Storm Clouds Over Havana by Mike Marino (novel24 .txt) 📕

October 10, 1957 7:14 A.M. (Seven hours from game seven of the World Series)

Walking into Blake O’Hara’s office was an experience similar to entering an H.G. Wells  time machine. The decor was classic stark 1930’s Steelcase office furniture from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Slate grey desks as large as an aircraft carrier, in fact we all referred to it as the USS Guadalcanal.

The overstuffed chair that acted as his editorial throne was a throwback or tribute, never sure which, to the film “Citizen Kane” while the rest of the spacious rooms furniture and decor gave the impression you were about to rub elbows with a group of Irish Republican Army gunmen in Bugsy Malone’s Saloon in Boston drinking mug after mug of what made Milwaukee famous.

The same goddamned Milwaukee the Yankees would be facing  on the field this afternoon in mortal pennant race combat. I was set and ready for the game...not only was Mickey Mantle in the game, I also had two first base box seats for myself and Penny Fitzsimmons, our office bookkeeper and my date. A Mick and a Dago on a ballgame date. We all called her Penny Arcade in private as she was like a pinball machine. Great levers and she loved to ball! By the way, in the end, all said and done...the Braves kicked our asses...there’s always next year….

“Shut the door Russo,” he gruffly mumbled with a voice that had been aged by Cuban cigars and Irish whiskey for, well, let’s say since he was one week old. He never breast fed, of that I was sure,  he probably used a shot glass for the hootch he kept stashed in his crib.

“Sit down, I have something to talk over with you. An opportunity, one you’ve been waiting for” he explained in a tone he felt I’m sure was as patrician as a Byzantine emperor, yet, came spilling out as raspy as a pug boxer who’d taken too many right hooks to the head and now viewed simple math equations as quantum physics. I knew better….Blake O’Hara was no rum dummy. He was as crafty as they come, which is why I buckled my emotional seatbelt. It was as the lady said, “going to be a bumpy night”.

I was anxious to get my days stories done in time for deadline for the  paper and was in a hurry. I didn’t want to miss the game. Besides having box seats and a healthy bet going in the office pool, I also had my bookie betting off the books for me. Goddamn Frank Costello...had to get himself shot on orders from that Mafioso prick Vito Genovese in May. He retired from the rackets now and I had deal with Vito’s bookies instead of Franks. My grandfather who raised me as a kid (my pop was whacked by some loan sharks whose installment plan included daily interest rates higher than the Empire State Building)  hated “those goddamned greaseball dagos” ...the gangster ones as he called them, but, Bommarito the butcher, down the street from us could slice prosciutto so thin with the precision of a fencing champion.  To gramps, Bommarito was to meats and cheese as  Josephine Baker was to causing erections in European cabarets two decades earlier. Gramps did see her do the famous “banana dance” and never forgot! Probably still had the same hard-on he did then, but grandma never complained. Perhaps the residual effect was worth the trip to Paris and Rome they saved up for years ago.

“I’ll stand  if you don’t mind, Chief. Got a lot to do, got tickets you know...the Mick will slam it out of the ballpark and I intend on being there to see it happen!” Blake shook his head barely concealing a smile that erupted on his face. “I know Russo. You also intend to score a homerun with Miss Fitzsimmons after warming up her bench. I know you Wops...you’re all sex fiends, ha, God love ya” He did have a point, but I managed to counterpoint with my own salvo. “Yeah, and all you micks are sorry drunks singing “Danny Boy” with tears streaming down your ruddy bloody faces.”

Pleasantries now exchanged we go got down to business. I’m sending you to Cuba. Havana to be exact. Christ, where else is there to go in Cuba. Dancing, music, women, and a lot of your underworld buddies are already there running the casinos and whorehouses. Meyer  Lansky will give you carte blanche I’m sure and comp you a room. He always liked you. His Hotel Nacional has excellent room service I hear. Long legged Cuban fillies with a bedside manner guaranteed to launch you into space to take your place as the first man on the moon after you land in her crater!”

“Jesus Christ, Blake...Cuba? Why? Take conga lessons so I can teach everyone at the Christmas party this year provided you won’t cheap out on us again this year with gift certificates to Macy’s for twenty bucks. Goddamn it, that was a cheap way out!”

