King Bongo

by Thomas Sanchez

  “Why do I care?”

  “You’ll care soon. The eagle is a monument to the Maine, our ship that was blown up by the Spanish in the Civil War or something. During the Big Race coming up, the President himself will be sitting in the place of honor under the eagle. He’ll be watching cars from all over the world zip by. This race has a richer purse than the one in Monaco. The course follows the Malecón past all the casinos.”

  “What’s a Monaco? Am I supposed to know that too?”

  “Monaco’s a place in Switzerland or something, where they race Ferraris, Porsches, Jags and stuff.”

  PayDay watched the eagle flick in and out of view through the waving palm fronds. His mind was getting too stuffed up with all these history lessons. He didn’t come here to go to school. “What’s the business?”

  “Johnny boy,” Lizard whispered into his ear, “the Right Guys want you to do a hit involving the President.”

  “They want me to shoot the President of Cuba in front of a crowd of people?” PayDay couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That’s just suicide! Besides, you can’t get a clean hit from here, too far.”

  “Not so loud. Calm down. From up above us, in the VIP suites, there’s a view clear as the dawn of creation.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve whacked a lot of important guys, but no politicians. That’s trouble, shooting a president. I thought he was on our side.”

  “It’s not us that’s doing the hit.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “His own enemies are doing the hit.”

  “And you’re going to let it go down?”

  “We’ll be heroes in the right places. Many favors will be owed if we tag the assassin.”

  “So I’m not the one who actually sticks the candy bar wrapper into the President’s mouth?”

  “No. Shooting presidents is not our business. Shooting the person who shoots the President, that’s our business.”

  Johnny PayDay had a lot to think about. He watched the eagle, its wings spread, flickering in the distance. It looked like it was flying. He glanced over at the red spider veins jumping on Lizard’s flushed cheeks. He gazed down at the swimming pool. The bad actor was rubbing suntan oil above the small breasts of the teenage redhead in the lounge chair. He had a visible hard-on in his skimpy royal-blue nylon swimsuit.

  PayDay had survived by seeing all the angles and mapping them out ahead of time. If his business was to shoot the shooter, then somebody would eventually be gunning for him too. Who was going to hit him? The bad actor?

  Sweet Maria was a maid with a mission at the Hotel Nacional. She considered herself smart and lucky to be a maid. It was a well-paid job, difficult to get. Lots of competition. Girls would do anything, stand on their heads, go down on their knees in front of anyone who could put a good word in or get an interview. The Nacional was a glory of a hotel. Maria liked everything about it, its long Spanish-tiled corridors, its high-ceilinged, air-conditioned rooms, its swanky bars and lush gardens, its deep-water swimming pools, its sophisticated restaurants.

  Famous people from all over the world stayed at the Nacional. Maria knew all the guests were famous, they had to be; one night at the Nacional cost more than Maria made in three months, working twelve hours a day, six days a week. But it was the highest-paid maid’s job in all of Havana, most maids made one-fifth the money. Another thing Maria loved about the Nacional was the uniforms: cute powder-blue dresses that fell just below the knee, with white aprons that were tied in a fluffy bow at the back. Very stylish, very French. Maria knew this because she had seen, in one of the magazines left behind by a guest, a splashy photo layout of the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Those pretty Ritz maids had similar dresses, and they got to wear the same style pretty hats as the girls of the Nacional. This made Maria proud. In their matching uniforms, they were like girl soldiers in the same elite housekeeping army.

  Maria gazed out the window of the room she was cleaning. The room was high up so she had a good view. She could see the private pool area down below, and the guests in bathing suits, talking and laughing, drinking colorful fruit concoctions served on silver platters by waiters. All rich people down there, all white people, even the waiters. She sighed. It was pretty to think of their lives.

