JC2 The Raiders (35 page)

"What do you think they'll do?"

"Give us trouble getting building permits. See if they can
arrange some strikes. Who knows? I don't think they'll try violence.
Do you carry a gun?"

Bat shook his head.

"Well, I have for many years, on and off. I suggest you think
about it."

THE SECOND WEEK AFTER JONAS SUFFERED HIS HEART
attack, Sonja flew to New York. Bat met her at Kennedy Airport and
took her to the apartment in the Waldorf Towers. She went the next
day to visit Jonas at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

Bat offered to drive her, but she insisted she would take a cab. She
wanted to do some shopping, too, and would meet him for lunch at the
21 Club at one-fifteen. Her first cab driver, a Puerto Rican, took a
sympathetic interest in her when she spoke Spanish to him and
suggested she remove a diamond ring and an emerald bracelet she was
wearing and carry them in her purse. She thanked him for his advice
and did what he said. He could not have guessed she was wearing a
jeweled platinum belt worth more than the combined value of the ring
and bracelet, plus his taxicab.

Jonas was grateful to her for coming. He was
sitting up now, propped up by pillows and the mechanical bed. He was
thinner already and looked a bit fragile. He had a better color, just
the same. Maybe that was because this was the first time since his
hospitalization after the crash of
The Centurion
that he had
gone twelve whole days without a drink.

He was in a mood to speak earnestly, driven undoubtedly by his brush
with mortality. "Do you have any idea how grateful I am to you
for rearing our son to be the man he is?" he asked her. "Here
I am, out of it. Bat is a godsend for me. Who else could I trust to
take responsibility for everything?"

"You have a loyal staff," she said.

"They are not Cords," said Jonas with a tone of finality in
his voice that suggested that was a complete answer.

"He
is
," she said. "I can
see that."

"But Sonja ... He doesn't like me. Why doesn't he like me?"

"Because the two of you are of a piece," she said sharply.
"Both of you ought to see that."

"Christ, I've offered him the
world!
I've given him ..." He stopped, shrugged.

Sonja nodded and did not comment. She was trying to assess the damage
this man had sustained. Her memories of him were — first, of
the twenty-one-year-old stud she had accompanied to Europe: handsome,
muscular, filled with optimism and enthusiasm; and, second, the
matured and self-confident entrepreneur she had met for the second
time four years ago. He was fifty-two years old now, young to have
suffered a heart attack. It was apparent that he knew it. He had
planned at least twenty more vigorous years, without limitations, and
now he had to reassess his plans.

"I would like to ask a favor of you," he said.

"Of course," said Sonja.

"Your Uncle Fulgencio knows my name. On Bat's recommendation, I
have invested money in a casino in Havana. I depend on a man your
uncle also knows to keep the operation honest."

"Meyer Lansky," she said.

"You know — Well ... It would be in everyone's best
interest — Uncle Fulgencio's, Bat's, and mine — if your
uncle were to look sympathetically on an application Meyer Lansky
will be making for a license to open a casino-hotel in Havana. He
will adhere to the customs, if you follow my meaning."

"He will pay my uncle such bribes as are customary," Sonja
said dryly.

"Whatever is customary," said Jonas.

"Will you have money in this?"

"Bat will make that judgment," said Jonas.

"You're letting Bat make judgments? That's something new, isn't
it?"

Jonas shrugged weakly. "What else can I do? Anyway, he's smart.
He's a Cord ... and a Batista, of course."

"Do you want a word of advice?" she asked.

"Why not?"

"Invest a little more in your relationship with your son. It
will pay a better return than any other investment you ever made."

"I
do
. I let him have his head on that
television show. I put money where I shouldn't have put it. We'll be
damned lucky if we break even on it."

"I'm not talking about money, Jonas.
Investing money is your whole life. It's what you
do
, and you
do it well. What you don't do is invest
yourself
. You don't
commit yourself. Do you love our son?"

"Of course I do."

"Then why don't you tell him?"

"He's never said anything of the kind — " He stopped
abruptly, and for a moment Sonja thought he'd felt a hard twinge in
his chest. " — to me ..." His voice trailed off, and
Sonja was alarmed.

