Havana (16 page)

Speshnev and the young man Castro sat at a sidewalk cafe in Centro, sipping coffee as the tanks rumbled by.

“Pah!” said Speshnev. “These are not tanks. I have seen tanks. In Spain, there were tanks. The German Panzers were huge and carried immense armor and armament. Now
those
were tanks!”

These tanks were American M4 Shermans, obsolete by a decade and somehow seconded to the Cuban national army for defense of the island against threat of invasion by, er, Haiti. They rumbled down La Rampa before turning onto 23rd, for Vedado, just a block or two away, where the battle still raged.

“It took them long enough to get here,” Speshnev continued in his rant. “Good heavens, your people are so slow. It is the Spanish disease. Siesta, siesta, always the siesta. That is your curse. It's an abomination.”

The tanks would signify the last phase of the battle. A squad of Batista's prize assault troops had attempted to broach the house several hours earlier, but withering automatic fire killed half and drove the others back. The house was sprayed with machine gun fire—its noise rattled off the windowpanes all over town—and when whoever was in charge decided enough was enough, that everyone inside was dead, he sent in two squads of
asaltos.
Half were killed, half driven away.

So then it was wait and snipe, wait and snipe, for hours, until at last the tanks arrived. Now they were here. It would soon be over.

“Isn't this a little dangerous?” asked Castro. Now and then a ricochet would whine by, loosed by who knew which side and off of how many bounces. Most people were behind cover, but Speshnev insisted on pretending it was a calm summer day. He sat drinking his sweet coffee. The waiter wore a pot on his head and scuttled along the ground like a crab, but continued in his profession, rather heroically.

“No,” said Speshnev, “it is not a little dangerous. It is in fact very dangerous. You can never tell which freakish way a bullet or a chunk of shrapnel or a wave of concussion will bounce. At any moment, we could die. Waiter! Another coffee, please,
pronto.
”

“Si, señor,” came the meek call from within.

“Then why do we sit here? Is this to test my courage? Are you trying to prove me a coward? I am not a coward, but I see no point in pointless, flamboyant risk for no gain.”

“Well, then, let me explain. All in all, what is happening so close by is an interesting object lesson for a young man who seeks to enter the profession in which you claim such an interest. Far more beneficial for you, I would say, than your awful chess, at which you show no progress and even less aptitude than before.”

“I play Ping-Pong. Do you play Ping-Pong?”

“Of course not,” Speshnev sniffed. “It's an idiotic game.”

“It's actually rather fast and exciting and—”

“You are trying to change the subject. Shut that mouth and listen and try and learn. What is the moral of the day?”

“Don't fight tanks with machine guns?”

“That is the moral of any day. No,
this
day.”

“I suppose—”

The world ended in noise. Then it came back again, just as it had been.

It was the sound of a Sherman's 75mm cannon firing. It seemed to momentarily suck the atmosphere from the planet and all within the cone of its percussion waves flinched, young Castro especially, for the pain seemed to drive two sharp needles into his ears.

“Eeee-gods!” he said.

“Yes,” Speshnev said, “war is loud. Battle is tremendous. It is not for the—”

But another explosion followed, as loud, and then the sense of sitting and talking in a cafe was gone totally, as one shell boomed, then another, in steady succession, ever so painfully loud. The Shermans were firing salvos, the shells detonating in the wreckage of the once beautiful house. Dust and smoke filled the air, and the vibrations from each individual blast seemed to linger and mount as yet more shells were fired. The cannonade went on for a solid three minutes. Castro put his fingers in his ears and his face down on the table to avoid dust. The agent simply sipped his strong sweet coffee, seemingly unperturbed.

At last it was over.

“My mother!” said Castro. “That was something.”

“Yes it was, and back to the subject please.”

“I suppose the lesson is, he struck too soon.”

“Ah,” said Speshnev. “At last you have said one tiny thing that impresses me. Not much, but a little. Yes, too early, no follow up, no alternative plan, no alibi, nothing.”

“Well, he was outsmarted. His men were captured and I would think tortured and they gave him up. What can be done?”

“What can be done is simple: discipline, patience, coolness, cunning. That is the way wars are won, not by flamboyant stunts.”

Machine gun fire. Lots of it. Then individual shots, as, presumably, troops shot at corpses to make certain they stayed corpses.

“You said we would go look.”

“It's happening faster than I anticipated. Use your ears. This is the radio of failed revolution. He had no need to assassinate the congressman and had he succeeded, the consequences for all ofus—except him—would have been tragic. There are always consequences. Nothing occurs without consequences. You must face consequences.”

“I must be realistic in my thinking, you are saying.”

More machine gun fire. A steady, beating roar, then silence.

“Learn this: you must have discipline. You must not strike until you are strong enough. You must withdraw quickly to avoid being caught. You must bleed them and bleed them and bleed them. It is a question of will. Do you have the will? Colorado did not. He had the means, and that was all, and it got him crushed in the stones of his own house.”

