Nobles said, 'Yeah?' admiring the thickness of his Debbie Reynolds, tucking in the fat ends of corned beef hanging out.
There was no way to make him sick, to make him even stop to make a face. Look at him, sucking his teeth, waving at the man in the apron behind the meat counter, telling him he wanted a dish of potato salad.
Cundo Rey said, 'Would you pay thirty dollars for a chicken? A cooked one?'
'Fried or roast chicken?'
'If you were starving?'
'Would I get biscuits and gravy?'
'At Mariel it was like a parking lot of boats waiting to leave, a thousand of them, it was so crowded with all kinds of boats. We sitting there for days and days, everybody running out of food and water. Now this boat is like a cantina comes to you. Is painted blue. The man on it offer you a cooked chicken for thirty dollars. Black beans, ten dollars a pound. Bottle of rum, eighty dollars.'
'Where's this at?'
'I just tole you. Mariel. You never hear of Mariel?' Almost gritting his teeth, Christ, trying to talk to this guy. 'The name don't mean nothing to you?'
'Yeah, I heard of it. You're talking about your boatlift back--when was that, three four years ago, brought all you boogers up here. Yeah, shit, I'd had me a boat I'd a gone down there made some dough.'
'You know what it cost to leave Havana? What they charge people? Thousand dollars. More than that--some of them, they think you have the money, they charge you ten thousand dollars.'
'It's what I'm saying. Get a old beat-up shrimper cheap, pack about five hundred of you squirts aboard--shit, you could retire, never work again long as you live.'
'If you don't get fined, put in jail by the Coast Guard when you come back from there,' Cundo Rey said. 'Listen, they put twenty of us on a cruiser, a charter-boat, a nice one about ten meters with the name Barbara Rose on the back. From Key West.'
'That's Barb'ra Rose, you spook.'
'The captain, this tough guy, say he only suppose to pick up five people, that's all he was paid for. See, he got their names, given to him by their people in Miami. They came down to Key West to hire the boat. Thousands of people were doing that, to get their relatives. But see, the G-two man from Fidel say to the captain, you think so, but you going to take four for one, twenty people. See, so the rest of us on the boat, with this family that was paid for, we all from Cambinado. Brought to Mariel in a truck.'
'What's Camba-nato?'
'Jesus Christ, it's the prison, Cambinado del Este. I told you I was in there--I picked up a suitcase in a hotel I find out belong to a Russian. I sell his big Russian shoes for ninety dollars--is how bad it is in Cuba, man--and a shirt, you know, that kind with the reptile on it. Where did the Russian get it? I don't know, but I sell it for fifty dollars. They give me life in prison.'
'You poor little bugger, I thought they put you away for being queer.'
'They put plenty of them in Cambinado, yes, and plenty of them come here, too.'
'Let's go find some,' Nobles said, 'and kick the shit out of 'em.' He licked mustard from his fingers. 'Yeah, I wish I had me a boat that time.'
'Not if you talk to the captain of the Barbara Rose,' Cundo said. 'He look at twenty people crowded in his boat, no food, a hundred and ten miles of ocean and if he reaches here he's going to make five thousand dollars.'
'I don't know if I'd get seasick or not. I doubt it, but I don't know. Biggest boat--you might not believe this--I ever been in's a canoe.'
'You hear what I'm telling you? The captain, this tough guy, don't like it. So all he does is complain.'
'No, I been in a bird-dog boat, too, up on the Steinhatchee. But it wasn't no bigger'n a canoe.'
'Listen, the captain of the boat is complaining, he's saying, 'Oh, I could go to jail. I could be fined. I could lose my business, this sixty-thousand-dollar boat because of you people. Why did I come here? Look at the ocean, the choppiness all the way.' Man, all he did was complain.'
'Yeah, but he took you to Key West, didn't he? And he made out pretty good.'
'First we had to lock him up in the below part, while we waiting for the approval to leave.'
'You did?'
'Then, it's time to go, he say it's a mutiny, he wants to leave the boat. No, first call the Coast Guard on the radio, then leave the boat. But then, finally, we leave.'
'He saw the light.'
'He saw the knife we got holding against his back. We leave Mariel, but still he complain, never shut up. He complain so much,' Cundo Rey said, 'we come to think, this is enough. So we throw him in the ocean and take his boat up to a place, it isn't too far from Homestead, and run it in the ground, in the sand. We have to walk, oh, about a hundred meters in the water to get to shore, but is okay, we make it.'
Nobles said, 'Well, you little squirt, you surprise the hell outta me.'
Cundo was staring back at him, giving Nobles his nothing-to-it sleepy look.
'Why you think I was in Cambinado del Este?'
'You said you stole a suitcase, belonged to a Russian.'
Cundo had Nobles' attention now, Nobles hooked, hanging on, wanting to know more.
'I took it out of his room, yes.'
'And the Russian got a good look at you, huh?'
'Yes, of course. Why else would I have to kill him?'
The little Cuban dude kept staring right at him, playing with his earring in his girlish way, nose stuck up in the air like he was the prize.
It took Nobles a few moments to adjust--wait a sec here, what's this shit he's pulling?--and think to say, 'Well, you shoot one of those fellas up here you don't even need a per-mit. Now you want me to tell you my idea? How me and you can make some quick bucks while we're waiting on the big one?'
Chapter 12
HE WAS SMILING before Franny reached the porch with her sack of groceries and saw him, holding the door open.
She said, 'What do you do, just hang out?'
'I'm locking up.'
'This early?'
It was twenty past seven. He closed the glass door and set the lock, Franny inside now looking around the empty lobby, the last of daylight dull on the terrazzo floor that was like the floor, to LaBrava, of a government building. He turned on the cut glass chandelier and Franny looked up at it, not impressed.
'The place needs more than that, Joe.'
'Color? Some paintings?'
She waited as he turned on lamps and came back. 'It needs bodies, warm ones. I'm not knocking the old broads...'
'Bless their hearts,' LaBrava said.
'Listen,' Franny said, 'I'm gonna be an old broad myself someday, if I make it. But we could use a little more life around here. So far we've got you and me and the movie star and things haven't improved that much. Joe, there's a carton behind the desk with my name on it UPS dropped off. Would you mind grabbing it for me? I've got my hands full.' She waited and said, 'Let's see,' when he brought it out and said, 'Oh, shit, I was afraid of that. Another case of Bio-Energetic Breast Cream. Apply with a gentle, circular massaging motion to add bounce and resiliency.' Into the elevator and up. 'Do you know how much bounce and resiliency it's gonna add to the dugs around here? Contains collagen and extract of roses, but not nearly enough, I'm afraid, for South Beach bazooms. They've served their purpose, we hope. Right?' And down the hall to 204. 'Maybe I can sell a couple bottles to your movie star... You're not talking, uh? I saw you having lunch, it looked like you were giving each other bites. When
