“We just thought we’d come see the girls. Verdad, muchachos, venimos por las jebas?”
Lots of embarrassed grinning and jostling here. Then Cesar was all business again. Damn mercurial Cubans.
“We’re also here to close down the place. This is un antro de vicio y prostitución, a, a...” Suddenly his perfect English went south on him.
“A den of vice and iniquity is the usual phrase back home.”
“Sorry, it’s been five years since I left Bronx Science.”
“Hey, man, you speak English!” shouted David at Cesar, “I demand to see the American consul. I’m an American citizen!”
Cesar looked at him with awe, then back at me. “Jesus, where did you get this monkey?”
I shrugged.
“I said I am an American citizen and I—”
In a lightning swift motion, Cesar lifted his tommy gun and fired over David’s head, missing him by scant inches.
“The next time is right between the eyes, comemierda!”
David grew deadly still, his eyes bulged, and this time he nodded quietly. I had to grin.
“Just get them out of here,” said Cesar. “Guys like him never learn, they think being American makes them better than anybody else.”
“I understand. May I?” I gestured at my gun on the floor. “I have a feeling I might need it.”
He nodded. “You might. Everything’s closed down. You got a car?”
I bent down, picked up my .45. “Around the corner.”
“Make sure you got gas. Things are going to be pretty hairy the next few days, until Fidel comes down from the hills. Now beat it.”
“I didn’t catch your name.” I offered my hand.
He shook it, warmly. “Rolando Cubela. And you?”
“Jason Blue.”
“Well, Mister Private Detective Jason Blue, if I’m ever in California, I will give you a call. But you and your friends better fly the coop now.”
The crowds were all going at it as we drove through Chinatown up to the house in Siboney. An angry mob had surrounded the police station on Zanja, down the street from the theater. I caught sight of one lone officer still in his blue uniform thrown down the steps, kicked, and beaten with shoes, sticks, and brooms. All the stoplights had been shot out of commission, traffic piling up as pedestrians and cars swarmed the streets. Fireworks — Roman candles, rockets, firecrackers — exploded in Chinatown, celebrating a new year like no other. Bands of teenagers in convertibles leaned on car horns, waving giant flags with the black and red of Castro’s party, and the lone star Cuban flag, singing the national anthem and some other military song about libertad. Every so often I would also catch the strains of the “Internationale,” accompanied by riffs of machine-gun fire. On every street, men and women were attacking parking meters with the ferocity they wished they could have shown to Batista’s henchmen. Swinging sledgehammers, they struck until they beheaded the meters, coins spilling like so much blood on the ground, which people would scoop up in a little triumphant dance. I suppose a little craziness is to be expected when a dictator meets his end.
In the backseat, David had passed out on top of Raquel. She hugged him to her abundant chest like a mother while she worriedly looked out the window, taking in the chaos all around.
“Mister,” she said in Spanish, “are you sure you’ll be able to get us out of here with no trouble?”
“I don’t know about the trouble, but we have a boat waiting for us. In a few hours, at the muelle.”
“No aeropuerto?”
“Sure to be closed,” I said, still in Spanish. I know it sounds funny, but at that moment I wished that I spoke better Spanish. Now that I had gotten a good look at her in the rearview mirror, I realized what a magnificent specimen of femalehood she was. I wanted to comfort her in all the ways a man can for a woman, but all I could do was say it would be okay and drive on.
We parked at the corner of 180th Street between 15th and 17th in Siboney without incident. The hubbub was now worlds away, back around the capitol building, shining ghastly white with the floodlights turned on, as people streamed in and out, taking files, artwork, boxes of papers. I had never been in a revolution before, but in Korea I had seen how, when authority suddenly vanishes, it’s every man for himself. I figured with the usual snafus there wouldn’t be a single port or customs officer on duty to stop us.
Raquel helped me carry David inside. We laid him on the bed of the coach house I’d rented from a Canadian I’d met at the Bodeguita del Medio the night I got into town. The coach house — clearly the servant’s quarters — was behind a two-bedroom white house of fairly recent construction, modest by neighborhood standards. She lay down with him and I went to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. It was going to be a long night. I had told the captain of the boat to meet me at the dock at 7 in the morning with a full tank and food for the trip to Key West. It was now close to 3 and the efforts of a whole week of searching for David were finally beginning to take their toll.
I had eaten all my meals out since coming into town, so I had no idea what the Canadian’s kitchen contained. I strolled across the grass to the empty house. There was a fence around the property and bushes taller than me. I walked in through the terrace to the kitchen and opened up a few cupboards, uncovering crackers, a jar of pickled herring, and a bag with a log of dried meat called pemmican that smelled suspiciously of old socks. Finally, in the refrigerator, behind two bottles of Big Rock Ale, I found a can of finely ground coffee. However, hard as I looked, I could not find a percolator anywhere in the place.
“Te puedo servir?” asked Raquel from the kitchen door. She’d apparently followed me over.
She leaned her head on the doorframe, her wide doe eyes slightly closed from fatigue and sleeplessness. It wasn’t her eyes I was looking at, but her full figure, like a Maidenform bra ad, barely covered by the flimsy crocheted lace dress she’d thrown on at the Shanghai.
“I have coffee but no coffee maker,” I said in Spanish.
“It’s right there,” she said, entering the kitchen. She slid next to me, her jasmine perfume as intoxicating as Tennessee moonshine. She grabbed hold of a metal conical object with a lid. She opened it, took out a piece of cloth shaped like a windsock, then turned, displaying it like a model at a fancy department store.
“This is how we do it in Cuba,” she said, dumping the dried coffee grounds in the garbage and rinsing the cloth under the faucet. She bent down, picked up a small pot, put it under the faucet to fill.
I came in close behind her, pressed myself against her back, breathing in the smell of her body, her perfume, her excitement. She didn’t move away, she just extended her arm to place the pot on the stovetop.
“You see, we have to wait until the water boils and then we put in the coffee.”
She turned to face me, her head cocked sideways. “Maybe you have a light?”
I dug in my pocket, pulled out a box of waxy matches, and lit one. She took my hand, guided it to the burner under the pot, then turned to me again, still holding my hand in hers. The match was burning down to my fingertips but I didn’t care. She brought it to her lips and blew it out.
“Pobrecito,” she said. “You burned yourself.” She kissed my fingertips then stuck them in her mouth, softly suckling them.
I took my fingers out of her mouth and put my tongue in there instead. She suckled that too and soon we were down on the kitchen floor, her dress over her head, her arms held together as though by a lacy rope as her full breasts with her big brown nipples bumped against my chest while I entered her, and soon we were both riding a wave of light that filled the room until it burst like a balloon and we were back on a grimy tile floor in Havana waiting for the boat to get us to a better place.