Havana (6 page)

“Zanja Street,” said Brodgins. “You know, in Centro, where the whores and the Shanghai theater and the—”

“Zanja,” said Roger, with a shudder that indicated how tasteless he considered the mention. “Sergeant, you'd better bring
two
Super .38s.”

The Soviet Trade Legation was located on the upper floor of the new Missiones Building, nos. 25 and 27, in a section of Centro Havana formerly known as Las Murallas—the Walls. At one time the old city's walls had been the dominant feature, but they were now being dwarfed in the building boom as American-financed and -designed skyscrapers were taking off like rocketships all over the landscape, as Havana transfigured into Miami. The Missiones Building, however, had been designed by a Frenchman, and so it lacked the bold, soaring modernism of the New Havana of Batista's second regime; it looked, in fact, like something out of Barcelona or Madrid in the twenties, rather than something out of Las Vegas in the fifties.

And so it was that Speshnev, in espadrilles and loose-fitting peasant's trousers and shirt, found himself sitting across from a rather intense young man in a suit, with hair brilliantined back glossily, who looked more like an American investment banker than a Soviet spymaster. Young Arkady Pashin was brilliant, feared, despised, connected, vigorous, tireless, ruthless, ambitious and oh such a pain in the ass.

“Speshnev, you were supposed to be here at 10
A.M.
It is 10:05
A.M.
This is not acceptable, it is not permissible, it is not desirable. We must maintain tight discipline here. We are outmanned, under-budgeted and without adequate resources. Only discipline and dedication will see us through here, through these difficult times. Do you see?”

“Pashin, they told me you would be a monster. But, young man, I had no idea that you would also be such a little prick.” He smiled warmly.

“Look, old goat,” said bloodless Pashin through thin lips, “this was not my idea. I have a number of very promising projects going on here. This came from some doddering genius at Moscow Control who knows nothing of the complexities of the situation. I don't need a hoary old myth who's disobedient and insubordinate, eating up my time and budget for nothing.”

“It was a nice day in the spring sunshine. An old man wandered a bit on the way over, to smell some flowers, to smell the warm sea. The Boss would have sent me back to the gulag for such treason, but at least for now, Pashin, you lack the power. You have to play along. It has been ordered. So any shit you give me is unsanctioned, pure sport on your part.”

“And they said you'd be a proud one. Still the Comintern movie star. The vanity, the narcissism, the love of self. That is why you'll never be a true Soviet man. You can't let the love affair you have with your mirror go; you're too used to being special.”

“I am a humble servant of the people. Just make certain you get the name right. It's Zek 4715.”

“All right, all right. This is getting us nowhere. You have a job to do, that is why you are here. I'm assuming you're already on it.”

“I don't report to you, Pashin.”

“No, but my reports will help you or hurt you. Wouldn't it be nice if mine helped you and yours helped me.”

“Both our reports should help the revolution, that's all. But to get through the business, yes, I've nosed around. I've seen our young prince. Did you know he has a nickname? I assume he was initially your discovery? So you have a lot riding on this and are probably annoyed I was brought in to handle him, because you were not considered experienced enough. Well, his nickname speaks of his power, his promise, his grand possibilities and your excellent nose for such matters. Do you know what it is?”

“I am not interested in—”

“It's ‘Greaseball.' Evidently, he's so anxious to hurtle into the socialist future, he periodically forgets to bathe. Ugh. Did you smell him before you saw him? I can't stand a dirty fellow when there's no excuse for it. I have quite recently gone nine years without a bath. Not pleasant. I will bathe every day of what little life I have left.”

“Forget his odor. Concentrate on his potential. Have you heard him speak? It's magnificent.”

“I have heard accounts. He likes long ones, or so I hear. And I hear also he likes the spotlight.”

“He is ruthless; he has already killed in the gangsterismo politics of the forties; he is dedicated; he believes, if in nothing else, in change. He has that thing you have, Speshnev, that most of us lack. The magnetism.”

“It's called charisma. Yes, I have it. Yes, you don't. Yes, he does. Yes, I suppose he has some potential. If only he learns to trim his fingernails.”

“This may not be as easy as you think. There has been a development.”

“And that is?”

“Batista's secret police aren't a threat, at least as long as Castro is benign and an orator, not a fighter. The time for fighting is still some years off, and it is your job not merely to recruit him and train him and prepare him, but possibly also to protect him.”

