JC2 The Raiders (36 page)

President Fulgencio Batista arrived. He paused on
his way to his table to salute Meyer Lansky, and when he saw Bat he
came across the room with his hand outstretched.
"¡Sobrino!"
he said — nephew.
"¡Jonas Enrique Raul!
¡Bienvenida!"

''¿Puedo presentar a la Señorita
Glenda Grayson?"
said Bat.

"Es una muchacha bonita,"
said
Batista — She is a beautiful girl. Then with a sly smile he
asked,
"¿Es ella su hija?"
— Is she
your daughter?

Glenda understood nothing of the exchange and looked puzzled.

"I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Grayson," said Batista
in English. "I know your name well. We receive American
television in Havana. You would do well, Meyer, to book Miss Grayson
to star in a show here in the Riviera."

"Yes. I mean to discuss just that with her this evening,"
said Lansky.

The star of the opening show was Ginger Rogers. Lansky told them that
Abbott and Costello would play the Copa Room soon. Other major stars
were being booked. He would indeed like to arrange an appearance by
Glenda Grayson.

When the show was over, Glenda said she would be happy to put her
agent in contact with Meyer Lansky. She said she had never seen a
nightclub show so elaborately and expensively staged.

Lansky was ebullient when he accompanied Bat and Glenda to their
suite after the show. They were trailed by waiters wheeling carts
laden with champagne on ice, caviar, lobster salad, coffee, and
Danish. Billy Blue Eyes Alo came, too, attracted by Glenda even
though he knew he did not dare touch her.

"You see?" he said to Bat. "It is how a casino should
be run."

Bat nodded. "And you'd like for us to put some money in it,
hmm?"

Lansky grinned. "Only if you see in it the very great likelihood
of very great profit. I'm asking you to invest, not to shoot money
into a speculation."

"Meyer ..." said Bat. "Let's step out on the balcony.
I'd like to talk with you alone."

From the balcony, twenty floors above the street, they had a view of
the Straits of Florida — "You can almost see across,"
said Lansky — and of a part of Havana. The city was alive.
President Batista had put out an invitation for everyone in the world
to come to Havana; there was no limit to what they could enjoy there
— the most honest casinos, the most luxurious tropical hotels,
the most spectacular shows, the finest food, the youngest but most
wanton whores, music, dancing, everything to amuse and arouse. (In
one show room a man called The Giant laid out twelve silver dollars
edge-to-edge on a table, then laid his penis on them to demonstrate
that he could cover all twelve.) From the balcony, the vitality of
the city's nightlife was evident. At midnight, traffic was heavy, as
music floated up on the warm, scented air, as did the sound of
laughter, somehow carried over a long distance.

"Meyer— "

And then they heard a random burst of gunfire, just as Bat and Glenda
had heard it earlier.

"Do you know what that is, Meyer?"

"The police," said Lansky. "They're too quick to use
their guns, but they fire in the air almost always."

Bat shook his head. "No," he said somberly. "That is
the sound of war. Civil war. The rebels from the mountains. You are
going to hear a great deal more of it."

Lansky turned his eyes away from Bat and out across the city.
"Batista will take care of that. When he turns the army loose—
"

"The army is already loose, and they can't stop it."

Lansky drew a deep breath. "You are saying you won't invest
here."

"More than that," said Bat. "I am advising you to save
what you can and get out."

"You have to be crazy. Everything I have in
this world is tied up in the Riviera. Look at it! The world's finest
casino-hotel ...
The world's finest!
"

"Meyer, I know I can trust you," said Bat. "You can
guess the source of my information. My suggestion to you is to bail
out as much as you can."

Lansky shook his head. "No. No," he said. "I'm a
professional gambler. I should have known better than to bet
everything on one throw, but I did. I have to believe you're wrong."

"Fine," said Bat. "I hope I am, too."

"You've spoiled my evening," said Lansky dolefully.

As soon as Meyer Lansky and Jimmy Blue Eyes Alo left the suite. Bat
turned off the lights and pulled back the drapes. Moonlight off the
ocean, plus the warm orangish glow of the city, gave the room plenty
of light for anything but reading.

