Fight? Bennie kept to himself the fact that he heard Mercedes screaming just before he found the cook. Joey, he said, I didn’t kill Orlando. He was my friend.
Friends kill each other all the time. Why didn’t you take the knife out of him? The longer he’s dead, the harder it’s going to be. And next time, put a shower curtain under him. That way the blood won’t get on the rug.
You do it, Joey. You take the knife out. I couldn’t even watch my mother kill a chicken.
Didn’t they teach you anything in that damn country of yours? Fucking Latin lover can’t get his hands dirty.
Joey looked long and hard at Bennie, then he kneeled next to Orlando and jiggled the knife handle. Blood’s pretty much set. We won’t be needing the curtains. And before he’d finished saying the word curtains, he had the knife out and was holding it next to his head. It was a huge nasty thing. For an instant Bennie had the image of the blade entering Orlando and causing massive damage to his inner organs. The thought made him shiver.
This is a job for the rough riders, Joey said, and made a phone call. In ten minutes two men showed up, a tall slim guy in a gray suit and a short heavyset one in a blue shirt and beige linen trousers. Bennie noticed that the short man had a tomato sauce stain on his right pant leg. The men looked at dead Orlando on the floor and proceeded to ransack drawers, pulling them out of the dresser and upending their contents on the body. When they were done with the drawers they took the bed apart, then started on the closet and rifled through Orlando’s clothes, discarding them this way and that and making a huge mess. Finally, one of them turned to Bennie, who was now standing in a corner of the room, and said, Where’s the money?
Money? Bennie asked, trying to be as sheepish as possible. Now the three men were looking at him, waiting for an answer. I don’t know about no money. Bennie’s legs were shaking and his throat was beginning to tighten as it did every time he was nervous, making him cluck like a chicken.
We better cut him up, one of the men said. It’ll be easier that way.
Bennie made a move for the door.
Where you going? said the man in the blue shirt.
I live upstairs, said Bennie. I just thought I’d lie down for a while. I work tonight.
You staying right here, Jack. He turned to the man in the suit. Bring the tools.
Bennie needed to sit down but the mattress was up against the window leaning over the two armchairs. The only other chair was on the opposite side and he’d have to step over Orlando. He looked at Joey, who shrugged.
Joey, please, he implored him, I don’t want to watch this.
I don’t either. They’ll do it in the bathroom.
But I can hear.
Cover your ears.
After the two men carted Orlando’s pieces wrapped in wax paper and tied neatly with butcher string out of the room, they came back in and stood on either side of Bennie and asked again where the money was.
Bennie’s lips were shaking so badly they couldn’t meet to form words, to say simply, I don’t know, I didn’t take it. Despite the very real danger he was facing, however, there was a spot of coolness inside him that kept him from falling apart. It surprised him. He’d always thought of himself as a coward. That coolness led him to conclude with absolute certainty that Mercedes had taken the twenty thousand but he wasn’t about to tell these guys that. Right now every little bit of knowledge he kept from them was to his benefit.
Then Joey saved him. Guys, he said, Bennie don’t know anything. He’s a stupid Cuban. All he knows is dealing cards. Leave him alone.
The two men looked at each other, then back at Joey. The small one said, We don’t take orders from you.
Listen fuck-head, Bennie here doesn’t have the money. And if Archie gives you any grief, tell him I answer directly to Meyer and he can go suck a moose.
The men grumbled some curse words at Joey and left to drop pieces of Orlando all over the desert. Bennie asked Joey what was going on. Either Joey didn’t know or he didn’t let on. Later that night, as the two of them shared a six-pack of beer, Bennie asked Joey how he knew these thugs.
I got some juice in this town, Bennie. Me and Meyer grew up on the same block in the Lower East Side. You can’t fuck around with Lansky. He owns everyone in Vegas, including me. He owns you, except you don’t know it. Orlando tried to pull a fast one and he paid for it.
What did he do? Bennie asked.
I’d like to know that myself. The whole thing’s unsavory, I know, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Joey used the word unsavory with great delicacy, saying every sound as if it were a precious jewel. You sure you don’t know anything about that money those guys were talking about?
Bennie shook his head.
I have a feeling you do, Joey said. He finished his beer and left.
Bennie didn’t see Mercedes for two weeks, and every day of those two weeks one of Archie’s men came by asking about the money. Joey’s so-called juice was the only thing between Bennie and the butcher’s block. It was the loneliest period of his life. He worked, he ate, he came home, and he sat by the door to his room until it was time for bed. Day in and day out without a holiday, not even Christmas, on which he worked a double shift and made five hundred dollars. The money didn’t matter that much to him. He had nothing to spend it on. He didn’t like whores and had no need for a car. He paid a full twenty dollars a week for his room. His work clothes were provided for by the casino and he had no family to care for, not in Vegas or Miami or Cuba. As he pondered his sorry state, cursing the day he ever decided to leave the island, he heard a knock at his door and Mercedes’s plaintive voice asking to be let in.
Where have you been? he asked.
I was in Mexico but I’m back now.
I can see that, he said. What happened between you and Orlando?
He tried a nasty thing on me, ese cabrón.
You didn’t have to kill him.
He wouldn’t stop. There was a knife there. I just try to scare him but he kept coming and so I hit him with it. I just try to scare him.
By now Mercedes had grown very agitated. Her eyes were wide open and her lips were spread into a grimace, like those Mixtec goddesses you see biting into the hearts of men. Hijode la chingada, she grumbled.
Bennie wanted to shut the door on her and forget she ever existed. What about the money? he asked.
Mercedes was silent for a moment and grew meek, hunching her shoulders downward and looking up at him with beseeching eyes.
I didn’t steal it. I just found it.
Oh, to be back in Cuba right now, he thought. Communism had to be better than this.
Mujer, are you crazy? You know half of Vegas is looking for you? What did you do with it?
Mercedes was silent.
If you don’t return that money to its owners, they’re going to grind us up into picadillo. You understand?
Mercedes straightened up and narrowed her eyes into fierce slits. Let me tell you three things, she said. First, the money is hidden; second, I ain’t giving it to nobody; third, you are a big pendejo.
Why do you come here? You are incriminating me, he said to her, which was stupid, considering he was incriminated the moment he landed at the Vegas airport.
I miss you, güerito. I want you to go away with me and we can be rich together.
That’s when he took her by the arm, shoved her out of the room, and slammed the door. When he turned around he saw a letter-size white envelope lying on the dresser. Bennie sat on the bed and stared at it, not knowing whether to pick it up and count it or flush it down the toilet or simply ignore it as if it were never there. He did the latter for a few hours until his fantasies got the better of him and he started thinking of everything he could do with the money. He could buy himself a fancy car. That would draw the women. He could buy a house. That was a smart thing to do. Or he could escape Las Vegas once and for all. Go to Miami, open up a barber shop, run a small book on the side, marry a nice criolla who would give him lots of children.