Earl doesn’t have time to calculate it, he merely drops to his knees and begins to speed-crawl up the side aisle, and after four or five rows squirms rightward, climbing over the feet of men, some of them masturbating. They are too intent on what the screen is showing to pay him attention, though one kicks at him, and he responds by clipping that man hard in the knee with his Colt barrel, causing a sharp cry of pain to echo through the space, competing with the crisp electrical buzz of the soundless film cranking away up top, and the low moans of otherwise occupied gentlemen.
Earl gets so far and stops, crouching under seat level, able to use the little space between the rapt men’s shoulders as a spy hole, and sees in that next second Frankie Carbine plunging into the auditorium from the same entrance. Yet he does something Earl didn’t do. He stops and looks.
Jesus Christ. She is sucking his…Jesus Christ, he is licking her…holy fucking shit, he is putting his…in her…
Earl sees him, face white, eyes open, guns momentarily lowered, transfigured by the imagery. In a second he recovers and is back on the hunt.
Earl rises, his shadow cutting across the light beam—“Down in front!” comes a cry—cocks and fires once at the illuminated man.
Stricken visibly, Frankie looks over, his eyes even wider, even whiter. A quiver or tremble palsies his limbs. Again the .45 has gone through soft tissue, ripping out chunks of flesh and organ, but no structure has been shattered, so he doesn’t collapse to the floor. He is exsanguinating rapidly, but don’t tell him that. He isn’t interested. He tries to bring his two guns to bear on Earl but can’t see him because in that second the flash and sound of Earl’s shot has punctured the secret dreams and hopes of the fuck-movie audience, and they rise almost as if in a parade, on command, as the panic of violent death overwhelms their urge to watch naked women.
At that moment precisely, however, catastrophe turns to tragedy for the men of Teatro Shanghai, for the avenging angel that is Señor Latavistada has arrived at the top of the aisle by means of the front door, having raced through the lobby where a manager will do nothing to stop a crazed secret policeman with a machine gun. What the captain sees is a mass of men coming toward him in panic, lit by the silvery light from the screen.
The captain is not one to hesitate. His philosophy is to attack, attack, attack, and so he simply opens fire on the mob, presuming that one among them would be Earl and what difference would it make if he killed twenty by accident, so long as he also killed the one he intended?
And it is satisfying in its way: the light machine gun rocks in his hands like the sword of god, reaching out to magically punish the world’s sinners. He fires a whole magazine, and before him, the gun spits smoke, which rises and is caught into the projector’s beam, and its bullets mowing into the surging mob. The bullets are so powerful, the men so packed, that each one penetrates at least three. Some they kill, some they maim, some they cripple, but the crowd is like a giant animal tormented by a man with a whip, and reacting organically, it recoils.
Frankie, slipping badly over on the far side of the theater, the gears of his brain sometimes engaged and sometimes not, sees what Latavistada is doing and, as the men turn to surge toward the exit which he guards from his knees, raises both guns and begins to fire blindly, one, then the other, and sees them fall or flee, and drives them back.
Then Earl, who has squirmed his way back down his row, leans out, waits for the scurrying to clear, and calmly shoots him. The shot was meant for chest and heart, but in the dark, crouching, firing one-handed, how can one be sure? The bullet hits Frankie in the throat, blowing out larynx and spinal cord, and his guns fall to the ground.
By this time Latavistada has reloaded, has heard Earl’s shot, has placed it somewhere on the other side of the theater and down toward the front, so he begins to climb over the bodies of those he’s shot, oblivious to screams and pleading and protests and shouts of bitter anger, trying to get a glimpse of Earl, who he realizes is hunching beneath seat level.
He locates the sector where Earl would seem to be. He fires a magazine, and the bullets pulverize the theater seats with such force that detonations of shattered wood and upholstery stuffing rise in the piercing silver beam. Surely that would do it. No man could live through such a thing.
