“You’re so smart. I’d like to adopt you.”
Shines wanted to shout, “You want to adopt me! Where do I sign the papers?” But he didn’t.
“So answer me. What kind of man would take money from a woman to spy on her husband? I know you know the man I’m talking about. I saw you shining his shoes once, you were talking up a storm. You two must be good friends.”
“I’m good friends with some customers, not so good with others.”
“What kind of man? Answer.”
“A man who knows he’s the right man for the job.”
A slight breeze picked up the silk hem of the woman’s skirt and fluttered it above her knees. She reached down and pulled the hem lower, her hand passing near Shines’ face. On one of her fingers was a wedding ring with a diamond the size of a dove egg.
It was then that Shines understood his difficulty in divining the essence of the life journey that the woman’s feet had traveled. Hers was a privileged life with rules of its own making. Her morality was not something that could be found spelled out in a book or preached in a church. She was like a cloud reflected on the water’s surface; try to grab the cloud and it would disappear into the water. Shines was incapable of finding the good or the evil in her.
“I don’t think,” the woman continued, “that those ears of yours miss a thing. I believe you hear all the secrets. Will you share some with me?”
No, Shines was not going to betray King Bongo. He knew that’s who she had been talking about. Anything he said about Bongo might be taken the wrong way. Silence on the matter was how to defend his friend.
The woman leaned forward, her mouth close to Shines’ ear in a whisper. “You’re honorable to protect your friend.”
Shines was hoping that her lips would remain close, but they didn’t. She straightened up.
“Oh, my, look at those beautiful Ferragamos! Now they can go dancing again!”
The sudden compliment thrilled Shines.
The woman reached down and touched his smooth head with her cool white fingers. The setting sun spiked golden rays around her body. Above her shoulder, perched high on a corner tower atop the baroque Gallego Building across the street, was an enormous bronze angel. The angel’s wings spread above the woman and they both flew into a shimmering heaven and disappeared. From the clouds above fluttered down a perfumed American ten-dollar bill.
Zapata stood hidden in the inky blue shadows beneath the stone arches of the Gallego Building. He watched as a woman walked away from Shines and stopped for the traffic before crossing Neptuno Street. Cars screeched to a halt in front of her, male drivers eyed her covetously and whistled, others honked their car horns, demanding the way be cleared so that they could have a better view of the beautiful blonde standing on the curb in a pair of very high-heeled shoes.
Zapata was disgusted. It was the kind of spectacle that gave the impression that all Cuban males were just excitable boys who couldn’t keep their pants zipped up.
The woman strolled down the Prado, then disappeared into the Sevilla Biltmore Hotel. Zapata stepped out of the shadows and crossed the boulevard over to the square of Parque Central. Beneath the José Martí statue, he placed his foot up onto Monkey Shines’ battered shoe shine box.
Zapata asked, “She tipped you big?”
Shines could barely conceal the grin on his face. “Who?”
“The rich American you were shining. Quite a show, the way she had her bare legs exposed, the sun shining right through her flimsy dress so that every man could see the outline of her body. Cheap American stuff.”
“She’s not cheap. She paid me ten dollars for a shine. That’s more than I make in a week.”
“No husband should let his woman shame him in public like that.”
“He’s American. They have different ideas.”
“I’ll tell you the different idea. He would rather spend his nights at the Three Virgins than at home.”
“You mean her husband is that kind?”
“He is. There’s not a cat peeing or a dog licking his balls in this town that I don’t know about.”
Shines shook his head in disbelief. “How could any man resist her? She’s so beautiful, like an angel.”
“She’s an angel, an angel with balls of steel.”
Shines still felt the touch of her fingers on his head, and he had her ten dollars in his pocket. She would always be a celestial being to him.
“Rich ones like her are cold as ice, they’ll turn the page on a man’s life without thinking twice.”
“You know everything, Captain.”
“I know that her husband’s being a regular at the Three Virgins is not the whole story. Something more is going on.”
Shines wanted to know what more was going on, so he kept quiet.
“Can I ask you something personal and intimate?”
“Certainly, Captain.”
“Why the hell aren’t you shining my shoes?”
“Sorry.” Shines took out his rag and wax and set to work.
“So you think Mrs. Armstrong is beautiful?”
“Like a religious vision.”
“She’s not to my taste.” Zapata made a sour sound with his lips. “Too white, reminds me of chicken. Why eat chicken every night if you can afford to eat Black Angus steak?”
Shines looked up. “Who’s Angus? Is she pretty?”
“I discovered early on that the blackest girls are the best. Those girls are originally from sugarcane country. Love from them is the sweetest.”
Shines’ head bobbed up and down, he was into the rhythm of the shine. “That’s right, Captain. Closer to the sugar, sweeter is the lovin’.”
“I can’t figure why an intelligent man, one who could have any woman, would break his teeth on a concrete cupcake like that Mrs. Armstrong.”
“I can’t break my teeth on her. My teeth aren’t even real.” Shines opened up with a grin that wrapped over his gums, exposing the jagged line of his ill-fitting dentures.
