King Bongo

by Thomas Sanchez

  Ming knocked on the door, then pointed at his watch. “You have ten minutes with Mr. Wu. No more.”

  “I thought I had thirty.”

  “You did, but you were twenty minutes late.”

  “I had a good reason. Mr. Wu would understand.”

  “Mr. Wu understands everything. You understand nothing.”

  “You know, Ming, you remind me of that Chinese Kwan Kong guy.”

  “Saint Kwan Kong.”

  “Yeah, the one who was ambushed and beheaded. When a monk found the guy his body was running around in circles, screaming, ‘Where’s my head? Where’s my head?’ ”

  Ming placed his index finger on the knot of his dragon tie and cocked his thumb on the underside, then quickly pulled his hand down the length of the tie. The silk slicing between his fingers sounded like a knife slitting a throat.

  Bongo opened the door into a jungle of orchids beneath a glass roof crisscrossed with wood lathing that provided shade from the sun. Piped up from the laundry below, steam vented into the room with a hiss, then was caught in a cold blast from a battery of air conditioners. The hot and cold air swirled together into a humid mist. Mr. Wu stood in the midst of lush blooming exotica; the sweet mash odor from the smoldering cigarette at the end of his long ivory holder mingled with the perfume of cinnamon, vanilla and gardenia.

  “Greetings, my wandering friend.” Mr. Wu spoke without looking up. His head was bowed toward a crimson bloom, his nostrils twitching at its aroma. His chest puffed up beneath his long blue silk tunic. He pulled back with an odd smile, remaining at a discreet distance, as if fearful that his scrutiny might frighten the flower. He moved cautiously to the swollen bloom of the next orchid, maintaining his air of deference as he surveyed the specimen from different angles, not allowing his gaze to become licentious. “We cannot expose our male irreverence to these creatures,” Mr. Wu said. “Otherwise they will droop and die. They are like women, wanting their beauty admired, not raped with a leer.”

  Mr. Wu’s rapture had a hypnotic effect on Bongo, his streaming words were like an ancient incantation: “Chao Shin-Kem wrote the first book on orchids in the twelfth century. He was from Fukien Province, China’s intellectual center and the heart of orchid culture. Shin-Kem instructed how orchids must be revered, for gazing at their beauty is to experience universal sexuality. If man loses his respect and beauty denies him, then man is worse off than before he knew of beauty’s existence. All else will fade to pale. If that happens, man’s torment will be beyond measure.”

  Bongo inhaled the perfumed air. He thought he could still smell the delicious Vanda dearei, its scent imprinted in his memory.

  “Have you ever,” Mr. Wu asked, “loved so much that after you lost that love your life itself was lost, and you became a burnt-out shell, a walking, talking dead man?”

  “No, I can’t say that I have,” Bongo answered. “My philosophy is to not get too close to that precipice.”

  “All of those men down there in the rice warehouse, sucking on pipes, sucking on what you call foreign mud, they have lost the beauty once glimpsed. They are dead. Nothing can fill the hole in their hearts.”

  “You’ve got some other customers down there who I don’t think have hearts.”

  “Healing medicine is for all,” Mr. Wu sighed. “That is our custom, rich and poor are equal, all entitled to the same medicine.”

  “I saw Americans downstairs. You get many?”

  “White Americans prefer cocaine. Cocaine is just a tourniquet, merely covers the wound. Opium fills the wound with dreams. So the Americans we get are mostly black.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You know what they say, no matter how long the Chinese have been in Cuba, they’re still homesick. Those Chinese you see in the warehouse, their pipes are filled with dreams of China. The black Americans, their pipes are filled with dreams of Africa.”

  “How come I don’t see any black Cubans in the warehouse?”

  “Ah …” Mr. Wu rose from the flower he was admiring and faced Bongo. “That’s because in Cuba the black ones secretly kept their African religion, they have their own dreams.”

  “And the black Americans?”

  “In America, the black ones only have the white religion. They smoke the wrong dreams. So they need our pipes.”