“From what? His wife's wrath at his mistress? Or his mistress's wrath at his wife?”

“No,” Pashin said, sliding a photograph across the desk toward Speshnev, “this man's commitment to his duty.”

The photo had been snapped at the Havana airport. It was of a group of men leaving the Air Cubana Constellation's stairway and heading to the terminal. One was flashy in his white hair and two or three others clearly bowed to him in body posture, factotums or assistants or eunuchs or whatever.

“This one?” Speshnev asked, pointing to the member of the group who was also not a member of the group.

“That one.”

It was a large square-headed American, with a jutting jaw and a crewcut.

“A soldier?”

“According to embassy gossip, a killer. He killed in the war, many, many times.”

“Oh, yes, there's a word for that. I think it's ‘hero.' Why is he here?”

“Ostensibly as the bodyguard of that showy one there. That's a famous politician in their country. But this man for some reason was recruited to accompany the politician to Cuba. Our Washington people have noted it and alerted me. They find it curious.”

“And…”

“And we don't know why. Maybe just because. Or maybe it's that if you had to kill someone, this is the man you'd want to do the killing. He's not like the rest of them. Give him a job, he does it.”

“Hmmm. That doesn't sound like them.”

“No, but maybe they're thinking of changing their ways. They want to get the attention of certain people in certain countries and this would be a very good way to do it, wouldn't you say?”

“Possibly.”

“So I think you should look about carefully. See what this fellow is up to. And…”

“And?”

“And if he's here to cut short the career of the prince of all our dreams, Zek 4715, then it's simple. You must be the faster, the better man. You must kill him.”

The old men were not pleased. They made him hide in a warehouse on the East Side, among rats and spiders, where it was cold. No one brought him coffee, no one commiserated with him, no one asked him how he was doing.

He felt their displeasure, but he could not truly gauge its fullness because he saw no newspapers for three days, saw no television, heard no radio. It was just him in the darkness of the warehouse, and every ten hours or so some greasy food was brought: cold hamburgers wrapped in wax paper from a diner, warm soda in a Dixie cup, a dried-out Danish. For a shitter he had a bucket; for wad he had old newspaper left around; for a mattress he had nothing except a wall to doze against, his butt on the hard cement floor.

Then he was summoned. He traveled by garbage truck from his warehouse, across the boroughs of the city, at last to Brooklyn and there, at night, shadowy figures smelling of cologne took him in through an alley. He found himself in a social club from Garibaldi's day, where the old men sat at single tables, drank bitter coffee from tiny cups, and smoked gigantic cigars. Most wore glasses, all looked creaky and wrinkly, but he understood that he was among the powerful and the legendary.

“Frankie, Frankie, Frankie,” said one. “A cop, maybe. Two cops, at the limits. But…you clipped a horsie?”

“It's the fuggin' horse, Frankie, you understand?” said another.

“Our people have never whacked a horse. It don't look good.”

“On the television, Frankie, the horses with the cowboys. Little kids love the horses. Now one of our people machine-guns a horse in Times Square in broad daylight.”

“I didn't have no choice,” said Frankie. “If you want to know, wasn't Lenny supposed to handle lookout? He's responsible. I can't do everything. I'm coming out of the place and there's no Lenny and just the cop galloping my way on a horse. Lone Ranger or whatever, he's about to pound me into the sidewalk. I just did what I have to. Fuggin' cop, what's he doin' there anyhow?”

“Frankie, he works there. It's his
job,
goddammit. They can't eat donuts all day long. Frankie, some, some even in this little room, they'd like to see Frankie the horsekiller floating in the river with a stevedore's hook through his throat, so as to say to the newspapers and the people, see, we don't kill horses. We only kill our own kind. Frankie, is that what you'd like to see?”

“No, it ain't.”

“Frankie, what we gonna do with you? You want to go for a swim inna river with a hook?”

“No, sir.”

“Miami don't want you, Tampa don't want you, Cleveland, Boston, they don't want you. You are hot as Catholic hell. We can't send you to Vegas 'cause they'd snitch you out to butter up Washington. They'd find a way to let certain people know you were available, and next thing you know, you're sitting in front of a television camera and you're talking 'bout us and you're famous.”

“I wouldn't never do that.”

“We can't let that happen. Frankie, my friend, you are now a pawn in a game you couldn't possibly understand.”

