“No, no,” he said. “Coño, no!”
Johnny woke from his reverie and headed back north. When he reached the approximate spot of the first turning, he remembered his mother whom he had abandoned. This time he slowed the boat down and made a broader arc, and when the city came into view, Obdulio said, “I want to go to La Yuma.” His childish voice cracked with plaintiveness. Johnny kept turning until the boat completed a full circle. This time he thought of the girl on the balcony with the pearly skin and beautiful black hair. How could he abandon those delights? Now Obdulio was screaming and it sounded to Johnny like a high-speed circular saw cutting through a dry log. He turned again.
The Ana María circled seven times. Every time Johnny thought of someone or something he was leaving, he pointed her back in the direction of Havana, then hearing Obdulio’s scream over the sound of the motor, he would turn the boat northward. As he was about to circle yet one more time, the sun appeared over the eastern horizon, red and massive, spreading its rays until the sea, the city, and the sky grew indistinct and became suspended in a blaze so pure and ubiquitous it was directionless. Johnny screamed louder than Obdulio, louder than the Russian motor, and passed the turning point, weeping for what he had left behind and hurtling faster than his longing toward the new.
Shanghai
by Alex Abella
Siboney
1959
The Chinaman lurched violently to the left, the impact of the slug blasting open his blue silk robe, drenched by the gush of blood out his side. Dropping his knife, he felt his ribs, his features distorted into a mask of incomprehension, as though it was inconceivable that he, of all people, should be on the receiving end of my smoking .45.
He stumbled backwards, bumping against the rickety wall, arms flailing, knocking down the porcelain vase with the tulips, the long clay opium pipe, the little smiling Buddha. The framed scroll with the hand-painted tigers fell on his lap as he eased down to the floor, his eyes wide in the knowledge of swift death.
It was only then that I heard the girl screaming. Dressed in the pasties and g-string of her chosen profession, Miss Raquel La Pasión’s full mocha breasts were aquiver with the emotion closest to lust, terror. She pointed at the dying Chink and let out a loud string of Spanish curses as she cowered behind the shirtless tow-haired boy. Tall and lanky, with the soft features of the country club set, the boy held a.38 in his trembling hands. He fired, the bullet smashing into a fruit bowl. I jumped over the settee, grabbed the gun out of his limp hands, and then I slapped the girl, hard.
“Cállate!”
She whimpered, hid behind the boy.
“David Souther?” I asked, as I slipped his gun into my jacket pocket. The show tunes from the theater above had stopped, the clatter of footsteps on the stage booming in the stillness.
He turned to me slowly, his eyes still hazy from the drug. “Who the fuck are you?” he drawled.
“Jason Blue. I’m a private detective. Your dad sent me to get you out of Havana. Let’s go!”
“Hey, fuck you, man. My old man can’t tell me—”
Drug fiends are like dogs, either you pull rank right away or they run away with you. I took my .45 and whipped him one across his baby face, then jammed the gun in his skinny ribs.
“You do what I say or I’ll break every fucking bone in your body. Put your shirt on now!”
The boy blinked twice, wiped away the trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand, and slipped on a soiled striped shirt.
“And Raquel?” he said, jerking his chin at the girl. “I’m not leaving without her.”
I hesitated for a moment, debating how much fight the kid still had in him, then grabbed the lacy dress from the Chinese canopy bed and threw it at the heaving hussy.
“C’mon.”
The opium den was at the far end of a warren of rooms under the Shanghai Theater in Havana’s Chinatown. I held my gun out in front, finger on the trigger, and quickly glanced down the corridor, barely lit by a yellow light dangling from the cobwebbed ceiling. No one around.
Coming down I had looked into all the other cubicles. All were empty except for the very last one, where I had found David Covenant Souther IV, of Woodside, Princeton, and Pacific Heights, heir to the Souther Chemical and Mellenkamp Frozen Food fortunes, wrapped up with a colored bimbo and a pipe of dope, staring at an enraged Chink intent on loping off the boy’s privileged, aquiline, and so very American proboscis.
“What are we waiting for?” asked the boy now. He stood right behind me, his breath a sour mix of rotting teeth and sweet opium perfume.
“The main chance, sonny.”
I counted four doors on either side of the hallway. At the far end, thirty feet away, an old wooden circular staircase led up to backstage. From there it was another long forty feet to the double exit doors — forty feet past dressing rooms with showgirls, bathrooms with drunken patrons, and offices with goons and gunmen, before finally getting out of the building and down the alley to my rental DeSoto. A friendly Cuban dishwasher had snuck me in through the side, but I couldn’t count on his generosity anymore — he was probably still knocked out in the closet where I’d sapped him. The hundred-dollar bill in his pocket would buy a lot of ice for his headache.
“When I say go, you run right behind me, you understand? Don’t stop no matter what.”
I translated for the bimbo, who nodded vigorously. At least she had the good sense to recognize that the big Chink’s death could not be good for her business. Besides, she had her ticket out of the Shanghai life right in front of her, the wobbly befuddled kid who for once was using his brain — and arriving at all the wrong conclusions.
“Hey, man, dig, this is too much.”
“What?”
“Hey, you just, you just shot that cat, man. Maybe we should call the police. Yeah, let’s call the American consul, man, he’ll get us out of this. This is Cuba, man. The dollar is almighty here. I’m an American, I want my consul, man. I mean, I didn’t shoot him, that’s your problem.” The kid sank down to the floor, crossing his arms and legs. “I’m not moving, man, I’m sitting down for my rights.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Yeah, man, I demand to see—”
“Aw, shit.”
This time I broke his nose. I gave him my handkerchief, told him to hold his head up and press down to stop the bleeding.
“If I have to bring you back in a full body cast, that’s what I’m going to do, David. Get off the fucking floor.”
The kid stretched out his long legs and got up, holding onto the girl for support.
“You’ll pay for this, Blue.”
“Get in line. Now, at the count of three. One, two...”
We rushed down the corridor and up the staircase, the girl pushing the boy up behind me, calling him estúpido, cobarde, and a thousand other endearments.
At the landing, I thought I was home free — I could see the exit doors open to the alley — and then I saw shards of brick fly in front of me and heard the loud report of the gun in the hallway.
“Down! Down!” I shouted at the boy and girl as I rolled away, taking cover behind a Chinese sarcophagus prop. I fired back at another Chinaman in a white suit. The shooter hid behind a piano when I returned fire, then stood up with a shotgun, blasting away at the quickly splintering casket in front of me. Where is everybody? I kept thinking, even as I told myself this was not what I had in mind when I took on the job.