Killing Castro (11 page)

Ernesto looked at his own girth and laughed. “You jest,” he said. “But it is true. When one is clever, when one thinks with one’s brain, it takes a long time to starve. It takes eternity.”

Turner finished his wine. He noticed that Ernesto’s glass was also empty and signaled to the dark-skinned waiter. The man came over and filled both glasses to the brim. Turner paid. Ernesto nodded his thanks. They touched glasses with ceremony and sipped the wine.

“You would not starve here, my friend, and you would have money. I am a man who has many deals working, many vistas of opportunity. You could perhaps become a partner.”

Turner smiled. “In crime?”

“A harsh word. There are many men who have more money than they need, and less brains than they ought to possess. One can relieve men of money. Or, if you have scruples, there is always work. You understand construction?”

“I’ve been on crews.”

“Men are needed,” Ernesto said. “Men who can run heavy equipment, men of that nature. Few men in Cuba understand such machines. The pay is high.”

Turner sipped more wine, thinking it over. Either way, he could make a living in Cuba. Either way.

“You said that you have no money. True?”

“True.”

“But what will you do for money in Brazil? It is no more easy to live there without money.”

But I’ll have money then,
he thought.
I’ll become a criminal again, a murderer again, by killing Castro. And I’ll run again, and I’ll pick up my twenty grand in blood money and hightail it to Brazil. And after a while maybe I’ll even learn how to relax again. How to live and enjoy life without looking over my shoulder for the law.

“I pry too much,” Ernesto was saying now. “I ask perhaps too many questions, and this is not the role of a friend. And I am your friend, Turner, and you are my friend. True?”

“True.”

“So. Let us finish our wine and go to the bordello. I shall pay, if you will permit me. Today—this morning—three of your countrymen came to me. Young boys, students in one of your colleges. They wished to purchase some marijuana cigarettes.”

“And you sold them some?”

Ernesto frowned sadly. “Of course not. Young, pink-faced boys—the marijuana would have them walking across the sky, skipping like lambs from cloud to cloud. I told them to wait for me. I went to my garden and harvested weeds—plantain, grasses. I dried these in my oven and added catnip. I rolled a huge quantity of cigarettes. These I sold to your countrymen for a fine sum of money. And there is no danger, because they may smoke them forever without being affected.”

Turner laughed.

“So I shall pay,” Ernesto continued. “The girls at this house are a delight, my friend. Young and clever. There is one girl I think you shall like. A Chinese. Her father was Chinese, her mother Cuban. A lovely girl.”

They finished the wine and walked to a hotel several blocks away. In the lobby Ernesto talked volubly to the madam, a fat Cuban woman with pendulous breasts. Two girls came out—the Oriental Ernesto had spoken of and a young Cuban girl with dyed blond hair. Ernesto went off with the blonde and Turner followed the Chinese girl to her room.

She had tiny hands and feet, delicate features. She spoke Spanish with a Chinese accent. She kissed like a child and made love like a woman. Her skin was soft, her body firm.

She stood still, her hands over her head, while Turner removed her clothing. His hands moved over her silky skin, fondling her beautifully resilient breasts, fascinated by their tautness, his tongue circling the dark, saucy nipples. Then she made him stay still while she took off his clothing. She touched his naked body, stroked him in new and delicious ways that aroused him subtly and undeniably.

He took her in his arms, and they went to the bed.

They were on the bed for a long time before they made love. The girl was an artist with the caress, the kiss. Her hands were everywhere, her lips active, her seeking tongue industrious. She set Turner on fire. He kissed her firm little breasts again, squeezed the ripe globes of her buttocks and stroked her inner thighs, making her leap with anticipation.

Then they made love. It was warm, intense, demanding. She was anxious to please. Turner felt like a master, a god, a man.

Afterward, he and Ernesto walked through the streets of downtown Havana, stopped for a glass of beer here and there, smoked Cuban cigars and relaxed in the soft warmth of Havana at night.

“And you wish to leave this?” Ernesto demanded. “This ease, this blissful atmosphere? This for Brazil?”

“I enjoy Havana,” Turner admitted.

“Of course you do. You will stay.”

“Perhaps.”

