If the Dead Rise Not (53 page)

I rode the elevator to the top of the building. In contrast with the railway-station atmosphere of the lobby, the executive floor was sepulchrally quiet. Very possibly it was even quieter than that, since most sepulchers don’t have carpets that run to ten dollars a square meter. The doors to the executive suites were all louvered, which may have been meant to help the free flow of air or cigar smoke. The whole floor smelled like a tobacco grower’s humidor.

Lansky’s suite was the only one with its own doorman. He was a tall man, wearing square sleeves and with a chest like a housekeeping cart. He turned to face me as I walked as silently as Hiawatha along the corridor, and I let him pat me down as if he were looking for his matches in my pockets. He didn’t find them. Then he opened the door, admitting me to a suite the size of an empty billiard hall. The atmosphere was every bit as hushed. But instead of another Jew with an overactive pituitary gland, I was met by a petite, green-eyed redhead in her forties who looked and sounded like a New York hairdresser. She smiled pleasantly, told me her name was Teddy, and that she was Meyer Lansky’s wife, and ushered me through a living room and a set of sliding windows onto a wraparound balcony.

Lansky was seated on a wicker chair, staring out into darkness over the sea, like Canute.

“You can’t see it,” he said. “The sea. But you can sure smell it. And you can hear it. Listen. Listen to that sound.” He held up his forefinger as if drawing my attention to the song of a nightingale on Berkeley Square.

I listened, carefully. In my unreliable ears it sounded very much like the sea.

“The way the sea draws back and off the beach and then begins again. Everything in this lousy world changes, but not that sound. For thousands of years that sound has always been exactly the same. That’s a sound I never get tired of.” He sighed. “And there are times when I get very tired of almost everything. Do you ever get like that, Gunther? Do you ever get tired?”

“Tired? Mr. Lansky, there are times when I get so tired of things that I think maybe I must be dead. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m sleeping all right, life might be almost intolerable.”

I gave him his cigarettes. He started to get out his wallet until I stopped him. “Keep it,” I told him. “I like the idea of you owing me money. It feels safer than the other way round.”

Lansky smiled. “Drink?”

“No, thanks. I like to keep a clear head when I’m talking business with Lucifer.”

“Is that what I am?”

I shrugged. “It takes one to know one.” I watched him light one of the cigarettes and added, “I mean, that is why I’m here, isn’t it? Business? I can’t imagine you want to reminisce about what a great guy Max was.”

Lansky gave me a narrow look.

“Before he died, Max told me all about you. Or at least as much as he knew. Gunther, I’ll come straight to the point. There were three reasons Max wanted you to work for him. You’re an ex-cop, you know hotels, and you’re not affiliated with any of the families who’ve got business here in Havana. I’ve got two of those reasons and one of my own that make me think you’re the man to find out who killed Max. Hear me out, please. The one thing we can’t have here in Havana is a gang war. It’s bad enough we’ve got the rebels. More trouble we don’t need. We can’t rely on the cops to investigate this thing properly. You must have gathered that yourself from your conversation with Captain Sánchez this morning. Actually, he’s not a bad cop at all. But I liked the way you spoke to him. And it strikes me that you’re not someone who’s easily intimidated. Not by cops. Not by me. Not by my associates.

“Anyway, I spoke to some of the other gentlemen you met last night, and we’re all of us of the opinion that we don’t want you managing the Saratoga, like you agreed with Max. Instead, we want you to investigate Max’s murder. Captain Sánchez will give you any assistance you require, but you can have carte blanche, so to speak. All we want is to avoid any possible dispute among ourselves. You do this, Gunther, you investigate this murder, and I’ll owe you more than the price of two packs of cigarettes. For one thing, I’ll pay you what Max was going to pay you. And for another, I’ll be your friend. You think about that before you say no. I can be a good friend to people who’ve done me a service. Anyway, my associates and myself, we’re all agreed. You can go anywhere. You can speak to anyone. The bosses. The soldiers. Wherever the evidence takes you. Sánchez won’t interfere. You say jump, he’ll ask how high.”

