Havana World Series

by Jose Latour

  He awoke at ten past six and ordered toothpaste, toothbrush, razor, razor blade, and a bottle of mineral water. Rancaño had shaved, showered, and brushed his teeth before drinking two glasses of water, getting dressed, and lighting a cigarette. He paid the bill, left, took Zanja Street. Feeling hungry, he had entered the nearest coffee shop to have breakfast.

  Promising to himself perpetual sybaritism, he asked for a second helping. Yeah. From now on he would indulge his every whim, fuck as much as he wanted, dress like a movie actor, buy a Cadillac—LIVE, for God’s sake! No more self-repression. No longer was he forced to figure out whether he could afford a second café con leche. The only limits he would accept would be those of reason.

  Five minutes later, Rancaño left a one-peso bill on the marble tabletop, then stood. He delighted in the waiter’s surprised stare at the liberal tip. Once again he strolled at a leisurely pace along Zanja’s right sidewalk, anticipating the surprise his resignation would cause as he drew nearer to Tele Hogar, his place of work.

  Four blocks away, all three plainclothesmen killing time inside a ’58 Rambler stationed at the corner of Zanja and Lucena knew about the colonel’s personal involvement in this case and didn’t want to screw up. TeleHogar’s hired hand for odd jobs should have arrived around seven, to wash and service the closed van before eight. But it was 7:17 and the mother-fucker hadn’t showed up. The cops were frustrated and tired after a sleepless night stalking the perp’s rooming house, at 619 Virtudes Street, where Rancaño shared a room with a clothing store clerk and a drugstore messenger. The vanishing trick made them nervous. Then suddenly, their patience paid off. Their man was approaching the TV shop.

  The three cops left the car at the same time, and the nearly simultaneous sound of slamming doors made Rancaño look back. Nonplussed, he froze and watched as two men fanned out to the left and right and the one in the middle approached him in a straight line, eyes fastened on his, gun drawn. His huge Technicolor fantasy suddenly deflated. Despondency descended on him. He didn’t even think about resisting arrest or trying to escape, as he was absolutely certain he couldn’t endure physical punishment. So, he merely winced when handcuffs closed around his wrists and The Big Question was posed.

  “In there. Stuffed in a set,” was his answer.

  The first thing that came to his mind was that were it not for the heist, he would’ve never given three brush daubs to Tatiana.

  Seven

  At noon, Colonel Grava told his aide he was not to be disturbed, then bolted the office door and plopped down on the creaking swivel chair. From the right middle drawer of his desk he took a blank page, and for ten minutes he made calculations. Rancaño’s deposition upheld Gallego’s as to the total stolen and the split. The 213,750 pesos found in the safe-deposit box authenticated Gallego’s version of what happened following the Château Miramar murders. It seemed increasingly possible that the 162,500 pesos found in Naguib’s chest of drawers weren’t part of the loot.

  The Lebanese was nobody’s fool, and only a fool would store money in excess of four or five thousand pesos in a piece of furniture sitting in his living room. After a few minutes, Grava gave in. He couldn’t make sense of it. Upset and frustrated, he checked the figures once again. Could he get away with filching 155,000 pesos from Fermín’s share? If he gave back the money found at the aparthotel to Lansky, plus what had been retrieved from Rancaño’s TV set, and only 58,000 of Gallego’s cut, the Hebrew would receive 275,000, nearly half the take. And he’d feather his nest with 210,000 pesos, coming from Lansky’s 20 percent reward, plus the 155,000 spirited away from … from where? The safe-deposit box? Impossible. Bank officials demanded that the receipt had to be sworn to before a notary. But Lansky didn’t have to know that Gallego had stored his cut in a fucking bank. He could concoct a different story—say the guy had stuffed his money in an old suitcase at his godmother’s, for instance.

  Grava wiped off his sweaty palms on the legs of his pants. He knew he was playing with fire. He had told Lansky about the money stashed at the Château Miramar because it had become public knowledge. The amount retrieved from the bank could be learned, and Lansky had the connections to do it, should he want to. But why would the old fart check where the money had been found? He wanted to recover his mazuma, not trace where it had been hoarded.

