by Jose Latour
Dick unfastened his gaze from the screen, placed his half-full glass on the table at a safe distance from Lansky’s jacket, and cleared his throat. His guests kept watching the game.
“In round numbers, 223,000 for the Yanks and 63,000 for the Braves.”
“How do we stand?”
“Thirteen-to-ten odds mean a net loss of around 100 thousand if the Yankees win and a net profit of 125 thousand if they lose.”
“Bets for this game?”
“Three sixteen for the Yanks and ninety-two for the Braves.”
Shaifer whistled low and cut a sideways look at Angelo Dick, who anticipated the next question.
“We’d lose around 195 if the Mules win. If Milwaukee takes the lead, we’d make roughly 215.”
Lansky seemed to be following the plays as he sipped his highball, but his mind juggled figures and explored opportunities. Only the set’s audio and the humming air conditioners could be heard. At the bottom of the third inning, following ten minutes of silence, he made an observation.
“On the first game these people bet, only with us, almost four hundred eight thousand bucks, over forty cents for each man, woman, and child in the city.”
Angelo Dick nodded reflectively before speaking. “You consider bets controlled by natives and those among buddies, maybe the total is over a dollar per person. Just like in New York or Chicago.”
“There’s something to learn from this,” Lansky said, turning to Shaifer. “We have to redirect the Cubans’ devotion to gambling. Take them to the wheel, the bones, the bandits, anything gives us better percentages. We ought to figure out some sort of small, low-overhead joints in Havana’s downtown and middle-class districts to take in natives who will never gamble at the Riviera, Capri, or Deauville. We gotta rise to the occasion, increase the profit potential of all that sports dough from fifty to eighty, eighty-five, or ninety per cent. Now, Jacob, the biggest amusement park here has a cheap gambling parlor operated by a Cuban. I’ve been told the guy’s making a killing. Give it a look-see, willya? Talk to the guy, tell him we’d like to do business with him.”
“I’ll see to it,” Shaifer said.
In the top of the fourth, Bill Skowron, the Yankees’ first baseman, hit a home run and opened the scoring, but in the bottom the Braves scored two runs. With Hank Aaron on third base, Del Crandall singled to left field; another hit by Andy Pafko moved Crandall to second; then a sharp liner to center field by Warren Spahn allowed Crandall to score. Angelo Dick refreshed drinks, lit a Pall Mall, and reclined on his armchair for the fifth. With one out, Whitey Ford walked and Hank Bauer, the New Yorkers’ right fielder, homered into the left field bleachers to give his team a 3–2 lead.
The three men watched with the poise typical of professional gamblers. For the financial reward involved, a vague inner satisfaction settled in just after the Braves took the lead, even though none needed to be reminded that the next day’s score could offset a first-game profit. Lansky smoked placidly, sipped his drink, or drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. Shaifer, shirt cuffs folded up under the elbows, had the inscrutability of a Siamese cat. Angelo Dick methodically reviewed figures in his mind, waiting for a new round of questions. Through the huge picture window, under a brilliant sun, the sea and the sky merged blues on the horizon.
At the start of the lucky seventh, Lansky turned a little in his seat and stared at Casino de Capri’s gambling-hall supervisor.
“How’s the other business, Angelo?”
“It’s okay, Mr. Lansky. I still haven’t got the final figures for September—you know, the accountant is working on it now, month ended yesterday—but we are hoping for a 160-grand net profit, not bad for the dead month. Nick is very pleased, especially with roulette results. We made 83,000 in it, 33,000 in baccarat, 28,000 in—”
“Not the Capri, Angelo,” interrupted Lansky.
“Sir?”
“I mean your other business.”
“My other business?”
“This angel factory you’ve opened up.”
Angelo Dick’s only visible reaction was a touch of paleness. To elude Lansky’s stare, he looked at the TV screen. Wiretapped was the first thing that came to his mind.
“Tell me, how’re you doing in the baby business?” Lansky insisted.
Angelo kept watching the game. “It’s no big deal, Mr. Lansky.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, starting to look befuddled.
