Cubop City Blues

by Pablo Medina

  Bennie surveyed the room and spied a half-full bottle of DonQ rum on the dresser, which he could reach without having to stand up. Two healthy swigs and he considered the situation. Calling the police wasn’t an option. They’d snoop, and his bosses weren’t fond of snooping. So he called Joey, his pit boss, at the casino—he’d know what to do—and waited for him.

  When Joey showed up at the motel three hours later and saw the cook lying on the carpet, his first words were holy fucking shit. Orlando’s face had turned gray and rigor mortis was setting in, no matter that it was damned cold in the room. Those were Joey’s second words: It’s damn cold in here, followed by, What were you fighting about?

  Fight? Bennie kept to himself the fact that he heard Mercedes screaming just before he found the cook. Joey, he said, I didn’t kill Orlando. He was my friend.

  Friends kill each other all the time. Why didn’t you take the knife out of him? The longer he’s dead the harder it’s going to be. And next time you put a shower curtain under him. That way blood doesn’t go on the rug.

  You do it, Joey. You take the knife out. I couldn’t even watch my mother kill a chicken.

  Didn’t they teach you anything in that damn country of yours? Fucking Latin lover can’t get his hands dirty.

  Joey looked long and hard at Bennie; then he kneeled next to Orlando and jiggled the knife handle. Blood’s pretty much set. We won’t be needing the curtain. Before he’d finished saying the word curtain, he had the knife out and was holding it next to his head. It was a huge, nasty thing. For an instant, Bennie had the image of the blade entering Orlando and causing massive damage to his inner organs. The thought made him swoon.

  This is a job for the roughriders, Joey said and made a call from the hotel phone. In thirty minutes two men showed up. One was tall and slim and wore a gray suit. The other, short and heavyset, was wearing a purple shirt and beige pants. Bennie noticed that the short man had a tomato-sauce stain on his right pant leg. The men looked at dead Orlando on the floor and proceeded to ransack drawers, pulling them out of the dresser and upending their contents on the body. When they were done with the drawers, they took the bed apart, then started on the closets and rifled through Orlando’s clothes, discarding them in every direction. Finally one of them turned to Bennie, who was now standing in a corner of the room and said, Where’s the money?

  Money? Bennie asked innocently.

  Now the three men were looking at him waiting for an answer.

  I don’t know about no money. Bennie’s legs were shaking and his throat was beginning to tighten as it did every time he was nervous. It made him cluck like a chicken.

  We better cut up the corpse, one of the men said. It’ll be easier that way.

  Bennie made a move for the door.

  Where you going? said the man in the purple shirt.

  I live upstairs, said Bennie. I thought I’d lie down for a while. I work tonight.

  You’re staying right here. Jack—he turned to the man in the suit—bring the tools.

  Bennie needed to sit down, but the mattress was up against the window leaning over the two armchairs. The only other chair was on the opposite side, and he’d have to step over Orlando. He looked at Joey, who shrugged.

  Joey, please, he implored him. I don’t want to watch this.

  I don’t either. They’ll do it in the bathroom.

  But I can hear.

  Cover your ears.

  The two men carted Orlando’s pieces, wrapped in wax paper and tied neatly with butcher string, out of the room. They came back and stood on either side of Bennie and asked again where the money was.

  Despite the very real danger he was facing, Bennie kept his composure. He concluded that Mercedes had taken the twenty thousand, but he wasn’t about to tell the two men that.

  Then Joey saved him. Guys, he said, Bennie don’t know anything. He’s a stupid Cuban. All he knows is dealing cards. Leave him alone.

  The two men looked at each other, then back at Joey. The short one said, We don’t take orders from you.

  Listen fuck-head, Bennie here doesn’t have the money. And if Archie gives you any grief, tell him I answer directly to Meyer and he can go suck a moose.

  The men grumbled at Joey and left to drop pieces of Orlando all over the desert. Bennie asked Joey what was going on. Either Joey didn’t know or he didn’t let on. Later that night, as the two of them shared a six-pack of beer, Bennie asked Joey how he knew those thugs.

