Naked in Havana (15 page)

He turned those ice blue eyes right on me and smiled. I caught my breath. He wasn’t beautiful like Angel, but there was an animal force about him that utterly disarmed me. I had to look away, give myself time to think.

Don’t fall for it, Magdalena, this is just another play. You’ll end up like Inocencia, caught in his web and not able to get out.

He reached across the table and took my hand. He had nice hands, with long tapered fingers, like a priest or a pianist. It surprised me.

He lifted my chin and leaned forward. He would have kissed me right there, in the middle of the Plaza hotel with all of Cuba watching, but just then the waiter arrived with the coffee and the moment was gone.

“You never told me what you were doing in the church,” I said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You’d come to pray for Inocencia as well.”

“I’m not a God fearing man, princess, but it doesn’t hurt to hedge your bets.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes, I love her, but I’m not in love with her. She knows that.”

“She told me.”

“She told you?”

I thought about that night in the club.
That man! He loves me halfway, and I swear, that’s the worst of it.

I wondered what would have happened if the waiter hadn’t appeared a few moments before, what it would have been like to have kissed him.

It seemed as if he was thinking the same thing. “You know something?” he whispered to me. “You’re going to love me one day. The very first time I saw you I knew it. And so did you. It’s fate.”

“I don’t believe in fate.”

“Fate doesn’t care if you believe in it or not.” He finished his coffee and looked at his watch. “I should get you back. You told Luis you would be fifteen minutes, we’ve been gone almost an hour. He’ll think I’ve raped and murdered you.”

“Why would he think that?”

“Everybody thinks that about me.”

As he walked me back to the cathedral square his mood changed again. He became morose. He was thinking about Inocencia again. I suppose we both were.

We reached the cathedral. Luis was standing under the colonnade, tapping his newspaper against his thigh, looking up and down the street. He looked relieved when he saw me.

Reyes took her hand. “You have to get out of Cuba,” he said. “This place is going to hell. I mean it.”

“Papi will never leave. They’ll have to carry him out.”

“That’s an option.”

“What does it matter to you what happens to us?

“You know the answer to that.”

“And what happens to you when the rebels walk into Havana?”

“Me? I’ll be on the last plane out. I’ll have turned a profit by then, and it will all be in cash in a suitcase. Your father should do the same thing. Tell him to sell the Left Bank before it’s too late.”

“It’s just been bombed. How can we sell it now?”

“He’ll still get takers, there’s a lot of investors out there who think this will all blow over. Lansky is one.”

“Papi’s made his mind up.”

“When Havana burns it’s not going to be pretty, princess. The clock is ticking. You don’t have a lot of time. You’re the only one who can change his mind.”

“If he thinks we should stay, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“Your funeral.” He shook his head. “You know, it might not have been the
rebelde
who planted the bomb,” he said.

“Then who?”

He shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

Luis opened the door of the Bel Air and I jumped in. He looked as if he disapproved of Reyes almost as much as my father did. As we drove out of the square I looked back for a sign of him, but he was lost among the bootblacks and the tourists and touts.

Chapter 22

It wasn’t the heat that got me down as much as the humidity. It was as if there wasn’t enough oxygen to breathe, and it brought on a torpor that made it hard to do anything after midday. It was unrelenting. I never felt dry, even when the ceiling fans were working flat out.

I wiped the condensation off my glass, touched it to my neck and forehead. I was about to meet with one of America’s most famous gangsters and I felt tense, though not as much as you might expect.

Once, when I was nine years old, I fell from my horse and broke my ankle. When my mother found me, my foot twisted round, she fainted. Even my father had panicked. I had to tell him what to do, and I didn’t cry, not once.

Afterwards my father said I should have been a boy.

“I’m tougher than any boy,” was apparently how I’d responded to that.

I didn’t need a diploma from the drama school to tell me I was a good actress. It wasn’t that I pretended to be two different people; I
was
two different people. I didn’t love my papi any less for sometimes being the daughter he would be ashamed of, but at least I could make him proud this afternoon.

So there we were, the two Magdalenas. When I needed one, the other stood back.

While I waited for Lansky I practised my arpeggios on my knee.
“More feeling into it,”
Inocencia had said.

Is this enough feeling, Señora Inocencia? Is this enough al forte?

The Left Bank was still a mess. The staff were on their hands and knees scrubbing at the blood on the floor, trying to get the stains out of the wooden dance floor. Glass had been swept into piles by the bar and no one had come to take it away. The chairs and tables had been stacked against the walls, but there were still blast marks on the walls and the ceiling. God only knew when Papi would be able to reopen.

