Manhattan 62 (9 page)

You say the word Cuba, you get a lot of conspiracy theories. In the next few days, after the papers print the story, the phone at the office rings off the hook. People telling me Castro is the actual devil. Castro's spies murdered the girl. No one is sure what the worm means, not at first, but the words Cuba Libre get plenty of reaction.

If the girl is fighting Castro, she is a martyr, people say. The New York Diocese takes up her case, says they will post a reward; anything for someone who fights the Communist evil. One caller informs me that Russians landed on the High Line in a spaceship and did the job.

A lady whose husband was in the 2506 Brigade and died at the Bay of Pigs, says to me, and I'm scribbling it down fast as I can, phone under my chin. “They let us down,” she says. “Them Kennedys, they left my husband and his men on that beach to die. The Kennedys killed him, they're killers, they don't care for nobody, and that Bobby Kennedy, he's the worst of all, you ask me they had a hand in this terrible death, poor dead girl.” The next caller wants Bobby on the case, he's the Attorney General, he cares for the people of Cuba, he hates Castro, he's been right in there fighting for freedom.

One man stops into the station house and tells me the girl is Miss
La Prensa,
Gladys Feijoo, the girl Castro kissed when he was in New York in '59. I dig out some clippings from his trip. It's true. A picture in the
Daily News
shows the girl, long dark hair, kissing Fidel on the cheek while he writes in her autograph book. Castro is smoking a cigar. He hired a public relations firm to show him how, and he was a star, charming, talking to everyone, visiting the zoo, visiting Columbia University.

Then I think: maybe Saul Rudnick, Nancy's father, knows something. Rudnick used to teach at Columbia, and I'm guessing he loves Castro like the rest of them. It's a long shot, but I don't have much else, so I call him. Saul says come on over, though he doesn't like me much.

Saul opens the door himself. “Hello, Pat,” he says, “Come in.”

In baggy brown corduroy pants, and a red sweater, he's a big balding man, about sixty, a lawyer, an ex-football player, long fiercely intelligent face, like a Jewish Abe Lincoln.

In Saul's hand is a copy of the
New York Times,
and I'm hardly in the living room when he says, “Did you see what fucking Bobby Kennedy is doing? What's his business with Cuba? Has his people trying to mine the Havana harbor. Jesus Christ. What can I do for you, Pat. Can I get you a cup of coffee. Sit down, for heaven's sake.”

Times I've been in the house, Saul lectured me on the evils of JFK's containment policy, the sadness of the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, and why goddamn Rudolph Bing wrecked his favorite operas at the Met. He was also interested in my views; and we had agreed about the rapacity of the damn Yankees. I hated them as much as he did. First few times, when I started dating Nancy, I picked her up at the redbrick house on Charlton Street. Rudnick liked her dates to call for her. I could see he didn't much like me; his idea of a suitor for his princess was not an Irish Catholic cop. But he offered me some of his good malt whisky and made nice. After all, I was his baby's friend.

“Is this about Nancy?” says Saul, leaning against the shining black grand piano. “I didn't know you were still seeing her.”

I want him sweet because I need help, so I nod, and, him thinking his baby is safe from me, he sits, gestures to another armchair. I sit, too.

It's a rich handsome room, old Oriental carpets, fine polished wooden floors, good furniture, old sofas, books everywhere. Art, too. Good pictures on the walls. On the piano are clusters of photographs, all in silver frames, many of them of Nancy, of family, even of Saul in his Marine uniform during the war. It's a room with a ripe comfortable feel, and the truth is, deep down, I like it here. I'd like to have this. To belong.

The Rudnicks' Village is a different place from mine, a place of pretty tree-lined streets and redbrick houses that date back to before the Civil War; of nineteenth-century brownstones, where old ladies still live behind lace curtains; of little theatres, and arthouse movies; of prosperous people like her father, and their children.

Last I heard, Saul Rudnick was fighting for a union on behalf of the Mohawk Indians building the Verrazano Bridge. Saul's pretty keen on the working class, except for me. Fordham is not what he has in mind for his daughter; he prefers Columbia boys for his little girl.