“I see.”

“You were very lucky. You managed to disaffiliate yourself from his plot, and to disconnect yourself from being his pawn. Otherwise you would be in prison now and before the wall tonight. Yet here you sit, drinking coffee.”

“I was lucky to have someone so astute looking after me. I will not be so hasty and foolish in the years to come.”

“I hope not. But I need a promise. You will not do anything stupid or ill-founded, no matter what anger seizes you. Do you understand? If I am to continue, if our sponsorship is to grow, if your movement is to prosper, it has to be well run. You have charisma, but do you have wisdom? The former without the guidance of the latter is pure anarchy. From now on, you must seek approval. If you do that, you'll be surprised how you can be aided by us.”

“I can tell you are experienced.”

A last rattle of machine gun fire echoed down the dusty streets.

“What is next is, you go on vacation.”

“Vacation! Why, I have work to do. We have a plan already in place, I shouldn't tell you this, for Santiago, although, yes, it needs some polish—”

“You have no work. Don't delude yourself. Don't bore me with fantasy. Forget Santiago. For now, you are too famous. I want you gone. And I do mean
gone.
You don't tell your wife, you don't tell your three mistresses—”

“Four, actually. The new one, so beautiful.”

“—your four mistresses, your three, or is it two, followers. Poof! You are vanished, invisible, as of the moment you leave this cafe.”

“But my wife—”

“—will forgive you, as she always has. I am not joking. There will be something like a terror ahead, and some deaths will be whimsical. With your idiocy, you could walk into that in a second. Some people think you have talent, and must be preserved, and that task, melancholy though it be, has fallen to me. So off you go.”

“Where shall I go?”

“Don't even tell me. Think of me as a magician. I count three, and when I reach it…you are gone.”

The young man had vanished by two.

What a wonderful story. Drunken American congressman goes to whorehouse, gropes, squeezes, requests vague perversions, acts up, strikes the girl, causes a ruckus and insults Cuban hostess. His bodyguard roughs up the local security. The hostess complains to the overboss, and in that fiery Latino way, psychotically obsessed with honor and face, he takes it too seriously and decides to teach a lesson to the congressman and by extension all arrogant grasping Americans, with their money, their new buildings, their disdain for Cuban machismo.

Alas something goes tragically wrong; the assassination attempt is foiled, and the heroic Cuban security services, ever fast on their feet and so professionally agile, track the attack back to its source and decide that's where the lesson must be taught. Thus the military settles the score, though it's a daylong battle not settled until the tanks arrive late in the afternoon, and scores of the innocent and even some of the guilty die. But finally El Presidente's flag flies over No. 353 23rd Street in Vedado, and for days the curious, the bloodthirsty, the horrified come look at the smokey ruins where so many died, and where the story ended in a brilliant explosion of bloodlust, ambition, vengeance, crazed bravado and fabulous theater.

But the serious people understand that there is so much more to it than that, and underneath the gossip and the scandal and the delicious details, they begin to investigate. This includes the expat business community, diplomatic and intelligence circles, even the American military. All must know more and all are eventually satisfied. But chief among the ranks of the intensely curious is the unofficial American crime boss of Havana, Mr. L, who receives many urgent calls from compatriots back in America. These august, elderly gentlemen are suddenly worried about the political stability of the island in which they've invested so heavily. Mr. L is no fool, and understands that these men need an “inside story,” the true gen, as it were, that conforms to their intuitive sense of conspiracy. He makes calls, he asks favors, he gently twists arms, until something resembling an underplot emerges and though it's not a thing that could ever be proven in a court, it's enough to satisfy the various people he must satisfy. This is done over several days with careful deliberation, for such is Mr. L's way, cautious and painstaking, good with details, ever patient. And of course finally a plan is devised, and like all good plans it not only satisfies its own mandates but also, magically, several others as well. It's too good an idea, really, not to be implemented.

So Frankie is summoned to the Montmartre from his dank exile, ever ready to please, primed to go the extra yard, incredibly happy to be noticed again.

“You've heard it all, I suppose,” said Mr. Lansky, drinking milk in his office in his linen suit, as always.

“I went down myself to look at the ruins. Man, that wasn't no gunfight, that was a goddamned artillery attack.” Frankie has a black Ban-Lon sports shirt with red piping, white trousers, a pair of expensive Italian loafers. He is holding his sunglasses because his pockets are too tight to accommodate them.

“Frankie, I've told you. Please, no swearing. It's coarse, and other ways can be found to make a particular emphasis.”

“I apologize.”

“It's just a small thing. Anyhow, suppose I tell you there's more.”

“I bet there's more. For one thing, there's twenty-five or more whorehouses completely up for grabs. These houses could be a start. They could be a front for narcotics distribution; they could be a source of talent for color dirty pictures, which I guarantee you is the next big fuck—, uh, next big moneymaker in our business, and already the West Coast is trying to push it; they could be a way to get in with certain business execs who consider themselves too hoity-toity for our kind of action, and politicians too, including, if I hear right, not only congressmen but senators as well.”

