Once more he made the gun safe, and dropped it on the lanyard. From the coat he took out a hip flask and took a large pull on it before offering it to me. “Hair of the dog?”
I shook my head.
“No, I guess not. That’s the thing about alcohol poisoning. Be a while before you can even tolerate the smell of schnapps, let alone drink any.”
“You bastard.”
“Me? It was you that killed her, Gunther. Him, too. Once you’d said what you said, there was no alternative. They had to die. They’d have had me over a barrel with my pants down and fucked me from now until Christmas, and there’s nothing I could have done about it.” He took another swig of liquor. “You, on the other hand. I know exactly what’s to stop you from doing that very same thing. Can you think what it is?”
I sighed. “Honestly? No.”
He chuckled, and I wanted to kill him for it. “Then it’s lucky I’m here to tell you, asshole. Noreen Charalambides. That’s what. She was, is, in love with you.” He frowned and shook his head. “Christ only knows why. I mean, you’re a loser, Gunther. A liberal in a country full of Nazis. If that doesn’t make you a loser, then there’s that hole in your fucking shoe. I mean, how could a dame like that fall for a schmuck with a hole in his fucking shoe?
“Just as important, however,” he continued, “you are in love with her. No point in denying it. You see, we had a talk, she and I, before she left Berlin to go back to the States. And she told me how you two felt about each other. Which, I have to say, was a disappointment to me. On account of the fact that she and I had a thing ourselves on the boat from New York. Did she tell you that?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t matter now. All that does matter is that you care enough about Noreen to stop her from being killed. Because here’s what’s going to happen. As soon as I’m off this boat, I’m going to send a telegram to my kid brother in New York. To be honest, he’s my half brother. But blood is blood, right? Kid Twist, they call him, because it’s fair to say he’s a little bit fucking twisted in the head. Well, there’s that and the fact that he used to like twisting the necks of guys he didn’t like. Until they broke. That was before he developed his real skill. With an ice pick. Anyway, the fact is, he likes killing people. Me, I do it because I have to. Like just now. But he enjoys his work.
“So what I’m going to tell him. In this telegram I’m going to send. Is this, see? That if anything happens to me while I’m in Germany. Like me getting arrested by the Gestapo. Anything. Then he should track down Mrs. Charalambides and kill her. With a name like that, believe me, she won’t be hard to find. He can rape her, too, if he’s got half a mind. Which he has. And if he’s in the mood. And quite often he is.”
He grinned.
“You can think of it as my own denunciation, if you like, except that unlike yours, Gunther, her being Jewish has got nothing to do with anything. Anyway, I’m sure you can grasp the general idea of what I’m talking about. My leaving you alone is guaranteed by the letter you’ve addressed to the Jew Desk at the Gestapo. And your leaving me alone is similarly guaranteed by the telegram I’m going to send to my kid brother just as soon as I’m back in my suite. We hold each other in check. Just like stalemate in a chess game. Or what the political scientists call a balance of power. Your insurance canceled out by mine. What do you say?”
A sudden wave of nausea hit me. I leaned to the side and retched again.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” said Reles. “Because, let’s face it, what other choice do you have? I like to think I can read a man like a newspaper, Gunther. That was easier during Prohibition. The guys I dealt with were black-and-white, and mostly you knew where you were with them just by looking in their eyes. Then, after the repeal of the Volstead Act, my organization had to diversify. Find some new rackets. Gunther, I virtually started labor and union rackets in the States. But a lot of these guys are harder to read. You know, guys in business. It was hard to find out what they fucking wanted because, unlike the guys running booze, they themselves didn’t know what that was. Most people don’t, and that’s their problem.
“You, on the other hand, my friend. You are a little bit of both. You think you’re a black-and-white kind of guy. You think you know what you fucking want. But really you’re not, and you don’t. When I first met you, I thought you were just another dumb ex-copper looking to make a quick bill. I expect there are times when that’s even the way you think of yourself. But you’re more than that. I expect that’s what Noreen saw. Something else. Something complicated. Whatever it was, she wasn’t the type to fall for a guy who didn’t fall for her in the same way.” He shrugged. “With her and me, it was just because she was bored. With you, I think it was the real thing.”
