Cuba Libre (2008) (7 page)

They waited, Charlie Burke and Fuentes behind Novis, holding their hats in front of them. Waiting for an audience with the king. To ask a favor. Tyler remained a few steps behind them, wondering now what would happen if he were to say, Excuse me. How long are we supposed to stand here? Or give this important man one more minute. If he didn't look up and say something by then, walk out. The trouble was, Tyler didn't have a watch to time the man with.

He turned enough to take in the room, the crystal chandelier, a bottle of cognac, snifters, a coffee service and cups on the tablecloth... and a girl--he couldn't believe it, not ten feet away from him--sitting by herself at the other end of the table, a girl with reddish-brown hair piled and swirled in a way that showed her slender neck, her hair shining in the light from the chandelier, the girl looking right at him, already looking at him when he turned and saw her. In one hand she held a demitasse raised almost to her lips, and in the other a perfectly round cigarette, no question about it, a tailor-made. She said to Tyler, "I like your hat," and kept looking at him-not smiling or anything, like she was giving him the eye, no just looking him over.

Tyler touched the brim to her realizing this must be Boudreaux's mistress. Fuentes had mentioned his boss's lady friend being here and Tyler had imagined an older, more mature woman with rouge on her face, not anyone like this girl. She was a beauty and looked rich, even smoking the cigarette. Camille had smoked, but she was a whore.

Fuentes was saying, "Mr. Boudreaux, you know Mr.

Charlie Burke from when he was here, and this is Ben Tyler, the one brought the horses."

Tyler turned as Fuentes said his name, heard the girl say "Ben?" and saw Boudreaux looking this way, at the girl and then at him. From his expression he seemed pleasant enough, a man who could be as old as fifty, had that wave in his hair and was called Rollie, the only one at the table without whiskers or a mustache.

He said to Tyler, "You're the horse breaker," telling him WhO Tyler said, 'he was, "the, That,sJinete."right. And I understand you're the horse buyer."

He wanted to look at the girl again, but kept his eyes on Boudreaux, the man not saying yes or no, though he did maintain his pleasant expression. He said, "I'm told you've delivered a fair string. Take them to Matanzas tomorrow and you can go on home." Sounding like that was it, you're dismissed.

And now he was looking at his girlfriend again.

"Amelia?"

"Yes?" Tyler glanced around to see the girl raise her eyebrows.

"Why don't you go on upstairs. I won't be much longer here." The man speaking to her with that soft New Orleans sound to his voice.

She said, "I haven't finished my coffee."

"Honey, the waiter will bring you some, all you want." Boudreaux waited. Tyler waited.

All the men in the room waited while Amelia sat there and appeared to be thinking about it.

Boudreaux said, "Amelia?" His tone not as soft this time. "You want Novis to see you to the room?"

Tyler saw the bodyguard turn to face Amelia.

She said, "I think I can find it," and rose from the table, taking her time then to pick up a little beaded purse. Boudreaux said, "Honey, leave the cigarette."

Tyler watched her look at an ashtray on the table and then seem to change her mind and dab the cigarette into her demitasse. Now she placed it in the ashtray. Coming toward the door her eyes held his and she said, "Nice meeting you, Ben."

He held the door open and she walked past, out to the lobby. Tyler turned to see Boudreaux watching him.

Now Fuentes stood up straight and said to his boss, "Excuse me, but you don't want to see the horses?"

"I'll take your word," Boudreaux said, "they're what I want."

Fuentes nodded. He said, "Well, all right," and said, "I told these gentlemen you would write a draft on the bank for three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars, if you would, please."

Boudreaux looked puzzled. "For twenty-five head? That's a hundred fifty each." He said to his associates, "Gentlemen, can you imagine paying a hundred and a half for western range stock?"

Tyler watched them shake their heads and blow cigar smoke at the ceiling. Indeed they could not. "I believe what I agreed to was a hundred dollars a head," Boudreaux said, and to his associates, "I don't ask how they avoid paying duty, but they must to make a profit, even if they stole the horses to begin with. I didn't ask if these fellas are horse thieves, and I won't."