There were just two chairs set up, and this table, right in front of the stage.

Waiting for Mister Lansky.

He arrived on time and he had his bodyguard with him, as usual. He waited by the bar.

Lansky was immaculate as always. They said he had the biggest collection of bow ties anywhere in Central America, if not the whole continent. He took off his Panama and looked around, taking in the damage. He raised his eyebrows, gave me an apologetic smile. “Bastards,” he said and sat down.

I didn’t get up or offer him my hand. My mouth was suddenly dry and I wanted to take a sip of my lime and soda, but I was afraid that my hands might shake and betray me. I said nothing straight away, not even trusting my own voice.

“How’s your father?” he said.

“He has a concussion. The doctors say he’ll be fine in a day or two.”

“That’s good, he was very lucky. It could have been much worse.”

Was that a threat? I thought about what Reyes had said; “
it might not have been the rebelde who planted the bomb.”

“When are you going to reopen?”

“I don’t know. As you can see, there’s a lot of work to be done. He asked me to look after things here for a day or two.”

“Only two people killed. It was a miracle.”

“One of our
boleros
lost both her legs.”

“I’m sorry. I heard her sing once. She was very good.” He tapped his Panama on his knee. We watched each other. “It’s going to be expensive, the clean-up. How long you gonna be closed? Week? two? Maybe more. And people don’t come back, not straight away. They wait a while, make sure there’s no more trouble.”

So, here it comes, I thought, the shakedown.

“I could fix this up for you, be good as new in a week. And I could guarantee a crowd the first night, twice as big as you’ve ever had.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Did your father tell you I offered him a concession? Look at all that space out the back there, going to waste. A few craps tables, some roulette, all very discreet, separate from this nice little dance room you got here. It makes a lot of sense. Of course if I’m going to fix up the club, there’d be no skim the first year, but after that, we could come to some arrangement.”

“Why are you so interested in my father’s club, Mister Lansky? We’re in the middle of a revolution.”

“A few hundred hot heads in the mountains.”

“From what I hear, Batista is losing the war.”

He looked surprised that I should know that. “If you don’t mind me being frank with you, young lady, I don’t give a damn about Batista or about the rebels. I have businesses to run, and I am not about to get run out of town because of some intellectual goof-off with an unruly beard.”

“You think Fidel is an intellectual?”

“I seen his type before. End of the day they know the rules. Without American tourists and without American trade, this country is going to be broke in a week. So whoever is running this country, they’ll have to talk to us. Even if he does win, what’s the worst that’s going to happen? They’ll shoot a few people in the street, make a few speeches, and then it will be business as usual. Now, do you want my money or not?”

I thought about what Reyes had said to me, about getting out of Cuba before it was too late. I think if it was up to me that day, I would have taken Lansky's money. I would have sold him the whole place, right down to the dancing girls. But it wasn’t up to me and I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mister Lansky. The answer is no.”

Lansky stared at me as if he needed a translator. But it was the same word in Spanish as it was in English.

“My father doesn’t want it, Mister Lansky.”

“That a fact?”

I knew what he was thinking: here was some bobby soxer trying to frustrate his business plans. What does she know?

“Well, tell him I’ll talk to him when he feels better.”

“The answer will be the same.”

“This is a genuine business proposition. I’m not some third rate gangster, missy.”

“I never said that you were.”

He leaned in. “Because you know, there’s a lot of very dubious gentlemen in Havana. But I am offering you very favourable terms here and I do not like being treated as if I am just some Bible salesman in off the street.”

He leaned back in his chair and let me think about that.

I let the mood settle. “My father wants to keep this as a music club.”

He nodded and stood up. He leaned over the table, hoping to intimidate me perhaps. “Tell him I had nothing to do with this. It’s not my style. It’s crude.”

“You think it was the rebels?”

“I know it was them. Your place is an easy target. Me, I got security on the doors, all my places. Your father’s a nice guy, but he’s too lax.” He straightened and put his hat back on his head. “It was nice meeting you.”

He left.

I sat there for a long time until I was sure I would be able to stand up without my knees giving way. But for once I had done something I knew Papi would be proud of. I had just faced down Meyer Lansky. Not bad for a princess.

I thought again about what Reyes had said to me.

You have to get out of Cuba. Tell him to sell the Left Bank before it’s too late.

I hoped my papi had made the right decision. Sometimes letting some gangster take what he wants is not the worst thing you can do.

Chapter 23