  It was always a thrill when Maria got to open the door of a just-vacated room. The hardest part was waiting until the guests had left. Sometimes she held her breath, her heart pounding, watching as the uniformed bellhop rolled his luggage cart down the hallway and knocked softly on a room door. The guests would walk out, the woman fashionably dressed for the airplane or cruise ship, the man in a suit and tie. They would disappear with the bellhop and the luggage into the elevator. Finally, Maria had the room to herself. The scent of the departed guests was heavy in the air, the woman’s perfume, the man’s aftershave lotion. Sometimes Maria heard conversation the guests left behind. They were talking about what to have for dinner, steak or lobster? What wine, red or white? Where to dine, the Havana Yacht Club, Chez Merito, Castillo de Jagua, La Zaragozana? What cabaret show after dinner, the Sans Souci or the Tropicana? Where to go dancing, Mocambo Club because it’s air-conditioned, Bambú Club at Rancho Boyeros because its music is hot? Where to have a nightcap, Montmartre in Vedado or Morocco Club on the Prado? What a feast Havana is! Back home it’s raining or snowing and sure to be boring. Aren’t we the lucky ones!

  Maria’s father was a sugarcane cutter and her mother had nine kids to care for in a two-room, palm-thatched, dirt-floored hut with no toilet, no running water, and no electricity. Maria ran away when she was fourteen and fell in love with a handsome man who drove one of the ox-drawn carts loaded with cane from the fields to the mill. She learned early on that if you were a girl, compliant and cute, well, then, the saints would hear your prayers and the gods would accept all those songbirds you strangled and placed as offerings on the sacred altar of your Santera. The souls of those birds would wrap around you in a good-luck halo and stay with you long after the oxcart driver tired of you and handed you over to another oxcart driver. But Maria also knew that sometimes luck, if it couldn’t be bought or stolen, could come with a little assistance from the gods. All a girl had to do was push her luck right to the edge.

  Maria looked beyond the hotel pool, past the tropical gardens laid out in stately grandeur, down to the Malecón. Such a lovely parade of cars on the Malecón: Fords, Chevrolets, Buicks, Packards, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles. What colors they flashed! Beyond them, on the stone seawall, lovers snuggled, body to body, gazing starry-eyed across the ocean’s sun-reflected golden skin.

  Maria sat on the edge of the bed and waited. She knew if she watched long enough she would see the lovers on the seawall kiss. Sometimes it was a first date for the lovers so they just held hands, but then at the end there had to be a little kiss, even if it was only a peck on the cheek. Others were bolder, they crushed their mouths together with a soul-suck wonder, oblivious to the crashing waves below them, the honking cars and catcalls behind them.

  So many men kissing so many girls. Maria thought, Heaven. Those men were bus drivers, or shirtless dockworkers, or factory workers in blue coveralls, or shopkeepers in white shirts and neckties. So many different types of men with only one thing on their minds. How Maria wished to be sitting on the seawall, her eyes closed, her moist lips poised. She was a good girl. Her house was painted pale blue and pink to please the saints. Everything in her life was kept cool with blue, and pink was the spirit of love. The pink gloss she wore on her cocoa-colored lips was the same triumphant color of love worn on the face of Queen Erzulie, the black Madonna whom Maria adored.

  Like Erzulie, Maria wasn’t refined and didn’t go for fancy lace. But black lingerie was another thing altogether; a girl had to make exceptions. Like Erzulie, Maria smoked unfiltered cigarettes, drank young rum that burned her tonsils, and ate roast pork greasy enough to slip down her throat without swallowing. Like Erzulie, Maria was a splendid commoner with exceptional appetites.

  Maria
let her gaze drift farther along the Malecón, where the road widened around the Maine monument with its immense American eagle. She knew her history. The American ship Maine was blown up in Havana harbor by the Americans themselves in order to blame the Spanish and start a war at the end of the last century. The Americans had wanted to get their hands around Cuba’s waist and hold her down to get all her sweet sugar. The Americans were shameless. Now they had their hands up Cuba’s dress, on her breasts, they were raping her.

  From way up where Maria watched, the Maine monument was in clear sight. When the moment came and the President was on the grandstand during the Big Race, Maria would go into the closet of the room and find the rifle left there for her. She would come back to the window and, with the marksmanship she had learned in a rebel camp, she would take aim and get the job done. One shot and Cuba would become a free country.

