“Don’t go.” Maria placed her hand over his. “Sometimes Queen Erzulie makes me say bad things.”
“I’m sure you’re a good girl.” Bongo pulled his hand away.
Guy Armstrong was off his stool and plunging into the crowd.
“A very good girl.” Bongo slapped a peso tip down as he moved quickly away, not wanting Armstrong to get out of the bar before he did.
“You’ll be back,” Maria called, batting her eyelashes. “I know your kind. Sweet Maria will be waiting.”
Outside the Three Virgins, Bongo waited in the Rocket convertible, its canvas top pulled up and windows rolled tight. He didn’t want Guy Armstrong to spot him when he came out. Bongo lit up a Lucky Strike. He cracked a window, the cigarette smoke drifted out into the night. What was keeping Armstrong in the bar so long?
Bongo punched the glove compartment button and the lid dropped down. He pulled out a manila envelope and dumped its contents onto the passenger seat. In the dim light the photographed faces of three college girls smiled up. He ran his gaze over the faces, the large brown eyes, the sweet curve of lips, the expressions of innocence. He had examined the faces many times in the last week. His interest went beyond the fact that the girls were friends of Mercedes’ and had been in the Tropicana on New Year’s Eve. He was interested because their mothers had come to his office; three weeping women begging for his help in finding their missing daughters. They had been to the police, who had taken money from them and promised to investigate. Weeks went by without any word. When the mothers returned to the police, they were told that their daughters had been kidnapped and killed by terrorists. The police took more of their money, claiming they would find the bodies. But there were still no bodies. The grieving mothers believed Bongo could help; he understood how to investigate disaster, that was his job.
Bongo heard a car. A Chrysler Imperial limousine pulled up, its headlights glowed like dragon eyes above the malevolent grin of the slanted chrome grille. The deep throb of the Imperial’s engine was cut and three people climbed out. Bongo could tell right away they were Americans, but not because of the car. Many Cubans had American cars. They were obviously slumming it in a Cuban dive after a late night at the casino. One of them was short, muscular and bald; he moved with the square-shouldered forward lean of a boxer in the ring. The other guy was big and blubbery, with a head like a watermelon clobbered by a sledgehammer, his face raw and red, and the tip of his tongue dripped out one side of his mouth like a slobbering Doberman. The woman was a big-breasted blonde, but not a blonde like Mrs. Armstrong; this one was a peroxided dame. She tugged at her short skirt as she hobbled on high heels. The Doberman growled something at her as he watched the swell of her ass under the skirt she had just yanked into submission. The woman’s crispy voice sang back to the Doberman, “Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry, when I take you out in my surrey.” The Doberman looked perplexed; not knowing what to do, he slapped the bald man on the back of the head. The bald guy turned around with a snarl. The peroxide blonde giggled, the two men grunted at each other, and they all went into the bar.
Laughter and excited shouts seeped through the thin wooden walls of the Three Virgins. The front door flew open and two men staggered out, but they weren’t the two who had just gone in. The men had their arms around each other’s necks, clenched in a rough embrace. Each gripped the long neck of a beer bottle, appearing ready to bash the other.
Bongo slipped the envelope with the photos of the college girls into the glove compartment and slid lower in the front seat. Over the top of the dashboard, he tried to get a clear look at the faces of the two men as they weaved in front of the bar. One of them, dressed in white, could be Armstrong. They both dropped their beer bottles, unzipped their pants and flipped out their dicks. They swung around, each with one arm still around the other’s neck, laughing as they sprayed piss against the wall of the Virgins.
The bar door slammed open again and two more men stumbled out into the night. They swung around and unzipped their pants. “Charge on, team!” shouted the man in white. “Let’s give this old wall a new paint job!”
The voice was definitely Guy Armstrong’s. Bongo slid lower in the seat, completely out of sight. He heard mumbling and pants being zipped up, followed by footsteps and car doors opening and slamming shut. Engines started and tires spun out on gravel.
Bongo popped up from behind the dashboard and looked around. Two cars were speeding away in different directions, their red taillights winking through a veil of dust. Which car was Armstrong’s?
