Spy in a Little Black Dress

IX



What is Fernando Lamas doing riding around with Rosario in that old pickup truck? Jackie wondered when Rosario showed up at her fleabag hotel to drop off her clothes. She had been waiting for Rosario outside, and the tall, lean Hispanic man emerging from the passenger side of the truck looked exactly like the Latin lover whose dark, wavy hair, caramel-colored skin, and gleaming white teeth had made him a sensation in Hollywood.

But this handsome young man walking toward her was unsmiling and carried himself stiffly, a serious-minded individual apparently, who had no use for glamour.

“This is Emiliano Martinez,” Rosario told Jackie, nodding toward the man walking beside her, carrying Jackie’s suitcase.

Her Cuban contact, but why had he come here?

“Pleased to meet you, Emiliano,” Jackie said. “Has there been a change in plans? I thought Rosario was going to bring me to meet you at a club somewhere at eight o’clock tonight.”

“She was, but I had some spare time before our Castro emissary will be at the club, and I thought you might enjoy a little sightseeing in our beautiful city,” Emiliano said in textbook English with scarcely a hint of a Cuban accent.

Beautiful city? Jackie almost laughed out loud as she looked askance at the dilapidated hotel behind her, and Emiliano quickly added, “I’m afraid your temporary lodgings haven’t given you a fair impression of Habana Vieja, and I’d like to correct that, if I might.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Jackie said with a warm smile, grateful to have someone show her something of the town other than a crocodile pit. “Just give me a few moments to change, and I’ll be right down.”

“Excellent,” Emiliano said, handing Jackie her suitcase. “I’ll wait for you out here. Rosario has to leave.”

Wear something to dance the mambo in if we’re going to a club later, Jackie told herself as she searched through the clothes in her suitcase. This’ll do, she thought, pulling out a sultry but still elegant off-the-shoulder Coco Chanel black cocktail dress with a cinch waistline and a curve-hugging skirt. The floral print seemed perfect for dancing the night away in Havana, although, judging by Emiliano’s straitlaced demeanor, she doubted that she’d get to do much dancing.

Rosario had already left when Jackie rejoined Emiliano in front of the hotel.

“Are you ready to see the town, Miss Bouvier?” Emiliano asked, sounding like a trolley car conductor, completely indifferent to how she looked in her Coco Chanel. God, he’s as stiff as a starched collar, Jackie thought. Jacques would have ooh-la-la-ed, and Jack Kennedy would have given her his womanizer once-over and a basket of compliments.

“Yes, I’m ready, and please call me Jacqueline,” she said, well aware that suggesting “Jackie” was asking too much.

Walking down the maze of narrow streets, lined on both sides with boutiques, small art galleries, and cafés and bars, Jackie was glad to have Emiliano as a guide in this historic part of town. He was an amazing font of information, pointing out landmarks with a relish that was a testament to his obvious, deep-seated love of the city.

“That’s El Floridita, the most famous bar in Havana,” Emiliano told her when they passed a café on the corner of Calle Obispo and Calle Monserrate. “It’s known as the ‘Cradle of the Daiquiri.’ ”

“Isn’t that a favorite hangout of Hemingway’s?” Jackie asked, recalling what she’d read in Life magazine about how Ernest Hemingway had spent last year in Cuba working on a novella that the magazine would be featuring in a few months.

“Yes, El Floridita is a favorite of his,” Emiliano said. “Some day there will probably be a life-sized replica of Hemingway propped up in his usual seat.”

Closer to the seafront, Emiliano led Jackie through the ancient city, which was filled with impressive castles, churches, and civic buildings constructed in baroque and neoclassic styles, replete with myriad columns and ornate stonework.

Everywhere she turned, there was something remarkable to see. “That’s the Catedral de San Cristóbal, known as ‘music set in stone,’ ” Emiliano said, pointing to a beautiful, asymmetrical church. “The remains of Christopher Columbus were once housed there.” About each museum, concert hall, monument, and historic building, Emiliano imparted some tidbit that Jackie found fascinating. He should be a professor, she thought, not a lawyer and a political activist.

