“The Right Guys want Hurricane to know which way the wind is blowing when he’s on the mound Sunday. You know what I mean?”
“They want to make sure he’s throwing in the direction they’re betting.”
“Not throwing too fast, not too slow. Just maintain the right point spread.”
PayDay didn’t like doing strong-arm muscle jobs that any goon could do. He was a specialist, he had worked too hard to get to where he was. But he was also a realist. He knew he was a new guy in Havana who had been brought in to do a big job. Maybe he was being tested. Maybe the Right Guys wanted to see if he was loyal. Maybe the Right Guys wanted to see if he could be trusted to handle a little job first.
PayDay scratched his itchy dick and said to Lizard, “I’m not a bone crusher. There’s hoods who can do that.”
“We can’t crush the Hurricane’s bones. We need his athletic skills. We can’t mess with his real estate.”
“So where do I come in?”
“We want you to teach him some respect. We don’t want his mind to wander when he’s on the mound Sunday in front of fifty-five thousand people.”
“I know about respect.”
“That’s why I took you to the Three Virgins last night. Hurricane and the rich American are always hanging out together. I figured Hurricane would be there and I’d finger him for you. But Hurricane didn’t show. Then I got a phone tip this afternoon that he was with Armstrong at the Floridita, piece of shit place that this is. I wouldn’t be caught dead here unless it was business.”
“Why didn’t you tell me what was up last night?”
“Hurricane wasn’t there so there was no need. Having smarts is like gas in a car, you don’t need it until you’ve got someplace to go.”
The waiter reappeared with a Manhattan cocktail and a bottle of beer on his tray. He set the drinks on the table and bowed. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
Lizard tossed an American dollar on the tray. “That’ll cover it. Now beat it.”
The waiter stood immobile.
“What the fuck do you want?” Lizard growled.
The waiter smiled and still didn’t move.
Lizard yanked a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and threw it onto the tray. “Bandit,” he hissed. “That’s more than your weekly salary.”
The waiter’s lips perked into a smirk, he pirouetted and strode off.
Lizard took a gulp of his Manhattan, sucking ice cubes into his mouth with the booze. He swallowed the liquor and crushed the ice between his teeth. “That Cuban Pete makes one ten-cent phone call to tip me that Hurricane is here with his pal, and he acts like he’s set me up for a blow job from Marilyn Monroe.”
PayDay heard the noise of Lizard’s rant, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was looking behind the bar at a mural depicting colonial Havana. On one side of the bay was a Spanish fort and lighthouse high on a cliff; on the other side was a small city encircled by a stone wall. It was a pretty scene because there were no people in it. PayDay knew it was different now, jammed with people who couldn’t be trusted. Somebody could come out of the shadows to put a bullet in your head, or appear right in front of you, fully exposed in harsh sunlight, carrying on like it was life as usual, but there was nothing usual about it, murder was in the air. In Havana a man didn’t have to watch his back so much as what was in front of him. The front action was where the play was, and it was always playing. Everything else was mere distraction.
PayDay glanced over at Lizard. After five Manhattans, Lizard had giant red-veined spiders clinging to each cheek. The spiders seemed to be moving around, angry, trying to get at one another across the bulbous bridge of Lizard’s fleshy blackheaded nose.
PayDay wrapped his fingers around the cold neck of his beer bottle and took a drink. He smelled a sweet scent on his fingers; his wife’s pussy, and something else. What was the other thing? Yes, Betty was always rubbing Pond’s Cold Cream onto her skin, not spreading it just on her face but everywhere. Sometimes she would ask PayDay to help her smear it on.
Like this afternoon in their room at the Nacional, when Betty had come out of the shower. She sat in front of the dresser mirror and fingered cream around on her face in little circular motions that absolutely hypnotized PayDay. This was the best part about married life for him, being able to sit in bed with his back against the pillows while watching a naked woman rubbing cream all over herself. This is what guys who weren’t married never got to have; slow moments with a dame who was all yours, a dame you didn’t have to pay for, a dame who trusted you enough to let you watch her do all the secret girly stuff.
