Chicago Noir [Anthology]

When a shaken La Mora finished, her eyes downcast, chest heaving, there was a silent pause, then Dago heard the applause like a rolling wave gathering force as it neared the shore, finally crashing in shouts of “bravo!” and “viva la mulata!” and general whistling. As she exited the floor, La Mora turned for an instant. Beto Chavez was clapping, but slowly, looking after her with a distant melancholia.

“Did you love Beto Chavez?” Zoe Pino asked, her leonine hair straying into her line of vision as she positioned her pen on a blank page of her reporter’s notebook. She shook her hair back with a shrug. They were two hours into dinner, well into a second bottle of wine, and had long put all of Zoe’s questions about Cuba-this and Cuba-that to rest.

“Did I

did I love Beto Chavez?” Destiny repeated, aghast. “What gives you the idea I

I mean, what are you getting at?”

“C’mon, Destiny

I know.”

“You know what?”

“About you and Beto.”

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Destiny began to gather her lighter and the pack of Romeo y Julietas she’d dropped on the table.

“Look, I'’ll close my notebook.” Zoe flipped it shut. “Off the record, I swear. I'’ll never use it. I certainly have no need to for these Mariel profiles. But please, I’'ve heard so many rumors about you and Beto

”

“And you listen to rumors?”

“I’m a reporter, yeah

”

“they'’re just rumors, that’s all.”

There was silence. Zoe reached across the table to Destiny’s hand. “It’s a great love story. One of the greatest, if it’s true.”

Destiny shook her head and turned away. There was no need for Zoe Pino to see her tears.

It was Beto Chavez who’d created the opportunity for her at La Caverna, immediately realizing the young queen talking to his mother had to be the same one he’d heard about earlier from Mariano. It was also Beto Chavez who named her Destiny. “It was fate,” he said to her after her first show. “Destiny, pure destiny.”

After the performance, Mariano and Dago stared, dumbfounded by the other’s appearance in this most unlikely of places. Mariano would learn Dago’s trajectory to La Caverna that very night but it would take Dago a bit longer, more than a year, to understand that Mariano was actually a defrocked priest, a pre–Vatican II follower, who offered Latin masses in a former Lutheran church, now converted and supported by Beto Chavez and an entire community of narco-traffickers.

It had been Beto’s boat, the San Dimas, that the priest had taken to Mariel to snatch up his brother-in-law, a boat normally used to ferry between Florida and the bleached islets of corrupt coral that served as hideouts for smugglers. Beto Chavez was a Dimas devotee, and he showed Dago the cross on the chain that hung around his neck.

“Not Christ, no. Look: no crown of thorns, no nails, just rope,” he explained, as Dago examined the little crucified man and breathed in Beto’s cologne. “Dimas, Dimas the good thief.”

Beto Chavez was beautifuclass="underline" his eyes wet with sadness but his smile a beacon. Dago fingered the knot in the shoelace he’d tied before, the tight little vise he’d placed on the sain't’s venerable testicles, now securely tucked into his handbag.

“Destiny

” Beto said, this time in a whisper, his lips grazing Dago’s ear.

It was not lightning between Destiny and Beto Chavez. That Beto flirted surprised no one. That he was chivalrous was the norm. At least that’s what Quique Lopez kept telling Destiny so she wouldn'’t have any illusions.

But what few people realized at first—including his mother Virginia—was that, within weeks of her debut, Beto Chavez had set up Destiny with her own apartment above a barbershop in Pilsen, far enough from La Caverna that he could pretend no one knew of his visits, but only ten minutes southeast of his family’s home on Kedvale, around the corner from the club in La Villita that served to launder so much of his profits.

It is unlikely that anyone would have believed that Beto Chavez was not fucking Destiny by then. It was clear he was utterly bewitched by her, by the way she walked, by the smell and feel of her hair, by the silky arousal her hands on him provoked. But when Beto had explained that he had no intention of touching or being touched by Destiny’s manhood, he got quite the surprise.

“I’m no fag,” he said, grinning.

“All of me or none of me,” Destiny said in refusal, flatly turning down the handsome, powerful drug lord, the one whom the sorority back at La Caverna yearned for precisely because he’d never, ever been known to betray the slightest interest in a queen.

Beto tried once, and only once, to force himself on Destiny. But he was stunned to discover how strong and limber she was, how easily the much taller and felid Destiny flipped him over, tying his hands with his Sinaloa belt, her knee jabbing Sain't Dimas into his neck. She swore that if he tried it again, she wouldn'’t hesitate to kill him, no matter what happened to her afterwards.

“I have nothing,” she whispered fiercely, “so I have nothing to lose.”

“How’d you get so

so strong?” Beto asked, coughing, not afraid but even more in awe.

“Cutting cane, forced ‘volunteer’ work in my country,” Destiny said, massaging Beto’s neck and shoulders as he leaned back on her, both of them still on the floor. “You’d be amazed by what I can do with a machete. Or a knife.”

Six months later, six months of Beto pleading and threatening to cut her off or have her fired, six months of Destiny shouting back that she’d tell the whole neighborhood how she’d thrown him on the floor, six months of Beto getting used to recognizing the pulse of Destiny’s desire against his leg or belly, of kissing and feeling her everywhere but there, Beto Chavez showed up one rainy April dawn at the apartment and let himself in with his key. He lifted the blanket from Destiny’s sleeping body, lowered himself to his knees and put his hungry mouth to her triumph.

Zoe Pino stroked Destiny’s hand gently. “I know some things,” she said. “I know you were, in some ways, almost married for a few years

”

Destiny winced. “I wouldn'’t ever say that. He was married, you know, really married, to a woman.”

Destiny had seen her only once and had been surprised. Beto’s wife was not a roly-poly demure woman, older than her years by virtue of the stress that Beto engendered with his lifestyle. Staring at her across Mariano’s church, Destiny found she was nothing like she’d expected: at least as tall as Beto, a pale skinned Mexican woman with reddish hair, strong and dignified. If Virginia hadn'’t been right by her side, Destiny might have doubted it was her.

“A sort of second wife then

” Zoe said.

“You mean a mistress,” Destiny clarified.

“Was that it then? You were his mistress? You know, they say mistresses are often the big love of men’s lives

”

“Don’t patronize me, Zoe, please.”

Had she been Beto Chavez’s true love?

That apartment above the barbershop on 18th Street had been a cozy little nest for many years. After work, when Destiny got home as the skies cleared for morning, Beto would come over for breakfast and the sweet exhaustion of their play. They’d spoon together for what seemed hours but which Destiny knew must have been only a little while, until she was asleep. Then he’d tiptoe out, back to his world of mystery and violence.