous, he thought. Coal-black hair, lovely skin, and startlingly white teeth. For the first time, he noticed she was wearing a dressing gown. It was tied loosely, and a lot of her breasts were showing. “I don’t understand,” he said to Meg. “How can she defect to the United States in Bogotá?”
“I’m working on that,” Meg said. “Her father is in Miami. He got out of Cuba years ago and has been trying ever since to get Maribel out, too. I’ve been in touch with the American Consul at the embassy. He wouldn’t make any promises in advance, but he hinted heavily that, if she did actually leave the company and officially express a desire to go to the United States, that something might be arranged. She’s a very big star in Cuba. The Reagan administration would make quite a show of her defection, I think.”
“What’s the next step, then?”
“We have to get her out of the hotel and into the embassy.”
“You make it sound as if she has to be smuggled out in a laundry basket. Can’t she just go downstairs and take a cab?”
Meg sucked her teeth and looked at the ceiling.
Cat had a sinking feeling. “Well?” he demanded.
“It’s a little more complicated than that. You see, there are four Cuban secret policemen travelling with the troupe, just to prevent this sort of thing.”
Oh, shit, he thought. “How did you get her away from them?”
“That was fairly easy. The troupe is housed two floors down. I was visiting backstage, and when the show was over, and everybody was going downstairs, I managed to get her into an elevator alone, and we got off on this floor.”
“Jesus, didn’t the four policemen notice that?”
“They all got onto one elevator just ahead of us. We were only a few seconds behind them, so I don’t think they could see which floor the elevator stopped on. They probably think we’ve left the hotel.”
As she spoke there was a knock on the door of the suite.
Cat jumped. “Probably,” he said.
Meg spoke rapidly in Spanish to Maribel, and they both headed for the bathroom. “Get rid of whoever that is,” Meg said to Cat, and closed the bathroom door.
Cat picked up the .357 magnum and stuck it in his belt, in the small of his back. When he opened the door, a heavyset Latino spoke to him in Spanish.
“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Hotel security,” the man said in English. “We are looking for two women who robbed a customer in the roof restaurant. I must search your room.”
“I’m afraid...” Cat was saying, but the man had already shoved past him. He looked quickly around the sitting room, then in the kitchen, then headed for the bedroom. “Hey, wait,” Cat shouted, following after him and trying to sound authoritative. “My wife’s in there.”
The man didn’t even slow down. He walked to the bathroom door and snatched it open. Meg was standing before the mirror in Maribel’s dressing gown, a towel wrapped around her head, and her face smeared with a white cream. She immediately launched into a tirade of irate Spanish.
Surprised, the man stepped back, and Cat got in front of him. “All right, out!” Cat shouted at him as Meg continued her abuse of the man. Cat kept his arms at his sides, but bumped the man, hard, with his chest. “Get out of my room now, or I’ll call the police!”
The Cuban turned and fled. Cat double-locked and chained the door after him and leaned against the door, his face in his hands. What else could happen to him in one evening? He calmed himself and went back into the bedroom. “What’s that on your face?” he asked Meg, following her back into the bathroom. “I’ve never seen you use that sort of stuff.”
“Toothpaste,” Meg said, splashing water on her face. “It was all that was handy.” She said something in Spanish, the sliding glass door across the bathtub opened and Maribel stepped out, naked, and quite unself-conscious about it. The two women laughed and embraced.
Cat retreated to the living room, but he had a hard time taking his eyes off Maribel’s astonishing body. The two women followed him. Maribel’s robe had been restored to her, but she had tied it only loosely, and Cat still found her distracting.
Meg said soothingly, “Tomorrow morning we’ll find a way to get her to the embassy. She can stay here tonight, can’t she? There are two beds. You and I can have one, and she can have the other.”
Cat was shaking his head. “All this is getting too crazy for me. It’s all out of control.”
“Look,” Meg said, “I know you’re worried about Jinx — I am, too. But this won’t slow us down.”
“You don’t know what’s happened since I saw you. I have a lot to bring you up to date on.”
“Do we have to do anything about it tonight?”
“Well, no, but...”
Meg placed a hand on his cheek. “Cat, we’ve got to get Maribel back to her father. I think you can understand how important that is to both of them, can’t you?”
Cat nodded wearily. “Yeah, sure, okay,” he said. “Jesus, what a day!”
“So what’s happened while I was gone?” Meg asked.
Cat poured them all a brandy and brought Meg up to date.
“So we’re going to Leticia?” Meg asked.
“I’m going to Leticia,” Cat replied.
“Listen, Cat,” she said firmly, “get used to this, now. Where you go, I’m going, too. You go to Leticia, I go to Leticia. It’s as simple as that. You don’t speak the language, remember? You still need my help. Anyway, I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”
Cat tossed off his brandy and poured them all another one. “God knows, I’d rather go with you than without you. I wouldn’t have gotten this far on my own.” He stood up. “Listen, I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m whipped.” He went into the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed quickly, out of modesty. He always slept naked, didn’t own a pair of pajamas.