and out for an hour. You grab the gun, and you feel the dense solidity of it, the purposefulness of it. Nothing feels better than a gun to a man who's hunted or hated or been oppressed or beaten. He can lose his imagination in it, because he knows that no matter what they do to him, if he uses it well, they will remember that night, their widows will cry and their orphans will beg. That is something to a man who has no other thing. God, he wanted a gun.
But he knew if he conked a cop, it would get to his hunters and they'd know the neighborhood, and they'd start busting down doors and smacking people around, and once they did, someone, someone, would talk. Someone had seen something. Someone always does.
So there was nothing. He, in the tiny apartment, Esmerelda staring intently at him, as if he were religious.
I ain't no saint, honey, he thought.
Time crept by, harshly. It seemed to crawl up stairs littered with broken glass. It took many a break to catch its breath. It was not a busy little worker. He finally took his damned watch off, because he kept checking it, and it would not move.
It was late, yet still the traffic ran up and down Zanja Street. Men went into and out of the Shanghai Theater or gathered laughingly and drunkenly at the Cafe Bambu a couple doors down from it. All glowed orange intermittently.
He watched the smoking men, the strutting women, the prowling cars; he heard the hoots, the whistles, the shouts, the clash of a dozen languages-but he saw nothing, not now.
He withdrew from the window, turned, and there was Esmerelda staring at him, her dumb eyes filled with love.
He smiled back, uneasily, wishing he had something to do, and then he heard men on the steps. They were trying to be quiet but they were approaching steadily.
Walter was having dinner with the head of United Fruit's marketing division, his wife, his daughter and his son. They were at the Tropicana, the world's most beautiful nightclub, and the meal was fabulous, even if now the waiters scurried to clear it, and deliver a last round of drinks before the floor show.
Stew Grant was a terrific guy and his wife, Sam-Sam! — was one of those eastern horsewomen types Frenchy loved so, but could never speak to. And the kids, Tim and Julie, were wonderful, the best American teenagers anyone could hope for. The subjects had ranged from Korea to Senator McCarthy-Stew thought he was a great man-to this new star Rock Hudson to United Fruit's prospects in its business arrangement with General Foods and this idea for dehydrating fruit to package in cereals, which looked very promising. But Frenchy couldn't take his eyes off the tanned, thin and aristocratic Sam, and she couldn't take her eyes off him. After all, he was…well, he was the government's man in Havana, and-
'Senor Short?'
'Yes?'
'A phone call. Urgent.'
'Jesus Christ. I am?'
'It's from Mr. Lansky.'
'Ah.'
Frenchy excused himself, followed the waiter back through tables to a house phone, and picked it up.
'What's up? News?'
'They have him.'
'What?'
'They have him. They're moving in now.'
Frenchy's heart danced.
'You're sure.'
'I am. Someone saw something and told someone and one of your snitches got it to the cops who got it to me. We're dealing with it now.'
'It's a great night,' said Frenchy.
Then he checked himself. Great night: Earl dead. Same thing. And in the next second, by his special gift, he denied the flood of regret that came over him, and hastened back to the table. The floor show was about to begin.
Now it was happening. It would happen here, in this little room, with no toilet. Men with guns were coming for him and they would kill him. It couldn't be a whore with her trick, for they'd be talking bravely. It couldn't be an old lady, for she wouldn't be creeping, she'd be walking brazenly. No, it was men, moving silently, maneuvering for position, trying to set up for a swift, brutal assault.
I will make a good fight, he told himself.
He gathered her up, soothingly, and slid her along the wall to a closet, gently pressed her into it and urged her down, into a ball. The bullets would be sprayed if he knew these boys, and they'd find her too, but that was the way it went.
He slid back, edging along the wall silently, because he knew they'd be listening for him. In his left hand he held the paring knife, and he'd taken a belt from one of her pitiful dresses and tied it around the hand, so that if he were hit or stabbed, and in pain opened his hand, his only weapon wouldn't fly away, irrecoverable.
I can get at least one, he thought. I can cut the first man through bad, and maybe I can get his gun from him, and maybe I can get it into play fast enough and maybe I can get another couple. Maybe I can get that goddamned New York boy, that rat, and maybe he's with the captain who cuts out the eyes and I can get him, too. If you're going out, you want to take some bad'uns with you.
Now it was silent.
He knew they were there and he knew there were at least three, because he'd heard the cracking of floorboards simultaneously from different spots as they crept along, which meant it wasn't his Russian pal, who always worked alone. Three would be about right to kill one man, unarmed, by surprise. Two would do it, but three was right, and that would be Frankie, the captain and whomever was driving the car.
It was three.
The room was filled with flickering orange from the dirty window. Honks and squeals from outside filled the air. No sound came from nearby, but under the blade of light admitted by the crack beneath the door, he saw a shape move, then another. Two men had passed in front of the door to get to the other side.
He tensed.
He watched as someone gently tested the knob. It was locked, though there was no deadbolt. It was quiet, then a thin blade appeared, sliding through the crack in the door and up to the lock, where it rested, steadied itself, began to hunt for leverage, and quickly enough got the lock released.
Earl tensed, feeling his own little knife, which could slash but not reach deep enough to get a good, blood- filled organ.
Not here, he thought.
The door opened, gently. He heard scuffling, then a voice.
'Anyone in there care to buy a vacuum cleaner?'
Chapter 57
Captain Latavistada set it up very nicely. He stationed men for blockade duty at each end of the block on Zanja Street. He infiltrated four more men around back of the whore's building and even got two on the roof. He himself, with Frankie and the Indian, waited down the street, out of the glare of the Shanghai's orange lamps, beyond the Bambu, as these brave young men maneuvered into position.
He watched, ever the military commander, through binoculars, over the hood of the car.
'He's not so smart,' he said.
'I never said he was smart,' said Frankie, who was next to him. Before them at the angle, its facade caught and made shadowy in the orange glow, lay the apartment building at 162 Zanja, pastel green, a kind of standard Havana structure fallen into bad repair, over-ornate in the Spanish fashion, of stucco, around a courtyard onto which
