Other Covenants

Chapter 3

“We only kill each other.”

—Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel

I was the best shot in the whole goddamn division, no kidding. Even the farm boys from the Midwest couldn’t outshoot me. My old man ran a dry goods store in Brooklyn; I didn’t know from shooting. But they put that M1 carbine in my hands, and magic happened. At Eisenborn Ridge, I put a round clean through the eye of an SS piece of s**t. Two hundred-fifty yards out, and I shot a hole in the bastard’s face like he was standing ten feet away. I’m not saying I never missed. Everybody misses. But I never missed when it really counted. Except Bugsy.

1947, two years after I got out of the service. They offered me $10,000 if I could pull it off. I don’t know why they wanted it done and I didn’t ask. Story I heard was he helped himself to money the Commission gave him to build hotels in Vegas. Meyer didn’t want him killed, but boyhood friendships don’t feed the bottom line. So I went out to Beverly Hills at midnight. I could see him in his living room from where I crouched in the bushes. I had an M1 carbine, exactly what I used in Europe, but a kid with a pellet g*n could have hit him. I missed. That made 1956 possible.

We all stood on that beach, under the palm trees. A leaky little yacht—the Granma, they called it, like your bubbe—lurched across the water. Bugsy stood next to me, dressed in pinstripe like he was going to a Hollywood party. “Look at this! It’s f*****g Sands of Iwo Jima! You ever see Sands of Iwo Jima, Katzie?” I told him I didn’t watch movies. Maybe he knew it was me nine-and-a-half-years before and maybe he didn’t, but he made amends with the Commission and business went on. You forgive a lot in this line of work. It’s too expensive not to.

I think there were about forty of us with Thompsons and grease guns and a couple boxes of grenades, a chilly night wind tousling the palm trees. We smelled the diesel, watched them clinging like ants as the yacht tilted back and forth like maybe it would flip. Eighty-one guys on a twelve-man boat; give the Reds credit for chutzpah at least. The yacht hit a sandbar and they climbed off and started wading towards the beach, rifles held up over their heads. Bugsy clapped me on the back. “Show these commies how you did it in Germany.” We opened up.

There wasn’t enough left of that Castro fella to take back, but the other one, I’ll never forget. Greasy asshole in a beret, lousy beard and hair probably hadn’t been washed in a couple weeks. I had the barrel of my M1911A1 to the back of his head, and he started babbling in Spanish. Bugsy turned to the soldier they sent to “supervise” us, an old Cuban in a pressed green uniform. “What’s he saying?”

The Cube smiled. “He says, ‘Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead!’”

“He thinks we’re CIA,” I said.

Bugsy laughed. “Just contractors, Che. Just f*****g contractors.” He lit a cigar, nodded to me. Turns out you can end a revolution in fifteen minutes.

That was December 2nd. The fourth night of Hanukkah, ’56. The menorah my zeyde brought with him from White Russia sat cold in my drink cabinet in Brooklyn, but we lit enough fires to make up for it.

*

1971, Havana. Now it all comes back around. I’m out front of José Marti International Airport, all the way on the opposite end of the island from that beach. The city’s changed in some ways: the skyline’s got more light in it, for one, and you can finally get a decent corned beef on rye. In others, not so much. We got a different Batista, but one tinpot island asshole is as good as another, so long as the climate stays business-friendly and Red-free. And it will. That was the deal, and everybody wins except eighty-one assholes in four feet of water. Stars, execs, producers, heiresses, Kennedys, President Nixon with his winter villa . . . everybody comes to Havana, all the way down to the schmoes standing around me on the sidewalk, laughing and backslapping, champing at the bit to blow their quarterly bonuses on roulette and bring a case of the clap home to wifey.

I finish my cigarette as the car pulls up—nice, new Cadillac—and an oily-haired kid steps out. Probably a gigolo when he’s not driving for Bugsy. I think he’s Cuban, but he could be Italian or Jewish or all three. “Señor Black,” he says. “Welcome.” He takes my suitcase and I sit down in the passenger seat. We’re going to Calle 23 in Vedado. That’s where the premiere happens.

He pulls out into traffic, aiming deep into Havana, a tangle of skyscrapers, Spanish villas, and palm trees barely hiding the barrios where the actual Cubes live, kids in ratty shorts and t-shirts begging for a few pesos so they can eat, widowed mothers selling themselves on filthy sidewalks, homeless men passed out in alleys. There’s more of that Cuba than Calle 23. You think Che and Fidel would have changed that? Don’t bet on it.