Lansky kept his eyes fastened on Angelo Dick. “Really? Four hundred twenty-three abortions in six months, your cut is a hundred for each little thing, and it’s no big deal? At the casino you make forty-eight grand a year; the bonus pushes you up to what, fifty-five? Sixty? At the rate you’re shipping angels to heaven you’ll make almost ninety grand a year. No big deal? Give me a break.”
“In fact—,” Dick began, taking a stab at mollifying Lansky, eyes still on the screen.
“Look at me, you sonafabitch!”
The old man read fear in Angelo’s eyes. Lansky was glad that it was out in the open at last. Life had burned out his self-control; twenty years earlier he had been capable of dancing around a punk like Angelo for months, work and party with him as if nothing had happened, and never feel anger boiling inside him. He rose from the couch and walked over to the huge picture window, hands in his pockets. Jacob Shaifer hadn’t moved an inch, but he wore a different expression now: that of a predator ready to leap over an unsuspecting antelope. The hall supervisor felt his bladder in need of relief and admitted to himself it was part beer, part panic. He now knew why the boss had invited himself to his apartment.
Lansky stared out through the window. His gaze plummeted a hundred feet down, across the wide avenue to the dog’s tooth rock beyond the seawall. Tame waves caressed it lovingly, white foam cooled it off, salt flavored it, seaweed adorned it. Lansky took a deep breath. Angelo’s greed had opened him to ridicule, and he needed to relieve his frustration with the jerk responsible for it. His cardiologist had advised him to at his last appointment. Seething is bad for you. Let the steam off; don’t repress your feelings all the time. Kick the furniture, yell at incompetent bastards—that’s the best therapy. Besides, it was part of the act, one of those rare occasions in life when what must be done perfectly matches up with what you feel like doing. He turned around and faced Angelo.
“Didn’t you know New York is trying to force its way in?” he hissed.
Angelo Dick nodded energetically.
“Didn’t you know Anastasia wanted to retire Frank?”
Second lively acceptance.
Lansky was fuming now. “Didn’t you know I had to call a meeting here with the Commission and the dons of the Five Families and tell them all that whoever wanted to invade the fucking Cuban territory would be sleeping in a wooden pajama one day after getting off the plane?”
Third mute approval.
“Talk to me, scumbag. Did you or didn’t you know all that?”
“I did, yessir.”
“And knowing it, you go and line up with a Joe Bananas sottocapo to perform abortions here on every New York slut gets pregnant.”
Angelo looked at the floor, weathering the storm.
“You almost had to charter a fucking plane! A hundred twenty-six broads flew over in August! Three gynecologists at three different clinics, for Chrissake! This keeps growing, you’ll have to rent office space and a coupla secretaries, goddammit!”
During a fifteen-second pause, Lansky got his breath back. Jacob Shaifer was enjoying the performance enormously.
“I know everything, Angelo, everything,” Lansky went on at last. “The dame pays four hundred. Two cover medical attention. You and Joe Notaro split the other two.”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Lansky,” moaned the culprit, “but I’m not making a hundred per patient. I gotta pay the interpreter that picks them up at the airport, taxi fare, tips—”
“You are stupid. I’m discussing principle
s here, not nickels and dimes. Can’t you see, asshole, they’ve used you as the foot in the door?”
“Just a second, sir,” Angelo said, holding up his hands innocently, minding his choice of words. “This is a misunderstanding. Notaro has never said a word about gambling, never mentioned that Bonanno wants to open shop here. Fact is right now there’s a lot of heat against illegal abortions in New York and prices have shot up to a thou, even twelve hundred. And since it’s legit here, including airfare each patient saves between four and six hundred dollars. I give you my word, Mr. Lansky, it was just a business opportunity. Nobody asked me how are we doing or suggested I change sides.”
Lansky moved his eyes to the screen for a few seconds to process the new information. Probably. Joe Bananas, Mr. Nice Guy, didn’t have the balls to go ahead on his own. Maybe Bananas’ closest ally, Joe Profaci, whose daughter married Mr. Nice Guy’s son, wasn’t sure yet. The hypocrite bastards.
“They don’t feel sure yet,” Lansky said as if muttering to himself. “They know I’m pretty powerful here.” And again addressing Angelo: “For twenty-one years I’ve done business in Cuba, you hear? Twenty-one years.”
“I’ll explain everything …”
“You sure will.”
