Live by Night (Coughlin 2)

“Well, last night you met the owner of El Vedado Tropicale. This morning you meet the recording secretary of Circulo Cubano.” He smiled as if he were a teacher humoring two schoolchildren who’d likely repeat the grade. “Anyway,” he said, “thank you for your help.”

Joe and Dion nodded but said nothing.

“I have thirty men,” Esteban said, “but I estimate I’ll need thirty more. How many can you—”

Joe said, “We’re not committing any men. We’re not committing to anything.”

“No?” Graciela looked at Esteban. “I’m confused.”

“We’ve come to hear you out,” Joe said. “Whether we get involved from that point remains to be seen.”

Graciela took her seat beside Esteban. “Please don’t act like you have a choice. You’re gangsters who depend on a product supplied by one man and one man only. If you refuse us, your supply dries up.”

“In which case,” Joe said, “we go to war. And we’ll win, because we’ve got numbers and, Esteban, you don’t. I’ve looked into it. You want me to risk my life against the United States military? I’ll take my chances against a few dozen Cubans on the streets of Tampa. At least I know what I’ll be fighting for.”

“Profit,” Graciela said.

Joe said, “A way to make a living.”

“A criminal way.”

“What do you do?” He leaned forward, his eyes scanning the room. “Sit around here, counting your Oriental rugs?”

“I roll cigars, Mr. Coughlin, at La Trocha. I sit in a wooden chair and do this from ten every morning until eight every evening. When you leered at me on the platform yesterday—”

“I didn’t leer at you.”

“—that was my first day off in two weeks. And when I’m not working, I volunteer here.” She gave him a bitter smile. “So don’t let the pretty dress fool you.”

The dress was even more threadbare than the one she’d worn yesterday. It was cotton with a gypsy girdle straddling a flounced skirt, at least a year out of style, maybe two, washed and worn so many times it had traded its original color for something not-quite-white, not-quite-tan.

“Donations paid for this club,” Esteban said smoothly. “Its doors are kept open the same way. When Cubans go out on a Friday night, they want to go to a place where they can dress up, a place that makes them feel like they are back in Havana, a place with style. Pizzazz, yes?” He snapped his fingers. “In here, nobody calls us spics or mud men. We are free to speak our language and sing our songs and recite our poetry.”

“Well, that’s nice. Why don’t you tell me why I should poetically raid a navy transport ship on your behalf rather than just overthrow your whole organization?”

Graciela opened her mouth at that, eyes aflame, but Esteban stopped her with a hand to her knee. “You’re correct—you could probably overthrow my operation. But what would you get but a few buildings? My supply routes, my contacts in Havana, all the people I work with in Cuba—they would never work with you. So, do you really want to kill the golden goose for some buildings and a few old cases of rum?”

Joe met his smile with one of his own. They were starting to understand each other. They didn’t respect each other yet, but the possibility was there.

Joe jerked his thumb behind him. “You take those photos in the hallway?”

“Most of them.”

“What don’t you do, Esteban?”

Esteban removed his hand from Graciela’s knee and sat back. “Do you know much about Cuban politics, Mr. Coughlin?”

“No,” Joe said, “and I don’t need to. It won’t help me get this job done.”

Esteban crossed his ankles. “How about Nicaragua?”

“We put down a rebellion there a few years back, if I remember right.”

“That’s where the weapons are going,” Graciela said. “And there was no rebellion. Your country occupies theirs just like they occupy mine when they see fit.”

“Take it up with the Platt Amendment.”

That put a rise in one of her eyebrows. “An educated gangster?”

“I’m not a gangster, I’m an outlaw,” he said, although he wasn’t sure that was true anymore. “And there’s not much else to do where I’ve spent the last two years but read. So why’s the navy running guns to Nicaragua?”

“They’ve opened a military training school there,” Esteban said. “To train the armies and police of Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Panama, of course, how to best remind the peasants of their place.”

Joe said, “So you’re going to steal weapons from the U.S. Navy and reapportion them to Nicaraguan rebels?”

“Nicaragua is not my fight,” Esteban said.

“So you’re going to arm Cuban rebels.”

A nod. “Machado is no president. He is a common thief with a gun.”

“So you’ll steal from our military to overthrow your military?”

Esteban gave that a small tip of his head.

Graciela said, “Does it bother you?”

“Don’t mean shit to me.” Joe looked over at Dion. “Bother you?”

Dion asked Graciela, “You ever think if you people could police yourselves, maybe pick a leader who didn’t loot you six ways from Sunday five minutes after getting sworn in, we wouldn’t have to keep occupying you?”

Graciela fixed him in a flat stare. “I think if we didn’t have a cash crop you wanted for yourselves, you’d have never heard of Cuba.”

Dion looked over at Joe. “What do I care? Let’s hear this plan.”

Joe turned to Esteban. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”

Esteban’s eyes registered offense for the first time. “We have a man who will be calling on the boat tonight. He’ll cause a diversion in a forward compartment and—”

“What kind of diversion?” Dion asked.

“A fire. When they go to put it out, we’ll go down to the hold and pull out the weapons.”

“The hold will be locked.”

Esteban gave them a confident smile. “We have bolt cutters for that.”

“You’ve seen the lock?”

“It’s been described to me.”

Dion leaned forward. “But you don’t know what kind of material it’s made of. It could be stronger than your bolt cutters.”