This got a chuckle.

"Sir?" Fuentes said. "You agree to one hundred fifty when I told you the price they ask."

"Now my segundo's calling me a liar," Boudreaux said. "Or he's getting old on me, losing his memory. Victor, is that it, you're becoming forgetful?"

"I don't think so," Fuentes said, standing up to him, and it surprised Tyler.

"Tell me, Victor," Boudreaux was saying now, "what's your cut on this deal?" It got sly grins from his friends as Fuentes shook his head. "No, I don't take nothing for myself."

"I'll tell you what, Victor, you forget your commission and I'll buy all the horses they brought. What'd you tell me, thirty mares? I'll pay a hundred each and these boys'll make within two hundred dollars of what you're saying was the original deal. Soon as they deliver and I like what I see, they get my check for three thousand dollars."

Tyler saw Charlie Burke turn to glance at him, the old ran ny appearing to be mystified, as Fuentes was saying, "They have deliver already, the horses are at Regla."

"When they deliver to the estate," Boudreaux said. "Having horses at Regla in these times nan American battleship blown to hell, insurgents getting cockier by the day--having horses over there is no guarantee I'd ever see them."

"Is what I promise these men," Fuentes said, "when I tell them we stop first in Havana."

Boudreaux said, "Are you listening to me?" Still with his pleasant expression and tone. "They get paid when the horses are in Matanzas. The delivery is their job and their risk, not mine."

There was a silence. Boudreaux waiting, his associates puffing on their cigars waiting, all of them patient about this business.

Finally Charlie Burke said, "Sir, will you be there when we come, at your estate?"

"Most likely, yes. If I'm not, I'll see you get your money. Now you can take my word on that," Boudreaux said, still with the nice tone, "or you can put your horses on the boat and take them home. I'll leave it up to you, all right?"

Tyler watched Charlie Burke accept this with a shrug, twenty years ramrod of a big cow outfit, a man who never took an ugly word off any of his hands, here he was backing down from this man in evening clothes, a wave in his hair.

Tyler said to Boudreaux, "We took your man's word we'd be paid when we got to Havana."

"Yes, well, you have to know whose word you can take," Boudreaux said, "and whose you can't, don't you? Now if you'll excuse us..."

Tyler said to him, "Stopping here wasn't in the deal. You'll have to pay for wharfage and feed."

Boudreaux looked up from his map and stared at Tyler, taking his time. "Wharfage and feed. What are you saying that will cost me?"

"Dollar and a half a head."

"And that comes to?"

The ma waiting to see if Tyler knew how to do his figures., "Forty-five dollars," Tyler said. And Boudreaux said, "You sure?"

Tyler stared, keeping his mouth shut with an effort.

Finally Boudreaux said, "Very well. Now will you excuse US?"

Tyler touched Charlie Burke's shoulder, saying, "Let's go," wanting to leave before he did something dumb. It was the man's reasonable tone that made you want to climb over the table and hit him, mess up his goddamn hair. The man sounded like he was stating a simple fact, take his word or take the horses and go home. Wasn't that reasonable? Or saying you had to know whose word to take. How can you argue with that? It was true, wasn't it?

Novis was holding the door open.

Once they were in the lobby again, the door closed behind them, Tyler took his time saying, "He wants you to lose your temper and carry on, act like a fool while he stays calm and pretends to be surprised, raises his eyebrows--you see him do that?--the son of a bitch."

Charlie Burke still seemed mystified. He didn't say a word. Tyler said, "Once we get the string to Matanzas the man is gonna pay the price we agreed on, a hundred fifty a head times thirty plus forty-five for wharfage and feed. That's forty-five hundred and forty-five dollars." He said to Fuentes, "And you get your cut out of it, that was the deal."

"You know why he did that?" Fuentes said. "He knows what he suppose to pay, but now he sees the war coming he can sell the horses to the Spanish for twice what he pays. You understand? Do it before there is a war. As soon as it starts they take the horses from him. Also, I think because his lady friend spoke to you, Amelia, and he saw the way she acted."