“You will go to the government,” Ernesto said, “and you will tell them that in the United States you killed a man and a woman, and that you stole into Cuba illegally. They will permit you to stay. They will assist you.”

And Turner started to laugh. The irony of it was magnificent—he would be asking for help from the man he proposed to kill!

“Good food and good drinks,” the businessman said. “And good little women, best in the world. But I’m getting out of here, Harper. I’ll tell you, give me the States any time. You can relax there. They appreciate business, don’t try to push a man out once he gets where he belongs. Here it doesn’t work that way.”

Garrison looked at him. The man was fat and he perspired easily. He had said that his name was Burley, Lester Burley—call me Les. Garrison neither liked nor disliked him. They were in the bar at the Nacional and they were drinking. Soon Garrison would go upstairs, and then Estrella would join him for the evening. He didn’t mind putting up with call-me-Les Burley until then.

“You’re in business here, Burley?”

“Les,” Burley corrected. “Yes, I’m in business here. Nothing fancy, import and export, actually. Mostly cigars, buying tobaccos and selling them to a few cigar makers in Tampa. Ever been to Tampa?”

“No,” Garrison said.

“You’d like it—good town. Couple factories there—Havana Royale, Garcia Supreme—I sell ’em a lot of their stuff. Handle it, you might say. You’re in real estate, Harper?”

Garrison nodded.

“Meaning you buy and you sell?”

“That’s right.”

“This trip business or pleasure?”

“A little of both,” Garrison drawled, slipping into his role. “Pleasure before business, I always say. Sort of a motto of mine. But if a chance comes along to make a dollar or two—”

“Up to you, of course,” call-me-Les said. “But I wouldn’t sign anything, wouldn’t put out any cash, wouldn’t buy any Cuban real estate. Not if I were you I wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Burley moistened his lips. “Same reason I’m closing shop and getting the merry hell back to the States. Don’t know what I’ll get into once I’m back there. Been in Cuba for years and years. More or less have to go into something concerning tobacco, what with my name. You understand?”

Garrison didn’t.

“Burley,” call-me-Les said. “Burley tobacco. For pipe smoking. Just a coincidence, but a funny one. Don’t you think?”

“Oh,” Garrison said. “Certainly.”

“I’ll find something in the States. Not like this country—there a man with drive and know-how still finds opportunities. This place used to be like that. Now they’re turning it Socialist, even Communist. And that’s why you’re a damn fool to pay out good money for a piece of property here. You wouldn’t have it long enough to enjoy it. You’d just buy the blame thing and watch them take it away from you.”

Garrison nodded thoughtfully. Actually he wasn’t paying much attention to Burley. He was thinking about Estrella, remembering the last time they had been together. Now he noticed that Burley was eyeing him, waiting for him to say something.

“You mean confiscations,” he said. “I thought they were done with that.”

“Not by a long shot. It’s just starting. Oh, they took over the big companies already, the oil and the land. Maybe that’s enough for Castro. It’s beginning to look as though nothing’s enough for that boy, but I guess you never know.”

“No?”

“Nope. Because he plays ball with the Russians. He gets guns and aid and God-knows-what from them, and that means trouble. I’ll betcha he has an idea he’ll kinda parlay this whole thing into an empire. You know—commissar of all South America, or something like that.”

Burley moistened his lips again. “But he won’t last forever. The Commies like him now because they can use him. He’s useful, he’s handy. But they’ve got their eye on the whole South American setup and they want it for themselves. And if by some fluke he ever got hold of it, they’d knock him off so fast he wouldn’t know what happened to him. He’d find himself on the outside looking in. After that he’d find himself on the inside, looking out.” He guffawed at his own joke and then spent the next ten minutes explaining it.

Garrison waited. A slender girl brought drinks and he swallowed half of his. In a few minutes, he thought, it would be time to go to Estrella. She would be better company than this idiot of a cigar salesman who insisted on being called Les. Garrison had had the totally monotonous experience of hearing Burley recount in detail his amatory adventures since age sixteen, and now he was explaining the political picture in Cuba. It was hard for Garrison to decide which was less interesting. Sex was more exciting to him than politics, but at the same time Burley had a way of making any subject a bore.

“You see what I mean, Harper?”

“Sure,” Garrison said automatically. “Sure, Les.”

