Chapter 11
Walking into the Flamingo Lounge was like stepping back in time. It was out in Dade County, just across the road from a second-hand car place. There were a few pick-ups parked out front. The Imperial was discreetly parked out back. It was dark inside, with puce-coloured brick walls and no windows. It used to be a bank.
Men in guayabera shirts and khakis played dominoes under the ceiling fans. Angel sat with his back to the wall drinking cafe con leche and talking business with three other guys, all wearing silk suits and too much jewellery. His muscle were sitting by the door, as usual. I walked straight past them. Perhaps they didn’t think I was a threat because I was a woman, perhaps they were distracted by the fact that I had stockings but no shoes, or perhaps they were watching the stripper.
Angel looked up, surprised. He was even more surprised when I picked up his coffee and threw it in his face.
It was only then that the two goons actually started moving. Angel jumped up and motioned for them to sit down again.
“What the hell was that?”
“You think that’s all I’m good for?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He makes blue movies, right?”
Angel jumped over the table, grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into a back room. There was a guy sitting at the desk, checking off figures in a ledger. He told him to get out and kicked the door shut behind him.
Then he hit me upside the head. I saw a bright flash and went down. Then he threw a chair at me. “What the fuck?” he shouted at me.
I just lay there. I really didn’t think he had it in him, the last time I’d thrown things at him he’d run out into the street to try and get away from me. But that was a long time ago, and now he had a reputation to keep up.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” he said.
“You know, Angel, there’s no point keeping bodyguards if a woman can just walk up to you and fill you full of cappuccino.”
He smiled at that. Then he looked down at the stain on his suit and that got him angry again. That was the thing with Angel, you could do what you wanted to him as long as you didn’t untidy his clothes. “You want to tell me what that little show was all about?”
“You set me up.”
“I what?”
“You think I’m a whore.”
I was still curled up in the corner. He grabbed another chair, and I thought he was going to throw it at me. Instead he put it down right in front of me, so I couldn’t get up even if I wanted.
“You better start making some sense.”
“Your friend Marcellis was naked when I got there. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Some audition. He asked me to do that scene from Casablanca, you know, the part where Ingrid Bergman gets down on her knees and gives Humphrey Bogart a blow job.”
“I didn’t know about this,” he said.
“Sure you didn’t. That’s what I am now, right? I’m like one of the showgirls at the Tropicana, someone you can pass around hand to hand like your old man used to do in the old days. Thanks for nothing.”
““Thanks for nothing?” Is that what you said? Nothing? When I found you, you were working in that shitty diner on Biscayne. Now you got nice clothes, you sit right up front to see Frank Sinatra, and I pay all your old man’s medical bills. Is that nothing?”
“So that means you can hire me out to your sleazy Hollywood friends?”
“You think that’s what I did? I thought he was the real deal. I swear to God I did not think he would pull a stupid stunt like that.”
I didn’t know if I believed him. I wanted to.
He picked up the chair and turned it to firewood on the top of the desk, then threw a battered Remington typewriter across the office and put a hole in the wall. As he was going out he turned around and asked me if I was okay, like an afterthought.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said.
Two days later I saw in the Miami Herald that a well-known Hollywood producer called Tony Marcellis had been injured in a hit and run while crossing the road outside his hotel. He was in serious condition in hospital. The driver of the car had not been found.
Angel gave me a diamond necklace because that was the way to solve every problem, with money and a dented fender.
But I kept the necklace.
Chapter 12
Angel wanted me to meet him at the Fontainebleau for lunch. As I was walking across the lobby I heard a man laughing. It wasn’t the kind of laugh you could ever forget.
He was sitting by the windows with a couple of other men who looked as if they had just escaped the pages of Rolling Stone. He hadn’t shaved and his shirt was crumpled. He looked like a journalist, or a private detective perhaps, three years into unemployment.
I thought perhaps he was drunk. But when he saw me, he stood up, rock steady on his feet and grinned. “Princess!”
The last time I’d seen him was on the tarmac at Havana airport, the night everything went to hell. He had just thrown two suitcases full of money into the back of the Cessna that was about to fly Papi and me to Miami.
He walked over with his hands in the pockets of his grey slacks and looked me over. “Well, you’ve only gotten more beautiful since I last saw you, and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. Still breaking hearts?”
“Hello, Reyes.” I looked over his shoulder at his two friends who were eyeing me as if I was their dinner. For all I knew all three of them had just gotten out of jail. “Are you going to introduce me to your pals?” I said.
“Those bastards?” he said loud enough for them to hear. “I wouldn’t let them pat my dog. Let’s grab ourselves a drink at the bar.”
I was already late for lunch with Angel. I looked at my watch.
“You got somewhere better to go?”
I shook my head. “Make mine a mojito.”
“What are you doing in Miami?” I asked. “Are you living here?”
“I wouldn’t live here, it’s full of crooks. I’m living in California. I work for a security consultant.” He stole some of the ice from my cocktail and crunched it between his teeth.