  Maria got up and went to the bedroom closet. Not to find the rifle, it was much too early for that, but to look for anything the rich guests might have left behind. On the floor of the closet she saw a white glove with shiny buttons up the side. She tried to slip the glove onto her hand, but the threads of the finger seams began to split. She pulled harder, forcing the glove to fit. Then she peered under the bed, searching for the matching glove. No luck, but at least she had half a pair. Last month she had found another glove, a pink suede one. The pink and white gloves worn together would make a statement, show people that she had so many gloves that she got bored wearing them in matched pairs and mixed their colors and styles just to keep life interesting. All the girls would appreciate her daring.

  Finding the white glove gave Maria hope that there might be more treasures. She went through all the drawers in the Italian Baroque–style dresser. Nothing. She pulled up the cushions on an imitation Louis XVI sofa, slipping her fingers into crevices, feeling for coins. Nothing. She removed the silk-covered seat of a sleek lounge chair. Payday of the gods! American money! A two-dollar bill! This was huge magic, the lucky number two. A big reward in life was coming her way. A two-dollar bill was so powerful it shouldn’t be spent, it would just keep giving and giving, pouring honey from heaven. She folded the bill carefully, unbuttoned the top of her maid’s uniform, and tucked the bill safely beneath her bra against her skin.

  Such a lucky day. Maria began to strip the king-sized bed in order to make it up fresh with the clean sheets she had brought. She pulled the blanket off, exposing the top sheet twisted into a knot. She knew what that meant; two lovers caught in a hurricane of passion the night before. She unraveled the sheet and from it fell peach-colored silk panties trimmed in creamy lace. These were the kind of panties Maria had seen Marilyn Monroe wearing in a double-page photo spread in a movie magazine. Maria plucked the panties up between thumb and forefinger. They were new, with no stains or wear, used only for the act of seduction. Maria visualized the blond woman from up north, there on the bed, wearing nothing but these. And the man, naked, except for a starched white shirt he didn’t want to waste time taking off. Maria imagined the man pulling the blonde’s panties down, sliding them off her alabaster skin and raising them to his nose, inhaling her intimate scent.

  Maria held the delicate silk to her own nose and inhaled. A faint female perfume wafted up. She looked at the label sewn into the waistband: NEIMAN MARCUS, DALLAS, TEXAS. The two-dollar bill tucked beneath her bra was already bringing her luck.

  Maria always left the exploration of the bathroom for last; that was where the biggest treasure might be, but she didn’t want to rush in. After she had the bedroom vacuumed and tidied up, looking as if no human had ever spent one minute there, she allowed herself to open the bathroom door.

  The bathroom suite was grand, all marble, mirrors and gleaming chrome fixtures. There was even a crystal chandelier. The toilet lid was up and a used condom floated in the water. Maria quickly made the sign of the cross three times, flushed the toilet, and banged the lid down. She glanced around. A pile of used towels lay bunched up in the corner on the floor. She shook out the towels but found nothing left behind. On the long marble counter was only a half-empty cobalt-blue jar of face cream that said CHANEL on it. Now, that was something a girl could use. Maria’s luck was growing. She set about scrubbing the bathroom and, when she had everything glistening like the fronds of a palm tree after a quick rain, she slid back the glass door of the shower stall.

  There, side by side in the center of the porcelain tub, with their sharp toes pointing toward the drain, was a pair of high-heeled shoes. The shoes were made of glossy flame-red patent leather and stood high on stiletto heels. What a strange but miraculous vision, the bright red surrounded by a sea of white! Who would have left shoes in a bathtub? Did the owner’s man dislike them because they made his woman look too desirable to other men, so he hid them while she was packing in the other room? Or perhaps the woman was spiritual and had left the shoes behind as an offering to Queen Erzulie. It was impossible to tell. But one thing Maria knew, the magic two-dollar bill was burning a lucky hole right through to her heart.

  Maria cautiously lifted the shoes. She gasped, marveling at ribbon-thin ankle straps with dainty metal buckles. Inside the narrow insteps were identical labels that read: CHRISTIAN DIOR, PARIS, FRANCE. She didn’t know who the Christian in Paris was. She thought the shoes looked like the ones Dorothy wore in The Wizard of Oz. She had watched a scratchy old print of that movie in the theater of the sugar mill town where she had grown up. She had had to work a week just to buy the ticket to get into the theater, where she sat in the balcony because her skin was too dark to sit up front with the white people.

