by Philip Kerr
“I came to see how you are,” I said.
“As you can see,” she said, calmly.
“Going somewhere?”
“So you were a detective.”
I smiled. “That’s what Max used to say. When he wanted to needle me.”
“And did it?”
“At the time, yes, it did. But there’s not much that gets to me now. I’m rather more impervious these days.”
“Well, that’s a lot more than Max can say.”
I let that one go.
“What would you say if I told you that my mother killed him?” she said.
“I’d say that it might be best to keep a wild thought like that to yourself. Not all of Max’s friends are as forgetful as me.”
“But I saw the gun,” she said. “The murder weapon. In the penthouse at the Saratoga. It was my mother’s gun. The one Ernest gave her.”
“It’s a common enough gun,” I said. “I saw plenty of guns like that during the war.”
“Her gun is missing,” said Dinah. “I already looked for it.”
I was shaking my head. “Do you remember the other day? When you said you thought she was suicidal? I took the gun away just in case she decided to use it on herself. I should have mentioned it at the time. I’m sorry.”
“You’re lying,” she said.
She was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “No, I’m not,” I said. “The gun is missing, and so is she.”
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly simple explanation for why she’s not here.”
“Which is that she murdered him. She did it. Or Alfredo López. That’s his car out there. Neither of them liked Max. One time Noreen as good as told me that she wanted to kill him. To stop me from marrying him.”
“Just how much do you really know about your late boyfriend?”
“I know he wasn’t exactly a saint, if that’s what you mean. He never professed to be.” She flushed. “What are you driving at?”
“Just this: Max was a very long way from being a saint. You won’t like this, but you’re going to hear it anyway. Max Reles was a gangster. During Prohibition he was a ruthless bootlegger. Max’s brother, Abe, was a hit man for the mob before someone tossed him out of a hotel window.”
“I’m not listening to this.”
Dinah shook her head and stood up, but I pushed her back down onto the chair again.
“Yes, you are,” I said. “You’re listening to it because somehow you’ve never heard it before. Or if you did, then maybe you just buried your head in the sand like some stupid ostrich. You’re going to listen to it because it’s the truth. Every damned word. Max Reles was into every dirty racket that there is. More recently he was part of an organized crime syndicate started in the 1930s by Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky. He stayed in business because he didn’t mind murdering his rivals.”
“Shut up,” she said. “It’s not true.”
“He told me himself that he and his brother murdered two men, the Shapiro brothers, in 1933. One of them he buried alive. After Prohibition ended, he went into labor racketeering. Some of it was in Berlin, which was where I first met him. While he was there, he murdered a German businessman called Rubusch who refused to be intimidated by him. I myself witnessed him murder two other people. One of them was a prostitute, Dora, with whom he had been conducting a relationship. He shot her in the head and dumped her body in a lake. She was still breathing when she hit the water.”
“Get out,” she snapped. “Get out of here.”
“And maybe your mother already told you about the man he murdered on a passenger ship between New York and Hamburg.”
“I didn’t believe her, and I don’t believe you now.”
“Sure you do. You believe all of it. Because you’re not stupid, Dinah. You’ve always known what kind of a man he was. Maybe you liked that. Maybe it gave you a cheap little thrill to be near someone like that. It can happen like that sometimes. There’s a fascination all of us feel for the kind of people who inhabit the shadows. Maybe that’s it, I don’t know, and I really don’t care. But if you didn’t know Max Reles was a gangster, then you certainly suspected as much. Strongly suspected, because of the company he kept. Meyer and Jake Lansky. Santo Trafficante. Norman Rothman. Vincent Alo. Every one a gangster. With Lansky the most notorious gangster of them all. Just four years ago Lansky was facing a congressional committee investigating organized crime in the United States. So was Max. That’s why they came to Cuba.
