King Bongo Read online

  Broadway Betty cut Lizard off. “It’s pretty water,” she cooed.

  Betty rubbed Lizard raw. If she wasn’t asked a question she talked straight. But if you asked her a question, she answered by singing you a line from some Broadway musical show, like that Oklahoma shit. It drove Lizard crazy. He knew these two from before, in Atlantic City. PayDay was always dragging his wife along on business. It was a good thing PayDay was recommended from the top, and got the job done—slit a man’s throat, put a bullet in his head. But Lizard was top dog here, PayDay had to answer to him. That was the way it was. If you were underneath you got the abuse shoveled onto your head, because if you didn’t like it and squawked, they’d be shoveling dirt into your face as you stared up dead-eyed from your grave.

  Broadway Betty continued her rapture. “It’s such a beautiful sea here. It looks like … melted peacocks.”

  “Melted peacocks!” Lizard choked on the Manhattan he had just raised to his lips. He spluttered the booze back into the glass. “That’s probably something you read in a goddamn tourist guide. ‘The waters of Havana are pretty as melted peacocks.’ Yeah, sure. And the pretty rain is as slick as the sweat on a gorilla’s balls.”

  Betty looked down. Her dress was halfway up above her knees. She liked looking at her knees, round and plump as two peaches in a basket. Maybe she could get a suntan on them if she and Johnny stayed here long enough. Sometimes their stay was long, sometimes short, she never knew in advance. That was one of the exciting things about her husband’s job; he wasn’t a nine-to-fiver. Her knees were nice, but between them was another lovely sight that intrigued her. The top of the barstool was upholstered in bright raspberry-colored Naugahyde. Shot through the raspberry were flecks of bright glittery stuff, like flecks of real gold. She liked the idea of it, a raspberry-gold sherbet. She wished she could get a lipstick that color, she already had every other shade. Maybe she could get that color in the hotel gift shop. She should ask them if they had “hot raspberry–gold swirl.” She couldn’t stop staring; she liked the idea of sitting on something that looked good enough to eat. Everything in Cuba was so colorful. She wanted to stay.

  “What are you gawking at?” Lizard cut into Betty’s thoughts.

  She turned her eyes up to him and sang. “Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry, when I take you out in my surrey, with the fringe on top.”

  Lizard was fuming. He hated these Broadway lyrics.

  PayDay tried to head off more trouble. “You were asking Betty another question earlier. What was it?”

  “What do I care what it was? Yeah, I remember, I was asking if she wanted another drink. Then she started singing about the fucking Oklahoma plains. Now she’s going on with more Broadway sissy stuff. You should stop taking her to those musicals, that’s how the queers in New York brainwash people. That’s how they make you a fairy boy.”

  Lizard shot both of them a sour glance. He swore to himself if this Daffy Duck dame popped off with any more pansy song shit he was going to whup her. To hell with business propriety and trying to be a good boss. Goddamn crazy, these two were. If he had to bet, he’d bet that every time this dame clammed her big red lipstick–coated Daffy Duck kisser on PayDay’s pecker she was probably humming him off with “I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair.” Goddamn perverts.

  “To answer your first question”—PayDay tried to calm the big man—“Betty will have another Banana Banshee.”

  “Banana Banshee,” Lizard groaned. “That’s not a cocktail, that’s a milk shake. That’s the fifth one this morning. Was her mother a monkey?”

  Johnny PayDay pushed his cocktail napkin around on the slick varnished mahogany of the bar. He admired the picture on the napkin, the whole big beautiful Hotel Nacional, as if it were a Spanish palace or something, seen from the towering front with a line of palms leading right up to it. He thought of the briefcase of dough in his room. It was safe there. All these fancy hotels in Havana that were owned by the Right Guys from America were safe, because if you stole from the Right Guys and got caught they would make your mother eat a jelly donut with your tongue stuffed in the donut’s hole.

