Night Work

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Night Work Page 2

by David C. Taylor


  “Do me a favor, Echevarria. Shut up.” Money did not tempt him. He had grown up in a household that had money. His mother inherited hers from family holdings that got their start when Boston was still a village. His father made his in the Broadway theater after a brief, lucrative career running booze during Prohibition. Neither had any reverence for the stuff. His mother spent hers wildly to show contempt for the hard, narrow, tightfisted rules of her upbringing. His father spent his, because what the hell, there would always be more tomorrow. When his mother killed herself, Cassidy inherited more money than he thought he would ever need and his indulgences were few. He liked to buy art from the studios of the artists he knew who worked in Greenwich Village where he owned an apartment from which he could see the river. He liked to eat in good restaurants. He hoped that when he got older some perverse and expensive passion would kick in so that he could fling money around like confetti. Somebody once said that money was for throwing off the backs of trains. Maybe he could work up to that.

  There were few people traveling at that time of day, and the concourse was not crowded. A boy of about ten walking with his parents noticed the handcuffs and pointed. “Look, Mom, Dad, a bad man. Look.” His mother hushed him and pulled him along, but the boy kept looking back over his shoulder as they went, drawn by the mystery of evil.

  Echevarria, wrapped in thought, made no comment, but a minute later he slowed and pulled on the handcuffs and Cassidy stopped. Echevarria’s face was pale and his voice was tight and harsh. “Do you think I’m kidding you? Paredón. This is what they will do to me. This is where you take me. To the wall.”

  “You’ve been extradited to stand trial for murder.”

  “Trial? There will be no trial. They don’t need a trial to send you to the wall.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have shot those guys.”

  “You think this is about the men I killed?” He snorted. “They were nothing. Peasants, hired gunmen, nada. They have killed many themselves. They would have killed me. No, they don’t kill me for them. Nobody cares about them.”

  “Their mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers?” Cassidy said it mildly.

  “Their mothers are whores. Their sisters are whores. Their lovers are whores. Their brothers are the same as they are. The reason they are going to kill me is that I stole from a bigger thief than I am. The second biggest thief on the island. The first is, of course, President Batista. Do you know who the second is?”

  “No.” Cassidy tugged on the cuffs and started walking again.

  Echevarria stopped talking while Cassidy bought cigarettes at a newsstand. He offered one but Echevarria waved it away impatiently and pulled him out into the concourse so he could go on. His face was pale and he was sweating from his urgency. He looked around quickly to see that they were not overheard. “General Roberto Fernández Miranda.” He waited expectantly, but he saw that the name meant nothing to Cassidy. “He is President Batista’s brother-in-law. He has the concession for all the slot machines in the casinos and bars. He owns the parking meters in Havana. Do you know now much he makes from the parking meters? Half a million dollars a month. From parking meters. Coño! Half a million a month.”

  “So you took some of it and killed the men who were protecting it.”

  “He owed me money. He refused to pay. He thought because he was a big man he did not have to pay. This is the thinking of peasants when they get power. My family came to Cuba in 1705 with a land grant from King Felipe number five. Batista and his people are jumped up negros from the cane fields, greedy shits without honor. They put on suits and think they are no longer monkeys.”

  “You’re an unpleasant bastard, Echevarria. Stop talking to me.” Cassidy had never met a criminal who could not rationalize what he had done. And why did men think killing was a simple solution to a complex problem?

  “You won’t help me.”

  “No.”

  “All right, then.” He nodded as if something had been decided.

  “Detective Cassidy?” A young woman in an airline uniform looked from Cassidy to Echevarria as if unsure who was the handcuffed, who was the handcuffer.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve found you a flight. It’s the Tropicana private charter, but I’ve explained the circumstances and they’ve agreed to take you. We’ll have to hurry. They’re holding the plane for you. I’ve had your bag put aboard. If you’ll follow me.” She was blond and pretty and wore a light blue cotton uniform of a broad-shouldered, quasi-military design, and she walked fast, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor. She had a smile that went on and off like a light. Every once in a while she would throw a look over her shoulder to make sure they were still with her. The smile would light. Her eyes would find the handcuffs. The smile would snap off.

