“Thanks for the warning.”
“You sure I can’t get you anything?”
“I’m just fine.”
There was no contact at all. Earl Swagger wasn’t particularly interested in Roger St. John Evans, and Roger felt his coldness totally, despite the net of charm the young man had flung out. It secretly enflamed him. He was, after all, the celebrity of the station: handsome, debonair, a superb athlete, a war hero, the one everybody picked as the best boy, the fellow who’d go far.
But Earl just stood, in his centurion’s stillness, his face wary but untroubled, his eyes steadily on the move, flicking this way and that, but nowhere near anxiety. He just watched.
He was completely ill-dressed for the dinner-jacketed formality of the evening, and if he’d noticed it—unlikely—it clearly didn’t bother him a bit. His khaki suit was rack-bought, new, rather baggy and shiny at once, and too tight through the shoulders. Roger had to fight the temptation to give the man his tailor’s name.
But then Roger noticed something, a lump under the coat, left side, under the arm where it oughtn’t to be.
“You’re armed?”
“Yes, sir. Today and every day.”
Roger sort of slid around and, looking across the chest, he could see the grip of a pistol protruding just half an inch from the shoulder holster that contained it. He brightened, because he recognized it.
“Oh,” he said, “your old .45? I carried one, too.”
“Close enough,” Earl said. “Yeah, it’s a Government Model, but not a .45. It’s what’s called a Super .38.”
Roger knew just a little about guns.
“Super? It must kick?”
“Much less than a .45. The point is, it holds two more rounds. Nine. It shoots a little small bullet, about half the weight of a .45, but much faster. It’ll go through most anything. I figured down here if I’m shooting—and I hope to hell I’m not—I’m shooting through or at a car. Sometimes a .45 won’t even get through a car door.”
Roger suddenly lit up. He had it!
“Say,” he said, “I know! You’re a shooter, a hunter. Would you like to shoot pigeons while you’re down here? You know what, I’d like to put you together with Hemingway. He’s a great shotgunner. Damn, that would really be something. You’re a hero, he’s a hero, he’d love you. I’ll bet you’re a great shotgunner.”
“I’ve shot ducks. In Arkansas, we flood the rice fields in the fall, and the mallards come in. Many a fine morning I’ve spent there with a good friend. I hope to take my boy duck hunting soon.”
“Hemingway,” said Roger, from his reverie. “Let me work on that! A little shooting party. You, Hem, possibly the ambassador, down at Finca Vigia. We’ll hunt, then roast the ducks, drink wine, or rum punch or vodka. I’ve known him since the war. You’ll love Hemingway. He’s a man’s man. Wait till you see his place, his trophies. He has a buff you simply would not believe. Oh, say, won’t this be something?”
“Uh,” said Earl, “who’s this…Hemingway?”
Before Roger could register incredulity at the fact the state policeman had never heard of America’s most famous writer, a new presence swirled in on them. It was Lane Brodgins, a little drunk, clearly on a mission from Harry.
“Evans, Sergeant Earl, howdy. Great party, Evans. You boys know how to throw a hoedown and damn if Harry doesn’t appreciate it.”
“Ah, yes,” said Roger. “Well, as I was telling Sergeant Swagger, this is just the warm-up. Next Monday, the stars come out.”
“Say, that’s a great idea! Harry will like that one, he will. Earl, you should relax. You’re off duty now.”
“I’m fine.”
“I have a feeling Sergeant Swagger will only relax in his grave, if there,” said Roger.
Swagger, for the first time, let a crease of a smile play across his face. Roger had been flattering him hard, not easy work but he was good at it, and finally the effort was beginning to tell.
“Tell you what,” he said, “maybe I’ll have a Coca-Cola.”
“That’s the spirit, old man!” said Roger. He snapped his fingers, a waiter appeared. “El Coca-Cola, por favor,” he said, sending the man off on his mission.
“I was just telling Sergeant Swagger I thought I could put an afternoon of pigeon shooting together. He’s a great sporting shot, I hear. It happens I know Hemingway a bit and we could all go down to Finca Vigia and shoot pigeons. Hem’s a shotgun man.”
“Who’s Hemingway?” asked Lane Brodgins. Then he turned to Earl.
“Sergeant Earl, you’d better finish that Coke and then head back to quarters for your beauty sleep. The congressman has decided he has to see the Cuban criminality firsthand, for himself. So that means tomorrow we’ve arranged for a tour of certain areas. Who knows what we’ll run into.”
“Good God, where are you going?” asked Roger.
“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.”
Chapter 6
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.”
Chapter 7
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.”
Chapter 8
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 beau
ty 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.