Naked in Havana (18 page)

He handed her a sugar bowl from his breast pocket.

“Where’s the cream?”

He unbuttoned his fly and held his penis over her coffee cup. The woman duly obliged him. The audience roared.

I stared, open-mouthed. I saw now how Superman had earned his nickname: his penis was huge, impossibly so. He was more sideshow freak than sensuality. I turned away.

“Amazing, isn’t he?” Angel said, grinning.

I saw him for the first time. My beautiful boy was not beautiful at all. I had seen this same expression before, on the faces of men in the casinos, those who couldn’t leave the tables until everything was gone, the ones who did not know when to stop, who just couldn’t stop.

I could not believe I had not seen it before.

Superman had the woman bent over the table now, and he was about to penetrate her. No, I couldn’t bear to watch this. Perhaps this poor woman did this every night, perhaps she knew that thing would somehow fit inside her, but she certainly wasn’t enjoying the experience. Her hands were balled into fists around the edge of the table as she braced herself. Men in the audience were cheering and shouting encouragement.

I shook Angel’s arm. “Get me out of here.”

“But the show’s just starting.”

“Please.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

He grabbed my wrist and threw the curtain aside. He pulled me away down the corridor toward the stairs, away from the cheers and catcalls from inside the theatre encouraging Superman’s performance. I had never been so terrified, not even in the barrio with Reyes. I just wanted to get out of there.

“You’re hurting me,” I said when we got outside and pulled myself free.

Some cab drivers saw us tussle and started cat-calling.

“I thought you’d like it,” Angel shouted at me. “You said you wanted to see the night life!”

“Not
that
.”

“I wouldn’t have brought you if I’d known you’d embarrass me.” He walked ahead of me to the car, his hands in his pockets, a sulky little boy. He jumped into the Pontiac and started the engine. I thought he might even drive off and leave me. I jumped in beside him, struggling with the heavy passenger door.

I realized what a fool I was. For the first time I realized I didn’t love Angel and probably never had. He was just a spoiled little rich boy out for a good time and he didn’t give a damn about me. I had broken my papi’s trust in me for one night of rebellion and what had I gotten out of it?

I just wanted to get home and hide in my room and lock the door. I wondered what Reyes would say when he found out about it, as he was bound to do. He seemed to know everything that went on in Havana.

“Oh, princess,” I imagined him saying, “when are you ever going to
learn?
”

Chapter 25

The worst of the storm had passed, leaving the city drenched and steaming. Warehouses and apartments blocked out the sky as Angel drove the Pontiac through the narrow, flooded streets. We turned onto Calle Cuchillo, Knife Street. He was driving too fast and his face looked ugly in the dashboard light. I asked him to slow down but he ignored me. He still hadn’t spoken to me since we got into the car.

Something made me look over my shoulder. I saw a black, unmarked sedan behind us, its headlights off.

“There’s a car following us,” I said.

Angel glanced in the mirror. “No, he’s not,” he said, but he made a hard right onto San Nicolas anyway. He rechecked his mirror. The sedan was still there.

Suddenly it roared up alongside us, hemming us into the kerb. Angel swore and slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision. Another car came up behind us, so close that Angel couldn’t back up.

Three men got out of the first car and strode towards us.

“Drive, Angel!” I shouted at him. “Go up on the footpath. Drive!”

But he just sat there, frozen. Blocked in like that in such a narrow street there was probably not much he could have done anyway.

“It’s the fucking police,” he said, threw open the door and ran.

I sat there, stunned. I was still sure he’d come back for me, but he didn’t. I heard him run off down a cobbled lane that led off the
calle
. The men ignored him. I realised it was me they wanted.

They were wearing dark suits and narrow ties, their hair already plastered over their skulls by the rain. They surrounded the car and then one of them opened my door. I tried to get around the other side and jump out, but by then the men from the other car were right there waiting for me. An iron hand clutched my arm and dragged me across the street. I tried to twist away, fell and scraped my shin.

I just could not believe this was happening.

They forced my hands behind my back and put handcuffs on me. Then two more men picked me up and carried me to one of the cars. I screamed “Don’t touch me!” at one of them, for all the good it did me.

I looked up into their faces, one of them was a boy, not much older than me, with a wispy moustache on his upper lip. He looked terrified, too. Perhaps it was his first job. He relaxed his grip a little and I pulled free; the older man swore at him and grabbed me with his other hand in a death grip that cut off all the circulation to my arm.

The car’s door was open and the motor running. The driver was already behind the wheel. “Get in and get on the floor,” he said. “Move!”