The kid offers me another cigarette. “Your first time here, Señor Black?”

“Not hardly,” I say, lighting it. “I probably been coming here since before you were born.”

“You more Cuban than me, maybe,” he says. He’s right. Without us, what would this city even look like? If they’d left things in Batista Senior’s hands, we’d have the hammer and sickle a hundred miles from Miami. Instead, this island’s so kosher you could eat it for Passover. Israel is for the prophets and pioneers, the reformers and rabbis. Our kind of yid, we remade Havana in our own image. It’s Scumbag Jerusalem.

*

You don’t get a lot of second chances in life—especially when it comes to guns. I can thank Meyer for this one. We met in Cohen’s Deli in Miami at a little table in the back. You’d think he was just another alte kacker, sitting all alone eating his matzah ball soup. This is how he wants it done:

The Shtarker premieres at the Harry Cohn Theater, next to the Playboy Club Havana. I’m going to sit up in the box with Bugs and watch the picture, have a few drinks, make sure he’s at ease. The credits roll, I’ll down another quick drink, pull that same M1911A1 out of its shoulder holster, and empty the clip in Bugsy. By sunrise I’m in Miami.

“Why now?” I asked.

He cut a matzah ball in half with his spoon. “I didn’t think this Shtarker picture would go anywhere. I figured nothing would come out of it except he’d waste a bunch of dough, which is why I told him he had to use his own. I turn around, and the picture’s going to be released in a week.”

Time was, Meyer would have been on top of that and I would have been to Havana and back months ago. He’s old now. They’re all old. Alex Birns is on parole; spends more time on the racquetball court than running Cleveland. Abe Bernstein’s done s**t since the end of the Purple g**g. Mickey Cohen’s rotting in the Atlanta pen. f**k Mickey anyway, palling around with Billy Graham, pretending to be Christian.

Meyer took a sip of Dr. Brown’s celery soda and looked into his soup. “I’m sick of this, Katzie. I been friends with this schmuck since we were running whiskey, but always with the limelighting. Thinks he’s a goddamn movie star. And he cast a bunch of Italians. He couldn’t have at least hired Jews?”

It’s funny that The Shtarker’s what pushed Meyer to end things. Bugsy does nothing but limelight.

He tried to get Batista Two to name him Mayor of Havana in ’64. A couple years later, he called the Pentagon and offered to send a bunch of us to Vietnam to kill more commies. Just last year, he tried to become the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Straws and dead camels, I guess.

“I don’t pay attention to the movies,” I said. Not when I can help it.

“Well you know who does? Every other f*****g person in the free world. We’ve got a delicate thing going on in Cuba. The deals they made with us, the moment we start advertising is the moment it all falls apart, and Bugsy knows it. So the asshole decides he’s going to make a gangster flick. Last thing any of us need is a picture like this coming out. Don’t miss this time.”

“Forty-seven was a fluke.”

He looks at me, half the matzah ball quivering in his spoon. “Yeah, well, no more flukes. Now go get yourself some brisket or something.”

*

We hit Calle 23 and the last thing I want to do is go to this premiere. If it were up to me I’d take care of Bugsy and head right back to the airport. You don’t think of guys in my line of work not wanting to go into the office, but there you have it. I don’t want to have to watch the damn thing is all. You either believe in the pictures or you don’t, and I don’t.

The Calle feels like a giant pinball table. You bounce around, hitting all the targets in a neon daze until you find a hole somewhere to collapse in. It’s five times the size of Vegas with a hundred times as many ways to go broke. You’ll probably lose most of your savings by the time you’ve been through the blackjack tables at Solomon’s Palace, Ezekiel’s Wheel, and the Maccabee. If you’ve still got money left over, you won’t after a few hours at the tracks and a few lap dances at Burning Bushes. Then it’s back home to explain to the kids why they’re not getting birthday presents. That’s the story of Havana. Infinite variations but the same old tired plot. Like the movies.