Truth is, I like Saul Rudnick. Admire him, too. Sure, he's a Communist, but you have to give it to him, he's a straight arrow. Back during McCarthy, when he's called to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, he tells them to shove it, more or less; he says what he believes, tells them he's a Communist straight out; also he never rats out his friends, goes to jail for it. This gives Saul the moral high ground, which he claims with glee. Nancy gets it from him, the sense of always being right.

“Ah, Martha, thank you,” Saul says when the colored maid brings coffee on a little silver tray. “Try the ruggelach,” he adds. “These are from Greenberg's. Excellent.” He stuffs a pastry in his mouth. “Plenty of butter in these babies,” he adds. “Now what can I help you with?”

I tell him about Miss
La Prensa
and how somebody identified her as the dead Cuban girl on the High Line.

“Oddly enough, I remember Miss
La Prensa.
I remember that photograph of her and Fidel in the paper. Nice girl, too, if I recall, but nothing in it, not between them. He was a serious revolutionary. By God, he was a handsome man, though. It was April when I met him, what three years back? I was teaching at Columbia in '59, adjunct professor, naturally nobody would hire a Red full time. April 15, 1959,” says Saul. “We knew from where the police had deployed their barricades that it would be on that closed-off portion of West 116th Street

“We, students, professors, were not alone. Joining us was a group of local Cuban–American women. Columbia has a tense relationship with the surrounding Harlem community and it is rare for any of these ladies to even consider walking across our campus, but on that day it was their campus as much as ours. Those tiny Latinas sang, and by the time two hours of this cross-cultural camaraderie passed, we have their accent, and we are singing

“And then his entourage pulls up, preceded by a motorcade of New York City police on motorcycles with lights and sirens blaring. First out of the lead limo was a slight but lithe khaki-clad man wearing a vaguely familiar looking beret. One of the woman whispered, ‘Che, it's Che!' How surprised I was that he is only perhaps five feet ten or so, for I have imagined a big man.

“Some of us were not sure at that time who this was, but the little Latina, I thought she was going to faint, so I put my hand on her arm, and held her steady, and we are like that just as the late afternoon sun breaks through, from the car emerges the spectacular backlit Fidel.

“Fidel, who was a man of the people, comes to the barrier, he reaches across to embrace his little ladies, then he strides to us—in his combat boots he is a spectacular strider—and in perfect English, says, ‘It's good to be back at Columbia. You know I was once a student here.' He's tall, as tall as me, and I push to the front of the line, and say, ‘Dr Castro, welcome,' and he shakes my hand. It was something.”

Saul finishes his story, he's been telling it with gusto, but out of the blue he slumps into a chair. His face turns white. I can see the pain.

“Are you all right?”

“It's nothing,” Saul says. “I'm fine. My wife will be home soon. There she is. I can hear the door. Ginny?”

“Hello, darling, I'm right here, and I'm going to fix you some Alka-Seltzer. Hello, Pat, so nice to see you.” Saul's wife, Virginia, has arrived. She's a tall handsome Negro woman, Nancy's stepmother, and about the nicest person I've met at the house. She kisses Saul, and says to me, “Pat, dear, it's been a while since you've been here, and we miss you, we really do. You're always welcome. Look, why don't you come to our Labor Day Party, like you did last year. OK? Please. Saul, tell Pat he's most welcome.”

“Sure.”

“You feel bad, dear? I'm going to call the doctor,” she says, but Saul waves her away.

“I'm fine. Just indigestion. Let it be, Ginny, please. Nancy is coming later. I'm sorry I can't help you any more, Pat. I remember that girl, the Miss
La Prensa,
but I never got to know her.”

“Please, go take a nap, Saul, and you'll feel better when Nancy does get here. Now Pat, let me see you off,” she says, and leads me to the front door, shakes my hand, and reminds me about the party.

“Is he OK? Mr Rudnick, I mean?”

“Truthfully, I don't know. He hates the damn doctors, and he never lets me go with him. Goodbye, Pat. We'll see you very soon.”

*

Saul Rudnick's a dead end. I light up on the street, and start for Seventh Avenue. I turn the corner. Coming the other way is Max Ostalsky. He's carrying a bouquet of red roses.

