by Marc Olden
At a café on the Rue de Rivoli, and now certain that they were not being followed, Rolando ordered a carafe of vin rosé for himself and Barbara, then left the table. Barbara relaxed, filing her nails while watching a young French couple hold hands across a table. All the love in Barbara’s life was painful.
She loved her son, whom she never saw, and she desperately loved Rolando, the priest, who was a homosexual. Right now, he was telephoning Mas Betancourt in New York, telling him that the second payment had been made, that all had gone well, that they would leave Paris tonight and land at Kennedy Airport early tomorrow morning.
Rolando, using a public telephone, spoke in Spanish to Mas Betancourt.
“It went well. The delivery was made, and we did not attract attention.”
“Good, good.” Mas’s voice blended with the crackle of transatlantic static. His words echoed and reechoed in Rolando’s ear.
Mas said, “Anything more?”
“No. She did nothing, spoke to no one, went nowhere. We had separate rooms, but I paid a clerk to tell me if she left to meet anyone. The clerk says she didn’t and I believe him.” Rolando could not understand why Mas had asked him to watch Barbara Pomal. It was unthinkable for Barbara to betray Mas.
Mas did not explain why he had ordered Rolando to watch her carefully and report back.
“She saw no one, spoke to no one?”
“No. Except for sleeping in separate rooms, I have been with her every single moment.”
“No signals, nothing you might have missed?”
Rolando laughed, shifting the receiver to another ear. On the street in front of him, Parisians on bicycles, motorbikes, and in tiny gray cars waited for a red light to change to green.
“My beloved uncle, the woman is as Caesar’s wife. She is above reproach. What is this suspicion? She’s worked for you for over ten years. Hasn’t cheated you out of a dime. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, nothing. You’re sure? She spoke only to you and our friends, right?”
The priest’s eyes followed two blond Scandinavian teenage boys with bright orange rucksacks on their backs. “No one but me and our friends. Yes, uncle.” What was Mas worried about? Why was he suddenly suspicious of Barbara? Another puzzle to unravel.
Rolando frowned. “Has this got anything to do with—”
“And you haven’t mentioned anything to Barbara? She doesn’t know you’re watching her?”
“No. She is doing her job. I can see her from here, and all she’s doing is filing her nails and drinking wine. I took her all over Paris, didn’t tell her where we were going, so she had no idea when we’d stop. It was impossible for her to set up anything. Believe me, uncle, I’d know. I have one of the better minds in your employ, correct?”
“Sí, sí. Okay, I see you tomorrow. Don’t come to me from the airport. Go home, wait. I call you.”
“And Barbara?”
“I take care of Barbara. Thank you, Rolando. Take care of yourself.”
At the table, Rolando sipped wine, observed Barbara closely, and wondered if she knew that powerful women must always be careful. Even queens are toppled and destroyed.
At their hotel, he left her in the lobby.
Her face showed that she knew where he was going. Why did she love him? Nothing would ever come of it. He had told her so again and again. But still she loved him. For her, it was only the priest, which Rolando thought was piling pain on top of pain. She loved her son and could not have him, and she loved Rolando and would never have him.
But the priest treated her gently, knowing that the detachment he felt toward women gave him an advantage over her.
She touched his arm, her eyes searching his face, wanting to ask him why he did it, why he had to go now, and knowing he would smile and give her no answer. Why was he wearing his Roman collar? Because he wanted to, because it fitted his ironical view of life, himself, God. Why was he now going to find sex with a stranger? Because he wanted to.
Looking quickly around the lobby, she leaned forward, kissing him gently on the cheek.
“I don’t care if people see.”
He smiled, his sad brown eyes looking deeply into hers. “People see very little. Notice, we haven’t been stoned or whipped. I’ll call you when I get back.”
The pain of his leaving, of his going to a stranger, hit her hard. She nodded, quickly turning her back to him and walking away before he saw the tears.