“I didn’t mean you. I meant King Bongo.”
“Ah … King Bongo. He loves all the ladies, and they love him.”
“Is that so?”
“I’ve never seen a woman who could pass him by.”
“Mrs. Armstrong is passing him by.”
“She’s married. So maybe she doesn’t have the right rhythm for him and they can’t dance.”
“A woman like that doesn’t need rhythm.”
“Everybody needs rhythm.”
“What did she say to you?”
“About King Bongo?”
“About anything.”
“Nothing special.”
“That woman doesn’t waste her time. She got a shine because she knows you’re the number one rumor man in Havana.”
Shines held his rag suspended over Zapata’s shoe. “She said she wanted to adopt me.”
“Bullshit!”
“That’s what she said!”
“They have no shame, these Americans. Telling shoe shine boys they want to adopt them. What kind of arrogant crap is that?”
Shines ripped his rag into Zapata’s leather again. “She could have meant it.”
“Shines, when your mama passed out and nearly smothered you when you were a baby, she ruined the part of your brain that knows the score.”
“I know the score.”
“You do? Then tell me, who won yesterday’s ball game?”
“Hurricane was throwing a no-hitter into the top of the ninth, we were ahead one to nothing.”
“And?”
“Swish-swish, the Hurricane’s fastball slices the first two batters in half.”
“Then what?”
“Three batters get on base, the next, whoosh, a home run. We lost four to one.”
“No, that wasn’t the score.”
“It was. I heard it with my own ears on the radio.”
“The real score was that the game was fixed.”
Shines stopped his rag dead center o
n the toe of Zapata’s shoe. “Impossible!”
Zapata laughed. “You’ll never know the score, even when it’s right in front of your eyes.”
Shines didn’t like what he was hearing. More than that, Zapata was talking more than usual, which meant there was trouble ahead. Shines kept his head down.
“Did Mrs. Armstrong say anything about her husband?”
“Only that they were meeting at the Sevilla Biltmore.”
“What about Hurricane? Did she mention him?”
“She’s an American, she doesn’t know anything about Cuban baseball.”
“The score, Shines, the score. Hurricane was with the Armstrongs on New Year’s Eve.”
“The only thing she said about that night was what shoes she was wearing.”
“When I hauled Hurricane in for questioning this morning, he immediately said he didn’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Fix the game that he lost.”
“That’s bad. Real bad.”
“In Cuba, that’s the same as raping a nun.”
“Worse.”
“I told Hurricane I’d believe he didn’t throw the game if he told me why he had been with the Armstrongs. He said they were just friends, out for some New Year’s fun.”
“Maybe it’s true.”
“I called him a redheaded lying mulatto and said I was booking him for throwing a game for the Right Guys.”
“Santa Barbara, protect us all!”
“Then I reminded him that he just happened to be speeding away from the Tropicana in the Armstrongs’ car moments before a bomb exploded, a college girl was killed, and the Panther disappeared.”
“What did he say?”
“That he didn’t know the girl and he had no idea where the Panther was.”
“Hurricane’s a national hero. He’s not mixed up in bombings and disappearances.”
“Shut up and pay attention. You don’t know the score.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I informed Hurricane that if he knew where the Panther was and didn’t tell me, I was going to walk him onto the pitcher’s mound in front of his fans, stick my gun in his ear and blow his brains out.”
“Wheeew!”
“That loosened his tongue. He told me about the cripple.”
“Cripple?”
“He said to follow the crippled beggar with a dog at Carnival.”
“Cripple with a dog … that’s Saint Lazarus.”
“But which one? Carnival is crowded with guys dressed in rags like Lazarus, walking mangy dogs on ropes and praying for everything from a syphilis cure to forgiveness for murder.”
“Too many Lazaruses.”
“Too many. So I pulled my gun and shoved it in his ear. He said he didn’t know who the right Lazarus was, but that the White Spider Woman knew.”
“You spared his life?”
“Do you know how many women dressed in white gowns and bandannas run around this town acting like they’re the goddesses of the White Spider?”
“Hundreds.”
“Thousands.”
Shines’ hands began to tremble. “So you shot Hurricane?”
“I gave him a week to come up with better dirt, or he’s a dead man.”
“That’s a relief, since he’s the starting pitcher on Thursday.”
Zapata lit a cigar, took a puff, then said in a confidential tone, “You have the rumor ear. I need answers.”
“I won’t hold back.”
“Without me, you wouldn’t have the best shoe shine spot in Havana. I keep the other shiners away from here.”
“You’re my protector.”
“Then tell me about the Panther.”
Shines stopped shining, sweat beaded on his bald head. He glanced up. “Some shoes walking the streets … they whisper that the Panther still dances.”
“That means she’s alive. Where?”
“It’s whispered that she dances for the crippled saint.”
“Saint Lazarus! A saint is taking care of her?”
“Yes. But like you said, there are so many of them.”