I drop my bags at the Havana Rivera and head over to the Harry Cohn. Everyone’s waiting around to catch glimpses of the stars as they pull up. I don’t know why people care. It’s all fake anyway. A bunch of putzes from the Anti-Defamation League chant and wave signs: “We won’t stand by for public image g******e!” “MORE than gangsters!” “Schande fur die goyim!” “We’re better than Bugsy!” Dumb kids with shaggy hair and ugly moustaches, looking like faygeles. Someone’s yelling about the movie being in “kosherface” because it’s got more Italians than Jews in it; the director’s some guy named Coppola and they gave the leads to this Al Pacino and this Marlon Brando. Everybody’s all worked up over that. It’s just a movie. I push through the crowd and head to the side door like Bugsy said. Up a set of stairs to Box #5, open the door and there he is.

Used to be people mistook Bugsy for a movie star. Good-looking guy, dressed sharp, always joking and laughing and throwing money around. And of course, he hung out with movie stars. Used to be friends with George Raft—you know, Scarface. Of course, when Raft stopped being big in Hollywood, Bugsy stopped giving a s**t. Not giving a s**t is probably the reaction you want from Bugsy anyway.

I remember once this asshole producer from L.A. came up to Bugsy when he was hanging around in Vegas. I can’t remember who all was there. Elizabeth Taylor, maybe? They had a thing for a while. Those actors are all the same to me anyhow. Anyway, this producer makes a big show of greeting everyone except Bugsy. I’m sitting at the bar drinking a scotch and he turns to him and says, “I’m sorry, I don’t recall seeing you in anything.” Bugs says, “I direct.” And this dumb f**k still doesn’t know he’s smoking dynamite, so he says, “What do you direct, Mr.—?” “Siegel,” says Bugs. “And the answer is everything.”

I used to box amateur. I was no Barney Ross, but I did okay. The worst part of boxing was waiting for the bell to ring on the first round, because you know you’re going to take the kind of hit that rearranges your entire world. This f*****g producer stepped in with George Frazier and didn’t even see the ropes. “Oh yes, Bugsy.” You never, never call him that to his face.

I’m no rabbi, God knows. I’ve smacked around some assholes who deserved it and some who didn’t, but you do it until the message registers and you walk away. Bugsy never walked away. He put that poor stupid bastard in a wheelchair for life.

That was Bugsy back when. Today he looks wilted. The hair he’s got left is white, and his face is so loose and wrinkled it looks like it hangs off his skull. But his eyes—predatory blue, sharp as the neon cage he and Meyer built around this city. Eagle eyes in the face of a vulture.

“Katzie!” One spotted claw crawls up onto my shoulder, and the other steadies him on a cane. He waves to some Spanish starlet with a nice rack behind him. “Raquel, this is Katzie Black, from New York.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say, shaking her hand and trying to keep my eyes out of her cleavage. Bugsy gives her a hundred-dollar bill and a pat on her fine, round a*s and tells her to go get a drink downstairs.

The box is something. Like a big balcony. There are armchairs to watch the show, a wet bar with plates of cold cuts and fresh fruit, and a full liquor cabinet. Bugsy put autographed photos all over the walls: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Jean Harlow, and a bunch of others I don’t know. Bugs hands me a Montecristo #2 and points at the bar top. “Matches and the cutter over there. Fix yourself a drink.”

I mix a mojito, light the Montecristo, and we exchange bullshit about how things are in the States. Meyer’s fine, Carlo’s fine, everybody’s f*****g fine. Then he cuts all that off and says, “Screw what those ADL pishers say, Katzie. This picture’s going to change everything for us.”

“How do you figure?”

He sits back in his armchair. “It’s a true story.” I think about how old Bugsy is, all the things he’s done, and I’m not surprised he’s crazy. Hell, he was always crazy. It’s why people call him Bugsy to begin with. I start to wonder if this movie is some kind of life story. I hope I’m not important enough to be in it.

“There’s no such thing as a true story in a movie. Even if it’s based off somebody’s life they change up so much that it’s a lie in the end.”

He looks out over the theater, all the stars gathering in their seats and up in the boxes. “No, all the best movies are true. But there are two kinds of truth. There’s what happens, and there’s what people want to believe happens. You maybe call that a lie, but that’s the kind of truth our whole world is based on. Take ’56. The papers just said it was “forces under the command of President Batista.” People want to believe that. They don’t want to realize the Feds came to me and Meyer. They want it to have happened a different way, so it might as well have, and that might as well be the truth. That’s the kind of truth this movie is. About us.”

I help myself to a slice of mango from the bar.

“Why tell any kind of story? Why bring the attention?”

