Queen of the Underworld Read Online Free PDF Page B

name’s Prieto, Prieto y Portes in full. When you get to work tomorrow, have some savvy person escort you through the maze of Cuban monickers. All the surnames and compound names, it’s a wild ride. The mother’s name usually gets tacked on at the end. No, I’ve never met Prieto, he stays mostly out of the picture up in Palm Beach, but all of us in the tourist trade get the scuttlebutt. During the season when we’re open, young Alex slips over to Nightingale’s whenever he can and has a quiet game of cards upstairs.”
    “You
know
him?”
    “He’s a paid-up member of my club.”
    “But you two barely nodded to each other!”
    “He needs his hideaway same as everyone else.”
    The parade of beachfront hotels soon began, starting with the old three- and four-story stucco dowagers with their wraparound corners accented in neon colors, where Paul had first washed dishes, then waited tables, in the pre–World War II years when he couldn’t aspire to managerial positions in those restricted establishments. In those days, there were still signs saying “No Dogs or Jews” on Miami Beach lawns.
    Then past the Blue Flamingo Apartments for retirees, formerly the Army-requisitioned Blue Flamingo Hotel managed by Corporal Paul Nightingale for the duration of the war (a satisfied general staying overnight had told Paul he had a rare gift for hospitality), and on into the neon sparkle of Collins Avenue where, after being demobilized, Paul had worked his way up through the management levels of ever newer—and now unrestricted—hotels, perfecting the art of treating tourists like millionaires for two weeks, until he decided to start his own nightclub where locals like himself could feel pampered and welcome.
    Then came the taller sweeping curves of the debutante edifices with their movie-set interiors and cutthroat competition. The owner of the Fontainebleau, Paul had told me, had built a fourteen-story addition to shut out the afternoon sun from the rival Eden Roc’s cabana next door.
    And then on north into Paul’s territory, where stretches of lonely beach could still be glimpsed between the most recently constructed hotels.
    “So, what’s your pleasure, darling?” Paul inquired as we entered Bal Harbour. “Should we repeat our Christmas routine or head straight for the Ivanhoe? It depends on how hungry you are.”
    “Let’s keep our traditions intact and go to the Americana bar first.”
    “Their dry martinis won’t knock you out after your long day?”
    “My ‘long day’ has mostly been spent resting up for you on my bed at the Julia Tuttle after a good night’s sleep on the train.”
    Before Paul, I would never have admitted such a thing to a man I cared about.
    “Tell me something, Emma.” On the rare occasion when he used my name, it still sent a jolt through my system.
    “What?”
    “How is it you’re always better than I remember?”
             
    “W E’LL START with two dry Beefeaters straight up with a twist, and then in ten minutes if you’ d bring us two shrimp cocktails.”
    “Certainly, sir.”
    You could tell from the way Paul placed orders that he was imagining ahead for both of you just when you’d be ready for what. Ten minutes would be exactly the right amount of time for two or three slow sips of gin to dilate our receptor channels and enhance the savoring of our reunion. How I loved our preliminaries in these dark tropical spaces with their fantasy settings: a ship, an island, a medieval castle, even the inside of an airplane.
    Paul nudged a flat silver case from an inside pocket, narrowing his eyes at a waiter as he flicked it open. Only when he was coaxing a cigarette from the case with exaggerated slowness did the waiter dart forward with a lighter.
    “Three out of ten?” I suggested as soon as the waiter was out of earshot.
    “Nope, he should have jumped the moment he saw the case. But we’ll give him your three because he recognized his mistake and because I’m