King Bongo: A Novel of Havana - Hardcover
Thomas Sanchez, the author of the Key West novel Mile Zero (“A comic masterpiece bursting with vital characters, its brilliantly contrived plot uncoils with the suspense of a thriller.” —New York Times), returns to the tropics with King Bongo, a fevered dream of dangerous desires and political treachery amid the glamour, intrigue and corruption of 1950s Havana.
On New Year’s Eve 1957, a terrorist bomb rips through Havana’s famous Tropicana nightclub. King Bongo, a rogue Cuban American, tortured by a mysterious past and possessed of a mythic musical talent, goes on the hunt for the culprits, and for his sister, known as the Panther, Cuba’s most exotic showgirl, who disappeared in the explosion.
Navigating Havana’s maze of colonial backstreets, red-light districts, Chinatown alleys, swank country clubs and opulent casinos, Bongo becomes ensnared by other complicated and outrageous lives—American hit men plotting a political assassination, decadent movie stars trolling with their bait of teenage mistresses, prophetic shoeshine boys and hotel maids willing to sacrifice their lives for the right social cause; a beautiful American socialite weaving a web of erotic intrigue—and, more dangerously, by Humberto Zapata, a sinister Machiavellian secret police operative, with whom Bongo will have a final explosive showdown.
Thomas Sanchez reimagines a world of lush sensuality where Cuban and American cultures collide in a riveting novel of graphic power.
On New Year’s Eve 1957, a terrorist bomb rips through Havana’s famous Tropicana nightclub. King Bongo, a rogue Cuban American, tortured by a mysterious past and possessed of a mythic musical talent, goes on the hunt for the culprits, and for his sister, known as the Panther, Cuba’s most exotic showgirl, who disappeared in the explosion.
Navigating Havana’s maze of colonial backstreets, red-light districts, Chinatown alleys, swank country clubs and opulent casinos, Bongo becomes ensnared by other complicated and outrageous lives—American hit men plotting a political assassination, decadent movie stars trolling with their bait of teenage mistresses, prophetic shoeshine boys and hotel maids willing to sacrifice their lives for the right social cause; a beautiful American socialite weaving a web of erotic intrigue—and, more dangerously, by Humberto Zapata, a sinister Machiavellian secret police operative, with whom Bongo will have a final explosive showdown.
Thomas Sanchez reimagines a world of lush sensuality where Cuban and American cultures collide in a riveting novel of graphic power.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Thomas Sanchez lived for many years in Key West, Mallorca, and Paris, where the French Republic awarded him the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He currently resides in San Francisco. He is the author of Mile Zero, Day of the Bees, Zoot-Suit Murders and Rabbit Boss, which was named by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the most important books of the twentieth century.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
1. White Spider Dancing
King Bongo drove along the Malecón. All his troubles slid right off his shoulders and out over the ocean. The canvas top of his Oldsmobile Rocket 88 convertible was down and oversized fuzzy dice hung from the chrome stub of the rearview mirror, swaying to a rumba throbbing from the radio. He loved this drive out of Havana headed for the Tropicana, past the centuries-old mansions facing the sea; fanciful three-story palaces with gaily colored facades of pillars and balconies, cheek by cheek with each other, like old tarts posing for a group reunion shot in the glare of tropical sunlight, shining with a glamour that refused to fade away. One after another these gaudy palaces preened along the curve of the Malecón, with its high stone seawall backing down the ocean that lapped against it. Perched on the seawall were perennial lovebirds, men and women, boys and girls, lovers all, sitting and swooning, holding hands, faces nuzzling necks, shoulders being caressed, lips kissing, and all the while waves crashing below. The moon shone down and the stars led the way along the Malecón as the road curved. The grand old mansions gave way to modern high-rise apartments, hotel towers, and sprawling shopping galleries. Bongo loved it all, old gods and new money, yesterday’s dreams rubbing shoulders with tomorrow’s promises.
