Abe was about to finger a boss when he got himself thrown out of a high window of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island in November 1941.”
“You know who did it?”
“He was in protective custody at the time, so, sure, I know. And one day I’ll take my revenge on these guys. Blood is blood, after all, and there never was any permission asked or given. But right now it wouldn’t be good for business.”
“Sorry I asked.”
Reles nodded grimly. “And I’d appreciate it if you never asked me about it again.”
“I already forgot the question. Listen, we Germans are good at forgetting all kinds of things. We’ve spent the last nine years trying to forget there ever was a man called Adolf Hitler. Believe me, if you can forget him, you can forget anything.”
Reles grunted.
“One name I do remember,” I said. “Avery Brundage. What ever happened to him?”
“Avery? We kind of fell out after he got himself on the America First committee to keep the U.S. out of the war. It made a change from trying to keep Jews out of Chicago country clubs. But that slippery bastard’s done all right for himself. He’s made millions of dollars. His construction company built a large chunk of Chicago’s gold coast: Lake Shore Drive. At one stage he was going to run as a candidate for governor of Illinois until certain people in Chicago told him to stick to sports administration. You might say we’re competitors these days. He owns the La Salle Hotel in Chicago. The Cosmopolitan in Denver. The Hollywood Plaza in California. And a large chunk of Nevada.” Reles nodded. “Life’s been kind to Avery. Recently he got himself elected as president of the International Olympic Committee.”
“I suppose you made a fortune in 1936.”
“Sure. But so did Avery. After the Olympics were over, he got himself a contract from the Nazis to build the new German embassy in Washington. That was payback from a grateful Fuhrer for heading off an American boycott. He must have made millions. And I didn’t see a cent of it.” Reles grinned. “But it was all a long time ago. Dinah’s the best thing that’s happened to me since then. She’s a hell of a girl.”
“Just like her mother.”
“Wants to try everything.”
“I guess you must be the one who took her to the Shanghai Theater.”
“I wouldn’t have done it,” said Reles. “Taken her there. But she insisted. And the girl gets what she wants. Dinah’s got a hell of a temper.”
“And how was the show?”
“How do you think?” He shrugged. “To tell the truth, I don’t think it bothered her much. That little girl is game for anything. Right now she wants me to take her to an opium den.”
“Opium?”
“You should try it yourself sometime. Opium’s great for keeping down the weight.”
He slapped his belly with the flat of his hand and, in truth, he did look slimmer than I remembered him in Berlin. “There’s a little joint on Cuchillo where you can smoke a few pipes and forget everything. Even Hitler.”
“Then perhaps I’ll have to try it, after all.”
“I’m glad you’re on board, Gunther. Tell you what. Come back tomorrow night and I’ll introduce you to some of the boys. They’ll all be here. Wednesday night’s my cards night. You play cards?”
“No. Just backgammon.”
“Backgammon? That’s dice for queers, isn’t it?”
“Not really.”
“I’m just kidding you. I had a friend who used to play. You any good?”
“Depends on the dice.”
“Come to think of it, Garcia plays backgammon. Jose Orozco Garcia. The sleazeball who owns the Shanghai. He’s always looking for a game.” Reles grinned. “Jesus, I’d love it if you could beat that fat bastard. Want me to fix you up to play him? Tomorrow night, maybe? It’ll have to be early, because he likes to keep an eye on the theater after eleven. You know, that could work out well. Play him at eight. Come up here around ten forty-five. Meet the boys. Maybe with some extra money in your pocket.”
“Sounds good. I can always use a little extra money.”
“Speaking of which.”
He took me into his office. There was a modern teakwood writing desk with an off-white veneered top and some leather chairs that looked as if they’d come off a sportfishing boat.
He opened a drawer and took out an envelope, which he handed to me. “There’s a thousand pesos,” he said. “Just to show you my offer is a serious one.”
“I always take you seriously, Max,” I told him. “Ever since that night on the lake.”