Zapata angrily flipped his cigar away. “And only the White Spider Woman can lead to the right one. Around we go in a circle.” He reached under his coat, slipped his revolver out and pressed its barrel against Shines’ sweating head. “No more mumbo jumbo. Who is the White Spider Woman?”
Shines felt the gun, ready to explode a bullet into his brain.
“Who is she?” Zapata demanded.
Shines forced his tongue to move before it was too late. “She works at the Nacional.”
“Her name!”
“I don’t know.”
“What does she do?”
“A maid.”
“The White Spider Woman is working as a maid in a pricey hotel? More mumbo jumbo. I don’t believe any of it.” Zapata pressed the barrel harder. “Give me some truth.”
Shines saw his terrified reflection in the glossy shine of Zapata’s shoes. Then his reflection disappeared as his own tears of fear splashed onto the shine. He had to come up with something big. “The Americans!”
“The Armstrongs?”
“No! Two men! I shined their shoes. They were with a woman in a zebra skirt. They talked!”
“Unless they talked about something serious, like assassinating the Pope, it’s not enough to save you.”
“They did say something about the Pope … and about the President, how everyone would be distracted when it happened at three past three.”
“Three past three, when? What day?”
“The day of the Big Race.”
“Did you catch where the Americans are staying?”
“They mentioned the Nacional and the Capri.”
“Right next to each other, and on the route of the race. What did the Americans look like?”
“One was bald like me, short and mean-looking. The other guy was big, really ugly, with a flat face, but thick lips like a duck.”
“That sounds like Lizard.”
“Not a lizard, lips like a duck.”
“Larry Lizard, does special affairs at the Nacional. He’s got a wife and three kids, seven different aliases, arrest warrants in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic.”
Zapata removed the gun from the base of Shines’ skull and slipped it back into its holster. He pulled a peso from his wallet. “Here’s for the shine.”
“Thanks, Captain.” Shines took a deep breath. “One other thing. I tossed the coconut shells last night, all four of them.”
“I don’t believe in that saints-and-devils circus.”
“I asked about you.”
Zapata laughed sarcastically. “My fate, I suppose?”
“The shells don’t tell about fate. The shells don’t tell good or bad. They speak of a flow, a journey like a river.”
“Where does the river lead?”
“All rivers lead to love.”
Zapata laughed with deeper sarcasm. “Are you going to start singing a love song?”
“The shells say, you don’t have to fear other men. Other men will not be able to kill you. Only love can kill you.”
“Now you are singing a love song.”
“The shells say, the steel arrow of lost love has rusted in your heart and filled your soul with gangrene. Unless the arrow is removed, it will kill you.”
“So my fate is foretold. Sing on, my friend.”
“The shells say, it takes an arrow to remove an arrow.”
BOOK THREE
tropical truth
1.
Knockout Muse
King Bongo sped his Rocket convertible under the gleaming white arch spanning the entrance drive to the Tropicana. He drove up the palm-lined road, parked and walked into the casino. At night the casino had the allure of adventure and a promise of winning the hand of Lady Luck; by day it was completely different. Bongo passed between green-felt gaming tables abandoned like rafts on a sea of red carpet. He followed a ramp
down into the vast open-air cabaret. In the tropical trees and twisting jungle vines, unlit bulbs were connected by a tangle of electrical wires. The illumination that transformed everything at night into a colorful spectacle was gone, replaced by a flat daylight that revealed forlorn theatrical artifice. Between the rows of empty tables, a lone man was sweeping up trash from the previous night’s show.
Bongo called out, “Say, have you seen the Giant?”
The man stopped sweeping. He cocked a hand over his eyes to get a better view. “I know who you are.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. I’m the parking attendant at night. You’re the famous tango dancer, Carlos Guardel. You were wearing a powder-blue tuxedo on New Year’s Eve and snazzy two-tone spectators from Argentina.”
“Good memory.”
“You left the cabaret and came back in with an orchid. Then everything exploded.”
“Besides me, who else do you remember from that night?”
“Are you kidding? There were hundreds of people in and out. I told the police what I remembered. As a matter of fact, one of them had been here that night. Zapata was his name.”
“When did Zapata leave the cabaret on New Year’s Eve?”
“Only minutes before you came back with the orchid. I don’t forget a thing like that.”
“And the two guys with him?”
“They left at the same time. But Zapata returned the next day to ask me questions.”
“Did you mention anything that was out of the ordinary before the bombing?”
“Everything is out of the ordinary at the Tropicana.”
“True enough. Have you seen the Giant today?”
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
“No. Insurance.”
“The big man isn’t here. But Fido’s around. You want me to find him? He might know where the Giant is.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem, Mr. Guardel. No problem at all.” The man hurried off.
Bongo pulled down one of the chairs stacked on a table and sat. Before him was the immense show stage, where his sister had slithered down from a towering palm and had been transformed into a magnificent Panther, dancing to a powerful beat of bata drums as she was pursued by hunters. Where was the beautiful jungle cat now? What stage was she dancing on? What cage was she locked in?
King Bongo Page 21