  “I have to use the men’s room,” Echevarria said.

  “There’ll be one on the plane.”

  “No. Now. I have to now.”

  The young woman from the airline stopped and flashed her professional smile to cover her mild embarrassment. “If you need to use the facilities, there’s time. The gate’s at the end of the corridor. I’ll meet you there.” She smiled and went away.

  Echevarria paused at the men’s room door to let Cassidy go first. Cassidy put his hand on the door to enter.

  Politeness suddenly from this arrogant shit? The look between Echevarria and the jailor O’Hara. Cassidy hesitated. Echevarria’s hand slammed against his back and shoved him toward the door. Instead of resisting, Cassidy went with it and crashed the door, yanking Echevarria with him.

  There were three of them in the men’s room. One man was on the left next to the sinks under a mirror. Another was near the urinals on the opposite wall, and the third was waiting behind the door. The one by the urinals held a small automatic. The one by the sinks showed no gun, and the man near the door had been rammed back when Cassidy crashed through. The one with the gun brought the pistol up. Echevarria, surprised by Cassidy’s lunge through the door, staggered as he came into the room, and Cassidy used the momentum to sling him by their handcuffed wrists into the gunman before he could pull the trigger. Echevarria’s weight knocked the gunman back into the urinals. He hit his head and went down, and the gun spun away across the floor. Cassidy snatched his gun from under his arm as the man by the sinks tried to get a pistol from his pocket. It caught on the cloth, and before he could untangle it, Cassidy stepped forward in the small room, dragging Echevarria by the cuffs, and touched his gun barrel to the man’s forehead.

  “Don’t.”

  The man’s eyes crossed as he looked at the gun.

  “Drop it.” The man dropped the pistol, and it clattered on the tile floor. Cassidy shifted his aim to the man behind the door. The door had hit him in the face. He was crouched by the wall whimpering with his hand covering a smashed nose while blood ran down his chin. When he saw Cassidy point the gun, he raised his hands and stood up, and Cassidy could see that he was not more than sixteen years old. The man on the floor by the urinals moaned. Cassidy kicked his gun into one of the stalls and pulled Echevarria to his feet. The adrenaline was burning out, and he could feel shakes coming on in reaction. He ground the barrel of his pistol into the side of Echevarria’s neck. “Who are they?” His voice sounded harsh.

  “Cousins. They live here.”

  “You paid the jailer to let you make a call.”

  “Yes,” in a defeated voice.

  “You, what’s your name?” Cassidy said to the man by the sinks.

  “Javier.”

  “Javier, pick up your gun. Two fingers by the tip of the barrel. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I understand.” He had a thick Cuban accent and his voice was tight with strain. He was slim and not more than five feet six inches tall. He wore a white shirt and black trousers. His black hair was oiled tight to his skull and a neat, narrow mustache was a black line on his lip. He looked at Cassidy with a mixture of fear and anger.

  “Bring it to me. If you do so
mething stupid, I’ll shoot you.”

  Javier crouched and picked up the gun by the barrel tip and carried it to Cassidy, who put it in his jacket pocket. “Go get the other one in the stall. Same deal.” The man on the floor shifted. Cassidy kicked him. “Lie still.” Javier brought the second gun to Cassidy. “Does he have a gun?” Cassidy gestured toward the boy with the broken nose.

  “No.”

  “You, turn out your pockets. Slowly.” The boy obeyed. “Lift your shirt.” There was no gun tucked in his waistband. “All right. The three of you into that stall. Shut the door. Stay in there for five minutes.”

  “You are not going to call the police?” Javier asked.

  “No.” If he called the Miami cops he’d be held up for at least a day.

  “We had to do it. You know this?”

  “Why?”