“… but I gotta pee.”
“You already peed outta the piss pot. Keep an eye on the schmuck.”
Lansky motioned his last remark to Shaifer by jerking his head and remained alone in the living room as both men marched to the bathroom. Bottom of the eighth. The Braves’ Eddie Mathews walked; Hank Aaron lined a double into right field, sending Mathews to third. Casey Stengel emerged from the dugout and sportively trotted his sixty-eight years to the pitching mound for a talk with Whitey Ford. Fans knew that Ford and Stengel didn’t get along, but talking in front of the cameras they looked like father and son. Stengel rested his right hand on the pitcher’s shoulder and signaled for Ryne Duren. The game proceeded and Adcock fanned for the first out before Wes Covington flied out deep to center field, and Mantle’s throw couldn’t beat Mathews to home plate. Tied, 3–3.
Angelo and Shaifer returned to their seats and watched the action. The hall supervisor awaited sentencing smoking nervously and trying to sort out his predicament. He suspected that Lansky had ordered Shaifer to monitor him in the bathroom to prevent him from flushing some compromising papers—that had to be it. Treason entailed death, but that was out of the question; he hadn’t betrayed. He’d be reprimanded and that would be all. Nonetheless, the flustered Angelo envisioned his future in Havana as uncertain as the outcome of a baseball game tied at the start of the ninth.
Shaifer rose and ambled over to the pantry, opened the refrigerator, rolled up and gobbled two slices of ham and one of cheese in three bites. He came back into the living room wiping his fingers clean on his handkerchief, then arranged himself on the sofa.
“You fucked up, Angelo,” a calm Lansky said once he had concluded that the egregious blunder deserved the punishment agreed on beforehand. “You fucked up when they offered you the deal and didn’t mention it to Nick or to myself; fucked up again when operations started; and perhaps you also fucked up with something more serious nobody knows about, like blowing the gaff.”
“No. I give you my word,” Angelo averred.
“Let’s hope so. Nick and I agreed you’ll take a plane to Tampa, report to the Colonial Inn, and mop floors or wash dishes till I remember you again.”
“Yessir.”
“You sound like a fucking Marine,” Lansky quipped with a grin.
Angelo thought that joking entailed forgiveness and, relieved, smiled broadly. Shaifer shook his head in admiration. His boss was one of the greatest actors on earth.
Minutes wore on and not another word was spoken. In the bottom of the tenth Hank Aaron was called out on strikes, Adcock singled to center, and Wes Covington flied out. Then Adcock took second on Del Crandall’s single and Bill Bruton came to bat. Benched at the start of the game with knee trouble and because left-handed Whitey Ford was pitching, he took Andy Pafko’s place in center field after Duren relieved Ford. On the third pitch Bruton stroked a line drive to right field and Adcock scored the winning run for the Milwaukee Braves.
Meyer Lansky rose from the couch, turned off the set, slowly slipped into his jacket and put his hat on. Shaifer did the same after unfolding his shirt cuffs and followed his boss to the front door. Angelo Dick, right behind them, heard the lock clicking open, and believed himself home free. It was the proper moment to say good-bye with humble elegance in a diffident tone.
“Thanks for your understanding, Mr. Lansky.”
“You’re coming with us, Angelo. Get your jacket,” was Meyer Lansky’s soft-spoken indication.
Brought along by a weak cold front, drizzle fell that night. At dawn it was cloudy; before ten it started pouring all over Havana. Heavy drops plopping on a wooden louvered window awoke the man sleeping in one of two cabins at a private sanatorium for mental patients.
Mariano Contreras did a big stretch, got up, shuffled into a tiny bathroom, and urinated. At the sink, he coughed and spat prior to brushing yellowish teeth. The medicine cabinet mirror reflected a deeply wrinkled forehead, loose gray hair, green-gray eyes, white stubbles on his cheeks and chin, a bushy salt-and-pepper mustache, and a skeptical expression on cardboard-thin lips.
