Havana Noir

by Achy Obejas

  He turned to me slowly, his eyes still hazy from the drug. “Who the fuck are you?” he drawled.

  “Jason Blue. I’m a private detective. Your dad sent me to get you out of Havana. Let’s go!”

  “Hey, fuck you, man. My old man can’t tell me—”

  Drug fiends are like dogs, either you pull rank right away or they run away with you. I took my .45 and whipped him one across his baby face, then jammed the gun in his skinny ribs.

  “You do what I say or I’ll break every fucking bone in your body. Put your shirt on now!”

  The boy blinked twice, wiped away the trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand, and slipped on a soiled striped shirt.

  “And Raquel?” he said, jerking his chin at the girl. “I’m not leaving without her.”

  I hesitated for a moment, debating how much fight the kid still had in him, then grabbed the lacy dress from the Chinese canopy bed and threw it at the heaving hussy.

  “C’mon.”

  The opium den was at the far end of a warren of rooms under the Shanghai Theater in Havana’s Chinatown. I held my gun out in front, finger on the trigger, and quickly glanced down the corridor, barely lit by a yellow light dangling from the cobwebbed ceiling. No one around.

  Coming down I had looked into all the other cubicles. All were empty except for the very last one, where I had found David Covenant Souther IV, of Woodside, Princeton, and Pacific Heights, heir to the Souther Chemical and Mellenkamp Frozen Food fortunes, wrapped up with a colored bimbo and a pipe of dope, staring at an enraged Chink intent on loping off the boy’s privileged, aquiline, and so very American proboscis.

  “What are we waiting for?” asked the boy now. He stood right behind me, his breath a sour mix of rotting teeth and sweet opium perfume.

  “The main chance, sonny.”

  I counted four doors on either side of the hallway. At the far end, thirty feet away, an old wooden circular staircase led up to backstage. From there it was another long forty feet to the double exit doors—forty feet past dressing rooms with showgirls, bathrooms with drunken patrons, and offices with goons and gunmen, before finally getting out of the building and down the alley to my rental DeSoto. A friendly Cuban dishwasher had snuck me in through the side, but I couldn’t count on his generosity anymore—he was probably still knocked out in the closet where I’d sapped him. The hundred-dollar bill in his pocket would buy a lot of ice for his headache.

  “When I say go, you run right behind me, you understand? Don’t stop no matter what.”

  I translated for the bimbo, who nodded vigorously. At least she had the good sense to recognize that the big Chink’s death could not be good for her business. Besides, she had her ticket out of the Shanghai life right in front of her, the wobbly befuddled kid who for once was using his brain—and arriving at all the wrong conclusions.

  “Hey, man, dig, this is too much.”

  “What?”

  “Hey, you just, you just shot that cat, man. Maybe we should call the police. Yeah, let’s call the American consul, man, he’ll get us out of this. This is Cuba, man. The dollar is almighty here. I’m an American, I want my consul, man. I mean, I didn’t shoot him, that’s your problem.” The kid sank down to the floor, crossing his arms and legs. “I’m not moving, man, I’m sitting down for my rights.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Yeah, man, I demand to see—”

  “Aw, shit.”

  This time I broke his nose. I gave him my handkerchief, told him to hold his head up and press down to stop the bleeding.

  “If I have to bring you back in a full body cast, that’s what I’m going to do, David. Get off the fucking floor.”

  The kid stretched out his long legs and got up, holding onto the girl for support.

  “You’ll pay for this, Blue.”

  “Get in line. Now, at the count of three. One, two…”

  We rushed down the corridor and up the staircase, the girl pushing the boy up behind me, calling him estúpido, cobarde, and a thousand other endearments.

  At the landing, I thought I was home free—I could see the exit doors open to the alley—and then I saw shards of brick fly in front of me and heard the loud report of the gun in the hallway.

  “Down! Down!” I shouted at the boy and girl as I rolled away, taking cover behind a Chinese sarcophagus prop. I fired back at another Chinaman in a white suit. The shooter hid behind a piano when I returned fire, then stood up with a shotgun, blasting away at the quickly splintering casket in front of me. Where is everybody? I kept thinking, even as I told myself this was not what I had in mind when I took on the job.

