Havana (9 page)

The old men met in an impoverished mountain state so foreign to all the things they knew it seemed like a trip to someone else's old country. The site was an air-conditioned house that had once belonged to a mine manager and looked down across the coaledout ridges, the abandoned and rusting steam shovels, the scars in the earth. It was like a mansion in a battlefield.

They arrived by Cadillac, each with two or three bodyguards. The huge cars dominated the roads up from Miami and New Orleans, over from Cleveland and Pittsburgh, down from Boston and New York. When they reached the small town that was their destination, it was almost like a funeral parade: black Caddy after black Caddy, negotiating the hairpin turns, crawling through ruined, desolate, misty villages, past knots of curious, slat-ribbed children with hollow faces, lank hair and deep eyes.

And the men in the cars were famous too, at least in their worlds. They were the wisest of the wise, the toughest of the tough, the meanest of the mean, the fastest of the fast. What stories they could tell if storytelling were permitted, though of course it was not. What those old eyes had seen, what those old brains had calculated, what those old, still-strong hands had crushed.

They were lumpy, dark men, set in their ways, in black suits and ties and white shirts, and fallen socks over big black shoes. The lenses of their glasses were thick. Their veins showed, their eyes were rheumy and bloodshot, their hands large, their jowls fallen, their faces swaddled in fat and unsmiling, drawn, serious. They spat a lot, smoked a lot, cursed a lot. They wore pomade in their thinning hair. They looked as if they'd never laughed in their lives, or had a drink with a girl or gone to a dance or a ball game or a party. Their faces had the gray pallor of indoors at night, the waft and stench of cigarettes, the glow of neon. They were old men of the city.

They drank Sambuca or Frangelico or Amaretto from small glasses and sat listlessly around the living room, not at a single grand table like medieval potentates—there was no nobility in their world, only practicality—but like old peasants at a coffee-house in Salerno, too frail to toil in the fields. The subject was not who was there, but who was not there.

Chicago was not there.

“These Chicago people, I don't know,” said one. “They get more arrogant all the time. They think their thing is such a great thing.”

“What is to be done? Our thing must be protected, but I am not eager for a return to the old days.”

“Me neither. I've been shot enough already, six times, cut twice, beaten a dozen.”

“If I'm to be stabbed in the back,” one joked, “I want it to be by friends, not enemies!”

Everybody laughed.

“The Chicago thing could become a problem,” said the eldest of the equals. “The Chicago thing grows mighty on the river of money that flows to it from this Las Vegas, the city in the desert. Who would have dreamed such a thing? A city in a desert!”

“Sometimes even the longest shots come in. Someone picks the number.”

“The Chicago thing owns Las Vegas, so Chicago now sees itself first among equals. Soon, possibly, it will see itself as first without equals. It will be the only thing. Our things will be nothing.”

“Ben Siegel would be horrified if he knew how his dream had turned out because he was always, in his heart, an East Coast boy,” someone said.

“He was a great man, a seer—”

“He was also a nutbin jaybird whose eyes were bigger than his brain and he never had no judgment at all. He starts a fight in a train station with a fellow turns out to be a professional boxer. Goes urp all over his fancy clothes. He ends up like all the hot ones, with his face blown off on his sofa. His eye, I understand, is on the floor.”

“But Ben was committed, rest in peace and a slow death to whoever done the deed on him, to a fair shake for all the things. His idea was that Vegas would be for us all, we'd all have a piece. Not this Chicago thing, as these greedy bastards have established, and now it teeters dangerously toward what nobody wise and old wants.”

Though unsaid, all acknowledged privately the theory of mutually assured destruction that kept the peace, fragile as it was, in their tough little world of things. All knew that if any thing grew too powerful, it would wage war on the others. Alliances would be formed, treaties broken, it would be city against city, thing against thing. Worst of all, of course, it would embolden the class of men these men feared the most: The FBI? Not a chance: No, far worse: their own children and grandchildren, eager to take over, eager to drink from the river and to strut their strength and to push the old bastards aside. These people really frightened the old men. The kids: they wanted their thing.

But at last the one from New York, the wisest of them all, spoke, and all listened.

