Naked in LA (8 page)

Angel told me the film producer’s name was Tony Marcellis. “He’s set up a reading for you,” he said, “at his hotel.”

I took a cab over to the Algiers Hotel on Miami Beach. Angel told me Marcellis would meet me in the lobby. I was so nervous that I couldn’t think, I had been awake all night practising two monologues, learning them by heart; Katherine Hepburn’s case for the defence from
Adam’s Rib
and Elizabeth Taylor’s Gloria Wandrous in
Butterfield 8
“…
Mama. We, we both know what kind of a girl I’ve been, we both know where I’ve been through. Mama, face it. I was the slut of all-time…”

I gave the desk clerk my name, and while he called upstairs, I sat down to wait. A few minutes later the busboy came over, asked me if I was Miss Fuentes and told me that Mister Marcellis was expecting me upstairs.

Room 603.

I rode the elevator and went down the corridor, going over and over the speeches in my head.
Mama, we both...Mama, we both...

Now my big moment had come I could barely remember a single word.

I stood outside the door to 603, trying to pull myself together, taking deep breaths. I was about to knock when I realized the door was ajar. There was music coming from inside, Sam Cooke, “You Send Me.”

The door flew open. A girl stood there in her underwear.

“I’m here to see Tony Marcellis,” I said.

A middle aged guy with a mat of silver hair on his chest and chunky gold rings on his fingers came in from the balcony, wearing not much more than a towel, and smoking a cigar.

“I’m here for the audition,” I said.

He grinned. “Well you come to the right place,” he said and let the towel drop onto the carpet. “What do you think of that?”

Then he stood there, like he was waiting for an answer.

“I think it looks like a dick,” I said, “only smaller.”

I didn’t wait for the elevator, I ran down the fire escape and out of the hotel. I was halfway home before I realized I’d lost one of my shoes on the stairs.

That night I went to bed, feeling like a cheap whore. I opened my purse and took out the creased newspaper picture I’d found of Reyes and me at the Left Bank all those years ago. I wondered where Reyes Garcia was now. He belonged to another life, but whenever I thought of him I still wished that one day I would somehow find him again…

Chapter 11

Walking into the Flamingo Lounge was like stepping back in time. It was out in Dade County, just across the road from a second-hand car place. There were a few pick-ups parked out front. The Imperial was discreetly parked out back. It was dark inside, with puce-coloured brick walls and no windows. It used to be a bank.

Men in
guayabera
shirts and khakis played dominoes under the ceiling fans. Angel sat with his back to the wall drinking
cafe con leche
and talking business with three other guys, all wearing silk suits and too much jewellery. His muscle were sitting by the door, as usual. I walked straight past them. Perhaps they didn’t think I was a threat because I was a woman, perhaps they were distracted by the fact that I had stockings but no shoes, or perhaps they were watching the stripper.

Angel looked up, surprised. He was even more surprised when I picked up his coffee and threw it in his face.

It was only then that the two goons actually started moving. Angel jumped up and motioned for them to sit down again.

“What the hell was that?”

“You think that’s all I’m good for?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He makes blue movies, right?”

Angel jumped over the table, grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into a back room. There was a guy sitting at the desk, checking off figures in a ledger. He told him to get out and kicked the door shut behind him.

Then he hit me upside the head. I saw a bright flash and went down. Then he threw a chair at me. “What the fuck?” he shouted at me.

I just lay there. I really didn’t think he had it in him, the last time I’d thrown things at him he’d run out into the street to try and get away from me. But that was a long time ago, and now he had a reputation to keep up.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” he said.

“You know, Angel, there’s no point keeping bodyguards if a woman can just walk up to you and fill you full of cappuccino.”

He smiled at that. Then he looked down at the stain on his suit and that got him angry again. That was the thing with Angel, you could do what you wanted to him as long as you didn’t untidy his clothes. “You want to tell me what that little show was all about?”

“You set me up.”

“I what?”

“You think I’m a whore.”

I was still curled up in the corner. He grabbed another chair, and I thought he was going to throw it at me. Instead he put it down right in front of me, so I couldn’t get up even if I wanted.

“You better start making some sense.”

“Your friend Marcellis was naked when I got there. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Some audition. He asked me to do that scene from
Casablanca
, you know, the part where Ingrid Bergman gets down on her knees and gives Humphrey Bogart a blow job.”

“I didn’t know about this,” he said.

“Sure you didn’t. That’s what I am now, right? I’m like one of the showgirls at the Tropicana, someone you can pass around hand to hand like your old man used to do in the old days. Thanks for nothing.”

““Thanks for nothing?” Is that what you said?
Nothing?
When I found you, you were working in that shitty diner on Biscayne. Now you got nice clothes, you sit right up front to see Frank Sinatra, and I pay all your old man’s medical bills. Is that
nothing
?”

“So that means you can hire me out to your sleazy Hollywood friends?”

“You think that’s what I did? I thought he was the real deal. I swear to God I did not think he would pull a stupid stunt like that.”

I didn’t know if I believed him. I wanted to.

He picked up the chair and turned it to firewood on the top of the desk, then threw a battered Remington typewriter across the office and put a hole in the wall. As he was going out he turned around and asked me if I was okay, like an afterthought.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said.

Two days later I saw in the
Miami Herald
that a well-known Hollywood producer called Tony Marcellis had been injured in a hit and run while crossing the road outside his hotel. He was in serious condition in hospital. The driver of the car had not been found.

Angel gave me a diamond necklace because that was the way to solve every problem, with money and a dented fender.

But I kept the necklace.

Chapter 12

Angel wanted me to meet him at the Fontainebleau for lunch. As I was walking across the lobby I heard a man laughing. It wasn’t the kind of laugh you could ever forget.

He was sitting by the windows with a couple of other men who looked as if they had just escaped the pages of
Rolling Stone
. He hadn’t shaved and his shirt was crumpled. He looked like a journalist, or a private detective perhaps, three years into unemployment.

I thought perhaps he was drunk. But when he saw me, he stood up, rock steady on his feet and grinned. “Princess!”

The last time I’d seen him was on the tarmac at Havana airport, the night everything went to hell. He had just thrown two suitcases full of money into the back of the Cessna that was about to fly Papi and me to Miami.

He walked over with his hands in the pockets of his grey slacks and looked me over. “Well, you’ve only gotten more beautiful since I last saw you, and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. Still breaking hearts?”

“Hello, Reyes.” I looked over his shoulder at his two friends who were eyeing me as if I was their dinner. For all I knew all three of them had just gotten out of jail. “Are you going to introduce me to your pals?” I said.

“Those bastards?” he said loud enough for them to hear. “I wouldn’t let them pat my dog. Let’s grab ourselves a drink at the bar.”

I was already late for lunch with Angel. I looked at my watch.

“You got somewhere better to go?”

I shook my head. “Make mine a
mojito
.”

“What are you doing in Miami?” I asked. “Are you living here?”

“I wouldn’t live here, it’s full of crooks. I’m living in California. I work for a security consultant.” He stole some of the ice from my cocktail and crunched it between his teeth.

“So what brings you here?”

“Business.”

“With the two men in the lobby? They look familiar.”

“You probably remember them from Havana. Neither of them are taxpayers. But enough about me.”

I knew that was as much information as I was going to get from him. He reached out and touched the diamond necklace at my throat. It was one of Angel’s endless gifts. “Expensive.”