  * * *

  You understand, pulling crybabies out of jams is one thing. I don’t mind doing that so much; in fact, probably about half of my business in San Francisco consists of clean-up work. Make sure the pictures disappear, make sure the witness doesn’t remember, make sure the society columnist is well-greased, make sure the police blotter gets misplaced, make sure the recording wire nails somebody else. It’s what society detectives do, and in five years solo I’ve carved out quite a little practice for myself. Not quite orthodox detective work, but then, I don’t do divorces or children—I got two of each and they’re not experiences I particularly want to relive. However, I’m not in the market to be somebody’s carnival sitting duck either, particularly in a foreign country undergoing a revolution.

  The call from the kid’s father was not that surprising. I had just brought a couple of society chickees back from New York, where they had deluded themselves into thinking they were beatniks in love with a Commie juvenile delinquent. This little feat had drawn the attention of a host of Peninsula and City families, who were also struggling with the weird choices made by their money-addled offspring.

  My office is on Market Street, down from Lotta’s Fountain and across from the old Souther Chemical Building. “The progress of mankind is measured by the advancement of science,” reads the company’s credo, etched in ten-foot letters on the limestone front. Pretty classy for an outfit founded by an alcoholic French chemist who made his fortune by accidentally mixing up the tailing samples of an abandoned silver mine in Reno with those of a played-out hole in Virginia City, leading a disillusioned miner to kill himself and the chemist to file a claim for the dead miner’s bonanza.

  When Lorraine, my secretary, handed me a slip that old man Pierre Souther wanted to meet me in his executive dining room at 4 o’clock sharp, I knew it wouldn’t be for old sherry and stale walnuts. In any event, he was almost done eating when I came to discuss the job.

  He waved me to a cushy leather chair in the vast room at the far end of his penthouse. Milky sunlight eased through the stained glass window behind him, illuminating the company’s coat of arms, a chemist raising a test tube next to a knight on a white steed killing a dragon, while an empty cross bearing the sign Lux floated above them both.

  “Are you hungry?” He gestured at a steaming bowl of creamed spinach. “It’s about the only food I can hold down. We get it from the little old ladies at Searle’s. Best in town.”

  “No, thank you, the only green I like is the kind I fold and put in my pocket.”

  “So I hear.” He blew on his spoon, slurped the soup. Rail thin, with deep-set gray eyes, Souther seemed like a defrocked priest, eating seminary food to remind himself of his transgressions. “That divorce cost you a bundle, didn’t it?” he said.

  “The house, the ranch, and the Cord, if you want to know. I was hoping you’d help me make it up.”

  “Maybe I can,” he said. He pushed aside the half-full bowl, lit a filterless cigarette, and dropped the match in the soup. He blew out a cloud of smoke. Then: “You love your children, Mr. Blue?” He gazed at me with cold curiosity.

  “Is that a trick question, Mr. Souther?” I replied. “Because if it is, nothing I say will please you.”

  “I just want the truth.”

  “That’s all I’m going to give you, and this is
it: Sometimes I love them more than life itself; sometimes I could wring their little necks and jump for joy. But it’s always a real emotion, there’s nothing fake about my feelings for them. Don’t ask me about their mother.”

  “Do you miss them?”

  The twenty questions game was over. I got up, picked up my briefcase. “Since you obviously had me investigated, I don’t need to tell you that I see them twice a week and every other Sunday and it’s never long enough. Whoever it was you had on me should have told you I don’t like to waste time—mine or anybody else’s.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Blue. There’s twenty thousand dollars in this for you. Half now, half on delivery.”

  “Delivery of what?”

  “My son. My only son. He left for Cuba six months ago for some revolution nonsense and now he’s refusing to come back. I want to see him before I go.”

  “Even if he doesn’t?”

  “Love knows no bounds, Mr. Blue. I was fifty when I had him. His mother died when he was little and I didn’t know what to do with him. I sent him away to boarding school. He’s always hated me for that. I can take his hatred. I just can’t take his absence.”