“The Chicago thing has Las Vegas. We have Cuba. As long as we have Cuba, we need not fear Chicago. Chicago needs to fear us. Next to Cuba, Las Vegas is nothing but an annoyance.”

“This is very true,” someone said.

“He speaks what is real.”

He continued.

“We have our best man down there. He is clever, oh so clever with the numbers—”

“The Jew? He is not one of us.”

“He is in cunning. Only he lacks our will to do what is necessary. He has not killed, I believe.”

“No, he has not. He is an arguer, a fixer. With the guns, the boomboom, the flying blood, the puddles all sticky and black, the faces blown off, the hair mussed, the newspaper shots of what happens in alleys to men who have transgressed. No, not for him.”

“That is a shame. Sometimes that is where it must end. In an alley, with a pool of blood and the face gone.”

An amen chorus agreed. That was where it had to end some time. Nothing else would satisfy.

“This is why I have made an arrangement, which I now put before you, for your approval,” said the New York thing representative. “I have done this already. It can be undone, if you demand, but I think you will see some wisdom in it.”

“So, go ahead.”

“What is needed down there is someone with our kind of hot blood. The balls to get close with knives or guns. Fists even. Sometimes necessary as we have said.”

“It is not in the Jew to be that way. Any Jew. They have been beaten on too many times for them to take pleasure in that.”

“It was in Ben, at least a little. It was in Lepke Buchalter, rest in peace. It was in Murder, Inc. and in Barney Ross, the boxer. They were all Jews. Now in this Israel. These Jews are fighters, too. With the machine guns, what have you.”

“They are a new kind of Jew. Our kind of Jew is like our man in Havana. Or Abbadabba Berman: the numbers, the quickness, the sureness with the figures. That is your typical Jew. Certainly, yes, in certain times, it changes. You cannot, I think you will agree, count on it to be that way. You have to count on the typical, not the extraordinary.”

“So what have you done?”

“I have sent him a man.”

“One man would make such a difference?”

“One man, yes.
This
man.”

“And who is this man.”

“Frankie Carbine.”

“Frankie Horsekiller? Frankie of Times Square? Frankie of the two policemen? That Frankie?”

“That Frankie, exactly.”

“Oh, my god!”

The amen chorus rumbled nervously, then the wise man spoke again.

“He is crazy. He has no judgment. He likes too much to shoot. All his problems he solves with a gun. He wants to be big but he hasn't the vision. He just has his gun and his craziness. But sometimes you need craziness. You need that thing where there is no fear. Some of the old-timers had it. We had to move on, but there are throwbacks, and Frankie Carbine is such a man. We may have need of the crazed down there. Cuba is the lynchpin of all our things; we may have to defend it with crazy. Sometimes, crazy is necessary.”

All amened in honor of crazy.

“It's obvious,” said Roger. “You were set up.”

But Earl couldn't concentrate on what Roger was saying. He kept looking into the front seat at Frenchy Short and images returned of the young man in Hot Springs in 1946, his talent, his ambition, his anger, his hurry, his inability to fit in.

There'd always been something funny about it. They'd had to dump Frenchy because he was difficult to control and a politician couldn't stand having him around. And a week after, somehow the unit had been ambushed and so many other young men killed. All for nothing, as it turned out. It was as sorry a thing as Earl had ever been involved with.

And Frenchy? What of Frenchy? What had he known, who had he talked to, what was he capable of? To look at him, you'd never think he was capable of a thing. He looked, if anything, younger today than that first day in Hot Springs. Like Roger, he was blond and had a square, almost pretty face. He was dressed just like Roger too, in khakis, a white shirt, some kind of striped tie and a blue blazer with an insignia on the pocket. It was like the duty uniform with these guys. You'd look at him and you'd think, gee, this kid, he's probably a big man on some leafy campus somewhere. His eyes were guileless; he hardly shaved; he had freckles.

“Really, Earl,” Roger was saying, “it seems so sleepy and tropical down here, but there's a war going on. It's the same war that's going on everywhere. The Reds sneak in and call it ‘liberation' and get the brown people all heated up thinking they can have Cadillacs and freezers and televisions if only they overthrow the governments and take over, under communist supervision. That's the new war, Earl. Korea is an anomaly, because it's direct and involves actual combat. But we've studied the phenomenon and we know the wars of the future will be guerilla things, low-key dramas of assassination, subversion, sabotage and propaganda. Getting a congressman's dick in a wringer is exactly their kind of operation.”

