The Cuban Club

by Barry Gifford

  “Let’s not ask your uncle if he has any more ideas,” said Willy.

  LEARNING THE GAME

  “Hey, kid, what you think? We take this car, sell it, make big money.”

  Roy was waiting for his mother in her Buick Roadmaster convertible while she was inside her boyfriend Irwin’s building on Clinton Street. Roy was six years old. It was mid-July but the late morning air was still cool and the car’s top was up. His mother had said she’d be back in a couple of minutes, just long enough for her to pick up a few things from Irwin. His company manufactured women’s undergarments: slips, panties, girdles, brassieres and hosiery. He owned a factory in Jackson, Mississippi, where the goods were made, and the building on Clinton Street in Chicago, where the design and shipping departments were located.

  The small, brown man peered into the car. He had thick eyebrows and a thin mustache and was wearing a Panama hat.

  “We get the money, go to Puerto Rico. I am from there, have many friends. We get the money, we are rico there, muy rico.”

  Roy’s mother had left her keys dangling from the ignition. Roy, who was in the back seat, saw them and crawled into the front seat and took out the keys. Irwin’s building was on the south side, neighbored by factories and meatpacking plants, all brown and gray brick buildings.

  “What you say, chico? We go, huh?”

  “No,” Roy said. “This is my mother’s car, she needs it.”

  “She rich. She get a new one.”

  “My father will shoot you.”

  Roy’s mother came out of Irwin’s building carrying two bags. The small, brown man walked away.

  “It took a little longer than I thought it would, Roy. Were you worried?”

  “No, Mom.”

  She put the bags on the back seat.

  “You stay up front with me,” she said.

  “Did you see that little guy in the straw hat?”

  His mother slid in behind the steering wheel.

  ‘Where are my keys?”

  Roy handed them to her.

  “They were in the ignition. I took them out.”

  She adjusted the rear view mirror, then started the engine.

  “What little guy, Roy?”

  “A Puerto Rican man. He wanted me to steal the car with him.”

  “Don’t be silly. He would have to be crazy to steal a car with a child in it.”

  “I told him Dad would shoot him if he did.”

  “You have such an imagination.”

  Roy’s mother started driving.

  “What if I told you that I’m thinking of marrying Irwin? After my divorce from your father is final, of course.”

  “He’s too short for you, Mom.”

  “He is short, but he’s very nice to me, and to you, too.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “I have to make one more quick stop, and then we can have lunch. Would you like to go to the Edgewater?”

  “Have you ever been to Puerto Rico?”

  “Yes, twice. Once with your father, and once with Johnny Salvavidas. Remember him, Roy? You were on his boat.”

  “Did Irwin ask you to marry him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe he won’t.”

  Roy’s mother was a good driver. He always felt safe in the car with her. She drove for several blocks before Roy saw that she was crying.

  “What’s wrong, Mom? Are you upset?”

  “Not really, Roy. Maybe you’re right. Maybe Irwin doesn’t want to get married.”

  “You could get anyone to marry you. You’re beautiful and smart.”

  “And I have a good sense of humor. Don’t I, Roy? We laugh a lot, don’t we?”

  “Yes, Mom. You’re really funny.”

  “Hand me my dark glasses. They’re in the glove compartment.”

  She put the glasses on.

  “Did you stop crying?”

  “Don’t worry, Roy. I’m fine now.”

  They were driving next to the lake. The water was calm and many sailboats were out.

  “What if I had been a girl?” Roy asked. “I mean, if you had a daughter instead of a son.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Would you act different with her than you do with me?”

  “What a strange question. I don’t know, probably. Why did you ask me that?”

  Roy watched the sailboats struggle to catch some wind. He didn’t feel like talking to his mother any more.

