“I never heard of him.”
“He was an employee of the Hotel Saratoga. A pit boss in the casino.”
“I see.”
“I was hoping you might accompany me to the apartment. You being a famous detective. Not to mention his employer. In a manner of speaking.”
“Sure. Why not? I was only planning to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours.”
“Excellent.”
“Give me a minute to change, will you?”
“I will wait for you downstairs,
THE NEXT MORNING I was awakened by the telephone.
It was Robert Freeman. He’d telephoned to offer me a six-month contract to open up the West German Havana cigar market for J. Frankau.
“However, I don’t think that Hamburg’s the right place to base yourself, Carlos,” he told me. “It’s my opinion that Bonn would be better. There’s the fact that it’s the West German capital, of course. Both houses of parliament are situated there, not to mention all the government institutions and foreign embassies. Which is the kind of well-heeled market we’re looking for, after all. Then there’s the fact that it’s in the British zone of occupation. We’re a British company, so that should make things easier for us, too. Plus, Bonn is only twenty miles from Cologne, one of the largest cities in Germany.”
All I knew about Bonn was that it was the birthplace of Beethoven, and before the war that it had been the home of Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. When Berlin ceased being the capital of anything except the cold war, and West Germany needed a new capital, Adenauer had, very conveniently for himself, chosen the quiet little town where he had lived quietly throughout the years of the Third Reich. As it happened, I’d been to Bonn. Just once. By mistake. But before 1949 few people had ever heard of Bonn, let alone known where it was, and even today it was jokingly known as “the federal village.” Bonn was small, Bonn was insignificant, and Bonn was above all things a backwater, and I wondered why I hadn’t considered living there before. For a man like me, intent on living a life of complete anonymity, it seemed perfect.
Quickly I told Freeman that Bonn was fine by me and that I would begin to make travel arrangements to go there as soon as possible. And Freeman told me he would go about drawing up my all- important business credentials.
I was going home. After almost five years of exile, I was going back to Germany. With money in my pocket. I could hardly believe my luck.
There was that, and the events of the previous evening, at an apartment in Vedado.
As soon as I was washed and dressed, I drove to the National and went up to that big, spacious suite on the executive floor to inform the Lansky brothers that I had “solved” the Reles case. Not that you could ever have really called it a case. Public-relations exercise might have been a more accurate way of describing my investigation, provided your idea of a public was all of the mobbed-up casinos and hotels in Havana.
“You mean you’ve got a name?” Meyer’s voice had the deep-fried, rich tone of an Indian chief in a western. Jeff Chandler, maybe. The little man had the same sort of inscrutable face, too. Certainly the nose was exactly the same.
As before, we sat on the balcony with the same ocean view, except that now I could see the ocean as well as hear and smell it. I was going to miss the grating roar of that ocean.
Meyer wore a pair of gray gabardine trousers, a matching cardigan, a plain white sports shirt, and thick-framed sunglasses that made him look more like an accountant than a gangster. Jake was similarly informal. He wore a loose terry-cloth shirt and a bookmaker’s little straw Stetson with a hatband that was as tight and narrow as his mouth. And hovering in the background was the tall, angular figure of Vincent Alo, whom I now knew better as Jimmy Blue Eyes. Alo wore gray flannels, a white mohair cardigan with a wide collar, and a patterned silk cravat. The cardigan was bulky, but not enough to hide the spare rib he was wearing under his arm. He looked like anyone’s idea of an Italian playboy as long as the play was a Roman revenge tragedy written by Seneca for the amusement of the Emperor Nero.
We were drinking coffee from little cups, Italian style, pinkies out.
“I’ve got a name,” I told them.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Irving Goldstein.”
“The guy who killed himself?”
Goldstein had been a pit boss at the Saratoga, occupying a high chair over the craps table. Originally from Miami, he had trained as a croupier in several illegal gambling houses in Tampa before his arrival in Havana in April 1953. This followed the deportation from Cuba of thirteen American-born card dealers who were employees of the Saratoga, the Sans Souci, the Montmartre, and Tropicana casinos.
“With the help of Captain Sanchez I searched his apartment in Vedado last night. And we found this.”
I handed Lansky a technical drawing and let him stare at it awhile.
“Goldstein had become involved with a man who was a female impersonator at the Palette Club. It’s my information that before he died, Max had found out about it and, not at all comfortable with Goldstein’s homosexuality, he subsequently told him to look for a job at another casino. The Saratoga casino manager, Nunez, confirmed that the two men argued about something not long before Max died. It’s my belief that this is what they argued about. And that Goldstein murdered Max in revenge for his dismissal. So he probably had the motive. He almost certainly had the opportunity: Nunez told me that Goldstein went on his break at around two a.m. on the night of the murder. And that he was away from the craps tables for about thirty minutes.”
