Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

But it wasn’t a friend. It was Meyer Lansky, and he sounded annoyed.

“Gunther?”

“Yes.”

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been ringing all afternoon.”

“I went to see Max’s girl, Dinah.”

“Oh. How is she?”

“Like you said. She’ll be all right.”

“Listen, Gunther, I want to talk to you, only not on the telephone. I don’t like telephones. Never have liked them. This number you’re on: 7-8075. That’s a Vedado number, right?”

“Yes. I live on Malecón.”

“Then we’re practically neighbors. I’m in a suite at the National Hotel. Could you come here at nine?”

I turned over a few polite rebuffs in my mind, but none of them sounded polite enough for a gangster like Meyer Lansky. So I said, “Sure. Why not? I could use a stroll along the seafront.”

“Do me a favor, will you?”

“I thought that’s what I was doing.”

“On your way over here, get me a couple of packs of Parliament, will you? The hotel’s run out.”

I walked west, along Malecón, bought Lansky’s smokes, and went into Havana’s largest hotel. This was more like a cathedral than Havana’s cathedral on Empedrado. The lobby was easily bigger than San Cristóbal’s nave, with a fine painted wooden ceiling that would have been the envy of many a medieval palacio . It smelled a lot better than the cathedral, too, since the hotel lobby was swarming with well-washed or even scented human traffic, although, to my tutored eye, the hotel itself looked badly understaffed, with long lines of guests in front of the reception desk, the cashier, and the concierge, like so many people queuing for tickets in a railway station. Somewhere, someone was playing a tinny piano that brought to mind a dance class in a girls’ ballet school. Four long-case clocks were arranged along the length of the lobby. They were not synchronized, and they struck the hour consecutively, one after the other, as if time itself was an elastic concept in Havana. Near the elevator doors was a wall adorned with a full-length picture of the president and his wife, both dressed in white-she in a two-piece tailored suit, and he in a tropical-weight military uniform. They looked like a cut-rate version of the Peróns.

I rode the elevator to the top of the building. In contrast with the railway-station atmosphere of the lobby, the executive floor was sepulchrally quiet. Very possibly it was even quieter than that, since most sepulchers don’t have carpets that run to ten dollars a square meter. The doors to the executive suites were all louvered, which may have been meant to help the free flow of air or cigar smoke. The whole floor smelled like a tobacco grower’s humidor.

Lansky’s suite was the only one with its own doorman. He was a tall man, wearing square sleeves and with a chest like a housekeeping cart. He turned to face me as I walked as silently as Hiawatha along the corridor, and I let him pat me down as if he were looking for his matches in my pockets. He didn’t find them. Then he opened the door, admitting me to a suite the size of an empty billiard hall. The atmosphere was every bit as hushed. But instead of another Jew with an overactive pituitary gland, I was met by a petite, green-eyed redhead in her forties who looked and sounded like a New York hairdresser. She smiled pleasantly, told me her name was Teddy, and that she was Meyer Lansky’s wife, and ushered me through a living room and a set of sliding windows onto a wraparound balcony.

Lansky was seated on a wicker chair, staring out into darkness over the sea, like Canute.

“You can’t see it,” he said. “The sea. But you can sure smell it. And you can hear it. Listen. Listen to that sound.” He held up his forefinger as if drawing my attention to the song of a nightingale on Berkeley Square.

I listened, carefully. In my unreliable ears it sounded very much like the sea.

“The way the sea draws back and off the beach and then begins again. Everything in this lousy world changes, but not that sound. For thousands of years that sound has always been exactly the same. That’s a sound I never get tired of.” He sighed. “And there are times when I get very tired of almost everything. Do you ever get like that, Gunther? Do you ever get tired?”

“Tired? Mr. Lansky, there are times when I get so tired of things that I think maybe I must be dead. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m sleeping all right, life might be almost intolerable.”

I gave him his cigarettes. He started to get out his wallet until I stopped him. “Keep it,” I told him. “I like the idea of you owing me money. It feels safer than the other way round.”

Lansky smiled. “Drink?”

“No, thanks. I like to keep a clear head when I’m talking business with Lucifer.”

“Is that what I am?”

I shrugged. “It takes one to know one.” I watched him light one of the cigarettes and added, “I mean, that is why I’m here, isn’t it? Business? I can’t imagine you want to reminisce about what a great guy Max was.”

Lansky gave me a narrow look.

“Before he died, Max told me all about you. Or at least as much as he knew. Gunther, I’ll come straight to the point. There were three reasons Max wanted you to work for him. You’re an ex-cop, you know hotels, and you’re not affiliated with any of the families who’ve got business here in Havana. I’ve got two of those reasons and one of my own that make me think you’re the man to find out who killed Max. Hear me out, please. The one thing we can’t have here in Havana is a gang war. It’s bad enough we’ve got the rebels. More trouble we don’t need. We can’t rely on the cops to investigate this thing properly. You must have gathered that yourself from your conversation with Captain Sánchez this morning. Actually, he’s not a bad cop at all. But I liked the way you spoke to him. And it strikes me that you’re not someone who’s easily intimidated. Not by cops. Not by me. Not by my associates.

“Anyway, I spoke to some of the other gentlemen you met last night, and we’re all of us of the opinion that we don’t want you managing the Saratoga, like you agreed with Max. Instead, we want you to investigate Max’s murder. Captain Sánchez will give you any assistance you require, but you can have carte blanche, so to speak. All we want is to avoid any possible dispute among ourselves. You do this, Gunther, you investigate this murder, and I’ll owe you more than the price of two packs of cigarettes. For one thing, I’ll pay you what Max was going to pay you. And for another, I’ll be your friend. You think about that before you say no. I can be a good friend to people who’ve done me a service. Anyway, my associates and myself, we’re all agreed. You can go anywhere. You can speak to anyone. The bosses. The soldiers. Wherever the evidence takes you. Sánchez won’t interfere. You say jump, he’ll ask how high.”

“It’s been a long time since I investigated a murder, Mr. Lansky.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“I’m not as diplomatic as I used to be, either. Dag Hammarskjöld, I am not. And just suppose I do find out who killed Max. What then? Have you considered that?”

“You let me worry about that, Gunther. Just make sure you speak to everyone. And that everyone can give you an alibi. Norman Rothman and Lefty Clark at the Sans Souci. Santo Trafficante at the Tropicana. My own people, the Cellini brothers at the Montmartre. Joe Stassi, Tom McGinty, Charlie White, Joe Rivers, Eddie Levinson, Moe Dalitz, Sam Tucker, Vincent Alo. Not forgetting the Cubans, of course: Amedeo Barletta and Amleto Battisti at the Hotel Sevilla. Relax. I’ll supply you with a list to work from. A list of suspects, if you like. With my name at the top.”

“That could take a while.”