  “He is family. They will kill him if you take him back.”

  “He killed three men.”

  “Men of no importance.”

  “They were important to somebody, and he has to answer for it.”

  The man on the floor must have hit his head hard, because he wobbled when he tried to stand. Javier and the boy helped him into the stall and closed the latch.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  He sensed the tension rise in Echevarria. This was his last chance. He was steeling himself for it. Now or never. Cassidy held his eyes and pressed the gun barrel against Echevarria’s side. The courage went out of him, and he slumped. Cassidy tugged on the cuffs, and Echevarria went with him. He opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. He pulled Echevarria toward the end of the corridor, stopping to drop the two guns he had taken from the Cubans into a mailbox.

  The young woman from the airlines was waiting at the gate. She flicked them with her smile and said, “Have a nice flight.” The gate agent took the tickets from Cassidy and they walked out into the afternoon glare. The sun was still high in the sky, and the temperature was in the seventies, forty degrees warmer than New York the day before. They crossed the tarmac to where the plane waited in heat shimmer. Bright script on the fuselage read TROPICANA SPECIAL. They went up into the DC-6, and the attendants began rolling the ramp away as they went into the plane and the stewardess shut the door and then showed them to seats at the rear.

  The plane was full. Most of the passengers were men, and most of them were drinking. Maybe some of the women aboard were married, but probably not to the men they were with. This was party time. They were headed for Havana, out of the loop of their normal lives. There were no rules. One of the women spotted the handcuffs. She was a tall brunette in a tight skirt that hobbled her at the knees and a tight gold shirt that strained to hold her breasts. She swayed down the aisle carrying a drink in a tall glass and tapped on the handcuff chain with a long red fingernail while she leaned in to examine Cassidy with eyes as wide as an owl’s.

  “Have you been a bad boy?” Her breath was warm and smelled of rum.

  “No. I’m the good boy. He’s the bad boy.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “You know those tags on mattresses that say ‘Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law’? He removed one.”

  She blinked while it penetrated. “You’re kidding me. You’re a kidder, aren’t you? And you’re kidding me.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Kidder.”

  “What’s going on here?” He gestured at the plane, the party, at the man with an orchid clenched between his teeth as he danced in the aisle.

  “The Special? It’s from the Tropicana Club. They send it for the high rollers. You know, to get them in the mood.”

  “Hey, Alice, come sit down,” a man called from near the front of the plane.

  “I’m coming, Georgie.” She slapped Cassidy on the shoulder, said “Kidder,” and stilted away up the aisle on high heels, looking like something from the original blueprint for sex, her ass swaying just a little more than it had to. She checked once over her shoulder to make sure Cassidy was getting the benefit.

  I’ve got to get laid. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep. It would be worth the experiment. Even if I didn’t sleep, at least there’d be something for the effort.

  The engines revved, spat smoke, the propellers flicked and then blurred into their rhythm, and the pilot came on the intercom to welcome them aboard the Tropicana Special and to announce in a western twang that “it’s time for all you good folks to strap this plane to your bodies so we can take off for Havana and have some fun.”

  * * *

  “May I bring you a drink, Detective?” The stewardess smiled and bent over enough to let Cassidy look down her dress.

  “I’d like a martini, dry, on the rocks, a twist, if you have it.”

  “And for your, uh, um,” she struggled with it. “Would he like something?”

  “Please bring Mr. Echevarria a Cuban rum on the rocks. A double. Thank you.”

  She went to the back of the plane to fill the order. At the front of the plane a small stage was set where a few rows of seats had been removed. A man in a bolero jacket and skintight pants got up on it and sang a suggestive song about rum and a woman and a beach and the moon.

  The drinks came and the stewardess went away. The singer finished his song, and three women in split skirts and bikini bras got up and did a dance that would have been banned in thirty of the forty-eight states, and a couple of the passengers got up and tried to match them until they were shouted down.