“I know of six people that Max has murdered, but I’m certain there are plenty more. People who crossed him. People who owed him money. People who were just inconveniently in his way. He’d have killed me, too, but I had something on him. Something he couldn’t afford to let be known. Max was shot. But his own weapon of choice was an ice pick, with which he stabbed people in the ear. That’s the kind of man he was, Dinah. A rotten, murdering gangster. One of many rotten, murdering gangsters who run the hotels and casinos here in Havana, any one of whom probably had his own very good reasons for wanting Max Reles out of the way.
“So keep your stupid mouth shut about your mother. I’m telling you now that she had nothing to do with it. You keep your mouth shut, or she’ll wind up dead on account of you. You, too, if you happen to get in the way. You don’t tell anyone what you told me. Got that?”
Dinah nodded, sullenly.
I pointed at the glass by her arm. “You drinking that?”
She looked at it and then shook her head. “No. I don’t even like whiskey.”
I reached forward and picked it up. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.”
I poured the contents into my mouth and sucked on them for a while before letting the whiskey drip down my throat. “I talk too much,” I said. “But this certainly helps.”
She shook her head. “All right. You’re right. I did suspect what he was like. But I was afraid to leave him. Afraid of what he might do. In the beginning it was just a bit of fun. I was bored here. Max introduced me to people I’d only ever read about. Frank Sinatra. Nat King Cole. Can you imagine it?” She nodded. “You’re right. And what you said. I had it coming.”
“We all make mistakes. God knows, I’ve made a few myself.” There was a pack of cigarettes on top of her clothes in the suitcase. I picked them up. “Do you mind? I’ve given up. But I could use a smoke.”
“Help yourself.”
I lit it quickly and sent some smoke down my hatch to go after the whiskey.
“Where will you go?”
“The States. To Rhode Island and Brown University, like my mother wanted. I suppose.”
“What about the singing?”
“I suppose Max told you that, did he?”
“As a matter of fact, he did. He seemed to think very highly of your talents.”
Dinah smiled sadly. “I can’t sing,” she said. “Although Max seemed to think I could. I don’t know why. I suppose he thought the best of me in all respects, including that one. But I can’t sing, and I can’t act. For a while it was fun pretending that any of that might be possible. But in my heart of hearts I knew it was all pie in the sky.”
A car came up the drive. I looked out of the open window and saw the Pontiac pull up next to the Oldsmobile. The doors opened, and a man and a woman got out. They weren’t dressed for the beach, but that was where they had been, all right, and you didn’t need to be a detective to know it. With Alfredo López, the sand was mostly on his knees and on his elbows; with Noreen it was almost everywhere else. They didn’t see me. They were too busy grinning at each other and dusting themselves off as they sauntered up the steps to the front door. Her smile faltered a little as she caught sight of me in the window. Perhaps she blushed. Maybe.
I went into the hall and met them as they came through the front door. By now the grins on their faces had turned to guilt, but it had nothing to do with the death of Max Reles. Of that much I was certain.
“Bernie,” she said awkwardly. “What a lov
ely surprise.”
“If you say so.”
Noreen went to the drinks trolley and began fixing herself a large one. López was smoking a cigarette and looking sheepish while pretending to read a magazine from a rack as big as a newspaper kiosk.
“What brings you down here?” she asked.
So far she had done a great job of not meeting my eye. Not that I was trying to put it in her way, exactly. But both of us knew that I knew what she and López had been doing. You could actually smell it on them. Like fried food. I decided to offer a swift explanation and then make myself scarce.
“I came to see if Dinah was all right,” I said.
“Why shouldn’t she be all right? Has something happened?” Noreen was looking at me, her embarrassment now temporarily overcome by concern for her daughter. “Where is she? Is Dinah all right?”
“She’s fine,” I said. “But Max Reles isn’t looking his best right now, on account of how someone pumped seven bullets into him late last night. As a matter of fact, he’s dead.”
