William Kennedy - Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

“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.

“Viva Cooney,” Renata said. “I’m on his team.”

“I’ve read Hemingway,” Alfie said. “He knows guns. Cooney’s in trouble.”

“Would you really arrange it?” Renata asked.

“Why would Hemingway even consider this? And why involve me? He’s got a brigade of acolytes. But if he really does ask me to arrange the duel of the century, I’ll do it, and put you both on the weapons committee.”

“You should set it up in Madison Square Garden,” Alfie said.

“Cooney’s not a contender,” Quinn said.

The steaks arrived and at mid-meal the headwaiter came over to Alfie to whisper the buzz in the room — Colonel Fermín Quesada had arrived in the casino fifteen minutes ago. Quesada, the army commander in the city of Holguín, the latest of Batista’s avengers, had become the most hated figure in Cuba to the rebels. Alfie passed the news of his presence to Renata and Quinn on the chance they would consider it a threat. Quinn and Alfie agreed they had done a bit of gun handling, but who knew that? Quinn looked at Renata in her new whites. Did she look like a quarry of the army or police? With that wig she didn’t even look like she looked yesterday. Renata said she was fine; they all felt remote from official scrutiny.

“I don’t have sides in this revolution,” Alfie said, “but that puke of a man, I could empty a pistol into his face right here. Last Christmas Eve everybody in Cuba is with the family, right? Noche Buena. And he arrests twenty-five men, one with seven kids, Twenty-sixth of July people mostly. A union leader, one from Prío’s party, young guys, couple of commies. The soldiers are friendly, just come with us for a few questions, and they take them out of the houses and on the road they break their ribs, strangle them, hang them, shoot them, dump them. Two sons of my cousin Arsenio, an old outlaw who helped Fidel from the beginning, the army wouldn’t tell him anything. Then a taxi driver tells him they found two bodies. They’d cut half the face off one of his sons. The other son they machine-gunned his crotch. Somebody heard a lieutenant say, ‘He won’t fuck anymore.’ I’m looking for that lieutenant.”

Noche Buena stopped revolutionary activity in Holguín for weeks, and overnight Quesada was the army’s exemplar of Cuban peace through death. The army promoted him to colonel, Batista gave him a dinner at the Palace, and suddenly he was a candidate to lead the battle against Fidel in the Sierra. Now here he is playing roulette with the commander of Cuban intelligence.