Bugsy ashes his cigar.

“You watch it, and then you tell me.”

Which is exactly the part of this game I don’t want to play. I haven’t sat through a whole movie since Casablanca. Last thing I saw in a theater before I shipped out. When I returned from Germany, I knew I could never go back to working in my old man’s dry goods store, so I kicked around, did day jobs. Some nights I woke up in a sweat thinking I was back on Eisenborn Ridge. The furnace would make a loud clunking noise, and my dreams turned it into shellfire. First time it happened, I took the subway to a late-night theater and tried to watch Back to Bataan with John Wayne, that draft-dodging cock­sucker. I left the movie after fifteen minutes. Like I said, you either believe in the pictures or you don’t, and I couldn’t. Not war movies, not comedies, not gangster flicks. They aren’t real. I used to love that about movies. Not anymore.

I drank a lot, got into fights. Meyer heard about me after two Irishmen in Hell’s Kitchen wanted to know what a kike was doing at their bar and ended up picking broken glass out of their faces. He liked the fact that I served, that I had fought the Nazis, that I was such a good shot. He asked me if I had a steady job.

Bugsy points me to one of the big armchairs and the lights go down. The Coppola guy gets up and talks about what a fight it was to get The Shtarker made. Paramount didn’t want Pacino, Paramount didn’t want Brando, but thank God Mr. Ben Siegel was willing to front the money and pull strings, because what we’re about to see is like no other film ever made. Everybody goes crazy clapping and Bugsy stands up and waves from the box. This movie runs three whole hours. I get up and mix another mojito. Strong.

The Shtarker starts at a wedding in New York City, back in 1945. We see a huppah and a klezmer band and a bunch of people dancing the hora, but the scene is all about this fat, bulldog-faced guy sitting at a desk upstairs. That’s this Marlon Brando, except in the movie he’s called Vigdor Kornblum, and he’s the Shtarker. He sees all these peddlers and shopkeepers and everything and they all f*****g love him. He’s their king, holding court.

The Shtarker has three sons: Max, who’s just back from fighting the Nazis and has some shikse girlfriend; Sol, who’s a hothead, banging some chick he met at the wedding; and Felix, who’s a whiny little nebbish. Now there’s a pushcart peddler talking about how much he believes in America and how he fled the Czar and all this Old Country shtick, but now some goyim r***d his daughter after he did everything right and played by all the rules. Vigdor’s going to take care of it because he’s the Shtarker.

That’s small, though. The Shtarker’s big problem right now is that some Hollywood producer doesn’t want to cast this singer (I guess he’s supposed to be Eddie Fisher or something) because he f****d some broad the producer wanted. He’s got to protect his investment, so what’s the Shtarker going to do? “Oy, I’m going to make him an onbot he can’t refuse.” He gives the producer a warning—sends some goy henchmen to cut the head off a pig and leave it in his bed. The producer wakes up screaming. He sees all the blood and thinks he’s been shot, but then he gets the message when he sees the pig head, staring back from between his feet. The singer gets the part.

The whole picture’s full of that message stuff. Like this big bastard Lewis Brodsky, who’s the Shtarker’s muscle, gets clipped by one of Vigdor’s enemies and instead of just making him disappear, they send a packet of lox wrapped in a bulletproof vest. The Shtarker’s lieutenant, Kleiman, explains that back in Odessa, that meant that Lewis Brodsky sleeps with the fishes. We don’t do things all cute like that and Bugsy knows it better than anybody. It’s a lot of trouble, that symbolic s**t, when a .40 caliber barrel to the temple takes two seconds to get the same result. It’s got style, though, I’ll give it that. The lines stick with me: “Someday—and that day may never come—I will call upon you for a toivah.” “Revenge is a nosh best-served cold.” “Leave the g*n, take the knish.” I wish we talked that way.

The Shtarker’s son Max (that’s Pacino and he’s my favorite—went to the War like me) has to flee the country after he kills a bent mick cop in a restaurant, so he goes and spends some time in Israel. They shot it on location in Tel Aviv. I never went to Israel, but I feel like I’m seeing the best parts of it, even if it’s an Italian showing me. Max marries a beautiful Israeli girl and it looks like maybe he’ll never go back to New York, except she gets killed. I usually hate that sentimental tragic bullshit, but it makes me a little sad, I have to admit. Sometimes you can’t catch a break. Believe me, I know.

