“Who the hell are you to do that?”
“I know people in the army.”
“Who exactly do you work for?”
“I don’t work for anyone. I told you, I never take sides.”
“You did just now. You took my side.”
He started the car and we drove slowly back through the streets towards Vedado. The sun was just coming up, the sky had cleared and there was a lemon aura to the palm trees. Steam rose from the wet cobblestones.
I put my head back on the seat and took another long draw on the cheroot. There were angry red welts around my wrists where the handcuffs had bitten into me. I pulled down the sun visor and checked my reflection in the mirror. Look what they’d done to me. I didn’t recognize the stranger staring back at me; whoever that desperado was, she had a badly swollen lip and a bruise on her cheek the side of a baseball. At least she hadn’t lost any teeth.
“Stop the car,” I said, and I got out and was sick in the street. Afterwards I leaned on the bonnet of the Impala and started to cry. He came around the car, put his arms round my shoulders and held me. “We should get you to a hospital,” he said.
“No, I’m all right.”
“That’s a bad bruise on your cheek. We should get it looked at, make sure nothing’s broken.”
“If anything needs looking at, it’s your head, Señor Garcia. Why would you stick your neck out for me?” I remembered what Inocencia had said to me; maybe he really did love me. Why would he do that?
“Were they going to kill me?”
“No, they just wanted to scare you.”
“They were going to rape me first. That always scares a girl a little, too.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
“Why did they arrest me?”
“I don’t know. Do you think Lansky had anything to do with it?”
“Funny, that was what I was thinking, too.”
“He doesn’t like people saying no to him. He has a lot of friends in the police.”
“What about you? Who are your friends?”
“Me? I’m friends with everyone. I’m a very friendly guy.”
He helped me back into the car and we drove the few blocks to Vedado. When we reached the villa he turned off the engine and we sat there and listened to the clicking as the engine cooled down. “You’re not everything you seem, are you?” I said.
“Who is?”
“You won’t tell my father about this?”
“I won’t have to. He’ll find out himself before he’s even out of the airport. You know that, don’t you?”
“What am I going to tell him?”
“Tell him the truth, that you went to a live sex show at the Shanghai with Angel. He’ll prefer any lie you make up after that.”
I turned to look at his face but it was still too dark to see his expression. “You think I’m a puta?”
“No, I just think you have more spirit than good judgment.”
I put my face in my hands. This hadn’t happened. Perhaps when I woke up this would all turn out to be just a bad dream. “He’s going to kill me.”
“He won’t kill you, that wouldn’t be nearly punishment enough. If you were my daughter I’d put you in a convent.”
“Dios mio.”
“I still think we should go to the hospital.”
“I just want to sleep.”
“When does your father get back?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Well, good luck.”
I put my hand on his. “Thank you.” I leaned across quickly and kissed him on the cheek, wincing at the pain in my lip.
Before I could pull away he grabbed me, pulled my face towards him and kissed me. “I told you,” he said, “we’re meant to be together. It’s fate.”
I wrapped one leg around his thigh and kissed him back, pressing my face against his, my fingers tangled in his hair. When I pulled away there was a smear of blood on his cheek from my lip. The kiss left us both breathless.
“When will I see you again?” I said.
“I have to go away tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m getting out of town before your father gets back,” he said and grinned.
“I hear you’re running guns for the rebels.”
“People also say I’m spying for the CIA. It’s hard to know what to believe these days, isn’t it?
“How long will you be gone?”
“Until I get back.”
“Will you come back?”
“I always come back. I told you, I don’t have enemies. No one shoots at me because I’m on everyone’s side.”
“I’ll be waiting,” I said and got out of the car.
I managed to creep back inside the house without waking Maria. I watched from my bedroom window as he drove away. It had been the most terrifying, most memorable night of my life. I lay down on my bed, wondering how I was going to explain my bruises to Maria.
I ran my own bath, and stripped off my dress and underwear. When I stepped into the water I felt quite calm, but by the time I lay back and stretched out I was sobbing. An hour later I was still curled up on the cold tiles, shaking, unable to move.
Chapter 27
Two days later Papi got back from Miami. I watched from my bedroom window as he got out of the taxi in his Panama and white suit. Maria rushed out to meet him, took his case, ushered him inside. He glanced up briefly at my bedroom window. I knew from his face that he’d already heard what had happened, just as Reyes had said.
I sat in my room for hours, waiting for the summons that never came.
Finally I crept down the stairs. He was sitting on a cane chair in the patio with his cigars and his rum. Green parrots playing in the avocado tree, butterflies danced among the ferns. Rafa lay sprawled at his feet, the poor old dog had missed him.
Perhaps he intended to be angry with me, but as soon as he saw my face his expression changed. He rushed over and hugged me. “What did they do you?” He clung to me so hard it hurt. When he finally let go there were tears in his eyes.
