Voodoo Eyes (22 page)

Gwenver walked ahead of Max. People stood as he neared their tables, or, if he wasn’t in their immediate orbit, left their seats and came over to greet him. He gave the men skin and the women kisses. The women made eyes at him, a few whispered things in his ear – in full view of their male companions. There was due deference and due ass-kissing. There were insincere smiles and forced laughter and plenty of backslaps.

They took the table at the very end of the restaurant, opposite a fully stocked bar.

Gwenver sat with his back to the wall and ordered a rum on the rocks. Max asked for the first thing that came to mind. A Coke. He realised immediately that he’d asked for the impossible, but the man had already disappeared behind the bar.

‘You don’t drink alcohol?’ asked Gwenver.

‘I quit.’

‘Problems with it?’ Gwenver’s right eyebrow arched up in a snowy arrowhead.

‘No. Just lost the taste.’

Gwenver smiled.

There were two menus and a heavy marble ashtray on the table.

Max glanced through the menu. The meals were written in Chinese first, with Spanish translations beneath in brackets: pizza on one page, pasta on the next, drinks on the back.

‘Where do I go if I want dim sum?’ he asked.

‘Know how you tell a Cuban from a tourist at a Chinese restaurant? The Cuban’s the one eating pizza.’

‘I didn’t know pizza counted as Chinese food.’

‘Cubans love their pizzas, man.’

The waiter came back with the drinks. After displaying the Coke bottle – a genuine hourglass one with greeny blue tint – he poured Max’s drink with great care and ceremony, as though dispensing fine wine. He was very careful not to make the Coke froth over the side of the glass, before leaving the bottle on the table.

Gwenver mumbled something to the waiter as he set his rum down. The waiter nodded and walked away.

The conversations were quiet and impossible to hear, their particulars inaudible under the sound of busy cutlery on plates.

‘What is this place?’ Max asked.

‘What’s it look like?’

‘A restaurant. But an exclusive one, the kind you can’t just walk into.’

‘Then that’s what it is,’ said Gwenver.

‘Not very socialist.’

‘That’s the thing about Cuba: nothin’s as it seems and nothin’s as it should be. What you think you know, you don’t.’

Gwenver took a sip of his drink.

Max picked up the Coke bottle and scanned it for bottling information. He found it, below the curled logo: Pensacola, Florida.

‘You can get anythin’ you want here, you know the where to look, the who to ask – and the how to ask.’ Gwenver winked.

‘Even if it’s made in America?’

‘Especially if it’s made in America,’ said Gwenver. He downed his rum. Max had noticed how Gwenver’s way of looking at him had changed. Prior to walking through the door, he’d had an open, almost happy look about him: the tour guide eager to share his enthusiasm for the country, the blissfully brainwashed propagandist peddling his manifesto for this threadbare utopia. Now Gwenver was scrutinising Max like he was some rare species of bug he’d trapped under a glass – looking at the way he was put together, working out how hard he’d have to pull to break off wings.

‘Via the black market?’ asked Max.

‘The black market’s what’s keeping the government in power.’.

‘How’s that?’

‘Dictatorships always collapse when somethin’ essential runs out, somethin’ people can’t do without,’ he said. ‘Most people will put up with anythin’, as long as they have three basic things: food, water and a roof over their heads. Cubans get their food from the state. Everyone has a ration book. Every month they line up outside the government stores and get their allowance of rice, beans, some kind of meat – usually chicken or pork, rarely both. It’s their constitutional right to get them things. Castro’s equivalent of forty acres and a mule.

‘That’s meant to last a month, but they’re lucky if they make it to week three before one of the staples runs out. And then there’s always shortages. The well has a way of goin’ dry here right when you’re dyin’ of thirst. Been that way since the Russians stopped subsidisin’ the country and Cuba had to fend for itself. That’s where the black market kicks in. People don’t like spendin’ more than they can afford on stuff, but if it’s a choice between doin’ that or startin’ a riot, finding a few extra pesos is easier, and healthier.’

‘Castro knows about this?’

‘Sure. He knows about everythin’. Publicly, he doesn’t stand for it. Publicly, black marketeers are enemies of the revolution, scum of the earth,
parasitos.
That’s the five-hour speech. Privately, he accepts it. He knows no one under forty’s a socialist here anyway,’ said Gwenver.