“So what brings you here?”
“Business.”
“With the two men in the lobby? They look familiar.”
“You probably remember them from Havana. Neither of them are taxpayers. But enough about me.”
I knew that was as much information as I was going to get from him. He reached out and touched the diamond necklace at my throat. It was one of Angel’s endless gifts. “Expensive.”
“I have admirers,” I said, hoping to make him jealous.
“I bet you have. So how’s life, princess?”
“I get by.”
“How’s Amancio?”
“Papi’s not doing so good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He never really recovered from the heart attack that night.”
“I guess you roll the dice, you never know which way They’re going to fall.”
“We lost everything. The club. The house. All our money.”
“I don’t mean to sound heartless, sweetheart, but a lot of people lost everything. Even the mob guys. Lansky had to leave seventeen million dollars behind; Fidel took over before he had a chance to transfer it to a Swiss bank. He didn’t only close down their casinos he emptied their safes as well. Trafficante even had to sell his house. He just about sent them all broke.”
“Why do I find it hard to cry for them?”
“Out at the airport, the beards take everyone into a little room and shake them down before they leave. They go through your bags, they even make you empty your pockets. You can’t take out more than five pesos. They take jewellery, wedding rings, cameras, everything.”
“So you’ve been back?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t tell me - business?”
He grinned. “Everything is business.”
“It’s funny, Reyes, the thing I regret most is we le
ft our photograph albums behind. It’s like I lost a part of me.”
“You may have lost the past but at least you have the present. If you’d stayed, you wouldn’t be sitting in a nice bar with a beautiful necklace drinking cocktails. You look like a million dollars, princess.”
“Don’t flirt with me, Reyes, I haven’t decided if I’ve forgiven you yet.”
“What for?”
“Abandoning me on that airstrip.”
“Abandoning you? I didn’t abandon you. It’s you that should feel bad.”
“Me?”
“I saved that pretty little hide of yours twice - once in the police headquarters, the other out at the airfield, and all the time you had puppy dog eyes for that boy - what was his name?”
“Angel.”
“Angel. Right. And what did I get in return?”
“Do you always have to get something back for everything you do?”
“Always.” He drank his beer and watched me, his eyes speculating. “So what have you been doing since you were so cruelly abandoned?”
I couldn’t tell him. It would probably make no difference to whatever it was he thought about me but I couldn’t bear him to know. “I just concentrate on looking after my father these days.”
“There must be guys queuing up to take you out. Anyone special?”
“Good men are hard to find.”
He smiled, the way I remembered, the corner of his mouth twisting slightly. “What is it about you, I wonder, that makes a man lose his senses? You know, I was crazy about you in Havana. It can’t just be the way you look, though I’d say you were about the most beautiful woman in Cuba. But a guy would have to be out of his mind to lose his head over a woman like you.”
“Are you trying to sweet talk me again?”
“Face it, princess, some girls only want men they can’t have, or who are no good for them.”
“Maybe you’re right. Papi said you were no good for me.”
For a moment he lost that look, like the whole world was some sort of cruel joke. “He isn’t right about everything. I would have been good for you.”
“You think so? How long have you been out of Cuba, Reyes?”
“I stayed on about a year. Spent some of that time in prison, along with Santo and the rest of the boys.”
“So why didn’t you ever look for me when you got back here?”
“I figured that you were never going to stop thinking about Angel, and it was time I got you out of my head. But damn, it was hard and when I saw you just then, you just about took my breath away all over again.”
I leaned in, touched his arm. “Did you ever think to ask me if perhaps I felt the same way?”
I saw him hesitate. Perhaps I might have convinced him that he had made a mistake about me, but just then I looked over his shoulder and saw Angel walk in. When he saw me with Reyes he went white.
“What the fuck is this?” he said.
It was the first time I ever saw Reyes lost for words. He looked at Angel and then back at me and I watched him putting two and two together and coming up with a million and five. I wanted to shout at him, “This isn’t what it looks like,” but then I’d have to tell him what it really was, and that was a whole lot worse.
Reyes recovered fast. “Hi, Angel,” he said. “Señorita Fuentes and I were just catching up on old times. Why don’t you come and join us?”
“I don’t have time. I’m busy.” Angel turned to me. “Finish your drink, we have a reservation in the restaurant for lunch.”
Another woman might have told him to get lost; another woman might have said, you don’t talk to me like that, start treating me with some respect or I’m out of here. But another woman didn’t have a bedridden father and a mountain of medical bills every month and no qualifications to get a job anywhere else.
So I got up and followed Angel out of the bar. I looked back once and saw Reyes shaking his head. If he thought I was a basket case before, now he was certain of it.
Angel didn’t talk at all over lunch and he didn’t say anything in the elevator. But as soon as we got to our suite he grabbed me and threw me across the room and shouted: “What the fuck were you doing down there?”
I got up, grabbed the bottle of Veuve Cliquot from the ice bucket and threw it at him. My aim was off and it exploded against the wall. Angel backed off. I had had enough of him throwing his weight around.