  Besides, and most important of all, every government official with half a brain worried about the future of the regime, tried to figure out how to save his ass in case President Batista decided to do what President Machado had done twenty-five years earlier: go into exile to live comfortably for the rest of his life while the small fry took all the heat. Nobody was in the mood to squeal on friends who cut a few corners to weather the storm. And he had lots of friends. On an impulse, Grava spun around in the chair and pressed an intercom key.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Call Mr. Lansky’s residence and ask for an urgent meeting at three o’clock. Here, there, wherever he pleases.”

  Two hours and thirty-five minutes later, Colonel Grava ambled into the Fifth Avenue mansion clutching a briefcase; Shaifer showed him into the library, where Lansky and his lawyer, Bonifacio García, waited. The drivers of his two black Cadillacs and one of the bodyguards remained inside the cars to luxuriate in the air-conditioned interior and keep an ear on the police radio; the two remaining bodyguards chose to swap what they had recently heard on the grapevine as they paced around the arched driveway connecting the porch with the street. Shaifer ordered a maid to serve snacks to the five policemen, then sat in a living room armchair, next to the library.

  The colonel utterly failed in his effort to underplay what his men had achieved. He was breaking the news with a there-was-nothing-to-it tone in his voice. But his eyes sparkled and he kept fighting the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth. It was a blatant attempt to win his respect, Lansky thought. He registered Grava’s brand-new cobalt-blue gabardine suit and the pearl-gray tie before focusing on the colonel’s gaze. In his opinion, a guy who didn’t lock eyes with the person he addressed was hiding something. But he masked his reserve with encouraging nods and by discreetly arching an eyebrow during those parts of the story where Grava obviously expected some measure of controlled surprise. When the colonel began embellishing the story with nonessential information, Lansky admitted to himself that the man had worked fast, and that he could become a worthy ally eventually.

  “… Nobody seems to know where the driver’s cut is. My men searched his place and found nothing. His wife suffered a nervous breakdown, his two snotty kids were bawling like hell, neighbors sided with the bitch, so we’ll have to wait a couple of days before taking her in and see if she knows anything. But these bastards rarely involve relatives in their scams; she might not know the hiding place.”

  Lansky nodded. The colonel cleared his throat, searching for something more to say. “And … well … I guess that’s all. The two guys we collared spent around seven thousand. Rancaño dished out eighteen hundred on a six-month lease of a spot where he planned to open a gambling joint.”

  Garcia translated, and Lansky guffawed for the first time in days. The lawyer and Grava acted confused for a few seconds, then grasped the irony of it and contributed their own embarrassed grins. Lansky wiped his eyes dry with a handkerchief. He was wondering about the missing five thousand dollars. Two punks couldn’t throw away that kind of money in two or three days in a country where first-class whores charged ten bucks for a trick and a bottle of the best rum cost two or three pesos. Clearly, the upright arresting officers had skimmed the top.

  “I’m not interested in their expense account. How much do you bring?”

  “Two hundred seventy-five thousand.”

  “Twenty percent is …” Lansky did his mental calculation distractedly, while looking at a Delacroix original hanging on the opposite wall. “… fifty-five thousand. Garcia, give sixty thousand to the colonel.”

  The lawyer opened the bri
efcase, extracted twelve wads of five thousand pesos each in fifty-peso bills, then passed them on to Grava. While Lansky lit a cigarette, took a deep drag from it, then crushed it on a Murano glass ashtray, the colonel produced a folded, nine-by-twelve-inch Kraft-paper envelope, spread it out, placed the money in it, and closed its metal clasp.

  “Give your men the extra five thousand in my name, and tell them I appreciate results, okay?” the Hebrew said.

  “I will, sure. And I thank you in their name.”

  “Don’t mention it. Up to now your work is very, very good. But incomplete. I need to know who’s behind this job, and, with this Naguib dead, the only guy can shed some light on it is Contrary.”

  Garcia said “Contreras” when he translated.

  “Okay, Contrary Contreras,” Lansky went on, pleased that he could still set verbal traps for fools. “Perhaps I’ll question him personally. So, you gotta catch him alive. What happened with the driver can’t happen with him. Do I make myself clear?”

  “I guarantee that,” Grava said, as he started pondering how to make certain that Contreras was shot dead as soon as he revealed where he had his cut.

  “Do you have any clue as to where he might be?”