The radio blasted out a hot new tune. Bongo beat its rhythm on the steering wheel as he picked up on the lyric and sang along. “Lazarus rose from the dead and walked the dog. Do your hips shake when our lips kiss?” He gunned the engine and the Rocket flew along the edge of the ocean.
Yes, old Saint Lazarus walked the dead walk with his ghost dog, leading the way between two worlds. Bongo felt that his own spirit dog was running loose, luck was headed his way.
The palms swayed along the Malecón like soft skirts rustling in the breeze; horns honked hello from carloads of females passing by, the women leaning from windows, blowing kisses.
Bongo punched the car radio button and the music of a Miami station came on loud and clear: “I found my thriiilll on Blueberry Hiiilll.” He tapped out the beat with two fingers on the dashboard.
Tomorrow morning would be good for Bongo’s business, because tonight people having a good time would do bad things—crash cars, walk through plate-glass windows, fall into swimming pools and go to sleep underwater. Mistakes everywhere, blame to be assigned, value to be appraised, damages to be calculated, claims to be made, demands to be filed. All the things Bongo needed to make his up-and-coming one-man insurance office succeed. And that billboard looming ahead at the side of the road where the Malecón swooped in a ninety-degree left turn—bacardi, the famous rum that makes the whole world happy—that billboard would one day be replaced with a new declaration: king bongo’s great tropical life insurance, where everyone is royalty.
Elvis Presley’s lip-lashed words jumped out of the radio speaker: “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.” Even Elvis across the water in America had his spirit dog, walking to hell and back, paradise and beyond. Bongo glanced up at the moon over Havana and a sky full of stars. Before him the fuzzy dice dangled from the rearview mirror, fate swinging in the balance, the fate of all lovers, politicians and assassins, puckered up and waiting for a lucky kiss at the stroke of midnight.
Martin Fox was a giant of a man and his Tropicana was a giant of a place. The nightclub was New York’s Cotton Club, Paris’s Folies Bergères, and Monte Carlo’s Grand Casino all rolled into one in a jungle on the outskirts of Havana, far enough out of the city so that the pleasures it offered didn’t offend the faint of heart. The idea of the Tropicana was that you might lose your money, but you’d do it in an exotic setting while rubbing elbows with the highest rollers and getting an eyeful of the world’s most beautiful showgirls. It was a world-class idea, and the world beat a path to Martin’s door.
King Bongo hoped to meet the giant Martin and sell him some insurance. Even though Martin was already hooked up with the orchestrators of the biggest protection racket in Havana, Bongo figured he offered something more legit—real payoffs for real losses. There were things that even the world’s biggest bad boys couldn’t protect you from. Acts of God, for example. Just thirteen years ago, in 1944, the Tropicana’s roofless paradise got smacked by a hurricane that tore through banyan trees, uprooted palms, and stripped the earth down to its red dirt hide. Who better to pay off and help rebuild after that than those who had been hit by it too? Great Tropical Life was a homegrown company backed by local agricultural banks, eager to prime the pump of the economy in order to save their own financial skins. As Great Tropical Life’s only insurance agent in Havana, King Bongo knew he was a little man, but he had a big plan. Tonight his plan was to finally get Martin to sign a multimillion- dollar policy insuring the world’s most beautiful nightclub against any and all tragedies that could possibly befall it.
King Bongo aimed his speeding convertible at a concrete arch spanning the entrance of a long drive. Colorful blinking neon lights on the arch spelled out tropicana. Driving through the arch always gave Bongo a jump of anticipation, the excitement of entering a jungle governed by different rules. He drove up the road lined with royal palms, their silver trunks shimmering in the car’s headlights. Suddenly the road cut through a thicket of ferns and vines intertwined in a green mesh through which he could glimpse eight voluptuous bodies in a tropical mist. The famous Tropicana muses. The life-sized marble nymphs were circled around a fountain; colored lights shooting up through a watery spray animated their frolic.