As they reached the waterfront, Emiliano explained that the array of imposing walls and fortresses had been erected to protect the city from the constant siege of corsairs and pirates. Jackie could imagine pirate ships turning back in trepidation from the massive Castillo del Morro guarding the entrance to Havana Bay and the intimidating La Cabaña fortress with its eighteenth-century walls.

Soon Jackie and Emiliano found themselves joining the parade of tourists and locals strolling along the Malecón, the seaside avenue that was the throbbing pulse of the historic walled city. Jackie wished that she had her camera with her to photograph the charming view. On one side, the blue waves of the Caribbean splashed against the craggy rocks of the seawall, and on the other, the golden sheen of the setting sun burnished the beautiful old pastel-colored buildings.

“Emiliano, this is so lovely,” Jackie said. “I can’t thank you enough for showing Old Havana to me.”

Instinctively, she grasped his hand and pressed it. It was an innocent gesture, but it seemed to embarrass him.

“I think we’d better be going,” Emiliano said, withdrawing his hand and glancing at his watch. “We don’t want to be late for our meeting.”

Don’t feel insulted. He’s just shy, Jackie told herself. Emiliano reminded her of some of the scholarship students she had met at college—the ones called “grinds”—who restrained their social lives and were awkward around girls because their education was paramount to them. But they didn’t look like Emiliano. His torrid handsomeness was at odds with his bookish reserve, an incongruity that Jackie found amusing.

On the walk back to catch a taxi, Jackie took a stab at learning more about her reticent escort without seeming to pry. “I like your name,” she said. “Emiliano Martinez has a nice ring to it. Were you named after anyone special?”

“Yes, my parents named me after Emiliano Zapata.” He looked at Jackie with an arched eyebrow. “Do you know who he is?”

“Of course I do,” Jackie said. “He led the Mexican Revolution against the Díaz dictatorship and the landowners who stole the peasants’ farms from them.”

Emiliano looked impressed. He had no idea that Jackie knew about Zapata, not from any history book, but from a press kit that the entertainment editor at the Times-Herald had shown her for a new Elia Kazan movie coming out soon called Viva Zapata! and starring Marlon Brando. There were pictures of a fierce-looking Brando with a thick black mustache overhanging his lip and a sombrero tied under his chin with the tag line: “Roaring Story of Mexico’s Tiger on a White Horse!”

Jackie cast a sidelong glance at Zapata’s namesake walking beside her, the scholarly young man dressed in summer slacks and a simple white sports shirt, and suppressed a giggle at the thought of him as a tiger on horseback.

“My parents were poor farmers like the Mexican peasants,” Emiliano explained, “and they wanted their son to grow up to be like Zapata and fight for the oppressed in Cuba.”

Traffic on the six-lane Malecón was flowing heavily, but Emiliano managed to hail a taxi. “La Europa,” he told the driver once he and Jackie were inside.

Looking out the open window, Jackie drew in her breath at the sight of a majestic hotel rising on a hill a stone’s throw from the sea.

Emiliano followed her gaze. “That’s the Hotel Nacional,” he told her. “Beautiful, isn’t it? A lot of famous people have stayed there and still do, everyone from Winston Churchill to Errol Flynn. And well-known American gangsters too, like Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.”

“Didn’t Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner stay at the Nacional on their honeymoon last year?” Jackie asked. She remembered seeing an item about that in the gossip columns that she perused daily to keep current with celebrities for her Inquiring Camera Girl column.

“Where else would they stay?” Emiliano rejoined, a note of bitterness in his voice. “Frank Sinatra has a suite there, and so does Luciano. The Mob—a perfect name for your country’s organization of Italian American gangsters—controls the big hotels, nightclubs, and casinos in Havana.”

Yes, I know that, Jackie thought, but she kept listening.

