My busty companion was right. The drive to Acapulco displayed itself in green breeze-stirred grass on rolling land that occasionally jutted rock and even grew terrifying precipices above tan beaches flecked with foamy white; sleepy little communities of houses and huts of pastel stucco and tile roofs; snarls of coral vine and fields of bougainvillea, mango clumps and banana trees and tropical flowers; boats with sails of white and pea green on a sapphire sea glimpsed beyond piers and wharves with silver nets drying in the sun. I could identify with the latter — I was fishing, too, remember?
But for the fringes of beach and a flat grassy patch just big enough for a landing field, Acapulco itself was an up and down affair — a land-locked harbor of cliffs and promontories and white-gold beaches, a tropical paradise of orchids and coconut palms and parrots. Radiating out of the unpretentious plaza, with its nondescript church, were humble residential streets, while on the heights above perched the seasonal villas of the well-to-do, like pastel stairsteps climbing the hills. Between the two worlds of everyday locals and wealthy foreigners — spread out on their different levels — pockets of shantytown, like fungus, infested hillsides.
La Mirador was the first of the luxury hotels built in Acapulco, back in the early thirties, followed by maybe a dozen more; some of the shiny highrise hotels had mob investors — Moe Dalitz, from Cleveland, for one — who’d got in on the ground floor, back when Repeal was around the corner. Like Havana and Vegas, Acapulco was the kind of resort area mobsters loved — for business and pleasure.
Built on Quebrada Cliffs, La Mirador was no highrise, rather a rambling affair, rich with patios and terraces, and very open, starting with a lobby that had no walls. The beach — though it was late afternoon when we arrived — was scattered with sunbathers, taking in the declining sun, and swimmers, splashing in the foam; Vera and I saw this from a terrace above, the yellow and red and blue of beach umbrellas like polka dots on the creamy sand. Our room, however, opened onto the swimming pool area, which overlooked a magnificent waterview, white waves emerging from the vivid blue Pacific to crash on enormous ragged rocks.
We’d arrived after the daily siesta, just in time for cocktail hour. We didn’t even change our clothes — the atmosphere was almost pretentiously casual; resorts like this, after all, were where the international set came to lounge in open-neck shirts and shorts and sandals. There wasn’t a coat or tie to be seen in the entire Mirador bar.
Which, as bars went, was an unusual one, hewed in the side of a cliff. We sat in our booth, as if in an opera box in a theater, watching the stage the lack of a wall presented, providing a full view of the setting sun using its entire paintbox to color the sky as waves dashed against the rocks a hundred and fifty feet below.
Vera had a
Vera’s face had a wide-eyed, youthful innocence, as she drank in not only the gin but the magnificent sunset, and I dared to hope the almost Miss California’s ambition to make it in show business wouldn’t destroy her, as it had the late Miss Chicago.
Throughout, I’d been wearing my sunglasses, but soon my doing so would seem affected and might attract attention — the opposite of my intention. The blond hair, the dark glasses, the typically touristy clothing, and the context of La Mirador and Acapulco itself would keep me — I hoped — from being made by Charley and Rocco Fischetti, who were also staying in this hotel.
In fact, they too were in the Mirador bar, at this very moment, sharing a booth with two Latin dolls who I figured to be showgirls in the hotel’s nightclub, La Perla. In short-sleeve linen sportshirts, slacks, and the tans they’d developed, the two brothers were ignoring the dying sunset and the twinkling harbor lights coming alive. Charley, smoking a cigarette in a holder (like his adversary Lee Mortimer!), seemed to be enjoying himself, chatting up his date; Rocco sat sullenly, a cigar going, the smoke bothering the girl beside him, not that he gave a shit.
The way the booths angled around, I had a good view of them from across the room — and my dark glasses allowed me to gawk without seeming to. Neither Charley nor Rocco (nor their showgirls, for that matter) seemed ever to glance at us, which meant they’d been distracted when we came in, because every other normal man in the bar had noticed bosomy Vera.
Which was another reason to slip out of there.