Reles spoke calmly, even reasonably, and, listening to him speak, I found it was hard to believe that he had just murdered two people. If I’d felt any better, I might have argued with him, but with the stomach I had and the talking I’d already done, I was more or less exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep and stay asleep for a very long time. And maybe puke a bit more if and when the need hit me. At least then I would know I was alive.
“As I see it,” he said, “there’s just one remaining problem.”
“I imagine it’s not a problem you can fix with that Colt.”
“Not directly, no. I mean, you could do it for me, but I bet you’re the picky type. Well, you are now. I’d like to meet you in ten years’ time to see how picky you are then.”
“If you mean I’m picky about murdering people in cold blood, then you’re right. Although I could make an exception in your case. At least I could until you’ve sent that telegram.”
“Which is why I’m going to leave you on the boat until I’ve had time to go to the Palace Hotel in Potsdam and send the message to Abe. That’s a nice hotel, by the way. I have a suite there, too, for when I’m in Potsdam.” He shook his head. “No, my problem is this. What am I going to do about that Gestapo captain in Würzburg? What was his name? Weinberger?”
I nodded.
“He knows too much about me.”
I nodded again.
“Tell me, Gunther. Is he married? Does he have any kids? Anyone he loves who I can threaten if he gets out of line?”
I shook my head. “I can honestly say that the only person he really cares about is himself. To that extent at least he’s fairly typical of anyone working for the Gestapo. All Weinberger cares about is his career and getting on, at any price.”
Reles nodded and walked around the deck for a moment. “To that extent at least, you said. In what way is he atypical?”
I shook my head and realized I had a blinding headache. The kind that feels likely to leave you blind. “I’m not sure that I understand what you’re driving at.”
“Is he queer? Does he like little girls? Can he be bribed? What’s his Achilles’ heel? Does he have one?” He shrugged. “Look, I could have him killed, probably, but it makes waves when a cop gets killed. Like that cop who got killed outside the Excelsior, in the summer. The Berlin polenta made all sorts of heat about that, didn’t they?”
“Tell me about it.”
“I don’t want to have him killed. But everyone’s got a weakness. Yours is Noreen Charalambides. Mine is that fucking letter that’s in some cop’s desk drawer, right? So what’s this Captain Weinberger’s weakness?”
“Now you come to mention it, there is something.”
He snapped his fingers at me. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
I said nothing.
“Fuck you, Gunther. This isn’t about your conscience. This is about Noreen. This is about her opening the door one night and finding my kid brother, Abe, on her doorstep. In truth, he’s not as skilled with an ice pick as I am. Few people are, except maybe my old man, and the doctor who taught him. Me, I’m just as happy to use a gun. Gets the job done. But Abe.” Max Reles shook his head and smiled. “One time back in Brooklyn, when we were both working the Shapiro brothers—local underworld figures—the kid murdered this guy in a car wash because he didn’t clean his car right. He left the wheels dirty. So Abe told me, anyway. Broad daylight, and the kid knocks him out and then stabs him in the fucking ear with an ice pick. Not a mark. The coppers thought the guy had a heart attack. As it happens, the Shapiros? They’re dead, too. Me and Abe buried Bill alive in a sandpit last May. That’s one of the reasons I came to Berlin in the first place, Gunther. To wait for the heat on that murder to die down a little.” He paused. “So. Am I making myself clear? You want that I should tell the kid to bury the bitch alive, like Bill Shapiro?”
I shook my head. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you.”
PART TWO
Havana, February 1954
1
W
HEN THE WIND BLOWS from the north, the sea smashes into the wall on the Malecón as if it has been unleashed by a besieging army intent on the revolutionary overthrow of Havana. Gallons of water are launched into the air and then rain down upon the broad, oceanfront highway, washing some of the dust from the big American cars heading west, or drenching those pedestrians who are daring or foolish enough to walk along the wall during winter weather.
For a few minutes, I watched the crashing, moonlit waves with real hope. They were near but not quite near enough to reach the windup gramophone belonging to the Cuban youths who had spent most of the night grouped in front of my apartment building, keeping me and probably several others awake with the rumba music that is everywhere on the island. There were times when I found myself longing for the hob-nailed, juggernaut rhythms of a German brass band; not to mention the street-cleaning properties of a model twenty-four-stick grenade.