“The Mob backed Sinatra’s singing career when he was starting out, and in return, Sinatra became a cash courier for them. Five years ago, he landed at Havana airport carrying a suitcase stuffed with two million dollars in cash, profits from the Mob’s criminal activities in the States. He went to the Nacional with two gangster friends and delivered the cash to Luciano to pour into the Mob’s activities here.”

Jackie was shocked. All she knew about Sinatra was that he had a voice like a dream and wasn’t a bad actor either.

“What has happened to Cuba is sinful,” Emiliano said, the bitterness in his voice more pronounced. “Our beautiful island—the ‘Pearl of the Antilles’—has been corrupted by crime and greed. On the surface, it’s all bright lights and glitter, but there’s an undercurrent of violence. We Cubans want our nation back. The guidebooks describe Havana as ‘a volatile mix of Monte Carlo, Casablanca, and the ancient city of Cádiz all rolled into one.’ Well, that volatile mix is going to explode some day.”


Jackie didn’t know what part of town the taxi had driven them to, but it was off the beaten path. Except for the neon sign that said LA EUROPA over the doorway, the club might have been a large private home out in the suburbs somewhere. It reminded Jackie of pictures she had seen of Prohibition-era speakeasies in the States—a faintly scandalous-looking place for seekers of forbidden pleasures and celebrities who didn’t want to be gawked at by tourists.

Before they went in, Emiliano briefed Jackie on how to conduct herself. “We’re going to sit at the bar and wait for our Fidel Castro contact to come. If they ask you why you’re there, say that you write a newspaper column on entertainment. You love dancing, and you wanted to see the show.”

Well, I love ballet—that much is true, Jackie thought.

As soon as Jackie followed Emiliano into the club, her nostrils were assailed by a pungent odor that reminded her of the stables at Merrywood. She assumed it was from the thick clouds of cigarette smoke swirling around the room and thought the smell was even worse than the acrid aroma of the Gauloises that she’d tried in Paris.

Emiliano pulled out a seat for Jackie at the bar, told the bartender to make her a mojito, and looked around the room. “Our friend isn’t here,” he said to Jackie. “Enjoy your drink while I go look for him.”

This is good, Jackie said to herself as she took the first few sips of her mojito. I wonder what’s in it?

“Delicious drink, isn’t it?” the man seated next to her said, as if reading her mind.

Jackie turned her head to see an impeccably dressed gentleman in what looked to be a bespoke Savile Row suit with a silk handkerchief nestled in the breast pocket—attire that seemed as out of place in a club like La Europa as a tuxedo at a clambake.

“Why, yes, it is delicious,” Jackie said. “Do you know what’s in it?”

“White rum, sugar cane juice, lime juice, sparkling water, and mint,” the man said, sounding like an expert mixologist. “The mint is called yerba buena, a spearmint that’s very popular on the island. People in the know say that La Europa’s mojitos are even better than the ones at La Bodeguita.” The man smiled suggestively. “And you get a lot more than drinks here, if you know what I mean.”

Jackie was afraid that this strange man was trying to pick her up, but he quickly put her at her ease. “I would love to chat more with you, but I’m afraid I must be going, Miss…?”

“Bouvier. Jacqueline Bouvier. And you are?”

“Arthur Phillips,” he said. “I’m here from the States seeking investment opportunities for my company, and I’m having dinner with a prospect who’s probably waiting for me by now.”

The man fished a bill out of his wallet and laid it on the counter.” This is for you, Diego,” he said to the bartender, an intense-looking young man busy fixing drinks. Then Phillips withdrew a business card and handed it to Jackie. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Bouvier. I hope our paths cross again sometime.”

As Arthur Phillips took his leave, Jackie glanced at the card he had given her. Printed on it in bold letters, she saw the name THE THORNDYKE FUND.

That’s funny, Jackie thought. Those were the same three words that she had seen on Robert Maheu’s notepad. What was the Thorndyke Fund? Why was Maheu so interested in it? And what kinds of investments were involved?

Any questions that she had about the Thorndyke Fund flew out of Jackie’s head when she looked up from the card and saw the man sitting on the stool next to the one vacated by Arthur Phillips.

