The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [135]
“I notice your papa as the gentleman I met at Hialeah; he walks right up wearing this creamy linen suit with a creamy rosebud in his lapel, and he says hello to me, and then he tells us, I mean the Tropigala band, he wants us to play this particular tango. So Omar, Omar Ordonez, our bandleader, plays it. Slow Argentine tango. So at the best table in the place that night is this woman, sitting there between two ex-big-shots from Cuba, friends of Batista, one in the Church and one in crime. Both making money, we could say, from the sins of the flesh, not to mention the heart’s sad aspirations. The churchman is Archbishop de Uloa.”
“The other is Feliz Diaz?”
“Yes.” Raffy went on to describe Diaz, with a keen dislike, as a man of political influence in Miami, whose criminal interests were protected by the powerful and paid for by the hopeless who bought the drugs, hookers, and numbers rackets that he sold. “Castro is on my primo shit list, but kicking Diaz out of Havana showed excellent judgment on Castro’s part.”
“And the woman in the Tropigala that night? The same woman we saw yesterday at Golden Days getting out of the black Mercedes with Diaz?”
“Yes.”
Annie asked for her name.
“Helen Clark.”
“So my father met Diaz that night? And?”
“Diaz and this woman are sitting with Archbishop de Uloa. She’s all tan in a little white dress. It’s nothing but you can tell it’s a thousand dollars, you know the kind I mean?”
Annie did.
“I’m watching from the bandstand. I see your dad’s asking her to dance. She laughs out loud, but she’s nervous. Jack introduces himself to Diaz and the archbishop. Edward Fettermann, vice president of this mining corporation.” Raffy pinched off the burning tip of his cigarillo and slid the butt into his shirt pocket. “Your dad stares at Helen, almost mad-looking, and holds out his hand, just holds it there. Whole Tropigala freezes, like the Ice Age broke through the windows in big chunks.”
Annie asked if her father had already known Helen Clark before.
“I don’t think so. Later he told me that’s when they met. She stands up and walks onto the dance floor. I’m thinking, the poor guy (your papa), he’s going to wash up dead with the morning tide because nobody in Miami moves in on Feliz Diaz. I don’t know this tango and I’m trying to fake it, strum and thump, but I’m distracted like everybody else, watching the two of them. At first it’s like she was trying to get away but then it was like they’d practiced.” Raffy did a slow graceful sequence of tango steps up the aisle beside their seats. “When the number’s over, guess what?”
Annie shrugged. “Diaz shot my dad.”
“No. Don’t make jokes.” Raffy clapped his hands. “Diaz claps. Then the big-shot priest claps. Then Diaz holds his hand out to Jack. He says, ‘Join us.’”
“My dad,” Annie admitted, “could dance.”
Raffy nodded. “Across the sky and never look down.” Humming a song, he held out his arms and courteously invited Annie into a dance. She thought, why not? She hadn’t danced, except rock-music gyrations, for a long time. They moved down the stairs and onto the close-cut grass. The rumba steps came back to her from her childhood.
Each in their separate memories, Raffy sang and they danced at the racetrack. The moment again felt curiously peaceful to her. It was strange that Rafael Rook should feel so familiar.
Finally she stepped away from him and asked, “Did Helen Clark take up with my dad after that night?”
He leaned against a gate and shook his head no. “Honestly I think they hated each other’s guts. But your dad and Diaz, they hit it off big. Diaz loves humongous stakes poker, seven-card stud. It’s like an addictive obsession with him. Your papa would play those stakes. Jack was the ace of aces with regard to poker. Except, he had some bad runs.”
“I’ll say: two or three hundred thousand dollars worth.” Annie took her bottled water from her purse.
“Unfortunately. But