Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,81
you’d ask me,” Jackie said with a smile, longing to be in Emiliano’s arms again. She remembered being pleasantly surprised at what a good dancer Emiliano was the first time she mamboed with him at the Dance Academy, before Colonel Sanchez’s raid sent everyone fleeing for their lives. That seemed like a hundred years ago, and tonight, in this beautiful place with this beautiful man, she felt perfectly safe.
The way Emiliano moved rhythmically in time to the beat and smoothly brushed his body against hers made Jackie feel that she could have danced with him until the sun came up. But when the song ended, he glanced at his watch and said, “We’d better leave now, Jackie, while the dance floor is still crowded.”
Jackie sighed. “Okay, let’s go.”
When they arrived at the screening room, in a secluded part of the mansion, Emiliano tried the crystal doorknob and found that it wouldn’t budge. “Just making sure,” he said.
“Why do you think Mr. Mitchell keeps the room locked?” Jackie asked.
Emiliano shrugged. “Who knows? My guess is that he brings his men friends here for private screenings of racy movies like the live sex acts at the Shanghai Theatre. He wouldn’t want his wife barging in on them, would he?”
“No, I think she’d be appalled.”
“But that’s not our worry. Right now we have to get the door open.” Emiliano turned to Jackie with a wave of his arm like a master of ceremonies presenting the star of the show. “And now, Señorita Houdini and her magic bobby pin.”
Jackie was ready. She slipped the bobby pin into the keyhole, maneuvered it around a bit until she heard a little click, turned the knob, and opened the door. It amused her to think that if all else failed, she could have a future as a safecracker.
Emiliano retrieved the reel from its hiding place under a thick sofa cushion, set up the projector, and turned out the lights.
Jackie took a seat and peered at the screen, determined to find Metzger’s treasure map on a wall in Dracula’s castle, even if it took all night. She tried not to be distracted by Carlos Villarías’s dreadful acting. His exaggerated walk and gestures were almost ludicrous. She was too young to have seen the original Dracula, with Bela Lugosi as the count, but she imagined that Lugosi had to be a more convincing vampire than this clownish Mexican imitation. She shook her head, forcing herself to stop thinking about the acting and concentrate on the scenery.
“This looks like a bedroom in the castle, right?” Emiliano asked.
“Yes, it’s the bedroom where Dracula put a lawyer named Renfield up for the night. That’s Renfield lying on the bed after he’s been attacked by Dracula and his wives.” Jackie sat up sharply. “Wait. Can you stop the reel and go back a little? I think I saw something on the wall above the bed.”
Emiliano rewound the reel and stopped it at the point where the object on the wall could be seen. “It looks like a picture of a crocodile,” he said.
Jackie shuddered and let out a sigh. She’d had enough of crocodiles in Havana to last her for the rest of her life. “Oh well, keep on going.”
In the next scene, Renfield, now a crazed slave to Dracula, was aboard a schooner bound for England, with Dracula hidden in a coffin. Jackie frowned. “I don’t see how we’re going to get back to the castle on this reel,” she said. “In fact, if the movie follows Bram Stoker’s book, the rest of it is all going to take place in London.”
“Do you want me to start over again?”
“Yes, please.” A thought suddenly occurred to Jackie, and she smacked her forehead with her hand. “How can we be so dumb? That picture of the crocodile? Cuba is shaped like a crocodile, isn’t it? I have a hunch that’s the treasure map we’re looking for.”
Once again, Emiliano rewound the reel and let it unspool to the spot in the bedroom with the picture on the wall.
Jackie jumped up and got so close to the screen that her nose was practically touching it. “I was right, Emiliano!” she cried. “It’s a map of Cuba. If you get close enough, you can see the names of the provinces. She pointed to different places. “La Habana… Matanzas… Granma… Holguín… Camagüey…” She stood on her tiptoes, straining to see. “It looks like there’s an X on the very tip of La Habana, right in the center. That’s