Bongo turned the key in the Rocket’s ignition, flicked on the headlights, and drove off behind a pair of red taillights. There was a fifty-fifty chance he had the right prey in sight. But he hung back. He couldn’t afford to get close enough to the car ahead to see if it was the right one. He couldn’t take the chance of being spotted. The car sped up. Bongo glanced down at the speedometer glowing in a green circle on the dashboard; a black arrow pointed to “80.” He turned off his headlights, racing through the dark.
Bongo gripped the steering wheel with both hands. There was no moon and he couldn’t see the black asphalt. He had to gauge the contours of the road by the red tracers of taillights ahead. The tires squealed. If he calculated wrong the Rocket would swerve onto the dirt shoulder and flip over.
Suddenly the glare of oncoming headlights beamed into Bongo’s eyes. In the opposite lane another car was passing the car ahead. If the Rocket was far enough to the right, Bongo was safe; if the Rocket was over the invisible center line, the two cars would crash head-on.
Bongo had to think fast. Should he switch on his headlights to signal the oncoming car that he was there? If he did, he would give his position away to the car that he was following. He left the lights off. The rhythmic vibrations of the road pulsed through the Rocket’s tires, its beat whirred up through the chassis. Through his grip on the steering wheel, Bongo got the beat. He felt where he was on his own song line as the onrushing car bore down on him with blinding headlights.
A wind-knocking whoosh whipped the air outside the driver’s window of the Rocket as the other car blasted by. A sharp metal clang reverberated in Bongo’s ear and the Rocket shuddered. Bongo held tight to the steering wheel. He glanced down to see the reflection of the other car in his outside mirror, but the mirror had been ripped off by the passing car. That was the metal clang he had heard.
Bongo looked up into the rearview mirror. He could see the car behind him in the illumination of its own taillights. The car screeched to a stop. Two men jumped out to see what their car had hit. Bongo recognized Pedro and Paulo, which meant that Zapata was inside. What was he doing prowling around at this late hour?
Bongo turned his eyes back to the road ahead. The car he had been chasing slowed down, turned off onto a side road, then zigzagged through dusty streets crowded with small houses. It stopped in front of a house. Bongo cut the Rocket’s engine and rolled to a quiet stop a few houses away. He could make out the shape and make of the car he had been following. It was definitely Guy Armstrong’s white Cadillac, as out of place here as a cruise ship beached on a mountaintop.
Armstrong got out and looked suspiciously around, as if suspecting that he had been followed. Then he rapped his knuckles on the car roof, and from the opposite side of the Cadillac emerged a young man with a slender build. He walked up to the house and unlocked the front door. Armstrong followed, closing the door behind him.
No lights came on inside the house. Bongo waited. Still no lights. He decided it was safe enough to get out and try to see something through the house’s windows. Just as he opened the Rocket’s door and stepped out, a car swerved around the corner in front of him, its headlights illuminating the street.
Bongo threw himself back into the convertible, lying flat on the front seat. He reached up to the glove compartment, popped it open, fingered under the manila envelope of photos, and pulled out his revolver.
The other car rolled alongside the Rock
et, its engine rumbling.
Bongo twisted around on the front seat, lying on his back. He checked the gun to make certain it was loaded. He had a good view up through the Rocket’s side window. If someone intended to jump him they were in for a surprise.
The car pulled forward, its engine was cut. Doors opened and slammed. Footsteps ran away.
Bongo inched his way up on the front seat until he had a view over the dashboard through the windshield.
He was surprised to see the two men who had joined Armstrong in pissing on the wall of the Three Virgins. They walked up to the front door of the house Armstrong had disappeared into. One knocked on the door. The door stayed closed. The man knocked again. The door cracked open. Armstrong’s white face peered out, the two men quickly went inside. Armstrong closed the door.