“I could go back to Italy.”

“Italy! I wouldn't wish you on Italy. In Italy, they expect results, not chaos, scandal, shame and newspapers.”

“They
like
horses in the old country, Frankie.

“Frankie Horsekiller, I can only think of one town where you can go and not be noticed. A man of importance has agreed to take you in, as a special favor and because we have arrangements with him over long time. You must be good and obey him and work hard for him before you can ever begin to think of coming back to your home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Frankie, the Jew Meyer, that's Mr. L to you, he will take you in. He may have some enforcement problems and you might fit in to his plans. Frankie, don't embarrass us again, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Frankie.

“And, Frankie,” said one, “say hello to Desi for me.”

The boss and his man Lane stayed in the embassy itself, in VIP quarters; Earl had been dumped at an old joint called the Plaza, facing a beauty of a park square, right at the border of Old Havana. It didn't make much sense for the bodyguard to be that far apart from the body he was supposed to guard, but it was clear that Lane didn't want Earl getting too close to the action.

So he took a cab in on that first morning and found the whole shebang starting with a briefing, put on by one of the ambassador's brightest boys, which laid out the realities of organized crime in Cuba for the Right Honorable United States Congressman Harry J. Etheridge (2nd, Democrat, Ark.), chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, winner of the American Legion of Merit, awardee of the Hearst empire's “Proud to Be an American” contest, 1951.

It was a familiar story. With the big American gambling spas like Saratoga and Hot Springs and, worst of all, Coral Gables, being closed down by reformers, the boys, the fellas, the mob, whatever you wanted to call them, they looked south to Cuba ninety miles away. Somehow Fulgencio Batista was coaxed out of retirement (suspiciously, he had retired to Coral Gables), and in 1952, in a bloodless coup, re-took the government. And so the mob moved in, and with its know-how at the gaming tables, soon took over the big houses. Muscles Martin, of Pittsburgh, ran the Sans Souci; Billy Bloom ran the games at the Tropicana; the old S. and G. wire syndicate, closed down in Coral Gables, moved over and operated the Casino Nacional. Meyer Lansky bought a share of the Montmartre and was the unofficial boss of American criminal interests in Cuba. So well set-up was the outfit here, the functionary explained, that a courier took off every night for Miami with the checks of the losers, to clear them that very night. If they didn't clear, the managers could confront the check-bouncers the very next day.

Boss Harry appeared to listen during this explanation, but he asked no questions and he took no notes. Earl, with his police brain, wrote it down in the interior of his mind; that was the way he worked, filing the data away. A quick rundown of what the young man called “risque” spots followed, with admonitions to avoid them all, but Earl did note that Lane took this down: the Bambu on Zanja Street, the Panchin at Fifth Avenue and C, the South Club at San Rafael and Prado, the Taberna San Roman at San Pedro and Ovicios, the El Colmao on Araburu, the Tasca Espanola at Carcel and Prado—all spots of colorful reputation and possible organized crime ownership. The mob probably hadn't taken over Johnny's Dream Club out on Almendares River, or Mes Amis or El Mirador, and it certainly hadn't taken over the Shanghai Theater, also on Zanja Street, where naked women and dirty movies could actually be seen. The Palette Club and the Colonial were two other dives the congressman and his intrepid investigators were advised to avoid. And that was it for the official American presentation to the congressman, as if the government itself had made peace with the idea that some of its nastiest boys had set up a government in Cuba. It made everything easier on everyone, and, what the hell, it was only Cuba after all.

Then the investigation itself commenced, and Earl was surprised to learn that despite Lane's prediction and Roger's warning, a stop on Zanja Street didn't turn up the first day, or the second, or even the third. What happened instead proved less an investigation than a sightseeing tour, well-fortified by huge rum drinks with little American flags on toothpicks stuck in pieces of pickled pineapple, melon or whatever. The boss had several of these an hour at this spot or that, and his face turned redder and his hair whiter. Other than that it was cruising. The boss was driven about slowly, seeing the sights, admiring the women, checking out the casinos.

