Chicago Noir

by Neal Pollack

  The woman—Virginia was her name—didn't say much during the conversation. Dago was never sure if she ever believed that he was, in fact, one of Cuba's most popular drag attractions, as he described himself. He talked nonstop for ten minutes. Then a man walked in, utterly dashing, maybe thirty years old, about 5'9", cinnamon-colored and princely, bearing a boyish grin. He wore denim pants with a huge buckle in the shape of what looked like Cuba if somebody had tried to take the hump out of it. Later, Dago would learn it was Sinaloa, a Mexican province notorious for its drug runners. The man whispered in Virginia's ear. He looked at Dago only once, and only long enough to wink in his direction before disappearing again.

  * * *

  Dago had drinks on the house that night and watched the show, a parade of queens trying their best on Third World budgets to create First World fantasies. The next day at noon sharp, he was given a tour by Virginia of the storage closet that served as the queens' dressing room (they shared the bathroom with the customers, male and female), and offered a look at the DJ's collection to pick out his debut song. There was no La Mora. There was no Celeste Mendoza or Juana Bacallao, though plenty of Lola Beltran and Veronica Castro. Dago sent the resourceful Quique off with twenty dollars and a list of possibilities. He came back with Olga Guillot's greatest hits in pristine condition.

  That night, Dago was introduced to the overflow Saturday night crowd as La Mora, covered in a simple blue chiffon dress with black pumps, his naps under a towering black hive of a wig, his jewelry accidentally tasteful by virtue of its simplicity. After hours of rancheras and accordion-laced banda music, La Mora came out defiantly, her supple lips shaping the words to Guillot's "La Mentira," a slow-burning torch song that entrusts the lying lover to God's judgement.

  Dago faltered only once, and it was only for a split second: To her astonishment, there was Father Mariano, sitting expressionless next to the man with the Sinaloa buckle from the night before. By now Dago knew the man was Beto Chavez, Virginia's straight, married, drug-dealing son, a rascal who flirted with every queen at La Caverna but had never been caught with his pants down except with natural born women. Quique didn't know anyone but he certainly knew everything. Beto Chavez winked again and lifted a can of Tecate in Dago's direction.

  When a shaken La Mora finished, her eyes downcast, chest heaving, there was a silent pause, then Dago heard the applause like a rolling wave gathering force as it neared the shore, finally crashing in shouts of "bravo!" and "viva la mulata!" and general whistling. As she exited the floor, La Mora turned for an instant. Beto Chavez was clapping, but slowly, looking after her with a distant melancholia.

  "Did you love Beto Chavez?" Zoe Pino asked, her leonine hair straying into her line of vision as she positioned her pen on a blank page of her reporter's notebook. She shook her hair back with a shrug. They were two hours into dinner, well into a second bottle of wine, and had long put all of Zoe's questions about Cuba-this and Cuba-that to rest.

  "Did I … did I love Beto Chavez?" Destiny repeated, aghast. "What gives you the idea I … I mean, what are you getting at?"

  "C'mon, Destiny … I know."

  "You know what?"

  "About you and Beto."

  "Well, I don't know what you're talking about." Destiny began to gather her lighter and the pack of Romeo y Julietas she'd dropped on the table.

  "Look, I'll close my notebook." Zoe flipped it shut. "Off the record, I swear. I'll never use it. I certainly have no need to for these Mariel profiles. But please, I've heard so many rumors about you and Beto …"

  "And you listen to rumors?"

  "I'm a reporter, yeah …"

  "They're just rumors, that's all."

  There was silence. Zoe reached across the table to Destiny's hand. "It's a great love story. One of the greatest, if it's true."

  Destiny shook her head and turned away. There was no need for Zoe Pino to see her tears.

  It was Beto Chavez who'd created the opportunity for her at La Caverna, immediately realizing the young queen talking to his mother had to be the same one he'd heard about earlier from Mariano. It was also Beto Chavez who named her Destiny. "It was fate," he said to her after her first show. "Destiny, pure destiny."

