always wondered why others couldn’t do the same.
After dessert, the men wandered out to the street, the palm trees making brushy sounds in the wind. All along the shops, men and women in suits and rags flowed down the narrow brick road—too narrow for cars—buying and selling candy, exotic birds, European suits, eyeglasses, and themselves. The men couldn’t walk five feet without hearing the standard Tss-tss from a hidden cove in a closed shop and seeing teenage girls in sequined dresses, faces impossibly made up with a hundred types of rouge and lipstick. Their small breasts pressed and propped for display in low-cut tops.
He saw one about his daughter’s age and it made him sick to his stomach.
Small white lights hung over the narrow brick street, and the night was brisk and cold. Raft kept talking about getting Eartha Kitt for the grand opening of the Capri and tried to make not-so-subtle hints to Santo about increasing the budget so they could make the place even better than what Lansky was building. Not that they were in competition; hell, if one member of the Syndicato hit it big they all did.
Raft and Longo and Santo smiled as they drove ten miles outside the city to the Sans Souci and headed up through the wandering hills and down a palm tree-lined road, where the air through the open windows smelled of salt and burning sugarcane, ending at the front door of the old Spanish villa. A man in a maroon coat held open the door for the men and took them back to the Nevada Room. There, a magician named Mickey, who they’d found in Atlantic City—a brother-in-law to an important family—performed card tricks with two six-foot-tall blondes in pasties while Raft told a story about a man he’d seen perform some kind of show with his two-foot schlong in Chinatown.
Santo wasn’t listening, too intent on watching the man in the tuxedo place the Cuban girl’s head into a guillotine and a carrot under her chin.
“I hear Batista is going to let that Castro fellow go,” Raft said.
Santo turned back to him as the magician set up the trick. “I don’t think that’s a good plan.”
“He’s some kind of hero to these people,” Raft said. “You kill him and they’ll turn him into Jesus Christ.”
Santo cleaned his glasses and slipped them back on his face. The world out of focus, with all the green, blue, and yellow lights of the dim room, and then back clear again.
The blade fell quickly through the guillotine and sliced right through the carrot while leaving one of the blondes—her head seemingly cut clean with a blade—still smiling.
“Sometimes I wonder about all this money, Santo,” Raft said. He dabbed at his perfectly oiled hair in the nightclub light and took a sip of a gin martini. “It’s all sunshine and palm trees and women. But this can’t last. This place is restless as hell.”
“You really worried about Castro?” Santo asked. “Don’t you read the papers? He’s just some kind of bandit.”
“Easy come, easy go,” Raft said. “I made ten million in my life. Spent it all on gambling, booze, and women. The rest I can spend foolishly.”
Raft laughed and laughed at that. A joke he’d told a million times.
Santo had heard it a million and two. But he liked it and liked Raft and liked being in Havana with beautiful girls in pasties with a good, cold Cuba Libre and the healthy flush of a nice tan.
An old couple stopped by the table and asked Raft for an autograph, and he stood and hugged the old woman, talking about what was wrong with the movie business these days.
Longo leaned over and whispered. “They’re looking at Johnny. I don’t know much else. It’s all over the papers.”
Santo heard the drumroll and watched the plump blonde being led into a box with the magician holding her hand. Her thick, white ass jiggled in green panties as she was swallowed into a black box.
“Do we know what Charlie was saying to the newsmen?”
“No, sir. We do not.”
“Make some
After dessert, the men wandered out to the street, the palm trees making brushy sounds in the wind. All along the shops, men and women in suits and rags flowed down the narrow brick road—too narrow for cars—buying and selling candy, exotic birds, European suits, eyeglasses, and themselves. The men couldn’t walk five feet without hearing the standard Tss-tss from a hidden cove in a closed shop and seeing teenage girls in sequined dresses, faces impossibly made up with a hundred types of rouge and lipstick. Their small breasts pressed and propped for display in low-cut tops.
He saw one about his daughter’s age and it made him sick to his stomach.
Small white lights hung over the narrow brick street, and the night was brisk and cold. Raft kept talking about getting Eartha Kitt for the grand opening of the Capri and tried to make not-so-subtle hints to Santo about increasing the budget so they could make the place even better than what Lansky was building. Not that they were in competition; hell, if one member of the Syndicato hit it big they all did.
Raft and Longo and Santo smiled as they drove ten miles outside the city to the Sans Souci and headed up through the wandering hills and down a palm tree-lined road, where the air through the open windows smelled of salt and burning sugarcane, ending at the front door of the old Spanish villa. A man in a maroon coat held open the door for the men and took them back to the Nevada Room. There, a magician named Mickey, who they’d found in Atlantic City—a brother-in-law to an important family—performed card tricks with two six-foot-tall blondes in pasties while Raft told a story about a man he’d seen perform some kind of show with his two-foot schlong in Chinatown.
Santo wasn’t listening, too intent on watching the man in the tuxedo place the Cuban girl’s head into a guillotine and a carrot under her chin.
“I hear Batista is going to let that Castro fellow go,” Raft said.
Santo turned back to him as the magician set up the trick. “I don’t think that’s a good plan.”
“He’s some kind of hero to these people,” Raft said. “You kill him and they’ll turn him into Jesus Christ.”
Santo cleaned his glasses and slipped them back on his face. The world out of focus, with all the green, blue, and yellow lights of the dim room, and then back clear again.
The blade fell quickly through the guillotine and sliced right through the carrot while leaving one of the blondes—her head seemingly cut clean with a blade—still smiling.
“Sometimes I wonder about all this money, Santo,” Raft said. He dabbed at his perfectly oiled hair in the nightclub light and took a sip of a gin martini. “It’s all sunshine and palm trees and women. But this can’t last. This place is restless as hell.”
“You really worried about Castro?” Santo asked. “Don’t you read the papers? He’s just some kind of bandit.”
“Easy come, easy go,” Raft said. “I made ten million in my life. Spent it all on gambling, booze, and women. The rest I can spend foolishly.”
Raft laughed and laughed at that. A joke he’d told a million times.
Santo had heard it a million and two. But he liked it and liked Raft and liked being in Havana with beautiful girls in pasties with a good, cold Cuba Libre and the healthy flush of a nice tan.
An old couple stopped by the table and asked Raft for an autograph, and he stood and hugged the old woman, talking about what was wrong with the movie business these days.
Longo leaned over and whispered. “They’re looking at Johnny. I don’t know much else. It’s all over the papers.”
Santo heard the drumroll and watched the plump blonde being led into a box with the magician holding her hand. Her thick, white ass jiggled in green panties as she was swallowed into a black box.
“Do we know what Charlie was saying to the newsmen?”
“No, sir. We do not.”
“Make some
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