Vegas. A part in a movie here, a season at the Sands there. A lot of big stars owe that guinea sonofabitch.'
What is his connection with Cuba?' asked Tom.
Cuba is to the mob what Detroit is to General Motors. And Rosselli is to the mob what Christian Herter is to the White House. The Don's kind of like a Secretary of State for the Mafia. The olive oil in the Cosa Nostra machine. Would that the Secretary of State was able to achieve so much. Christian Herter's a fucking amateur next to the Don. Lansky and Trafficante have got a problem with Castro in Cuba? Let's speak to our roving ambassador of organised crime. Maybe the Don can come up with a solution. A proposal. Some contacts. Pull in a few favours. Come up with a plan.' Goldman toasted Tom with a bottle of beer. I guess that's where you come in, Paladin. Who do they want dropped from the team?'
Castro.'
Well good for you.'
And his brother.'
Wouldn't that just suit everyone?' said Goldman. The mob, the CIA, the big corporations, the government. Everyone except the Cuban people, I guess. So the mob and the Company have cut a deal on this, have they? I guess it makes a lot of sense. If it can be done.' He paused and inspected the cherrywood bowl of his pipe before relighting what tobacco remained in there.
That's what Rosselli's paying me five hundred bucks to find out.'
Find out all you can, if I were you.'
Sure. I'm on it. S'why I'm talking to you.'
Can it be done, do you think?'
Tom lit a cigarette and smoked it silently, his face a study of indecision.
Any fool can stick his fucking head in a lion's mouth,' he said finally. The trick is taking it out again.'
True.'
But, why not? It's not like Cuba's closed for business, or anything. The American embassy may have pulled down the shutters, but the ferry still sails from Key West, and Pan Am still flies in and out of Havana.' He shrugged. And Castro's the kind of man who likes to make a lot of public speeches. So, yeah. I'd say it can be done.'
Whatever you need, just let me know.'
Thanks, man.'
By the way, how is Mary?'
Not sleeping too good.'
I find that hard to believe. She takes enough fucking pills.'
She keeps thinking the atom bomb's going to go off while she's in bed.'
Best place to be if it does.'
And she's busy with the election, of course.'
Of course. Who's going to win?'
It'll be close.'
Oh, for sure, but let's hope Kennedy, right?'
Tom shrugged, noncommittally.
For Mary's sake, anyway,' argued Goldman. She's put a lot into this. And after November she might be well placed to get something valuable out of it.'
Kennedy's no different from Nixon,' grumbled Tom. He just sweats less and owns a better razor. But Mary.' Tom shook his head, and stubbed his cigarette out angrily. Sometimes I think maybe she's in love with the guy. You should see her when he's on TV. It's like he's Gary fucking Grant, or something. And the rest of the time, she's breaking my balls about his style and his good looks. It's Jack Kennedy this and it's Jack fucking Kennedy that. I tell you Alex, I'll be glad when this is all over.'
If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were jealous.'
Me, jealous? Of Jack Kennedy? Come on.'
Sure. Why not? She wouldn't be the first party-worker to fall for the candidate. S'probably easier for her to do her job that way.' Alex grinned. You really don't like him, do you?'
Tom tried to hold back a sheepish smile and then, letting it go at last, shook his head. I'd like to blow his fucking brains out,' he said quietly.
Why? What is it that makes you dislike him so much?'
Tom thought for a moment and, remembering Brando's line in The Wild One, grinned and said, What have you got?'
Chapter 3
The Big Barbudo
Though we have a reputation for talking at great length, the assembly need not worry. We shall do our best to be brief.'
Old habits die hard, and in the event, Castro's speech to the General Assembly was, at over three hours, the longest in United Nations history. The Indian Prime Minister, Nehru, fell asleep and was woken only by the assembly president using his gavel to reprimand the longwinded speaker for saying that the two United States presidential candidates, Nixon and Kennedy, lacked brains.
Tom had read the report in the newspaper with interest. Castro's use of the royal we' seemed to indicate a Mussolini-sized ego. He didn't disagree with Castro's historical account of US-Cuban relations, but he did question the wisdom of referring to JFK as an illiterate and ignorant millionaire. What interested Tom most of all was the unscripted duration of Dr Castro's address. By all accounts three hours was hardly unusual for the Big Barbudo. Back home in Cuba, speeches lasting four or five hours were not uncommon. These were delivered to every kind of audience, too: sports coaches, doctors, agronomists, dentists, film-makers, and schoolteachers. It was clear that the bearded one liked the sound of his voice as much as he enjoyed a good cigar.
Tom wondered if the point of Castro's frequent speech-making was not to mobilise the masses, but to bore them into submission. Either way, a man who seized every opportunity to speak to an audience, no matter how large or small, and at such interminable length, was an assassin's dream. The wonder was that a marksman - some disaffected Batistiano, or dispossessed landowner's son - hadn't already tried. Of course Castro had his posse of revolutionary army bodyguards to protect him. But Tom, who was Cuban on his father's side, knew Cubanos well enough to guess the real worth of that kind of protection. After all, it wasn't as if the rebel army had defeated the regime of Fulgencio Batista in some great battle, merely that the old dictator's troops had refused to fight, preferring to stay in their barracks.
Tom had always felt that this was the real Cuban character: guerrillas more interested in fine cigars than sticks of dynamite, and soldiers who neglected their posts to watch the World Series on television. While about the only belief that united Cuban men was their hatred of homosexuals. Tom wondered if this was the real reason Johnny Rosselli himself wasn't in Havana making a feasibility study for a hit on Castro. Because from everything Alex Goldman had told Tom about the Don he was more than equal to the task of how and where to kill a man, having murdered as many as a dozen men during his thirty-year mob career.
Not that Tom minded very much. He welcomed this excuse to return to Cuba. He'd been too long away.
Tom felt the Cole Porter rhythm of Havana the minute he stepped off the plane at Rancho Boyeros airport. It felt good to be back in Cuba, to be speaking Spanish again, to hear the endless clamour of automobile horns, to be bargaining for his taxi fare into the centre of town, and to find himself offered a girl from a selection of photographs made available immediately he sat in the backseat by the mule-faced jinitero driving. Already enjoying his trip, Tom amused himself by having the driver describe each girl in obscenely intimate detail. The revolution did not seem to have changed things all that much. The Big Barbudo might have announced an end to gambling and prostitution but the taxi-driver still managed to make Havana sound like a sexual Disneyland. No government in history, insisted the driver, had ever succeeded in putting an end to the oldest profession.
You here on business?'
Yes, business.'
What kind of business?'
If I get time I was hoping maybe to catch one of the Maximum Leader's speeches.'
The taxi-driver twisted around in his seat, his face wearing a horrified expression, as if Tom had just admitted that he was a maricA3n.
Are you a journalist?'