  After the performance, Mariano and Dago stared, dumbfounded by the other's appearance in this most unlikely of places. Mariano would learn Dago's trajectory to La Caverna that very night but it would take Dago a bit longer, more than a year, to understand that Mariano was actually a defrocked priest, a pre–Vatican II follower, who offered Latin masses in a former Lutheran church, now converted and supported by Beto Chavez and an entire community of narco-traffickers.

  It had been Beto's boat, the San Dimas, that the priest had taken to Mariel to snatch up his brother-in-law, a boat normally used to ferry between Florida and the bleached islets of corrupt coral that served as hideouts for smugglers. Beto Chavez was a Dimas devotee, and he showed Dago the cross on the chain that hung around his neck.

  "Not Christ, no. Look: no crown of thorns, no nails, just rope," he explained, as Dago examined the little crucified man and breathed in Beto's cologne. "Dimas, Dimas the good thief."

  Beto Chavez was beautiful: his eyes wet with sadness but his smile a beacon. Dago fingered the knot in the shoelace he'd tied before, the tight little vise he'd placed on the saint's venerable testicles, now securely tucked into his handbag.

  "Destiny …" Beto said, this time in a whisper, his lips grazing Dago's ear.

  It was not lightning between Destiny and Beto Chavez. That Beto flirted surprised no one. That he was chivalrous was the norm. At least that's what Quique Lopez kept telling Destiny so she wouldn't have any illusions.

  But what few people realized at first—including his mother Virginia—was that, within weeks of her debut, Beto Chavez had set up Destiny with her own apartment above a barbershop in Pilsen, far enough from La Caverna that he could pretend no one knew of his visits, but only ten minutes southeast of his family's home on Kedvale, around the corner from the club in La Villita that served to launder so much of his profits.

  It is unlikely that anyone would have believed that Beto Chavez was not fucking Destiny by then. It was clear he was utterly bewitched by her, by the way she walked, by the smell and feel of her hair, by the silky arousal her hands on him provoked. But when Beto had explained that he had no intention of touching or being touched by Destiny's manhood, he got quite the surprise.

  "I'm no fag," he said, grinning.

  "All of me or none of me," Destiny said in refusal, flatly turning down the handsome, powerful drug lord, the one whom the sorority back at La Caverna yearned for precisely because he'd never, ever been known to betray the slightest interest in a queen.

  Beto tried once, and only once, to force himself on Destiny. But he was stunned to discover how strong and limber she was, how easily the much taller and felid Destiny flipped him over, tying his hands with his Sinaloa belt, her knee jabbing Saint Dimas into his neck. She swore that if he tried it again, she wouldn't hesitate to kill him, no matter what happened to her afterwards.

  "I have nothing," she whispered fiercely, "so I have nothing to lose."

  "How'd you get so … so strong?" Beto asked, coughing, not afraid but even more in awe.

  "Cutting cane, forced 'volunteer' work in my country," Destiny said, massaging Beto's neck and shoulders as he leaned back on her, both of them still on the floor. "You'd be amazed by what I can do with a machete. Or a knife."

  Six months later, six months of Beto pleading and threatening to cut her off or have her fired, six months of Destiny shouting back that she'd tell the whole neighborhood how she'd thrown him on the floor, six months of Beto getting used to recognizing the pulse of Destiny's desire against his leg or belly, of kissing and feeling her everywhere but there, Beto Chavez showed up one rainy April dawn at the apartment and let himself in with his key. He lifted the blanket from Destiny's sleeping body, lowered himself to his knees and put his hungry mouth to her triumph.
>
  Zoe Pino stroked Destiny's hand gently. "I know some things," she said. "I know you were, in some ways, almost married for a few years …"

  Destiny winced. "I wouldn't ever say that. He was married, you know, really married, to a woman."

  Destiny had seen her only once and had been surprised. Beto's wife was not a roly-poly demure woman, older than her years by virtue of the stress that Beto engendered with his lifestyle. Staring at her across Mariano's church, Destiny found she was nothing like she'd expected: at least as tall as Beto, a pale skinned Mexican woman with reddish hair, strong and dignified. If Virginia hadn't been right by her side, Destiny might have doubted it was her.

