FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The saga of Yoan Moncada "would be a great movie,'' said David Hastings, the certified public accountant from Gulfport, Florida, who watched as Boston Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington introduced his client, a switch-hitting Cuban player he called "one of the few most talented 19-year-olds in the world.''

"Most of it would be a comedy,'' Hastings said. "Comedy. Drama. Suspense.''

Hastings left out one genre for which the Moncada story is eminently qualified: Mystery.

"It's complicated,'' said Josefa Hastings, the wife of the accountant and owner of the Cuban restaurant that might serve as the "Rick's Cafe" of this story. "It's a complicated movie.''

This is a tale without an ending, of course. Still to be determined is whether Moncada, who is leading-man handsome, performs to the level of the $63 million investment the Red Sox made in an international free agent who has not played competitively since December 2013, when he left his Cuban team. That $63 million is divided between the record $31.5 million signing bonus the Sox gave him and the $31.5 million to Major League Baseball as a 100 percent overage tax for exceeding their allotment of international bonus money.

What makes Yoan Moncada's case different is that he was allowed to leave Cuba legally, for reasons no one seems willing to discuss. Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire

The Sox are supremely confident that a player they first began tracking back in 2010, when international scout Todd Claus first saw him in a tournament in Holland and marked him as a player to follow, has the talent to be an impact major-leaguer. When the Sox held a private workout for Moncada at JetBlue Park just before the Caribbean Series in early February, the talent evaluators who were there -- which included Cherington -- were unanimous in their belief that he was a special talent.

"Every one of our scouts was impressed with him,'' said Eddie Romero, the Sox director of international scouting who first courted Hastings, then established a comfortable personal connection with Moncada. "That was the consensus.''

But while Moncada's future in the game will unspool in full public view, no such clarity exists regarding the path Moncada took to arrive here. That is the case, of course, with so many Cuban players, like Yasiel Puig, who was smuggled out of Cuba in a scheme that has already led to one man, Gilberto Suarez, being sentenced to prison last Friday in a U.S. court in Miami for his role in the operation.

What makes Moncada's case different is that he was allowed to leave Cuba legally, for reasons no one was willing to discuss Friday. Hastings pleaded ignorance, saying he did not get involved with Moncada until after he had left the country. "I don't know anything about that process,'' he said.

Moncada, whose answers were interpreted by Romero, didn't respond to questions on the topic.

Equally mystifying is how Hastings, whose office is based in Gulfport, Florida, outside of St. Petersburg, and has never been in the baseball business, would wind up representing such a highly coveted prospect. Hastings said he was referred to Moncada by a "client," whom he would not identify.

"The client has asked me not to mention their name, so I respect their confidentiality,'' Hastings said. "Today is about Yoan's future with Boston.''

Asked if there was any reason for the secrecy, Hastings said: "No, just the privacy of the people involved.''

Back in December, a story by veteran reporter Jorge Arangure in Vice magazine first reported the possible involvement of a woman, Nicole Banks-Paulino, in assisting Moncada in his departure from Cuba. The player wound up last summer in Guatemala, where he established residency.

Banks-Paulino told Vice magazine that she previously had helped Cuban players obtain legal means of arriving in Guatemala and has processed the paperwork for players to obtain free agency.

" 'Carta de invitación' is basically that someone in Guatemala sent them tourist visas and they left Cuba with that," she told Vice in an e-mail. "The person who sent the visa was responsible for their expenses, etc. With the new Cuban immigration, any Cuban (there are exceptions) is able to get a passport and travel outside the country."