  He put out the cigarette on a large crystal ashtray bearing the inscription, Lux et Veritas.

  “Bring him back, Mr. Blue. He’s the only one I want.”

  The object of old Souther’s affection now raised his head from the floor of the Chinese theater. Who knows what half-assed vision of valor was going through his head at that moment, but he decided to make a run for it. Grabbing hold of his girl by the hand, he bolted for the door at the same time that the Chinaman came out from behind his piano. I aimed, but the bullet that dropped the shooter wasn’t mine. He fell forward on his chin, the impact shattering his jaw, a couple of teeth tumbling out of his mouth like liar’s bones on the worn wooden floor. I doubt he felt anything given the gory hole the rifie bullet had opened in his back.

  Presently four college student types in short-sleeved shirts bearing armbands with the letters 26-7 came in from the hall, pointing their hunting rifles at us. I threw my gun down right away. The oldest in the group, a skinny redhead Cesar Romero look-alike, waved at his cohorts to put their weapons down—but he kept his tommy gun aimed squarely at my chest all the same.

  “Turistas!“ I shouted, hoping they’d buy it. “Muchos problemas de policía.”

  Cesar Romero laughed.

  “No shit, Jack, everybody’s got a problem with coppers down here,” he said in a thick Bronx accent. “What are you fishing for?”

  Obviously, the stupid Yankee bit wasn’t going to get me far with this gent. I figured I’d take my chances.

  “The kid and his girl. I gotta get ’em outta here.”

  “How comefi”

  “I’m a private dick. His old man paid me to get him back to San Francisco, in California. El viejo se está muriendo.”

  Cesar looked hard at me, trying to decide if I was telling the truth. I was sweating, hoping he’d buy my song and dance.

  Finally: “You picked a fucking fine time to get him out. You know what just happened?”

  I shook my head no, even though I had a fairly good idea of why the crowds outside were shouting, “Viva Fidel!” full blast when twenty-four hours before just whispering “Castro” was enough to get you thrown in the slammer.

  “Batista left at midnight. He hightailed it out of here with his buddies and ten million in cash.”

  I gestured to put my hands down, take out a cigarette. He nodded, eased down the barrel of his gun.

  “Congratulations,” I said, as two of Cesar’s minions brought Souther junior and his doll, kicking and heaving, back into the hall. “I assume you were no fan.”

  “Are you kidding? Son of a bitch had my brother killed in one of his prison cells. Cut his balls off.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said, lighting my thirtieth Chesterfield of the day. “No offense, but what business do you have with a Chink theater?”

  Cesar’s expression changed to hurt pride and I wondered for a moment if I’d overstepped the bounds of Castilian etiquette—the kid’s skin was whiter than mine, after all. I was also gauging how fast I could wrest the gun out of his hand and clear our way to the car. Fortunately, something somewhere in his troubled Cuban psyche kicked in and he let a sly smile out.

  “We just thought we’d come see the girls. Verdad, muchachos, venimos por las jebas?”

  Lots of embarrassed grinning and jostling here. Then Cesar was all business again. Damn mercurial Cubans.

  “We’re also here to close down the place. This is un antro de vicio y prostitución, a, a…” Suddenly his perfect English went south on him.

  “A den of vice and iniquity is the usual phrase back home.”

  “Sorry, it’s been five years since I left Bronx Science.”

  “Hey, man, you speak English!” shouted David at Cesar, “I demand to see the American consul. I’m an American citizen!”

  Cesar looked at him with awe, then back at me. “Jesus, where did you get this monkey?”

  I shrugged.

  “I said I am an American citizen and I—”

  In a lightning swift motion, Cesar lifted his tommy gun and fired over David’s head, missing him by scant inches.

  “The next time is right between the eyes, comemierda!”

  David grew deadly still, his eyes bulged, and this time he nodded quietly. I had to grin.

  “Just get them out of here,” said Cesar. “Guys like him never learn, they think being American makes them better than anybody else.”

  “I understand. May I?” I gestured at my gun on the floor. “I have a feeling I might need it.”

  He nodded. “You might. Everything’s closed down. You got a car?”