Blake started to burst at the seams laughing as I was raging. “OK, OK, calm down. I feel your ready to move up to Foreign Correspondent, and want you in Cuba. Mainly to dig around and do that investigative shit you do so well here, but there...I want you to look into the Santiago murder. There’s got to be more too it than what the reports are saying. Francisco was a friend of mine so I have an interest in it. You’d be helping me out while at the same time take some vacation time in a paradise of debauchery and yes, pal around with the greaseballs.”

Before I could say another word. A man sitting in the darkened corner of Blake’s office, who I hadn’t noticed before stood up and walked over to me. “..and you would be doing your government a great service as well.”

“Blake...what’s going on here, who’s this?” Blake lit another cigar. “I told you to sit down Russo, now maybe you will. Sit..please..sit. This is Sean Donovan, CIA. No relation to Wild Bill Donovan, although we both worked with him as OSS agents during the war.”

Donovan interjected in a hand off from Blake as smooth as a play by the Harlem Globetrotters. “ It seems we have a small problem in Cuba that we don’t want to see grow larger. We need someone on the ground to gather information for us and the Batista regime. A journalist is the perfect cover, plus you’ll probably unearth the facts behind Santiago’s murder. A win win as I see it.”

I thought a moment and yes, I do want to be a roving journalist, and Cuba? Sex and booze? Yes, only one problem I could see. “Look guys, if you think I’m gonna expose Lansky and the mob down there, you’re both crazy. They’d have me whacked and dumped in a swamp. Even if I made it back here alive  I’d never be able to work for a paper again. They’d find me for sure. I’d be finished either way!”

Sean looked at Blake and both laughed. “Look,” said Sean, “I don’t give a shit about those guineas, besides, that’s Hoover’s problem. We’re interested in a young Cuban lawyer who’s stirring the shit pot. His names Castro, Fidel Castro. He’s a minor leftist player but is a pain in Batista’s fat ass. We also know Francisco Santiago was killed on his orders. We have a plan.”

I was beginning to warm up to the idea. As long as it didn’t involve Lansky and the mob. “OK, gentlemen. I’m in ...what’s the plan?” I couldn’t wait to hear the plan and make my own plans for nights of rum and rumba. Sean was delighted and relieved. “Good, this Castro thing is small, but we want to keep it that way. Besides six months from now, no one will even remember his name.”

I shot a defensive warning salvo of a look to the redoubtable lump of a government agent who was as overtly covert as they come. Impeccably dressed in an understated Brooks Brothers suit with all the banality I associated with staid office accountants and funeral directors. If he were to commit a murder in broad daylight with hundreds of witnesses to his nefarious act, no one could accurately describe him in any detail. These guys blended into the world around them, and their very strength lay in the fact that they are odorless, colorless and tasteless...not to mention highly dangerous.
“Excuse me….who the hell are you again?”

He slowly rose from the chair in the corner as though he were a stop action Harryhausen dinosaur in one of those sci fi drive-in movies so popular with the delinquent crowd and their souped up coupes. “I’m Sean Donovan, CIA.”

“I know that,” I said hoping the irritation was showing in my demeanor and evident in my voice. “What does my going to Havana have to do with you. I didn’t even vote for Ike.”
“Ah, Stevenson man I see. Look within the Agency we have no political agenda. We’re merely watchdogs at liberty’s door making sure the bad guys don’t get into the living room. Look, Russia squashed the student revolt in Hungary last year. So much for the proletarian Utopia. Budapest is still recovering. A few days ago the goddamned Reds got Sputnik up and running in orbit and beat our ass to space with what could be one ugly weapon prototype. North Vietnam beat the shit out of France three years ago and we’re well let’s say keeping our ears to the ground over there. Saigon recently attacked from the north this week. It’s a Red roller coaster ride that is fucking up Europe and now Asia. We want to make sure the Red’s don’t influence things in this hemisphere. We have a problem in Cuba, however, named Castro. If he gets Soviet support the tide will change...90 miles offshore of America.”

I was not unaware of the Reader’s Digest history lesson, but was still in the dark as to what I felt I was being rushed, pushed, forced into. Christ...Havana and sunshine, are