  A man rose from a seat near the woman who thought Cassidy was a kidder and walked back to perch on the arm of the empty seat across the aisle. He was in his late thirties, Cassidy guessed. He was about six feet tall and had a boyish Irish face and thick hair that looked like he combed it with his fingers. He wore linen trousers and a dark blue cotton shirt open at the throat, and he had the easy open manner of someone comfortable in his skin, a man with some power and used to wielding it without second thoughts. He raised his glass in a toast and took a sip. “The lady up there says you’re a cop.”

  Cassidy nodded and said nothing. Handcuffed prisoners drew people the way animals in the zoo did—proximity to danger, but the danger caged.

  “Do you mind if I ask what he did? I kind of didn’t believe the business about the mattress tag.”

  “He killed some people.”

  “How many?”

  “Three.”

  “Uh-huh.” That didn’t seem to bother the man. Maybe that was one of the benefits of having power. People died, you lived. “Why’d he do it?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  Echevarria pulled at his drink and looked at the man with a flat stare. “Go fuck yourself.”

  The man laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. Prurient interest about another man’s misfortune. But I can’t do that. It’s against my professional code. See, I’m a senator, and the code says we fuck other people, never ourselves. What happens when you get to Havana?”

  “There’ll be some cops meeting the plane. I turn him over to them, spend the night, the next day I’m on vacation.”

  “A vacation in Havana’s not bad duty.”

  “You know Havana.”

  “I do. I like Havana. I get down here a couple of times a year. Fact-finding missions for the good of the Commonwealth, of course. And the fact is there is nothing a man could want that Havana cannot give you.” He grinned. “Where are you from, Detective?”

  “New York.”

  “Nothing I can do for you, then. You’re not a constituent. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll have to struggle along without you, then.”

  “I’ll buy you drink. They’re free.”

  “Thanks, I’ve got one.”

  “Okay. Nice talking to you. See you around.” He went back up the aisle, stopping to talk to people, touching others on the shoulders, offering a sip of his drink to a pretty woman. His laughter carried to where Cassidy was sitting. A man who took life in big bites, Cassidy th
ought.

  * * *

  When the plane landed, the stewardess asked Cassidy to wait until the rest of the passengers were off. Maybe they thought someone coming off The Special in handcuffs would kill the party spirit. The young senator paused by his seat. “Where are you staying?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

  “There’s the Hilton. American owned, if that’s important to you. To me, what’s the point? You could be in the Miami Hilton, the Los Angeles Hilton. I like the Nacional. It’s got a casino, of course, but if you’re really looking for that kind of action, the Tropicana’s the place to gamble. Besides, they flew you here. You might as well give them the custom.”

  “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “You don’t gamble?”

  “Not for money.”

  “See you. Have fun.” He went on, youthful and confident, worlds to conquer.

  Fresh air blew in through the open door, soft and tropical, and carrying the smell of the ocean and the scent of flowers Cassidy could not name.

  Two soldiers were waiting at the bottom of the ramp, a colonel for command presence and a sergeant to do any heavy lifting. They were dressed in gray military uniforms with polished leather belts crossing their chests and pistols in polished leather holsters at their waists. The colonel was a tall man in his late thirties. His uniform was severely tailored to emphasize his slimness. His cavalry boots gleamed. He had a narrow, tanned face with a pointed chin and a nose like a hawk’s beak. The sergeant was a big man, thick through the chest and shoulders, heavy-legged. Coarse black hair like wire forced its way out from under his hat, and his face was flat and broad with small dark eyes set deep. Indian blood. A gray Jeep was parked near the fence, a driver behind the wheel.

  The colonel smoked a thin cigar, which he waved genially at Cassidy as they started down the ramp. Cassidy felt the drag on his wrist as Echevarria held back, and heard Echevarria suck in breath. He jerked on the cuffs to move him. He wanted this over with now. He wanted to be free of Echevarria. He looked forward to being in Havana, anonymous, solo, no rules, no responsibilities. Who knows what he might find? He might even get lucky.

 

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