"Jonas?"

"It isn't easy. My father died without ever having said he loved
me. He never heard it from me either. He died, and we never ... told
... each other. That was a huge mistake, Sonja, a horrible mistake.
My god, am I making it again?"

"You have pride, Jonas. So has Bat. I could wish you were not so
very much alike."

Sonja surprised Bat at "21" by ordering steak tartare.
"They know how to do it here," she said.

"You've been here before, then."

"Did you suppose I had never been to New York before?" she
asked with an amused smile.

Of course she had been in New York before. He should have remembered
that. She had been in Europe, too, and not just when his father took
her there. She had been in Cuba and most of the countries of Latin
America. She had decorated two rooms in the hacienda outside Cordoba
with pre-Columbian artifacts from Peru. Hanging in her own bedroom,
instead of the crucifix that hung in the bedrooms of most dutiful
wives, was a print by Picasso and a Calder mobile. She was no longer
the innocent girl his father remembered. In fact, she was not the
placid, compliant woman he thought he remembered as his mother. He
should have thought before of being proud of her.

At age fifty, she was a memorably striking woman, who drew glances
from men at nearby tables. His father had a taste for women who were
beautiful when they were young and then aged well. Though he found it
difficult to like Monica much, he could see why his father had
married her twice. And the latest of them, Angie, was a fit successor
to the two others he knew about.

His mother had ordered an appetizer of caviar, with Stolichnaya vodka
so cold that it was not absolutely liquid but had begun to change
consistency to something thicker. He had never tried it but had
duplicated her order and found it surprisingly good.

"Your father tells me you are having an affair with Glenda
Grayson."

"That's true."

"She's older than you are."

"She's a wonderful woman. The world has not always been kind to
her."

Sonja shook her head. "That is a very bad reason to fall in love
with a woman."

"She's very outgoing, very loving."

"Worse reasons," said Sonja. But then she smiled. "I
thought you meant to marry the little girl from Florida."

"She wants a career."

"And Glenda Grayson does not? If you should decide to marry her,
which God forbid, would she give up her career and become a wife?"

"Things haven't come to that state yet," said Bat.

Sonja glanced around the room, as if to make sure their fellow diners
could not overhear their conversation. "I need to talk with you
about something. How much money have you and your father committed to
Cuba?"

Bat, too, glanced around before he answered. He leaned a little
toward his mother and said, "A little over a million dollars. In
the Floresta casino."

"What about the hotel being built by Meyer Lansky? Don't you
have money in that?"

"So far, we don't have any money in that. Lansky has secured
financing through others. He'd like for us to buy out one of his
partners. It would give him more respectability."

"Your father asked me to contact our Uncle Fulgencio and ask him
to be certain Lansky gets all the necessary licenses and
permissions."

"That might be helpful," said Bat. "Lansky has a good
relationship with Uncle Fulgencio, but I'm not sure it's good
enough."

Sonja took a sip of the icy vodka. "I will fly to Havana on my
way back to Mexico," she said. "I am going to tell you
something, however. I'll put in a good word for your friend Lansky. I
strongly advise you, even so, not to invest any more money in Cuba."

"Why?"

"You'll lose it."

Bat touched his mouth with one finger. "You take seriously the —
"

She nodded. "The whole thing is a house of
cards. Our uncle may be dead in a year. If he's lucky, he'll be in
exile. He is not bright. He steals too much. Cuba looks brilliantly
prosperous. It isn't. A few miles from those beautiful new
casino-hotels, people live in squalor. The rebels in the mountains
are growing stronger. More of them all the time. And they're getting
weapons from the Soviet Union. Our uncle's regime — " She
shrugged. "He was driven from power before. It can happen again.
It
will
happen again."

"Meyer Lansky has committed every dime he has to his hotel."

"He will lose it."

"The new regime, whatever it is, will need the casino-hotels
just as much as the present regime does," said Bat. "And
they can't run them themselves."

