"They're saying you were in Hot Springs," the man demanded, and Earl was not surprised.
"What's it to you?"
The man smiled, but it wasn't a smile of love or friendship. It was a smile of release as a man tries to relax his face just before the shit begins.
"I heard about a guy there. They're still talking about him. He supposedly punched out a big famous mob gun down there and got free lunches for years on the story. Yeah, I don't believe it for a second. Ben Siegel was tough as they come, and if anybody laid him out, he must have sucker-punched him, that's what I think. You know anything about that, bud?"
Earl said, "You know what? I don't explain things. That ain't my job around here."
"You don't know me, but I know you. I been watching you eating all this shit up. Some kind of hero. Yeah, well, heroes go down too, mac, just in case―"
"Hey, let me tell you, bud. If someone takes a whack at me, I put him flat faster than a ghost's boo. If some hooligan face-boy thinks he's tough and wants to take a cold shot, I'm the man who shows him he ain't much but average. And I don't like it when some bunny rabbit in a dancing-lesson jacket sticks his nose in mine and tells me some business. You got that?"
"Oh, well, say, ain't we got us a hero here, but ever notice how outside the movies heroes end up cold and still? Why―"
But then another man was on the porch, slicker, older, comforting, smoother.
"Frankie, Frankie, there you are. Oh, sorry, sir, Frankie's been drinking too much and he gets cranky. He doesn't mean a thing by it, don't pay any attention to him."
He pulled Frankie away but Frankie broke free, not to assault Earl but to whisper.
"Somebody killed Ben Siegel on his own sofa. Shot down while reading a newspaper. If I get my hands on that guy…"
But the older man reigned him in with surprising force, and sent him on his way. It was as if the younger suddenly realized the power of the old, and slumped and dejected, he exited.
Earl looked at the old man: he saw sadness, wisdom, smart eyes, a nose both huge and beautiful at once. He saw something he recognized, if not by name, by instinct.
"Mr. Swagger, please don't pay any attention to my associate. He's in his cups, he has dreams of glory, he spent too much time at lousy tables in New York nightclubs. He plays the gangster when he's the assistant to the assistant. Sober and free of his fantasies, he means you no harm at all, believe me."
"He's way out of line."
"He gets that way when he drinks. I'll have words with him. By the way, I run a casino. It's called Montmartre. Come on by and spend a night gambling on my tab, just to show there's no hard feelings. You can't lose and what you win is yours to take. It's owed you. You're quite a hero. My name is Meyer Lansky."
A king gangster! A big gangster! The biggest of the big!
"I'm not a gambler, but thanks anyhow."
"Whatever makes you happy, my friend. The house will always be open to you and I think you'll find the cards run your direction."
He smiled, and slid back, and with that smooth way of his seemed to vaporize into invisibility.
Chapter 16
The young man studied the board. Now this was interesting. It seemed that the force was setting itself up to the left, where the queen commanded doughty pawns, clever rooks, heroic knights and even the bishop, while the king languished, as was his wont, far away, shielded by a few disengaged pieces. The old lady did the work.
But the more he studied, the more he concluded that his opponent was lulling him. He was engineering what seemed to be an aggression on the right, but the real action would come suddenly from the left, and it would be blinding and clever and swift. He knew a possibility lurked here. In his mind, he struggled to unlock it, but no epiphany arrived for assistance.
Yet his faith was deep: he was convinced the right was a ruse, the left a trap. He knew he had to decide, to countermove, to show aggression and tenacity. So he-
"No, no, no!" the older man screamed at him. "Have you learned nothing these days? Have you been sleeping? Have you been daydreaming! Ach, such an idiot you are!"
"But, sir," said the twenty-six-year-old Castro, "it appeared to me that―"
"Go ahead, make your move, this is becoming boring."
Castro moved, the older man countermoved insolently, a performance of abject contempt, and in the countermove Castro saw a seam open, an unexpected thrust of aggression rupture his defenses, and felt the steam go out of him.
"Damn!" he said. "Again."
"Play it out, idiot."
It was quick: three moves and for the sixth straight time and the ninth time in ten days, he was checkmated. He had but a solitary, lucky draw to show for his efforts.
"You have to have a feel for these things," said the chess master.
"Maybe chess is not the game for you. There's no opportunity to give speeches or go on the radio. Perhaps that is what you are really good at. It's a tawdry talent, but I suppose it is what one has, and one must make the best of it. Let the smarter fellows make the decisions and figure things out."
"No, no," whined the young man, "I am smart. You will see that―" But then he stopped. He said, "That was last year. How did you know I was on the radio? You are not from Cuba."
"I know some things. One thing I know: You need a better head for chess. That would be a wiser place to start than speeches, where you get paid in plaudits and end up the day with nothing tangible. What have I been telling you? Don't be so hasty. It gets you massacred every time."
"At least it's a glorious massacre," said the young man.
"Have you ever seen a massacre?" the older fellow asked.
"No," Castro admitted.
"Well, I have. Not pretty. Certainly not glorious. Ugly, bloody, pitiful, pathetic, squalid. So all great crusades end up, if they are not carefully managed."
"Who are you?" Castro asked. "You show up and suddenly we are playing chess every day. You speak our language too well, and with a European accent. You learned your Spanish in Spain."
"Spain, it's true."
"Thirty-six to thirty-nine? Where also you saw the massacre?"
"I have, alas, seen many massacres. Too many. I hope not to see another."
The two sat in the park called San Francisco under palm trees in Old Havana, not far from a coffee stand, a shoeshine man, a fleet of bolita salesmen, two whores taking a time off from a busy morning, a woman rolling cigars, and many relaxing seagulls. The sun was hot, but a fresh sea breeze from the nearby harbor made the palms dance and kept the sweat from collecting.
"I think you've come a long way to see me," said Castro. "You were interested in me from the start, that I could tell. I understood that."
"I have some practical experience. Possibly you'd listen to my advice now and then. Sometime in the future, when you are wiser, you might even take it."
"Where are you from?"
"What does it matter? What matters is that you and I believe in the same things and possibly the same methods."
The boy began a hoary recitation of what he believed in. Meanwhile, Speshnev looked hard at him and, try as he could, only saw a familiar type, thrown up by revolutions and wars the world over. An opportunist with a lazy streak, and also a violent one. Not smart, but clever enough to get himself in real trouble. A minor gift for gab, but no real character or integrity. No vision beyond the self, but a willingness to use the vernacular of the struggle for his own private careerism.
Speshnev had of course read the documents. The boy Castro was only a third-generation Cuban, his father being the son of a Spanish soldier who, when Spain left in 1899, had decided to stay in the new country rather than move back to the old. The father's family was Galician, from that severe province in the north of Spain whence hailed conquistadors and other men of cruel disposition and rapacious appetite. But there was no evidence the boy was comprised of such fortitude. So far, beside the speeches, there'd only been mischief: he played at organizing demonstrations against the American secretary of state in 1948 and had gone on some mad pretend campaign to liberate the Dominicans from the strongman Trujillo, abandoning the quest when things got tough. No questions had been answered.