  "A sort of second wife then …" Zoe said.

  "You mean a mistress," Destiny clarified.

  "Was that it then? You were his mistress? You know, they say mistresses are often the big love of men's lives …"

  "Don't patronize me, Zoe, please."

  Had she been Beto Chavez's true love?

  That apartment above the barbershop on 18th Street had been a cozy little nest for many years. After work, when Destiny got home as the skies cleared for morning, Beto would come over for breakfast and the sweet exhaustion of their play. They'd spoon together for what seemed hours but which Destiny knew must have been only a little while, until she was asleep. Then he'd tiptoe out, back to his world of mystery and violence.

  It was not unusual for him to come home hurt, to have sprained an ankle running, to have his face torn apart in a fight, to take a bullet in the flesh of his arm. He'd always come to her first, he'd always come to be cured by her hands and to sleep off the doubt and fatigue in her bed.

  He brought her the usual romantic offerings of chocolate and flowers but also books and records, including an import of Moraima Secada singing filin, which could always make her cry. Instead of cocaine, he brought her what seemed an interminable supply of hormones; these made her smoother and curvier, her muscles softer though she was no less formidable.

  Sometimes, on her days off, he'd show up in the early evening and they'd watch a movie and make dinner together. Destiny realized she'd never seen him anywhere outside of the club or her apartment, a place she kept warm, ready, but barred to all other visitors out of respect for Beto. Except for that last time …

  At some point, of course, Virginia knew, the other queens knew, everyone knew. But it was so startling that even as time passed and all the little clues accumulated to create a rather convincing circumstantial case, doubt nagged even the most vociferous gossips; insecurity, and perhaps fear too, because Beto Chavez wasn't anyone to trifle with, dogged even the most convinced.

  Could it be real?

  If things hadn't changed so dramatically, if everything hadn't ended so abruptly, if her world hadn't collapsed so utterly, Destiny wondered how long they could have gone on like that … Back then she would have said forever, she would have wanted forever, would have believed in it.

  But now, even as she sometimes touched the loosened shoelace on her own homemade altar to Saint Dimas, she knew that everything Zoe Pino would write about her—the pageants, the titles, the movie, her sanctified role in the most prestigious drag show in all of Chicago, the ridiculously profitable website (Quique, now her manager, had come up with it), the sensation she caused on returning to Havana for a millennium appearance captured by CNN (for 2001, not 2000, because the Cubans did not agree with the rest of the world on the new century's commencement)—none of it would have happened if she and Beto had continued their journey together.

  Catastrophe happened on an early and placid Tuesday evening in late summer. Destiny's windows were open and she heard Beto's voice downstairs greeting the barber, who'd stepped outside to take in the wild palette of sunset descending west on 18th Street. She leaned out eagerly, imagining herself like Juliet for a moment, ready to hear promises from her Romeo, when she suddenly caught sight of a pickup truck inching its way down the street, a couple of black-garbed men, not cowboys but more like ninjas, leaning over the cab, the stout barrels of their automatics slowly taking aim.

  Destiny's mouth opened. In her head, she screamed, as loud and precise as a missile. But the only sound heard for blocks and blocks was the explosive rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire as Beto Chavez danced like a marionette on the cracked Pilsen sidewalk, his arms reaching out to the barber who fell beneath him. Within seconds, the pickup truck was an eastbound blur, a cloud of smoke and black powder slowly settling in its wake.

  Destiny raced downstairs, her throat still incapable of noise. She pulled Beto off the barber, onto his bloodied back, only to find the bullets had made tripe of his chest and belly. Her hands went to keep him together, to keep him whole. The barber's wife was now on the ground beside him, the light disappearing as people gathered, leaning in. Someone tried to pull Destiny off Beto but she cuffed him so hard he fell back and no one else dared get near her.

  "Go …" Beto whispered. "Get out of here …"

  She tried to protest but the words were still struggling to exit, impossible to form. She noticed his chain with the Saint Dimas cross on the ground and picked it up, letting the light glint off of it so he could see she'd saved it.

