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

Salas marched his troops into the embassy, flouting the international convention that protects asylum seekers, slaughtered the Matanzas six and exchanged fire with the three newly arrived armed rebels, who all fell. One policeman was wounded. Salas, who could have served as a body double for Oliver Hardy, strode into the first-floor room and stood over the fallen trio, his lower belly and groin bulging under his trousers below the edge of his bullet-proof vest. Javier, dying on his back with a privileged vision of this exposure, slightly elevated his right hand, which still held a machine pistol and, with terminal energy, fired his last shot into the center of the puffcake. The police chief joined the fallen, lingered two days in a hospital, and died.

Within an hour of Renata’s arrival at the Brazilian embassy the Cuban police knew she had found asylum, but the international outcry against Salas’s contravention of protocol kept them from a second invasion. Renata announced to her soul that she would make a pilgrimage to Babalu Aye to thank him and his brother for their vigilance on her behalf.

Quinn had just been served his reheated chicken dinner when he saw Gloria threading her way across the DeWitt ballroom to report that Roy’s bail was the expected five thousand. Renata and Max left the table with her and walked toward the lobby where Quinn imagined Max in a shadowy corner counting off the five in cash and passing it to his daughter to liberate a young man whose intimacy with her helped liberate her into near suicide.

From a lobby phone Renata called her contact in New Jersey, Cuca, whom she’d known since childhood but never knew her politics, but who had worked for Fidel in Havana until she was marked, then fled to Miami where she raised money for Fidel; and after the revolution she stayed on with Fidel’s extended intelligence family. Cuca said it was a go for Renata’s unnamed friend. He drives to Plattsburgh and leaves his car where Avis can pick it up. He meets his driver and they go twenty miles to the ruins of Fort Montgomery in Rouses Point. Max walks north through a cattle pasture and thin woods, not half a mile, and he’s in Canada. His driver crosses the border on 9-B which turns into Canadian route 223 and meets Max north of the Customs House. They drive two days to Gander and Max pays the driver one thousand dollars, then flies to Havana.

“I can’t lug my suitcase through that,” Max said.

“Travel light, leave it here,” Renata said.

Max walked her out of lobby traffic, down an empty hallway.

“That bag is full of money,” he said. “It was insane to carry it all, but when I heard they’d raided Alfie and were looking for me, I was gone in ten minutes. Your contact may be getting me on the road, but this money could get me into Cuba. Fidel doesn’t do charity work.”

“If you give it to Fidel how will you live?”

“I’ll keep a few bucks. He wouldn’t want an americano on the dole down there.”

“Is this Alfie’s money?”

“I made it through him. But it’s mine.”

“How much money are you talking about?”

“Nine hundred thousand, plus. I didn’t have time to count it.”

“You carried that much money on an airplane?”

“I chartered a plane from Miami.”

“Max, what did you do to get such money?”

“I bought some weed with my own money and sold it to a few of Alfie’s clients. Alfie didn’t care. He deals in multiple millions.”

Renata shook her head. Who can believe such talk?

“Can I trust this driver of yours not to mug me?” Max said.

“I’d trust my contact with anything.”

“I don’t trust anybody when it’s money.”

“She doesn’t know you have money. Bury it, draw a map.”

“I know a dealer who buried three million and can’t remember where. Don’t trust anybody, not even yourself. Your calls to your contact were probably tapped.”

“We use pay phones. We know how to avoid the tap.”

“They tap pay phones.”

“The way we talk nobody knows what we mean. Put your money in a safe deposit box.”

“That’s about as safe as a mail box.” Max touched her shoulder. “Renata, I need you to hold this money for me.”

“You’re not serious. I can’t do that. I can’t.”

“Yes you can. You know how to protect it, where to hide it. I have no time, and it’s too risky to carry it. I think I came to Albany to put the money in your hands, and I didn’t know that until this minute. I’ll pay you well. How does fifty thousand sound? Consider it yours, right now. When I need the rest I’ll have someone pick it up. If anybody kills me all the money is yours, you’re a millionaire overnight. I worship you, Renata. I don’t trust anybody but I trust you with my life, and my fortune, if you think a million’s a fortune. You’re my primary beneficiary.”

“What about Gloria?”

“I’ll take good care of her. But she really doesn’t need my money. She has Esme.”

“You want to turn me into a drug dealer.”

“Nobody will link this money to drugs.”

“If they link it to you they will. How would I explain such cash? Esto es ridículo, Max, ridículo .”

“This is family. Your sister’s rich and I’m your brother-in-law, and we’ve been pushing money at each other for years. Esme will swear to that. Worst-case scenario you have to pay some taxes. But keep it hidden. You are smart, my love, very smart. You can do it.”

“I have to tell Quinn about this.”

“I can trust Quinn.”

“He doesn’t trust you.”

“That’s about you, not money.”

“He won’t let me do it.”

“Do it without him.”

“I could never do it alone. I’m not as smart as you think I am.”

“So you won’t do it?”

They walked back to the lobby and she stared toward the ballroom. She could hear the music, faintly. Quinn will go crazy. “I will ask him,” she told Max. I am a lunatic, yes? Yes. “Maybe we keep it until you are in Cuba, but then you send someone or I bury it and send you the map.”

“Perfect,” said Max.

“I’m not sure Quinn will think it is perfect.”

She left Max in the lobby and walked into the ballroom and sat beside her husband to persuade him to become a felon. Quinn heard the urgency in her voice and went with her toward the lobby but stopped short of Max.

“You can get ten years for this,” he said.

“It’s saving his life. We keep it until he’s in Cuba, then he sends for it. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“It’s piss money,” Quinn said. “Shit money.”

“But money. Much money, free money.”

“If they trace it to him you’ll look like the head of his syndicate. So will I.”

“All we do is hide one suitcase. We could bury it in the woods.”

“I buried a treasure when I was a kid. A week later I went to dig it up and it was gone.”

“I’ll divide it up, put it in different safe deposit boxes.”

“All under your own name?”

“So put it behind one of our walls, make a new wall.”

“I don’t want it in the house.”

“Are you saying no to Max? Are you saying no to me?”

“I’m saying he should find another patsy to mind his loot. It’s a lousy thing to do to you. To us.”

“He is a fugitive. You want him to go to jail? Do you hate Max so much?”

“Aiding a fugitive, another felony.”

“So you are forbidding me to do this?”

Max came toward them.

“Where’s your goddamn car?” Quinn said to him.

“Just outside,” Max said. “Very close.”

“I love you, Quinn,” Renata said.