Bongo waited three hours. No lights came on inside. He lit up his last Lucky and turned on the radio, keeping the sound low. He found a Miami station—only the Florida stations were on this late. Only the Americans worked and played twenty-four hours a day, never giving themselves time off, every moment was a job. A song drifted to a melodious end. The radio announcer came on, his voice intimate and wrapped in the folds of the night’s inky darkness. “The next tune is by Miss Peggy Lee, so cuddle up next to your baby.”
Bongo had no baby to cuddle up to. He gripped the handle of his revolver tighter and thought of Mrs. Armstrong. Peggy Lee was one of her favorites, along with Johnnie Ray. He remembered Mrs. Armstrong’s blond hair cascading in front of his face and the scent of her perfume. Peggy Lee began to sing. Bongo was startled. It wasn’t what he had expected. It sounded exactly like Mrs. Armstrong. The seductive tone spilled with creamy danger, knowing it had all the time in the world to find its mark, knowing it had the target all to itself, clearly in sight, inevitability just around the corner.
I hear you speak my name,
softly in my ear
you breathe a flame.
The breathy voice panted into Bongo’s ear.
Why quarrel without bliss
when two lips want to kiss?
The languid music seemed to be coming from the lips of a siren deep in the depths of the ocean, rising up in a lush tide. A watery darkness fell over Bongo and he floated away. He saw his sister holding out her hand to him in a flood, she was skinny and naked, only a child. She cried for his help as she clung desperately to a tree, her fingernails digging into the bark. The water was rising up far above Bongo’s head, a deafening torrent, a liquid roar. His sister’s mouth opened as she cried again for his help, but the water silenced her words. He swam toward her, past chickens and goats and turtles and sharks and dead people tumbling in the massive current. He tried to reach her, but he was a drowning boy in a drowning universe. He kicked his feet in the murky water, heading up. He kicked harder until his body broke the surface and he gasped for air, looking around. The flat surface of the water was everywhere; the earth was inundated. He gazed up. The sky was clear blue. The passing hurricane that had raised the waters had swept the heavens clean. Only a vast yellow sun was blazing, and from it came tumbling a giant white spider, falling straight into his face.
Bongo jerked awake in the front seat of the Rocket, gasping to get his breath back. The sun was beating down on the car. He sat up, grabbed the rearview mirror, and twisted it down to peer at his face. Was he visible or a drowned ghost? The mirror was fogged over with moisture. He swiped it clear with the back of his hand. His face was covered with sweat. He could still feel the white spider that had just been crawling on his skin. Then he remembered another face: the black face of the woman in white at the Tropicana, just before the blast. In his mind’s eye he could see her ebony hand banging down on the table in front of Mercedes, crushing the spider. The face was Sweet Maria’s. On New Year’s Eve Maria’s black face had been framed by a white bandanna and she wore no makeup. Stripped of her mask, she had looked completely different from the Sweet Maria who poured aguardiente behind the bar at the Three Virgins.
Bongo rolled down the window of the convertible, sucking in fresh air. Suddenly he was spooked, his body jerked involuntarily. Shadowy shapes surrounded the car. He thought he saw his sister and the three college girls. Then the shapes came into focus. Children encircled the Rocket, standing mute as they stared at him. How long had they been there?
Bongo rubbed his eyes and looked past the children. Guy Armstrong’s Cadillac was gone, and so was the other car. The street was deserted. It was as if everything the night before had been a dream.
Monkey Shines was born on a street named bitterness, but he was an eternal optimist. He was a small man, his body was thin and hard, all twitching muscle and jangling bone. His skin was as black as the stain of indigo ink leaking from a fountain pen clipped to the white shirt pocket of a prosperous businessman. Shines wasn’t prosperous, but he was industrious. This industry kept him moving all day long in the hot sun at his “office” beneath the palms on the steps of the marble José Martí monument in Parque Central. He sat hunched over on a rickety wooden box, shining the shoes of men who stood above him with one foot steady on the ground, the other foot propped up on the box. All day long the sun came and went over this scene, beating down on the larger-than-life marble figure of Martí, first father and first martyr of modern Cuba, his right hand outstretched before him, pointing toward freedom’s future promise. No matter how hot it got, Martí remained vigilantly cool, despite his suit and long overcoat. Below him, carved in stone around his inscrutable perch, stood children, women and men, looking up in awe, or ahead with a resistant gaze.
