Killing Castro

by Lawrence Block

  Fenton stopped, dropped to one knee. He sighted in on the driver, the one with the sunglasses. He had to be hit right away, Fenton decided. Or he would simply hit the gas pedal and get away. Why let him get away?

  The man in the road finished tying his shoelaces. He straightened up, turned toward the Jeep. Then something stopped him and he turned, his eyes darting like a sparrow. He had spotted movement in the bushes and he rushed forward, his gun at the ready.

  Manuel shot him through the chest.

  Then all hell broke loose. Fenton squeezed the trigger and let the Sten gun leap and chatter in his hands. His first burst was wide, smashing the Jeep’s windshield, but his second burst took half the driver’s head away. The man slumped over the wheel and died. Garth and Maria had drilled two of the soldiers in their tracks. The bearded one and another were behind the Jeep, returning fire.

  Fenton sent a burst at the Jeep, hoping for the gas tank. He missed. A bullet whined over his head and he flattened out, staying close to the ground, holding tight to his gun. Taco Sardo was a short distance to the left. He was trying to circle around, to move in on the two Castristas from the side. Maria was creeping off in the opposite direction. It was a pincer movement, Fenton realized. A spontaneous, intuitive pincer movement, carried out on an individual basis rather than by regiments or battalions.

  He heard heavy breathing to one side. It was Garth, moving closer, face flushed with combat fever, eyes stupid but determined. Fenton jammed a fresh clip into the breech of his gun and tried several more rounds on the gas tank of the Jeep. He saw Taco on the left, then heard a quick, sharp rifle shot from the rear of the Jeep. Taco went down, moaning, clutching at his leg. Then a Sten gun, an answering Sten gun. Maria, far on the right, surprising the two soldiers with hot lead. One died with a bullet in his throat. The other, the one with the beard, threw down his rifle and stretched his hands toward the sky.

  Now they moved in, all of them. This also called for speed, for guerrilla tactics, for expediency. Manuel and Fenton checked each soldier in turn, made sure the five bodies on the ground were corpses. Maria held her gun on the bearded one. Garth went to check on Taco, then came back.

  “The kid’s all right,” he told Manuel. “He got it in the leg. The bleeding ain’t bad and the bone’s okay. I can lug him back and he’ll be walking tomorrow.”

  Manuel nodded shortly. Now the bearded soldier was talking, pleading for his life. He did not sound frightened at all. His voice was calm, rational. There were beads of perspiration dotting his forehead but those were the only signs of worry.

  “He wishes us to let him to live,” Manuel said in English. “He says he will make no trouble for us. He says not to kill him.”

  The bearded man spoke again.

  “He says one more death will accomplish nothing,” Manuel translated. “And so we should let him live. So he may return and kill us all.”

  The bearded soldier started to protest; evidently he understood English. Manuel’s eyes hardened. He lowered his Sten gun, took a pistol from his cartridge belt. The soldier’s eyes widened and his mouth opened.

  Manuel very deliberately placed the mouth of the pistol against the soldier’s forehead and spattered his brains over the trunk of the car.

  They piled the six bodies into the Jeep. There was a container of spare gasoline in the trunk. Fenton unscrewed the cap, poured the gasoline over the bodies and over the Jeep. He stepped back, took out a cigarette, scratched a match. He took two long drags on the cigarette and pitched the butt underhand into the Jeep. It was safer that way, easier than tossing a match. The gasoline went up with a roar and the Jeep was transformed into a sheet of flame.

  They left in a hurry. They collected weapons, ammunition. Garth shouldered Taco like a sack of dirty laundry and the rest of them followed him into the woods. Fenton brought up the rear, his heart still pounding, the excitement still a living force.

  Another victory. Six men dead this time, six corpses baking in a burning Jeep. It was bloody, it was the supreme insult to a corpse, but he knew that it had been necessary.

  Fenton walked and death walked with him. Death always walked with him now, a thin pain in the chest that was always close at hand. And it was strange to have death as a companion. Before, when he lived with no fear of death, no sure foreknowledge of doom, it had been enough simply to live, to exist, to go on.