  PayDay looked back at Lizard. He noticed all the angry red spider veins covering Lizard’s fleshy jowls. Those spiderwebs had been created over a lifetime of boozing and smoking and being pissed off that among the Right Guys he wasn’t the top dog. PayDay thought again of the briefcase in his room stuffed with C-notes. It represented only half his pay; half now, half when the job was done. He had come to do a job, so he had to bide his time. He watched the red spider veins jump on Lizard’s cheeks as his teeth chomped the ice from the glass of liquor he had just sucked dry. Those spiderwebs gave PayDay an idea. Maybe he could do two jobs down here; one for pay, the other for pleasure.

  “No more Banana Banshees,” Lizard moaned. “I’m banning Banshees before your wife pops out monkey twins right here on the floor.”

  PayDay quickly filled Lizard in on the medicinal side effects of the Banana Banshee, a blended mix of bananas, crème de cacao, rum and sugary coconut flakes. Banshees were hard to get in big northern cities; most bars didn’t have bananas or crème de cacao. If Banshees were made with bananas just starting to overripen, getting black spots on their yellow skins so they had that squishy sweet jungle taste, well, then, they were tops with his wife, kept her happy. This was one reason he always accepted jobs in tropical climates. He could get paid and make his wife happy too. There was nothing he liked better than to watch his wife poolside at a hotel, sun-tanning in her bathing suit, sipping a Banana Banshee out of a glass with a straw as she bent over to paint her toenails from a bottle of fire-engine-red polish. That was the best.

  “What was that you just mumbled?” Lizard barked.

  “I said the Banana Banshee is healthy for you and it’s a hell of a hangover cure, especially on New Year’s Day.”

  “Women and business, shit, they don’t mix.” Lizard nudged PayDay. “And how about you? You going to have some goddamn girly-girl drinky-poo? Maybe a Pink Cadillac Fart, a Grasshopper Turd, or a White Russian Hemorrhoid?”

  PayDay didn’t answer. Out of his jacket pocket he pulled a candy bar in a bright white wrapper across which was printed in bold red letters PAYDAY. He flipped the candy bar over and carefully peeled back the wrapper so as not to make a ragged tear. He finessed the peanut-coated caramel bar out without spoiling the wrapper. He flattened the wrapper on the bar, smoothed it with the palm of his hand, and folded the edges back in on themselves so that only the name PAYDAY showed.

  Lizard watched the ritual. This was maybe the eighth PayDay candy bar this bald-headed shorty had gobbled up since he first got here; he was always smoothing the wrappers down when he was finished and placing them carefully back in his jacket pocket. But Lizard knew that PayDay was good at what he did, and that he always left his calling card. No matter who the guy whacked, he always stuffed a PayDay wrapper in the stiff’s mouth. That way the Right Guys knew who’d done the job. Johnny PayDay was a good take-out man, smart with a gun or a knife; he asked no questions, was obedient as a dog, and kept his trap shut. You could kick the shit out of him, but you couldn’t kick the secrets out of him.

  “You know,” Lizard ventured a professional opinion, “you keep on eating that kiddy-shit candy and it’s going to give you diabetes. Your legs are going to fall off at the knees.”

  PayDay ran his palm thoughtfully over the slick candy wrapper without saying a word.

  Broadway Betty lifted her head up from staring at the shiny seat between her legs, still dazzled. “How do they get those gold specks in there?”

  The bartender handed her a big frothy Banana Banshee, then shook his head; he didn’t know how they got the specks in there.

  “I know.” Lizard smiled smugly.

  “Really?” Betty sat up straight and crossed her legs. She had good legs, like her knees, smooth white skin, plump in all the right places. She thought her patent leather peach-colored high heels made her legs ev
en more tempting.

  Lizard gave her the once-over, a dishwater blonde, a ditsy dame. Normally he liked this kind, big tits, small brains. But Betty’s brain was so tiny it could fit into a fast-melting ice cube. “I’ll tell you what that gold stuff is. It’s nauga shit. Naugas shit out little gold metallic nuggets.”

  Betty gave Lizard a blank look.