The high forehead, the bushy white beard and mustache, the brute masculinity of an aging lion king tamed by advancing years. It had to be. It was. Ernest Hemingway. In the flesh. Not a replica of him in El Floridita, but the real man.

Without missing a beat, Jackie slid into the seat next to him, leaned in close, and said, “Mr. Hemingway? I’m Jacqueline Bouvier of the Washington Times-Herald, and I’m so thrilled to meet you.” Her voice came out in a vibrato like the voice of Babykin, the talking doll popular back home, and she was afraid that Hemingway would ignore her.

But he didn’t. He downed the rest of his mojito and turned toward her with a flushed face and bleary eyes. “And what brings a lovely young thing like you to La Europa?” he asked. “Did the newspaper send you?”

He sounded wary, and Jackie remembered that his last book, Across the River and into the Trees, had been published two years ago to bad reviews. He probably thinks I’m a critic out to do him in, Jackie surmised, so she quickly said, “Oh no, I’m here on vacation. And I must tell you that I love all your work”—she deliberately stressed the “all”—“and can’t wait to read your next one, Mr. Hemingway.”

“Call me Papa,” he said, his eyes crinkling in a smile. “My new book is called The Old Man and the Sea. It’s the story of a four-day battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. I wrote the first draft in eight weeks in my home in Finca Vigía here.”

“Eight weeks! That’s amazing!”

“Well, it’s a short book,” Hemingway said modestly, “and the idea had been brewing for years.” He signaled to Diego to make him another mojito. “I’ve spent a lot of time fishing for marlin off the coast of Cuba on my boat, Pilar, and I turned that struggle into an allegory about the battles we go through in life.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Jackie exclaimed.

Diego set down a new drink for him, and Hemingway took a hefty swig of it. “I don’t know what the critics will say about it,” he ventured, “but it’s the best I can write ever for all of my life.”

“I bet you’ll win the Pulitzer Prize for it,” Jackie said.

The band struck up a mambo, and Jackie turned her head toward the dance floor, watching it fill up with couples.

“Would you like to dance?” she heard Hemingway say.

Would I! Jackie felt a little thrill rush through her, but when she turned back to Hemingway, she saw that his question had been addressed to someone else—the heavily made-up, scantily clad Hispanic woman, obviously a prostitute, sitting on the other side of him.

Red faced, Jackie slipped off her stool, looked around, and spotted Emiliano standing at the end of the bar. She didn’t know how long he had been there, but she was glad to see him.

“I looked everywhere and couldn’t find Javier,” Emiliano told Jackie when she rushed over to him, “but I see you like celebrities, so I’ve asked my friend Diego to introduce you to one.”

Hoping that she wouldn’t get another brush-off, Jackie followed Diego, a tray of drinks held high in his hand, weaving through the dance floor, which was crowded with couples vigorously shaking their hips in time to the mambo’s catchy beat. Finally, they came to a roped-off area that Jackie assumed was reserved for big shots. Diego undid the rope and motioned Jackie inside.

Jackie gasped when she saw who was sitting in the first booth, along with three sinister-looking men.

“Mr. Sinatra, I’d like you to meet Jacqueline Bouvier. She’s a columnist for the Washington Times-Herald,” Diego said as he set down the drinks on their table.

Face-to-face with the idol of every teenaged girl in America, “The Voice” himself, Jackie thought that she would swoon like one of his legion of adoring bobby-soxers, but she held her ground with a frozen smile on her face.

Sinatra gave her a long look. “A columnist, eh?” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Well, you’re a helluva lot better-looking than Walter Winchell, I can tell you that.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sinatra,” Jackie murmured, batting her eyelashes out of sheer nervousness.

Sinatra patted the empty space beside him on the banquet. “Have a seat,” he said to Jackie. “We’ll buy you a drink. I could use some good press.”

His thuggish-looking companions guffawed at that, while Diego took his cue and left, reaffixing the rope behind him.

