King Bongo Read online

  Bongo smiled. “That’s why you didn’t hear from me. I was phoning all the time. As usual, no ring.”

  The Judge tightened the velvet rope closing off the cabaret entrance. “No ring, no admittance.”

  Bongo reached into his tuxedo pocket and pulled out a pen and checkbook. He filled in a check as he spoke. “Here’s the money, your claim is paid in full. You didn’t get paid earlier because of the holidays. You know how it is, the mail is slower than usual.”

  The Judge took the check and shoved it into his pocket. “That’s another thing. Mail doesn’t move, water doesn’t flow. Cuba is getting to be a banana republic.”

  “I wrote the check for more money than what you claimed your losses were,” Bongo said. “A holiday bonus.”

  The Judge grudgingly unhooked the velvet rope. “I still wouldn’t buy insurance from you again, even if you unzipped my pants and smoked my cigar.”

  “Keep your pants zipped.” Bongo winked. “There’s only a few puffs left on your tiny cigarillo. You don’t want to deny your wife her once-a-year smoke.”

  Bongo stepped past the podium and into a vast amphitheater magically illuminated by colored lights in towering trees. With no roof overhead, it was a paradise under the stars. Down in front, on a raised dance floor, festive revelers shook their hips to the blasting rhythm of a twenty-five-piece band perched high above in a giant bamboo cage.

  Bongo felt the beat pulsing up through the soles of his feet. His two-toned shoes kept time to the music. He strode past tables of excited people. The blue mist of cigarette and cigar smoke made the women’s clinging dresses sparkle and the men’s white dinner jackets shine. The moon overhead beamed down.

  “Hey, Bongo, Happy New Year!”

  Bongo heard the words shouted as he glided onto the dance floor and into the gyrating crowd.

  A young woman danced up next to him, her hips swinging in rhythm with his. The sweat on her face made her glow, as if she were one of the muses from the fountain outside, miraculously come to life. Her satin dress was as slick as her skin.

  “Mercedes!” Bongo took her by the waist and floated with her across the dance floor through waves of dancers. Together they were a ship at sea, bow and stern taking the swells of syncopated notes.

  “Lose yourself, Bongo! Go, King!”

  Bongo felt the beat, felt it the way he had as a boy, standing naked before his father, his head shaved, while his father slapped his skull with his open palms, slapping the beat into him, tattooing his memory.

  “Hey, King!” came a shout from the bandstand. “Come on up and join us!”

  Bongo danced up to the bandstand with Mercedes at his side and they shimmied through the wide bamboo bars into the cage. The band members grinned with expectation. One of them stood, and over the heads of the others tossed a set of bongos. Bongo caught the drums and ran his hands over their skintight heads, taking the beat. His sound soared across the crowded dance floor and swirled up into the night sky, punctuating a note for every star above.

  The band stopped; they knew Bongo was sailing. The dancers stopped; they knew Bongo was in orbit. His solo had everyone gasping, his lightning moves had the monkeys chattering, his beat had the saints smiling and the dead dogs walking.

  His furious drumming stormed to a climax. Thunderous applause washed over him.

  He rested his hands on the bongos and looked out into the crowd, searching for one special face, gazing into all eyes, trying to find his father. Daddy, did you hear that? I got the beat you pounded into my head! Damn you and praise you for beating me into deliverance!

  “You’re soaking wet!”

  Bongo glanced up, still in a daze.

  Mercedes wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.

  The band blasted into a new dance tune. Bongo smiled at Mercedes. “Would you like a rum and Coke?”

  “Yes,” she sang back to him, “rum and Coca-Cola!”

  Bongo made his way to a palm-thatched bar. Revelers patted him on the back, congratulating him on his playing, shouting above the music to buy him drinks. Cold glasses of rum and Coke were shoved at him and he grabbed as many as he could.