“And your proof is… this?” Lansky brandished the sheet of paper I had given him. “I’m looking at it and I still don’t know what the hell it is. Jake?” Lansky handed the paper to his brother, who stared at it uncomprehendingly, as if it were the blueprint of a new missile-guidance system.
“That’s a very accurate and precise drawing for a Bramit silencer,” I said. “A custom-made sound suppressor for the Nagant revolver. Like I said before, because of the Nagant’s closed firing system-”
“What does that mean?” asked Jake. “ ‘Closed firing system.’ All I know about guns is how to shoot them. And even then they make me nervous.”
“Especially, then,” said Meyer. He shook his head. “I don’t like guns.”
“What does it mean? Just this. The Nagant has a mechanism which, as the hammer is cocked, first turns the cylinder and then moves it forward, closing the gap between the cylinder and the barrel that exists with every other model of revolver. With this gap sealed, the velocity is increased; more important, it makes the Nagant the only weapon you can effectively silence. During the war, Goldstein was in the army and afterward he was stationed in Germany. I imagine he must have swapped revolvers with a Red Army soldier. A lot of men did.”
“And you think this
“He was a homosexual, Mr. Lansky,” I said. “That doesn’t mean he couldn’t handle precision metalworking tools.”
“Got that right,” muttered Alo.
I shook my head. “The drawing was hidden in his bureau. And to be honest, I don’t think I’m going to find any better proof than that.”
Meyer Lansky nodded. He fetched a pack of Parliaments off the coffee table and lit one with a silver table lighter. “What do you think, Jake?”
Jake pulled a face. “Bernie’s right. Proof is always hard to come by in these situations, but that drawing sure looks like the next best thing. As you yourself know only too well, Meyer, the Feds have made a case with a lot less. Besides, if this guy Goldstein did whack Max, then it’s one of ours and there’s no debt to settle with anyone else. He’s a Jew. From the Saratoga. It keeps everything neat and tidy, just the way we wanted. Frankly, I don’t see how we could have ended up with a better result. Business can proceed without any interruptions.”
“Nothing is more important,” said Meyer Lansky.
“How’d he kill himself, anyway?” asked Vincent Alo.
“He opened his veins in a hot tub,” I said. “Roman style.”
“I guess that makes a change from doggy style,” said Alo.
Meyer Lansky winced. It was plain he didn’t much like that kind of joke. “Yes, but why?” he asked. “Why kill himself? With all due respect to you, Bernie, he’d got away with the murder, hadn’t he? More or less. So why do himself in? His secret was safe.”
I shrugged. “I spoke to some people at the Palette Club. The whole point of the club is that some of the girls are real and some are cut-jobs. The club’s shtick is that you can’t tell the difference. It seems that in the beginning Irving Goldstein might have had the same problem. That the girl he thought he fell in love with was in fact a man. When he discovered the truth, he tried to live with it, which is when Max found out about it. Some of the people at the Palette think that the shame finally got to him. I think that maybe he planned to kill himself, but before he did, he decided to get even with Max.”
“Who knows what’s in the mind of a guy like that?” said Alo. “Confused, or what?”
Meyer Lansky nodded. “All right. I’ll buy it. You’ve done a good job, Gunther. A nice quick result with no one offended. I couldn’t have ordered it better if I was in La Zaragozana.”
This was the name of a famous restaurant in Old Havana.
“Jimmy? Get this man his money. He earned it.”
Vincent Alo said, “Sure, Meyer,” and went out of the suite.
“You know, Gunther,” said Lansky, “next year, things are really going to take off for us here in Havana. We got this sweet new law coming. The Hotel Law. All new hotels are going to be granted tax-exempt status, which means there’s going to be more money to be made on this island than anyone ever dreamed of. I’m planning a new casino hotel myself, which is going to be the biggest in the world, outside of Las Vegas. The Riviera. And I could use a man like you in a place like that. Until then, I’d like you to come over to the Montmartre and work for me there. You can do the same thing you were going to do at the Saratoga.”
“I’ll certainly give it some thought, Mr. Lansky.”
“Vincent’s going to run the Saratoga now.”
Vincent Alo had returned to the balcony. He was holding out a gambler’s chip bag for high rollers. He smiled, but his blue eyes remained without emotion. It was easy to see how he’d earned his nickname, Jimmy Blue Eyes. His eyes were as blue as the sea on the other side of the Malecon, and just as cold.
“That doesn’t look like twenty thousand dollars,” I said.