Tyler said, "It looked to me like she was being polite's all she was doing."

"Is that what you think? Listen," Fuentes said, "Mr. Boudreaux makes sure she belongs to him and no one else. You don't believe me, ask her. She's over there with the journalist. You see her? I think she's waiting for you to look at her again."

Chapter
Six.

THE FIRST TIME NEELY TUCKER and Amelia met--it happened to be right here at the hotel cigar countermNeely said, "I have never bought a lady a cigar before, but if I may...?" Amelia said, "You're sweet, but I prefer cigarettes." And Neely said, "Whatever pleases you gives me pleasure."

This evening when Neely, leaning on the glass counter, said he'd never bought a lady cigarettes before, Amelia turned to him saying, "You were waiting for me, weren't you?" giving him her famous smile. Eyes twinkling mischievously, her countenance aglow, would be the way he'd write it, rather than say her smile showed in her eyes and made her seem so, well, alive. Amelia, when she wanted, could express all sorts of emotions with her eyes. Neely told her one time she could've been an actress, caught himself right away and said, "What am I talking about, could have been."

He watched her turn to the young man behind the cigar counter.

"You know what I like, Tony, Sweet Caporals, por favor."

Neely struck a match and held it ready as she tore open the pack of cigarettes.

"Rollie sees me smoking in public he has a fit."

Neely watched her light the cigarette now, puffing away, her delicate little nostrils dilating, her pile of auburn hair shining in the lobby's electric lights.

"You do everything he tells you?"

"Just about. He's in there with his sugar buddies." "What're they up to now?" "The usual, making money."

"You must know Rollie's not your type."

"But I'm his, and that's what counts, isn't it?"

Neely and Amelia Brown were good friends from the moment they'd started talking early last fall and would meet whenever both were in Havana at the same time. Neely loved Amelia. He thought of her as the most adorable, the most unusual--bizarre, really--and intelligent girl he'd ever met in his life. Talking to her wasn't like talking to a girl. She knew things, what was going on in the world. You could say anything you wanted to her, even slip and use curse words and she never acted shocked. Hell, she used them herself. It rankled him a little that the time he spent with her didn't seem to bother Boudreaux. The way Amelia explained it, "Well, he knows I'm discreet, and he doesn't see you otherwise as a threat."

Neely said, "Why not?" Naturally a little hurt.

She said, "I don't know. Maybe if you were taller."

This evening he was curious to know what she thought of Ben Tyler.

"Did you meet the cowboy?"

"Ben? Yes, indeed."

"Rollie introduced you?" "Hardly. I spoke to him though." "Uh-oh."

"I have a new theory," Amelia said. "It isn't that Rollie gets jealous if he thinks I'm flirting... Well, he does, yeah. But he also likes to see people grovel, and if I acknowledge them, even by saying a few words, it raises their status so to speak, puts us all on the same level and then Rollie has trouble feeling superior."

Neely loved her theories.

"I've never seen you grovel." "No, that's why he respects me." Amelia paused as though she might explain this, but said, "You know what I mean."

She had always been candid with Neely about her role as Boudreaux's mistress, saying it was like a free lunch, she could have anything she wanted as long as it was Cuban. Amelia lived here year-round, on the sugar estate or at the summerhouse, on the beach not far from Matanzas. They'd met on a steamer, Amelia coming to Havana on holiday with her friend Lorraine.... What Neely couldn't understand was why a girl from a respectable New Orleans family, good-looking, convent-educated, would ever consider being a kept woman. Amelia told him respectability was not an issue here, not with a mother who lived on cocaine toothache drops and KocaNola and a daddy who practically lived with his quadroon when he wasn't at the Cotton Exchange. She said, "I'm less kept than if I were married to Rollie; I can walk away any time I want." Neely said, "Are you sure?" Another time he said, "But you don't love him. Do you?" She said, "Rollie's fun." "Oh, come on."