by Philip Kerr
We were drinking coffee from little cups, Italian style, pinkies out.
“I’ve got a name,” I told them.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Irving Goldstein.”
“The guy who killed himself?”
Goldstein had been a pit boss at the Saratoga, occupying a high chair over the craps table. Originally from Miami, he had trained as a croupier in several illegal gambling houses in Tampa before his arrival in Havana in April 1953. This followed the deportation from Cuba of thirteen American-born card dealers who were employees of the Saratoga, the Sans Souci, the Montmartre, and Tropicana casinos.
“With the help of Captain Sánchez I searched his apartment in Vedado last night. And we found this.”
I handed Lansky a technical drawing and let him stare at it awhile.
“Goldstein had become involved with a man who was a female impersonator at the Palette Club. It’s my information that before he died, Max had found out about it and, not at all comfortable with Goldstein’s homosexuality, he subsequently told him to look for a job at another casino. The Saratoga casino manager, Núñez, confirmed that the two men argued about something not long before Max died. It’s my belief that this is what they argued about. And that Goldstein murdered Max in revenge for his dismissal. So he probably had the motive. He almost certainly had the opportunity: Núñez told me that Goldstein went on his break at around two a.m. on the night of the murder. And that he was away from the craps tables for about thirty minutes.”
“And your proof is . . . this?” Lansky brandished the sheet of paper I had given him. “I’m looking at it and I still don’t know what the hell it is. Jake?” Lansky handed the paper to his brother, who stared at it uncomprehendingly, as if it were the blueprint of a new missile-guidance system.
“That’s a very accurate and precise drawing for a Bramit silencer,” I said. “A custom-made sound suppressor for the Nagant revolver. Like I said before, because of the Nagant’s closed firing system—”
“What does that mean?” asked Jake. “ ‘Closed firing system.’ All I know about guns is how to shoot them. And even then they make me nervous.”
“Especially, then,” said Meyer. He shook his head. “I don’t like guns.”
“What does it mean? Just this. The Nagant has a mechanism which, as the hammer is cocked, first turns the cylinder and then moves it forward, closing the gap between the cylinder and the barrel that exists with every other model of revolver. With this gap sealed, the velocity is increased; more important, it makes the Nagant the only weapon you can effectively silence. During the war, Goldstein was in the army and afterward he was stationed in Germany. I imagine he must have swapped revolvers with a Red Army soldier. A lot of men did.”
“And you think this faygele made the silencer himself? Is that what you’re saying?”
“He was a homosexual, Mr. Lansky,” I said. “That doesn’t mean he couldn’t handle precision metalworking tools.”
“Got that right,” muttered Alo.
I shook my head. “The drawing was hidden in his bureau. And to be honest, I don’t think I’m going to find any better proof than that.”
Meyer Lansky nodded. He fetched a pack of Parliaments off the coffee table and lit one with a silver table lighter. “What do you think, Jake?”
Jake pulled a face. “Bernie’s right. Proof is always hard to come by in these situations, but that drawing sure looks like the next best thing. As you yourself know only too well, Meyer, the Feds have made a case with a lot less. Besides, if this guy Goldstein did whack Max, then it’s one of ours and there’s no debt to settle with anyone else. He’s a Jew. From the Saratoga. It keeps everything neat and tidy, just the way we wanted. Frankly, I don’t see how we could have ended up with a better result. Business can proceed without any interruptions.”
“Nothing is more important,” said Meyer Lansky.
“How’d he kill himself, anyway?” asked Vincent Alo.
“He opened his veins in a hot tub,” I said. “Roman style.”
“I guess that makes a change from doggy style,” said Alo.
Meyer Lansky winced. It was plain he didn’t much like that kind of joke. “Yes, but why?” he asked. “Why kill himself? With all due respect to you, Bernie, he’d got away with the murder, hadn’t he? More or less. So why do himself in? His secret was safe.”
I shrugged. “I spoke to some people at the Palette Club. The whole point of the club is that some of the girls are real and some are cut-jobs. The club’s shtick is that you can’t tell the difference. It seems that in the beginning Irving Goldstein might have had the same problem. That the girl he thought he fell in love with was in fact a man. When he discovered the truth, he tried to live with it, which is when Max found out about it. Some of the people at the Palette think that the shame finally got to him. I think that maybe he planned to kill himself, but before he did, he decided to get even with Max.”
“Who knows what’s in the mind of a guy like that?” said Alo. “Confused, or what?”
Meyer Lansky nodded. “All right. I’ll buy it. You’ve done a good job, Gunther. A nice quick result with no one offended. I couldn’t have ordered it better if I was in La Zaragozana.”
This was the name of a famous restaurant in Old Havana.
“Jimmy? Get this man his money. He earned it.”
Vincent Alo said, “Sure, Meyer,” and went out of the suite.
“You know, Gunther,” said Lansky, “next year, things are really going to take off for us here in Havana. We got this sweet new law coming. The Hotel Law. All new hotels are going to be granted tax-exempt status, which means there’s going to be more money to be made on this island than anyone ever dreamed of. I’m planning a new casino hotel myself, which is going to be the biggest in the world, outside of Las Vegas. The Riviera. And I could use a man like you in a place like that. Until then, I’d like you to come over to the Montmartre and work for me there. You can do the same thing you were going to do at the Saratoga.”