Maybe Roger meant it as a joke, but still, Earl had not laughed.

“They have to make us look ridiculous and weak. So along comes an idiot like Harry Etheridge and with his appetites and lack of judgment, he's an incident waiting to happen. And it happens.”

They were driving an embassy car back from the Centro Havana jail after a stop at the emergency room, where Earl's wounds were tended, he was given shots and painkillers, and his knife cut was stitched. He was back in his suit even if it was a little bloodied; the Colt Super .38 had been restored to the Lawrence holster held by leather halter under his left shoulder.

It was early. The old city was coming awake. Gray dawn splashed across the white streets and a cool wind ruffled the trees. They seemed to have found the Malecon, that great Havana roadway that girded the waterfront, and a gray sheet of as yet unlit Caribbean spread off to one side, while a row of bricky-bracky pink and pale-blue colonnaded buildings dominated the other. Frenchy, who was driving, had rolled down the windows. All the smells of Havana—the sea, the fish, the fruit, the meat, the poultry, the tobacco, all of it rawly ripped from where it had been the day before—rode in on breezes, propelled by the smell of very hot, strong, sweet coffee.

“But, Earl,” continued this talky Roger, “Earl, you stopped them, you stopped them cold. Walter said you were the sort of man for this kind of work and he was right.”

“Who's Walter?” said Earl, then realized Roger was talking about the boy in the front seat. “Frenchy,” he said, leaning forward, “what the hell is going on here?”

“Earl, we needed a good man. The best. I knew you. Whoever's been in Arkansas knows Earl Swagger. So I made a suggestion. That's all.”

“It was a good suggestion,” said Roger. “Walter, or should I say
Frenchy,
made a good suggestion. You handled the knuckleball they threw us, so Congressman Harry isn't on the cover of
Life
magazine beating up a whore in a blow job dispute and making the United States look like two cents worth of garbage.”

“So is that why I'm here? I wondered.”

“Earl, this is nothing formal. Just think about things. You have several futures ahead of you. You can stay in Arkansas and be a state cop and probably, given your skill and integrity, end up in command. But again, some wiseguy politician or newspaper joe may cut you off at the knees if it earns him three extra votes or some kind of prize.”

Earl said nothing.

“Or…well, you just think about the
or.
The
or
could be something you never dreamed of. Someone has noticed your talent, your skill, and there's no reason you should waste it in Arkansas. Nobody ever made it in Arkansas. Look at Boss Harry and Fred C. Becker: they're the best Arkansas has managed. No need for you to be a big fish in a microscopic pond like Arkansas.”

“I like Arkansas.”

“Buy a summer house there.”

They turned up the Prado and navigated its leafy broadness, sliding by the mock-Paris cafes, the heavily ornamental central strip with its stone benches, palms and statues, passed the Sevilla-Biltmore where the gangsters lived, then turned left to the Plaza.

“Just think about it,” said Roger.

“What was your name again, son?” Earl said to Roger.

Roger let out a long sigh of exasperation. “All right, show the Ivy League hotshot how little you think of him because he never fought on Iwo Jima. Let me tell you, though, I seem harmless and silly because I'm supposed to seem harmless and silly. It's called cover. It's what we do. For the record, my name is Roger St. John Evans. Roger Evans. I told you I was in codes? That was cover, too. I'm a senior case officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, head of Havana station, reporting directly to the Caribbean Desk in Langley, Virginia, directly to Plans, directly to the Director of Central Intelligence. That makes me important. I am important, take it from me. Walter—Frenchy—is my no. 2.”

“Well, I'm sure you're very important, sonny. Now I want you to take a hike, because I have to have a talk with young Walter here and what he says and how he explains some things between us has a lot to do with whether I'm staying or whether I'm on the next plane home.”

“Sure,” said Roger. He leaned forward to Walter and said, “Don't blow it!”

 

Time ticked away as the two men sat in the car next to the pie-shaped, five-story building that was the Plaza. Across from them the Parque Central began to fill up; Havana was an exceptionally busy town and today would be no different. Cubans in straw hats and white suits came and went along the street and on to jobs in Old Havana, in the buildings along the Prado, here, there everywhere. Old ladies set up their tables and began the day's worth of rolling cigars for the touristas. It was a little early yet for pimps and touts, but they would be there, you could be sure.

