Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“All right, he’s big, he’s important. He came to America as an immigrant kid. Life was tough. He made his way. It’s the common story. I didn’t ever want to know everything. He’s been good to me. Look, Sam, I get your point. I believe you. But it makes no difference. I don’t care how important he is. I don’t admire his line of work, and I don’t think he’s flying down here for me.”

“Why not? It’s been a long time since he’s seen you. Remember what you said when I asked if you fucked Zeva? You said, ‘I didn’t hear you, Sam,’ or something like that.” His tone was melancholy and nostalgic, as if he’d referred to the distant past.

“I remember. So do you. You have an ear for facts. What are you getting at now? Are you setting me up for something? I don’t like the feeling, Sam.”

His ears — I hadn’t noticed until that instant — protruded slightly; long and batlike; fact-catchers. He dipped his head, in a tiny, sheepish, Oriental bow, to concede the point.

“When I was a boy, I knew the statistics for every player in the major leagues. I could name the capital of every country in the world. I love facts. Do you know, in the state of Florida, you’re never more than sixty miles from water? Don’t get so excited. You feel strongly for the Cuban bitch. I approve. You want to protect her honor. Maybe you have Latin blood. Maybe you’d die for la familia. But right now you’re suffering from culture shock.” He stabbed the tabletop with his fingertip. “Here, you’re in America, not Berkeley. Miami is America and I’m trying to tell you something. I don’t think you can hear me. Let me — please — tell you something. In the human brain there are two major centers. One is for sex, the other is for aggression. They lie side by side. Cut the links between them and a natural human person becomes a fucking liberal. Somebody cut your links?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“César Chávez says, ‘Don’t eat grapes,’ so you don’t eat grapes?”

“Damn right I don’t. You’ve got my number. Is it all right to change the subject now, or do you intend to finish the story?”

He sighed, rubbed his eyes again. As though much discouraged, he continued. His voice went flat and thick.

“The rest is obvious. Some women were sent by Zev. When they came down from the mountains, Zev put them on airplanes to places like Zurich, Caracas, Stockholm. Different ambassadors helped him. The same later, after the revolution. The women still live in distant places with their sons. We call these women Vessels. The sons we call Potentates.”

“That’s very poetic.”

“Everything is in Zeva’s thumb.”

“That sure isn’t what I told her. I feel like a liar. Fidel knows about his familia?”

“He has received photographs. He sees boys becoming young men. No question who is the father. Fidel is prepotent, you know what I mean? It’s a technical fact.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the stud is prepotent, it doesn’t matter what the woman looks like. Fidel’s baby grows up big, handsome, smart, with a memory for detail. It talks when it’s six months old and never stops. By the time it’s six years old, it’s kicking ass. No kid on the block can handle it. Beat it with a baseball club and it comes off the floor fighting. You follow me? I’m talking about a hero.”

“Sounds like a pit bull.”

“Fidel is no longer young. The revolution no longer feels to him like his personal expression. He finds himself looking at the photos. He cares. He needs these sons. He is ready to deal. That guy in the water bothers you, but we had to send a strong message. No other way. He was dead before he left Havana. Or you were dead.”

“Zev risked my life to send a message?”

“It was the first stage of our negotiations. The last is when the Potentates go to Havana, and Zev’s women leave.”

“What about his daughters? He had none?”

“Sure he did. There’s one right in Havana. He sends her Christmas presents. That’s a fact. But he’ll bargain only for Potentates. Zev wants you to find them. You won’t talk to reporters, won’t sell the story, won’t make deals on the side with the Vessels, or subcontract with other operatives. You won’t even think about that kind of shit. We’ll have Zeva in a couple of days and you two will fly to Zurich. You go to the bank and open the box. You’ll find cash and bankbooks in the names of the Vessels. Give the bankbooks to the manager. He’ll show you the status of each account along with addresses in different cities. With the cash you and Zeva play while you find the Potentates and put them on planes to Havana. You have a month. After that Zeva’s passport is invalid. If she isn’t back in Havana, Consuelo is dead.”

“I can imagine us playing. How many sons?”

“Some Vessels miscarried, and some, like I told you, had daughters. Of twenty-eight babies, fifteen sons.”

“Zev wants me to find fifteen men I never saw in my life, who could be anywhere in the world, and put them on planes to Havana?”

“They won’t be so hard to find. They look like him. Maybe a couple are dead. There could be a few it wouldn’t be wise to send to Fidel. You have to study them; use good judgment. Figure, eleven. Maybe less. Look, Consuelo is already in jail. You understand? It’s under way.”

“What if they won’t go?” I said, panic in my heart. “Not everybody is like me.”

This was like agreeing that I might go. Unthinkable, but I’d said the words. Not everyone is like me, including me, but I’d been shoved over the edge with news about Consuelo. Sam picked up the implicit agreement. As if the main issue were settled, his mood changed. Encouraged, he said, “Tell a guy in France or Norway he’s won a free trip to Cuba, and you think he won’t go? Miami is full of European tourists and Latin Americans. Not only drug barons. We’ve also got former dictators and their dependents who are to a high degree scumbags. They drive around in fancy cars, wearing gold chains and no shirts. Like the guy who lives across from me. He parks on my grass. I asked him nicely not to do it, but he keeps on doing it.”

“Must be a scumbag.”

“I’ve been feeding broken-glass hamburgers to his watchdog.”

“Sam, I have an idea. You and Zev write letters to the Potentates and stick plane tickets to Havana in the letters. I’ll help.”

“We don’t know who they are. And maybe you’re right, some won’t go. We’ll tell you how to encourage them.”

“You think I’m a travel agent.”

“That could be your cover — a business card, official papers, home office in Miami, secretaries answering the phone.”

I detected in Sam’s long narrow face, broken by the glint of small dark eyes, an idea of me passing across his features like a breeze across a lake. It touched the strong nose, the sensuous droop of his lower lip. But it wasn’t me. He saw the travel agent. There’d been a flash of intenser concentration on my presence, like an animal fixed in his gunsight stare, through which I could see Zev’s stare, his invincible determination of how things will be; and I saw that I had nothing to say about it, only to behave as Zev assumed I would, because I wasn’t a crook and there was nothing I wanted.

I said, “There are chores I have to do in Berkeley. Not very important, but they’re my life, such as it is. Otherwise, I’d leave for Zurich this minute. What the hell. Why not? Zev is my favorite uncle. I owe him plenty.”

“What do you have to do? I mean have to do. Like pay some bills?”

“That’s right. Like pay some bills. Telephone, gas, electric …”

“Like pick up your car at the dealership?”