smile and a vigorous handshake. He led them to high wingback armchairs that had been arranged around a copper coffee table. On the table were four tiny cups of Cuban coffee, four water glasses, and the bottle of Suarez Reserve Rum in a weave basket.
Esteban's sister, Ivelia, rose from her seat and extended her hand. Joe bowed, took her hand, and brushed it lightly with his lips. Her skin smelled of ginger and sawdust. She was much older than her brother, with tight skin over a long jaw and sharp cheekbones and brow. Her thick eyebrows rolled together like a silkworm and her wide eyes seemed trapped in her skull, bulging to escape but helpless to do so.
"How were your meals?" Esteban asked when they sat.
"Excellent," Joe said. "Thank you."
Esteban poured them glasses of rum and raised his in toast. "To a fruitful relationship."
They drank. Joe was stunned by how smooth and rich it was. This is what liquor tasted like when you had more than an hour to distill it, more than a week to ferment it. Christ.
"This is exceptional."
"It's the fifteen-year," Esteban said. "I never agreed with the Spanish mandate from the old days that lighter rum was superior." He shook his head at the notion and crossed his legs at the ankles. "Of course, we Cubans went along because of our belief that lighter is better in all things - hair, skin, eyes."
The Suarezes were light-skinned themselves, descended from the Spanish strain, not the African.
"Yes," Esteban said, reading Joe's thought. "My sister and I aren't of the lesser classes. That doesn't mean we agree with the social order of our island."
He took another sip of rum and Joe did the same.
Dion said, "Be nice if we could sell this up north."
Ivelia laughed. It was very sharp and very short. "Someday. When your government treats you like adults again."
"No rush," Joe said. "We'd all be out of a job."
Esteban said, "My sister and I would be fine. We have this restaurant and two in Havana and one in Key West. We have a sugar plantation in Cardenas and a coffee plantation in Marianao."
"So why do this at all?"
Esteban shrugged in his perfect dinner jacket. "Money."
"More money, you mean."
He raised his glass to that. "There are other things to spend money on besides" - he waved his arm at the room - "things."
"So says the man with a lot of things," Dion said, and Joe shot him a look.
Joe noticed for the first time that the west wall of the office was given over entirely to black-and-white photographs - street scenes mostly, the facades of nightclubs, a few faces, a couple of villages so dilapidated they'd fall over in the next wind.
Ivelia followed his gaze. "My brother takes them."
Joe said, "Yeah?"
Esteban nodded. "On my trips home. It's a hobby."
"A hobby," his sister said with a scoff. "My brother's photographs have been published in Time magazine."
Esteban gave it all a diffident shrug.
"They're good," Joe said.
"Someday maybe I'll photograph you, Mr. Coughlin."
Joe shook his head. "I'm with the Indians on that one, I'm afraid."
Esteban gave that a wry smile. "Speaking of captured souls, I was sorry to hear of the passing of Senor Ormino last night."
"Were you?" Dion asked.
Esteban gave that a chuckle so soft it was almost indistinguishable from an exhaled breath. "And friends tell me Gary L. Smith was last seen on the Seaboard Limited with his wife in one Pullman and his puta maestra in another. They say his luggage looked hastily packed but there was a lot of it."
"Sometimes a change of scenery gives a man a new lease on life," Joe said.
"Is that the case with you?" Ivelia asked. "Have you come to Ybor for a new life?"
"I've come to refine, distill, and distribute the demon rum. But I'm going to have trouble doing that successfully with an erratic import schedule."
"We don't control every skiff, every tariff officer, every dock," Esteban said.
"Sure you do."
"We don't control the tides."
"The tides haven't slowed the boats to Miami."
"I don't have anything to do with boats to Miami."
"I know." Joe nodded. "Nestor Famosa does. And he assured my associates that the seas this summer have been calm and predictable. I understand Nestor Famosa is a man of his word."
"By which you imply I'm not." Esteban poured them all another glass of rum. "You also bring up Senor Famosa so that I will worry he could overtake my supply routes if you and I aren't in accord."
Joe took his glass off