Sometimes Betty even left the door open in the bathroom when she took a pee. She’d call out through the open bathroom door, “Johnny, honey, would you bring me my hairbrush?” He’d bring the hairbrush to her as she sat on the toilet like a princess on a throne. “Johnny, honey,” she’d coo, “would you mind brushing my hair?” “Yeah, doll,” he’d say. And as he brushed with long slow strokes, she would arch her neck and her eyes would roll up toward him with a gleam and he would hear the stream of her pee splashing in the water. Standing next to her, he had to concentrate real hard not to get a woody. A woody would ruin it for her. A woody wouldn’t be right. He had to grit his teeth and stroke her hair and concentrate to keep the blood from rushing to the head of his dick as she peed. These were special moments between a man and a wife, and PayDay was never going to give them up. Any guy who ever touched his wife, ever so much as bumped into her, he would do something awful to him, something so horrible that even PayDay couldn’t imagine it.
This afternoon, after Betty had smoothed the cream onto her face, she got up from a silk-covered chair in front of the dresser mirror, took off her robe and lay down on the bed. “Johnny, honey,” she cooed, “would you mind doing my back?” He rubbed the cool goo on her skin, slow, the way a wife likes it. When his palms ran up the hill of her ass he had to focus on not getting a woody, but when his hands came sliding down to the cushy bottom of the hill, he just couldn’t help himself. “Oh, Johnny,” Betty cooed, eyeing what he was up to after he dropped his pants, “you’re so cute!”
PayDay sniffed the scent of his wife on his fingers as he drank his beer, wondering how long he was going to have to wait in this bar before Lizard gave him the sign to make his move. He wondered where Betty was now. Maybe she was at the hotel beauty parlor having her blond hair permed. Maybe she was in bed reading one of her movie magazines. He was so crazy about her that he couldn’t give her enough, his woody just never went down. He considered himself one of the lucky ones. He had a wife he could count on.
• • •
At that moment, PayDay was nearly right. Betty was lying on the bed in the hotel room waiting for the coral-pink polish on her toenails to dry. Between each of her toes was a big wad of cotton. She flipped through a movie magazine. There was a story about an actress who was going to marry a prince from some tiny country she’d never heard of: “Can Grace Beat the Royal Jinx?” There were lots of photos of actresses who had wedded royalty and none of the marriages lasted or they ended up in some kind of tragedy: “On January 5th a starry-eyed Grace Kelly announced she would wed the world’s most eligible bachelor, Prince Rainier of Monaco.” Betty chuckled. She had married the most eligible bachelor, Mister Johnny PayDay, and it had lasted. She flipped through more pages. “The Most Intimate Interview Lucille Ball Has Ever Given! Lucille’s Way to God.” This was serious, Betty thought. “Lucy’s a slapstick queen, a lovable screwball. Here for the first time are her innermost thoughts on faith and marriage, the unity between Desi and herself, though their faiths differ.”
This reminded Betty that the Lucy show was just coming on. She slid from the bed and hobbled across the rug to the TV, careful not to disturb her cotton-separated toes. The image of Lucy and her husband, Desi, having breakfast in their apartment flickered in black and white on the screen. Before long Lucy had tangled herself up in a vacuum cleaner hose and couldn’t get loose. The look on Lucy�
�s face was one of total bewilderment. Betty knew that look, she could feel it whenever her own face screwed into the same expression. It always happened when she was called upon to do something that Johnny normally took care of, like writing a check.
The phone next to the television rang. Betty picked up the receiver, expecting Johnny. Nobody back in the States knew she was in Cuba. Johnny always said it was important for her not to tell people where they were going. All businessmen have competition, Johnny had explained, it was better to keep things quiet.
But it wasn’t Johnny’s voice on the phone.
“Are you free, darling?”