He touched his thumb to my cheek. “Those bastards,” he said, and he didn’t apologize for using bad words. Instead he picked up a cane chair and threw it across the patio. Gaucho yelped and ran for cover inside the house.
“I’m all right,” I said.
“What were you doing out there?” he shouted.
“I was with Angel.”
“And he left you? He left you?”
I nodded.
“A true Macheda! Things get tough, they run.”
“I’m sorry, Papi.”
“Sorry doesn’t cover it, cariña.” He paced up and down, then threw his cigar at the wall. “He took you into the barrio?”
I nodded.
“Don’t tell me what you were doing there, I don’t want to know.”
“I shouldn’t have gone.”
He paced the tiles. “No, you shouldn’t have gone! What the hell were you thinking? How could you do this?” His anger evaporated as suddenly as it had come, and he threw his arms around me again. He held me close and I felt his chest heave, I realised he was crying. Oh, Papi, please don’t cry. That’s much worse than shouting. I can stand you shouting but not this.
“What were you doing with that boy, anyway? He’s getting married soon.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Are you in love with him?”
“I’ve always been in love with him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to, but there was never a right time.”
“If he had any respect he would have come to me first.” He stared into my face and I wondered how much he knew, or had guessed. “Did you sleep with him?”
“No,” I said. It was a lie but I told myself it protected us both, not just me. I had already hurt him enough. I couldn’t tell him all of it, I just couldn’t.
“I shouldn’t have left you here on your own. I’m away four
days and everything goes to hell.” He started pacing again. “I believe we have our Señor Garcia to thank for your rescue.”
“I don’t know what would have happened if...”
“Why did he do this? Have you made any promises to this man?”
I shook my head. That much, at least, was true.
“Perhaps I’ve misjudged him.”
“Perhaps you misjudged me, too, Papi. I’m sorry. I let you down.”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You didn’t let me down. It’s funny, you never knew your mother, you were still only a kid when she died. It’s a shame, she would have understood you better than I ever could. She was a spirited woman, just like you. When she was your age her father threatened to put her in the convent to save her virtue, stop her running around with the wrong kind of boys.”
“Which boys?”
“Boys like me. I married her because of her spirit, and you remind me a lot of her. Sometimes it makes me smile and other times it scares me half to death. I was hoping you’d be more cautious, a bit more like me.”
“I won’t ever disobey you again.”
“Yes you will. It’s in your nature, I know that.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Luis was covering for you all this time, is that it?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
“I caught him stealing some of Mama’s jewellery.”
“When?”
“About a year ago.”
“You blackmailed him?”
“No, I helped him. I didn’t want him to lose his job. And I asked him to return the favour.”
“You blackmailed him.”
I supposed I did.
“They say he was in the movement,” he said.
“I don’t believe it. They’re making it up.”
“No, I don’t think so. It makes sense. He was poor, I heard his father was beaten to death on a sugar plantation when he was a kid. I don’t blame him. I don’t disagree with what these people are doing, just the way they’re doing it.”
“He’s dead, Papi. They beat him to death.”
He nodded.
“Do you think it was Luis that bombed the Left Bank?” I asked him.
“Luis?”
“It would have been easy for him to do. The police said they caught him at a rebel house on Calle 5 and there was bomb making equipment everywhere.”
“You don’t believe what the police say.”
“They lie about a lot of things but why would they lie about that?”
“I can’t believe that Luis would do something like that to us.”
I wasn’t sure anymore. He had been our driver for a long time but I had never really asked him anything about himself. How he must have despised me, lying to my father, shaming myself with Angel, blackmailing him to keep quiet about it. I suppose he had no cause to admire us.
After what Reyes had shown me in the old city, after everything he had said, I had started to look at Cuba and my life a different way.
“What were you doing in Miami, Papi?”
He went to the table, opened his cigar box, chose one and lit it. He watched the smoke drift upwards and then closed his eyes. Finally: “I was looking for a place for us to live.”
“But you said you’d never leave here.”
“That was before they bombed my club, that was before the police arrested my own daughter and threatened to rape her!”
“They didn’t touch me, Papi. They were just trying to scare us.”
“Look at your face. You tell me they didn’t touch you?”
What could I say to that? What a filthy little brat I was, how could I shame him this way? What had I done?
“This isn’t my Havana anymore,” he said.
“Are you leaving because you want to go, or because of me?”
“What do you think?”
“Don’t do it because of me.” I thought about Lansky. Was it him who planted the bomb, who had me arrested? I hated the thought of him getting his own way now, and I would hate it even more if Papi left Havana because of me. Cuba was in his veins. He would shrivel up and die anywhere else.
I watched him debate with himself, his hands opening and closing into fists. He said, “The repairs to the Left Bank are going to cost a fortune.”
“Lansky offered to pay for them.”
“I would rather take money off the devil.”
“What would we do in America anyway?”
“I don’t know. I would get only a fraction of what this house is worth now. It would be like starting again.”
“Just a little while longer, Papi. If you can stand it, I can. I’m not frightened.”