  “Speaking of dreams,” Bongo said, “thank you again for the Vanda dearei.”

  “I told you not to take her into the Tropicana.” Wu shook his head sadly. “She never should have been in such a place. It’s a tragedy she’s gone.”

  “There are worse tragedies.” Bongo remembered Mercedes’ smiling face as she waved to him for the last time.

  “She was unique. Don’t think there will ever be another.”

  “I don’t.” Bongo still saw Mercedes’ smiling face.

  “Men make that mistake, they always think there will be another. But each beauty is unique and can never be repeated.”

  “Amen to that, Mr. Wu.”

  “Now, my dear wanderer, why are you here?”

  “I brought you something.” Bongo handed Wu the brown package that had been tucked beneath his arm.

  “Is it a gift, or a payment for debts owed?”

  “I need your help.”

  “Will it cost me?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s have a look.” Wu set the package on his potting table. “Will it blow up in my face?”

  “No harm will come to you.”

  Wu slipped a blade under the thick twine binding the brown paper. “This is tied well. Is it money?”

  “No.”

  Wu sliced the twine and began unwrapping the package. “Three layers of paper. What can be so precious?”

  A salty, nauseating stench wafted up. Wu let go of the wrapping and turned his face away in disgust.

  Bongo pulled at the remainder of the wrapping, trying not to inhale any more than he had to. A balled-up gray cloth object lay on the table.

  Wu scolded, “You shouldn’t have brought this here. This is a place of beauty.”

  “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  Bongo carefully spread the gray ball out. It was a piece of clothing, faded and torn.

  Wu held his nose. “What is it?”

  “The underpants of shark bait.”

  “That’s not funny.” Wu pinched his nose harder. “You’re insulting me.”

  “I paid the Crab at the morgue a bribe to get this.”

  “You wasted your money.”

  “These are the underpants of a murdered man.”

  “Why bring them here?”

  “They might have something to do with downstairs.”

  “The warehouse?”

  “The laundry.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Bongo turned over the frayed waistband, exposing the faint inky outline of a number. “I need to know which laundry customer had this number.”

  Wu bent closely to examine the mark. “Impossible to make out.”

  “Try.”

  Wu picked up a large silver-handled magnifying glass, the one he used in the most intimate moments of trying to agitate his reluctant orchids into reproducing. He peered through the magnifier. “It’s not a mark from one of the Chinatown laundries.” He squinted for better focus. “Nor is it a downtown Havana mark. It’s farther out, past Vedado, way out in the Country Club area.”

  “Then a laundry there would know who the number belongs to?”

  “If I find the right laundry, they will have a record. We Chinese keep good records, better than lawyers.”

  “Once I get the name of the dead man who was wearing these, I can try to find his murderer.”

  “Don’t forget the business I’m in. I know everyone’s laundry. I know all the secrets in Havana.”

  “Please help me on this, and—” Bongo hesitated. He wasn’t certain he could trust Wu.

  “And?”

  Bongo took a chance. “And also help me find beauty
.”

  “Go on.”

  “My sister? Where is she? You said you know all the secrets.”

  Wu laid the magnifying glass down on the table. He wrapped the package back up. The air cleared.

  “Ah … the Panther, the beauty that rivals the orchids.” He took Bongo by the arm. “Come with me.”

  Wu guided Bongo down a row of long-stemmed orchids whose heads were bowed from the weight of bright flowered crowns. He spoke softly as he walked. “In his first book, Chao Shin-Kem wrote the story of only twenty orchids. He knew nothing beyond his village. He wasn’t aware that orchids account for one out of every ten flowering plants in the world. There are twenty-five thousand different species of orchids, our dear Cuba alone has more than two hundred natives. What’s fascinating is that the orchid spends its life living off of another plant, a host; it can only survive with symbiosis. That’s why orchids have so many guises. Some are marble-smooth like the testicles of a young boy, others are pendulous and hairy like the swinging balls of a bull, some have penises, narrow as pencils or fat as cigars. And then there are all the lady orchids, exposing their most intimate parts, their fleshy petals spread, their labia excited and sometimes gorged with fluorescent colors.” Wu stopped abruptly.

