The café owner was bald and clean-shaven, with thick lips and a broken nose. The man told me the phone had been out of order for days and blamed it on pequeños rebeldes who liked to demonstrate their devotion to the revolution by shooting their catapultas at the ceramic conductors on the telephone poles. If I wanted to warn López, it wasn’t going to be by telephone.

Experience told me that the militia seldom allowed anyone to drive back through a roadblock. They would assume, rightly, that I intended to warn someone. I would have to find another route back to Finca Vigía—one that took me through the little side streets and avenues of San Francisco de Paula. But it was not an area I knew well, especially in the dark.

“Do you know Finca Vigía—the American writer’s house?” I asked the café owner.

“Of course. Everyone knows the house of Ernesto Hemingway.”

“How would a man get there who didn’t want to drive down the main road, south to Cotorro?” I held up a five-peso note to help him think.

The café owner grinned. “Do you perhaps mean a man who didn’t want to drive through the roadblock near the gas station?”

I nodded.

“Keep your money, señor. I would not take money from a man who merely wished to avoid our beloved militia.” He led me out of the café.

“Such a man as yourself would drive north, past the gas station in Diezmero, and turn left onto Varona. Then go across the river in Mantilla. At the junction he would go south, on Managua, and follow the road until he came upon the main highway going west toward Santa María del Rosario. At which point you would cross the main road north again and find Finca Vigía from there.”

This series of directions was accompanied by much pointing, and like almost everything in Cuba, we had soon attracted a small crowd of café patrons, small boys, and stray dogs.

“It will take you fifteen minutes, perhaps,” said the man. “Assuming you don’t end up in the Río Hondo or shot by the militia.”