In a small, dark, smoke-filled Pigalle nightclub, the priest sat alone at a table, staring up. Above him, in a large net suspended from the ceiling, two slim young men and a girl made love to one another, to the eerie, droning sounds of Gregorian chants. The bodies of the young lovers rolled from side to side, and the patrons beneath them stared unblinkingly, turning their heads to follow the lovers as they writhed across the net.
Rolando smiled, enjoying the irony of watching sex to sacred music, wondering which of the two young boys he would buy when the show was over.
9
WHEN MAS BETANCOURT PUT down the receiver and turned to speak to his wife, she knew something was wrong.
“He’s dead.”
Pilar Betancourt bowed her head, made the sign of the cross, frowning and deepening the lines in her forehead. “The telephone call just now …”
“Sí.” Mas sat on a dark red velvet couch, thick, walnut-brown hands folded in his lap. “He died this morning.”
Adiós, mi padre. The babalawo, old, sick, and mortal after all, had closed his eyes in death less than an hour ago. The tiny black man would see no more. His eyes were now blind to this world and to all worlds.
The babalawo had died without saying anything more about the woman who might betray Mas Betancourt, the woman who was a dark, deadly shadow. And still waiting.
Pilar Betancourt sat down on the couch, her hands reaching for his.
“God’s will,” she said, and she believed it. She was a woman born for sorrow, accepting, though never fully understanding, the horrors of life. She was thirty-six, her beauty fading, her gentle, aristocratic face lined by years of emotional and physical pain, her always slim body now too thin.
God always takes, thought Mas. My sons, my legs, my wife’s breast. And now the babalawo. When I need the priest more than ever, God calls him, and the priest goes. Mas was too stunned to be enraged.
He would have to find another babalawo, though it wouldn’t be easy. The relationship between man and priest was special, and to find a priest to trust, to feel comfortable with …
It wouldn’t be easy.
Pilar Betancourt, in a long-sleeved gray woolen dress, her long auburn hair piled around her head like a soft woolen cap, fingered a tiny gold cross around her neck. “What happens to the priest now?”
“The ceremony begins almost at once. They must contact his spirit to find out what they should do with his possessions, the things he uses for his magic. Usually everything is buried with him. A black chicken must be killed and also buried with him.”
Mas Betancourt sighed, gently squeezing his wife’s hand. “At the funeral parlor, there is a special ceremony. Dancing, chanting. Nine days after death, there must be a Catholic mass, then a spiritual mass with flowers and candles being offered. One year later, there will be another ceremony. This one completely cuts his ties with this world and makes him free. Free.”
Mas Betancourt said the word with envy.
Pilar’s hand was cool on his neck, and he leaned back into her touch.
“I am sorry, querido.” Her words were for him, not for the priest on whom he had depended. Pilar Betancourt’s intense love for her husband matched his love for her.
She had been born into a Havana family of wealth and status, raised to defer to the strength and wisdom of men, as all Latin women were, and in Mas Betancourt she had found the man she would serve all of her life. He’d married her when he was thirty-seven and she seventeen and a virgin, one of the most beautiful women in Havana.
Their time of total h
appiness together was brief. Late in 1959, Castro’s revolution triumphed, costing her family and most of Cuba’s upper class all of its wealth. Shortly after that, her parents were killed, and so were her two infant sons. Then Mas was crippled, his legs crushed.
She had nursed him, and he could now get around, dragging himself on crutches. But he was no longer the strong athlete, the skilled boxer and jai alai player who had thrilled her and other Cubans with his physical excellence.
She knew he dealt in narcotics, that he had men killed. She knew because they discussed what he did. Business with lieutenants and distributors was never conducted in their home or in front of her. She left the room when certain telephone calls came in, waiting for Mas to discuss what had been said.
Pilar Betancourt was a Cuban wife, a Catholic, raised to obey husband and church, to raise no questions or obstacles. But she loved Mas, not because it was expected of her, but because of a tenderness she found in his strength. He was leaving dope, he had promised her that, and Mas was a man of his word.