  I got some juice in this town, Bennie. Me and Meyer grew up on the same block. You can’t fuck around with Lansky. He owns everyone in Vegas, including me. He owns you, except you don’t know it. Orlando tried to pull a fast one and he paid for it.

  What did he do? Bennie asked.

  I’d like to know that myself. The whole thing’s unsavory, I know, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Joey used the word unsavory with great delicacy. You sure you don’t know anything about that money?

  Bennie shook his head.

  I have a feeling you do, Joey said. He finished his beer and left.

  Bennie didn’t see Mercedes for two weeks, and every day of those two weeks one of Archie’s men came by asking about the money. Joey’s juice was keeping Bennie from the butcher’s block. It was the loneliest period of his life. He worked, he ate, he came home, and he sat by the door to his room until it was time for bed. Day in and day out without a holiday, not even Christmas, on which he worked a double shift and made five hundred dollars, but he had nothing to spend it on. He didn’t like whores and had no need of a car. He paid twenty dollars a week for his room. His work clothes were provided by the casino, and he had no family to care for, not in Vegas or Miami or Cuba. As he pondered his sorry state, cursing the day he ever decided to leave the island, he heard a knock at his door and Mercedes’s plaintive voice asking to be let in.

  Where have you been? he asked.

  I was in Mexico but I’m back now.

  I can see that, he said. What happened between you and Orlando?

  He tried a nasty thing on me, ese pinche cabrón.

  What? Bennie asked.

  I can’t say, Mercedes said, suddenly coy.

  You didn’t have to kill him.

  He wouldn’t stop. There was a knife there. I just try to scare him but he kept coming and I hit him with it. I just try to scare him.

  By now Mercedes had grown very agitated. Her eyes were wide open and her lips were spread into a grimace, like those Mixtec goddesses you see biting into the hearts of men. Hijo de la chingada, she grumbled.

  Bennie wanted to shut the door on her and forget she ever existed. What about the money? he asked.

  Mercedes was silent for a moment and grew meek, hunching her shoulders downward and looking up at him with beseeching eyes.

  I didn’t steal it. I found it.

  Oh, to be back in Cuba right now, he thought. Communism had to be better than this.

  Mujer, are you crazy? You know half of Vegas is looking for you? What did you do with it?

  Mercedes was silent.

  If you don’t return that money to its owners, they’re going to grind you up into picadillo. You understand?

  Mercedes straightened up and narrowed her eyes. Let me tell you three things, she said: First, the money is hidden; second, I ain’t giving it to nobody; third, you are a big pendejo.

  Why did you come here? You are incriminating me, he said to her.

  I miss you, güerito. I want you to go away with me and we can be rich together.

  That’s when he took her by the arm, dragged her out of the room, and slammed the door. When he turned around he saw a letter-size white envelope lying on the dresser, which wasn’t there before Mercedes’s visit. Inside it was a thick stack of one-hundred-dollar bills. He put it back down, sat on the
bed, and stared at it, not knowing whether he should flush it down the toilet or simply ignore it as if it were never there. He started thinking of everything he could do with the money. He could buy himself a fancy car. That would draw the women. He could buy a house. That was the smart thing to do. Or he could escape Las Vegas once and for all. Go to Miami, open up a barbershop, run a small book operation on the side, marry a nice criolla who would give him lots of children.

  What about Mercedes? After all, she was the one who had killed Orlando and taken the money. She worked hard, the poor woman, doing laundry, cleaning houses, and selling herself when the opportunity availed itself to lonely men like him who lived in cheap motels without a hope in the world. Most of what she made from her labors she sent to her family in México. At least she said she did. Mercedes was foul mouthed and overweight but not a bad sort. If he squinted really hard he could see traces of beautiful María Félix in her features. She killed Orlando in self-defense. How many women would not have done the same? The more he stared at the envelope the more he thought, Mercedes, Mercedes with that singsong Oaxacan accent of hers and hair like black milk and ever-so-dim resemblance to the most beautiful actress of all time.

