if each were a cape and the audience were her captivated bull. They were certainly transfixed when her tassels began swinging in opposite directions, and Kit added her own applause to that of the crowd.
Evie Shaw had probably been just like that, Kit thought, watching the woman present herself to the crowd like a gift. But without the tassels.
As the set ended and the applause soared, Fleur turned back to Kit, renewing the conversation exactly where they’d left off. “Naked City is the old Cuban barrio,” Fleur explained, cradling her parasol on her lap. “They pretty much took over the neighborhood in the early eighties, because the rent was cheap and they could all stay together.”
“But that was a long thirty years ago,” Kit pointed out as the MC gave a mid-show shout-out to the legendary burlesque star Tart Ta-Tan. An older woman in polka dots and pearls stood to give a Miss America wave. “Surely there are Mexicans there now.”
“Yes, but the Cubanos had an added defense. A way to keep newcomers, at least the smart Latinos, out of the neighborhood,” Fleur said, and Lil—who’d rejoined them—gave a concurring nod.
“What?”
Fleur pointed the handle of her parasol at Kit. “The Marielitos.”
Kit tilted her head. “Mariel-what?”
“Remember the ‘freedom flotilla’? The Cuban boatlifts from Mariel to Miami? The way America welcomed the refugees only to have the crime rate skyrocket?”
“No.” Kit put out her cigarette, then leaned on her elbows.
Lil sighed. “Think Scarface. Think drug runners using white powder to control their new world.” Fiddling with her swizzle stick, she shook her head. “The Marielitos have a reputation even among the Cubans, and they make the PIRU look like children playing in a schoolyard,” she said, naming one of Vegas’s most violent gangs.
“So, then, I need to talk to a Cuban,” Kit muttered, scouring her mind for sources.
“Ay,” Lil said, rolling her eyes. “Get a Cubana talking and you might never shut her up again.”
Kit drew back as Fleur scoffed her agreement. “How come you can both be prejudiced, but I get chewed out if I even say the word chola?”
“Because we’re Latinas,” Lil said, as if that explained everything.
“Sí,” added Fleur. “But even I would be very careful about questioning a Cuban in Naked City about one of their own. From what I hear, it’s still a different world.”
“What do you mean?”
“She means they still kill chickens in their backyards.” The voice, low and resonant, popped up directly behind Kit. She turned to find Dennis close, palming a cold Pabst, smelling faintly of spice, probably his pomade. Probably Suavecito.
Kit narrowed her eyes as he pulled up a wooden chair. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Just arrived,” he said, straddling the chair, beer can dangling from his fingertips.
“Really?” Fleur said. “Then you’ll react in total surprise to find Kitty-Cat here is playing investigative reporter again.”
“Yeah, but you were the one who mentioned the Marielitos,” he pointed out.
“So you were eavesdropping.”
“Most of the Mariel descendants are good people,” Dennis said, expression gone serious as he turned to Kit. “Besides, you’re not going to get someone in that neighborhood to talk to you, Kit.”
“He’s right. Forget that you look like a Vargas girl,” Fleur said. “To them you represent establishment, and a world where they don’t even want to belong.”
Sipping at his can, Dennis nodded. “When you’re marked as an outsider, even in your homeland, and then you move somewhere else where you’re both outsider and outlaw, you tend to live by your own rules. Obviously not all of the Marielitos were criminals, but they’re still very insular. They trust no one.”
Kit thought of Marco Baptista’s grandmother, of her broken teeth and orishas and candles. “Okay, but the boatlifts were decades ago. Fortunes change. Families change.”
Lil draped an arm over the back of her chair. “You really are so white.”
Dennis sipped his beer and smiled. “Memories are as long as lineage.”
Kit was certainly learning that. “Well, I wouldn’t ask them anything they find threatening. And this new drug makes cocaine look like cane sugar, you saw it. Besides, the two junkies who died today weren’t even Latinos, yet they resided in Naked City. So I think someone’s bringing ‘crocodile’ into the poorest sections of the city and setting it loose on the kids there.”
Lil whistled. “Then it’ll be a crocodile against a sleeping dragon . . . and you’ll be poking that dragon.”
“It’s a good analogy,” Kit said, and a part of her thought it might even be a just reward. “Maybe a