Cassidy crossed and looked through the one-way. In the next room, the young senator from the plane was on the bed straining through improbable gymnastics with two young women, one the color of dark honey, and the other of chocolate. They all seemed to be having a good time. As Cassidy watched, one of the women glanced at the one-way and then shifted to be sure the senator’s face was clearly visible.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?”
The two men from the room were back. They looked angry and dangerous. One had a knife or razor scar that ran from his ear to his chin. The other had the thickened eyebrows of an ex-pug. “Who the fuck are you?” Scar tissue asked.
“Nobody. Just passing by. Saw the camera and thought, cool, guys are in the movie business. I always thought it would be cool to be in the movie business.” He used the talk to close the distance on the two men. He figured the pug would be the more dangerous of the two. He’d know how to hit, and he’d know how to avoid getting hit.
“The movie business? What are you, a wise guy? What, you walk into someone’s room, no one asked you?”
“Sorry.”
“Fucking right you’re going to be sorry.”
Cassidy swept up a ceramic table lamp and smashed it against the side of the pug’s head and then backhanded the wreckage of the lamp across the scar’s face. When his hands went up to defend himself, Cassidy kicked him in the balls, and then turned to see how the pug was doing. He was on his knees on the floor, dazed and bleeding from the ear. Cassidy kicked him in the head, and he fell over, unconscious. He turned back to the man with the scar. He was bent over, holding himself and sucking for air that would not come. Cassidy punched his head with the remains of the lamp, and the man went down hard. It took a minute to tie their hands with lamp cords, and then Cassidy took the reel of film out of the camera and left the room.
The people in the corridor were at the far end where a window looked down on whatever was happening below. Cassidy went to the door next to the room with the movie camera and knocked. There was no answer. He slapped the door hard a couple of times with the palm of his hand.
“Go away.” Muffled by the door.
“Senator, you’ve got to get out of there.”
“We don’t want any.” Muffled giggles.
Cassidy banged again. “Senator, it’s Michael Cassidy. The cop from the plane. You’ve got a problem.”
The door opened. The Senator wore a towel and had a drink in his hand. “I’m very busy, Mike. I’m doing a little fact-finding in here.”
“Uh-huh, well you’re fucked and you’re fucked.” He held up the reel of film. The senator seemed to understand what it meant. His face turned serious. “I’m in room five-oh-six across the hall,” Cassidy said. “I’ll buy you a drink.” The senator nodded and went back inside the room.
Ten minutes later he knocked on Cassidy’s door.
“Do you know who owns this hotel?” Cassidy poured some scotch into a glass, added ice, and passed it to the senator, whose hair was wet from the shower.
“No.”
“A couple of people, fronts, but mostly Meyer Lansky. Do you know who that is?”
“Sure. He’s a gangster.”
“Yeah, well, he’s the gangster. Some people call him the Mob’s accountant. Some say he’s the brains behind all the illegal gambling in the States. He’s got Batista in his pocket and Batista’s given him license to run gambling in Cuba. He’s one of those guys who thinks long-term. The film, the girls, you, that’s long-term thinking. It’s always good to have some weight with a U.S. Senator. Maybe assigning you a room with a one-way mirror wasn’t coincidence. Where’d you find the girls?”
“They found me in the bar.” The senator grinned and shrugged at his own gullibility. His eyes were wary, but he didn’t seem badly shaken by anything that had happened. Maybe he was one of those people who was used to people cleaning up after him. Maybe he was one of those men who liked to walk to the edge of the cliff just to see how high the fall might be. “What about you? Are you thinking about long-term benefits?”
Cassidy tossed the reel of film to the senator. “You should burn this, unless you collect them, reminiscences for your old age.”
The senator bounced the reel in his hand as if weighing it. “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”
“I haven’t thought about you at all. I saw what they were doing. I didn’t like it, so I stopped it.”
“Okay. Thanks.” The senator waited to see what came next.