“It’s been a long time since I investigated a murder, Mr. Lansky.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“I’m not as diplomatic as I used to be, either. Dag Hammarskjöld, I am not. And just suppose I do find out who killed Max. What then? Have you considered that?”

“You let me worry about that, Gunther. Just make sure you speak to everyone. And that everyone can give you an alibi. Norman Rothman and Lefty Clark at the Sans Souci. Santo Trafficante at the Tropicana. My own people, the Cellini brothers at the Montmartre. Joe Stassi, Tom McGinty, Charlie White, Joe Rivers, Eddie Levinson, Moe Dalitz, Sam Tucker, Vincent Alo. Not forgetting the Cubans, of course: Amedeo Barletta and Amleto Battisti at the Hotel Sevilla. Relax. I’ll supply you with a list to work from. A list of suspects, if you like. With my name at the top.”

“That could take a while.”

“Naturally. You’ll want to be thorough. And just so as everyone knows it’s fair, you shouldn’t leave anyone out. Justice being seen to be done, so to speak.” He tossed the cigarette over the balcony. “You’ll do it, then?”

I nodded. I still hadn’t thought of any rebuffs that were polite enough to give the little man, especially after he’d offered to be my friend. Plus, there was a flip side to that.

“You can start right away.”

“That would probably be best.”

“What will you do first?”

I shrugged. “Go back to the Saratoga. Find out if anyone saw anything. Review the crime scene. Speak to Waxey, I guess.”

“You’ll have to find him first,” said Lansky. “Waxey’s gone missing. He drove the broad to her house this morning, and no one’s seen him since.” He shrugged. “Maybe he’ll turn up at the funeral.”

“When’s that?”

“Day after tomorrow. At the Jewish cemetery in Guanabacoa.”

“I know it.”

My route back home from the National took me right past the Casa Marina again. And this time I went in.

 

 

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS BRIGHT but windy, and half the winter sea was crashing down on the Malecón, like a deluge sent by a God saddened at the wickedness of mankind. I woke early, thinking that I would have liked to sleep longer and probably would have done so, except for the fact that the phone was ringing. Suddenly everyone in Havana seemed to want to speak to me.

It was Captain Sánchez.

“How’s the great detective this morning?”

He sounded like he didn’t much like the idea of my playing the sleuth for Lansky. I wasn’t too happy about it myself.

“Still in bed,” I said. “I had a late night.”

“Interviewing suspects?”

I thought of the girls at the Casa Marina and the way Doña Marina, who also ran a chain of lingerie stores across Havana, liked it when you asked her girls lots of questions before deciding which one to take up to the third floor. “You could say that.”

“Think you’re going to find the killer today?”

“Probably not today,” I said. “Wrong kind of weather for it.”

“You’re right,” said Sánchez. “It’s a day for finding bodies, not the people who killed them. Suddenly we’ve got corpses all over Havana. There’s one in the harbor at the petrochemical works in Regla.”

“Am I an undertaker? Why tell me?”

“Because he was driving a car when he went into the water. Not just any car, mind you. This is a big red Cadillac Eldorado. A convertible.”

I closed my eyes for a second. Then I said, “Waxey.”

“We wouldn’t have found him at all but for the fact that a fishing boat dragging its anchor snagged the car’s bumper and pulled it up to the surface. I’m just on my way over to Regla now. I was thinking that maybe you’d like to come along.”

“Why not? It’s been a while since I went fishing.”

“Be outside your apartment building in fifteen minutes. We’ll drive over there together. On the way maybe I can pick up a few tips from you on how to be a detective.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that.”

“I was joking,” he said stiffly.

“Then you’re off to a great start, Captain. You’ll need a sense of humor if you’re going to be a good detective. That’s my first tip.”

Twenty minutes later we were driving south, east, and then north around the harbor, into Regla. It was a small industrial town that was easily identified from a distance by the plumes of smoke emanating from the petrochemical plant, although historically it was better known as a center of Santería and as the place where Havana’s
corridas
had been fought until Spain lost control of the island.

Sánchez drove the large black police sedan like a fighting bull, charging red lights, braking at the last moment, or turning suddenly and without warning to the left or the right. By the time we skidded to a halt at the end of a long pier, I was ready to stick a sword in his muscular neck.