  Mercedes sat calmly at a table on the edge of the dance floor. Her black hair was piled atop her head in an elaborate braid that made her appear to be crowned royalty. Laced through the braid were bright stars of jasmine blossoms. She took the drink offered by Bongo, then waved to three young women at another table. The women giggled and waved back. They were thrilled that one of their own had snagged Bongo. They had all seen him dance or play the bongos in clubs around town. He was a hard one to catch, half Cuban and half American. Just when a girl thought she understood him, had him nailed to the floor with a wedding ring ready to be slipped onto her finger, one half of Bongo would escape. A girl couldn’t chase him because she wasn’t sure which half to chase. He was fifty percent enigma, a man who knew the darkest secrets of the seedy back streets of Old Havana yet also knew the swankiest people in the country clubs. A girl had to accept that Bongo was black and white, yes and no, tonight but not tomorrow. All of this made him more attractive, the handsome fox, the swift fish, the drum-playing, dancing fanatic with a great grin, ready to defy the odds and stay single. And tonight one of their own had triumphed. Mercedes was next to Bongo, coolly sipping a rum and Coke as people cleared the dance floor for the next fabulous cabaret extravaganza.

  Bongo slipped his arm around Mercedes’ bare shoulders and embraced her affectionately.

  The lights went out. The crowd hushed. Everything was black.

  A voice boomed from the darkness with the melodrama of Moses coming down from the mountain.

  “Laaadieees and Gentlemeeen, the most famous cabaret in the world offers the fiesta of women, the show of shows, a true paradise under the stars!”

  A spotlight pierced down from above, illuminating on a vast stage a master of ceremonies in a white tuxedo.

  “Behold now, the Queen of the Jungle, the black pearl of the Antilles, le chat noir, the rarest of the rare, the seldom seen, the one and only … Cuuubaaan PANTHER!”

  The master of ceremonies disappeared in a swirl of mist.

  The crowd gasped in a collective “aaahhhhh!”

  From the lush jungle backdrop, six-foot-tall female bird creatures magically appeared in the trees, slowly spreading their wings to reveal nearly naked bodies. Glittering bits of jeweled costumes clung to their breasts and formed tiny strategic triangles between long legs and the thrust of buttocks. Iridescent feathered headdresses adorned the fabulous birds of paradise. They stood poised, wings outspread, ready to soar over the audience.

  The sound of a single drum rose up.

  All eyes were fixed on the stage. Shafts of blue, red, and yellow light shot through the slowly dissipating mist, revealing at the back of the stage the skeletal steel form of a monstrous white spider. From behind the spider, a dark creature slithered down the thick trunk of a banyan tree to the beat of the drum. In syncopated movements, the creature made its way from the base of the banyan into the maze of the giant spider. The spider’s spiny steel skeleton lit up in a gaudy flash of lights.

  The deep voice of the master of ceremonies breathed from hidden loudspeakers: “The Panther.”

  A shudder went through the crowd.

  The Panther leapt from the steel spider. On all fours, she arched her glistening back, her satiny black skin shining. She shook her head as if trying to free herself from a leash tight around her neck. She strained against the force, digging the red claws of her fingernails into the floor.

  The cheering audience stood up from their tables and threw white gardenias onto the stage.

  The band blasted into a conga that raked the cat’s back. She prowled to the fierce rhythm. On her black feet were strapped gold high-heeled shoes. She rose, a glorious Panther, naked as the day God made her. Her feline body vibrated with menacing sensuality. The thunderous conga shook her world. The audience screamed, caught in the titillation of t
he prey being set upon by the predator.

  The muscles in the Panther’s sleek shoulders twitched. A melodious, murderous purr ripped from her throat, joining the howl of up-tempo music.

  The tall birds of paradise descended from high in the trees and surrounded the Panther in a pulsating swirl of flesh and feathers. The Panther burst through the birds and for the first time showed her face. It was black, and her short hair was white: God’s panther angel on the prowl. From her lips flamed a volcanic tirade.

  The dead wander in the canefields.

  At night dragging chains are heard.

  Lightning flashes like a razor blade

  Slitting the flesh of the conga night.

  Many in the audience did not understand a word of the Spanish being sung, but were dazzled by the sizzling syllables exploding from an exotic world exposed for their entertainment. They thought they were listening to a passionate love song. Some knew the difference. They understood this was a chain-dragging scream of suffering, a cry for emancipation.