“You don’t own me, Angel! And you touch me again, I swear to God I will cut your balls off.”
“Take it easy, baby.”
“Why didn’t you tell me he was here in Miami?”
“I didn’t know he was anything special to you. Did you sleep with him?”
“Screw you, Angel.”
“Did you?”
“You are the only man I’ve ever slept with, and you know it.”
That seemed to mollify him. “I don’t want you talking to him.”
“I’ll talk to him if I want to. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. He was there for me when other guys ran off and left me. He helped Papi and me get out of Havana.”
“Yeah? I heard he went back to your place in Vedado the next day with Ruby and they busted open your old man’s safe.”
I stared at him. Angel grinned at me, like I was the most stupid broad in the whole world for not figuring it out for myself. I just didn’t know whether I could believe him.
“So what’s he doing here?”
“What do you think he’s doing? This is Miami. You can’t move without tripping over a Fed or some Agency spook.”
“He said he was a security consultant.”
“Is that what he told you, baby? He was working for Howard Hughes in LA. Does that sound to you like he’s legitimate now? Anyway, it’s a lie. He’s working for us, him and Ruby and Winstone and the rest of his pals. They’re helping us get rid of Fidel.”
It sounded like it was just talk if you could forget who his father-in-law was, who his friends were.
“We got a guy, works on Castro’s staff, over there in Havana. We’re giving him fifty large to drop some pills in his drink. Reyes” pals at the Agency made them for us; they dissolve in water in seconds. We’re going to show this fuck he can’t screw with us.”
I didn’t know what to say. Angel only lied half of the time and left you to guess when he was telling the truth. Now he sat there, picking at smoked salmon and swilling champagne like it was beer.
I went out onto the balcony. It was getting on for evening. The lights on Collins twinkled on along the seafront.
“He said he’d been in prison over there. Was that a lie as well?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Or maybe Fidel put him in Tricornia to keep an eye on Santo and the other guys, find out what they were planning. You never know with that guy who he’s working for. Don’t go pouring your heart out to him, baby. That would be a big mistake.”
“Don’t ever talk to me like that again, Angel. You don’t run my life.”
“You can always go back to work at the diner.”
“You know, I may have had sauce stains on my uniform but at least I felt clean.”
“Yeah? You won’t leave me, baby.”
“Don’t count on it,” I said and went into the bathroom to dress. Maybe he’d seen me naked enough for one lifetime.
Chapter 13
I was running along a beach in the fog. Someone was following me, coming up behind me fast, but the sand was crumbling away beneath my feet and I couldn’t get away. I stopped and looked behind me but all I could see was shadows.
I woke up covered in sweat, and sat up. I twisted my legs out of bed but the nightmare wouldn’t stop. I could still hear the sound of someone panting in the darkness.
“Papi?”
I switched on the bedside light. He lay there, eyes bulging and his chest heaving. I sat him up in the bed; his pyjamas were soaked with sweat, and he clung to me so tight it hurt. His lips were blue.
<
br /> “I’ll get help,” I said but he would not let go. “Papi, please!” I had to pry his fingers loose. He put a hand out to me as I made for the door. “I’ll be right back,” I said and ran.
I hammered on Lena’s front door. Her bedroom curtains pulled aside and she peered out at me, terrified. When she saw it was me, she shouted “I’m coming, honey,” through the window, and I heard her running down the passage. She threw open the door.
“Miss Fuentes, what’s wrong?”
“Please, call an ambulance!”
“What’s happened?”
“It’s Papi, he’s sick, he’s really sick!”
I didn’t have time to say anymore. I ran back to our flat. Papi had bunched the sheets in his fists and he was making terrible noises in his throat. He shook his head at me. I think he knew.
I held him in my arms. Don’t die, Papi, don’t die. He kept writhing and twisting, his lungs sounded wet, I knew there was no air getting in.
The ambulance took forever to arrive, but perhaps it was just a few minutes. He was unconscious when the two medics ran in with the gurney. They clamped an oxygen mask on his face and rushed him out to the ambulance. I rode in the back with him to the hospital and prayed.
When we got to Jackson Memorial the medics ran the gurney down the hall to the nurses’ station. I ran along behind. Everyone was shouting at once. An intern ran out, then another. They transferred him to a bed in the casualty ward and pulled the curtains. A nurse hustled me into the waiting room.
The swing doors closed behind us. Suddenly it was quiet.
She sat me down in a plastic chair. She started asking me questions but I could barely hear her. I had been ready for this moment for weeks, for months, but now it was here it seemed surreal. Everything seemed to be happening very far away from me.
The nurse finished filling out her clipboard and then she went back down the corridor to get Papi’s file. I sat there and watched a policeman bring in a drunk he’d found lying in the road. Another ambulance arrived and a man was brought in on a gurney with a swollen eye and blood seeping from his nose. The medics told the duty nurse he’d been in a bar fight.
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