They did the big downtown joints first, old and distinguished, the pleasure palaces that made Cuba in the twenties and the thirties and the forties and now, in the fifties, such a destination. In Old Havana the Hotel Sevilla-Biltmore on the Prado, then over to La Rampa, where the Hotel Nacional, the Hotel Lincoln, the Hotel Capri all clustered, like Spanish castles, usually white and tall and flanked by trees and elaborate gardens just off the broad avenues of the most modern section of the city. The casinos themselves followed, such as the Tropicana, the world's biggest and most beautiful nightclub, and the less imposing but still beautiful Sans Souci, all in the section called Centro, clustered in the same modern downtown that could have been Cleveland with gambling. In these joints, the layouts were the same: the gaming room with its busy sense of drama, the wide esplanade where a pool of aquamarine water glinted in the sun and waiters plied the bathers with elaborate fruit-and-rum concoctions, the nightclub and bar, with a stage and always a vast bar.

Boss Harry was always expected. A senior executive waited, and an attending staff. There were many pretty women, flashy and fleshy, as if that too, were a coinage all knew the boss to enjoy. Usually, a tour ensued, and the boss and his party were taken from the big gaming rooms to the nightclub to the backstage area, where in the day the behind-the-scenes theater world seemed stale and filled with sad odors. Then they moved to the pool, usually overlooking the sea, where hundreds of vacationers lay out cooking in the sun, trying to turn brown in a basting of cocoa butter or Coppertone. When recognized, as happened more than a few times, the boss generously mixed with the common or not-so-common men, shaking hands, posing for pictures, holding babies. You'd have thought the man was running for office of mayor of Havana or something.

Another day there'd been a long, larky drive out La Quinta, as the broad Fifth Avenue was called, as it ran along the North Coast, a two lane road with parklands between the lanes, where lights gleamed and trees rose. They passed through the section called Miramar, and went to the famous resort at La Playa, next to a Cuban version of Coney Island, complete with rides and freak shows, as if the city itself weren't already a freak show. At La Playa, a big do was thrown. A later stop took them to the Havana Yacht Club, the greyhound races nearby and then even further inland to the Oriental Park, a racecourse where in season the swells went in straw boaters and white linen suits to throw money away on the ponies. Now, however, it was not in season, and only a skeleton crew of lackeys awaited the great man, to show him what he wanted to see.

“Noticed any gangsters, Earl?” Lane said at one point.

“There seem to be some slick fellas watching us,” said Earl. “If they're gunmen or pimps or hooligans or grifters, I couldn't say. But in places like these, they watch hard.”

“Well, what I see,” said Lane, “is people having a good time, having some fun. I don't see no gangsters. Earl, I think you've been reading Dick Tracy in the funny papers.”

Lane in all matters seemed to know a little better than Earl, as if he were afraid anything Earl might say could impress Boss Harry and in that way damage his own position as the boss's no. 1 boy.

“Now, Lane, you listen to Earl,” said Harry. “He's fought gangsters toe to toe, isn't that right? He cleaned up Hot Springs. Didn't stay clean long, but he did the job up fine, as my friend Fred Becker tells the story. Ain't that so, Earl?”

“We fought 'em but it did seem they got that town up and running again fast after the shooting stopped,” was all Earl could admit, for he had dark superstitions that moneys were paid and that some of Arkansas's most distinguished sons—like the heroic Hot Springs reformer Fred Becker, who rode his victory to the governor's mansion, and the wise and compassionate Harry Etheridge, congressman and Washington kingmaker—all somehow turned out the richer for it.

And now finally, on the night of the fourth day, they had descended to the lowest of the low, to the lower end of the seventeen blocks of Zanja Street, where everything was cheap and easy. The long byway carved a streak through Centro, aiming toward the far more elegant Prado, but where the Prado made many think of Paris, Zanja made men think only of sex. It was lined with bodegas, fruit stands, old women rolling cigars at card tables along the street, lottery agencies—the town seemed washed in numbers, testament to the greed that lay everywhere—bars and tabernas, nightclubs of smoky reputation, a mess of open-air Chinese restaurants just off the main drag, the mysterious doors in which a single square hatch opened, a man was examined, then admitted—and of course the Shanghai Theater.

They pulled the big Cadillac slowly over the cobblestones and the building itself came into view.

“I do believe we ought to take a look-see,” said the boss.

“Might never get a chance like this again.”

“Driver, did you hear?” Lane, sitting next to Harry, asked.

“Si, Señor Brodgins,” said Pepe, a sergeant in the police seconded to chauffeur's duty. He pulled the car over not far from the destination.

“Earl, you go on in and make sure it's safe, now, you hear?” said Lane.