  I bent down, picked up my .45. “Around the corner.”

  “Make sure you got gas. Things are going to be pretty hairy the next few days, until Fidel comes down from the hills. Now beat it.”

  “I didn’t catch your name.” I offered my hand.

  He shook it, warmly. “Rolando Cubela. And you?”

  “Jason Blue.”

  “Well, Mister Private Detective Jason Blue, if I’m ever in California, I will give you a call. But you and your friends better fly the coop now.”

  The crowds were all going at it as we drove through Chinatown up to the house in Siboney. An angry mob had surrounded the police station on Zanja, down the street from the theater. I caught sight of one lone officer still in his blue uniform thrown down the steps, kicked, and beaten with shoes, sticks, and brooms. All the stoplights had been shot out of commission, traffic piling up as pedestrians and cars swarmed the streets. Fireworks—Roman candles, rockets, firecrackers—exploded in Chinatown, celebrating a new year like no other. Bands of teenagers in convertibles leaned on car horns, waving giant flags with the black and red of Castro’s party, and the lone star Cuban flag, singing the national anthem and some other military song about libertad. Every so often I would also catch the strains of the “Internationale,” accompanied by riffs of machine-gun fire. On every street, men and women were attacking parking meters with the ferocity they wished they could have shown to Batista’s henchmen. Swinging sledgehammers, they struck until they beheaded the meters, coins spilling like so much blood on the ground, which people would scoop up in a little triumphant dance. I suppose a little craziness is to be expected when a dictator meets his end.

  In the backseat, David had passed out on top of Raquel. She hugged him to her abundant chest like a mother while she worriedly looked out the window, taking in the chaos all around.

  “Mister,” she said in Spanish, “are you sure you’ll be able to get us out of here with no trouble?”

  “I don’t know about the trouble, but we have a boat waiting for us. In a few hours, at the muelle.”

  “No aeropuerto?”

  “Sure to be closed,” I said, still in Spanish. I know it sounds funny, but at that moment I wished that I spoke better Spani
sh. Now that I had gotten a good look at her in the rearview mirror, I realized what a magnificent specimen of femalehood she was. I wanted to comfort her in all the ways a man can for a woman, but all I could do was say it would be okay and drive on.

  We parked at the corner of 180th Street between 15th and 17th in Siboney without incident. The hubbub was now worlds away, back around the capitol building, shining ghastly white with the floodlights turned on, as people streamed in and out, taking files, artwork, boxes of papers. I had never been in a revolution before, but in Korea I had seen how, when authority suddenly vanishes, it’s every man for himself. I figured with the usual snafus there wouldn’t be a single port or customs officer on duty to stop us.

  Raquel helped me carry David inside. We laid him on the bed of the coach house I’d rented from a Canadian I’d met at the Bodeguita del Medio the night I got into town. The coach house—clearly the servant’s quarters—was behind a two-bedroom white house of fairly recent construction, modest by neighborhood standards. She lay down with him and I went to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. It was going to be a long night. I had told the captain of the boat to meet me at the dock at 7 in the morning with a full tank and food for the trip to Key West. It was now close to 3 and the efforts of a whole week of searching for David were finally beginning to take their toll.

  I had eaten all my meals out since coming into town, so I had no idea what the Canadian’s kitchen contained. I strolled across the grass to the empty house. There was a fence around the property and bushes taller than me. I walked in through the terrace to the kitchen and opened up a few cupboards, uncovering crackers, a jar of pickled herring, and a bag with a log of dried meat called pemmican that smelled suspiciously of old socks. Finally, in the refrigerator, behind two bottles of Big Rock Ale, I found a can of finely ground coffee. However, hard as I looked, I could not find a percolator anywhere in the place.

  “Te puedo servir?” asked Raquel from the kitchen door. She’d apparently followed me over.

  She leaned her head on the doorframe, her wide doe eyes slightly closed from fatigue and sleeplessness. It wasn’t her eyes I was looking at, but her full figure, like a Maidenform bra ad, barely covered by the flimsy crocheted lace dress she’d thrown on at the Shanghai.