“You’re welcome.” Cassidy headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Downstairs.”
* * *
The lobby was full of people, some in bathrobes, some in party clothes. The lights of ambulances and fire engines and police cars flicked through the glass of the doors and windows and painted the walls in streaks of red and blue.
Outside, the fire trucks and ambulances and police cars were parked at angles. They had come fast, and the men in them had gotten out fast, but after that they had discovered there wasn’t much to do. An explosion had blackened the façade of the casino wing, and the glass had blown into some of the ground-floor windows, but that was the extent of the damage. Flashbulbs flared. Cops and uniformed SIM officers stood talking in clumps. A group of firemen put more energy than necessary into extinguishing flames in a grouping of small ornamental palms.
A cop grabbed Cassidy’s arm and pushed him back toward the other tourists. Cassidy gestured toward the group of uniformed officers bunched near the casino entrance. “Estoy con el Coronel Fuentes.” The cop stepped back and touched the brim of his hat and nodded.
Fuentes seemed unsurprised to see him.
“What happened?” Cassidy asked.
“The bomb went off before she could get it inside.” He nodded toward where Sergeant Lopato crouched by a young woman who lay on the sidewalk. Light from the hotel windows fell on her. She wore a yellow party dress. The dress was dark with blood. Her left side was heavily bandaged. Blood had flowed from under her and pooled at the raised sill of the entrance. One foot still wore a green high-heeled shoe. She moaned, and Lopato leaned close and said something to her. She moved her head from side to side, either in refusal or in pain.
“It blew her left arm off,” Fuentes said. “Clearly she meant to carry it into the casino. Maximum damage, hey? Dead tourists. Innocent Americans killed. The outrage. The terror. Now the tourists don’t come. The economy suffers. The new order rises. The old order falls. A good plan when you’re sitting with your Communist friends in a house by the beach drinking rum and making revolution. Who would look twice at a pretty girl in a pretty dress carrying her purse into the casino? No one. We want pretty girls in the casino. And what is she thinking as she comes here, hey? She will walk in and leave the purse under a table, maybe the roulette table, play a few spins, and then walk out. Maybe she plans to stop on the Malecón to watch, and then home to her friends, full of excitement. The description of the explosion, the noise, the fire, the screams of the capitalist oppressors. And she is the hero. A good plan. Only one problem. A bad timer, or a bad fuse. The stupidity of amateurs.”
A doctor had been standing nearby trying to get Fuentes’s attention. Fuentes ignored him. Finally the doctor could not wait any longer. “Coronel…” He lifted his black bag to show Fuentes.
“No. No drugs. Not until she speaks to my sergeant. Give her drugs, she goes to sleep. She wakes up in the hospital, she has courage she does not have now.” He said it in English for Cassidy’s benefit.
“She’s going to die if you don’t let me attend her.”
“She came here to kill. If she dies, she dies. So what?”
The girl cried out, a high wail that trailed to a whimper. It sounded like a plea.
“If she lives,” Cassidy said, “you can question her again and again. If she dies, you get nothing.”
“Your professional opinion, Detective?”
“Yes.”
; “Thank you.”
Lopato stood when Fuentes approached him. The two men talked together in low voices. Then Lopato squatted by the girl again and asked her a question. She did not respond. Lopato put his hand on the blood soaked bandage that covered her ruined shoulder and squeezed.
The girl screamed.
Some of the firemen walked away quickly.
Lopato leaned down and asked her something again. When she did not answer, he clamped her shoulder. She screamed again. Her feet drummed on the terrace stones, and she died.
Fuentes looked over at Cassidy and shrugged.
* * *
He did not think he would sleep. And then he woke and somewhere in the night an idea had come. He examined it in daylight. It seemed half-baked, but it was all he had, so he went to look for the senator.