  He called in sick to work and sat on the bed consumed by an idyll he had never before experienced. He let his mind fly, and the twenty thousand became two hundred thousand. He imagined himself in Mexico, owner of a hacienda surrounded by acres and acres of maguey and a distillery bearing his name, Benjamín Rojas, Producer of Fine Tequila. Across the way there would be a stable of black paso fino horses and a field with a herd of gleaming prize zebu cattle that would be the envy of every ranchero in the comarca. He built a whole architecture of fantasy with him at the center: cars, women, presidents, prime ministers, cardinals, all currying his favor. What Mexico needed was a Cuban with balls, coño, who would create an empire of liquor that would rival the great distilleries of the world—Bacardi, Jack Daniels, Hiram Walker.

  That’s when someone knocked at the door.

  Bennie picked up the envelope and stuffed it into the back of his pants. He looked through the peephole and saw that it was Joey.

  Jesus, Joey said as he walked into Bennie’s room. It’s freezing in here. You’d figure Cuba was in Siberia the way you guys like the cold.

  It’s on its way there, Bennie said.

  Joey sat on the bed and lit up a Cuban Churchill, every puff of smoke round and sweet and perfect.

  You have the money, Joey said. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to bet my left testicle you have it on your person even as we speak.

  Bennie felt his throat tightening. He sat on the armchair, took out a handkerchief, and blew his nose. The cigar was getting to him.

  Joey blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. You fucking Cubans can sure make cigars, he said. It’s about the only thing you’re good at. Twenty grand is pocket change for Meyer, but he hates to be swindled. Why don’t you give me the money, spare yourself?

  Bennie hesitated. All those dreams of women and paso finos and thousands of acres of maguey plantings going up with Joey’s smoke. He reached behind him and handed Joey the envelope.

  I’ll make you a deal, Bennie, Joey said. I keep fifteen and I’ll give you five. Call it a reward for a job well done. Just between you and me. Nobody else has to know.

  Joey counted out five thousand and passed them back to Bennie, who took the money without hesitation and put it in his pocket. As he did so he felt his blood thicken and his heart slow a few beats.

  After Joey left, Bennie pulled the shades shut and lay on the bed. He tried to summon up his fantasies but all he could think of was the money in his pocket. What was fat Mercedes to him, anyway, and Orlando with that eggplant face of his? Five thousand wasn’t twenty but it was enough for a down payment on a small house. The wife and the book operation would come eventually. So would the juice. He didn’t realize it then but a spot in his heart had turned to stone.

  STORYTELLER

  Mama died first. She caught cold. Coughed all night, gave a few heavy sighs, and was silent. I heard, then didn’t hear, her from my bed but didn’t get up because I knew her time had come. The time for what? That time. That time. I turned over, put the pillow over my head. Papa yelled, sick in bed and his bowels burning. He was no help. Nothing I could do. Nothing I wanted to do.

  I fell back asleep, then woke. I had a vision of a man in white who came to my room with a bucket full of fish, wanting me to cook them. I asked why. He said he was hungry. I rose from the bed and took the bucket to the kitchen. I cleaned the fish, remembering the way I’d been taught by Cornelia, scraping away at the scales, then slicing open the belly and pulling out the guts. The process seemed endless; there were enough fish to feed a large crowd. The man in white became my father. I told him to get back in bed to calm his bowels, the same bed Mama lay in. Daily she got quieter; her skin felt like wet ashes. When she was alive it was all bitter. Never liked being alive. She tried to kill me. She tried to burn me out of her womb.

  That’s too much power for stories, keeping people alive against their will, she said once. Papa never thought that way. He was happy to hear them. Doctor said it was terminal, Port Authority terminal, and Papa taking the outbound bus. That’s when he went to bed. To wait, he said. Once death catches up to you, no use running to the next room. Her tentacles are long, like the giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo and all his dignity and madness. They’re not long enough for me yet. I know the sun when it hits the window and goes through the glass. Warmth on my skin, then it gets beasty eyed and wants to play. I never did—play, that is, except at chess.