  He licked his lips. "See you in paradise … okay?"

  Zoe Pino cocked an eyebrow in Destiny's direction. "C'mon, he didn't really say that."

  "I swear."

  Destiny lit another Romeo y Julieta. She'd lost count. The bitch had gotten her to tell the whole damn story and now she didn't believe her?

  "'I'll see you in paradise'? I mean, that's …"

  "I know, I know," Destiny interrupted. "How do you think it made me feel? And how do you think it makes me feel now to know I can never tell that story because nobody will ever fucking believe me?"

  "No, no, I believe you," Zoe insisted. "It's just, well, unbelievable. I mean, it's … Look … you know what I'm trying to say."

  Destiny nodded.

  "So that's when you left Pilsen?"

  "I had to."

  "What do you mean you had to?"

  "I had to! Before the ambulance had even arrived, another car drove up, this one full of Mexican cowboys with their pistols drawn. One guy, a little skinny guy, his eyes all mean, he looked right at me and pointed his gun at Beto and just shot him point blank. I felt like Jackie Kennedy, gathering bits of his brains into my lap. I was screaming—finally!—and crying, and he made this motion with the pistol for me to go, and I did. I just ran and ran, scattering pieces of Beto all the way to Quique's apartment and stayed holed up there, terrified and traumatized, until the day of Beto's funeral."

  When she and Quique finally made it back to her apartment, they found the place had been tossed. All of her records and books were on the floor, clothes torn from the bar in the closet, the mattress gutted. The refrigerator leaked a foul smell from a puddle underneath.

  Destiny just sobbed and sobbed.

  "My god … what did they want? Do you know what they wanted? Did Beto keep anything here?" Quique asked, his voice shaky.

  She shook her head.

  "Are you sure?"

  Beto hadn't even kept a change of socks there. Destiny realized all she had of him now and forever was the Saint Dimas cross from around his neck.

  Later, at Mariano's church before the family arrived for funeral services, the priest, his stone face wet, opened the casket so she could have a last look. Destiny, wearing a men's suit for the first time in her life, looked down at her lover. Beto was in pieces, like Saint Dimas himself, with a forearm in Jerusalem and a tibula in Istanbul.

  A noise from the front of the church revealed Beto's family, a mournful Virginia leading the widow and a gaggle of children. Sternfaced men, no doubt armed, flanked them on both sides. Mariano immediately snapped shut the casket and Destiny stepped back, disappearing into the shadows.

  The only other thing she remembered from that day was Mariano's prayer: Saint Dimas, from great sinner and criminal, a moment of mercy turned you into a grea
t Saint. Remember me, poor sinner like you, and maybe greater sinner than you …

  Zoe parked her boxy Nissan in front of a Western-wear store on 26th Street with a garish yellow awning and snakeskin belts draping one of the windows. Across the street was La Caverna, as anonymous as ever.

  "You ready?" she asked.

  Destiny nodded and pulled the car door open. She could smell the carnitas from the corner.

  "You've really never come back?"

  "Never," Destiny said.

  "See, I just don't get that, because you weren't in danger. Unless, of course, somebody thought you knew something … ?"

  Destiny sprinted ahead, sick of Zoe's baiting. Upon seeing Destiny, the same cross-eyed bouncer from years before grinned and called her by her old name: "La Mora! Doña Mora!" There was a flurry of activity then, with men stepping up to bow and kiss her hand and queens popping out of nowhere, screeching and jumping up and down. Zoe struggled to keep Destiny in sight, though she was easily the tallest person there, her head high and steady.

  Inside La Caverna, Destiny saw the same Mexican man, now white-haired, serving drinks. But the place was different: cleaner, painted. There were color posters of all the new queens framed on the wall. She was stunned to see her own face staring back at her from above the bar, in the center of a sort of Wall of Fame of famous queens who'd started at La Caverna.

  Destiny clutched her heart, unexpectedly moved. Then she saw that Virginia was still there too, sitting on a stool behind the bar, taking money. The woman, now an old crone, flinched when she saw Destiny. The crowd parted like the Red Sea.