Chapter 11
Earl's head felt like Esmeralda had it between her thighs and was crushing it to pulp. The place stank of piss and shit and sweat, and Esmeralda-he thought she had liked him! — just crushed away, squeezing his temples toward nothingness, while meanwhile the other whores rifled his pockets.
He fought to be free, and only upon opening his eyes did he realize he was in a holding tank in some Centro police station, and Esmeralda and her two pals were nowhere near. The crushing sensation was just the residue of the cosh's solid thump against his jaw.
He shivered, and the magpies scattered. They had been looting him, not that the cops hadn't already picked him clean. His shirt was gone, his jacket and tie, the gun and holster of course, and his shoes and socks. Only his pants remained, though not the belt. But his cellmates were searching him for what few remaining dollars they thought he might have. He had none.
"Get out of here!" he screamed, kicking one away, shoving several others. They scampered to the other side of the room, where they joined the larger night's haul of street scum, pimps, grifters, pickpockets, strong-arm men and what have you that the Havana cops had rounded up that night on Zanja Street or other dark corridors of the city. They watched him suspiciously, muttering among themselves.
Earl's head hurt bad. It hurt extremely bad. This had to be concussion ten or so. A few more and he'd start to go punchy, like some old fighters he'd seen. He touched where the hardest blow had landed and found that someone had taped a grapefruit to his face. But it wasn't a grapefruit on his face, it was the grapefruit of his face. It hurt also to the touch.
He touched the gash on his arm, found it secured tightly by a linen strip. The blood had blackened on his skin where it congealed. He could hardly move it. He needed stitches bad; it could reopen at any moment.
He pulled himself upright. He was in the back of the biggest cell in the back of the biggest cop shop in the town, him and twenty or so of his best friends. They eyed him ominously. These boys didn't appear to care for Earl. Perhaps word had gotten out that he'd whacked the shit out of two bad boys and these fellows in here thought they'd score some points with bossman El Colorado, whoever that nightmare might be, by giving Earl a little taste of same. But that's what the cops had already done. He spit something on the floor and saw that it landed and splattered red. Somewhere in the night's squalors he'd cut open his tongue on a tooth. He reached in, and felt, and all the teeth remained, but the jaw was swollen on the left side and crowded the choppers, and several teeth wiggled loosely even as they jacked in pain. He drew his hand smartly away, and the fingertip too was red. He needed three weeks leave at the beach somewhere, and a diet of Jell-O and Coca-Cola.
"Hey!" he screamed, and there was no answer from wherever officialdom concealed itself. Outside the bars was only a deserted stone corridor and way down it some light, where perhaps the office was. He knew this was the tank. Every city had a tank. You dump the shit in the tank: that's how it worked. In the morning you flush it out and let all the scum that are still alive run free, knowing they'll be back in the evening, or if not them, then their twin brothers. Nobody cared what happened back here.
"I demand you call the American embassy!" he tried again.
No answer and then, "Eeeye deman choo call Americana eeem-buzzy," a not-bad imitation of himself from one of the concealed comedians, and everybody laughed.
"Hey, Charlie," someone said, "choo inna lotta shit, man."
Earl said nothing. What was there to say? His head hurt too much to think, it was so dark he could hardly see a thing, and the boys were roiling themselves toward violence. Not good. He drew back. He'd been in a prison before but there he'd had the righteous wrath of hating it and what it stood for and the dream of its destruction to impel him onward. He had none of that now. He felt tired and old, and his wife and son were oh so far away in Arkansas, as were his friends, his hopes, his ambitions.
Fuck, he thought. I am going to die in a prison.
Maybe the cavalry would get here in time, maybe it wouldn't. But for now he could do nothing but wait and ache and pray.
Some time passed, though here in the Centro tank no sense of a concept called "time" truly existed. He may have passed out. Possibly it was near dawn. He wasn't sure. He felt human warmth, and blinked.