This deal would be his last. La última. After it was completed, they would move to Spain and be with other Cuban exiles. Spain, where Mas owned property, where Pilar would not have to worry about her husband dying at the hands of someone in narcotics. She wouldn’t miss New York. It wasn’t a city, it was a concrete cage filled with millions of animals.
She was not involved in her husband’s business; Mas kept her completely away from all aspects of dope dealing. And because she had no direct contact with narcotics or its victims, she found it easy to put the matter entirely out of her mind until Mas discussed something with her.
He turned to her. “I have to go out. Call DaPaola for me. Tell him I want Ray to drive. Have both of them meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes.”
Luis DaPaola was one of Mas Betancourt’s three trusted lieutenants. Ray was new, a young Cuban who served as driver and bodyguard.
As Pilar dialed slowly, carefully, Mas looked at her tired, beautiful face. She slept nine or ten hours nightly, still waking up exhausted. During the day she napped at least once, sometimes twice. At Mas’s insistence, three doctors had examined her since her mastectomy, finding nothing wrong with her, although it would be at least five years before it was certain that all cancer was completely gone from her body.
Pilar followed her doctors’ advice. She did the special exercises necessary to strengthen the left side of her body, took vitamins, and though she ate little, she ate the foods the doctors prescribed. But she was still thin, still tired, and Mas worried about her.
She did not want him to see her mutilated body, so she undressed with the lights out, always wearing a blouse to bed, hiding her scars from him even in darkness. Often he would kiss Pilar’s scars, his lips touching cloth, sometimes weeping silently as Pilar had done when she had first kissed his crippled, withered legs.
She still didn’t know that the babalawo had predicted her death unless she left New York. That prediction was buried deep within Mas Betancourt, surrounded by the cold fear that the prediction just might come true.
But it wouldn’t. He would see that it did not come true. One more deal, and he would quit. And keep Pilar alive. But time was running out.
At the front door, in overcoat and hat, leaning on his crutches, he looked into her eyes. Sad, gentle brown eyes that he had so often kissed.
“I’ll be at Cervantes’ restaurant. We have to talk about the rest of the money, the final third. It’s due next month.”
“What did the babalawo say?”
“Nothing. But I must do it. I have only days to make the payment, and that is barely enough time. Some people are having trouble getting their share together, and we have to pressure them.”
She fastened the top button on his overcoat “Barbara. Can’t she help you with the money?”
“She is. She is in Chicago. Then she goes to Cleveland, Baltimore, Washington, and Newark. I must have commitments now, before the load comes in. She’s making sure, that’s all.”
“I see. And DaPaola and Lazzaro?”
“They have a lot to do here. They are dealing with top distributors and with the blacks. That is a lot of work, they are busy.”
She nodded. “Everything will be successful, I know it.”
He leaned forward, pressing down hard on his short aluminum crutches, and they kissed gently. Her perfume was flowers and lemons, a scent she had used for years. Pilar was constant in all things.
It must be successful, he thought. What is there left for me, for us, if I fail?
“Everything will be good for us,” he said.
But inside, he felt the same fear that had gripped him when Pilar had gone into the hospital to have her breast removed. That fear was a hideous, screaming beast, riding his back with sharpened claws, digging in deeper every minute and holding on, holding on.
10
BANDAGES WERE WRAPPED ACROSS both eyes, around his forehead, and down the right side of the stocky man’s face. His thin, wide mouth and a few inches of unshaved skin were visible, but most of Russell Gormes’s face was hidden under soft white gauze. He lay on his back in a hospital bed talking slowly and wheezing between sentences. Katey, the only other person in the tiny room, thought Russell sounded like an old man who’d just been kicked in the throat.
Russell Gormes said, “Two of them. Didn’t see the second dude until it was too late. Some old biddy screams, so I turn, and that’s when he cuts loose with the sawed-off. He hit a lot of the wall, but got enough of me to put me here.”
He stopped talking in order to wheeze and cough, feeling the plastic hospital identification bracelet on his left wrist with stubby fingers whose nails had been chewed down to nothing.
