José Latour

Grove Press

ISBN: 0–8021-4186–2 (Paperback)

Chap­ter One

The last day that Angelo Dick spent in Havana, Cuba—October 1, 1958—began in a most aus­picious way around 2 a.m., in the ascend­ing ele­va­tor cage of the plush, twenty-two-story apart­ment build­ing where he lived. Angelo appre­cia­tively eyed the smil­ing, pretty brunette hold­ing a blue plas­tic ring a yard in diam­e­ter. He was wont to flirt with regal dames from the Havana nightlife, but this hus­tler was a sight for sore eyes. Five foot six in three-inch heels, mid-twenties, green eyes, coal-black hair that tum­bled down her back, full lips, creamy skin, and a taw­dry but per­fectly fit­ted dress which insin­u­ated a great body.

“What’s that for?” he had just asked on the ground floor, point­ing to the weird con­trap­tion, as they waited for the elevator.

“You’ll see,” had been her enig­matic answer.

Angelo had spot­ted her for the first time that same evening, a lit­tle after 10 p.m., when she’d set foot in Casino de Capri on the arm of a middle-aged Nor­we­gian sales­man. As the cou­ple tra­versed the gam­bling hall, headed for the night­club, Angelo and sev­eral patrons had peered at the object. Why did the babe bring that to a casino and night-club? What pur­pose did it serve? The damn thing was eclips­ing a flesh-and-blood god­dess, the gam­ing exec­u­tive had thought. Sud­denly he had real­ized it was a fab­u­lous sales gimmick.

Three hours later he had seen her again, calmly sashay­ing among casino tables, hop­ing to be picked up. But as Angelo very well knew, com­pul­sive gam­blers won’t leave a table for a dame, not even for an Ava Gard­ner look-alike car­ry­ing an intrigu­ing plas­tic ring. The Nor­we­gian was nowhere to be seen.

Nick Di Con­stanzo, Casino de Capri’s gen­eral man­ager, had repeat­edly warned all those under him never to mix busi­ness with plea­sure. You want to have a drink, sweet-talk a broad, engage in con­ver­sa­tion with a friend, you do it after hours. But Angelo was only human. Tired of call girls, he felt like a ring girl. So, he had approached the young woman with a jaunty step and his most engag­ing smile, accom­pa­nied her to the bar, ordered the bar­tender to serve the lady what­ever she pleased, and said he would be free in less than an hour.

Dur­ing the short walk from Casino de Capri to the build­ing where he had rented apart­ment 15-A almost a year ear­lier, a mere three blocks, Angelo had learned that her name was Glo­ria, “glory” in Span­ish. He had felt sure it was going to be a glo­ri­ous night indeed. The only thing that Angelo didn’t approve of in this par­tic­u­lar broad was her per­fume: Chanel No. 5. Ever since Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe went pub­lic on what she wore to bed, he hadn’t found a high-priced chip­pie who smelled different.

And finally, sit­ting on his liv­ing room couch, sip­ping his first drink of the night, Angelo dis­cov­ered what pur­pose the ring served. Glo­ria took a moment to change the posi­tion of a floor lamp and the cof­fee table, placed the sound track of The Eddie Duchin Story on the record player, and stripped as she danced. Once buck naked, she started rotat­ing the hula hoop with such a slow, sen­sual sway­ing of her hips that it looked as though grav­ity had been conquered.

As a man of the world, Angelo had seen a lot. He knew that cer­tain moments in life merit spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion, and on this par­tic­u­lar night, for some rea­son he couldn’t define, he sus­pected that he was watch­ing a unique per­for­mance he’d never see again. Angelo wanted to pro­long this very pri­vate show as long as pos­si­ble, mem­o­rize every­thing, includ­ing its con­comi­tants: the music, the soft light­ing, the fla­vor of the Black Label high­ball. But Glo­ria slith­ered lan­guorously across the room, get­ting nearer every few sec­onds. After three min­utes, Angelo suc­cumbed to the erotic flex­i­bil­ity radi­at­ing from her superb body. They rolled over the car­pet kiss­ing and touch­ing in blind sex­ual frenzy as he pulled his clothes off.

Angelo Dick kissed Glo­ria good-bye next to the front door at 6:30 a.m., when the ris­ing sun was puri­fy­ing the green­ish tint of his liv­ing room’s pic­ture win­dow and the char­coal gray of the nearby sea. Amaz­ing what twenty bucks buys in this town, Casino de Capri’s hall super­vi­sor con­cluded five min­utes later as he flopped onto his bed. He signed off smelling Gloria’s per­fume on his pillow.

Nearly five and a half hours later, the ring­ing phone on the bed­side table awoke him. The Bre­itling strapped to Angelo’s left wrist read 11:58. Who can it be at this hour, for Chris­sake? Angelo reg­is­tered the dis­com­fort of a full blad­der and a slight hang­over as he propped him­self on his elbow and picked up the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Hold the line, Angelo,” a bari­tone voice said.