  “A few. But he’s the smartest of them, and it’ll be difficult to collar him. Don’t worry, Mr. Lansky: In a week, two at most, the case will be closed.”

  …

  The Orkin Man inhabited an unpretentious red-brick house on Fifth Street, in Guanabo. The place belonged to a Campo Florido cattleman whose family loved to spend the summers in this beach town fifteen miles to the east of Havana. To recover land and construction costs, the owner rented it from September to May at a modest thirty-peso monthly rate. The house consisted of living-cum-dining room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a cemented back patio with a shower to wash sand away from legs and feet. Inexpensively furnished to discourage thieves, it had only three electrical appliances: a 1935 General Electric fridge, a 17-inch Dumont TV set, and an ancient Motorola radio.

  The present tenant’s billfold included two identity cards, one from the Havana Center of Salesmen and Trade Representatives and another from the Cuban Trade Association, attesting that Ubaldo Barrios, occupation salesman, born in Havana in 1927, was a member of both institutions. But every morning Señor Barrios assumed the personality by which he wanted to be known to town residents: that of Otto, the Orkin Man.

  The Orkin Exterminating Company, Inc. with main offices in Atlanta, Georgia, claimed the dubious honor of being the biggest pest control company in the world. It fumigated warehouses, factories, ships, trains, libraries, agricultural produce, furniture, homes, and every other place where a worm, rat, cockroach, termite, ant, or mosquito could thrive. Its Cuban representative, with offices at 1509 Twenty-third Street in Vedado, two blocks away from the Bureau of Investigations, had agreed with Señor Barrios that from September 25 on he would become the Orkin Man in Guanabo.

  Nobody expected miracles, for in winter even mosquitoes beat a retreat, but if the energetic young man could hook ten or twelve grocery stores, the cinema, three or four yachts, and forty or fifty homes, it was worth the trouble to send an exterminator on a Cushman motor scooter once a month, collect three or four hundred pesos, and pay a 15 percent commission to Señor Barrios.

  Acting under such a powerful incentive, in the mornings the Orkin Man would visit two or three businesses and five or six homes. He explained to potential customers that the exterminator would make free recommendations and provide a cost estimate. There was no obligation to fork out any money. The good-looking Orkin Man had persuasive powers and an engaging smile. By October 14 he had phoned in thirteen addresses to the Havana office.

  The salesman ate his meals at a greasy spoon favored by low-income patrons, wore cheap clothes, had never been seen hitting the bottle, went to bed early, and didn’t seem inclined to get intimate with any of the young servant girls who opened front doors at the most affluent-looking houses. But on Thursday afternoon the Orkin Man became nostalgic. He recalled the fortune hidden in a certain stool, by association his fiancée’s coveted behind flashed in his mind, and in a few seconds he experienced an erection.

  Señor Barrios shook his head and tried to concentrate on the sports pages. A few minutes later he learned that Sweet Flash, his favorite bitch, was in that evening’s seventh race. Shit. He closed his eyes to project the brilliant oval in his mind, sniff the smell of wet clay, anticipate the race’s suspense. Two blocks away from the Havana Greyhound Kennel Club, the Pennsylvania Club dancer would be wiggling her no-less-tempting rump. She was a better prospect than Esther, who, besides believing him to be in the city of Holguín on business, wouldn’t satisfy his burning lust. Going to the city would be a stupid thing, the Orkin Man reasoned as he got up and marched to the bedroom to start getting dressed.

  He rode a bus to Havana, flagged down a Piquera Gris cab on Egido Street, and asked the driver to take him to the dog track. For the next twenty minutes, the ’57 Nash cruised the Malecón and Fifth Avenue. The Orkin Man avidly gazed out the backseat windows, taking in everything. Those five days he had been away felt like five months. This was his natural environment, the place he belonged. He wasn’t listening to the exchanges between a dispatcher and other cabdrivers on the short-wave radio, nor was he aware of the searching glances the taxi driver shot at him through the rear-view mirror.

  A rumor that had been circulating widely among city residents for over a year had never reached the ears of the Orkin Man. He didn’t know that the largest, best-organized Cuban cab company was owned by the widow of a National Police chief shot to death by a revolutionary in 1957, and consequently hadn’t learned that a considerable number of its drivers were ex-cops collecting a twenty-three-peso monthly government check for informing on passengers. Each and every snitch driving one of those cabs had seen the mug shot of the Orkin Man.