  Mama’s crossed the threshold. Papa went along with it, not wanting to contradict her. That would only have brought her wild tongue on him, poor man, poor man, his guts twisting against themselves. But he’s as happy she’s gone as I am. Not that he’s ever said so; he just hasn’t said otherwise.

  When I washed Mama in the morning she was cold and stiff. Some people turn like that after years of vitriol. I read in a book—I read everything that reaches my hands and eyes, such as they are—that if you put a mirror under someone’s nose and it doesn’t fog up, that person’s dead. I couldn’t find a mirror small enough. I looked in the kitchen, and I looked in Mama’s chest of drawers—perhaps there I might find a powder case or small vanity. I looked in the living room for the silver tray Papa had given her for their twenty-fifth anniversary. Cleaning lady stole that, as she’d taken everything of value in the house, even the sex videos Papa would watch when Mama wasn’t home and he thought I was sleeping or reading. Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I’m deaf. Finally, when I’d just about given up and resigned myself to never knowing for sure if Mama had died or was just in a deep sleep, I remembered the round makeup mirror in the bathroom. I brought that and held it under her nose. The mirror didn’t fog, not the least, and there was no question after that. She’d been dead, dead for some time. I didn’t tell Papa, thinking, What’s the use? He’ll find out soon enough. So I told him a story, a good long one about a university professor, one of our neighbors, who falls in love with a much younger professor. The young professor is horrified and flees from the older professor, leaving him alone and in despair. After the story Papa’s belly began to hurt worse than before and he asked for the heating pad and the painkillers and cursed me for telling him such a tragic story. He wanted something happy to counteract the sadness of that other one. I reminded him I only told one story a day—my mind wasn’t up for more—and promised I’d give him what he wanted the following day.

  No sex, though, he said. That only gets me worked up and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I said, No sex.

  And no death.

  I said, No death.

  And no solitude.

  That I couldn’t promise, considering that’s all I knew, as did he, who was about to die.
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  I spent the rest of the day trying to devise a story that had no solitude, no death, and no sex. No sex? It was like fishing for the impossible fish.

  I read books of stories, books on the crafting of stories, books about mythology and legend. I told him the story of Perseus and Medusa, which he said rightly that I stole, and the story of Baucis and Philemon, which he found dull. I also told him the stories of Peleus, of Penelope and the suitors, and Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, but he was unimpressed by these and said perhaps I should stick to telling my own. I then told him one about a man getting out of Cuba on a boat, taking extreme care in composing it to suit his demands. I don’t know if I succeeded or failed. He never said.

  The next morning, after a sleepless night, I made my way to his bedroom. I gave Papa his coffee and moved over to Mama’s side of the bed. She, being dead, had not moved. I looked closely into her face, saw wrinkles and blotches here and there on the cheeks and forehead. Her eyes had lost their color. I could barely distinguish the iris from the white. Her nose, that fine sharp thing that resembled a shark’s dorsal fin, had sunk somewhat and turned bonier than it used to be. Her belly had grown overnight, so she looked pregnant as she must have looked with me. I’d never known a dead person before. I had no way of telling that these were the first steps in the process of decomposition: the formation of liquid materials inside the body as a result of the breakdown of flesh through the action of intestinal bacteria and the production of vapors. Papa said she’d been snoring all night. I was mortified—allow me the pun. How was I to know then that the dead fill up with gas, which causes all manner of sounds as it escapes the body through its major orifices, the alpha and omega, the burp and fart, the wheeze and flutter. Rigor mortis, livor mortis, algor mortis. Then the body falls apart. The stench is unbearable. She bloated up, then bloated down. I put aside my feelings and finished washing her nevertheless, as I was compelled to do in order to keep Papa from being suspicious, her skin rubbery to the touch and cool, like ice cream that has lain outside the refrigerator long enough to start melting.