He turned around and hugged me with such ferocity that I couldn’t breathe. He stroked my hair. “I promise I’ll never let anyone hurt you again,” he said.
A few days after Papi got back from Miami, Rafa died. One morning we came down for breakfast and he was lying sprawled on the patio tiles, and we thought he was asleep, but when Papi went to pat him he was cold. He picked him up and wrapped him in a blanket, then he carried him out to the old ceiba tree in the front yard and buried him there. When he was done he sat there for hours, and none of us went near him. He didn’t talk for days. Another part of the Vieja Havana was gone, at least our part of it.
Papi cleaned up the damage at the Left Bank and re-opened with a fanfare, but the crowds were disappointing and it was never quite the same again. He never found another bolerista quite like Inocencia. I watched him grow older every day, it was as if the life and soul had been sucked out of him.
I had not heard from Reyes in weeks and I wondered where he was. I imagined him in the jungle somewhere, leading a line of mules loaded with crates of guns up some overgrown mountain trail, or slipping a barricade in some ancient fishing boat, loaded to the gunnels with rifles.
He didn’t believe in wars but he helped other men carry them on; he didn’t believe in Fidel or Meyer Lansky but he served them both. He lit votive candles for women he only half loved. He was an enigma to me and to everyone who knew him, perhaps even to himself.
For all his brash confidence I supposed that one day he would have his reckoning, too.
Chapter 28
Angel got married in the cathedral one Sunday in December. I was praying for wind and for rain.
Unfortunately, it was an almost perfect day.
I chose a pew halfway towards the back, as far from the aisle as possible so I would not have to catch his eye as he walked past. I watched him standing at the altar, smoothing down his perfect hair, looking nervous, looking happy. The Macheda clan were one of the most influential families in Havana, and it was standing room only inside the cathedral if you weren’t family or close friends.
Papi sat beside me, he looked sallow and tired. I nagged him constantly about his drinking and his smoking, I had even joined forces with Maria who now kept him on a special diet: rice salads, no spicy foods, just one glass of rum in the afternoon. She even tried to hide his cigars. He complained a lot but he did as he was told. He even came home from the club at midnight.
“You’re the best father in the world,” I told him, “but what kind of father will you be when you’re dead? I need you.”
Guilt worked where carping didn’t; he didn’t look well, but he looked better.
I knew my friends were all watching me, but if they thought they were going to see a show they were going to be disappointed. I felt serene. I smiled and waved back at everyone. Ramon, from my father’s bar, was my boyfriend for the day. I clung to his hand and kissed him on the cheek whenever Angel looked my way. I looked radiant, damn him.
It was only when I saw Esmeralda Salvatore walk along the aisle that my resolve began to slip. This was the biggest day in Havana for years and it was supposed to be my day.
It was my pride that was wounded more than anything. I stood a little straighter, fanned my cheeks with the order of service, and just kept smiling, smiling till my jaw ache
d. And then I smiled some more.
The Nacional was Havana’s most prestigious address, its distinctive twin spires dominated the bluff at Vedado. In fact it was a monument to the Mob, everything that Papi despised. It was also where Angel was having his wedding reception.
The bellboys swooped as our Bel Air pulled up outside. Papi raised an eyebrow at me. Look at the state of their uniforms, his face said. They can’t even buy their busboys new threads.
White limousines pulled up at the portico one after another, splendid military men with wives dripping diamonds, men in tuxedos like my father, some of them trailing bulky men in dark suits.
Papi took my arm and led me up the steps into the lobby. It was a surreal time to be having a wedding: there was a press blackout in Havana and the rebels had cut the phone lines to the rest of Cuba. We were effectively cut off from the rest of the world, all the glamour existed inside a wonderland bubble. Every day there was a fresh rumour; the rebels were on the outskirts of the city; Santa Anna had fallen; Batista was dead; Fidel was dead.
But walk inside the Nacional and the war did not exist, it was a world with no rebels, no calendars and no windows. This was Meyer Lansky's world and Bobbo Salvatore’s world, a green beize universe of roulette wheels and card shoes and blackjack croupiers. They still believed nothing would change. It was surreal.
A buffet had been laid out on the lawns; Morro crab and queen conch enchiladas from the southern archipelago; roast breast of flamingo; roast tortoise with lemon and garlic; crayfish, oysters, and grilled swordfish from Cojímar, grilled manatee from Camagüey.
How did he do it? The roads leading in and out of the city had been blockaded for weeks by rebel militias and many of Havana’s restaurants had shut down. There was even a shortage of sugar - Papi said it was like Detroit running out of cars.
Yet somehow Salvatore and Macheda had flown in the best food from everywhere in the country. Perhaps they would survive the revolution after all.
The reception was one of the biggest parties I had ever been to, and I had seen much extravagance in my short life. The guests were drinking French champagne and añejo rum and waiters circulated with boxes of Montecristo cigars.
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