  A spectacular orchid towered before the men, spicing the air with a lush gingery and gardenia scent.

  Wu whispered conspiratorially, “Angraecum sesquipedale.”

  “Unbelievable,” Bongo marveled. “It’s as tall as a person.”

  “She is.”

  “But what does she have to do with my sister?”

  “She is more than just a perfumed dream,” Wu said with gravity. “Gaze upon this beauty and see if you can find your own life within hers.”

  Bongo wondered, why all this Chinese inscrutability? Why all these tests of his patience? Why didn’t Wu just say what he knew about the Panther? Bongo examined the plant; its magnificent trunk of a stalk thrust high, from its top exploded riotous fleshy tendrils that cascaded in a colorful fall back to earth, where the tendril tips tenaciously dug into soft soil to re-root.

  Wu asked, “Have you ever seen such blooms as these on an orchid?”

  “Never.” Bongo bent closer. “They are the size of human hands. And there are so many of them, budding out of the trunk, blooming off of the tendrils.”

  “What does their white shape look like?”

  “Spiders. Enormous star-shaped white spiders.”

  “And?”

  Bongo’s mind flashed to the banyan in the Tropicana that he was sitting under with Mercedes, the tree that the white spider had fallen from. Suddenly he saw the black woman swathed in white, her hand coming down to smash the spider.

  Wu watched the expression change on Bongo’s face. “You are there.”

  “Where?”

  “On the road to finding the White Spider Woman. She will lead to your sister.”

  “How do you know about the Spider Woman? You weren’t in the Tropicana that night. You were outside in your car with Ming.”

  “I know everyone’s laundry.” Wu smiled. “I know everyone’s secrets.”

  4.

  Everything Shines

  I’ll tell you what you can’t get in America anymore.”

  “What’s that?” Johnny PayDay asked.

  “A fucking shoe shine worth a shit,” Lizard said. “It’s the end of civilization when you can’t get a decent shine. Only two places left where a man can get shined right, here and Mexico City. It’s only greaser bean-farters and nigger boys who can get the job done.” Lizard peered down at the shaved head of Monkey Shines as he rapped his shoe-rag across shoe leather. “Ain’t that right, nigger?”

  Shines didn’t answer.

  “I forgot,” Lizard laughed. “These black Cubans don’t speak English like our niggers, they only speak Spanish.”

  Shines understood English. Having shined shoes for thousands of hours in the hot sun, he had been all ears and picked up languages, the basics anyway. That’s how he’d been able to get ahead, that’s how one day he would make his fortune selling lottery tickets to tourists.

  Broadway Betty stood next to PayDay. She wore a short zebra-print skirt and a cobra-print halter top; it was what she thought of as her jungle look. “Johnny, honey, can I buy some peanuts?”

  PayDay pulled out his wallet and handed Betty a dollar. “Here, babe. And get me some too, peanuts taste better down here.”

  Betty headed toward a crowd of boys standing in the cool shadow of the José Martí monument. Long strings of peanuts were looped around the boys’ necks. They shouted at the glamorous customer and jostled each other, trying to prove who had the best nuts.

  Lizard nodded his head in approval at the competition. “These Cubes are natural-born hustlers. Who says all they can do is cut cane and roll cigars?”

  “I never said that.”

  “I didn’t mean you. Cuba’s got a future with hustlers like this. You know the difference between Cuba and the States?”

  “What?”

  “The nigger problem.”

  “There’s lots of black ones here too.”

  “Yeah, but here the niggers all think they’re Spanish.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  “The Cubes gave them Spanish names and only let them speak Spanish. After that, they fucked the hell out of their women. Smart, huh?”

  PayDay pulled out a candy bar and carefully peeled down the wrapper. He took a bite, watching his wife in her tight zebra skirt, surrounded by boys who were shaking strings of nuts at her. He wondered, had she gone to bed with the Bad Actor? PayDay had asked her, but she insisted that the Actor had been a real English gentleman, and promised to introduce her to Lucy and Desi so she could get their autographs. “Where did you say the Actor lives?”