Finally Frenchy said, “Well, Earl, I'm up front, but you're in the driver's seat. They want you. It's something, let me tell you.”

Between Earl and the young man lay a whole gulf of mistrust. Frenchy had been a member of Earl's raid team in Hot Springs some years earlier, in an ugly little war against mobsters, supposedly for the moral betterment of mankind. But Frenchy was wild then, and made mistakes, some innocent people were killed, and it was decreed by frightened higher authorities that he should be let go. Off he went, spewing fury and screaming betrayal.

A week later, the team was mysteriously ambushed in a rail yard, after being set up by someone with an unusual sense of its weaknesses and vanities. Seven good men died that night and only Earl and one other made it out. Within six months, the tables and wheels of Hot Springs were up and running, so it had all been for nothing. It still left a dark, rancid taste on Earl's tongue. He hated to think on it; it got him riled in ways unnecessary for a calm life.

“You don't tell me nothing. You understand? Was a time when I thought I might come looking for you so's we'd have a little talk, get some things straightened out.”

“Earl, there's nothing to be straightened out.”

Earl looked at him and Frenchy held the gaze square and hard. There was no evasion, no furtiveness of the eyes, none of the things you saw when you had a crook before you, as Earl had had before him now a thousand or so times. Earl watched: the boy didn't breathe hard and shallow, his eyes didn't flutter left to recall or right to make something up, his throat didn't dry or crank up a quart or two of liar's phlegm. He held steady, maybe even a little too steady. That was the thing about Frenchy, damn his skills, he could look anybody square in the eye and tell him anything and say it with such passion he made you believe it.

“Does this Roger kid know what a little snake he has working for him?”

“Earl, I never did you or any of them any harm. I heard about it when I got back from China. I looked for you, because I wanted to know what happened, too. When I heard that Bugsy Siegel got pasted, I figured Mr. Earl paid him a call.”

“Like as if I'd waste my time on city trash like that. No, he wasn't part of what happened in Hot Springs.”

“Neither was I. Ask me any question. I'll go over it with you day by day, I'll cite time, date, location. I'll account for it all. You try your hardest to trip me up, but you won't be able to do it, because there's nothing for me to trip up on.”

“What I know is you got canned, and both the old man and I fought as hard as we could against that. Some fights with some assholes you just don't win. Next, you disappear. A week later we are turned inside out by someone who knew us so well he played it straight to our weaknesses, to that old man's silly vanity, to his memories. Only two of us walked away.”

“You and Carlo Henderson.”

“That left seven good men and one great one to die in a rail-yard.”

“I'd bet he didn't go unavenged.”

“There was justice paid out, and I'd do it again in a second, even if it was evil killing work. But that ain't got nothing to do with you. We were talking about the great D. A. Henderson and seven good men.”

“I remember D.A. He was a good hand. Earl, I had not a thing to do with it. I left town, I drifted to Washington, I went to work in a small unimportant department of the government, I had a lucky break and met some people—through a girl, actually—and got a small, unimportant job in the Agency. A nothing job. In there, I worked hard and met some more people and got some training and got the China assignment. I saw some things, but you know we lost China, and some men were stained by it. Their careers are finished. I just barely survived and I'm still at it. Going nowhere except fetching coffee for this Harvard asshole Roger who thinks he's the next Director. Anyhow, that's the story, the whole story.”

Earl just studied him.

“Truth is, you could be spinning a lie or saying the word of God and I wouldn't know. Some—very damned few—criminals have that gift. But most don't. Not hardly nobody does. I never saw it in fifteen years in the Marine Corps. But it exists, I have learned that as a cop.”

“Earl, I'll take a polygraph.”

“You could beat that.”

“Earl, you just watch and wait and make up your own mind. You belong in the major leagues, not out on some lousy Arkansas state route, handing out tickets. You'll see.”

Earl shook his head.

“I need some sleep,” he finally said.

“Earl, tonight there's the big party. You'll see it's the world you belong in. I know you, Earl. I know where you belong.”