“So just you watch. I’ve got a hunch Castro’ll be dead within the next two months. Want to bet on it?”

“No bet. I think you might be right.”

Of course he will,
Garrison thought.
I’m going to kill him, you poor damned fool. I’ve got the gun in my room. Want to have a look at it?

“Here’s how it goes, Harper. Castro gets killed—by the Commies, who would rather have their own man in than him. He’s bullheaded and overconfident and he can be ordered around only as long as he’s getting something out of this Russian deal. Actually, he has no strong convictions. He just likes to run off at the mouth. You know what they used to call him at the university? Loudmouth!

“And you know what the Russians want? To grab Cuba, bump Castro off and then spread a big propaganda blanket saying the U. S. arranged everything and Castro was killed by Americans. Then the whole island goes Communist and we’ve got one hell of a mess on our hands. Brother, I want to be long gone by then.”

“Sure,” Garrison said, completely disinterested in Les’ predictions, right or wrong. “Well, take care, Les,” he said, getting to his feet.

“You got to go?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, dropping money to cover the check. “I’ll see you.”

“Well, at least let me pick up the tab—”

Garrison didn’t let him. He left, went to the newsstand in the lobby, picked up a fresh cigar. He took the elevator to his room and let himself in. Everything was as he had left it, and Estrella hadn’t shown yet.

He walked to the window, raised the shade, looked out at the plaza where Castro would be speaking. The big public speech was due on July 26th, of course. The anniversary of the movement. And that was the day Castro was going to die, unless one of the other four got to him sooner.

Which seemed doubtful enough.

July 26th was a little less than three weeks away. He laughed; maybe he should have told Burley to revise his figures, should have told him that Castro would be dead in three weeks, not two months. Good old call-me-Les, with his ear pretty damn close to the ground, let me tell you. He would probably drop dead of apoplexy if he knew that John Harper, boy real estate speculator, was the man who was going to put an extra hole in Fidel Castro’s head.

Garrison yanked down the window shade, went over to the bed again. The hell with it, he thought. There were plenty of little things to laugh at, things like call-me-Les Burley, but the big things weren’t that funny. He had problems of his own.

Estrella was the problem. The easy answer was too easy—get rid of her, forget her, go back to the States and let her rot. That was the right answer but it didn’t take care of the problem.

Because the problem was that he
wanted
to take her back with him. She was a new type of woman—she didn’t ask for anything, didn’t want anything, didn’t waste words and didn’t get in his hair. She was with him when he wanted her, with him completely and totally. She left him alone when he had to be alone. She knew how to keep her mouth shut.

And he wanted to keep her. That was what it boiled down to—she was a fine little possession and he didn’t want to let go of her. And taking her back didn’t exactly fit in with his plans, with the pattern of his life. He was going to have to leave in a hurry, a hell of a hurry. He didn’t have time to go through war-bride ceremonies. And he might have to lam it hard, might have to bribe some fast-buck pilot to run him home in a hurry. You traveled light in Garrison’s business. The first thing you had to learn was not to attach yourself to anything—not to a home, a city, or a thing. You lived out of one suitcase and you were ready to leave that suitcase behind in a jam.

You sure as hell stayed away from love.

Women were fine—they were part of the rewards of the business—expensive, high-flying, one-night gigs. But not love. God in heaven, not love!

A knock at the door.

“Who is it?”

“Estrella. Let me in, ’arper.”

He opened the door. She was in his arms, soft and warm. The same excitement was there. It happened every time, the heat, the tension, the desire. Every time.

And afterward:

“I love you, ’arper. I love you.”

“I love you, Estrella.”

Three days hadn’t changed anything. Three days, and as many movements along the road toward Santiago, had done nothing to lift the tension in the rebel band. Garth did not talk to Fenton. Nor did he talk to Manuel, and since no one else spoke English, he, consequently, did not talk to anyone. He spent his time watching Maria. He never went near her, but he never stopped watching her.

And the tension grew. Castro was due within the week. They were in position now, a position they presumably could hold when the time came. Their camp was in the hills, but they were near a rock formation that overlooked the road. From these rocks an ambush would not be difficult at all. Manuel had explained it to Fenton but actually little explanation was necessary.