“Same time I see this flash of light, I hear this fuckin’ noise like being trapped in a telephone booth with thunder, and next thing, my face is on fire. Pain that won’t quit, like somebody hit me in both eyes with a pan of hot grease. My face is burning up, and I go down like a rock sinking in water. I’m screaming, and I can’t see shit. I’m bli …”
Almost said “blind.” Russell Gormes caught himself in time. No way was he going to say “blind.” Didn’t matter how many miles of bandages they had wrapped across his eyes and around his face. Russell Gormes wasn’t going to say “blind.”
Sun coming through an unwashed window was warm on Katey’s neck and shoulders. He sat in the only chair, an unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker Red wrapped in a brown paper bag between his legs. The bottle was for Russell, who used to be his partner. Russell wasn’t a cop anymore, and the story behind that was mind-blowing.
Russell Gormes, thirty-three, short and strong, built like two fire hydrants welded together. Thick black eyebrows that met over his hooked Lebanese nose, and feet turned out so that when he walked fast he waddled like a drunken duck. Good cop, good man.
And so fucking unlucky, it was pathetic.
Doctors had told Katey that it was almost certain Russell Gormes would be permanently blinded by the shotgun blast he’d taken in the face yesterday afternoon. Russell didn’t know this, and Katey wasn’t going to tell him.
Katey said, “Leslie. How is she?”
“Hangin’ in there. Still havin’ trouble with her breathing though. Been in to see me this morning, and she’s gonna try to come back this afternoon if she can. How’s your love life?”
Small talk about nothing, thought Katey. But he’s got to talk about anything except those bandages.
“Still seeing Margaret. Still separated from Grace. One of these days Grace’s lawyer and my lawyer are gonna sit down and hit us with their briefcases, and that’s when you’ll hear me holler.”
Russell Gormes snorted. “Don’t tell me about lawyers. Leslie and me could write a book about those bloodsuckers.” His stubby hands gently touched the bandages over his eyes as though they were a new scab.
Katey placed the brown bag under his chair. He could write a book, too. He could write a book about Leslie Lucas, who was the
reason Russell Gormes wasn’t a cop anymore and had been forced to take a job guarding a Columbus Avenue bingo joint, where a little after four yesterday afternoon two spic junkies had tried to take off the manager and patrons. One had a sawed-off shotgun that he had used on Russell Gormes’s face.
Leslie Lucas was a delicately pretty blond informant who had once been on the fringes of a Brooklyn Mafia family that had been smuggling untaxed cigarettes from North Carolina to New York. Russell Gormes had fallen in love with her and left his wife. Because of Leslie Lucas, he’d eventually been forced to resign from the police department.
Katey loosened his tie and put his feet up on the edge of Russell Gormes’s bed. He liked Russell a lot. The man had been steady, dependable, never coming unglued, no matter what went down. If there was trouble and you needed a man to watch your back, put Russell Gormes at the top of the list.
These days, you could only feel sorry for the poor Lebanese bastard, and feeling sorry for anybody was something Katey couldn’t deal with.
Pity confused him, and cops should never be confused. You liked somebody or you didn’t. A thing was right or wrong. Katey understood that. But pity? Katey couldn’t handle that.
The shit had really hit the fan when a cop like Russell Gormes—detective’s gold shield and eight commendations before he was thirty—fell in love with a snitch. Incredible.
And leaving his wife to live with her. Everybody went around shaking his head over that one. The department had no choice but to fuck him over, to make an example of him. Laws, written and unwritten, had been broken. A good cop turning in his shield to shack up with a Judas. It made the department look foolish, and that’s why Russell Gormes had to get hurt.
From that point on, Katey’s partner sped downhill faster than if he were wrapped in wet silk sliding down a glass mountain. And all Katey could do was watch and feel sad about it, because Russell refused to listen to anybody when it came to Leslie Lucas. Katey wanted to punch walls, but what would that have proved?
