Havana’s underworld stared back at me with modest enthusiasm.

“It must have been some card game,” I observed.

“Waxey, get Bernie a drink. What are you drinking, Bernie?”

“A beer’s fine.”

“Some of us play gin, some of us play poker,” said Max. “Some of us don’t know a game of cards from a sorting office in a post office, but the important thing is that we meet and we talk, in the spirit of healthy competition. Like Jesus and the fucking disciples. You ever read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Bernie?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Smith talks about something he calls the ‘invisible hand.’ He said that in a free market, an individual pursuing his self-interest tends to promote the good of his community as a whole through a principle that he called ‘the invisible hand.’ ” He shrugged. “What we do. That’s all it is. An invisible hand. And we’ve been doing it for years.”

“That we have,” growled Lansky.

Reles chuckled. “Meyer thinks he’s the clever one, on account of how he reads a lot.” He wagged his finger at Lansky. “But I read, too, Meyer. I read, too.”

“Reading. It’s a Jew thing,” said Alo. He was a tall man with a long, sharp nose that might have made me think he was one of the Jews; but he was one of the Italians.

“And they wonder why the Jews do well,” said a man with an easy grin and a nose like a speed bag. This man was Moe Dalitz.

“I read two books in my life,” said one of the micks. “Hoyle on gambling, and the Cadillac handbook.”

Waxey returned with my beer. It was cold and dark, like his eyes.

“F.B.’s thinking of resurrecting his old rural education program,” said Lansky. “Sounds like some of you guys should try to get in on it. You could use a bit of education.”

“Is that the same one he ran in thirty-six?” said his brother, Jake.

Meyer Lansky nodded. “Only he’s worried that some of the kids he’s teaching to read, that they’re going to be tomorrow’s rebels. Like this last lot that’s now doing a stretch on the Isle of Pines.”

“He’s right to worry,” said Alo. “They get weaned on communism, some of these bastards.”

“Then again,” said Lansky, “when the economy of this country takes off, really takes off, then we’re going to need educated people to work in our hotels. To be tomorrow’s croupiers. You gotta be smart to be a croupier. Math smart. You read much, Bernie?”

“More and more,” I admitted. “And for me it’s like the French Foreign Legion. I do it to forget. Myself, I think.”

Max Reles was looking at his wristwatch. “Talking of books, it’s time I threw you guys out. I got my call with F.B. To go through the books.”