On the walls were several big, frameless paintings that were either extremely good representations of vomit or modern abstracts. I couldn’t decide. One wall was given over entirely to some dark wood bookshelves that were filled with records and magazines, art objects, and even some books. On the far wall was a big sliding glass door, and through it I could see a smaller, private version of the pool that existed on the floor below. There was a button-backed leather daybed and beside it a tulip table, on which stood a bright red telephone. Reles pointed at the phone.
“See that phone? It’s a special line to the Presidential Palace. And it makes just the one call a week. The one I told you about? Every Wednesday, at a quarter to midnight, without fail, I use that phone to call F.B. and take him through the figures. I never knew a guy who was so interested in money as F.B. Sometimes we speak for as long as half an hour. Which is one reason Wednesday night is my card night. I play a few hands with the boys, and then throw them out at exactly eleven-thirty. No broads. I make my phone call and go straight to bed. You work for me, you might as well know you also work for F.B. He owns thirty percent of this hotel. But you can leave that spic to me. For now.”
Reles went over to the bookcase, tugged open a drawer, and took out an expensive-looking leather attache case, which he handed to me.
“I want you to have this, Gunther. To celebrate our new business association.”
I brandished the envelope of pesos. “I thought you already gave me something for that.”
“Something extra.”
I glanced at the combination locks.
“Go ahead,” he said. “It’s not locked. Incidentally, the combinations are six-six-six on each side. But if you like, you can change it with a little key that’s hidden in the carrying handle.”
I snapped open the case and saw that it was a handsome backgammon set, custom-made. The checkers were made of ivory and ebony, and the dice and doubling cube had pips made of diamonds.
“I can’t take this,” I said.
“Sure you can. That set used to belong to a friend of mine called Ben Siegel.”
“Ben Siegel, the gangster?”
“Naw. Ben was a gambler and a businessman. Same as me. His girlfriend, Virginia, had that backgammon set especially made for his fo rty-first birthday, by Asprey of London. Three months later he was dead.”
“He was shot, wasn’t he?”
“
“Didn’t she want it?”
“She gave it to me as a keepsake. And now I’d like you to have it. Let’s hope it’s luckier for you than it was for him.”
“Let’s hope.”
FROM THE SARATOGA I DROVE down to Finca Vigia. The Chieftain was exactly where Waxey had parked it, except there was now a cat on the roof. I got out of my car and walked up to the front door and rang the ship’s bell hanging on the porch. Another cat was watching me from the bough of a giant ceiba tree. A third on the terrace poked its head through the white railings as if waiting for the firemen to come and get it out. I stroked the cat’s head as footsteps came slowly to the door. The door opened, and the slight figure of Hemingway’s Negro servant, Rene, was standing there. He was wearing a white cotton waiter’s jacket. Sunlight shining through the house behind him gave him the air of a Santeria priest. He said, “Good afternoon,
“Is Senora Eisner at home?”
“Yes, but she is sleeping.”
“How about the
“Miss Dinah. I believe she’s in the swimming pool,
“Do you think she’ll mind me seeing her?”
“I don’t think she minds anyone seeing her,” said Rene.
I didn’t pay much attention to that and made my way along the path to the pool, which was surrounded with royal palms, flamboyan trees, and several almond trees as well as flower beds filled with ixora-a hardy red Indian flower better known as jungle flame. It was a nice-looking pool, but even with all that water it was easy to see how any jungle might have caught fire. My own eyeballs felt scorched just looking at it. Dinah was doing a graceful, leisurely backstroke up and down the steaming water. I supposed it was steaming for the same reason my eyeballs were scorched and the jungle was in flames. Her bathing suit was an appropriate-looking leopard print, only at that particular moment it seemed slightly less appropriate, given that she wasn’t actually wearing it. The suit lay on the path to the pool alongside my jaw.
She had a beautiful body: long, athletic, shapely. In the water her nude figure was the color of honey. Being German, I wasn’t exactly shocked by her nakedness. Naked culture societies had existed in Berlin since before the Great War, and until the Nazis, it had been impossible to visit certain Berlin parks and swimming pools without seeing lots of nudists. Besides, Dinah herself hardly seemed to mind. She even managed to perform a couple of tumble turns that left little to my imagination.