He looked up. Three men loomed over him. They dangled shivs from hands, blades formed from spoons or screwdrivers or whatever. Their eyes had the blank look of killers. The pride they had in what they were capable of doing-anything-radiated off them. Two of the three had scars, which meant that the one without was really dangerous.
Earl was flat against the wall, on a bench that passed for a bed. He had no room to maneuver. They towered over him, pressing in, all advantage to them, none to him. If he rose, they'd gut him quickly enough. If he stayed down and balled up, they could cut him bad enough that he'd lose his strength, then pry his limbs away in that fashion, longer but going the same inevitable destination, and get their blades into his guts.
"Hey, Joe," said the scarless one, "choo got money?"
"I don't have nothing, friend," said Earl.
"Oh, that is very bad. I want to help you, but my friends here, they want to cut you now."
"They can cut me all they want, but they're not going to get any money, because I don't have any money."
"Then maybe they cut you for fun."
"I ain't done nothing to you. Please leave me alone."
He had decided on the balled-up defense. It wasn't much but it was all he had. Now it was a question of how quick he could get his knees up to his chest and bury his face and throat in them and lock his arms around his legs.
"We don't like Yankees. El Colorado tells us choo people come here and fuck our women and steal our crops and make us your monkeys, and we don't like it nohow. Cuba libre, motherfucker."
"Just leave me alone," said Earl. "I ain't done a thing to you."
"I think we have to teach norteamericano a lesson. Charlie, you are the history lesson of the evening."
Suddenly a fourth party joined the exchange.
He said, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but would any of you be interested in purchasing a very fine vacuum cleaner?"
"He's where?" said Walter Short.
"The police took him," said Lane Brodgins. "I don't know―"
"You idiot! You moron! Who the hell gave you authorization to head to Zanja Street?"
"Congressman Etheridge doesn't need authorization, Short. Who the deuces do you think―"
"You moron! If anything happens to Earl, I will personally see that your career is so completely destroyed you won't even be able to get a listing in the phone book!"
"You cannot―"
"You were to get him here so we could develop him. That was the point. That was the only point. This wasn't a let's-get-Boss-Harry-laid mission."
"You try and tell a United States―"
" You had an obligation to us. We put money into this, we are picking up the tab, we are getting you great press, you had one job to do―"
But it was pointless.
He slammed down the phone. Then he deslammed it and quickly called Roger, who answered groggily. He explained.
"Oh, Christ," said Roger.
"We can handle this. I have friends in the Cuban State Police."
"You would, Short."
"Roger, I have to do the shit so you can be the golden boy at the Yacht Club tennis tournament. Now please get dressed, get a cab, get over here. Meanwhile, I have to think."
He hung up, then started dialing.
There was a moment of dumbfoundment.
All eyes-the three thugs', Earl's-went to the vacuum representative, to discover a scrawny scarecrow of a man with a bristle of gray hair, wearing a baggy linen suit. His face looked as if history itself had marched across it several times in several climates. He spoke with some indeterminate European accent and had the palest eyes Earl had ever seen.
Then he smiled.
&nb
sp; "Hey, you, get the fuck outta here!" screamed one of the assailants, drawing himself up to full power and stepping forward to thrust his bull-chest against the skinny man. "You, go, I cut your―"
That assertion was halted by the evening's biggest surprise: what could only be the sound of a small pistol firing.
Everyone looked down to discover that the European vacuum salesman had just shot out the knee of the knife-wielder, who collapsed. As he fell, the European caught him, twisted an arm behind his back, and stuck the muzzle of the small gun into his throat.
He spoke in a commanding Spanish of such intensity it was amazing, not only in fluency, blasphemy and eloquence but also force, for the seriousness of his argument was instantly recognized, and the others backed off.
The wounded man crawled away, howling.
Earl, astounded, watched them go.
The man sat next to him.
"As I was saying, I have a very nice upright model, superpowered, what we call the Atomvac 12. It's not atomic-powered of course, but you know how sales brochures love to exaggerate. Anyhow, it's new to the island, has a thirty-foot extension cord and―"
"Who the hell are you?"