  At the racetrack, the passenger got off, paid the fare, and approached the entrance. The cabbie kept him under observation until he went inside, then reached for the mike and pressed its send button.

  “Seventeen,” he said.

  “Go ahead, seventeen.”

  “I’m at the dogs. I’m gonna take a leak and have an espresso.”

  “Gotcha.”

  The cabbie steered the car to a gas station fifty yards ahead, stepped out, and from a pay phone dialed a number.

  “Command.”

  “This is agent 414.”

  “Puke it.”

  “A minute ago I dropped a guy looks like the youngest of the two men wanted by the Bureau—at the dog track.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. “What is he wearing?” the voice asked.

  “Light gray sport jacket, black slacks and shoes, dark green shirt, no tie.”

  The snitch would have sworn he could hear the frantic scratching of a pencil.

  “Is he carrying?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Gas station right in front, by my cab, number seventeen.”

  “Stay put until someone gets there. Keep an eye on the exits. You see him coming out, tail him.”

  “Listen, I—”

  The noise of a receiver banging onto its cradle made the stoolie stare at the earpiece. He finally hung up and walked back to his car to get behind the wheel and do what he had been ordered to. Six minutes later, a dark green ’58 Pontiac sedan noiselessly slid behind the taxi. Its driver stepped on the dimmer switch three times prior to turning off the lights and the ignition. The cabbie got out and approached the Pontiac’s passenger door. He was greeted by a swarthy man in his early thirties whose bushy mustache was probably an attempted compensation for his high-pitched, effeminate voice.

  “The guy still inside?” the cop asked.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Okay, you can blow.”

  “You don’t need me here?”

  “Shit, no. Half the force is coming
over.”

  “Coño!”

  “I hope you didn’t make a mistake, pardner.”

  “I didn’t. He’s the guy in the mug shot, only a few years older.”

  “Fine.”

  “See you.”

  “Sure.”

  At the Kennel Club bar, the Orkin Man was savoring an excellent lobster salad with Russian dressing washed down with Hatuey beer. After several days of ordinary meals he relished the delicacy, and before finishing the first helping he ordered a second. While waiting for it, as he poured a fresh beer into his glass, he thought he should find something out, just in case.

  From a pay phone close to the bar’s rest room, he called the Pennsylvania’s dressing room and talked to the dancer. She sounded a little angry at first, and he fed her one of the business-trip stories he had improved to perfection over the years. Then he asked.

  No, she couldn’t; had a date with a customer. Wouldn’t she drop the bastard for the man who loved her above everything else in life? Sure, the girl said; what she wouldn’t drop were the fifty bucks the guy would give her for an hour of her time. Well … she knew he was broke—still owed her twenty pesos and had only two pesos in his billfold—but couldn’t she reschedule the fellow anyhow? For old times’ sake? There was a silence on the line, and then she said perhaps she could tell the sonofabitch she had her period. Would she loan him a couple of bucks to pay for the room? the Orkin Man wanted to know. The woman cursed her stupidity, then asked how the hell he managed to get by, never having a frigging penny in his pocket. It was agreed that the Orkin Man would wait for her at the bar and pay for his drink, and that therefore he’d better nurse it. And if she caught him talking with, smiling at, or even looking toward where the cigarette girl stood, all bets were off. The Orkin Man returned to the stool with his left hand in the side pocket of his pants to mask his semierection.

  He climbed the stands once the third race concluded, the evening’s program in his hand. Having reached the top, he swept his glance across the sparse crowd; less than three hundred people rather than the usual weekend multitude. He also noticed that most of them were gawkers just passing time. The Orkin Man loved the ambience, from the superstitious bettors who made colored-chalk drawings on the cement floor to help their animals win to the unreachable mechanical rabbit. But figuring that prior results could have been influenced by stimulants, debilitating intercourse, or some other trick, he based his betting solely on the hound’s bearing when it was paraded by the track’s rail. From Robinson he had learned that dogs also laugh and cry; therefore, he believed that the animal’s state of mind could be more important than its previous record, its sex, or its age. And during the walk, Sweet Flash was always playful and lively, swaying and flirtatious. She smiled merrily too.