Martí was the hero of all Cubans, and Shines had an honored spot at the great man’s feet. He often imagined, just to keep himself going through the long hours of tedium, that he was shining the shoes of the great man himself. But never were the shoes he shined those of great men. Great men were no longer in Cuba. At best, the shoes Shines polished were those of important men of government, commerce or sport; at worst, they were those of elected criminals, small-time thieves or wife-beaters.
Shines never had to look up at the face or clothing of a customer to know what kind of a man he was. He intuited from the leather of the man’s shoes, from the feel of the man’s foot beneath as he rubbed on polish with his bare hands, whether a man was righteous or not. Shines could make conversation with men as he waxed their leathers without ever making eye contact, for he felt that if the eyes of a man were the windows to his soul, then his feet were the result of how he carried himself through the journey of life. The feet didn’t lie, they were formed by where they had been, they couldn’t hide their secrets.
Secrets were not hard for Shines to come by. Many of the men who stood above him considered him a shoe-shining machine that showed up ready for business at dawn as the red sun crept up over the immense Capitolio dome down the street. They assumed that there was no more brain between the two ears of Shines’ shaved black head than there was between the ears of a black mule. These men would talk to their companions, if they had stopped by together for a quick spit shine, or to other men waiting for a shine, if they were getting a double-dip polish. Mostly the talk was about the weather, about sugar prices, about some undeserving cigar roller or canecutter who had won the lottery, about yesterday’s baseball game at El Cerro Stadium. Sometimes the talk was about women, which ones were worth five minutes of a man’s time to stick it to, which ones wanted it but pretended not to. The talk was never about wives; wives didn’t seem to exist. But sometimes the talk was about big money and big deals, about political payoffs and personal back-stabbings. From all this talk, secrets would fall like coins onto Shines’ shiny head, leaving their indelible imprint on his memory. Even in the shadowless glare of the tropical noon, Shines knew everything that was moving between men in Havana.
There were those with whom Shines would share these secrets, others to whom he would sell them, and some who would have to kill him before he would ever reveal a damn thing.
Shines had been feeling
the feet of men in shoes since he was six years old. Six years old, working the streets with his battered little shoe box slung over his shoulder and bigger boys beating him up, stealing his meager tin of polish and smashing the box. But Shines was an optimist. He kept on walking the streets, tugging on men’s trousers, grinning up at them, offering a shine. Shines learned early on that people don’t give money to beggars to help the poor. They gave money to make themselves feel better. So young Shines offered free shines, an offer hard to refuse, and when the shoeshine was done, after a little polish, a lot of spit and ripping of the rag, the man would feel guilty and shove a coin into the offered hand of the skinny kid below him. Shines learned that there was money to be made off another man’s guilt. No matter how high and mighty a man was, he felt guilty about something. A man might be wearing a fine suit and expensive shoes, but maybe he slapped his wife at breakfast because he didn’t like the way she buttered his toast, or he kicked the family dog on the way out of the house, or he cheated on how much money he dropped into the charity basket passed around at church on Sundays. There were a million things, both large and small, that a man could feel guilty about.
Just as a fortune-teller peers into a crystal ball, Shines could touch a man’s foot beneath his shoe leather and know where he had been and where he was headed. It wasn’t the bunions that Shines felt, or the toes that were sometimes bunched or bent, that spoke to Shines. No, Shines could feel the vibrations of a man’s soul in his foot, like the wind blowing through the top of a tree. When Shines didn’t like the vibration he was feeling, he gave a short shine. When he liked the vibration, he gave a double shine and extra wax. And then there were the times Shines dreaded, when he felt no vibration at all. Then he knew he was shining the shoes of a dead man, a devil who had escaped from the grave, stolen the horse of another man’s existence and was riding around on it. Or perhaps there was no vibration because Shines was shining the shoes of a man who was about to die but didn’t know it.
King Bongo Page 11
