Zapata stepped into the room and stood in front of the blood-spattered sink and wall. He wore his linen suit, Panama hat, and dark sunglasses. The line of his mustache seemed straighter than ever in the harsh glare.
He pulled out a chair and sat across from Bongo, his intimate whisper of a voice laced with menace. “There’s a Panther loose.”
Bongo didn’t answer.
Without looking up, Zapata commanded Pedro and Paulo. “Get the others.”
“All at once, sir?” Pedro asked.
“The woman first.”
“Yes, sir,” the two men said in unison, hurrying off.
Zapata took out a snub-nosed revolver and set it on the chopping block. “The Panther is special to many people,” he whispered. “But for us, she represents more than life. Don’t you agree?”
“You brought me to your torture palace just to ask me that?”
“I brought you here because you are in the center of things. Many fingers point to you.”
“There’s not anyone that you don’t suspect.”
“Especially you. I always suspected that she loved you more than me.”
“She never loved you. You saved her and she was indebted. That’s different.”
“I plucked her little body from the floodwaters. I took her home and sponged the mud from her flesh. She quivered back to life in my hands. I created her.”
“And you left me in the mud to die.”
“I thought you were dead. You were just a pathetic white thing, barely breathing.”
“She was—”
“A goddess cub, a cat child.”
“Tell me”—Bongo leaned forward, staring into the opaque orbs of Zapata’s sunglasses—“how long were you spying on my family from your house across the river?”
Zapata sighed heavily, then caught his breath and whispered, “It was fascinating, like watching a play. The hovels offered little shelter, so life was carried on outside. I studied it all, like it was my personal anthill.”
“It was a sad place, shit ran in the streets, kids were covered with open sores. What kind of anthill is that?”
“The best kind, a colony of desperation.”
“Poverty can also have its nobility.”
“I could see your sister pissing in the mud. I could see your father copulating in the mud.”
Bongo struggled to free his hands from the handcuffs. He wanted to choke the life out of Zapata, but the circles of steel cut into his flesh and he bled.
Zapata’s hollow whispering continued, “I watched everything, day after day, through my binoculars.”
“And you never did anything to help. You just watched.”
“There are some things that cannot be helped.”
“They weren’t things. They were people.”
“The way your father used to stand you and your sister together, dressed only in your undershorts, and slap your shaved heads like they were drums as people with real instruments gathered around and joined in. It went on for hours, into the night. In the light of fires I could see you and your sister, standing still as statues. Amazing. The bongo beat being played on your skulls traveled across the river to me.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed the show.”
“And then the hurricane crashed across the cane fields and the Almendares swelled up and tore through the pathetic shacks of your mud town. I spent days after, searching among the jagged stumps of ripped-up trees hung with the bodies of animals and people.”
“I know the story.”
“At the mouth of the river, where the sea churned brown from the mud that had washed into it, I found the two of you twisted together, one black one, one white one.”
“You left me there to die and took her.”
“Of course I took her. A man doesn’t need another man. I could give her life.”
“Or keep her in a cage for twenty years.”
“The only escape from the cage is death.”
“You’ve killed every man that ever got close to her.”
“Except you. But your time is coming. That’s why I took you to see the miserable shark bait speared through the chest. That will be your fate.”
“He was one of my sister’s lovers?”
“That’s why I had his ass tattooed. He was a university professor, they’re all subversives. I eradicated a piece of leftist trash, and a personal irritant. Two birds, one stone.”
“The professor may have been a leftist, but he wasn’t her lover. When he was fished out of the ocean he was wearing underpants that belonged to the American who died in the Big Race. The professor and Guy Armstrong were lovers. You killed the wrong guy.”
Zapata’s lips quivered into an ironic smile. “Ah, my dear boy, you are so wrong. The professor wasn’t the lover of Guy Armstrong. He was the lover of your sister, and Mrs. Armstrong.”
“Impossible.”
“The professor was often at the Armstrongs’ house when the husband was gone. He just happened to put on the wrong underpants one night in the dark after he was finished with her.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I’ve had the Armstrong house under surveillance for months. The husband wanted us to think he was just a rich cream puff who liked cheap sex with our Cuban boys. It was all a pretense. Armstrong was behind the plot at the Big Race to kill the President. He used his wife’s money to destabilize our little island. His kind are the most despicable, idealists dressed in Brooks Brothers suits, Cadillac commies.”
“Mrs. Armstrong … she was part of this?”
“She’s ignorant of politics. But she did know her husband wasn’t a homo. They had, shall we say, an active bedroom life.”
Bongo was silent. The words that Mrs. Armstrong had once breathed into his ear flamed in his mind. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited. How long I’ve been without.”
From outside the room there was a clanging, then thuds, then scuffling.
Zapata ignored the sounds. His lips moved below his mustache. “Sometimes, when I see you in a certain light,” he whispered, “you look so much like your sister that it’s hard to tell you apart. She is the blackest of the black. You are white, but your heart is that of a black.”
Bongo pulled at the steel cuffs cutting into his bleeding wrists. He spat out his words. “Sometimes, when I see you in a certain light, you look almost human.”