"Ah, yes. Of course. Vurmoldt, Acme Vacuums. This is my territory. I don't seem to have a card on me. Perhaps you have one on you and I could call and make a more formal presentation."
"A vacuum salesman with a gun?"
"It comes in handy."
"I'll say, bub."
Earl stared at him in the darkness. What astounded him was the utter finality with which the vacuum salesman had just shot a man, then forgotten about it. That was the first mark of a professional. Shooting a human being isn't an easy thing and some people never come back from it and you see it in their eyes forever. Yet this Vurmoldt, of Acme Vacuums, had done it precisely, even scientifically, and had not wasted a single breath on it. It was necessary, he did it, and now he had moved on to other arguments.
"You seem to have been in some scrapes, if you don't mind my saying so," Earl told him.
"The recent ugliness. Oh, it was quite unpleasant. I was shot at in France by French, in Russia by Russians, in Italy, then France again, and finally in Germany itself, all by Americans. Quite annoying, you know. Possibly you and I exchanged shots at Normandy or the Ardennes offensive?"
"I was in the Pacific killing Japanese. Though I'd have been happy to shoot you too, if you'd given me the chance."
The man's face lit in laughter.
"Say, you are a scamp!"
"My name is Swagger, Mr. uh―"
"Vurmoldt. Lower Silesian. An old family of mercantile disposition. The vacuums, by the way, really are quite an excellent product. You would be pleased."
"Earl!"
Earl looked up. It was Roger St. John Evans, rushing down the corridor, flanked by nervous-looking Cuban policemen and various embassy assistants. Keys rattled, men bustled with urgency. It was a little war party come to rescue Earl. They weren't as quick as the vacuum salesman, but they had finally gotten there.
"Earl, Jesus, I had no idea until that idiot Brodgins called the embassy to complain about the Cubans. Good god, are you all right?"
The doors were flung open.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. This here fella saved me. I―"
But Vurmoldt had disappeared into the dark mob of Cubans gathered in the corner, away from the husky guards with their clubs and automatic pistols.
"Hell, he was just here. Sir, I―"
But then Earl looked at the man next to Roger.
"Hi, Earl," said Frenchy Short. "Long time no see."
Chapter 12
The old men met in an impoverished mountain state so foreign to all the things they knew it seemed like a trip to someone else's old country. The site was an air-conditioned house that had once belonged to a mine manager and looked down across the coaledout ridges, the abandoned and rusting steam shovels, the scars in the earth. It was like a mansion in a battlefield.
They arrived by Cadillac, each with two or three bodyguards. The huge cars dominated the roads up from Miami and New Orleans, over from Cleveland and Pittsburgh, down from Boston and New York. When they reached the small town that was their destination, it was almost like a funeral parade: black Caddy after black Caddy, negotiating the hairpin turns, crawling through ruined, desolate, misty villages, past knots of curious, slat-ribbed children with hollow faces, lank hair and deep eyes.
And the men in the cars were famous too, at least in their worlds. They were the wisest of the wise, the toughest of the tough, the meanest of the mean, the fastest of the fast. What stories they could tell if storytelling were permitted, though of course it was not. What those old eyes had seen, what those old brains had calculated, what those old, still-strong hands had crushed.
They were lumpy, dark men, set in their ways, in black suits and ties and white shirts, and fallen socks over big black shoes. The lenses of their glasses were thick. Their veins showed, their eyes were rheumy and bloodshot, their hands large, their jowls fallen, their faces swaddled in fat and unsmiling, drawn, serious. They spat a lot, smoked a lot, cursed a lot. They wore pomade in their thinning hair. They looked as if they'd never laughed in their lives, or had a drink with a girl or gone to a dance or a ball game or a party. Their faces had the gray pallor of indoors at night, the waft and stench of cigarettes, the glow of neon. They were old men of the city.
