"Sure. It was a secret affair, all right. Not a word in the papers, and everyone present sworn to secrecy by a Bishop who was among the honored guests." Hall dried the sweat on his hands again. "But always at these affairs there's a man with a camera. Usually he's a Gestapo Heinie. Sometimes he's a Gestapo Spaniard or even a Gestapo Latin-American. A picture, just one picture, has to be made. It goes to the German consul or the Falange chief of the country and they have to forward it to the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin. The pictures back up the reports, you see, and, besides, when you have a picture of a deacon trucking with a doxie in a bordello it's a good thing to threaten to show the deacon's wife if the deacon decides to return to the paths of righteousness."
"But are you sure, Matt?"
"I'm a good reporter. My job is to remember unimportant things, and to remember them well when they become important. If I'm wrong, I'll find out for myself in San Hermano."
The Governor accepted one of Hall's cigars. "God," he said, "I hope you're wrong, Matt."
Later, back in his hotel room, Hall stripped to his shorts, ran cold water over his wrists and the back of his neck. He poured some Haitian rum into a glass, drenched it with soda from the pink-and-green night table.
Outside, in the darkness, four boys were playing tag. Hall listened to the whispered padding of their bare feet as they flew from cobblestones to trolley tracks. He went to the wrought-iron balcony, stood there watching the undersized kids chasing each other up and down the narrow street. Two freighters rode at anchor in the harbor, their gray noses pointing at the pink Customs House. A soldier lurched down the street, barely missing the feet of an old jíbaro sleeping in the doorway of a dark store.
Hall returned to the desk. He wrote a short note to a friend in a government bureau in Havana—merely to say that he was leaving for San Hermano and that for the time being could be reached in care of Pan American Airways there—and a similar note to Bird. He decided to let his other letters wait until he reached San Hermano.
The kids who were playing tag disappeared. The only noise which broke the silence of the night now was the soft pounding of the presses in the newspaper plant up the street. Hall sealed his letters and started to pack his bags.
The four boys reappeared with a whoop. They carried freshly printed magazines this time, and, as they ran down the street, first one then another took up the mournful cry: "Puerto Rico Ilustrado! Il-us-traaa-dooohhh!" They were no longer to be seen when Hall ran out to the balcony to look.
He took a cold shower, then lit one of his Havanas. The mosquito net which completely covered his bed annoyed him. He put out the light in order not to see the bars of the net frame. Silently, he railed against the sugar planters and their kept politicos for leaving the island prey to malaria. He had to remind himself that the net was his protection against malaria before he could crawl under the frame, but even then he climbed into bed with a cigar in his mouth.