At the corner, I hurry into the coffee shop and sit near the window and watch him as he turns into Charlton Street. Feeling like a spy, or a stalker, I get to the door so I can see Max turn into the Rudnick house. He seems confident, as if he belongs there. It's only a few weeks since we were at Minetta Tavern, him, me, Nancy. Please, Maxim, do come to Daddy's house.

Was that the moment when I knew? When I understood that Nancy had wanted Max, and that she got him? That he had been my friend only until he fell for her? Looking back later, I knew that something in my gut had shifted, something in me had turned bitter and I could taste it. The rest of the summer, through July and August, it began eating me from the inside out.

After I leave Charlton Street, all I want is a drink, but I go back to the station house where there's a note that Gladys—Miss
La Prensa
—called to say she's alive, and fine, and living on East 107th Street with her husband.

On my desk is another message. A woman name of Reyes in Union City; the sergeant scribbled it down, the name, the number. When I call, a woman answers, then, hearing I'm a cop, hangs up. I get hold of the address and drive to New Jersey, to her house, but the door is locked, the lights out. It's probably a mistake, a crank call. The only thing I find in Union City is a flyer pasted to the wall of a shop. A worm and the words Cuba Libre.

A few days later, someone claims the dead girl's body. It's all the information I get; nobody's talking. A man turns up and claims her and they let him have the body, and I can't find out why or who he is. It bugs me all through the summer, the way this Reyes woman leaves a number, then hangs up on me. That her door in Union City is locked, and her lights out.

CHAPTER FIVE

October 18, '62

T
HE KID WHO PUMPED
gas at the Esso station on my corner was always asking questions. There was a
time I had him figured for some kind of agent, FBI, maybe. He had greasy hair and he wore stained overalls, but some kind of feral intelligence was written on his face.

He was there when I filled up Thursday after I crawled out of my sick bed, put on my good gray suit and a blue silk tie, made coffee and got my car. It was cold out. “What's up,” said the kid while he pumped my gas. “Nothing much,” I said.

“You on a big case, man?”

“Right,” I said, and gave him a quarter tip, and drove out to Union City. This time I was going to force the situation. This time I had a second homicide, a second victim with a tattoo of a worm and the words Cuba Libre. I took my gun.

I snapped the radio on, and got Alan Freed, and I listened to Gene Pitney's “The Man Who shot Liberty Valance”, which was crap, and then some Roy Orbison. I never liked Orbison, but he was good. There was a difference. You could recognize talent, but if it didn't move you, it didn't matter. Roy Orbison never made me tap my feet, or want to move.

The town looked like somebody picked it up in Cuba and set it down in New Jersey. I had been to Cuba, in '47, me and my uncles, some cousins, a few pals, a bunch of guys looking for a good time. We went down for a long weekend, to gamble, look at girls, or something more because you heard there were plenty of gorgeous babes and we were planning to find out what all the buzz was. Even saw Nat King Cole. Havana was paradise, the girls were stunning, the cocktails had plenty of rum.

One afternoon, while the others were having a snooze, I drove out into the countryside for a couple of hours, looking for a beach where I could take a swim.

I saw the poverty. The fear. The soldiers. Pretty little girls begged for coins, or offered themselves to me, couldn't be more than fourteen. Castro took over, and it looked good for a little while; I understood, I had seen how bad it was. Until later when he threw in with the Russkis and started killing his own if they didn't play ball. After that, I hated the son of a bitch. Max Ostalsky had told me he envied me the trip. He loved Castro. He loved those revolutionaries, or maybe it was just the afterglow, the style, Che Guevara's beret.

In Union City, Alicia Reyes lived above a lace shop where in the window three mannequins draped in creamy veils looked like brides chatting together about their weddings. The time I had been here during the summer, I had knocked on every damn door in Union City and every other Cuban neighborhood. People had shut me out. Now, when I rang the bell, a small voice replied immediately. “Yes? Can I help you?” I identified myself.

“I'll be right down,” she said, and a minute later she appeared at the door. “I was expecting you.”

She looked about fifty. Gray hair tucked into a bun, she was a small woman, skin prematurely criss-crossed with fine lines; she had the tiny sharp features of a little bird.