  The Panther gyrated across the stage in a frenzied conga trance, her blood stirred by ancient longing for salvation from cruelty and starvation.

  Bongo felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned to see the grinning face of Fido.

  “She’s here! Outside!”

  “Okay. I’m coming.”

  Bongo turned to Mercedes. “I’ll be right back.”

  Mercedes didn’t hear him. Her eyes were transfixed, but not by the wild antics onstage. She was staring straight up.

  A glistening silver thread hung down from the branches of a banyan tree. At the bottom of the thread dangled a white spider, its crooked legs moving frantically, like a marionette suspended on a string.

  The conga music on the stage grew louder. The spider dropped lower, hanging directly over Mercedes’ head.

  Bongo reached up to grab it.

  “No.” Mercedes pulled his arm down. “Don’t kill it.”

  The spider swung back and forth, wriggling, then dropped to the table in front of Mercedes.

  A fist slammed down and crushed the spider before it could make a move.

  Mercedes cried out, startled.

  A black-skinned woman, in a traditional white Santera dress with a white bandanna wrapped around her head, leaned over Mercedes and scooped up the dead insect. “White spiders are bad luck,” she hissed. “Especially tonight. You’ll see.”

  “It’s worse luck to kill something harmless.”

  “Dancing white spiders are not harmless. Leave, if you don’t want to end up like this.” The woman opened her fist, showing the crushed spider.

  Mercedes was terrified.

  Bongo confronted the woman. “You should leave.”

  The woman put her face close to Bongo’s. “You might look white, but you’re as black inside as I am.”

  Mercedes was confused. She asked Bongo, “What does she mean?”

  Bongo didn’t answer. He took the woman by the arm. “You should go. I don’t want them to throw you out.”

  “Will I be thrown out because of my color? Or because I tell the truth?”

  “I don’t make the rules.”

  “It’s all right to be black if you’re naked and on the stage, but if you’re not they don’t want you. Even President Batista couldn’t get in here if he weren’t president.”

  “That’s not the issue,” Bongo said sternly. “You’re frightening the lady.”

  The woman screamed, “I know who you are! You are the one in danger! You are the one who must leave!” She continued screaming, but the conga music drowned out her words. She turned in a swirl of white, evaporating like a cloud.

  Bongo sat down. Mercedes was trembling. He put his arm around her.

  “Excuse me,” he said in an apologetic tone. “I have something I must do, but I’ll come right back.”

  Mercedes grabbed his wrist. “Please don’t leave!”

  “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  Mercedes looked skeptical.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll ring in the New Year together.”

  “What’s so important that you have to leave?”

  “Just for a few minutes.”

  “Promise?”

  He kissed her cheek.

  Mercedes reluctantly let go of his wrist, then smiled. “Hurry back if you want that special midnight kiss.”

  Bongo got up and pushed through the crowd. He made his way along the center aisle, between the tables occupied by high-roller gamblers, swanky socialites, rich foreigners and the political elite.

  At a table big enough for twelve sat three men. Two of them, Pedro and Paulo, were heavyset, their holstered guns bulging beneath their suit jackets. They guarded a slight man, Humberto Zapata, seated between them. Zapata wore a creamy linen suit, a red bow tie, a sharply creased Panama hat and silver-rimmed sunglasses. He peered intently at the stage through a pair of opera glasses, as a pencil-thin mustache twitched on his upper lip.

  When Zapata angled the opera glasses higher, Bongo knew he was gazing at a man in a banyan tree towering above the stage. The man was on a wooden platform painted to look like part of the tree. He crouched behind a cannon-sized spotlight that kept the Panther in an ethereal glow wherever she moved.

  Without shifting the opera glasses, Zapata spoke to Bongo as he passed.

  “A man doesn’t ever have to be alone. Why? Because there are more good women in the world than there are bad men.”

  Bongo stopped. His response was quick. “I despise you.”

  “And then what? Do you have a life after that?”