But he kneels, quickly reaches for a magazine, and realizes he’s out. To pistols then! He dumps the big gun, reaches to his hip and pulls the Star. He clicks back the hammer. Now he’s much more mobile. He crouches, looking just over the seat level, looking for his target.
It’s quiet, except for the occasional whimpers of men on the edge of death. The air seethes with smoke, illuminated by the silver beam. On the screen, Jose is still fucking Carmen and Carmen still seems to be enjoying it.
Where Earl should be, of course, he is not.
A brush of paranoia pierces the bull-like mental strength of Latavistada. Where is the fucker? Where has he gone? Is he hit? Did I hit him?
He creeps down the aisle, peering down each row for his enemy. He only sees bodies, mangled chairs in the dim light of the screen, all of it flickering as Jose pounds away on Carmen. He has to close. He knows this.
He slides down an aisle and it annoys him to crawl so he climbs to his feet, begins a slow creep until he reaches the halfway point, then hears the scuffle of a determined man. I have you! he thinks with a spurt of pleasure so intense it is almost sexual. He leaps up to shoot and drills a runner. The only problem: that running man is not his enemy. Then a strange thing happens. Suddenly he is pinned in light. He is blinded in radiance. It is as though God were addressing him. Ramon, God seems to be saying, time to consider your sins and plan confession.
However it’s not God. Possibly it’s a trick arranged by that sly bitch Odudua. It seems she has planned things so that the porno reel has run out and no one has stayed in the projection booth to change it, and so the pure beam of light, unfiltered by blasphemous imagery, hits him in his beautiful eyes, and he turns, blinded, and can only barely recognize the form rising from the seats just beyond his, like some creature crawling from a fresh sea. Would this be God?
No, it’s Odudua. Next to her, the white guy with the gun, that one is Earl, who shoots him twice in the chest. He slides down, instantly numb. He feels no pain, only immense laziness. As a predator, he feels no fear. Men such as him do not, in any practical sense, experience fear. He feels…wonder. How did it come to this?
Earl leans over, presses the gun muzzle against Latavistada’s left eye, feels it sink a little under the pressure, and shoots through it into the brain.
Then Earl rises. Somewhere sirens are beginning to wail. Someone begs him to get a doctor. Someone calls for Maria and another for Roselita and one for Mabel-Louise. That one seems to be from Kansas City.
But Earl turns, slips out, for he has no time for the dying. Not any more. He has a boat to catch.
Chapter 60
At dawn a mist came in. The Day’s End cruised back and forth just off the Malecon. It was clear that whatever Earl had wrought, it was significant.
The sirens had been blaring for an hour. Ambulances hustled in both directions up and down the Malecon, their flashing lights penetrating the mist that lay heavily on the land and sea.
“By the number of them,” Orlov said in Russian, “you’d have to say quite a lot of damage was done. This American, he seems to have a special gift for mayhem.”
“It may have cost him his life, however. I see him fighting till his last pint of blood is gone and then, without a pulse, shooting and killing his last enemy before he dies.”
“Possibly you romanticize him, sir. You make him sound like one of their ridiculous cowboys or some legendary cossack. He’s a killer, that’s all.”
“Orlov, you are very young. I allow myself one illusion per decade. It keeps the world amusing. The true enemy isn’t western capitalism, it’s boredom. Anyhow, go listen on the radio and tell me.”
The young officer disappeared for a few minutes, lea
ving Speshnev alone, floating in a netherworld. The mist rolled everywhere, dense and clinging; he felt like a subject in some terrible avant-garde painting, symbolizing existential nothingness, universal ennui, the desolation of the soul.
But then the young man returned.
“Some kind of massacre. Many shot. A high-ranking police officer assassinated. The policia are beside themselves. It’s quite amusing.”
“But no word on the American?”
“They said some Americans had died and some others been wounded. It’s hard to tell. It doesn’t sound as if he got away.”
“No.”
“We had better go, Speshnev. At any moment the Coastal Police could come out of the mist and demand that we heave to. We have no business here and I don’t want to be nabbed in Cuban territorial waters with this much secret gear aboard. The American intelligence people would have a field day. My career, you know, is not as glorious as yours, but it would die such a death.”