  Now it was different. Now he enjoyed killing, killing, killing. It was the only way to prove that he was still alive.

  It was a Thursday night and Garrison was eating in the best restaurant in Havana. The restaurant was Le Vendome, on Calle Calzado, and the food was French. Garrison had baked clams, chateaubriand and a small bottle of Bordeaux Rouge. He passed up dessert and had cognac with his coffee.

  When he had finished he paid his check, left a tip and walked out of the restaurant. He looked neat and summery in his cord suit. His tie was neatly knotted, his shoes polished. He walked with a sure, easy stride. Outside, he let the doorman summon a cab for him, pressed a coin into the man’s palm, settled into his seat and told the driver to drop him at the Nacional. That was his hotel, the city’s oldest and one of its best, completely air-conditioned, well serviced, with bars and a pool and a night club and a gambling casino. Tourists were still allowed to gamble in Castro’s Cuba, but Cuban nationals were prohibited from doing so. This amused Garrison.

  He got out at the Nacional, tipped the driver, strode into the lobby and took an elevator to his room. Inside it, with the door locked and bolted, he made a quick check of the room. It had been searched again, he noted, amused. And once again they had failed to find either gun. The rifle was still in his mattress—he had slashed the mattress cover, wedged the gun into the ticking and sewed the mattress up again. The Beretta was still inside the television set where he had placed it. It didn’t even interfere with the operation of the TV. Not that he cared, he never bothered turning it on. All you ever got were Fidel’s speeches, and it wasn’t hard to get tired of them. He said the same thing all the time and took six hours each time to say it.

  Garrison undressed, went into the bathroom and adjusted the shower spray. He showered quickly, shaved, trimmed his mustache. Then he stretched out on his bed and closed his eyes.

  This was the easy way. He wondered where the others were, Fenton and Turner and Garth and Hines. Probably crouching in a dirty little room somewhere with a batch of grubby Cubans mumbling at them. And this was so much simpler. Just the direct method, quick and easy.

  He’d had to get to Cuba illegally, in Di Angelo’s boat. That much was easy enough. And then there was that shrewd old Cuban on La Avenida Blanca, the one a New Orleans contact had put him wise to. You didn’t need a passport or a visa to stay in Cuba. All you needed was an identification paper and they gave you that as you got off the boat. And that little old man had given him one that couldn’t look more like the real thing. You didn’t even need the damned thing while you were in Cuba—nobody ever asked for it—but you had to have it to leave the country. And Garrison planned to leave the country the day Castro died.

  His eyes opened. He grinned, looked at the ceiling, closed his eyes again. The simple way. He was an American businessman on vacation, a real estate speculator who occasionally took a taxi to look at a piece of property. He stayed in a top hotel, ate at good restaurants, tipped a shade too heavily, drank a little too much and didn’t speak a damned word of Spanish. Hardly an assassin, or a secret agent, or anything of the sort. They searched his room, of course, but this happened regularly in every Latin American country. It was a matter of form. Actually, it tended to reassure him, since they searched so clumsily that he knew they were not afraid of him. Otherwise they would take pains to be more subtle.

  The simple way. He stood up, naked and hard-muscled, and walked to his window. He’d been careful to get a room with a window facing on the square. The square was La Plaza de la Republica, a small park surrounding the Palace of Justice. Parades with Fidel at their head made
their way up a broad avenue to that plaza. Then Fidel would speak, orating wildly and magnificently from the steps of the palace. From his window Garrison could see those steps.

  With the rifle properly mounted on the window ledge, he could place a bullet in Fidel’s open mouth.

  He drew the window shade and returned to the bed. Maybe he wouldn’t even have to use the gun, he thought. Maybe one of the four idiots—Turner or Hines or Garth or Fenton, wherever the hell they all were—would save him the trouble. He was in no hurry. If one of the others killed Fidel, that was fine. He got his twenty grand just the same, with no risk and no work. If not, then he set up the gun and squeezed the trigger. The rifle would be dismantled and tucked away in the room before Fidel knew he was dead. The Beretta could stay where it was, in the television set. And he would be on the next boat to the mainland.