He pushed me into the back, grabbed my neck and forced my head down, then he threw a jacket over me. I heard the other men get in, one climbed in next to the driver, in front of the seat where I was lying, the other sat right on top of me, his feet on my shoulders and on my head, keeping me down there. He had on those heavy shoes the security police all wore for kicking people. I screamed, but that just made him press down harder.

I heard the thud of the doors and then we sped away. I lay there, unable to move. The worst thing was the stink of that jacket, it reeked of sweat, and my head was pressed against the worn carpet and I could barely breathe. I heard the crackle of a two way radio and the driver saying:
we have her
. That was it.

Every time the car hit a pothole it sent a shock wave through my body. There was nothing I could do but lie there and pray that it would be over soon.

Meanwhile I tried to work out what was happening. If this was Batista’s police, what did they want with me? I thought: my papi will come and get me out of this. But Papi was in Miami, and he didn’t know I was out in the barrio, past midnight. This time I had really messed up.

I couldn’t believe that Angel had abandoned me. I was sure he would call his father, or call Salvatore, he’d get me out of this somehow.

I was hurting, lying there curled up like that, and I wriggled around to try and get into a more comfortable position but then one of them grabbed me by the hair. “Don’t move,” he said. “We’re not going to hurt you so just settle down.” It sounded reassuring but I knew it was a lie. They just wanted to make it easier for themselves.

We were caught in traffic. I could hear ambulance sirens; perhaps there had been another bombing. I tried to scream, thinking that help was so close by. If I’d been thinking straight I would have realised there was no help; I was already a prisoner of the police.

The driver sounded irritated. “Shut her the fuck up,” he said, and I felt a numbing blow to the back of my head. I stopped screaming.

I wondered where they were taking me.

We drove on for another few minutes and then I heard one of them say: “This is it.”

They pulled me out of the car and forced me to my feet. The jacket slipped off my head and I recognized the police headquarters on the Rampa. I was so close to home! There was a knot of women in shawls crouched by the door, waiting for their men. The streets were slick with rain.

“Get her inside,” someone said, and they threw the jacket back over my head and pushed me through a door. All I could see was a stone floor under my feet. I was limping, I’d lost one of my shoes in the scuffle.

I heard the banging of metal doors, someone was shouting somewhere close by. When they took off the jacket I found myself in a cell with bare walls and a mattress on the floor. A dim light bulb hung on a flex from the ceiling.

One of the policemen tore the diamond necklace from my throat. “It’s to stop you harming yourself,” he said. “We’ll give it to you back later.” He went out, slamming the door behind him.

They left me there. I squatted down on the mattress but I couldn’t get comfortable because of the handcuffs. Already I couldn’t feel my fingers.

When my papi found out about this, someone would pay!

Or would they? It was only men like Lansky and Salvatore who had friends in the government. Amancio Fuentes was just some old fashioned blueblood who wouldn’t play the game. Perhaps that was why this was happening. First the bombing, then this.

Was this Lansky's way of teaching us a lesson? It seemed very brave standing up to a gangster until you were sitting in a prison cell without a friend in the world. Then you realised what power meant and what it was like not to have any.

Chapter 26

I lay with my head against the wall. A roach scuttled across the floor. I heard someone screaming further down the corridor, it sounded as if they were being beaten. Then someone turned a radio up very loud to cover the screams: Johnny Mathis, “When I Fall in Love.”

I closed my eyes and tried to block it all out but I kept replaying it over and over in my mind, seeing Angel jump out from behind the wheel and run off down the street. He didn’t look back once, my Romeo. The only man I could ever love! Well, so much for that. He had left me there like a dog and run.

I don’t know how long I lay there. They had taken my wristwatch and there were no windows. I must have dozed for a moment.

I woke to the rattle of keys. Two men kicked the door open and dragged me to my feet, hauled me down the corridor to another cell. They pushed open a metal door and pulled me inside.

The room was empty except for a wooden desk and a metal chair. They forced me down onto the chair. I sat there, waiting. My whole body was shaking, I couldn’t control it. I wondered if they meant to torture me.

Someone else came into the room, stood behind me. I could smell his cigarette. I tried to twist around to look at his face but one of the men slapped me hard across the cheek. “Sit still,” he said.

I heard him grind out his cigarette on the cement floor with his heel.

He walked around and stood in front of me. He looked like Clark Gable, he was wearing a white cowboy hat and soft leather boots, he even had a silver belt buckle in the style of a Texas cattleman. He perched on the edge of the metal desk and smiled.

“
Hola, chica,
” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head, saddened by this sorry state of affairs. “You don’t know? What a pity. My name is Colonel Masferer. What’s your name?”