Queen of the Underworld Read Online Free PDF

with his tawny skin, Saracen features, impeccably barbered salt-and-pepper hair, and the four slashes of wrinkles—two horizontal, two vertical, like the beginning of a tic-tac-toe game—in the middle of his forehead. Finally the little gold tie pin, his logo, took on its familiar nightingale shape at about the same time his special cologne kicked in, and, though he was practicing his usual custody of the eyes, I felt the pulse-quickening jolt of being desired in all my details.
    We were being noticed by the few others in the lobby. A group of men in those pleated smocklike shirts that I would learn to call guayaberas played dominoes at a table in the corner while listening to a Spanish-language station on their transistor radio. Behind the front desk where morose Luís had been stationed earlier, a square-chinned young man in blazer and someplace’s school tie sat on a high stool reading a hardcover book. He looked up and gave us a polite nod as we went by. Paul nodded in return.
    I saw us through their eyes: a suave Jewish man somewhere in his forties, and a queenly young woman in a well-fitting black dress with dark blond hair coiled up and away from her neck. Father and daughter? Too different in coloration, unless she’s an adopted daughter. But there’s a charged reticence between them that isn’t at all familial. They could be two spies on a joint mission; but most likely, in this setting, she’s his young mistress.
             
    “I T’S BEEN a long time since Christmas.” Paul’s first words once we were alone in the car.
    “It sure has.”
    “You’re looking extremely well.”
    “So are you.”
    “Thank you, we try. You hungry?”
    “I’ve been saving up all day.”
    “In that case, should we zip straight up Biscayne and cross over at Broad Causeway? That’s the fastest.”
    “No, let’s go the slow way, beside the ocean. I prefer to spin out my pleasures when I know they’re finally in reach.”
    He laughed softly and reached over to cover my hand with his, the first time he had touched me since Christmas. His cologne, concocted for him by his aunt Stella, who had a thriving custom-perfume business on Miami Beach, enfolded me with its many associations dating back to last summer when I began waiting tables at the Nightingale Inn and realized I was falling in love with the owner.
    Though it was drizzling and almost dusk, I could make out the bobbing lights of ships in their sea-lanes and they convinced me I was finally here, with both the job and the man I most desired.
    “Now this was your aunt who fixed you up at the Julia Tuttle?”
    “No, my mother’s college roommate, but I guess Tess is the nearest thing I’ve got to an aunt.”
    “The one who works for the Cuban dentist. That figures.”
    “Why? Is there something wrong with the hotel?”
    “On the contrary. How much are they charging you?”
    “A hundred and three dollars a month.”
    “And the
Star
’s starting you off at what, two hundred? You should be able to make it. With a few devoted friends feeding you regularly. No, her Cuban connection got you a good deal is all I meant. If you think Jews are notorious for sticking together, wait till you get to know some Cubans. That was your manager on the desk, Alex de Costa.”
    “That boy with the book? But he’s so young!”
    “A kid like you. Fresh out of Harvard, with some degree that has nothing to do with business. International Literature, something like that. The grandfather is Cuban-American, a real estate baron. The Julia Tuttle’s just a handy sideline of his.”
    “For
what
?”
    “His Coral Gables empire. All these exiles are going to be either renting or buying homes, depending on which way the wind blows down in Castro-land. The ones who weren’t able to bring out their money, he lets them run up a tab at Julia’s. Like the old company store. Whether they go back or stay, they’ll be beholden.”
    “Do you know this grandfather de Costa?”
    “His