'You should. And what would you tell him?'
'For 70 percent, I won't kill him.'
'Perhaps he isn't the sort to scare. His nickname is Ojos Bellos, 'Beautiful Eyes,' for unpleasant things involving knives and eyes, known to make prisoners sing loud and fast.'
'I will make him sing loud and fast.'
'Now, Frankie, maybe there's another thing, another way of going, which would bring you into intimate contact with Latavistada, even as a buddy, a partner, a pal. And in that way, the two of you could acquire serious property in this town and a franchise for the future. Without bloodshed or rancor. Can you think of such a way?'
Frankie thought hard. Here's what he came up with: nothing.
'I…I…' He felt like a fish flopping on a dock, drowning in air.
'Okay, Frankie, that's not your way of thinking. It's all right. It's fine. Just sit back, relax, take a load off, and listen.'
'Yes, sir. Yes, Meyer.'
'Frankie, here's the thing. Maybe this fellow who got himself all blown up, this El Colorado, maybe he was only the muscle end of the show. Maybe there's someone behind him, someone shadowy, who's secretly planning a big takeover and when he gets that done, he kicks us all out, El Presidente at the top and all of us on down, and we are out of luck.'
'Who could do such a thing? Another crew? It would have to be a hell of a crew, that I know.'
'Not a crew, Frankie. Worse than a crew, more powerful than a crew. An idea.'
'An idea?'
'The idea of communism. The idea that nobody owns a thing, that nobody pays for a thing, that it's all free, it's all cooperative, no bosses, no anything. No mobs either. The mobs have to go.'
Frankie blinked.
'It's fucking evil!' he finally blurted, and Meyer did not, for once, correct him on his profanity.
'It is evil, Frankie.'
'They could do that?'
'Maybe this is the beginning.'
'Jesus Christ.'
'Frankie, there's a young man in this town whose goal it is to arrange just such a thing. He believes in it. He hides under sweet sayings about freedom and peace and bread, but that's what he wants. A world without ownership. A world without wealth. A world in which no matter how tough you are and how smart you figure and how hard you work, you get just enough and no more. It doesn't matter you're clever and brave. That doesn't matter. You get your few beans every week and that's it. Everybody's the same.'
'Except some guys at the top.'
' Exactly! Of course. The guys at the top, they get it all. They've sold everybody on this we-are-all-equal malarkey, but behind closed doors it's party time, with babes and drinks and fancy cars. But for nobody except the big shots. There's no give and take, only take by a few. Under the guise of something called equality. It's the greatest scam in the world.'
'That is so wrong.'
'It is wrong, Frankie. It's anti-American. This young Cuban man, he's a lawyer who doesn't practice, he just roams, giving speeches, collecting followers, making allegiances, looking for ways to advance his program, laying with a girl or two along the way. He's catnip to women. And, as you might imagine, he's exactly the one who'd benefit from the kind of chaos and instability as the day before yesterday.'
'He's gotta be stopped.'
'Frankie, suppose I tell you police snitches saw him in the house with Colorado the day before the assassination attempt. He's the thinker behind it. He's the brilliance figuring all this out. He gives the orders, and some other schmoes do the work and take the heat and maybe get burned.'
'The bastard. He needs a bullet in the brain.'
'You could do this?'
'Without blinking an eye. It's what I do best.'
'That's my boy, Frankie. And that's where Captain Latavistada comes in.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah. In Military Intelligence, it's his job to keep tabs on this kind of boy. On your own, without contacts, I think he'd prove too slippery. You'd never run him to earth. It's his town, Frankie, not yours. But Latavistada knows this stuff. He can help. You, him, I think you two could get along. Frankie, this is the job you were born to do. Can you concentrate on that and put the business of Bennie Siegel aside? It's called discipline and it's the hardest thing to learn. But I know you can do it, Frankie. I have my faith. There'll come a time when we call in the tab on Bennie's killer, but we've got this job to do, and you are the man to do it, right, Frankie? Then comes the business of the whorehouses and who's to take them over. And naturally it's you, Frankie, under my supervision and with the captain's assistance. You see, Frankie? Sometimes I think all this was planned out by someone with true vision. Are you ready for such a thing?'
'I am your man, Mr. Lansky,' said Frankie, meaning it with every fiber of his being.
Chapter 26
The eagle soared. Its wingspan was immense, stretching for at least twelve feet, each feather immaculate and precise in the rigidity of the windswept moment. Its beak hooked downward sternly, its eyes were sagacious and farseeing as it observed the horizon for signs of danger, and it looked as if it were on freedom's patrol, ready to slide down and issue destruction from its razor-sharp talons at any indication of threat. It was, somehow, freedom itself. But it also wasn't; it wasn't going anywhere. It was made of brass, and it was tethered to a marble bridge between two marble pillars.
Earl stood below it, watching, supporting himself on a cane, trying to ignore the pain that a thousand aspirin had not mollified. He stood at the foot of some steps thirty feet beneath the ornamental bird, and behind him rushed the busy traffic of the Malecon. If he turned his head just a bit, over his right shoulder he could see the twin, gleaming towers of the Hotel Nacional, Havana's finest, atop a green hill, surrounded by green gardens.
'Do you know what this is, Earl?' asked Roger.
Weren't they supposed to be on the way to the airport? Wasn't there a 6:05 Air Cubana Constellation to New York, which would lead to a 10:15 to Saint Louis which would lead to a night in a hotel and an 8:30 A.M. to Little Rock, which would lead, by three tomorrow, back to Blue Eye, Arkansas, and a home, a wife, a child?
'Of course I know what it is,' said Earl.
What remained of the USS Maine was this bird on these two pillars, two cannons embedded in the concrete base of the monument, and some brass words on a plaque, all of it facing empty sea under a hot sun. The ship itself had blown up some half mile out on that sea at this spot, but nothing out there indicated that it had ever existed.
'Do you know how many men died here, Earl?' said Frenchy.
'No. A hundred?'
'Three hundred sixty-two, in a flash. Bang, all gone, just like that.'
'I get the point,' said Earl. He glanced at his watch. 'We have to be going. I have a flight.'
'One more stop, Earl,' said Roger. 'No lectures, no chatter, no rah-rah from men you must think of as boys who haven't done one-tenth as much as you. But one more stop. It's just a bit of a way.'
Roger signaled and the car came and got them, and Earl lumbered into the backseat with his hip throbbing away and now his head and shoulder also racked from the funny tension of walking with the damned cane.
'You let them give you anything for the pain?' asked Frenchy.
'I'm taking aspirin. I didn't want nothing stronger. You get used to feeling too happy. This ain't bad. Been through worse.'
'I'll bet. The stories you could tell,' said Roger.