“Excellent, Frankie. Your instincts are superior. And I suppose you know just the man for the job and I wouldn't be surprised if he was born Franco Carabinieri in Salerno forty-three years ago.”

Frankie blushed.

“It would be a very tasty deal for everyone, all around the table.”

“It would indeed. Even now the Cubans are jockeying for the strength to make such a grab themselves. There's a certain captain in the military intelligence service named Latavistada, recently of Santiago, where he had a reputation for getting things done, who is most anxious to take over. He owned brothels in that town.”

“I should have a talk with him.”

“You should. And what would you tell him?”

“For 70 percent, I won't kill him.”

“Perhaps he isn't the sort to scare. His nickname is Ojos Bellos, ‘Beautiful Eyes,' for unpleasant things involving knives and eyes, known to make prisoners sing loud and fast.”

“I will make him sing loud and fast.”

“Now, Frankie, maybe there's another thing, another way of going, which would bring you into intimate contact with Latavistada, even as a buddy, a partner, a pal. And in that way, the two of you could acquire serious property in this town and a franchise for the future. Without bloodshed or rancor. Can you think of such a way?”

Frankie thought hard. Here's what he came up with: nothing.

“I…I…” He felt like a fish flopping on a dock, drowning in air.

“Okay, Frankie, that's not your way of thinking. It's all right. It's fine. Just sit back, relax, take a load off, and listen.”

“Yes, sir. Yes,
Meyer.
”

“Frankie, here's the thing. Maybe this fellow who got himself all blown up, this El Colorado, maybe he was only the muscle end of the show. Maybe there's someone behind him, someone shadowy, who's secretly planning a big takeover and when he gets that done, he kicks us all out, El Presidente at the top and all of us on down, and we are out of luck.”

“Who could do such a thing? Another crew? It would have to be a hell of a crew, that I know.”

“Not a crew, Frankie. Worse than a crew, more powerful than a crew. An idea.”

“An idea?”

“The idea of communism. The idea that nobody owns a thing, that nobody pays for a thing, that it's all free, it's all cooperative, no bosses, no anything. No mobs either. The mobs have to go.”

Frankie blinked.

“It's fucking
evil!
” he finally blurted, and Meyer did not, for once, correct him on his profanity.

“It is evil, Frankie.”

“They could do that?”

“Maybe this is the beginning.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Frankie, there's a young man in this town whose goal it is to arrange just such a thing. He believes in it. He hides under sweet sayings about freedom and peace and bread, but that's what he wants. A world without ownership. A world without wealth. A world in which no matter how tough you are and how smart you figure and how hard you work, you get just enough and no more. It doesn't matter you're clever and brave. That doesn't matter. You get your few beans every week and that's it. Everybody's the same.”

“Except some guys at the top.”

“
Exactly!
Of course. The guys at the top, they get it all. They've sold everybody on this we-are-all-equal malarkey, but behind closed doors it's party time, with babes and drinks and fancy cars. But for nobody except the big shots. There's no give and take, only take by a few. Under the guise of something called equality. It's the greatest scam in the world.”

“That is so wrong.”

“It is wrong, Frankie. It's anti-American. This young Cuban man, he's a lawyer who doesn't practice, he just roams, giving speeches, collecting followers, making allegiances, looking for ways to advance his program, laying with a girl or two along the way. He's catnip to women. And, as you might imagine, he's exactly the one who'd benefit from the kind of chaos and instability as the day before yesterday.”

“He's gotta be stopped.”

“Frankie, suppose I tell you police snitches saw him
in the house
with Colorado the day before the assassination attempt. He's the thinker behind it. He's the brilliance figuring all this out. He gives the orders, and some other schmoes do the work and take the heat and maybe get burned.”

“The bastard. He needs a bullet in the brain.”

“You could do this?”

“Without blinking an eye. It's what I do best.”

“That's my boy, Frankie. And that's where Captain Latavistada comes in.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. In Military Intelligence, it's his job to keep tabs on this kind of boy. On your own, without contacts, I think he'd prove too slippery. You'd never run him to earth. It's his town, Frankie, not yours. But Latavistada knows this stuff. He can help. You, him, I think you two could get along. Frankie, this is the job you were born to do. Can you concentrate on that and put the business of Bennie Siegel aside? It's called discipline and it's the hardest thing to learn. But I know you can do it, Frankie. I have my faith. There'll come a time when we call in the tab on Bennie's killer, but we've got this job to do, and you are the man to do it, right, Frankie? Then comes the business of the whorehouses and who's to take them over. And naturally it's you, Frankie, under my supervision and with the captain's assistance. You see, Frankie? Sometimes I think all this was planned out by someone with true vision. Are you ready for such a thing?”

“I am your man, Mr. Lansky,” said Frankie, meaning it with every fiber of his being.