  Lizard wondered again why PayDay didn’t keep this looney-tunes dame at home where she belonged. Just because a guy is hired to do business in Cuba doesn’t mean he can slack off. Lizard had never brought his own wife to Havana, not once. He kept her up in Tampa, pure squaresville. He liked that idea; him in Havana with the rackets while the wife and kiddies lived in a suburban tract, where each house had the same fried brown lawn out front with runt palm trees sticking up and a couple of kids’ bikes lying on their sides. If anybody came looking to clock him there they wouldn’t know which door to knock on, since each house was indistinguishable from the others. The sameness of the middle class was perfect for a guy like him, everyone was invisible and zombied out from watching shit TV. The worst TV was the Lucy show. Lizard hated Lucy, a whiny, clown-faced, redheaded bitch. He didn’t have an ounce of sympathy for Desi, her rumba-assed Cuban Pete husband. Desi always played the injured party, but everyone in Havana knew he was a schlong man who stuck it to every chorus girl in his nightclub act. Not that Lizard had it in for a schlong man; he himself was famous for that. Matter of fact, people didn’t know whether he got his name from his lizard, which would leap out of his pants whenever a broad-assed babe was around, or from the fact that at the least slight, his black snub-nosed lizard of a revolver would leap out and blow the offending party’s brains through the roof.

  Lizard continued his natural science lesson to Betty. “And another thing about naugas, they ain’t gonna be making car seats and barstools out of them much longer.”

  “Why?” Betty asked wide-eyed.

  Jesus, she really was dumb to buy into this one. “Because”—Lizard winked—“Ford Motor Company has nearly killed off the last of the herd to use their hides for that new car, the Thunderbird.”

  Betty frowned. “Do naugas exist, or are you just pulling my leg?”

  Yeah, Lizard was pulling her leg, in fact he wanted to pull her legs open and plug her right there, just to see if he could fuck some sense into her. He leaned his red spider-veined face up close to her peachy complexion and bragged, “Take it from me, naugas exist. Great herds of them.”

  “Where?”

  “New York City.”

  “New York City? I’ve never seen them there.”

  “You weren’t looking in the right places.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “You can’t mistake them. They have big heads and tiny dicks, just like the Jews. Their skins make great seat covers.” Lizard threw his head back and roared at his joke, foam frothing in the corners of his mouth like a rabid dog.

  PayDay pulled another candy bar from his pocket. He carefully undid the wrapper as if it were an ancient shroud wound around a mummy.

  “Come with me!” Lizard barked to PayDay. “We’ve got to talk business.”

  PayDay slipped the candy bar back into his pocket. Already the sugar from the last bar was making his ears ring in a sugar rush. He was feeling twitchy.

  Lizard led the way across the vast tiled floor to the plate-glass window facing the ocean. Through the window, looking directly down, they had a good view of the hotel’s VIP swimming pool. There was another pool on the other side of the hotel for the regular guests, but this one, reserved for the special few, was just outside the private cocktail lounge downstairs. People were splashing in the pool and others sunned themselves in deck chairs. A middle-aged man hefted himself out of the water and trotted over to a redheaded teenage girl splayed out on her back in a lounge chair. She was nearly nude, except for two narrow strips of a bikini. Around the crotch of the bikini bottom wispy feathers of red hair peeked out. The man stood over her, grinning and dripping water. She handed him a towel and he started to dry off, laughing down at her like a department-store Santa Claus patronizing a kid on his knee.

  Lizard’s lizard got hard watching this. He wanted to lick the red hair in the crotch of the girl’s bathing suit.

  PayDay watched dispassionately. He wanted to know what the business was.

  Lizard panted, “Do you recognize them?”

  “No.” PayDay shook his head.

  “Shit, man, those are famous people. She’s too young to have hummed off enough dick yet to really make it in Hollywood. She’s only had a bit part in one movie, a kid movie about a boy who loses his dog. She’s gonna be a big movie star. You don’t recognize the guy?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you ever go to the movies?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve probably got a goddamn TV.”