  THE FIFTH ANGEL

  Roy fell asleep while he was watching a movie on TV about a twelve year old boy who’s living in an isolated mountain cabin with his parents. His father is a failed writer, a novelist, and he’s sickly; he should be living in a better climate, not in a snowbound redoubt with a wife who doesn’t love him and a child who is not really his own. The boy’s real father is the sick man’s brother who the boy thinks is his uncle, a bank robber who shows up at the mountain retreat during a blizzard with a bullet wound in one leg, accompanied by two cohorts, a third having been captured during the getaway wherein two cops were killed. The bank robber is the boy’s mother’s old boyfriend; his brother married her to give the boy a home and a family. She’s still in love with the bad brother, who intends to escape the manhunt by hiking over a supposedly impassable mountain trail. There’s also a bleach blonde floozy, a warbler who can’t carry a tune, who’s hung up on the bank robber, as well as a handyman who lusts after the boy’s mother and begs her to let him take her away from the invalid novelist. The boy is the hero, the only one who can lead the criminals over the dangerous pass.

  Roy woke up just as the movie was ending. He was ten, two years younger than the intrepid boy, and he wondered if, given a similar circumstance, he would behave as bravely. His own mother had married her third husband a few months before, but Roy knew it wouldn’t last. They were fighting all the time and Roy did not want to continue living with them. He loved his mother but she was constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown; Roy had overheard her talking on the telephone to his grandmother telling her she needed to be hospitalized or sent to a sanitarium, somewhere she could rest. Otherwise, his mother said, something terrible might happen. Roy figured this meant one of three things: that she would kill herself or her husband, or that her husband would kill her.

  Roy didn’t care about his stepfather. The best solution, Roy thought, would be for him to go away, to admit the marriage had been a mistake and leave Roy and his mother alone. It was a week before Christmas and snow was falling. Roy put on his parka and galoshes and went out the back door. He decided that if his mother and her husband did not separate, he would be the one to go. It was five o’clock in the afternoon and there was no light left in the sky. Roy walked into the alley behind his house. He was standing still, letting the snow cover him, when he heard shots, four of them in rapid succession.

  Teddy Anderson, a nephew of Roy’s neighbors Sven and Inga Anderson, came into the alley from behind the Andersons’ garage holding a gun, an automatic. Teddy saw Roy and waved to him with his hand holding the gun. Teddy was twenty years old, he had always been nice to Roy, but Roy knew that Teddy was often in trouble with the law and that his uncle and aunt were trying to straighten him out. Teddy fired a shot into a garbage can behind Johnny Murphy’s house, then he fell down and stayed there. Roy went over to him and saw that in his other hand Teddy was holding a bottle of brandy. He had passed out. Roy took both the gun and the bottle out of Teddy’s hands and put them on the ground just inside the passageway next to the Andersons’ garage, then he went back and dragged Teddy by his left leg out of the middle of the alley and propped him up against the garage door, just in case a car came through and the driver couldn’t see Teddy lying in the snow.

  When he’d heard the shots, Roy thought they could possibly have come from inside his house. If his mother was dead, since his father had died two years before, a court would probably order him to live with his grandmother, which he did not want to do. In this
circumstance he would just run away, get out of Chicago, hop a freight train or hitchhike west, to California or Arizona, somewhere warm, like the writer in the movie should have done.

  He looked at Teddy Anderson leaned against the garage door, sound asleep. Roy was surprised nobody had come into the alley after hearing the shots. He did not feel guilty about being disappointed that neither his mother nor his stepfather had been murdered. Roy walked back into the passageway, picked up the automatic and put it into his coat pocket. He would hide the gun somewhere in his room until he really needed to use it.

  A LONG DAY’S NIGHT IN THE NAKED CITY (TAKE TWO)

  Roy’s father had a friend in Cicero, Illinois, named Momo Giocoforza whom Roy visited once in a while when he was in high school. He died a few years later but in those days Momo hung out at the Villa Schioppo, a restaurant on Cermak Road next to the Western Electric Company plant. Momo was part owner of Hawthorne Racetrack, which was on the boundary between Cicero and Stickney. Roy could usually find him in a back booth of the Villa talking to men who always looked like they were in a hurry. Momo, on the other hand, not only never seemed to be in a hurry, but he hardly moved except to put a fork or glass to his mouth. Momo was a fat man, close to three hundred pounds, with very small hands, fingers no bigger than a ten year old child’s. He rarely shook hands. Momo always seemed glad to see Roy and have plenty of time to talk with him. He insisted that Roy eat something and would order food for both of them. Roy guessed that Momo never stopped eating.