Zapata didn’t answer. He remained motionless, his eyes hidden behind the glare of sunglasses.
The silence between them was broken by shouting and footsteps, then the door was flung open. Pedro and Paulo burst in, pulling a handcuffed woman, forcing her to stand before the blood-spattered sink behind Zapata.
Zapata did not turn to face the woman. He directed his whisper at Bongo. “Do you know her?”
Bongo looked at the woman. It was Señorita Pee-Pee from the Hotel Nacional.
Zapata whispered more insistently. “Do you know her?”
The woman didn’t seem frightened. She wore a drab hotel uniform dress, but held her head up in noble defiance.
It was obvious to Bongo that Zapata already knew who she was, that he was fishing for more information. Bongo betrayed nothing by stating, “She’s a Señorita Pee-Pee. She works in the ladies’ lounge at the Nacional.”
“How do you know she works inside a ladies’ lounge? That’s not a place a man would go.”
Bongo had no intention of telling Zapata that he had followed Sweet Maria into the lounge, where he met Señorita Pee-Pee.
“I didn’t say I was in the lounge. I was in the hotel, trying to sell insurance.”
“What about the hotel maid I saw you kissing? Were you selling her insurance too?”
“Whatever it takes to close a sale.”
Zapata tilted his head toward Pedro and Paulo and ordered, “Get the others. Close the door behind you.” He waited until the two men left, then turned to Bongo. “Did you know that during the Big Race, someone tried to shoot the President from the Nacional? Th
ey missed and struck Armstrong’s windshield instead. That’s why he crashed.”
“It’s news to me.”
“Of course, you were too busy trying to close insurance deals with maids and pee-pee girls.”
“It’s not an alibi, it’s how I make my living.”
“So your visit to Mrs. Armstrong’s house the night before her husband was killed was—”
“—just business. Sometimes I have to go to the clients.”
“And I suppose you just happened to be at the Tropicana on business when the Judge was murdered?”
“As a matter of fact, I was. Ask Fido, ask the doorman. I was there to sell insurance to the Giant.”
“The same as you had been on New Year’s Eve?”
“That was one reason, yes.”
“And you just happened to be called away New Year’s Eve only minutes before the bomb exploded?”
“A series of coincidences.”
“You know I don’t believe in coincidence.”
The door slammed open. Pedro and Paulo herded in three handcuffed men and stood them before the long sink with Señorita Pee-Pee.
Zapata remained facing Bongo. “Do you know these men?”
The men were beaten and bloodied. The big black one with the shaved head was Fido; he grinned at Bongo with his smashed lips. Next to Fido was the mulatto, Hurricane, his pitching arm broken at the elbow and hanging limp. The third man was white, his face cratered by festers from burning cigarettes that had been stubbed out on his flesh. His blood-caked eyelashes were long like a woman’s. Bongo recognized him, it was the student who shot the Judge.
“I know them.”
“They are your friends?”
“Fido is a friend.”
“And a good one he is. He refused to say anything bad about you.”
“He doesn’t deserve this.”
“Leave it to me to decide who deserves what.”
The student coughed. A purplish fluid gurgled up and trickled from his split lips.
Zapata reached across the table and pulled the pack of Luckys from Bongo’s shirt pocket. He tapped out a cigarette and lit up. His black sunglasses lenses reflected smoke rising into the air. “There are no secrets anymore. What do you have to say?”
“How about a smoke?”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“What else? You’re a man who doesn’t believe in coincidence?”
“You’re right. Take this pack of Lucky Strikes, for instance. They’re the only brand you smoke. At the fountain of the muses, where the Judge was shot, there were butts of freshly smoked Luckys. Your fingerprints were on them.”
“Where did you get a copy of my fingerprints?”
“You forgot. When you registered your gun, it’s the law. We have an extensive archive of prints—union workers, university people, journalists. We even have the pawprints of cats that screw in the night.”
“My prints on some cigarette butts doesn’t make me a murderer.”
“No, but they might make you an accomplice. You and your friend Fido.”
“Accomplices prove nothing, if you don’t have a murderer.”
“Ah, but we do.” Zapata looked at the snub-nosed revolver that he had placed on the table before Bongo. “That is the murder weapon.”
The student behind Zapata coughed blood again.
“After I matched up the prints on the cigarette butts to their owners,” Zapata continued, “it was just a matter of finding a gun registration with the same prints. Which one of these handsome fellows behind me do you think is the owner of the murder weapon?”
“None of them.”
“If that was the case, I wouldn’t have invited you out to this splendid abode. Do you know who this mansion was being built for?”
“No idea.”
“A high public official who wanted to be even higher, so he was secretly working with those who want to overthrow our government. That’s how it always works out. There are no pure revolutions, only tainted humans.”
“It’s not my game.”
“It’s everyone’s game now, no one is on the sidelines.” Zapata picked up the gun and aimed it between Bongo’s eyes. “Shooting me isn’t going to accomplish anything.”
“We’ll see.” Zapata stood up and turned around. He stepped to Señorita Pee-Pee, his voice intimate, as if he were a lover. “You are special. I will save you for dessert.” He moved to Hurricane.
“You bastard!” Hurricane shouted.