“Who is this?”
“Can I come up?”
“You have the wrong number.”
“No, I don’t. It’s you, my pet.” The voice had an affected upper-class English accent, a singsongy swish of syllables. “My dove, you’re not still angry with me, are you?”
“I’m not mad at anyone.”
“Then don’t be a naughty dolly. Come down here and meet me in the patio lounge.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because Lucy’s on.”
“Lucy’s down here too. She’s on the TV behind the bar. She’s got a vacuum cleaner hose wrapped around her neck.”
“Johnny? Is that you? Are you playing with me?”
“I would like to play with you.”
“If you’re not Johnny I’m going to hang up.”
“That would be a big mistake. Because then you won’t get to meet Lucy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lucy’s a friend, has been for years. Lucy and Desi have been on my yacht.”
“You have a yacht?”
“And a house in Jamaica, and a house in Beverly Hills.”
“Who are you?”
“A movie star. A very big movie star. Your husband’s been trying to meet me for weeks. But he’s too shy to approach me. I think he wants my autograph for you.”
“You think so, really?”
“I know it.”
“It could be true. My birthday is coming up. Maybe he was going to surprise me.”
“Why don’t you surprise him? I’ll give you an autograph for him.”
“That’s kind of nice … I suppose. But how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t, darling. You have to come down and have a peek. And if I’m not a big star, you can disappear back into your rabbit hole.”
“It’ll take me a few minutes to get ready.”
“I can wait. I can wait forever for a princess.”
“I’ll be right down.”
It took Betty an hour to get herself ready. But after all, she was going to meet big Hollywood people; Johnny would want her to look her best. She checked herself out from all angles in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Her chartreuse halter top plumped her breasts like two jiggling bowls of Jell-O. She wore her newest skirt, the one that flared out above the knees and had cute printed poodles prancing around it from front to back. Coral-pink toenail polish was the perfect finishing touch with her open-toed snakeskin spike-heeled shoes.
When Betty stepped out of the elevator into the grand lobby, all eyes were on her. She knew that look. It meant the women were jealous and the men were covetous as their eyes slid over her curves. She felt sexy and confident, hearing the clickety-clack of her spike heels on the tiled floor as she made her way in a dignified strut to the double doors leading out to the patio lounge. The doors swung open and two uniformed doormen bowed as she passed, as if she were a real princess, like Grace, the future Princess of Monaco.
Betty wasn’t worried that the movie star might not be there. She knew enough about men to know that he would wait. Men hate to wait more than anything. It makes them furious. But they will never leave, because by the time the woman arrives, they know they’ve built up a certain amount of credit that can come in handy later, when she adds up the price they’ve paid to be with her.
The large outdoor patio seemed like the courtyard of a Spanish palace. Everywhere were ornate white wicker tables and chairs, occupied by elegant men in tropical suits and women in sophisticated summer dresses. Even though it was winter, even though it was January, it was warm, carefree and sensually humid; the air was perfumed with the scent of flowers blooming in giant red-clay pots.
“Darling! Over here!”
Betty knew an aristocrat’s voice when she heard it, even though she had never met anyone aristocratic, unless you counted the judge who married her and Johnny in Atlantic City. But she had seen aristocrats in the movies.
Betty tried to focus among the tables, which seemed to float around her. She wasn’t very good at seeing long distances, but it didn’t mean she had to wear glasses. She considered herself way too young for that. And besides, it was her theory that blondes only looked good in sunglasses. Anything else was ridiculous, and she didn’t want to look ridiculous. She wanted to be as up-to-date as the latest model of automobile rolling out of Detroit. No other woman in Havana was wearing a poodle skirt. They were all the rage in America, but she was the first, the only one to wear one here.
“Yoo-hoo! Right over here, princess!”