The Shtarker dies and hothead Sol gets gunned down (that’s James Caan) and Max takes over. The first thing he does is have all his rivals whacked. It’s a hell of a scene. He’s at his baby son’s bris, and all that time there are these assholes who tried to screw him over getting strangled and shot and knifed. The last scene is him sitting in Vigdor’s office, doing business while the door closes on his shikse fiancée. The new Shtarker.

It doesn’t feel like three hours.

Bugsy pats me on the arm. “What’d you think?” I light a cigarette, sip my drink. I’m on straight rum now: Havana Club. I let the warmth run through me, wait for it to calm me down. You’re always a little nervous, no matter how many times you do this. It’ll be one-hundred and three once I’m done with Bugsy.

“I think it’s a lot of bullshit, Ben.”

“But it’s good bullshit,” he says, and he smiles.

“Yeah,” I say, taking a drag. “It is. That Coppola, he’s got some style.”

Bugsy shakes the ice around in his drink, smile deepening. “It’s based off a book. Guy named Philip Roth wrote it. He’s pretty famous now.”

“I don’t care about famous, but I liked it.” I can’t believe it, but I did. Down below the audience is filing out to the afterparty at Solomon’s Palace.

“Everybody’s on about James Caan being the only Jew in a big role, but you know we used to play the Italians in the old gangster flicks?” Bugs chuckles, pulls another cigar out of his breast pocket. “Ed Robinson—you know, ‘Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?’—he was a yid. Now the Italians play us. That’s what you call progress.” He lights his cigar and stands up. “Now how about you finish your drink and do what you came here to do.” I look up at him, and he smiles that smile that used to have all the broads in Hollywood at his feet. “’Forty-seven all over again.” He pats his chest, right over his heart.

“What do you mean?” I stand up, but I don’t draw, not yet. He laughs, puffs the cigar and focuses his eyes on me, blue and sharp and broken as a smashed glass.

“This ain’t a Western. I’m not going to quickdraw you. But we both know why you’re here. Hell, I asked for you. Just like I wanted you on that beach in ’56.”

He wouldn’t bother with a setup. If he wanted me dead, I would’ve been dead. I pull the M1911A1 and aim it at his forehead. He can look down the suppressor, but he doesn’t flinch—just sits smoking his cigar like I’m the firing squad.

“Go on. Pull the trigger.”

He sees the question in my face and sighs. “You want to know why? Here.” He pulls down his right eyelid to show an angry red knot of meat. “Stage Five. It spread to my liver, and from my liver wherever it wants.”

“How long you got?” I lower the g*n just slightly.

“The doctors say six months. But you and I know it’ll be any second now.”

I raise the barrel again, point it right at the center of his chest. In this line of work you get used to the idea that the Angel of Death rides on a twitch of your finger, but you also know that in the big picture, most of those deaths don’t mean anything. The degenerate gambler who skipped on paying was always going to be a degenerate gambler who skipped on paying. The rat was going to rat out someone, somewhere anyway. You outlive your purpose, well, anyone who signs on with guys like Meyer and Bugsy knows that day’s coming, that the guy you’re drinking scotch with today will pat the dirt over you tomorrow. Our lives are as interchangeable as car parts: some cost more to fix than others, but we’re all replaceable.

But sometimes there’s something more. Sometimes you feel like maybe you aren’t just deciding life or death—you’re deciding something bigger, redirecting the little trickle of water that becomes a river. In ’47, I felt it. Maybe that’s why I missed. In ’56, I felt it again, looking Che in the eyes as he begged. And now?

I don’t feel it at all. Bugsy’s damage is done. He’s circled right back around from a no-account asshole to a king to a no-account asshole again, just with money and fame this time. This is waste management, nothing more. But I still hesitate, because he’s grinning. Ear to ear. You never saw someone about to get clipped so happy.

“What the f**k are you so giddy about?”

He shakes his head, wheeze-cough-laughs out a spicy cloud of smoke.

“You know what makes the movies so great?”

“I hate the f*****g movies.”

“But you liked The Shtarker.”

“That’s one movie.”

He drops the cigar in the ashtray, closes his eyes, spreads his arms like he’s going to fly. “My parents were out of Letychiv. It’s in the Ukraine now. Five of us in a one-room flat, barely enough money to put food on plates. You know the story. Bet you lived some version of it.”