As he stood for a brief moment looking at the ocean, he felt Glenda
pressing against him from behind. He reached back, touched her, and
was not surprised to feel that she was already naked. As he turned,
she grinned impishly and handed him two lengths of coarse hempen
rope.

"Where'd that come from?" he asked, laughing.

"I packed it, of course," she said.

"All right. Turn around."

She turned and offered her hands behind her back.

He tied her wrists together with tight hard knots. He tied the second
length of rope around her chest, just under her breasts, to pinion
her arms at her sides. She went into the bedroom and sat down on the
bed. "Hurry," she murmured as he began to undress.

The rope had been her idea. At first, he had been reluctant to bind
her, especially to pull the ropes and knots so tight she could not
possibly escape, but she insisted that he must bind her not just
symbolically but rigorously. He had to admit the effect was
powerfully erotic, stimulating to both of them.

With her hands bound behind her, she could not lie on her back. So
they coupled the way she enjoyed better than any other: she atop him
and astride, her hips writhing. She loved doing it that way, whether
she was bound or not. It put him in her deeper than any other way,
and it made possible a greater variety of movements. Twice she lost
her balance and started to topple off him. With her hands and arms
bound she couldn't stop herself. Expecting this, because it had
happened many times before, he reached up quickly to brace her. Each
time she laughed.

She closed her eyes and wore a contented smile as she worked. She
gasped and moaned, and he knew she had reached a climax. Then she
reached a second one and maybe a third; he wasn't sure.

"Ready to come, lover?" she asked finally.

"Any time," he said.

He put his hands on her hips to steady her, and she began more
vigorous thrusts, forcing him deeper and deeper into her and
squeezing him almost painfully. His orgasm was powerful, enervating.

She lifted herself, then rose and walked out to the living room. Bat
remained on the bed, satiated and exhausted. From where he lay he
watched Glenda use an elbow to shove the sliding glass door open. She
stepped out onto the balcony and stood staring moodily at the ocean —
confident apparently that no one could see her, though he was not so
sure. Maybe the idea that she could be seen occurred to her, because
she turned abruptly and hurried back into the room.

"Bat — "

"What, baby?" he asked, still not rising.

She came to stand in the bedroom door. "What's going to become
of us?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"For god's sake, if I have to tell you — "

"I don't know, Glenda," he interrupted. He rolled off the
bed and stepped toward her, meaning to untie her.

She turned and walked back to the open sliding door. "There's
nothing for us, is there? In the long run." She stared out over
the moonlit sea. "I mean, anything permanent. We fuck. We fuck
good. But that's all there is. Right? We say we love each other, but
— "

"Glenda — "

"You wouldn't want me to bear a child for you, would you?"

"Are you telling me you're pregnant?" he asked.

"No. I've never been pregnant. I'm not going to get pregnant. I
can't afford to be pregnant. I don't want to carry a bastard."

"My mother did."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Bat. Bad choice of words. I am truly sorry. But
— "

He began to untie her.

"The whole deal," she said quietly, "is that we don't
have any future. The biggest reason is, your father— "

"My father has nothing to do with — "

"No? Your father doesn't like me. Oh, I'm fine as a cash cow,
but he wouldn't want his son to marry one."

"My father doesn't control my personal life!"

"The hell he doesn't."

The smell of cigar smoke wakened them. Bat woke first, but before he
said a word, Glenda woke, too. Cigar smoke. Coming in through the
air-conditioning vents? No. It was fresh and pungent. Someone was in
the suite.

Actually, someone was in the bedroom. Bat first spotted the point of
fire on the tip of the cigar. Then he saw the man, first as a shadow
and then, as his eyes focused, distinctly.

Bat almost never suffered nightmares, and when he did there were just
two. In the first he was running across the Ludendorff Bridge and was
hit in the lower chest. In the second he awoke to find an intruder
staring at him. This was that one, but it was no dream; it was real.

