Havana

The photo had been snapped at the Havana airport. It was of a group of men leaving the Air Cubana Constellation's stairway and heading to the terminal. One was flashy in his white hair and two or three others clearly bowed to him in body posture, factotums or assistants or eunuchs or whatever.

'This one?' Speshnev asked, pointing to the member of the group who was also not a member of the group.

'That one.'

It was a large square-headed American, with a jutting jaw and a crewcut.

'A soldier?'

'According to embassy gossip, a killer. He killed in the war, many, many times.'

'Oh, yes, there's a word for that. I think it's 'hero.' Why is he here?'

'Ostensibly as the bodyguard of that showy one there. That's a famous politician in their country. But this man for some reason was recruited to accompany the politician to Cuba. Our Washington people have noted it and alerted me. They find it curious.'

'And…'

'And we don't know why. Maybe just because. Or maybe it's that if you had to kill someone, this is the man you'd want to do the killing. He's not like the rest of them. Give him a job, he does it.'

'Hmmm. That doesn't sound like them.'

'No, but maybe they're thinking of changing their ways. They want to get the attention of certain people in certain countries and this would be a very good way to do it, wouldn't you say?'

'Possibly.'

'So I think you should look about carefully. See what this fellow is up to. And…'

'And?'

'And if he's here to cut short the career of the prince of all our dreams, Zek 4715, then it's simple. You must be the faster, the better man. You must kill him.'

Chapter 7

The old men were not pleased. They made him hide in a warehouse on the East Side, among rats and spiders, where it was cold. No one brought him coffee, no one commiserated with him, no one asked him how he was doing.

He felt their displeasure, but he could not truly gauge its fullness because he saw no newspapers for three days, saw no television, heard no radio. It was just him in the darkness of the warehouse, and every ten hours or so some greasy food was brought: cold hamburgers wrapped in wax paper from a diner, warm soda in a Dixie cup, a dried-out Danish. For a shitter he had a bucket; for wad he had old newspaper left around; for a mattress he had nothing except a wall to doze against, his butt on the hard cement floor.

Then he was summoned. He traveled by garbage truck from his warehouse, across the boroughs of the city, at last to Brooklyn and there, at night, shadowy figures smelling of cologne took him in through an alley. He found himself in a social club from Garibaldi's day, where the old men sat at single tables, drank bitter coffee from tiny cups, and smoked gigantic cigars. Most wore glasses, all looked creaky and wrinkly, but he understood that he was among the powerful and the legendary.

'Frankie, Frankie, Frankie,' said one. 'A cop, maybe. Two cops, at the limits. But…you clipped a horsie?'

'It's the fuggin' horse, Frankie, you understand?' said another.

'Our people have never whacked a horse. It don't look good.'

'On the television, Frankie, the horses with the cowboys. Little kids love the horses. Now one of our people machine-guns a horse in Times Square in broad daylight.'

'I didn't have no choice,' said Frankie. 'If you want to know, wasn't Lenny supposed to handle lookout? He's responsible. I can't do everything. I'm coming out of the place and there's no Lenny and just the cop galloping my way on a horse. Lone Ranger or whatever, he's about to pound me into the sidewalk. I just did what I have to. Fuggin' cop, what's he doin' there anyhow?'

'Frankie, he works there. It's his job, goddammit. They can't eat donuts all day long. Frankie, some, some even in this little room, they'd like to see Frankie the horsekiller floating in the river with a stevedore's hook through his throat, so as to say to the newspapers and the people, see, we don't kill horses. We only kill our own kind. Frankie, is that what you'd like to see?'

'No, it ain't.'

'Frankie, what we gonna do with you? You want to go for a swim inna river with a hook?'

'No, sir.'

'Miami don't want you, Tampa don't want you, Cleveland, Boston, they don't want you. You are hot as Catholic hell. We can't send you to Vegas 'cause they'd snitch you out to butter up Washington. They'd find a way to let certain people know you were available, and next thing you know, you're sitting in front of a television camera and you're talking 'bout us and you're famous.'

'I wouldn't never do that.'

'We can't let that happen. Frankie, my friend, you are now a pawn in a game you couldn't possibly understand.'

'I could go back to Italy.'

'Italy! I wouldn't wish you on Italy. In Italy, they expect results, not chaos, scandal, shame and newspapers.'

'They like horses in the old country, Frankie.

'Frankie Horsekiller, I can only think of one town where you can go and not be noticed. A man of importance has agreed to take you in, as a special favor and because we have arrangements with him over long time. You must be good and obey him and work hard for him before you can ever begin to think of coming back to your home.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Frankie, the Jew Meyer, that's Mr. L to you, he will take you in. He may have some enforcement problems and you might fit in to his plans. Frankie, don't embarrass us again, do you understand?'

'Yes, sir,' said Frankie.

'And, Frankie,' said one, 'say hello to Desi for me.'

Chapter 8

The boss and his man Lane stayed in the embassy itself, in VIP quarters; Earl had been dumped at an old joint called the Plaza, facing a beauty of a park square, right at the border of Old Havana. It didn't make much sense for the bodyguard to be that far apart from the body he was supposed to guard, but it was clear that Lane didn't want Earl getting too close to the action.

So he took a cab in on that first morning and found the whole shebang starting with a briefing, put on by one of the ambassador's brightest boys, which laid out the realities of organized crime in Cuba for the Right Honorable United States Congressman Harry J. Etheridge (2nd, Democrat, Ark.), chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, winner of the American Legion of Merit, awardee of the Hearst empire's 'Proud to Be an American' contest, 1951.

It was a familiar story. With the big American gambling spas like Saratoga and Hot Springs and, worst of all, Coral Gables, being closed down by reformers, the boys, the fellas, the mob, whatever you wanted to call them, they looked south to Cuba ninety miles away. Somehow Fulgencio Batista was coaxed out of retirement (suspiciously, he had retired to Coral Gables), and in 1952, in a bloodless coup, re-took the government. And so the mob moved in, and with its know-how at the gaming tables, soon took over the big houses. Muscles Martin, of Pittsburgh, ran the Sans Souci; Billy Bloom ran the games at the Tropicana; the old S. and G. wire syndicate, closed down in Coral Gables, moved over and operated the Casino Nacional. Meyer Lansky bought a share of the Montmartre and was the unofficial boss of American criminal interests in Cuba. So well set-up was the outfit here,