“Just a minute or so longer.”
“Speshnev, you know he’s dead. He fought I don’t know how many. Clearly he did much killing. But he’s gone, he—”
Then they saw him.
He emerged from the mist with his coat tightly wrapped about him. His face was grim and sunken, his eyes bleak and dark. He needed a shave. There was no lightness at all to his step.
“Well, he is a cowboy, after all,” said Orlov. “I give you that.”
Speshnev expected him to falter, to fall and, as in a movie scene, let his coat spread open to reveal the fatal wound, the gush of blood from a shot gut.
But it never happened. Orlov brought the boat in close, and there was not even a need to tie up. The American just sloshed out into the shallow waters until he reached the gunwale, and two negroes pulled him up. Orlov gave the command and they sailed off, into the mist.
An hour passed and then another, and all the while the American brooded alone in the bow. At one point, Speshnev directed one of the negroes to bring him a cup of coffee, which he drank while smoking a Camel. Finally the mist broke and revealed them to be alone on an empty blue sea, under a bright sun in an empty blue sky.
The American seemed to relax a bit; he took off his wet coat, rolled up his sleeves, then peeled off the shoulder holster with the old Colt in it. He seemed to contemplate it a bit and then, almost with a sadness in his limbs, he tossed it over the side. In two handfuls, he dispensed with the remaining shells from his pockets
Speshnev approached.
The American looked over to him.
“Hated to do that. A gun gets you through a fight, you feel something for it. Stupid, ain’t it? Just a gun. Not like it’s a damn dog or anything.”
“I’m certain it went to gun Valhalla, Swagger, where it will drink grog in a great hall filled with wenches.”
“Ain’t that a pretty picture.”
“We heard on the radio. They’re calling it a guerilla attack. El Presidente will use it as an excuse to crack down on the radical left. Eleven men are dead and twenty-two more seriously wounded. A heroic police officer lost his life.”
“I blew his fucking brains out. Felt damn good too, you know?”
“Yes, I know. It always does. So you succeeded?”
“I got both of ’em. Killed ’em deader than shit. Ain’t I a peach? Too bad about them other guys.”
“Don’t be upset at the excess, my friend. Progress is made by chaos and tragedy, not by polite chatter. Justice came last night to Cuba, if only for a little while. Possibly it will come again.”
“Maybe so. Now I just want to sleep for a year. How soon can this tub get me home?”
“Swagger, don’t go back. They have you marked.”
“It ain’t like that’s a choice. I’ve got a job to do. I am the law on Route 71 between Blue Eye and Fort Smith in west Arkansas.”
“You know how it has to end. Not this year, maybe the next. You know what they have to do.”
“No, I don’t know nothing about them. I only know what I’ve got to do. That’s the only goddamned thing I have a say in.”
Both men turned. The horizon was flat, the wind strong, the sea empty. In a few hours, America would appear on the horizon.
Chapter 61
The old men were pleased. Really, there was no bad news, except of course for the tragedy of Frankie Carbine, but Frankie, that boy had always been a hothead, and it was in the cards that sooner or later, someone would blow that hot head off. That was his talent; that was his destiny.
“He lived a soldier, he died a soldier,” said one of the old men in the smokey social club on a completely undistinguished street in Brooklyn. Then he took a sip of his sweet red wine, then a taste of his sweet black coffee, then a puff of his long brown cigar.
“He went out hard,” said another. “That’s to his credit. He done his job, he took his pay, may he rest in well-earned peace.”
But nobody was truly upset over Frankie. What were his prospects, really? It is the duty of some to serve and die so that others may live and prosper. That is the way it has always been; that is the way it will always be. All the men in this room had done their jobs in hard places, all had survived by guile and cruelty and courage and relentless ambition. It was not in them, really, to mourn a fellow who hadn’t quite made it up the ladder. And, too, there were other champions to celebrate.