  What if these red shoes were Dorothy’s shoes? If so, it meant bad witches were flying around, that the gods would have to be appeased and the saints fed. This was a big responsibility. Maria sighed deeply. She needed an arsenal of witches to fight witches. She had to be brave. She decided to keep the shoes. She clutched them to her and wept with joy.

  Maria thought she heard witches whispering. She held her breath. But the whispering sound was only water running in the sink. Someone had forgotten to close the faucet. She turned the water off, then went back into the bedroom with the shoes and face cream. She sat on the edge of the bed, kicked off her own worn shoes, and put on the red ones. What a marvel! The shoes were tight, but they fit her feet, and her feet were not small. She didn’t have the courage to walk in the shoes yet. She bent forward and looked at her face in the dresser mirror. She unscrewed the cap from the face-cream jar. A heady scent of mint and aloe vera rushed up. She studied herself closely in the mirror as she applied fingertip dabs of white cream to her dark face. She was such an African princess, such a Spanish seductress. She batted her long eyelashes. She smoothed cream around her mouth, thinking about Esther Fernández, the brilliant and brave Mexican movie star with the perfect nose and flowing black hair. What a hard life Esther had lived, especially in that movie Flower of Blood, when her tender heart was betrayed by the suave actor Víctor Junco. No woman deserved to be treated like that. Víctor was a man who could steal any woman’s heart. He looked like a Latin version of the dashing American star Errol Flynn. Víctor had the same kind of seductive mustache above voluptuous lips, the same slicked-back black hair, high cheekbones and broad shoulders. Maria fell back on the bed, not thinking of dark Víctor but of white Errol. She wanted Errol to treat her the way Víctor treated Esther when he was seducing her in the movie. Maria wanted it rough.

  The scent of face cream and the tight magic of the red shoes were making Maria delirious. The soft pink roses on the wallpapered walls floated around her. She had seen Errol Flynn in that other blood movie, Captain Blood, filmed right here in Cuba. Errol swung by ropes from the mast of a pirate ship that he sailed on the high seas. He was like Tarzan, swinging on vines through the jungle, shirtless, a huge knife dangling at his belt. Errol swung through the roses toward Maria. She heard the other pirates shouting threats, trying to stop him from rescuing her. Errol swooped her up. He kissed her and his hands
moved over her breasts and between her legs. The other pirates were closing in, shooting their long pistols.

  No, it wasn’t pistol shots. It was loud knocking.

  Maria leapt up from the bed. “Mother of God!” She prayed it wasn’t the floor manager knocking at the door. The manager would fire her. Maybe she was going to be punished by a bad witch for being a black Dorothy in a white girl’s red shoes. The shoes! As she opened the door she remembered she was still wearing them.

  Standing in the doorway was Leaping Larry Lizard. He looked Maria up and down, his eyes stripping off all her clothes, everything except the shoes. A big grin flashed on his face and a hard-on bucked at his pants zipper.

  “Where the fuck did you get those shoes?”

  Maria’s eyes widened. She was afraid to blink for fear it would open up the dam and tears would gush out.

  “Don’t be afraid, my coconut meringue.” Lizard reached his arms around her waist and put his big hands on her bottom. He pushed her into the room and kicked the door closed behind him as he held her in a tight embrace. “Open up your legs and give me your Cuban banana split.”

  3.

  Shark Bait

  Orchestra Kubavana Viva was on the radio playing “Tropical Lies.” The music was a hit because it used only two rhythms, the slap of waves on the beach and the wind-scrape of swaying palm trees. Bongo drummed out the simple percussion on his desk. His fingers wanted to go somewhere else, find another beat, feel a different pulse. He had a pounding headache, a deep and insistent throb in his temples. He took another swig of rum from the glass on his desk, more hair of the dog. He wanted to douse that dog with rum, throw a lighted match on it, and watch it run burning through hell.

  He felt responsible for what had happened in the Tropicana the night before. Maybe if he hadn’t been away from the table getting the orchid, he would have been sitting in Mercedes’ place at the stroke of midnight. He would have been the one blown to bits. It didn’t seem fair that she had died and he hadn’t. Somewhere in him was a Spanish streak of chivalry that decreed it was the man who should suffer for the woman.