Unable to sleep, I considered going to the Casa Marina, and then rejected the idea, certain that, at this late hour, the particular
chica
I favored would no longer be free. Besides, Yara was asleep in my bed, and while she would never have questioned my leaving the apartment in the small hours of the morning, the ten dollars payable to Doña Marina would probably have been money wasted, since I was no longer equal to the task of making love twice in as many days, let alone in the space of one evening. So I sat down and finished the book I was reading instead.
It was a book in English.
For some time now I’d been learning English, in an effort to persuade an Englishman named Robert Freeman to give me a job. Freeman worked for the British tobacco giant Gallaher, running a subsidiary company called J. Frankau, which had been the UK distributor for all Havana cigars since 1790. I had been cultivating Freeman in the hope that I might talk him into sending me back to Germany—at my own expense, I might add—to see if I couldn’t open up the new West German market. A covering letter of introduction and several boxes of samples would, I supposed, be enough to smooth the arrival of Carlos Hausner, an Argentine of German descent, back to Germany and enable me to blend in.
It wasn’t that I disliked Cuba. Far from it. I had left Argentina with a hundred thousand American dollars, and I lived very comfortably in Havana. But I yearned for somewhere without biting insects, and where people went to bed at a sensible time of night, and where none of the drinks was made of ice: I was tired of getting a freezing headache every time I went into a bar. Another reason I wanted to return to Germany was that my Argentine passport would not last forever. But once I was safely back in Germany, I could disappear. Again.
Going back to Berlin was out of the question, of course. For one thing, it was now landlocked in the communist-controlled German Democratic Republic; and, for another, the Berlin police were probably looking for me in connection with the murders of two women in Vienna, in 1949. Not that I
had
murdered them. I’ve done a lot of things in my life of which I’m less than proud, but I haven’t ever murdered a woman. Not unless you counted the Soviet woman I’d shot during the long, hot summer of 1941—one of an NKVD death squad who’d just murdered several thousand unarmed prisoners in their cells. I expect the Russians would have counted that as murder, which was another good reason to stay out of Berlin. Hamburg looked like a better bet. Hamburg was in the Federal Republic, and I didn’t know anyone in Hamburg. More important, no one there knew me.
Meanwhile, my life was good. I had what most Habaneros wanted: a large apartment on Malecón, a big American car, a woman to provide sex, and a woman to cook my meals. Sometimes it was the same woman who cooked the food and also provided the sex. But my Vedado apartment was only a few tantalizing blocks from the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, and long before Yara became my devoted housekeeper, I’d got into the habit of paying regular visits to Havana’s most famous and luxurious
casa de putas
.
I liked Yara, but it wasn’t anything more than that. She stayed when she felt like staying, not because I asked her but because she wanted to. I think Yara was a Negress, but it’s a little hard to be sure about things like that in Cuba. She was tall and slim and about twenty years younger than I with a face like a much-loved pony. She wasn’t a whore, because she didn’t take money for it. She only looked like a whore. Most of the women in Havana looked like whores. Most of the whores looked like your little sister. Yara wasn’t a whore, because she made a better living as a thief stealing from me. I didn’t mind that. It saved me from having to pay her. Besides, she stole only what she thought I could afford to lose, which, as it happened, was a lot less than guilt would have obliged me to pay her. Yara didn’t spit and she didn’t smoke cigars and she was a devotee of the Santería religion, which, it seemed to me, was a bit like voodoo. I liked that she prayed about me to some African gods. They had to work better than the ones I’d been praying to.
As soon as the rest of Havana was awake, I drove along to the Prado in my Chevrolet Styline. The Styline was probably the commonest car in Cuba and very possibly one of the largest. It took more metal to make a Styline than there was in Bethlehem Steel. I parked in front of the Gran Teatro. It was a neo-Baroque building with so many angels crowded onto its lavish exterior it was clear the architect must have thought being a playwright or an actor was more important than being an apostle. These days, anything is more important than being an apostle. Especially in Cuba.