“I’ll certainly give it some thought, Mr. Lansky.”
“Vincent’s going to run the Saratoga now.”
Vincent Alo had returned to the balcony. He was holding out a gambler’s chip bag for high rollers. He smiled, but his blue eyes remained without emotion. It was easy to see how he’d earned his nickname, Jimmy Blue Eyes. His eyes were as blue as the sea on the other side of the Malecón, and just as cold.
“That doesn’t look like twenty thousand dollars,” I said.
“Looks can be deceptive,” said Alo. He loosened the neck of the drawstring bag and took out a purple thousand-dollar plaque. “There are nineteen more like this one in the bag. You take this to the cash desk at the Montmartre, and they’ll give you your money. Simple as that, my kraut friend.”
The neoclassical Montmartre on P Street and Twenty-third was just a short walk from the National. Formerly a dog track, it occupied a whole block and was the only casino in Havana open twenty-four hours a day. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and the Montmartre was already doing a brisk business. At that early hour, most of the gamblers were Chinese. But they usually are, at any hour of the day. And they couldn’t have looked less interested in the evening’s big Midnight in Paris stage show being announced on the casino’s public-address system.
For me, on the other hand, Europe already seemed a little nearer and more attractive as I walked away from the cash window with forty pictures of President William McKinley. And the only reason I hadn’t turned Lansky’s offer of a full-time job down flat was that I hardly wanted to tell him I was leaving the country. That might have made him suspicious. Instead I was hoping to deposit my money with the rest of what I’d saved in the Royal Bank of Canada and then, armed with my new credentials, leave Cuba as soon as possible.
I felt a spring in my step as I went back through the gates of the National Hotel to get the car I was planning to give Yara as my leaving-her present. I hadn’t felt quite so optimistic about my prospect
s since being reunited with my late wife Kirsten in Vienna, during September of 1947. So optimistic that I felt I might even go see Captain Sánchez and discover if there wasn’t something I could do for Noreen Eisner and Alfredo López after all.
At the end of the day, optimism is nothing more than a naive and i ll-informed hope.
20
THE CAPITOLIO WAS BUILT in the style of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., by the dictator Machado, but it was too big for an island the size of Cuba. It would have been too big for an island the size of Australia. Inside the rotunda was a seventeen-meter-high statue of Jupiter, which looked a lot like an Academy Award, and certainly most of the tourists who visited the Capitolio seemed to think it was a good picture. Now that I was planning to leave Cuba I was thinking I might have to take a few photographs of my own. So that I could remind myself of what I was missing when I was living in Bonn and going to bed at nine o’clock at night. What else is there to do in Bonn at nine o’clock at night? If Beethoven had lived in Havana—especially if he’d lived around the corner from the Casa Marina—it’s almost certain he’d have been lucky to write just one string quartet, let alone sixteen of them. But you could live all your life in Bonn and not even notice that you were deaf.
The police station on Zulueta was a few minutes’ walk from the Capitolio, but I didn’t mind the walk. Only a few months before, outside the police station in Vedado, a Havana University professor had been killed by a car bomb when rebels had mistaken his 1952 black Hudson for an identical model driven by the deputy head of the Cuban Bureau of Investigations. Ever since, I had been careful never to leave my Chevrolet Styleline outside a police station.
The station itself was an old colonial building with a peeling white stucco facade and louvered green shutters on the windows. A Cuban flag hung limply over the square portico like a brightly decorated beach towel that had fallen from one of the upper-floor windows. On the outside, the drains didn’t smell so good. On the inside, you barely noticed it as long as you didn’t breathe in.
Sánchez was on the second floor, in an office overlooking a small park. There was a flag on a pole in the corner, and on the wall, a picture of Batista facing a cabinet full of rifles in case the parade-ground patriotism of the flag and the picture didn’t pay off. There was a small, cheap wooden desk and a lot of space around it if you had a tapeworm. The walls and ceiling were dust-bowl beige, and the brown linoleum on the warped floor resembled the shell of a dead tortoise. An expensive rosewood humidor that belonged on a presidential sideboard sat on the desk like a Fabergé egg in a plastic picnic set.
“You know, it was quite a stroke of luck, me finding that drawing,” said Sánchez.
“There’s an element of luck in most police work.”
“Not to mention your murderer being dead already.”
“Any objections?”
“How could there be? You solve the case and at the same time you take the loose ends and make a bow. Now, that’s what I call detective work. Yes indeed, I can see why Lansky thought you were the man for the case. A real Nero Wolfe.”
“You say all that like you think I chalked him up for it, like a tailor.”
“Now you’re being cruel. I’ve never been to a tailor in my life. Not on my salary. I own a nice linen guayabera, and that’s about it. For anything more formal I usually wear my best uniform.”
“Is that the one without the bloodstains?”
“Now you’re confusing me with Lieutenant Quevedo.”