Bongo drove past the fountain and pulled to a stop underneath a swooping fan-shaped canopy dominating the entrance to the Tropicana. Other cars were arriving and being greeted by uniformed attendants. Bongo loved this social dance, the attendants helping elegant ladies in cocktail dresses out of their cars, then handing them off to a tuxedoed escort; a guy who might be a politician, a high-stakes poker player, a made man from Chicago, or just a regular Joe who had saved it all up to make the show, play the role, and wearing the best damn shoes money could buy.
“Hey, man! Love those kickers!” The parking attendant whistled, looking down at Bongo’s black-and-white patent leather shoes as he stepped out of the Rocket.
Bongo reached into the inside pocket of his wide-lapeled powder-blue tuxedo, pulled out a folded peso note, and slipped it to the attendant with a wink. “These are the same kind of shoes Carlos Guardel danced in. Handmade in Argentina.”
“You don’t say! Guardel, the greatest tango man of all!” The attendant peered closely at Bongo. “You look like Guardel. Same killer Latin-lover looks. Hey, maybe you are him. All the big stars come out to play at the Tropicana.”
“Especially the dead ones.” Bongo winked, and walked through the double glass doors swung open by two doormen who saluted his entrance into the foyer as if he were a true king.
If a man can be judged by the way he walks, then maybe Bongo was a king. He walked to the beat, not arrogant, not strutting, not threatening. He had a natural rhythm drumming in his blood. People noticed his walk because he always seemed balanced, like a guy poised high up on a tightrope while the earth spun out of control below.
Coming across the red carpet, beneath the sparkling overhead chandeliers, was a seven-foot-tall man with muscles bulging beneath his suit. His shaved head glistened, his mouth was a huge gash beneath a once bulbous nose flattened by battles both in and out of the boxing ring.
“Do you have a ticket to tonight’s show?” the man demanded. He stared hard at Bongo, then laughed and threw his arms around him in a bear hug, lifting him off the ground and giving him a swift kiss on each cheek. “Bongo, my brother! The first show is already over. Why so late?”
“I took the scenic route. I drove along the Malecón.” Bongo smiled. “Let me down, Fido.”
Fido lowered Bongo to the ground. Then, like a gorilla with the nimble feet of a ballerina, he did a dance as he sang a mock tune. “Fido, let me down, I drove along the Malecón. Got my pay today, hoping tonight to get some play.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting lucky.”
“Lucky! What luck do you need? You’ve got the moves. You could steal the nipples off a nun while she said her rosary.”
“Yeah, I could add that to my collection.”
“Collection? You call that parade of puff and powder that goes through your bedroom a collection? That’s a harem.”
“I gave up the harem. Got a steady girl now. Say, is the Giant here?”
“You mean me? Of course I’m here. I’m always here.”
“I mean Martin.”
“Around somewhere. You know, keeps the roulette wheels greased and the dancers’ G-strings in the right crease. We’re sold out tonight.”
“As usual.”
“The most beautiful girls.”
“And the highest gambling stakes.”
“Forget the dough, the girls are the highest stakes.”
“Is she here?”
Fido’s enormous mouth opened in a grin that exposed a mouthful of gold-capped teeth large as piano keys. “She’s here. When she came out of her tree earlier the joint went wild. There was such a roar that even the five-thousand-dollar-ante gamblers in th...
King Bongo drove along the Malecón. All his troubles slid right off his shoulders and out over the ocean. The canvas top of his Oldsmobile Rocket 88 convertible was down and oversized fuzzy dice hung from the chrome stub of the rearview mirror, swaying to a rumba throbbing from the radio. He loved this drive out of Havana headed for the Tropicana, past the centuries-old mansions facing the sea; fanciful three-story palaces with gaily colored facades of pillars and balconies, cheek by cheek with each other, like old tarts posing for a group reunion shot in the glare of tropical sunlight, shining with a glamour that refused to fade away. One after another these gaudy palaces preened along the curve of the Malecón, with its high stone seawall backing down the ocean that lapped against it. Perched on the seawall were perennial lovebirds, men and women, boys and girls, lovers all, sitting and swooning, holding hands, faces nuzzling necks, shoulders being caressed, lips kissing, and all the while waves crashing below. The moon shone down and the stars led the way along the Malecón as the road curved. The grand old mansions gave way to modern high-rise apartments, hotel towers, and sprawling shopping galleries. Bongo loved it all, old gods and new money, yesterday’s dreams rubbing shoulders with tomorrow’s promises.