‘Now, there’s two kinds of black market – micro and macro. Micro’s your standard solo, money-on-the-side hustle. And there’s a million different skins to that onion. One is – say I’m workin’ in a government food store. I’ll keep a few sacks of rice and beans by and tell the government my delivery came up short and can I have some more? No one bothers to check. Why go through all that trouble for a few pounds of rice? So I get replacement stock. I divide up the food I stashed and sell it privately for one or two times the goin’ rate. Sometimes more, if there’s a national shortage. Then there’s the trade in toiletries. Most tourists leave behind soap, shampoo, toothbrushes. The maids keep it and either use it themselves or sell it. It’s a tidy lil’ bidniss. Do you know bein’ a maid in a big hotel actually pays more than a doctor earns, when you factor in tips and extras? It’s fucked up, but it’s true.

‘You know how they say history repeats itself? Well, the replay started here in the nineties. There’s more hookers now than in Batista’s time. Full-time hookers, part-time hookers, only-on-weekends hookers. The revolution’s made whores of all its granddaughters. The young women now, they use their bodies first, their brains second. Their bodies get them what they want and they use their brains to keep it. The nightclubs and brothels are back. Soon there’ll be peepshows, casinos and neon on the Malecón again. Folk are just as broke as they was before and twice as miserable,’ Gwenver went on. ‘Take a good look around and take a big whiff, ’cause the Cuba you seein’ today is all comin’ to an end real soon. When the Castros go, that’s it. Five, ten years’ time, and it’ll be another Puerto Rico or Bahamas. The revolution’s come full circle, baby. It’s over. Played out.’

‘That doesn’t bother you?’

‘Nope.’

Gwenver took an ice cube out of the glass, popped it in his mouth and chewed down on it, making the sound of heavy feet on gravel. He looked over Max’s shoulder and waved to someone.

‘What about the macro side of the black market?’ asked Max.

‘Now
that,
my man, is a whole other conversation.’

‘That’s what you do, right?’ said Max, glancing down at the Coke bottle. And that’s when he noticed a small red blemish on the first white ‘o’ of the brand name. When he looked closer, he saw what it really was – a pair of wings, identical in shape to the ones on the bullet casings. The mark of the Abakuás. It didn’t surprise him – Wendy Peck had said they supplied every restaurant and bar in Cuba – but noticing the symbol for the first time here chilled him.

Gwenver was working for them.

Max felt his balls shrivel and his stomach tighten.

‘Enough about me,’ said Gwenver. ‘Let’s talk about you.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘What do you do?’

‘I told you. I’m a freelance writer.’

‘Yeah, but what do you do
really?
You ain’t a Fed ’cause you’re too old for a gig like this. And you ain’t the CIA ’cause they wouldn’t send a white guy here. Be a black spic. Which narrows you down to three: cop, bounty hunter, private dick. Which is it?’

Max heard the sound of windchimes from his left and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the drapes undulating slightly, the hem of the fabric rippling, as if from a draft.

He heard the door behind him close, a key turning in the lock and the snap of a bolt. He turned his head. The restaurant was empty. The plates still lay on the tables, pizzas in various stages of demolition, glasses halfway to empty, the dirty cutlery resting on napkins. He hadn’t heard anyone leave. It was as if the clientele had simply been erased.

‘You a writer, I’m Donald Duck,’ said Gwenver, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. ‘See, I met enough in my time. But I met myself way more cops. So I do know the difference. You walk cop, talk cop, stare cop. You think it wasn’t strange no one talkin’ to you at the PIE? No one askin’ you where you was from, askin’ for some back-home news? They knew you wasn’t right.

‘So, let’s start this again. Who and what are you?’

‘I told you.’

‘Right …’ Gwenver sighed, leaned forward and reached behind his back. He drew out a black .38 Smith & Wesson snub-nose, the humpbacked, hammer-shrouded Bodyguard model, ideal for concealment and a quick draw but wildly inaccurate on multiple shots. Not that he’d need more than one, at this range. He placed it on the table, close to his fingers. ‘Maybe you wanna rethink your answer.’

Max had exactly two options.

The first was to keep denying it.

Best-case scenario: he’d get thrown out and blow his best chance of finding Vanetta Brown. Gwenver would notify the other Panthers. No one would talk to him.

