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civilians: the Chinese bus driver, who would die while his head wound was being treated at a military hospital, two of his twelve wounded passengers, both children, also Chet Looby, and who knows who else? Joe Cooney would find his blue seersucker sports coat riddled in his closet by machine gun fire. A painting in Bellas Artes, A Faun and a Young Girl by Rubens, would be cut in half by a blast from a fifty-caliber gun on the tanqueta, and the façade of the museum would be so ravaged by gunfire it would close for fifteen days.
    Rebels and Palace guards would shoot each other for forty-five minutes. Firing from rooftops and streets, echoing from sites remote from the Palace, would go on for three hours, and Renata would keep her tourist visitors on the floor of the museum for more than two hours. One man in her charge would suffer a heart attack, four others would be cut by flying glass, and two women would faint and be slapped awake by Renata. After the third hour’s final silence the museum’s director would tell Renata that Diego’s corpse had been found in the fountain of Zayas Park, and that the Military Intelligence Service, SIM, had been asking if anyone in the museum knew Diego, and someone said that Renata did.
    “I knew him only through painting and sculpture, as a man of the arts,” Renata told the director.
    “Of course,” he said. “Now go home and stay there and don’t talk about Diego.”
    Quinn called Max four times from a pay phone to update the attack, the street scene, the sprawl of corpses. He dictated a story on the sudden death of Cooney’s friend and Max told him he was hired. When the shooting fell away to single sporadic shots in the distance, Quinn walked toward Bellas Artes to find Renata, but was stopped half a block away by soldiers. He explained his work and showed his letter from Max, which the soldier could not read. A woman came out of the museum and Quinn asked her if she’d carry a message to Renata, and she agreed. Two men from SIM came out and took Quinn into the museum and asked how he knew Renata, this woman who knows rebels. Did Quinn know any rebels? He showed them his passport and Max’s letter, and one of the men telephoned Max, who vouched for Quinn.
    Quinn’s first-person story of death at the Palace and death on a hotel balcony would be carried internationally with his byline by the Associated Press, in the week ahead Time would hire him as a stringer, and Quinn the newcomer would suddenly be a Havana newsman with cachet.
    “Diego was in the attack. He’s dead,” Renata said, her first words as they left the museum. “Now, because I know him, they don’t trust me.”
    “They don’t trust me because I know you . But they didn’t arrest either of us. Here you are. Here I am.”
    “You came to see me. You are a thoughtful man.”
    “I thought I’d take you home. I know they’ve been shooting at you.”
    “My mother is in collapse. She thinks I’m dead. But I can’t go home. I have to know if Diego is truly dead. I want to go to the necrocomio , where they take the bodies.”
    “Don’t tempt the police to arrest you. They’re very, very nervous. I saw them kill a friend of that guy who sang for Hemingway.”
    “Oh no, oh the poor man. So many innocents killed. I’m sure I know many, many of the dead. I’m sure of it.”
    “I wrote the story of that man, and of the whole attack, for Max. He hired me.”
    “I knew he would.”
    They walked toward Agramonte.
    “Do you have a car?” she asked.
    “No. But I’ll find us a taxi,” Quinn said.
    “I have a car.”
    They walked, and when she saw Diego’s car she opened the door and sat at the wheel. She took the key from the ashtray as Quinn got into the 1952 Oldsmobile four-door with stains on its carpet. It smelled of oil.
    “Is this your car?” Quinn asked.
    “It is sometimes my car.” She put her head on the wheel and sobbed.
    “I can drive,” Quinn said.
    “Better if a woman is driving.”