Betty had him in her sights now. A figure wavered in front of her, slightly out of focus on the far side of the patio. Behind him, rows of colored liquor bottles on an outdoor bar counter sparkled as the last shining slant of the sun dipped toward evening. Betty made her way to the man. He was deeply tanned and wore a white dinner jacket with no shirt underneath, his manly chest exposed; on his feet were expensive Italian loafers with no socks. Now, this was a movie star.
“My darling.” He took her hand and held it to his puckered mouth beneath the slit of a mustache that dashed across his upper lip. He kissed her hand with a wet smack. “You were such a naughty dolly to have kept this jolly boy waiting so long! But, ah, my princess, I know how delinquent little girls can be.”
Betty saw two cocktail glasses on the table. “Where’s Lucy? Did she have to go to the little girls’ room?”
“Lucy’s not here. I just had her publicist on the phone. Maybe she can join us.”
“Desi, too?”
“Desi, too. The publicist said Desi would love to meet you.”
“Really?” Betty couldn’t help but smile.
“Really, truly, madly, my precious.” He gallantly slid a chair out and waited for Betty to be seated, then sat and gazed at her across the table. “You are”—his manly chest heaved—“more sublime close up than even I could have dared to imagine.”
“How did you know what room I was in?”
“Everyone working here knows what room the most beautiful woman in the hotel is staying in.”
“That’s nice.” Betty felt more comfortable.
“May I offer the princess a libation?”
“A what?”
“A cocktail.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Your desire is my command. It’s right here.” The man pushed one of the glasses on the table toward her. “A Banana Banshee, prepared to your high personal standard.”
Betty brightened. “How did you know I drink Banshees?”
“I know many things. When I first saw you a few weeks ago at the pool, polishing the jewels of your toenails, I said to myself, I must get an invitation to partake of this sweet dish, this diva under the palms, this standard of American beauty that leaves her dark-skinned tropical sisters cowering in her shadow.”
Betty sipped her yellow Banshee through a green plastic straw. The taste was cool and jungly. “What’s a diva?”
“The brightest star in the heavens.”
“That’s nice.” Through the straw Betty sucked the Banana Banshee right down to the bottom of the glass. “May I offer you another libation?”
“A what? Oh, I remember. Yes, please.”
He pushed the other full cocktail glass on the table across to her.
“What about you?” Betty asked. “Aren’t you drink
ing?”
“With pleasure.” From the inside pocket of his dinner jacket he slipped out a silver flask, unscrewed its cap and savored a long drink. “Ah, the best rum in the world. Only two people in the world have this rum. Me and the President.”
“President Eisenhower drinks rum?”
“No, my jewel. President Batista.”
“President who?”
“Our host in this fair country, President Batista.”
“I didn’t know Cuba was a country. I thought it was a state, like Puerto Rico, and there was a mayor or something who ran it.”
“Would you like to meet the President? He’s a close personal friend. You’ll find no man a more charming puppy than Fulgencio Batista. The ladies quite like him.”
“Batista, Batista, Batista.” Betty let the name roll playfully off her tongue. She liked the sound of it.
“I can arrange the meeting.”
Betty sucked on her Banshee. The rum made her giggle. “Batista goes bananas.”
“Batista goes bananas?” He let the words trip off his tongue. “I like that. It’s quite funny. Not only are you beautiful, you have a refined sense of humor. You are a political satirist.”
“A what?”
“Funny, like Lucy.”
“Where is she?”
“Enough about Lucy! Let’s talk about you.”
“I’m not very interesting.”
“Oh, I think you are. I’ve watched you. I’ve asked myself, what is this jewel, this princess, this diva, doing with a little bald-headed fellow?”
“Johnny’s my husband.”
The man took a slow sip from his flask and leaned back nonchalantly in his chair. His white dinner jacket swung open, exposing more of his tanned chest; it was shaved bare. A gold chain encircled his neck with a heavy gold Spanish doubloon dangling from it. “You have a husband. Good. You can’t have an extramarital affair unless you have a husband.”
“Extra … marital? Is that like having an extra marriage or something?”
King Bongo Page 13