Too excited to speak, her heart thumping a mambo of its own, Jackie sat down next to Sinatra. Up close, she was surprised to see that he looked gaunt and tired. There were lines around the famous mouth, hollows under the high cheekbones, and a worried look in the riveting blue eyes. He seemed edgy, a coiled spring of tense energy.

“Let me introduce you to everyone,” he said to Jackie. “The guy with all the bottle caps on his chest is Colonel Guillermo Sanchez,” Sinatra said, pointing to a hatchet-faced man in a khaki military uniform with a jacket full of medals. “He’s a hotshot in the secret police, and President Batista just gave him a promotion.”

Jackie didn’t want to think about what Sanchez did to merit that reward. And she didn’t like the way he leered at her either.

“That’s my pal Sam Giancana,” Sinatra said, nodding at the thin-lipped, shady character sitting next to Sanchez. Sam Giancana, Jackie knew, was a name synonymous with “Mafia hitman.” “He’s very popular in Chicago—paints the town red,” Sinatra added with a crooked smile.

Giancana caught the joke and laughed. He had a cackle like an ice cream headache—the maniacal ha-ha-ha-ha of a bloodless psychopath, Jackie thought, looking away from Giancana’s cold, dead eyes peering at her from behind horn-rimmed glasses. Frank Sinatra did indeed have ties to the Mob, as Emiliano had said. The CIA’s secret report of Giancana’s string of murders, love affairs, and financial interests read like a sensational crime novel.

Jackie was surprised when Sinatra introduced the henchman sitting next to Giancana as the “Mambo King.”

For some reason, that brought another burst of maniacal laughter from Giancana. Jackie’s skin was beginning to crawl. As thrilled as she was to be rubbing elbows with Frank Sinatra, this was not the kind of company she wanted to keep.

“What are you drinking?” Sinatra asked her.

“A mojito,” Jackie tossed off, hoping to sound sophisticated.

“Here, take this one,” Sinatra said, passing her one of the drinks Diego had brought. “That’s Ava’s favorite drink in Havana too. She just left for Africa to make a movie there with Clark Gable called Mogambo. Some new young actress from Philadelphia is in it too. I think her name is Grace Kelly.”

Grace Kelly, the girl from Schrafft’s. I hope this is her big break, Jackie thought, smiling inwardly as she remembered their coffee-spilling gambit in the restaurant. To Sinatra, she said, “Africa—that sounds exciting.” She tried to sound impressed, but it was disconcerting to know that when the cat was away, the mice would play, even when the cat was the gorgeous Ava Gardner. “Will you be joining her there?”

Sinatra frowned. “My show is opening at the Club Parisién next week, so I’ll be stuck in Havana for a while. Africa would be great, but I gotta keep up with Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett, and the movie offers aren’t rolling in right now.”

Suddenly, Jackie had a suggestion for Sinatra that she thought would cheer him up.

“You know, I just finished reading From Here to Eternity, and I think you’d be perfect for Private Maggio in the movie.”

A light came on in Sinatra’s eyes. “Say, that’s a great idea,” he said. “Maggio, the little Italian guy who has a lotta guts but no luck. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll get on Harry Cohn at Columbia right away.” He looked at Jackie with new appreciation. “You’re a smart girl. Classy too. What are you doing after the show?”

Jackie knew that Sinatra had only one thing in mind, and she wasn’t interested. Besides, Guillermo and Giancana were deep in conversation—she caught the words “Castro” and “poison” in the same sentence—and that made her exceedingly nervous.

“I’m with someone, and I really must be getting back to him,” Jackie said, rising from the table, “but thank you so much for the drink, and good luck getting the part of Private Maggio.”

Emiliano looked worried when Jackie caught up with him at the bar. “Javier still hasn’t come,” he said, “but maybe he’ll show up during the show. It’ll be starting soon. I reserved a table for us.”

“Good. Maybe I’ll get to see the Mambo King perform. He was sitting with Sam Giancana and Sinatra. Is he like Pérez Prado?”

