“Is that what happened to you?” Inez asked.
“I was not a dancer,” Renata said, “I would never take money for that.”
“You only do it for love,” Inez said.
“Exactly. Do you know the owner, Trafficante?”
“I do.”
“My sister is a good friend of his.”
“He is a generous man.”
“We’re going to the Montmartre, not the Sans Souci,” Alfie said. “Lansky owns the Montmartre casino.”
“I cannot like him,” Renata said. “I dislike his eyes.”
“He’s a sweetheart,” Alfie said.
“Who do you think that Javier is?” Quinn asked. “I think he’s with Fidel.”
“You may be right,” Alfie said.
“I would love to work with Fidel,” Renata said.
“I’m going to try for an interview with him,” Quinn said.
“The New York Times just did that,” Alfie said.
“Fidel can’t have too many interviews. Batista’s army kills him every day in the papers. He has to keep proving he’s still alive.”
“Everybody wants Fidel,” Inez said.
“He’s got momentum,” Quinn said.
“He’s the only game in town,” Alfie said.
“Maybe you should move your store to Santiago,” Quinn said to Alfie.
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I am going to Santiago,” Renata said. “Definitely. I’ve said it before but now I’m going to do it. I am.”
“I’ll do the driving,” Quinn said. “Can we keep this car?”
The Montmartre was at O and Twenty-fifth and they dropped Inez at the door on Twenty-fifth that led directly up to the second-floor casino. After she was out of the car Quinn said, “She has a Nazi tattoo.”
“She was in a camp,” Alfie said. “Worked with her father in French nightclubs until someone betrayed them as Jews. She weighed seventy pounds when I met her in Europe after the liberation. She wanted to go to New York but they wouldn’t let her in — Commie Jew. Then Trafficante gave her a job down here.”
“Why did he do that?”
“I asked him to,” Alfie said.
“I owe her an apology,” Renata said. “I thought she was a whore.”
“She was a whore. Her father pimped for her. Then they used her that way in the camp. She was gorgeous. Her father died in the camp and when she got well she survived as a whore. She couldn’t dance anymore. They ruined her knees.”
“Is she still a whore?”
“Yes,” Alfie said, “but only for me.”
When Renata said she would not go to dinner in the tour guide’s blouse and skirt she’d been wearing for two days, Alfie went into the club to arrange for the table and Quinn dropped Renata at a fashion boutique on Twenty-first Street that specialized in Paris imports. He felt obligated to call Max at the newspaper and find out what part of Cuba was erupting in blood, and should he be covering the spatter?
“Cooney’s looking for you,” Max said. “He called twice and then came in person and left you a letter. And Hemingway called you. Big day for you and Hemingway. Cooney’s challenging him to a duel and wants you to set it up.”
“A duel? Really? Rapiers or flintlocks?”
“That’s up to Hemingway.”
“Did Hemingway mention the duel?”
“He didn’t even mention his name. He just asked for you and hung up. I recognized his voice. Cooney’s letter is short. ‘Dear Mr. Quinn, you’re a friend of that bum Hemingway. Tell him I think he’s a bum and I challenge him to a duel, any kind of gun or whatever he likes, I ain’t particular. I’m not kidding here. I’m taking this public. You can write the story but if you don’t want to I’ll get somebody else. He’s a bum to hit me like he did and I want everybody to know what a cheap coward trick it was. He’s a bum and a cheap coward. I hear he’s a good shot but so am I. Tell him to wear his soldier medals. I’ll be wearing mine. Yours truly, Joseph X. Cooney.’”
“Good letter,” Quinn said. “We can sell tickets.”
“You know how to reach Hemingway?”
“Hang around the Floridita.”
“I’ll draw you a map to his house. Out near San Francisco de Paula. You should tell him in person.”
“You mean now he’s a story?”
“Dog shoots man. I’ll print that.”
“Get me his phone number.”
“Have you seen Renata?”
“We eloped last night.”
“Have you been sucking on the rum bottle?”
“That’s my next assignment.”
“How is she?”
“She’s shopping for the honeymoon.”
Max drew a long breath. “Are you up for this story or are you piped?”
“Get me his phone.”
“Dial oh-five and ask the operator for five-four-four. The phone is listed under José C. Alemán.”
“I’ll let you know what he says tomorrow.”
“Call him tonight.”
“Would you interrupt your honeymoon to talk to a writer?”
Another long breath. “How is she?”
“Erratic but it doesn’t interfere with her sensuality.”
“You better do right by that girl.”
“You can’t believe how hard I’m trying.”
Renata emerged from the store transformed into a denizen of the beau monde, stunning in a white off-the-shoulder sheath, white high-heeled pumps, white earrings and white sunglasses, blond hair upswept, and the necklace of the Orishas stylishly pendant on her bosom. She also carried a new suitcase that promised additional transformations.
“Guapísima,” Quinn said. “I don’t recognize you. Gorgeous.”
“I am never the same, even when I am not somebody else.”
“I think I may have to memorize that. You’re a blonde.”
“It’s a wig.”
“It’s a good one. I thought you had gotten it bleached.”
“Now we must get you a necktie.”
Newly garbed, they rode the elevator to the Montmartre’s second floor and stepped into a foyer of full-length mirrors, the vitalizing rhythm of a mambo drifting in from the nightclub on the right, and the clicks and bells of slot machines on the left beckoning arrivals toward the roulette and blackjack tables in the casino beyond. Renata took Quinn’s arm as they went into the nightclub, which shimmered in black and chrome, its mauve curtains billowing on the elevated stage, its tables filling up. When Quinn pointed to Alfie at a center table two tiers up from ringside, the maître d’ led them to him. Before they were seated Alfie had a waiter filling their champagne glasses.
“Hey-soos Maria,” Alfie said as the newly designed Renata sat down; and his eyes said the rest. Another scalp in her saddlebag.
“Good table,” Quinn said, changing the subject.
“They know me. The place will be packed by eight and it stays that way till four a.m.”
“I always liked this club,” Renata said. “I’m sure I sat at this table when my sister sang here.”
The lights and the piped-in mambo went down abruptly and a voice boomed through the speakers, “Damas y caballeros, ladies and gentlemen, el club Montmartre presenta la Orquestra de Bebo Valdés!” Billowing curtains receded, twenty musicians on stage erupted with a magnified mambo that was quickly joined by twenty mulata dancers moving to the feverish beat with their feathers, flounces, ruffles, spangles and vast expanses of flesh, and the pulse of nighttime Havana skipped a syncopated beat.
Quinn was still finding it difficult to realize that he was actually a player in this manic culture — across the table from him a woman of hyperventilating beauty with rebellion running in her veins, and a loner hoodlum who peddles tools of psychotic vengeance to suicidal rebels. Keeping with this improbable beat he told them about Cooney’s challenge to Hemingway.