Cassidy found him eating breakfast in the dining room. The senator looked freshly showered, rested, and serene, as if nothing that had happened the night before had touched him. He indicated the chair opposite him at his table. “Sit down. Have some breakfast. I recommend the papaya, and the coffee is wonderful. I don’t know why you can’t get a decent cup of coffee in the States.”
A waiter came and poured coffee for Cassidy, took his order, and went away.
“I guess you heard what all the excitement was about.” The senator mopped egg yolk with a piece of toast. “A rebel bomber blew herself up, one of Castro’s people, they say.”
“Yes. I saw her.”
“I hear she was pretty.”
“Not when I saw her.”
“They can’t win. Batista’s got a big army, well equipped. We’ve been supplying them and training them for years. I don’t think a bunch of ragtags are going to beat them.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“She must have known she could die doing it. She must have known the bomb could go off while she was still there.”
“And?”
“Do you think there are any men in Batista’s army who would blow themselves up for him?”
The senator pushed his plate away. “That’s an interesting thought. Dedication over equipment. Commitment beats heavy weapons.”
“The American Revolution.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. It doesn’t always work. Mostly God is on the side of big battalions. That’s the gospel up in Washington. Still, an interesting thought.”
The waiter brought Cassidy’s food, scrambled eggs, a piece of papaya, a fried plantain.
“I apologize for last night. I insulted you. You did me a service and I asked what you wanted in return. It comes, I suppose, of working in a town where nobody offers anything for free. I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine. You begin to think everyone acts that way. Sorry.”
“Forget it. And at the risk of disillusioning you, I need your help.”
“Come on.” He looked a little angry.
“The world’s full of disappointments.”
“Yeah, yeah. What do you need?” He was not happy.
“Are you really down here to do some fact-finding?”
“That’s what it says on my schedule and on my receipts.”
“Are you busy today?”
“Maybe a cigar factory in the afternoon. We’ve still got a couple of tobacco growers down near the Connecticut border. Some of them sell wrappers to the Cuban cigar makers. Why?”
“Do you know La Cabaña?”
“The fortress across the harbor next to El Morro.”
“It’s a prison. I need to get in there.”
“Sure. Why?”
“I have to get someone out.”
That didn’t seem to disturb him, but it made him pause. “Who?”
“A woman.”
“Uh-huh. What’s she in for?” The interest of a born conspirator began to show.
“I don’t know. Politics. But whatever it is, they’re going to kill her.”
“So what’s happening here? Are you following your dick or your brain?” This from a man who had done both.
“Both.”
“You know her.”
“Yes.”
“Ahh, like that, huh?” A man who liked women and understood what that could do to you.
“Yes.”
“Why do you need me? You’re a cop. They’ll let you in, won’t they?”
“If I go in with you, they’ll be looking at you. No one will pay attention to me.”
“Once you’re in, what do you do?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is a hell of a plan.”
“I’m not strong on plans. I’m more likely to bang around and see what happens.”
“Uh-huh, just grab and hold on tight.” It seemed to intrigue him. Maybe being a senator wasn’t exciting enough.
Cassidy said nothing. The idea sounded ridiculous to him. What did it sound like to the senator?
“So I go to the authorities and tell them about my abiding interest in prison administration, or history, or something. I form a group. We go in. You do what you do, and then we get caught. That’s not really going to be a help to my political career.”
“No.”
“Last night was last night. That’s over. I owe you, but this? Why should I do it?”
“No reason at all.”
“I suppose it has to happen fast.”
“She’s on short time.”
Cassidy lit a cigarette and smoked while the senator thought about it.
“A goddamn stupid thing to be doing.”
“Yes.”
“We could try for this afternoon. I’ll get some people together. I’ll have to make some calls, find out who can give us permission.”
“Thank you, Senator.”
He grinned. “If we get caught, my father’s going to kill me.”
