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

As I was arranging my desk without the homicidal frenzied flair of a  interior decorator, a very pretty young girl, 18 or 19 or 20 I suppose, came running into the building with an arm full of what appeared to be textbooks, which soon took flight from her arms as she tripped on a strip of torn, worn carpeting. The books flew in different directions like  a flock of spastic parrots cascading near my desk. On the floor scattered, they were a colorful puzzle of political science, art history, and mathematics from what I could tell.

I bent over  to help retrieve the artifacts of academia just in time to hear a full metal jacket of profanity which was interesting and humorous in that I recognized the four letter words in English, but could only guess at the 12 letter Spanish invectives flowing from her mouth at 90 miles an hour.  These were not quaint Japanese 15 syllable  haikus or Robert Burns poetry about roses and haggis. It was Desi Arnaz on amphetamines with excoriating expletives combined with  streetwise wise cracking Ann Sheridan from the film, “Angels With Dirty Faces.”

She bent down at the same time head-on crashing into me sending us both sprawling on the floor like human pick-up sticks  from a child’s toy game from which I would sport a black eye for a week.

“El señor lo siento mucho! Por favor, perdóname, voy a buscar el resto, se sienta Pease!” I rubbed my head as Jorge intervened and interpreted, thankfully. “She is very sorry Senor Russo and begs forgiveness.”

“Oh hell, Jorge, it’s no big deal...tell her it’s OK, please.” Suddenly English gushed from her as oil from a Texas wildcat well. “I thank you Senor. I was in such a hurry, I should have been more careful.” Her voice was deep and raspy, OK, sexy and warm. Now that I could get a good look at her I could see she was one of the most beautiful young woman I had ever crashed into!

“Please, call me Mickey. You too Jorge. This senor thing makes me feel like I need a suit and tie or toreodor outfit. Hello. Let’s start all over. I’m Mickey and am pleased to meet you even if it was a head-on crash.” A shy smile formed on her face as  I helped her up to her feet, “My name is Pilar. Pilar Escobar Ybanez. I work here part time and go to university as well.”

“I’m Mickey Russo and am here as a correspondent from a newspaper syndicate in NYC. My publisher was a very close friend of Francisco Santiago so I will be here for a little while getting the flavor of the island and taking in a ballgame or two. I love baseball. So what are you doing for dinner?” I chanced the question. She could think I was too brash and forward, but somehow doubted that after I heard her say “Fuck” in English and at least three Spanish dialects except Castillian.

Her smile brightened the entire room. “OK, Mickey. Mickey. I like that very much, and yes, I would be honored to go to dinner with you and I will take you to see some baseball at El Gran Estadio de la Habana on the weekend. My treat.” Ah, my kind of woman!

She gathered then hurried to a back room with an old Gestetner machine. One of those old machines with the addicting smell of ink and solvent. No match for the scent of her hair and perfume she was bathed in. Tonight,  I’lltake her to the Nacional for dinner then to the Tropicana for drinks and a floor show. If she is 18 or 19 I better see if that’s legal age down here. I know in the Southern states they can marry and knock up  a 13 year old as Jerry Lee Lewis would show within a year.

“What’s her story Jorge?” His countenance assumed a somber somewhat serious facade. “Sit down, Senor. Excuse me, Mickey. She is a student at the university. She studies political science and I am sorry to say involved with a left wing student group based on the 26th of July Movement. Castro’s movement. She helps out here where she can, writes a small column and in exchange I let her use the Gestetner to print out leaflets for the students to pass out. Announcing meetings of the group to gain more members, news of Castro, that sort of thing. They are in real danger for their activities from the police if they go too far, but they are young and of course want change so feel a sense of how you say, immortality.”

The picture was coming into sharp focus. “In other words, she could get hurt, yes?” I asked in an agitated voice with a dash of fear. It was all too real. I was used to New York, hell, the USA. You could voice an opinion that lodged somewhere from outside the confines and strictures of the societal status quo. Here, Pilar and the other students can face a firing squad after days of sadistic torture. These kids may not be immortal, but they sure had balls, beliefs and determination.