“We all did.” I never hesitated before. You may miss, but you don’t think about whether or not you should shoot, not when you’ve already drawn. It’s when, not if. Do I fire now? In thirty seconds? Five minutes? Twenty years? When. Not if. But here I’m hesitating. Bugsy opens his eyes, like he’s coming out of a dream.

“My kid brother’s a doctor in L.A. I’m real proud of him. So were my parents. They were proud of me too. They knew maybe I broke some laws, but they saw a successful son, somebody important. Anything bad was just background, dust under the rug.

“You liked The Shtarker because it’s realer than real. We ain’t Meyer Lansky and Ben Siegel and Katzie Black, not as soon as those lights go out and the projector starts rolling. People see the way it should have been. Vigdor and Max and Sol. Men of honor. Tough guys. We’re a little notorious, a little dangerous, but we’re heroes. They’ll want to be us, and then the way it should have been becomes the way everybody wants it to be, and that’s as good as true. Che and Fidel understood that. How do you think they got eighty-one schlubs to pile onto a boat that couldn’t fit twenty? They sold the legend. Everything was swept away.”

Bugsy holds his hands up like he’s framing a headline. “Hollywood mogul and gangland figure Benjamin Siegel assassinated by notorious hit man ‘Katzie’ Black. People will hear about you and I, and they’ll flock to see the movie. It’s great publicity. But it’s more: they won’t see the bloodstains, they won’t know about the cancer. They’ll just know the legend, and The Shtarker fills in the rest. We live forever. You want a World to Come? That’s your World to Come.”

Publicity. This was Meyer’s idea. Bugs never thought like that. He had the vision but never the strategy. “Why do they have to know it was me?” I ask, but we both know the answer. ’47. This isn’t exactly revenge, but when the company gets downsized, the ones who pissed off the boss go first. Somebody shuffles outside the door, metal clicks on metal. I’m leaving this room under a sheet. As a legend.

“Do it.”

I never liked Bugsy. A lot of guys did. He threw money around, bought drinks, always had beautiful women with him . . . it was like hanging out with a movie star. You know what I think about the movies, but that wasn’t why I didn’t like him. In our line of work, you’re bound to be a piece of s**t, and we deal with it in all kinds of ways. Lots of drugs, lots of booze, lots of women. Lots of excuses: families to support; it’s the Jews against the world; we’re kike Robin Hoods; it’s just the way things are; in our day you either worked under gangsters or you became a gangster, and on and on. I always told myself that it all balanced out. I killed Nazis. If I killed a few more schmucks back home, well, you look at the camp photos and tell me I didn’t redeem myself. I’m a soldier, that’s all. Not everyone agrees with every war. Just differences of opinion.

But Bugsy—Bugs does this s**t because he flat-out f*****g loves it. The pain, the double-crosses, all of it. A shark in b****y water. A shark who can make you think the beach is safe because you can’t see his fin. A shark who wants me to tell everyone else to never mind and keep swimming while I’m carrying the bodies off the sand. I’m not part of the legend. I’m just its janitor.

He picks up his cigar again, looks like a producer at a board meeting.

“You and I’ll be in the sequel. Cast Robert Redford as me. Open on the beach, waiting for the Granma to land. Show us as patriots. Coppola’ll get somebody good to play you, don’t worry. End in this room, you and I. Cut.”

The nerves leave me, and I feel a sudden peace. I don’t want to believe this story he’s telling. I know the truth.

“You know what?”

He looks like I just woke him up by screaming in his ear. “Know what? Know f*****g nothing, Katzie. Conversation’s over. Do it.”

I loosen my finger on the trigger, drop the pistol on the armchair.

“f**k you, Bugsy.”

His eyes narrow, two coals of blue fire sinking into a sea of wrinkles.

“What did you just say to me?”

“I called you Bugsy,” I said. “And I told you to take this legend and go f**k yourself.”

I turn and walk towards the hallway with ten footsteps left on this earth. The business will go on. Cuba will be a neon jewel with a rotting belly until either the people or the CIA get sick of us. They’ll get somebody else, probably, but as far as I know, Bugsy will die in a hospital bed, wasted and numb with morphine, too proud for suicide as Catholic priests sniff around like vultures. That’s the story I want to believe. That’s the truth I take out of this world.

This isn’t the first time I walked out of a theater mid-show.

Roll credits.