Noreen stopped making her drink for a moment. “I see,” she said. “Poor Max.” Then she pulled a face. “Listen to me. What a damn hypocrite I am. As if I’m actually sorry he’s dead. And it’s not like I’m in the least bit surprised, given who and what he was.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry to sound callous. How’s Dinah taken it? Oh, Lord—she wasn’t there, was she, when he . . . ?”
“No, she wasn’t,” I said. “Dinah’s just fine. Already getting over it, wouldn’t you know?”
“Do the police have any idea who killed Max?” asked López.
“Now, that’s a question, isn’t it?” I said. “I formed the impression that this is one crime the police are hoping will solve itself. Either that or someone else will solve it for them.”
López nodded. “Yes, you’re probably right, of course. The Havana militia can hardly start asking too many questions without the risk of upsetting the whole rotten apple cart. In case it turns out that one of Havana’s other gangsters should prove to be responsible for Max’s murder. There’s never been a gangland murder in Cuba. Not of a boss, anyway. The last thing I imagine Batista needs is a gangland war on his doorstep.” He smiled. “Yes, I think I’m pleased to say that the politics of this thing look fiendishly complicated.”
As it turned out, things were a lot more complicated than that.
15
I GOT BACK AROUND SEVEN and ate the cold dinner that Yara had left for me on a covered plate. While I ate I looked through the evening newspaper. There was a nice picture of the president’s wife, Marta, opening a new school in Boyeros; and something about the forthcoming visit to Havana of the U.S. senator from Florida, George Smathers. But Max Reles didn’t get a mention, not even in the obituaries column. After dinner I fixed myself a drink. There wasn’t much to that. I just poured some vodka from the refrigerator into a clean glass and drank it. I was settling down to take the place of Montaigne’s dead friend. It seemed a pretty good definition of a reader. Then the telephone rang, which reminded me that there are times when a dead friend is your best friend.
But it wasn’t a friend. It was Meyer Lansky, and he sounded annoyed.
“Gunther?”
“Yes.”
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been ringing all afternoon.”
“I went to see Max’s girl, Dinah.”
“Oh. How is she?”
“Like you said. She’ll be all right.”
“Listen, Gunther, I want to talk to you, only not on the telephone. I don’t like telephones. Never have liked them. This number you’re on: 7-8075. That’s a Vedado number, right?”
“Yes. I live on Malecón.”
“Then we’re practically neighbors. I’m in a suite at the National Hotel. Could you come here at nine?”
I turned over a few polite rebuffs in my mind, but none of them sounded polite enough for a gangster like Meyer Lansky. So I said, “Sure. Why not? I could use a stroll along the seafront.”
“Do me a favor, will you?”
“I thought that’s what I was doing.”
“On your way over here, get me a couple of packs of Parliament, will you? The hotel’s run out.”
I walked west, along Malecón, bought Lansky’s smokes, and went into Havana’s largest hotel. This was more like a cathedral than Havana’s cathedral on Empedrado. The lobby was easily bigger than San Cristóbal’s nave, with a fine painted wooden ceiling that would have been the envy of many a medieval palacio. It smelled a lot better than the cathedral, too, since the hotel lobby was swarming with well-washed or even scented human traffic, although, to my tutored eye, the hotel itself looked badly understaffed, with long lines of guests in front of the reception desk, the cashier, and the concierge, like so many people queuing for tickets in a railway station. Somewhere, someone was playing a tinny piano that brought to mind a dance class in a girls’ ballet school. Four long-case clocks were arranged along the length of the lobby. They were not synchronized, and they struck the hour consecutively, one after the other, as if time itself was an elastic concept in Havana. Near the elevator doors was a wall adorned with a full-length picture of the president and his wife, both dressed in white—she in a two-piece tailored suit, and he in a tropical-weight military uniform. They looked like a cut-rate version of the Peróns.