After inserting a new blade in the safety razor, Contreras returned to the bedroom, lit a La Corona cigarette from a pack on the night table, and went back into the bathroom. The shaving brush worked a rich lather and he shaved cautiously, pausing to smoke, thinking that he would have to trim his mustache soon. When he was done, he dropped the stub into the toilet bowl and flushed it, stepped out of his shorts, pulled his undershirt over his head, then took a warm shower. His lean body was almost totally covered with hair—brownish on his legs, the pubis, the flat stomach, and his back, white on his chest. Once dried, Contreras rubbed alcohol on his face, sprinkled talcum on his feet, sprayed deodorant under his armpits, and combed back his hair. He dropped the soiled underwear into a basket and returned to the bedroom.
Putting on nylon socks, Contreras recalled his first visit to this sequestered place six days before. He had admitted to the shrink that he felt insecure, anxious, frightened. A friend of his, treated here for similar symptoms, had highly recommended a few months of peace and quiet at the same cabin in which he had regained his balance. The doctor’s instant diagnosis had been psychasthenia. His prescription: indefinite rest at the institution. A balanced diet would be provided and the patient could come and go whenever and wherever he wished. The full treatment cost 400 pesos a month. Contreras had haggled the man down to 350 just to mask his enthusiasm.
The health resort was an eight-acre country estate with royal palms and numerous tropical fruit trees, located at the intersection of Barrera and Alday, in the Los Pinos district, part of the imprecise belt dividing Havana’s urban and rural areas. Four years earlier, two practicing psychiatrists had converted its nineteenth-century sandstone mansion into a female ward, built a separate ward for males, and a thatched-roof outdoor lounge, a kitchen, and a dining hall. Rather optimistically, two cabins for married patients and their sane mates had been also constructed. They had hoped to attract and treat patients suffering from phobias, neuroses, manias, and similar mental conditions who could afford private care.
However, not everything came out as the owners had hoped. Fourteen competitors, some of them having many years of practice and prestige, had as good or better institutions in similar bucolic surroundings nearby, and charged equivalent fees. So the Hippocratic oath had been somewhat circumvented. Individuals as sound of mind as anyone, in need of monastic solitude at the tree-sheltered cabins for reasons of their own, were accepted as patients. The staff had been instructed to allow full freedom of movement to these people, including visitors at any time, orders for drinks and cigarettes, and permission to leave the premises whenever they felt like it. On the infrequent occasions when both
cabins were rented, the sex life of truly sick married patients was deferred.
Contreras dressed unhurriedly, donning underwear, a white dress shirt, a dark blue tie, an off-the-rack gabardine gray suit, and black cordovan lace-up shoes. Into his pockets he dropped wallet, key ring, coins, handkerchief, cheap ballpoint, cigarettes, and matches. Finally, his head covered by a three-day-old copy of the newspaper Excelsior and relishing the smell of wet earth and foliage, he followed a sinuous footwalk, left the cabin key at the reception desk, and reached a small parking space, where he climbed into a black ’47 Chevrolet Fleetline.
At a quarter past eleven Contreras pulled in behind an old Studebaker, twenty feet from the corner of Rastro and Belascoaín Streets, not too far from downtown Havana. The tires of cruising vehicles squelched on the asphalt; multicolored stripes of diluted motor oil crawled and disappeared into sewers, although it wasn’t raining at the moment. He got out and in less than a minute covered the two blocks to La Segunda Estrella de Oro, a Chinese restaurant at 808 Monte Street.
The place, five times longer than it was wide, exuded the amalgamated smell of mixed fried rice and the subtler aromas of shrimp, red porgy, lobster, and pork. All the revolving stools along the fifty-foot-long counter were occupied; from behind it, five slant-eyed waiters dripping with sweat brought in trays with steaming hot bowls of guy meing ton soup, the ever-present chen chow fon, and fried, meat-filled wontons. As patrons poured in, the frantic attendants cleared used tableware and empty bottles, mopped the Formica top and set out paper doilies and clean cutlery. There was a continuous flow of regulars: the traders, roustabouts, and truck drivers from the neighboring Mercado Único. Wearing muddy undershirts, frayed jeans, shoes, baseball caps or five-gallon hats, and big knives in leather sheaths tucked into the waistbands of their pants, they talked shop in their jargon. Facing the counter, sitting in comfortable booths, better-dressed families or groups of friends who were in no hurry feasted on chop suey, chow mein, and other delicacies.