The man was sitting on a chair facing their bed. He was dressed in an
open-collared pleated white shirt and nondescript trousers. An
automatic pistol in its holster hung from a wide web belt. The man
himself was anything but prepossessing. He wore a scraggly dark
beard, as if he were not old enough to grow a solid beard but had let
whiskers grow out where they would. He puffed with an air of
thoughtfulness on his oversized cigar.

"You have not to worry,
señor,
señorita
, "he said. "I come to do you no harm."
His English was Spanish-accented.

"Then why are you here?" Bat asked as he drew himself up in
bed. He spoke Spanish. "And who are you?"

"I am nobody,
señor
. That is
the point. And that is why I am here."

"You'll have to explain that."

"You are Señor Jonas Enrique Raul Cord
y Batista," the man said. "The
señorita
is
Glenda Grayson, the famous American television star. 'Cord y
Batista.' You are the grand-nephew of our dictator. You have come to
Havana to gather facts and to advise your father whether or not your
family should invest more money in Cuba and in the Batista regime."

"You know a great deal," said Bat.

The man nodded. "It is essential to know everything," he
said. "That is how wars are won."

"But — "

The man raised his hand. "The purpose of my visit is to
demonstrate to you how very shaky the Batista regime is. You know we
kidnapped a famous American racing driver?"

"Yes."

"And we released him unharmed. Our only purpose was to
demonstrate to the world that this corrupt regime cannot protect
Americans who come to Cuba."

"So, are we kidnapped?"

"No, no. We simply wanted you to see that the vaunted Batista
secret police cannot even surround you with protection in a luxury
suite in the Riviera Hotel. We have no interest in harming you,
certainly not to murder you. But I could have done it, you see."

"It is your ... recommendation, then, that we not invest in this
hotel," said Bat.

"That is my suggestion, Señor Cord. If you do, you will
not be in danger. But you will lose your money."

"Suppose you take control of the country," said Bat. "This
hotel will still be an important asset. Surely — "

"Batista has attempted to turn Cuba into the whorehouse of the
Western Hemisphere," said the man, raising his voice. "Every
kind of criminal is welcomed to Havana. The dignity of the nation and
of its people has been sacrificed. We will restore our national
honor, even at the sacrifice of the money these places bring."

"You are Marxists," said Bat.

"Our struggle is the people's struggle," the man said.

"Well ... You have delivered your message. Now?"

The man rose from the chair. He shrugged. "You are right. I
leave now. I — Oh. Incidentally, feel free to call hotel
security as soon as I am out the door. They will not catch me, and
that will be additional evidence of what I have been telling you."

Bat shook his head. "You are an interesting man, Senor ... ?"

"Guevara," the man said. "Ernesto Guevara. I am more
often known as Che Guevara."

WHEN JONAS WAS RELEASED FROM THE HOSPITAL HE went to the apartment in
the Waldorf Towers. After two weeks there he called for an
Inter-Continental plane and flew to the ranch in Nevada. He stayed
there a week, then moved again into the fifth-floor suite at The
Seven Voyages. Angie was with him all the time.

When Bat arrived, Jonas sat in the living room of the suite,
surrounded by heaps of files. Clint McClintock and Bill Shaw were
with him. Shaw, the former test pilot for the Air Force, had flown
him from New York and had a Beech Baron waiting at the airport to
take Jonas anywhere he wanted to go.

"You're looking good," Bat said to his father. "Like
you're making a fast recovery."

Jonas looked comfortable in a dark-blue polo shirt and khaki slacks.
"I'm drinkin' a little, again. Fuckin' a little, again," he
said. "They want to keep me on a short leash." He shook his
head. "Rather chuck it."

"I think you have other alternatives," said Bat.

"Well, anyway, sit down. What did you tell Lansky?"

"I told him no. My mother put the word in with the President, to
help him get his licenses. I'm not at all sure he needed help, but he
got it. But I said no to investing any more money in Cuba. My mother
thinks her uncle is riding for a fall, and from what I observed in
Havana I have to agree with her."

"Lansky's been trying to reach me on the phone, so I figured
you'd said no to him."

"He wants you to overrule me."

Jonas nodded. "You've bet your ass on this one, my boy. You may
have said no to a damned profitable venture. But I'm not going to
overrule you."