Zapata ignored him and moved to the student.
The student tried to speak, but blood gurgled from his lips.
Beneath his mustache, Zapata’s own lips formed the crescent of a smile. He moved to Fido. “I suppose this isn’t your gun either?”
“I don’t need a gun to kill a man. I can do it with my bare hands.”
Zapata walked back to the student. “I found this gun in your house. You killed the Judge. He worked for me.”
The student tried to spit in Zapata’s face, but his bloody lips only twitched.
Zapata shoved the gun barrel between the student’s teeth and pulled the trigger.
The blast reverberated as the back of the student’s head spattered against the wall above the sink and his body fell at Zapata’s feet.
Zapata stepped in front of Hurricane. “Backstage at the Tropicana, on New Year’s Eve, you smuggled the bomb in, hidden in a basket of flowers. You gave the basket to a dancer as a gift. The plan was for her to place it on my table. The explosion was timed for midnight. If the Judge hadn’t warned me, I’d be dead. Because of that, you set the Judge up to be executed by the university student.”
“You can’t kill me, I’m a sports hero.”
Zapata leveled the gun at Hurricane’s face and pulled the trigger. Hurricane slumped to the floor. Zapata looked down at the body. “Now you’re a dead leftist punk.”
Zapata casually sidestepped up to Señorita Pee-Pee. He nuzzled the gun barrel against her blouse, aiming at her heart.
“You’ve got it wrong,” Señorita Pee-Pee declared firmly. “It’s not your mansions we want. We want our dignity.”
Zapata circled the outline of her breast with the tip of the barrel.
“When I searched the Nacional after the assassination attempt on the President, I found the rifle that was used. It was hidden beneath towels in the closet of your lounge.”
“Next time we won’t miss.”
Señorita Pee-Pee stared fearlessly at Zapata as he drew back the trigger. The blast knocked her against the wall, her eyelids twitched, her eyes rolled up, she slid to the floor.
Zapata swung around, leaned across the table, pointing the gun at Bongo’s forehead. “Tell me where the Panther is!”
Bongo could see his face in Zapata’s sunglasses. He stared at his own reflection without saying a word.
The only sound in the room was Fido’s mournful sobbing at the carnage surrounding him. Blood was spattered on his face and pooling at his feet.
Zapata pressed the gun barrel into Bongo’s forehead and hissed, “You are my bird dog. Go scare up the bird.” He yanked the gun away. “And take your dumb boxer friend with you, before I change my mind and dump you both in the Pineapple Field.”
Mrs. Armstrong came toward Bongo across the terrace of the Hotel Sevilla rooftop bar. She wasn’t dressed like a grieving widow. She wore a sleeveless sheath of shimmering silver silk. Her long blond hair swung with the same rhythm as the hem of her dress swishing at her knees. She glided through the crowd as if the beam of the full moon overhead was her own personal spotlight.
Bongo stood up at his table and pulled a chair out for her. The familiar scent of roses and new car leather hovered in the air.
“Thank you for coming,” Bongo said with polite formality. “It must be a trying time.”
Mrs. Armstrong sat down. “I’ve packed everything up and closed the house.”
He waited for her to continue, to say something about the death of her husb
and, but she didn’t. He asked, “Where are you going?”
“Palm Beach. It has Cuban weather without the Cubans.”
“If all you Americans left, we would have Cuba without the Americans.”
“I suppose.”
“My condolences about your husband. The reason I asked you to meet me has to do with him.”
“It does? Oh, yes, I forgot.” She opened her purse. “I still owe for the job you did.” She pulled out her checkbook.
“That’s not what I meant. Given what’s happened, you don’t owe me anything. We’re even.”
“I always honor my obligations.” She quickly wrote a check and handed it over.
“Do you have time for a cocktail?”
“Not really.”
Bongo raised his hand and snapped his fingers. A white-jacketed waiter appeared. Bongo said, “Bring the lady whatever she wants.”
“I’ll have a Cosmopolitan,” Mrs. Armstrong said.
“And I’ll stay with what I’ve been drinking, rum and Coke.”
“Yes, sir.” The waiter bowed and left.
“It’s just like you to drink that,” she said with disdain.
“Rum and Coke.” Bongo smiled. “We Cubans have a sweet tooth. It’s the heat.”
“Rum and Coke, half Cuban, half American, like you.”
“Right now I feel only Cuban.”
“That means you’re stuck with antiquated traditions.”
“And you’re stuck with your pursuit of a tomorrow that never comes.”
“Americans are about progress.” Mrs. Armstrong’s frosted-lipstick mouth tightened. “That’s why we are different.”
“I’m becoming aware of how different we really are.”
Bongo looked at the diamond pendant hanging from a gold chain around her neck, its strategic sparkle was directly above the swell of her breasts. He remembered the cool feel of her breasts in his hands.
The waiter returned, served the drinks and left.
Mrs. Armstrong raised her cocktail glass to her lips, her smooth white arms glistening in the moonlight.
Bongo still didn’t know if there were three dark-starred moles on her left breast. The night he had tried to see them, the vaporous haze of the swimming pool water, and his impatient desire, had prevented him from getting a clear view.
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