Cassidy went shopping on La Rampa. He bought a cheap briefcase and stored his purchases in it and went back to the hotel and lay on the bed and wondered if he would be alive at the end of the day. It was a thought that had come often in the war. If you examined it from all sides it would paralyze you. Better to stuff it back in the box and go on. What else was there to do?
They left the cars in the shade of the high wall inside the gate and followed their guide, a slim, clerkish lieutenant with a wisp of a mustache and an impeccable khaki uniform, across the heat of the parade ground, the cut stones smooth and warm underfoot. The office of the Commandant was cool. The ceilings were high, the windows deeply recessed in the thick walls that displayed old photographs in frames of stern officers in elaborate uniforms, swords at their sides, artillery squads firing small field guns, soldiers on parade shouldering rifles from fifty years ago. The Commandant, General Castillo, was a happy round man, with a round head like a soccer ball painted with oiled black hair parted in the middle as if with a razor, a round belly, round wire-rimmed glasses. He was delighted by an excuse to show off his command. He greeted them with small cups of strong dark coffee and thimbles of brandy served by mess men in white uniforms, and gathered them around a large map of the fortress so he could explain its construction and history. Jack and his friend George, a senator from Florida, three aides, serious young men in seersucker suits with close-cropped hair and horn-rimmed glasses, all poured from the same mold. And two secretaries. Claire with Jack, tall, athletic, blond, with the high cheekbones of a model and long red fingernails that had never seen a typewriter. Alice with George, the pneumatic brunette from the plane from Miami, who swatted Cassidy on the shoulder in the lobby of the Nacional while they waited for the cars and said, “Ooh, I remember you. The kidder from the plane. What happened to the guy?”
“I ate him.”
She laughed and swatted him again and leaned a heavy breast against his arm for a moment. Perfume, musk, and body heat.
General Castillo carried a riding crop and used it to proudly point out the interesting features of his fortress. His English was accented, clear and colloquial. “Started in 1763 and finished eleven years later u
nder the reign of King Carlos III. The fort occupies nearly twenty-five acres and it could have housed six thousand men in time of war. However, the fort was never involved in a battle. Do you know why? Strength. It was clearly such a powerful fortress that no one ever had the courage to test it. To guarantee peace, you must have great strength. It is weakness that invites attack. There is a lesson here that America knows well. It is America’s strength that keeps the Communists quiet. Without that, they would be on our beaches and at our throats.” He slapped the map with the riding crop. “Now, we are here. Here are the barracks. Here are the stables, though we do not keep horses anymore. Here is the magazine where we still keep explosives and ammunition.” He turned to his audience and threw his arms wide. “Welcome to Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña. Now, let us go out, and we will walk, and you will ask me questions.”
Sun-warmed stone. Well-clipped lawn around a sundial. Young soldiers, their uniform shirts off, suspenders over bare torsos, playing soccer on a strip of grass near freshly painted barracks. Squads doing close-ordered drills under the bark and lash of sergeants. Flower borders along the paths. No sign of prison, of condemned prisoners in rose-colored shirts. General Castillo was not going to spoil his visitors’ day by showing them that. He led them west, away from the area Cassidy had seen the day before when he had delivered Echevarria to the mercy of Colonel Fuentes. The sun was hot on his back, and his hand sweated on the plastic handle of the briefcase.
He followed the tour for a look in the magazine to see the stacks of brass howitzer shells, crates of hand grenades, old wooden shelves packed with new cardboard boxes of small arms rounds. “Please, Señorita, it is best not to smoke in here. Boom!” A few minutes in the armory to admire the water-cooled .50 caliber machine guns on their tripods, the racks of M-1 rifles and Thompson submachine guns left over from World War II and supplied by the government across the straits for little more than their cost, an act of friendship. A trip to the battlements to inspect the black iron cannons that pointed out through the embrasures and had waited for a hundred years to take on any brig or frigate that might sail in to test the harbor’s defenses. At the next corner, Cassidy hung back until the others disappeared, and then walked away.
Night Work Page 4