“I’m glad you mentioned him, Captain.”
Sánchez shook his head. “Such a thing is not possible. No one with ears is ever glad to hear the name of Lieutenant Quevedo.”
“Where might I find him?”
“You do not find Lieutenant Quevedo. Not if you had any sense. He finds you.”
“Surely he can’t be that elusive. I saw him at the funeral, remember?”
“It’s his natural habitat.”
“A tall man. Buzz-cut hair, with a sort of clean-cut face, for a Cuban. What I mean is, there was something vaguely American about his face.”
“It’s as well we only see the faces of men and not their hearts, don’t you think?”
“Anyway, you said that I was working not just for Lansky, but also for Quevedo. And so—”
“Did I say that? Perhaps. How shall we describe someone like Meyer Lansky? The man is as slippery as chopped pineapple. But Quevedo is something else. We have a saying here in the militia: ‘God made us, and we wonder at it, but more especially in the case of Lieutenant Quevedo.’ Mentioning him to you as I did at the funeral, I intended only to make you aware of him as I would perhaps draw your attention to a venomous snake. So that you could avoid him.”
“Your warning is noted.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
“But I’d still like to speak to him.”
“About what, I wonder.” He shrugged and, ignoring the expensive humidor, lit a cigarette.
“That’s my business.”
“In point of fact, no, it’s not.” Sánchez smiled. “Certainly it is the business of Señor López. Perhaps in the circumstances it is also the business of Señora Eisner. But your business, Señor Hausner? No, I don’t think so.”
“Now it’s you who looks like chopped pineapple, Captain.”
“Perhaps that’s only to be expected. You see, I graduated from law school in September 1950. Two of my contemporaries at university were Fidel Castro Ruz and Alfredo López. Unlike Fidel, Alfredo and I were politically illiterate. In those days the university was closely tied to the government of Grau San Martín, and I was convinced that I might help to effect democratic change in our police force by becoming a policeman myself. Of course, Fidel thought differently. But after Batista’s coup in March 1952, I decided I was probably wasting my time and resolved to be less strenuous in my defense of the regime and its institutions. I would try to be a good policeman only and not an instrument of dictatorship. Does that make sense, señor?”
“Strangely enough, it does. To me, anyway.”
“Of course, this isn’t as easy as it might sound.”
“I know that, too.”
“I have had to make compromises with myself on more than one occasion. I have even thought of leaving the militia. But it was Alfredo who persuaded me that perhaps I might do more good by remaining a policeman.”
I nodded.
“It was I,” he continued, “who informed Noreen Eisner that Alfredo had been arrested and by whom. She asked me what was to be done, and I told her I could think of nothing. But, as I’m sure you know, she is not a woman who gives up easily, and, aware that you and she were old friends, I suggested that she ask you to help her.”
“Me? Why on earth would you say that?”
“The suggestion was not entirely serious. I was exasperated with her, it’s true. I must confess I was also exasperated with you. Exasperated and, yes, a little jealous of you, too.”
“Jealous? Of me? Why on earth should you be jealous of me?”
Captain Sánchez shifted on his chair and smiled sheepishly.
“A number of reasons,” he said. “The way you solved this case. The faith that Meyer Lansky seems to have in your abilities. The nice apartment on Malecón. Your car. Your money. Let’s not forget that. Yes, I freely admit it, I was jealous of you. But I am not so very jealous that I would let you do this thing that you are thinking of. Because I must also freely admit that I like you, Hausner. And I couldn’t in all conscience allow you to put your head into the lion’s mouth.” He shook his head. “I told her I was not serious about this suggestion, but evidently she did not believe me and spoke to you herself.”
“Maybe I’ve put my head in a lion’s mouth before,” I said.
“Maybe. But this isn’t the same lion. All lions are different.”
“We’re friends, right?”
“Yes. I think so. But Fidel used to say you shouldn’t trust someone merely because he is
a friend. It’s good advice. You should remember that.”
I nodded. “Oh, sure. And believe me, I know. Looking out for number one is usually what I do best. I’m an expert in survival. But from time to time I get this stupid urge to do a good turn for someone. Someone like your friend Alfredo López. It’s been a while since I did anything as selfless as something like that.”
“I see. At least I begin to think I do. You think that by helping him you’ll be helping her. Is that it?”
“Something like that. Perhaps.”
“And what do you think you can tell a man like Quevedo that might persuade him to release López?”
“That’s between me and him and what I rather quaintly used to call my conscience.”
Sánchez sighed. “I did not take you for a romantic. But that is what you are, I think.”
“You forgot the word ‘fool,’ didn’t you? But it’s more what the French call ‘existential’ than that. After all these years I still haven’t quite admitted my own insignificance. I still believe what I do makes a difference. Absurd, isn’t it?”
“I’ve known Alfredo López since 1945,” said Sánchez. “He’s a decent enough fellow. But I fail to see how Noreen Eisner prefers him to a man like you.”
“Maybe that’s what I want to prove to her.”
“Anything is possible, I suppose.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he is a better man than me.”
“No, just a younger one.”
21