A small group of policemen and dockworkers had gathered to view the arrival of a barge and the drowned car it had taken from the fishing boat’s anchor and then hoisted on top of a large heap of coal. The car itself looked like a fantastic variety of sport fish, a red marlin—if there was such a thing—or a gigantic species of crustacean.

I followed Sánchez down a series of stone steps made slippery from the recent high tide, and as one of the men on the barge grabbed hold of a mooring ring, we jumped onto the moving deck.

The barge captain came forward and spoke to Sánchez, but I didn’t understand his very broad Cuban accent, which was not uncommon whenever I moved outside Havana. He was a bad-tempered sort with an expensive-looking cigar, which was the cleanest and most respectable thing about him. The rest of the crew stood around chewing gum and awaiting an order. Finally one came, and a crewman jumped down onto the coal mountain and drew a tarpaulin over it so that Sánchez and I might climb up to the car without becoming as dirty as he was. Sánchez and I clambered down onto the tarpaulin and picked our way up the shifting slope of coal to look over the car. The white hood—which was up—was dirty but largely intact. The front bumper where the fishing boat had hooked it was badly out of shape. The interior was more like an aquarium. But somehow the red Cadillac still managed to look like the handsomest car in Havana.

The crewman, still mindful of Sánchez’s well-pressed uniform, had gone ahead of us to open the driver door on the captain’s say-so. When the word came and the door opened, water flooded out of the car, soaking the crewman’s legs and amusing his chattering colleagues.

The driver of the car slowly leaned out like a man falling asleep in the bath. For a moment I thought the steering wheel would check his exit, but the barge wallowed in the choppy, undulating sea, then came up again, tipping the dead man onto the tarpaulin like a dirty dish-cloth. It was Waxey, all right, and while he looked like a drowned man, it wasn’t the sea that had killed him. Nor was it loud music, although his ears, or what was left of them, were encrusted with what resembled dark red coral.

“Pity,” said Sánchez.

“I didn’t really know him,” I said.

“The car, I mean,” said Sánchez. “The Cadillac Eldorado is just about my favorite car in the world.” He shook his head in admiration. “Beautiful. I like the red. Red’s nice. But me, I think I’d have had a black one, with whitewall tires and a white hood. Black has much more class, I think.”

“Red seems to be the color of the moment,” I said.

“You mean his ears?”

“I wasn’t talking about his manicure.”

“A bullet in each ear, it looks like. That’s a message, right?”

“Like it was Cable and Wireless, Captain.”

“He heard something he wasn’t supposed to hear.”

“Flip the coin again. He didn’t hear something he was supposed to hear.”

“You mean like someone shooting his employer seven times in the adjoining room?”

I nodded.

“Think he was involved in the shooting?” he asked.

“Go ahead and ask him.”

“I guess we’ll never know for sure.” Sánchez took off his peaked cap and scratched his head. “Too bad,” he said.

“The car again?”

“That I couldn’t have interviewed him first.”

 

 

J
EWS HAD BEEN ARRIVING IN CUBA since the time of Columbus. Many who had been forbidden entry to the United States of America more recently than that had been given sanctuary by the Cubans, who, with reference to the Jews’ most common country of origin, called them
polacos
. Judging from the number of graves in the Jewish cemetery in Guanabacoa, there were a lot more
polacos
in Cuba than might have been thought. The cemetery was on the road to Santa Fé, behind an impressive gated entrance. It wasn’t exactly the Mount of Olives, but the graves, all white marble, were set on a pleasant hill overlooking a mango plantation. There was even a small monument to the Jewish victims of the Second World War in which, it was said, several bars of soap had been buried as a symbolic reminder of their supposed fate.

I might have told anyone who was interested that while it was now widely believed that Nazi scientists had made soap from the corpses of murdered Jews, this had never actually happened. The practice of calling Jews “soap” had simply been a very unpleasant joke among members of the SS, and merely another way of dehumanizing—and sometimes threatening—their most numerous victims. Since human hair from concentration camp inmates had commonly been used on an industrial scale, describing Jews as “felt”—felt for clothes, roofing materials, carpeting, and in the German car industry—might have been a more accurate epithet.