The radio blasted out a hot new tune. Bongo beat its rhythm on the steering wheel as he picked up on the lyric and sang along. “Lazarus rose from the dead and walked the dog. Do your hips shake when our lips kiss?” He gunned the engine and the Rocket flew along the edge of the ocean.
Yes, old Saint Lazarus walked the dead walk with his ghost dog, leading the way between two worlds. Bongo felt that his own spirit dog was running loose, luck was headed his way.
The palms swayed along the Malecón like soft skirts rustling in the breeze; horns honked hello from carloads of females passing by, the women leaning from windows, blowing kisses.
Bongo punched the car radio button and the music of a Miami station came on loud and clear: “I found my thriiilll on Blueberry Hiiilll.” He tapped out the beat with two fingers on the dashboard.
Tomorrow morning would be good for Bongo’s business, because tonight people having a good time would do bad things—crash cars, walk through plate-glass windows, fall into swimming pools and go to sleep underwater. Mistakes everywhere, blame to be assigned, value to be appraised, damages to be calculated, claims to be made, demands to be filed. All the things Bongo needed to make his up-and-coming one-man insurance office succeed. And that billboard looming ahead at the side of the road where the Malecón swooped in a ninety-degree left turn—bacardi, the famous rum that makes the whole world happy—that billboard would one day be replaced with a new declaration: king bongo’s great tropical life insurance, where everyone is royalty.
Elvis Presley’s lip-lashed words jumped out of the radio speaker: “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.” Even Elvis across the water in America had his spirit dog, walking to hell and back, paradise and beyond. Bongo glanced up at the moon over Havana and a sky full of stars. Before him the fuzzy dice dangled from the rearview mirror, fate swinging in the balance, the fate of all lovers, politicians and assassins, puckered up and waiting for a lucky kiss at the stroke of midnight.
Martin Fox was a giant of a man and his Tropicana was a giant of a place. The nightclub was New York’s Cotton Club, Paris’s Folies Bergères, and Monte Carlo’s Grand Casino all rolled into one in a jungle on the outskirts of Havana, far enough out of the city so that the pleasures it offered didn’t offend the faint of heart. The idea of the Tropicana was that you might lose your money, but you’d do it in an exotic setting while rubbing elbows with the highest rollers and getting an eyeful of the world’s most beautiful showgirls. It was a world-class idea, and the world beat a path to Martin’s door.
King Bongo hoped to meet the giant Martin and sell him some insurance. Even though Martin was already hooked up with the orchestrators of the biggest protection racket in Havana, Bongo figured he offered something more legit—real payoffs for real losses. There were things that even the world’s biggest bad boys couldn’t protect you from. Acts of God, for example. Just thirteen years ago, in 1944, the Tropicana’s roofless paradise got smacked by a hurricane that tore through banyan trees, uprooted palms, and stripped the earth down to its red dirt hide. Who better to pay off and help rebuild after that than those who had been hit by it too? Great Tropical Life was a homegrown company backed by local agricultural banks, eager to prime the pump of the economy in order to save their own financial skins. As Great Tropical Life’s only insurance agent in Havana, King Bongo knew he was a little man, but he had a big plan. Tonight his plan was to finally get Martin to sign a multimillion- dollar policy insuring the world’s most beautiful nightclub against any and all tragedies that could possibly befall it.