  There was a knock on the door. He sighed, raised himself on one elbow. “Who is it?”

  “Estrella. Let me in, ’arper.”

  The name on his identification papers was John Harper, a simple enough name which happened to begin with the one letter Estrella couldn’t manage. He stood up, wrapped a bath towel around his middle and opened the door for her. She came inside.

  She was very young and very beautiful. She had a tiny waist, solid breasts and hips, a red rosebud of a mouth and deep brown eyes that a man could get lost in. She was a prostitute; Garrison had managed to pick her up without trying very hard one night in the hotel’s bar. Now she came to his room every evening. Sometimes she would tell him that she was in love with him. Other times she would not say a word, would simply make love with him in fiery silence.

  Now she ran a soft hand over his chest. “You take a bath,” she said. “All you Yankees, every minute you take another bath. You take too many baths, ’arper.”

  “And you don’t take enough.”

  She pouted. “You don’t like how I smell?”

  His hands cupped her taut buttocks, drew her close. She was a full head shorter than he was. He lowered his face and inhaled the sweet animal fragrance that rose between her breasts.

  “I like how you smell,” he said. “You smell of sex. You smell like you want to get into bed.”

  “And you? You don’ wan’?”

  “I wan’, Estrella.”

  “You make fun how I talk. Don’ I talk awright?”

  “You talk like a magpie. Come here, Estrella.”

  She came into his arms again and he held her close. She wore a thin white cotton dress with nothing under it. He could feel the heat of her body through the thin cloth. She squirmed against him, and her hands found the towel around his waist.

  “You don’ need that towel, ’arper.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So,” she said. The towel dropped to the floor and she stepped back, looked at him, grinned. “You’re naked,” she said. “I love you, ’arper. I love you, you bastard.”

  He reached for her, caught her. She squealed with delight as he lifted her into the air and dumped her down on the bed. Then he was on the bed beside her, his hands busy with the white cotton dress. She laughed and giggled, pushed his hands away playfully. He grabbed her and kissed her. His tongue went between her lips and suddenly she moaned out loud; all the playfulness turned instantly to passion now and she was urging her body against his, kissing hard, holding tight.

  They took her dress off. His hands went over her body, stroking the silken luxury of perfect skin, rubbing the slightly rounded stomach, cupping full breasts taut with womanliness, then kissing the upthrust nipples while she writhed wantonly on the bed. She said ’arper, ’arper, ’arper, repeated again and again a name that was not really his.

  There was no element of time, no sense of space. Reality was suspended momentarily; rather, reality consisted only of Garrison and the girl, only of the meeting of bodies. There was one instant of irony when he realized again that they were making love on top of a high-powered rifle, but the thought was submerged by a wave of passion.

  Then he was on his back looking at the ceiling without seeing it, waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes, opened them again. He turned and saw her beside him, her eyes watching him. She looked like a cat by the fireplace, like an infant in the fetal posture. She looked beautiful.

  “’arper,” she said, her sleek, naked body arching toward him.

  “Mmmmm?”

  “When you go back to America?”

  “Not tonight. I’ll be busy tonight.”

  “Don’t kid aroun’. When you go back?”

  “I don’t know. Not for a while.”

  “When you go,” she said softly, “you take me with you. No?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Because I’m a killer, he thought. Hired killers don’t carry pretty little whores in their suitcases. They travel light.

  “’arper? You married, ’arper?”

  It was a convenient lie but he passed it up, shaking his head.

  “Then why not take me with you? I love you, ’arper. An’ you love me. I get in your blood.”

  “And I get in your—”

  “Don’t talk dirty. Why not, ’arper?”

  “I’m sleepy,” he said. “Stay here tonight. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Right now I want to go to sleep.”

