The joint was packed. Commies dug capitalisto-style gambling.
The croupiers wore shoulder holsters. Militia geeks ran the blackjack table. The clientele was 100% beaner.
Goats roamed free. Dogs splashed in a crap table filled with water. Dig the floorshow back by the slot machines: an Airedale and a Chihuahua fucking.
Pete grabbed a bellboy and yelled in his ear. “Santo Trafficante. You know him?”
Three hands appeared. Three tens went out. Somebody pushed him into an elevator.
Fidel Castro’s Cuba should be renamed Nigger Heaven.
The elevator zoomed up. A militiaman opened the door gun first.
Dollar bills dripped out of his pockets. Pete added a ten-spot. The gun disappeared, rбpidamente.
“Did you wish to enter custody, seсor? The fee is fifty dollars a day.”
“What does that include?”
“It includes a room with a television, gounnet food, gambling and women. You see, American passport holders are being temporarily detained here in Cuba, and Havana itself is momentarily unsafe. Why not enjoy your detention in luxury?”
Pete flashed his passport. “I’m Canadian.”
“Yes. And of French distraction, I can tell.”
Steam trays lined the hallway. Bellboys pushed cocktail carts by. A goat was taking a shit on the carpet two doors down.
Pete laughed. “Your guy Castro’s some innkeeper.”
“Yes. Even Mr. Santo Trafficante Jr. concedes that there are no four-star jails in America.”
“I’d like to see Mr. Trafficante.”
“Please follow me, then.”
Pete fell in step. Boozed-out gringo fat cats careened down the hallway. The guard pointed out custody high spots.
Suite 2314 featured stag films screened on a bedsheet. Suite 2319 featured roulette, craps and baccarat. Suite 2329 featured naked hookers on call. Suite 2333 featured a live lesbian peep show. Suite 2341 featured suckling pigs broiled on a spit. Suites 2350 through 2390 comprised a full-size golf driving range.
A spic caddy squeezed by them schlepping clubs. The guard clicked his heels outside 2394.
“Mr. Santo, you have a visitor!”
Santo Trafficante Jr. opened the door.
He was fortyish and pudgy. He wore nubby-silk Bermuda shorts and glasses.
The guard scooted off. Trafficante said, “The two things I hate most are Communists and chaos.”
“Mr. Trafficante, I’m-”
“I’ve got eyes. Four, in fact. You’re Pete Bondurant, who clips guys for Jimmy. Some six-foot-six gorilla knocks on my door and acts servile, I put two and two together.”
Pete walked into the room. Trafficante smiled.
“Did you come to bring me back?”
“No.”
“Jimmy sent you, right?”
“No.”
“Mo? Carlos? I’m so fucking bored I’m playing guessing games with a six-foot-six gorilla. Hey, what’s the difference between a gorilla and a nigger?”
Pete said, “Nothing?”
Trafficante sighed. “You heard it already, you hump. My father killed a guy once who spoiled one of his punch lines. Maybe you’ve heard of my father?”
“Santo Trafficante Senior?”
“Salud, Frenchman. Jesus, I’m so fucking bored I’m playing one-up with a gorilla.”
Pig grease spattered out a cooling vent The pad was furnished modern-ugly-lots of fucked-up color combos.
Trafficante scratched his balls. “So who sent you?”
“A CIA man named Boyd.”
“The only CIA guy I know is a redneck named Chuck Rogers.”
“I know Rogers.”
Trafficante shut the door. “I know you know him. I know the whole story of you and the cabstand, and you and Fulo and Rogers, and I know stories about you that I bet you wished I didn’t know. You know how I know? I know because everybody in this life of ours likes to talk. And the only fucking saving grace is that none of us talks to people outside the life.”
Pete looked out the window. The ocean glowed turquoise blue way past the buoy line.
“Boyd wants you to write a note to Carlos Marcello, Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli. The note’s supposed to say that you recommend no reprisals against Castro for nationalizing the casinos. I think the Agency’s afraid the Outfit will go off half-cocked and screw up their own Cuban plans.”
Trafficante grabbed a scratch pad and pen off the TV. He wrote fast and enunciated clearly.
“Dear Premier Castro, you Commie dog turd. Your revolution is a crock of Commie shit. We paid you good money to let us keep our casinos running if you took over, but you took our money and fucked us up the brown trail until we bled. You are a bigger piece of shit than that faggot Bobby Kennedy and his faggot McClellan Committee. May you personally get syphilis of the brain and the dick, you Commie cocksucker, for fucking up our beautiful Nacional Hotel.”
Golf balls ricocheted down the hallway. Trafficante flinched and held the note up.
Pete read it. Santo Junior delivered-nice, neat, grammatical.
Pete tucked the note in his pockets “Thanks, Mr. Trafficante.”
“You’re fucking welcome, and I can tell you’re surprised that I can write and say two different things at the same time. Now, you tell your Mr. Boyd that that promise is good for one year and no more. Tell him we’re all swimming in the same stream as far as Cuba goes, so it’s in our best interest not to piss in his face.”
“He’ll appreciate it.”
“Appreciate, shit. If you appreciated, you’d take me back with you.”
Pete checked his watch. “I’ve only got two Canadian passports, and I’m supposed to bring back a United Fruit man.”
Trafficante picked up a golf club. “Then I can’t complain. Money’s money, and United Fruit’s tapped more out of Cuba than the Outfit ever did.”
“You’ll get out soon. Some courier’s working on getting all the Americans out.”
Trafficante lined up a make-believe putt. “Good. And I’ll set you up with a guide. He’ll drive you around and take you and the UP man to the airport. He’ll rob you before he drops you off, but that’s as good as the help gets with these fucking Reds in power.”
o o o
A croupier supplied directions to the house-Tom Gordean threw a torch party there just last week. Jesъs the guide said Mr. Tom burned a mean cane field-he was hot to revamp his fascisto image.
Jesъs wore jungle fatigues and a baseball cap. He drove a Volkswagen with a hood-mounted machine gun.
They took dirt roads out of Havana. Jesъs steered with one hand and blasted palm trees simultaneous. Sizzling cane fields lit the sky up orange-pink-torch parties were a big deal in postBatista Cuba.
Phone poles blipped by. Fidel Castro’s face adorned every one.
Pete saw house lights in the distance-two hundred yards or so up. Jesъs pulled into a clearing dotted with palm stumps.
He eased in like he knew where he was going. He didn’t gesture or say one fucking word.
It felt wrong. It felt prearranged.
Jesъs braked and doused his headlights. A torch whooshed the second they snapped off.
Light spread out over the clearing. Pete saw a Cadillac ragtop, six spics, and a white man reeling drunk.
Jesъs said, “That is Seсor Tom.”
The spics had sawed-off shotguns. The Caddy was stuffed with luggage and mink coats.
Jesъs jumped out and jabbered spic to the spics. The spics waved to the gringo in the Volkswagen.
The minks were piled above the door line. U.S. currency was bulging out of a suitcase.
Pete caught on, dead solid perfect.
Thomas Gordean was weaving. He was waving a bottle of Demerara rum. He was putting out a line of pro-Commie jive talk.
He was slurring his words. He was dead drunk working on dead.
Pete saw torches ready to light Pete saw a gas can sitting on a tree stump.
Gordean kept spritzing. He got up a fucking A-#l Commie clichй head of steam.
Jesъs huddled with the spics. They waved at the gringo again. Gordean puked on the hood of the Caddy.