Earl looked at 205 Zanja on the shabby whore street whose washing of pastels only emphasized its crummy squalor, and saw just a big theater marquee with T
EATRO
S
HANGHAI
lit by orange lamps so that it had a lurid blood glow to it. Chinese symbols ran down the wall flanking the ratty entrance on either side, also orange in the lamplight. One of the lamps, however, was somehow miswired, and it flickered and crackled and nobody had gotten around to fixing it yet. Like a broken radio, it leaked hiss and sputter into the night, while it pulsed orange weirdness across the land.

Earl looked at Lane, bathed in the orange light so that he seemed to be an ice cream treat. Lane nudged him forward with a little shooing motion of his eyes. Earl got out, slipped toward the theater, and stepped in. It was shabby inside as out, and seemingly deserted, and a small box office under a sign in Spanish (but with $1.25 clearly marked) stood toward the rear. But it smelled not of popcorn but of disinfectant, and soon enough a fat Cuban came to him with a hand out for the buck-two-bits, and Earl just flashed the big automatic in his shoulder holster, as if to say, I am here to see what I will see. The man melted away, smiling broadly and insincerely.

Earl stepped through a curtain and into a darkness. He was aware of other men in there, an immensity of them, row after row after row, silent and transfixed, and the smell of more disinfectant, and in the glare of the screen he could see the men staring, unmoving, unbelieving. He looked up. In bold black and white a woman in a mask seemed to have something in her mouth and be working it easily, and it took a little while for Earl to put the details together and then he realized what she had in her mouth and that she herself wore only stockings and heels and that flabby immensity to the left of the screen was her big butt, inelegantly parted, revealing in its flaccidity that which should not be revealed. He recoiled, stepped back, and looked away from the screen.

Jesus Christ, don't this take it all! This old coot come a thousand miles from Washington, D.C., to look at a smoker on a movie screen in a theater.

He looked around and realized the place was full and the other watchers in the dark wouldn't be paying any attention to anything except what was on screen.

He slipped back out to the car.

“It's okay. The boys are watching the movies and the movies aren't like nothing playing in Washington, D.C. Mr. Congressman, you sure you want to go into this place? It don't smell very clean.”

“Why, Earl, I must go where duty takes me.” And with that he rose into the orange electrical glow, and with Lane hustled into 205 Zanja.

Earl smoked an orange cigarette and blew orange smoke while the boys had their fun. They were in there for almost an hour while he lounged on the fender of the Cadillac, and eventually, they came out.

“Ain't never seen a thing like that. Where do you suppose they find the gals? Earl, you are a po-liceman. You would know such things. Where would they find the gals?”

“Them gals looked pretty broke-down to me,” Earl said. “Old whores, can't walk the streets no more, don't know nothing else, that's what I'm betting.”

“Whoo-ee,” said the boss, “that was a thing to do, and now I am all up and ready for the next step. Shall we see what other adventures we might get into?”

Earl knew: he was looking for a woman. He said nothing to express his discomfort, but kept looking back, his eyes flicking quickly to the rear as he examined what lay back there.

“We being followed, Earl?” Lane wanted to know.

Earl wanted to say yes, for he felt something. A presence, an attention, something somehow
concentrating
on them. But it was only that feeling and that alone; nothing emerged to his vision to confirm the suspicion.

“I don't think so,” said Earl. “But if we are, he's a damn better man than I am.”

“Didn't think there were no better men than you, Earl.”

“There's plenty. But no, I don't think there's anyone back there. Maybe it's just my old imagination heating up.”

“Earl, have a drink, relax. A little drink wouldn't harm you a bit.”

Actually, Earl knew it would. He be back on the bottle full-time.

“No thank you, sir,” he said to Lane.

Earl checked the rearview mirror again just in case. No, nothing. Here, in this human tide of hustlers and grifters, whores and low-rent crime dogs, it was the bottom of the Havana pool. It reminded Earl a little of Hot Springs in 1946, that sense of a town gone mad for pleasures; but the Spanish twist to it also called up Panama City and its whores' paradise from 1938 when he'd done a tour down there, and every weekend the boys would head off for cheap beer and cheap women. Earl was no saint; he'd had a big share of each on the principle that if war came he'd not survive it and so he should take what he could buy now. He had no regrets, but now, married, with several wars under his belt, he somehow couldn't connect with it. He didn't need it.