“Yes she could get hurt, very badly Mickey,” Jorge answered with a paternal love in his voice for her. I was beginning to feel very protective of her as well, even though she could head butt me and leave me with a swollen eye.

At that moment, Pilar rushed from the backroom and as she flashed through the length of the office she yelled out, “Thank you Senor Gallegos, and Mickey. I will meet you here at 6:00 for dinner if that is OK. I have class most of the day and a student meeting this afternoon. Is OK?” I smiled and waved and with a warm feeling for this not so innocent innocent I yelled back, “Si Senora.” I felt I owed her to speak as much in her language as she spoke in mine. One problem. My Spanish was near zero. Her English was as abundant as junkies, male hustlers and  prostitutes  in and around Times Square back in New York.

I could feel pain in my eye now. Gawd I hate delayed reaction pain. “Jorge, got any ice here I can pack on this thing?” He laughed and nodded in the affirmative and over to the antiquated Admiral refrigerator and fashioned an ice pack to relieve some of the swelling. I looked like one half of a racoon.

“Gracias, Jorge. Now, what about this Castro. Does he have a snow balls chance in hell of upsetting the political apple cart and beating the army and police, or is it all a pipedream of his? You know, Don Quixote tilting at Latin windmills.”

“I can assure you that it is no pipe dream of his. He’s serious, very serious and my fear is for the young students that may get stuck in the crossfire if he is not successful. Including Pilar!”

Stony silence followed. Castro had the only journalist assassinated that had the brass balls to support him as much as the paper could. Why this fascination then with him? Was he a good guy or merely a tin soldier trying to call a bluff? I’d find out soon enough in the weeks to come when Pilar, our rebel contact in Havana and myself would join him in the Sierra Maestra. My job now became more complicated. I needed the information on his movements, as I also wanted to find out why he had Santiago killed. Now, more importantly, I wanted to make sure no harm came to Pilar or myself. This part of the equation was a new element. It could get complicated. It could get one or both of us killed...at least it was multiple choice...we could screw up and be macheted in the jungle by the rebels...or face a firing squad as guests of El Presidente Batista. Somehow I had to involve Lansky and his boys. They knew how the ballgame was played down here and to a large degree, wrote the playbook!

Dateline Havana October 17, 1957 6:00 P.M. by Mickey Russo, Special Correspondent

Rioting broke out today on the campus of the University of Havana when leftist student leaders staged a peaceful protest for freedom of political speech and were attacked by Havana Police.  In the confusion that followed, shots were fired and two students were wounded.

According to a police official, the student’s tossed a Molotov cocktail at police, thereby igniting the melee that followed. Student accounts differ from the official government reports.

When interviewed at police headquarters where she was being held, student activist, Pilar Escobar Ybanez of the student group,  Red October (named to celebrate the 2nd Russian Revolution of 1917 that put the Bolsheviks in power) they were refused permission to march on campus, but felt they had to have a voice in the decision recently handed down by university officials to ban all political clubs, publications and other activities determined to be a threat to the current Batista regime.

…...End Transmission…….

The day erupted with volcanic  interruptions that prompted my first byline from Cuba to the home office in New York for distribution throughout the newspaper syndicate. It wasn’t Pulitzer material by any stretch of a mental patient’s imagination, nor that of a hack journalist, but it opened my eyes to the dangers these students were confronted with for a simple act of peaceful protest.

Just two years ago in 1955, anti-black violence escalated in the South including the kidnapping and brutal murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till, that spawned widespread aggressive protests from Negro  and white Americans. Also that same year,  in Montgomery, Alabama, there was a bus boycott led by a young Negro minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., practicing a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience to protest segregation that attracted national and international attention and of course the backlash violence that came with the territory.

Now the everyday Cuban  was on the same threshold of potential violence as the Batista regime was putting its police in a confrontational stand against the population with guns and bullets, while it’s military forces were off in the mountains and jungles in the south of the island trying to stem the mounting victories of Castro and his rebels, not only in pitched guerrilla warfare against the regime,  but in the winning of the hearts and minds of the peasants. His forces were growing larger in numbers, while  in Havana, discord