The mob mambo in pre-Castro Cuba

In pre-Castro Cuba, jointly run by dictator Fulgencio Batista and the Mafia, there is chicanery behind every important door. Casino lackeys carry suitcases of money to Miami every weekend; people are murdered, cut up and fed to the carnivores at the zoo. Night life is exotic, seedy, corrupt: more "Cabaret" than Las Vegas.

Mayra Montero, a Cuban writer now living in Puerto Rico, brings this milieu to vivid life in "Dancing to 'Almendra' " — a novel that lets fictional characters collide with real-life gangsters and movie legends. The result is an irresistible melange about Havana when it was truly La Habana.

Joaquín Porrata and his friend Julian, both 11 years old, are present at the meeting in Havana where the hit on mobster Bugsy Siegel is planned. They are there by accident, because Julian's mother is decorating the dining room. So begins Joaquín's fascination with the underworld that controls the city.

Eleven years later, he is working for a newspaper on the day that hitman "Al" Anastasia is murdered in a barbershop in New York. On the same day, a hippopotamus is killed at the Havana zoo and Joaquín is sent to cover the story. He is drawn aside by a star-struck zookeeper, Juan Bulgado, who tells him that the hippo's death was a message, meant for Anastasia. Unfortunately, it arrived too late. Juan promises to tell Joaquín what the connection is between these disparate events if he'll arrange to take him to the opening of Capri Casino, where film star George Raft will be the greeter.

Suddenly, the simple story of the death of a zoo creature is fraught with possibility, and Joaquín cannot resist it.

Although he is warned away from the story repeatedly, Joaquín stays on top of it until he finds himself in mortal danger. It's Aurora, Julian's mother and crime-boss Meyer Lansky's girlfriend, who saves his life. When he was a child, and wildly in love with her, Joaquín saw Aurora dancing with Lansky to his favorite song: a danzon by Cuban composer Abelardo Valdés — the "Almendra." He was imprinted for life by the passion of the song, the intimacy of the couple. Montero makes the reader hear the jazzy melody, again and again.

Interwoven with Joaquín's bouts with the Mafia are two other important parts of his life. His brother Santiago, the smooth and clever favorite son of the family, has joined Fidel Castro's revolutionaries, unbeknown to anyone. Joaquín also falls in love with a one-armed mulatta: Fantina, who has renamed herself Yolanda. She would fit in nicely in a Gabriel García Márquez novel with her belief in magic and her tendency to fall in love instantly (and often) and always wind up disappointed.

Her narrative provides a counterpoint to Joaquín's — a life lived on the underside of Cuban society: the circus, the showgirls, the mob and a mysterious background that is revealed little by little. Edith Grossman's graceful translation brings this absorbing story to life.