Worst-case scenario: Gwenver would turn nasty. He could either turn him over to the Abakuás, who’d torture the information out of him, or turn him in to the cops, who might do the same. In short, whichever way it played, if he went with option one, he was fucked.

Option two: play for time, see how serious Gwenver was, how far he was willing to go. When you pull a gun on someone and mean to use it, you point it at a person. Gwenver had taken the gun out and put it on the table, like it had been inconveniencing him all day. He was either showing Max how bad things could get if he didn’t talk or else it was a crude display of power – letting him know who was in control.

Max went for the last alternative.

‘Isn’t carrying a gun illegal here?’

‘Quit stallin’.’

‘I’m not a cop.’

‘OK then, you’re retired. Which means you’re either a private dick or a bounty hunter. Which-the-fuck is it?’

Max looked at the gun again. It was old. The frame was scratched and there were chips and cracks in the stock. Smith & Wesson had stopped manufacturing the Bodyguard in 1997, he knew, replacing it with a lighter, more accurate model. He scanned the table for a weapon of his own. His glass and bottle were too small. The ashtray was heavy, but too far to reach. Gwenver would get the drop on him.

‘I’m a private detective. But I’m here of my own accord.’

‘You come
here
“of your own accord” – for
free?’
Gwenver chuckled. ‘Who you lookin’ for – “of your own accord”?’

Max put his palms to the underside of the table and felt cool marble against his damp, hot skin. He pushed up a little, testing the table’s weight and resistance, feeling for its tipping point. It wasn’t giving.

‘I’m not going to tell you,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s none of your fucken’ business.’

‘Our struggle may be over, but we still a brotherhood, Mingus. You come for one of us, you comin’ for all of us.’

‘Is that right?’

‘You bet yo ass,’ said Gwenver. ‘And you can play hard to get all you like, but I already got a good idea who you come for. See, the whole time I was walkin’ you around, I was figurin’ you out. I started with the way you talk. The South for sure, but not that inbred, tobacca-spittin’, hillbilly South. You speak poh-lite South. So I’m tellin’ myself, maybe this peckerwood was born there and moved away, someplace like the Midwest or the East Coast. Then I broke it down some more. Took in your clothes – lightweight pants, lightweight shirt, the way you ain’t sweatin’ too much, you’re at ease in the heat and sun – and that’s when I put it together. You from South Florida. Big city too, from your manner. Miami, by my reckonin’. And if I’m right, which I am, that means there’s only one person you could be here for. Vanetta Brown.’

Max kept his reactions in check, his eyes level with Gwenver’s. He moved his hands under the table, searching for the fulcrum.

‘You missed your vocation, Gwenver,’ he said. ‘You should’ve been a cop. Too bad you killed one.’

‘Quit tryin’ to bullshit your way out of this, Mingus. Bullshit ain’t your forte.’

‘As you should well know. You might fool the Cubans with that “brotherhood” rap, but you’re no militant. You never were. You may be the big man in this glorified pizza joint, but what you really were – and what you are and always will be – is a small-time hustler,’ Max said. ‘You got busted for cheque fraud when you were fifteen. You got four years. Three in youth correctional, one in San Quentin. When you got to the big house, you knew the score. Same as every teenager who goes there. Either join a gang or be some big man’s bitch. All you could think about was saving your ass. Literally. So you hooked up with the Black Guerrilla Family, the Panthers’ “military wing”. Only you didn’t give a shit about the struggle and you cared even less for their Marxist beliefs. You were getting out in a year. You were just doing what you had to do to stay alive. They were a badass gang. They were protecting you. But back out in the free world, you had no place to go. Your mama didn’t want you back because that cheque you forged was hers. She was the one who turned you in. All your deadbeat friends were in jail. So you hooked up with the Panthers all over again. You were never about them or your people. You were just about you. And you still are. And for the record, looking at you face to face, I know for sure you killed that state trooper and dumped your girlfriend in the road instead of taking her to the hospital, because that’s the kind of two-bit, self-serving cocksucker you really are,
brother.’

Gwenver had lost his smile and some of his confidence. As Max was talking, he had watched the storm clouds massing in the man’s stare, the way his eyes had changed to a darker, denser shade of brown. His bottom lip had started trembling.