  “Yeah. Betty likes the Lucy show.”

  “Shit, I should have known. Well, if you knew the movies, you’d know that guy down there is Robin Hood, he’s General Custer, he’s Captain Blood.”

  “Means nothing to me. That’s kid stuff.”

  “Yeah, that’s funny, because that guy likes kids too. I heard he once had two twelve-year-olds at the same time. Someone asked him what kind of fuck that was and he said well, if you add their ages together, it’s like being with a hot twenty-four-year-old.” Lizard paused. “Movie stars can get away with all kinds of shit. Look at him, out of shape, potbelly, skinny legs, dyed hair. Tan as a nigger, though.”

  “Is he the guy?”

  “Of course not. He’s not the guy we brought you here for.”

  “What guy is that? I thought you said we were going to talk business.”

  “It’s all business in Havana. Even when it’s pleasure, it’s business.”

  “So why are we watching a bad actor?”

  “You’re right about that. On the screen he’s a good guy. But in life he’s a bad actor.”

  “A lot of guys like that. Good guys in public, bad actors at home with their families.”

  “So you’ve got morals?”

  “I’ve got standards.”

  “Never mix morals with business.”

  “I don’t. So let’s get on with it. What’s the business?”

  “That guy down there is important. He’s with the Right Guys here, but he’s also in bed with the bearded boys.”

  “So make him my business and your problem is over.”

  “You can’t shoot a movie star! You can’t shoot General Custer, for Christ’s sakes!”

  “Okay, then, I’ll stab him in the heart.”

  “No, no. I just want you to keep an eye on him. Watch him like you would a puppy with no sense who might run out into the street and get himself run over.”

  “You brought me all the way from Detroit to baby-sit a bad actor?”

  “He’s so famous that fans are always mobbing him. Especially the Cubans, they idolize this guy. He’s like one of their own. He lives here at the Nacional while in town, but the real action is over at the Hotel Capri, where he keeps the penthouse. That’s where he does his serious play. It’s a stabbin’ cabin in the sky.”

  “He’s doing teenage girls?”

  “There’s talk about boys too,” Lizard added, looking to see if PayDay seemed shocked. “He’s got a mirrored bedroom wall in the penthouse.”

  “He likes to watch?”

  “Likes to film. That mirror is a two-way. On the bedroom side it reflects the action, but from the other side you can see right in without anybody knowing you’re there. He’s got a camera on the other side, films everything. In his Beverly Hills mansion, he’s got tape recorders in all the johns. You know how dames are always in the john at parties, putting on their lipstick and talking about how big one guy’s wallet is and how little another guy’s dick is. After the parties, he plays the recorded girl talk back to his pals and they have a real hoot.”

  “So okay, I watch him like a puppy. But tha
t’s not serious business.”

  Lizard put his arm around PayDay’s shoulders and turned him sideways, looking straight out the window. “You see down there across the lawn, at the bottom of the garden where the Malecón is?”

  “What’s a Mealycomb?”

  “It’s the stone seawall that the Cubans brought Chinese coolies here to build at the turn of the century. It starts at La Punta fortress, the entrance to Old Havana, then curves along the oceanfront, past here to the Almendares River. The Malecón is both a seawall and a highway, a seven-mile run.”

  “These Cubans are clever.”

  “Not that clever. I heard a guy in the bar at the dog track, he bet another guy that the Cubans never designed the Malecón. It was designed by American architects.”

  “You think that’s true?”

  “I wouldn’t bet a thousand bucks against the guy who said it was.”

  “So what am I looking at the Mealycomb for? Just some cars whizzing back and forth on it in front of the ocean.”

  “I’m trying to give you a little history. It’s important you know where you are in the scheme of things.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Look carefully through that bunch of palms down there.”

  “I see a big bird out in the middle of the Mealycomb or whatever you call it.”

  “Good boy. It’s a giant bronze American eagle with a wingspan of twenty feet, perched on marble columns. It’s facing across the sea to the U.S.A., ready to fly home to the land of liberty.”