I rode the elevator to the top of the building. In contrast with the railway-station atmosphere of the lobby, the executive floor was sepulchrally quiet. Very possibly it was even quieter than that, since most sepulchers don’t have carpets that run to ten dollars a square meter. The doors to the executive suites were all louvered, which may have been meant to help the free flow of air or cigar smoke. The whole floor smelled like a tobacco grower’s humidor.
Lansky’s suite was the only one with its own doorman. He was a tall man, wearing square sleeves and with a chest like a housekeeping cart. He turned to face me as I walked as silently as Hiawatha along the corridor, and I let him pat me down as if he were looking for his matches in my pockets. He didn’t find them. Then he opened the door, admitting me to a suite the size of an empty billiard hall. The atmosphere was every bit as hushed. But instead of another Jew with an overactive pituitary gland, I was met by a petite, green-eyed redhead in her forties who looked and sounded like a New York hairdresser. She smiled pleasantly, told me her name was Teddy, and that she was Meyer Lansky’s wife, and ushered me through a living room and a set of sliding windows onto a wraparound balcony.
Lansky was seated on a wicker chair, staring out into darkness over the sea, like Canute.
“You can’t see it,” he said. “The sea. But you can sure smell it. And you can hear it. Listen. Listen to that sound.” He held up his forefinger as if drawing my attention to the song of a nightingale on Berkeley Square.
I listened, carefully. In my unreliable ears it sounded very much like the sea.
“The way the sea draws back and off the beach and then begins again. Everything in this lousy world changes, but not that sound. For thousands of years that sound has always been exactly the same. That’s a sound I never get tired of.” He sighed. “And there are times when I get very tired of almost everything. Do you ever get like that, Gunther? Do you ever get tired?”
“Tired? Mr. Lansky, there are times when I get so tired of things that I think maybe I must be dead. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m sleeping all right, life might be almost intolerable.”
I gave him his cigarettes. He started to get out his wallet until I stopped him. “Keep it,” I told him. “I like the idea of you owing me money. It feels safer than the other way round.”
Lansky smiled. “Drink?”
“No, thanks. I like to keep a clear head when I’m talking business with Lucifer.”
“Is that what I am?”
I shrugged. “It takes one to know one.” I watched him light one of the cigarettes and added, “I mean, that is why I’m here, isn’t it? Business? I can’t imagine you want to reminis
ce about what a great guy Max was.”
Lansky gave me a narrow look.
“Before he died, Max told me all about you. Or at least as much as he knew. Gunther, I’ll come straight to the point. There were three reasons Max wanted you to work for him. You’re an ex-cop, you know hotels, and you’re not affiliated with any of the families who’ve got business here in Havana. I’ve got two of those reasons and one of my own that make me think you’re the man to find out who killed Max. Hear me out, please. The one thing we can’t have here in Havana is a gang war. It’s bad enough we’ve got the rebels. More trouble we don’t need. We can’t rely on the cops to investigate this thing properly. You must have gathered that yourself from your conversation with Captain Sánchez this morning. Actually, he’s not a bad cop at all. But I liked the way you spoke to him. And it strikes me that you’re not someone who’s easily intimidated. Not by cops. Not by me. Not by my associates.
“Anyway, I spoke to some of the other gentlemen you met last night, and we’re all of us of the opinion that we don’t want you managing the Saratoga, like you agreed with Max. Instead, we want you to investigate Max’s murder. Captain Sánchez will give you any assistance you require, but you can have carte blanche, so to speak. All we want is to avoid any possible dispute among ourselves. You do this, Gunther, you investigate this murder, and I’ll owe you more than the price of two packs of cigarettes. For one thing, I’ll pay you what Max was going to pay you. And for another, I’ll be your friend. You think about that before you say no. I can be a good friend to people who’ve done me a service. Anyway, my associates and myself, we’re all agreed. You can go anywhere. You can speak to anyone. The bosses. The soldiers. Wherever the evidence takes you. Sánchez won’t interfere. You say jump, he’ll ask how high.”