They drank Sambuca or Frangelico or Amaretto from small glasses and sat listlessly around the living room, not at a single grand table like medieval potentates-there was no nobility in their world, only practicality-but like old peasants at a coffee-house in Salerno, too frail to toil in the fields. The subject was not who was there, but who was not there.
Chicago was not there.
"These Chicago people, I don't know," said one. "They get more arrogant all the time. They think their thing is such a great thing."
"What is to be done? Our thing must be protected, but I am not eager for a return to the old days."
"Me neither. I've been shot enough already, six times, cut twice, beaten a dozen."
"If I'm to be stabbed in the back," one joked, "I want it to be by friends, not enemies!"
Everybody laughed.
"The Chicago thing could become a problem," said the eldest of the equals. "The Chicago thing grows mighty on the river of money that flows to it from this Las Vegas, the city in the desert. Who would have dreamed such a thing? A city in a desert!"
"Sometimes even the longest shots come in. Someone picks the number."
"The Chicago thing owns Las Vegas, so Chicago now sees itself first among equals. Soon, possibly, it will see itself as first without equals. It will be the only thing. Our things will be nothing."
"Ben Siegel would be horrified if he knew how his dream had turned out because he was always, in his heart, an East Coast boy," someone said.
"He was a great man, a seer―"
"He was also a nutbin jaybird whose eyes were bigger than his brain and he never had no judgment at all. He starts a fight in a train station with a fellow turns out to be a professional boxer. Goes urp all over his fancy clothes. He ends up like all the hot ones, with his face blown off on his sofa. His eye, I understand, is on the floor."
"But Ben was committed, rest in peace and a slow death to whoever done the deed on him, to a fair shake for all the things. His idea was that Vegas would be for us all, we'd all have a piece. Not this Chicago thing, as these greedy bastards have established, and now it teeters dangerously toward what nobody wise and old wants."
Though unsaid, all acknowledged privately the theory of mutually assured destruction that kept the peace, fragile as it was, in their tough little world of things. All knew that if any thing grew too powerful, it would wage war on the others. Alliances would be formed, treaties broken, it would be city against city, thing against thing. Worst of all, of course, it would embolden the class of men these men feared the most: The FBI? Not a chance: No, far worse: their own ch
ildren and grandchildren, eager to take over, eager to drink from the river and to strut their strength and to push the old bastards aside. These people really frightened the old men. The kids: they wanted their thing.
But at last the one from New York, the wisest of them all, spoke, and all listened.
"The Chicago thing has Las Vegas. We have Cuba. As long as we have Cuba, we need not fear Chicago. Chicago needs to fear us. Next to Cuba, Las Vegas is nothing but an annoyance."
"This is very true," someone said.
"He speaks what is real."
He continued.
"We have our best man down there. He is clever, oh so clever with the numbers―"
"The Jew? He is not one of us."
"He is in cunning. Only he lacks our will to do what is necessary. He has not killed, I believe."
"No, he has not. He is an arguer, a fixer. With the guns, the boomboom, the flying blood, the puddles all sticky and black, the faces blown off, the hair mussed, the newspaper shots of what happens in alleys to men who have transgressed. No, not for him."
"That is a shame. Sometimes that is where it must end. In an alley, with a pool of blood and the face gone."
An amen chorus agreed. That was where it had to end some time. Nothing else would satisfy.
"This is why I have made an arrangement, which I now put before you, for your approval," said the New York thing representative. "I have done this already. It can be undone, if you demand, but I think you will see some wisdom in it."
"So, go ahead."
"What is needed down there is someone with our kind of hot blood. The balls to get close with knives or guns. Fists even. Sometimes necessary as we have said."
"It is not in the Jew to be that way. Any Jew. They have been beaten on too many times for them to take pleasure in that."
"It was in Ben, at least a little. It was in Lepke Buchalter, rest in peace. It was in Murder, Inc. and in Barney Ross, the boxer. They were all Jews. Now in this Israel. These Jews are fighters, too. With the machine guns, what have you."
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