"The British thought the Egyptians couldn't run the Suez Canal,"
she said. "Anyway, they will close the casinos. Those people in
the mountains are Communists. They don't want the tourist trade."

"You paint a gloomy picture," said Bat.

"It's a gloomy situation," said his mother.

Bat watched the waiter stir raw eggs and herbs into the raw ground
beef. He wished he had ordered steak tartare.

"Tell me about your father," she said.

Bat sighed. "It's difficult to know what to say. One day he's a
thoughtless egomaniacal tyrant, scornful of anything I suggest; the
next day he promotes me and increases my compensation. You know—
He's clever as hell. Little by little, he's drawn me within his
orbit. It's a game. When he gets me to where I'm seriously thinking
of chucking the whole thing, he makes a concession. He doesn't make
them short of that. The longer I stay, the more difficult it is to
tell him to go to hell and walk out."

"Do you have any personal feeling for him at all?" she
asked.

"Uh ... Well, he can be— He's a
man
.
I don't know if you can understand what I mean by that."

"Do you think he has any personal feeling for you?"

Bat shrugged, then nodded. "Yes. I know he does. But do you know
why? He's afraid. And what's he afraid of? Not of dying, not any more
than any other man is afraid of dying. No, what Jonas is afraid of is
that he'll die and everything he's spent his life building will fall
into the hands of strangers. He thinks of himself as a king, and he
wants the kingdom to survive him in the hands of— In the hands
of a son."

"And that's all it amounts to, you think?"

"I don't know," he admitted quietly.

"You may be right," she said. "I'd
think about it if I were you. There is something about you that is
very much like him. You are a very generous man, except of yourself.
You don't
give
of yourself. You're afraid to commit yourself.
That's
your Cord inheritance. That's an inheritance you've
already got. You don't have to wait for him to die to inherit that."

Invitations to attend the grand opening of Meyer Lansky's Riviera
Hotel were sent to Jonas and Bat. Jonas was not sufficiently
recovered to make the flight from New York to Havana; but Bat flew
from Los Angeles, taking Glenda with him, explaining to curious
reporters — and through them to Toni — that his star
might do a show at the Riviera between television seasons.

The Riviera was the paradigm of new casino-hotels. It was a
turquoise-colored high-rise building in the shape of a curved Y, and
every room had a view of the sea. Inside, it was more gaudy than
tasteful; the effect was in fact overwhelming; guests were submerged
in bright modernistic decor. The casino was in a golden dome outside
the hotel.

Meyer Lansky personally welcomed Bat and Glenda. He escorted them to
their suite, where he handed them tickets to the grand opening show
in the Copa Room and told them they would be seated at his table.

They dressed for dinner: Bat in black tie, Glenda in a black gown
glittering with gold sequins. They left their room early enough so
they could look around a little before they went to the Copa Room.
Bat was especially interested in seeing what the casino looked like.
He liked what he saw. Jackets and ties were required of men. About
half the players wore black tie. The big room was quiet except for
the hushed calls of the croupiers and dealers. It was obvious that
big money was at stake on the tables.

When they left the casino, Bat and Glenda stepped outside for a
breath of the gentle tropical air, warm and heavy with moisture and
the odors of tropical flowers. The strident beat of cacophonous Latin
music drifted to the Riviera from a club not far away, Then suddenly
a jarring sound came to their ears: the sharp, harsh crack of
gunfire, followed by the signature rip of an automatic weapon. The
firing lasted about ten seconds, then the night was quiet again
except for the persistent music.

"What do you suppose that was?" Glenda asked.

"The
policia
are gun-happy," said
Bat. "They're nervous."

They went to the Copa Room. Meyer Lansky was at his table. He
introduced Glenda and Bat to the man who would be their dinner
companion, Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo. Bat knew that
Jimmy Blue Eyes was a partner in the Riviera. He was not the man
Meyer Lansky hoped the Cords would buy out.

It was Lansky's theory that a good casino had to have a good kitchen.
His official position in the hotel was director of food-service
operations; and though that was only a front, he did take a personal
interest in the kitchen, the preparation of food, and the way it was
served.