  From what little Momo shared with him about his relationship with Roy’s father, Roy gathered that they had done business together during and after Prohibition, and he never asked Momo for details. Once afternoon when Roy and Momo were having linguini with clam sauce and discussing the vicissitudes of the Chicago Blackhawks, of whom Momo was an avid follower, a short, wiry guy entered the Villa Schioppo and came over to their table and held out to Momo a white envelope.

  “It’s all there,” the man said. “I’m t’rough wid it.”

  Momo did not reach for the envelope so the man put it down on the table.

  “Siddown,” said Momo. “Have some linguini.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Giocoforza, but I can’t. I got my cab outside. I’m workin’.”

  The man shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked nervously around the restaurant. He was about thirty-five years old, five-nine or ten, ordinary features. His eyes were so small Roy could not tell what color they were.

  “So we’re up to date now, right?” he said.

  Momo barely nodded and said, “If you say so, Brian. I’m always here for you.”

  ‘No offense, Mr. Giocoforza, but I hope to Mother Mary I won’t.”

  The man was jumpy, like he badly needed to take a piss.

  “I’m goin’. Thanks a million, Mr. Giocoforza.”

  The man left and Momo picked up the envelope and slid it inside his coat pocket.

  “Funny guy,” Momo said to Roy. “He was a cop. He’s moonlightin’ one night, guardin’ some buildin’s onna Near North Side, and almost gets his eye shot out. Some fancy broad, a white girl, she’s stoppin’ cars—Mercedes, Jags, Cadillacs, expensive models—and tellin’ the drivers she’s got a flat tire or somethin’. As a driver’s about to give her a lift, opens a door, a black guy dressed like a bum comes up behind her and drags her into an alley. Most drivers take off, but one hero gets out, chases the mugger.

  “Now the broad’s a real doll, dressed to the nines, and the hero’s gonna save her, right? Thinkin’ what she’ll give in return. The black guy drops the woman when he sees the hero comin’ to help her. The driver comforts the broad, takes her into his car, asks her where she wants to go. She pulls a pistol out of her purse, puts it to the hero’s head, and the black guy jumps into the back seat, also wid a gun, tells the hero to drive. They go to his house or apartment, which they clean out the jewels and cash. Primo scam. Worked thirty-two times inna row until my pal here, the cop who’s moonlightin’ in order to save money for his weddin’, spots the pair in the act.

  “The cop attempts to pull the black guy out of this Mercedes, doesn’t figure he an’ the broad are workin’ together, an’ she plugs Brian point blank in the skull. Brian’s lyin’ onna sidewalk next to the car and the bum tumbles out right on toppa him. Brian’s bleedin’ all over but takes out his own piece and shoots the black guy, then passes out. When he wakes up, Brian’s inna hospital wid his eye bandaged. He’s barely alive an’ doctors tell him maybe he won’t lose the eye. The black bum’s dead, the broad got away clean.

  “While Brian’s inna hospital, his girl never comes to see him. She thinks he’s gonna die. He’s already given her ten, fourteen thousand for the weddin’. She’s why he was workin’ a second job inna first place, right? So while he’s inna hospital fightin’ to recover, she runs off wid another joker. By the time Brian’s on the street again he’s in deep shit. The police department insurance policy won’t cover him ’cause he was off duty workin’ for a private security firm, and they don’t cover part-timers. So he comes to me, knows a guy knows me. Brian’s suin’ the insurance company, the owner of the buildin’ he was guardin’ that night, the police department, everybody he can think of, payin’ some ambulance chaser to do it. On toppa that he’s afraid to go see the girl threw him over ’cause he’d put six inna her. Now he’s pushin’ a hack tryna get back on his feet. I give him a good deal, plenya time to pay me back, right? Why not? Your dad, he helped out plenya guys.”

  THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

  “I was in Brazil, with Antonio. When we flew into Rio the plane passed over the big statue of Christ on top of Corcovado and for the entire time I was there I couldn’t get that out of my head. The statue, I mean, the way it commanded everything below, in every direction. When I had an orgasm the image of Jesus on the mountaintop was in my mind, like I was coming with Him, not Antonio.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twenty-five. Rudy and I were separated and when Antonio invited me to go with him to Brazil, I just said yes, without thinking. I left Roy with my mother in Miami and we flew from there.”

  “And that was the first time?”

  “Uh huh, and it didn’t happen again—not with Antonio, anyway. I only saw him two or three times after we got back to Chicago.”

  Roy’s mother and her friend Kay were standing in the lobby of the Oriental Theater. Kay was smoking a cigarette. Her husband, Harvey, and Kitty’s son, Roy, who was eight years old, were inside the theater watching the last few minutes of The Proud Ones, a western starring Robert Ryan as a sheriff in a Kansas town who’s going blind.

  “Do you think if I went to Brazil I could have an orgasm with Harvey?”

  The two women laughed and Kitty said, “Maybe you should go with Antonio.”

  “Is he my type?”

  “He looks like Chico, the Mexican gunfighter in the movie, only taller. But Antonio was only an instrument of the Son of God.”

  “You should do a commercial for the Catholic Church, Kitty, standing in a mink coat, saying, ‘Jesus made me come.’ Or, ‘I came for Christ.’ ”

  “I’m sure the nuns believe it when they masturbate.”

  “I thought they weren’t allowed to.”

  People began coming out of the theater.

  “Mom, you missed the best part. The sheriff can’t see but he uses his hearing to figure out where the bad guy is and shoots him down, anyway.”

  Kay’s husband lit a cigarette and watched the crowd leaving.

  “See anything you like?” Kay asked.

  “The movie was okay. The kid liked it.”

  “I mean the women in the lobby.”

  “Lay off, Kay.”

  “Kitty was just telling me about the time she went to Brazil.”

  “I remember when you went there, Mom. You brought me back a little statue of Jesus Christ standing on the top of a mountain.”

  “Did you have fun there, Kitty?” Harvey asked.

&n
bsp; “She certainly did,” said Kay. “She even had a religious experience.”

  “What kind of religious experience?”

  “Kay’s just being silly.”

  “No, really. She had an epiphany.”

  “What’s that?” asked Roy.

  “It’s when you see God,” said Kay, “or you feel Him inside you.”

  “Do you have to be a Catholic to have one?”

  “No, Roy,” Kay said, “but it probably helps.”

  THE FAMILIAR FACE OF DARKNESS

  “You’re a godsend, Rudy. Thanks for helping me out. I won’t forget it.”

  “I’m the one doesn’t forget.”

  “I know, I know. You didn’t have to do this.”

  Rudy turned around and entered Lake Shore Liquors. His partners in the store, Earl LaDuke, who was Rudy’s uncle, and Dick Mooney, were waiting for him. Moe Herman, to whom Rudy had just handed a double sawbuck, went on his way. Rudy never loaned money to anyone; either he gave someone what he or she needed or refused without providing an explanation. All anyone in dire straits wants to hear is yes or no. If he was paid back, so much the better, but there never was a reason to count on it.

  Earl and Dick were seated at a card table in the basement. Rudy’s uncle was smoking a cigar with his eyes closed, and Dick was scrutinizing the previous day’s results at Sportsman’s Park. Rudy sat down and poured himself a finger of Jameson’s from a bottle on the table.

  “Good afternoon, Rudy. How’s Kitty?”