King Bongo aimed his speeding convertible at a concrete arch spanning the entrance of a long drive. Colorful blinking neon lights on the arch spelled out tropicana. Driving through the arch always gave Bongo a jump of anticipation, the excitement of entering a jungle governed by different rules. He drove up the road lined with royal palms, their silver trunks shimmering in the car’s headlights. Suddenly the road cut through a thicket of ferns and vines intertwined in a green mesh through which he could glimpse eight voluptuous bodies in a tropical mist. The famous Tropicana muses. The life-sized marble nymphs were circled around a fountain; colored lights shooting up through a watery spray animated their frolic.
Bongo drove past the fountain and pulled to a stop underneath a swooping fan-shaped canopy dominating the entrance to the Tropicana. Other cars were arriving and being greeted by uniformed attendants. Bongo loved this social dance, the attendants helping elegant ladies in cocktail dresses out of their cars, then handing them off to a tuxedoed escort; a guy who might be a politician, a high-stakes poker player, a made man from Chicago, or just a regular Joe who had saved it all up to make the show, play the role, and wearing the best damn shoes money could buy.
“Hey, man! Love those kickers!” The parking attendant whistled, looking down at Bongo’s black-and-white patent leather shoes as he stepped out of the Rocket.
Bongo reached into the inside pocket of his wide-lapeled powder-blue tuxedo, pulled out a folded peso note, and slipped it to the attendant with a wink. “These are the same kind of shoes Carlos Guardel danced in. Handmade in Argentina.”
“You don’t say! Guardel, the greatest tango man of all!” The attendant peered closely at Bongo. “You look like Guardel. Same killer Latin-lover looks. Hey, maybe you are him. All the big stars come out to play at the Tropicana.”
“Especially the dead ones.” Bongo winked, and walked through the double glass doors swung open by two doormen who saluted his entrance into the foyer as if he were a true king.
If a man can be judged by the way he walks, then maybe Bongo was a king. He walked to the beat, not arrogant, not strutting, not threatening. He had a natural rhythm drumming in his blood. People noticed his walk because he always seemed balanced, like a guy poised high up on a tightrope while the earth spun out of control below.
Coming across the red carpet, beneath the sparkling overhead chandeliers, was a seven-foot-tall man with muscles bulging beneath his suit. His shaved head glistened, his mouth was a huge gash beneath a once bulbous nose flattened by battles both in and out of the boxing ring.
“Do you have a ticket to tonight’s show?” the man demanded. He stared hard at Bongo, then laughed and threw his arms around him in a bear hug, lifting him off the ground and giving him a swift kiss on each cheek. “Bongo, my brother! The first show is already over. Why so late?”
“I took the scenic route. I drove along the Malecón.” Bongo smiled. “Let me down, Fido.”
Fido lowered Bongo to the ground. Then, like a gorilla with the nimble feet of a ballerina, he did a dance as he sang a mock tune. “Fido, let me down, I drove along the Malecón. Got my pay today, hoping tonight to get some play.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting lucky.”
“Lucky! What luck do you need? You’ve got the moves. You could steal the nipples off a nun while she said her rosary.”
“Yeah, I could add that to my collection.”
“Collection? You call that parade of puff and powder that goes through your bedroom a collection? That’s a harem.”
“I gave up the harem. Got a steady girl now. Say, is the Giant here?”
“You mean me? Of course I’m here. I’m always here.”
“I mean Martin.”
“Around somewhere. You know, keeps the roulette wheels greased and the dancers’ G-strings in the right crease. We’re sold out tonight.”
“As usual.”
“The most beautiful girls.”
“And the highest gambling stakes.”
“Forget the dough, the girls are the highest stakes.”
“Is she here?”
Fido’s enormous mouth opened in a grin that exposed a mouthful of gold-capped teeth large as piano keys. “She’s here. When she came out of her tree earlier the joint went wild. There was such a roar that even the five-thousand-dollar-ante gamblers in th...
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- PublisherKnopf
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 0679406964
- ISBN 13 9780679406969
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages320
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