  “You wan’ me to stay tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “An’ when you leave Cuba, you take me with you?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “We’ll see.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. He watched her close her eyes and drift off to sleep almost at once, like the contented little animal she was. He did not fall asleep that quickly. He rolled over onto his side, found a pack of cigarettes, smoked one in the near-darkness. He watched the tip of the cigarette glow with life when he drew on it. When he had finished, he stubbed it out in the ashtray on the bedside table, and closed his eyes again. But sleep didn’t come.

  Take her back to the States? That was a cute idea now, wasn’t it? Jesus, he thought, she’s just another little piece and Havana is full of a million sluts just like her. And they would all tell you how much they loved you. So he should bring this one home with him? Like a war bride, he thought. A goddamned war bride. Just another little piece, maybe a little better than most of them, but still nothing special. So why didn’t he hand her her walking papers and get rid of her before she got in his way? Why not?

  And it was the damnedest thing. He didn’t like her calling him ’arper. He wished she would call him Ray.

  A dry, hot, lazy afternoon. Maria sat by the ashes of the dead campfire. She was cleaning her Sten gun. Only a fool let his gun become dirty. Once she had seen such a fool with a dirty gun. A troup of Castro’s forces had attacked, and one of their men fired his weapon. And it had blown up in his face, had disintegrated it.

  She went on cleaning her gun, humming softly to herself. Her mind was busy with thought and she did not hear Garth until he was at her side.

  Then she whirled. This big man frightened her; twice already he had put his hands on her, bothering her.

  “You be nice to me,” he said now. “You be nice and we’ll have a good time.”

  She did not understand the words; they were in English and she didn’t know the language. But the meaning was clear enough even though the words were unintelligible. He wanted her.

  She tried to get to her feet. But he put his big hands on her shoulders and pushed. She fell down and he threw himself down beside her. She could smell the strong animal smell of his sweat. He was no man, this Garth. He was a pig.

  She cursed him in Spanish and he smiled, not understanding her words. He reached out a massive paw that closed around her breast. He squeezed and she writhed in terror. He was hurting her.

  “You and me,” he said. “We’ll have ourselves a ball.”

  He was lying on top of her now, his breath strong in her face. She felt one of his hands forcing itself bet
ween her thighs, touching her. She twisted, got a hand free, slapped at his face. He only leered at her.

  She saw the heat building within him, noticed the way he was breathing faster. She lay there, fighting him, waiting for the rape to begin, knowing he was stronger and she could not resist him. His hands were busy with her full, firm breasts, busy with her groin. She would have screamed but there was no one to hear.

  He might have raped her, but he did not. There were sounds of men coming, sounds of the rest of the party returning to the camp. He stopped, listened, grunted.

  “We got company,” he said. “Sometime soon, honey. We’ll have to get this finished, you and me.”

  “I will kill you,” she told him in Spanish. “I will kill you. I will shoot you and watch you die.”

  That night she spoke to Manuel. In Spanish, Maria said: “That Garth continues to bother me. Today he put his hands on me. Several times.”

  “You have no man,” Manuel said. “He wishes to be the one.”

  “I don’t want a man.”

  “It is not natural,” Manuel said. “A woman without a man.”

  “I do not want one. And even if I did, it would not be Garth.”

  Manuel shrugged expressively. “If you took another man, perhaps Garth would cease to bother you.”

  “I cannot. Not any man. You know what happened.”

  What happened was simple. Four months ago Maria had had a man, a husband. She and her man fought in the hills with Manuel. Then one day the Castristas caught them both on patrol. There were four of the Castristas. First they killed Maria’s husband by shooting him in the head with a machine gun until he had no head left. That was a picture which never left Maria’s mind, the picture of Carlos lying on his back in the dirt with his body ending at the neck, with blood everywhere.

  And then she had been raped. The four of them took her in turn, and it didn’t do her any good to struggle, but she struggled nevertheless. She kneed one soldier in the groin and tried to gouge the eyes of another. To punish her for this, the four of them burned her breasts with a cigar after they had finished with her. They did not kill her. They left her on the road, living but in fearful pain, as an example to the others. And for dramatic effect they placed Carlos’ dead body upon her and tied the two of them together.