I GOT BACK AROUND SEVEN and ate the cold dinner that Yara had left for me on a covered plate. While I ate I looked through the evening newspaper. There was a nice picture of the president’s wife, Marta, opening a new school in Boyeros; and something about the forthcoming visit to Havana of the U.S. senator from Florida, George Smathers. But Max Reles didn’t get a mention, not even in the obituaries column. After dinner I fixed myself a drink. There wasn’t much to that. I just poured some vodka from the refrigerator into a clean glass and drank it. I was settling down to take the place of Montaigne’s dead friend. It seemed a pretty good definition of a reader. Then the telephone rang, which reminded me that there are times when a dead friend is your best friend.

But it wasn’t a friend. It was Meyer Lansky, and he sounded annoyed.

“Gunther?”

“Yes.”

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been ringing all afternoon.”

“I went to see Max’s girl, Dinah.”

“Oh. How is she?”

“Like you said. She’ll be all right.”

“Listen, Gunther, I want to talk to you, only not on the telephone. I don’t like telephones. Never have liked them. This number you’re on: 7-8075. That’s a Vedado number, right?”

“Yes. I live on Malecón.”

“Then we’re practically neighbors. I’m in a suite at the National Hotel. Could you come here at nine?”

I turned over a few polite rebuffs in my mind, but none of them sounded polite enough for a gangster like Meyer Lansky. So I said, “Sure. Why not? I could use a stroll along the seafront.”

“Do me a favor, will you?”

“I thought that’s what I was doing.”

“On your way over here, get me a couple of packs of Parliament, will you? The hotel’s run out.”