“Oh, he’s not a musician,” Emiliano said. “They call him that because he likes to use his machine gun to make his victims dance before he kills them.”

“How awful!” Jackie exclaimed. She shuddered and shook her head to rid it of the grotesque image.

Seated at an intimate table for two in the darkened room, munching on the tasty paella that Emiliano had ordered, Jackie heard the band launch into an opening number. She sat up expectantly as a line of curvaceous showgirls in low-cut, flashy, sequined gowns took the stage. Jackie thought that their towering Carmen Miranda–style headdresses looked as if a crate of fruit salad had fallen on their heads, but she admired their dancing. It was scandalously exciting, especially to the men ogling them ringside—one of them, Guillermo Sanchez, Jackie could recognize by the stage lights glancing off the rows of medals on his chest.

When the show was over, people started filing out of the room. Soon, except for some showgirls at the bar or deep in one-on-one conversation with male customers scattered about, Jackie and Emiliano were the only patrons left. And still, there was no sight of Fidel’s contact anywhere.

“I guess we’d better leave,” Emiliano said with a sigh. “It doesn’t look as if he’ll be coming.”

But someone else was arriving, walking through the door and into the nearly empty room, directly in Jackie’s line of vision. Oh God, not him, Jackie wailed to herself. But it was—Jack Kennedy—no mistake about it this time.

Catching up again with the senatorial candidate was high on Jackie’s to-do list, but certainly not in Havana—that would raise too many questions. It didn’t surprise her that Jack was here—the U.S. had vital interests in Cuba, and Jack also had a keen interest in Havana’s showgirls, according to Charlie Bartlett—but why did he have to come here now?

When Jack turned his head in her direction, Jackie suddenly sprang up and said to Emiliano. “I’ve got to go to the ladies’ room. I’ll be right back.”

Jackie didn’t know where the ladies’ room was, but she headed in the opposite direction from the bar. There’s got to be someplace I can hide, she thought as she made her way along a wall, but where? Ah, perfect: a room with a curtain hanging in front of it—probably a dressing room of some sort.

Jackie pushed aside the curtain and almost screamed. There, seated on a man’s lap, was a gyrating seminude showgirl, her gown lying on the floor, her naked breasts brushing back and forth across the man’s face.

Without making a sound, Jackie closed the curtain and kept searching for a hideout. A stairway. That must lead to the ladies’ room, she thought, and raced up the steps. She came to a hallway, but none of the rooms on either side had a sign on the door.

She heard the sound of laughter coming from the bottom of the stairs and turned to see Jack Kennedy, a showgirl on his arm, about to start up the steps. Oh God, now what am I going to do? Jackie asked herself, quickly turning away. Having seen what was behind the curtain that she had opened, she was unwilling to try any of the doors.

Jackie stood in the hall, frozen to the spot, knowing that in a matter of moments, Jack Kennedy would be this close. Frantically, she looked around, searching for something to hide behind, but saw nothing. But then, beside a large door at the far end of the hall, Jackie spotted her salvation: a telephone on the wall and a phone book on a stand beneath it. She ran to the phone, hurriedly thumbed through the book until she found the number for La Europa—an office number that was different from the one on the hall phone—and dialed it with trembling fingers.

“Hola,” a gruff man’s voice said.

Disguising her voice, which she needn’t have done since it was trembling so hard, and in passable Spanish, Jackie said, “This is United States congressman John F. Kennedy’s personal secretary. Please have him come to your office immediately. I have an urgent message for him.”

“Un momento,” the man said.

Jackie waited, and when she finally had the courage to turn around, at the bottom of the stairs she saw a burly-looking man leading Jack Kennedy away from the showgirl.

With a sigh of relief, Jackie hung up the phone and quickly rejoined Emiliano, who was standing at the bar. “Is it all right if we leave now?” she asked. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling well. I think I just need some air. I’ll wait outside while you call a cab.”

“Of course,” Emiliano said, looking concerned. “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.”