“The Jew, see? He is so smart. I hate to say it, but in some ways this Jew is more valuable than a dozen soldiers. A hundred, even. This Jew, so smart, he presses everything for advantage and he always wins that advantage. He is the house odds twice over. Plus, he only scrapes a little off the top. Not much, just a little.”
The news had just come from Meyer. The scandal of the bloody battle in the Shanghai Theater between guerillas and the police—though of course everyone knew it was between Frankie’s men and competing vice lords, fighting for control of Old Havana’s thereto-fore independent brothels, and that Frankie, though dead, had nevertheless won—had scared El Presidente and, frightened, he had decided that his future lay in more cooperation with the old men, not less.
Thus, in private, through discreet emissaries, El Presidente had agreed to certain concessions planned to make the road between him and his American supporters more stable, not less. Instead of taking 20 percent off the top, he was now content with 18 percent. Instead of 10 percent of all heroin moneys, he would accept 8 percent. And as for those very profitable independent brothels in the old town, once under the iron control of that fiery rogue El Colorado and in play ever since his untimely end, he would look the other way if certain Americans of experience took over management. The policia had been so informed and would cooperate; the word was now being spread, by various means, to the working men and women of that quarter. Their new masters would soon appear and things would be managed more scientifically, after the modern fashion of the norteamericanos.
But best of all, because of a new and very cooperative young man in the intelligence service, pressures against subversives, radicals, students, communistas were all to be increased, as in the grand old days of other strongmen. This meant the possibility of unrest and upheaval was much, much smaller, which meant in turn the investment possibilities were much, much more attractive. It was even rumored that Hilton planned to erect a huge hotel near the Nacional!
And that one? The one whose mischief had so scared them a few months ago? Why, he was in prison and would stand trial in the fall and his sentence would be life at least. Our government agents had taken care of it. Wasn’t it nice when everybody got along? It was so much better than the old way. If only those strunzas of the FBI…but that was another matter.
An old man raised a nice glass of Sambuca.
“My friends,” he said, “I propose a toast. We are secure now. It doesn’t matter what Chicago does in Las Vegas. Our island will pour its treasures into our strongboxes forever. Las Vegas can rise or fall, its sponsors can succeed or fail, it doesn’t matter, not a bit. The future is ours.�
��
They all raised their glasses to a wondrous tomorrow, a Cuba forever theirs, untouched, untainted, tamed and perfected. It was the American way.
There had been some sickness, but strong as a horse and full of pride and ego, he had survived. Poison? Some would say so. It would be easy to do here in the prison, where certain people could be bribed, certain people controlled. After all, he had many enemies, and many twisted in envy and malice at his name.
There was plenty to hate. He admitted that. Rarely are men given so many gifts as he. He had foresight, wisdom, strength, courage, stubbornness, stamina, and the poet’s feeling for the soaring lyric. Women adored him, mothers worshipped him, men followed him.
The trial was but weeks away.
Yet he knew it was but another opportunity.
“History will absolve me,” he had written, and he knew it to be true. History would also celebrate him, then obey him and finally yield to him.
I will show you, papa, he thought. I will show you.
Chapter 62
“And so he escaped,” asked Pashin.
“Yes. He certainly caused a ruckus. What a scandal,” said Frenchy Short, “and how lucky, really, he got away, or I’d have had some very awkward explaining to do.”
“Remarkable. I’d bet that asshole Speshnev had something to do with it. He has not been seen in days.”
“Old men. Tricky old bastards. Too many tricks.”
“Their day will come, soon enough. Maybe not this year, but certainly the next.”
The two sat at the old bar called the two brothers—Dos Hermanos—down by the waterfront, across from the Customs House. The ferry full of cars from Florida was just pulling in. They were drinking mojitos, because for once there was little to do. It was a Saturday, late in the afternoon, and overhead gulls glided and screamed, and out front the traffic roared along.
“And you are off to West Berlin?” Pashin asked.
Havana Page 37
