The following is based on a true story. In 1994, Fidel Castro allowed thousands of Cubans to leave the island on makeshift rafts. I was living on Grand Cayman, writing for the daily newspaper. With no place to stay, the over 1,200 rafters ended up in a dusty campsite in the middle of Grand Cayman, where they languished for months. My reporting shone an unflattering light on the island; local authorities were not pleased with me and my work. This is a section of my novel in which the main character (based on me) is followed and harassed by the officials who were seeking any way to oust the refugees — and get rid of me.
……………………………………….
Entering the water when scuba diving is a cinch. You lean over the railing and the weight of the tank does the rest.
Plop.
Before the plop is an instant when you can stop the plop by leaning forward. After that gravity commits you.
In life, there are a million similar choices. They exist between prologues and epilogues. They are the interstitial spaces between floors. They are the mysterioso moments when civilizations are born, and galaxies die. Few people recognize them.
I do.
I was a thousand miles from Olmeadow with a disgusting, pock-marked nose inches from my own. It belonged to Raymond Ackerman, Chief of the Royal Cayman Islands Police.
A.K.A. Ratfink.
That protruding proboscis was a lousy landscape of huge blackheads and stray whiskers. Scar tissue bore testimony to teenaged zits. Greenish bits outlined his teeth. Black hair crawled across his nose, like one of those wooly bear caterpillars.
I was living on Grand Cayman, writing stories for the weekly newspaper Ye Olde Caymanian about Cuban refugees holing up in a makeshift Tent City in George Town. Over a thousand had escaped Cuba on rafts and refused to leave. Ratfink was pissed. He “requested” I visit him and so I did. No way out of those “requests.”
“What do you think you are doing, Miss Ramona Paredes deFlores?”
“My job,” I said, looking around the spartan room. Orderly stacks of paper piled on his desk. A uniform jacket hung on a rack next to a James Smith & Sons umbrella and a Burberry trench. It reminded me of Hunter Thompson’s axiom to never trust a cop in a raincoat.
“Your job is nothing but duff,” said Ratfink. He had a copy of Ye Olde Caymanian and was pointing it at me. “You should be writing the truth, not fabrications.” His short-sleeved uniform revealed hairy arms and knuckles. A World War II-era Omega watch cinched his wrist. No wedding band, but many European men did not wear them. Ratfink’s freakishly broad shoulders slumped.
Smack! Smack! Smack! Ratfink hit the paper so hard on his desk that some pages split.
“I am not fabricating anything,” I said. “I have been talking to the Cubans for months. What I wrote in my stories are the facts.”
“Facts? The refugees claim we took thousands and thousands of dollars from them so they could escape to Miami on boats?”
“I have a statement with 100 signatures from the Tent City Cubans to that effect,” I said. The document was in a safe-deposit box. The key was in my bra.
“That’s cheeky of you to think I would take that list seriously. You are off your trolley.” Ratfink sailed the paper into the metal trash-bin and knocked it over. Clunk. An empty Red Stripe bottle fell out. “That rag, that, that, that thing is lies. Your counterpart, Mr. Cooper, would never write rubbish like that for The Astrolabe. He’s a professional, does things via the proper channels. You do not. Do you disagree with my assessment of Mr. Cooper?”
“He’s a useless drunk who doesn’t recognize news inches in front of his nose.”
Shit, that wasn’t smart, Ramona.
We were nose to nose. Together, several of the pockmarks on his nose looked like Italy. His five o’clock shadow was early, more like two p.m.
Ratfink’s nose zoomed in for the kill.
“Mr. Cooper keeps quiet and doesn’t make trouble like you. But he’s not Cuban like you are.”
“Cooper is close to getting Caymanian status and won’t do anything to jeopardize it.”
A red smudge blotched the white of his left eye. He pulled out a thick, mustard colored folder from his desk. Printed across the top was “On Her Majesty’s Service” in block letters.
“We’ve been watching you, Miss Paredes deFlores.”
Drat. Is that the MI6 file again? Keep your wits about you, Ramona.
The file was thicker since my last “visit” with the Chief of Immigration, Simon Simms. I didn’t like thinking Ratfink and Simms were in cahoots about me. But I do like the phrase “in cahoots” so I perked up a bit.
There was only one person who could save me now.
Where was Miss Moneypenny?
My left eyebrow went up a notch. It happened when I was pissed off. Ratfink caught the gesture, threw the file on top of the desk. He grabbed a pen and stabbed his thigh again, again, again. Blood spurted. It was classic Mansfield Cumming, the sadistic founder of MI6. Cumming terrorized people by skewering knives into his wooden leg.
I was shaken but not stirred.
Ratfink stared me in the eye. There were ink stains and blood on his pants leg.
“Do you have anything more to say?”
I had an overwhelming sensation of stepping in a warm, creamy pile of dog poop. I shook my head.
“This takes the biscuit,” said Ratfink. “You base your stories on the word of people who live in a refugee camp. Who believes them?”
“I do. So do you, because otherwise I would not be sitting here. And the Cubans in Miami terrify you.”
Ratfink turned his back and looked out the window, one hand on either side of the panes. He moved his head as if he were stretching his neck, squared his shoulders and let out a long, slow breath. Ratfink was a muscular hulk who could beat the living crap out of anyone. He could have strangled me with just one hand. When he faced me again, the unibrow was a stripe across his brow. The eyes were on fire.
“Get out,” he snarled. “Get out! GET OUT! You will get it in the neck. Believe it.”
My head whirled as I drove home, images of Ratfink’s giant paws around my neck. How did I end up with an MI6 file and on Ratfink’s shit list?
He was right, it WAS the Cubans. Damn them. Damn me.
Photo c/o Ana Margarita Cabrera.