  “You stole my life.”

  “Well, then, you’ll just have to save up your pesos and buy her back.”

  Zapata lowered the opera glasses. “Here,” he offered the glasses to Bongo. “Have a look at what you lost.”

  The idea of what Bongo had lost suddenly filled his head with images: dogs tumbling underwater, crabs flying through the air, a girl cocooned in mud like a mummy, mud being washed away from her nine-year-old skin by coarse male hands, on one finger of the man’s hands a gold ring, a ruby-red eye shining from its center.

  Bongo looked at the hand holding the opera glasses. On the third finger was a gold ring set with a blood-red ruby.

  “What’s wrong, Bongo? Cat got your tongue?”

  “You won’t always be able to keep the Panther in a cage.”

  “Tut-tut, my pet, hurry along. Mr. Wu is waiting for you outside.”

  “I’m not your goddamned pet. How did you know Wu was waiting?”

  Zapata raised the opera glasses, his lips creased into a smirk. “I know everything. It’s time for you to go. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Don’t tell me when, where, or how to be. I’m not a child anymore.”

  “You are to me.”

  “It’s not my skin you own.”

  “Don’t get personal.”

  “Personal? You don’t know the word. You only know—”

  “—power. But don’t you see? Power is personal.”

  Bongo noticed that Zapata was not drinking. This was not a party to him. The only festive note on the table was a basket of flowers.

  Zapata sniffed disdainfully. “If I were you, I’d walk out of here right now and never come back.”

  “You don’t give me orders. I’ll do what I want. This isn’t a communist country.”

  Zapata set the opera glasses down with a thump. His voice had a raspy edge. “It’s not a communist country, yet. And it’s only because of men like me that it isn’t.”

  “To hell with you and your kind.” Bongo turned and headed for the foyer, where the Judge blocked his way with the velvet rope.

  “C’mon, Judge, unhook this damn rope and let me pass.”

  “You were in such a hurry to get in, what’s your hurry to get out? You should stay.”

  “Unhook the rope, or I’ll wrap it around your neck.”

  “Baby boy’s got to run home and get his beauty rest? T
oo bad, the Panther’s not finished yet.”

  “She’s none of your business.”

  “She’s got her biggest conga number coming up. You should see her in that one, her lovely papaya ripe and wet, waiting for the monkey to slip the banana in. Oh, my, more sweets to eat than on Carmen Miranda’s fruit hat. Stick around.”

  Bongo grabbed the Judge by the throat.

  “Watch it,” the Judge choked. “I’ve got insurance.”

  Bongo tightened his grip. “I sold you the insurance!”

  Fido yanked Bongo’s hand away from the Judge’s throat. “My friend, you don’t want trouble here. You should go.”

  “Why the hell are so many people telling me to leave?”

  Fido smiled enigmatically at Bongo and shrugged his huge shoulders.

  Bongo crossed the red carpet and stepped outside through the glass entrance doors. The uniformed attendant gave a slight bow, murmuring, “Mr. Wu is waiting by the muses.”

  Bongo walked up the drive under the palms. A canary-yellow 1936 Packard Victoria limousine was parked next to the naked muses frolicking in the spraying fountain.

  A Chinese man stepped out of the Victoria. He was square-jawed, stocky, wearing a purple suit and a wide tie with a snarling dragon embroidered on it. He poked a finger into Bongo’s chest. “I’ve got to frisk you.”

  “Come on, Ming, you know who I am.”

  “No one gets to Mr. Wu without the frisk.”

  Bongo raised his hands in the air.

  Ming patted him down from the ankles up. He felt the holstered gun under Bongo’s armpit. “Jackpot!”

  “Don’t take my gun. This is supposed to be business among friends.”

  “How do I know what kind of business it will end up being?”

  “Are you kidding? What did your mother put in your tea this morning?”

  The rear window of the Victoria rolled down. In the shadow of the backseat, in the far corner, glowed the red tip of a cigarette. A cloud of smoke floated from the open window. A voice came quietly through the smoke. “It’s okay, Ming. He has a license to carry the gun.”