  “Like I told you a hundred times,” Lizard said, “he has a place at the Hotel Nacional to keep up appearances, and a secret penthouse at the Capri where he can pop underaged cherries.”

  “Is the Capri penthouse on the roof?”

  “No, the roof’s got a swimming pool.”

  “A swimming pool on a roof?”

  “It’s something. At night you can skinny-dip under the sky.”

  Lizard looked down at the black bobbing head of Shines as he worked wax into shoe leather with his fingertips. “That’s right, boy, wax it up.”

  Lizard turned back to PayDay. “There could be a nigger problem here one day. Real niggers could take over, not just house niggers like President Batista. That’s one reason the Right Guys got involved in local politics.”

  “Does the Actor—”

  “Forget about him until your job is done.”

  “I’m itching to do it. Then I’m going to whack the Actor.”

  “You can’t touch him unless the Right Guys say you can! Like I told you, the Actor’s an inside-out guy, working both sides. When the time’s right, he’ll outlive his usefulness and the Right Guys will feed him to you.”

  “I’ll eat him alive.” PayDay swallowed the last of his candy bar, folded the wrapper and slipped it into his pocket.

  “The thing that’s twisted about the niggers here is”—Lizard continued his cultural appraisal—“they’ve got a queer religion. They’ve got a Saint Joan, or Saint Barbara, or something like that, and she changes into another god; they call it a Shango or a Chango. Now, here’s the funny part, this Shango-Chango is a guy. So if you think about it, the niggers are worshiping a cross-dressing, cigar-smoking, rum-sucking, rumba-ass transvestite.”

  Shines’ rag swick-swack-swicked as he bore down in a fury on Lizard’s shoe, hoping that the friction would set the leather on fire.

  PayDay turned around to watch Betty. He could watch his wife for hours. Every little way her sweet body moved excited him.

  Lizard interrupted PayDay’s reverie. “Would you stop ogling your wife’s ass like you’re a teenager with a boner caught in his zipper?”

  “We aren’t teenagers. We’re married
.”

  “You really are a sucker. The reality of marriage is, the woman doesn’t want you. What the woman wants is a kid. And she’ll let you fuck her every which way to Sunday to get it; in the cunt, the ass, the mouth, the ears, and if that’s not enough, she’ll cut you a new hole to fuck her in. After that she doesn’t need you, you’re finished, the great embarrassing fuck that gave her what she wanted. The joke is, her kid, the little angel, wasn’t born in heaven, but in a sperm-spewing hell where she made you fuck like you had a gun to your balls and a hot poker up your ass.”

  “Betty doesn’t want kids.”

  “Phew-wee, man! They all say that until their kid clock goes off like a stick of dynamite in an empty oil drum.”

  “Betty means it. We’ve been married seven years.”

  “Don’t forget that seven-year itch, pal. It’s the same for women as for men, except women itch in a different place.”

  PayDay imagined Lizard as a corpse with a PayDay candy wrapper stuffed in his mouth.

  Lizard gazed down at Shines with an expression of admiration.

  “Would you look at this one go, like a house on fire. He just can’t do enough to please a customer.”

  “He takes pride in his work.”

  “Nah. He’s in it for the tip,” Lizard snorted. “Now listen to me, before your precious bride comes back. Do you remember when you’re scheduled for the job?”

  “Three past three.”

  “Right. And what hotel room?”

  “Top floor, out of the elevator, turn right, end of hall, last door.”

  “Yeah, and don’t forget, the race is always timed to the minute. Three past three is when the lead car passes by. Everybody will be distracted.”

  “It’ll go off as planned.”

  “Big bonus for you if it does.”

  “I’ll settle for the other half of my dough.”

  “Listen, the Right Guys are so powerful, nobody can move a blade of grass without their permission. You pull this job off and there will be something bigger for you. Guaranteed.”

  “What’s bigger than a President? A Pope?”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  “So what’s bigger? What’s the idea?”