16
Cassidy and Orso walked the platform under Penn Station as the train pushed in slowly and stopped, hissing steam. They nodded to the uniformed patrolmen spaced every ten feet. The doors opened, and passengers disembarked, and the two men worked against the tide of people headed for the exit stairs.
“How many have we got?” Orso asked.
“Twenty uniforms down here. A hundred in the concourse, a hundred outside. Twenty plainclothes here and there.”
“Jesus. They must really think someone’s going to go for this joker.”
Ahead of them a knot of cops blocked anyone trying to get back to the last car. A tall, thin lieutenant with red hair and a freckled face as Irish as a shamrock separated from the group. “How’re you doing, detectives?”
“Connolly, right?” Cassidy asked. “Do you know Detective Orso?”
“Yeah, sure. I came up through the academy with your cousin Frankie.” The three men shook hands. “I sent Perez in to tell Castro and his people they were going to have to hang back till the other passengers cleared the platform. I guess we’re pretty much good to go now.”
“How many of them?” Cassidy asked.
“Thirty-two.”
“They told us fifty,” Cassidy said.
Connolly shrugged. “They sent an advance party on an earlier train without telling us. Thirty-two here including Castro.”
“Shit, it’s going to be like herding cats,” Orso said.
“Could shoot ’em all now, save everybody the trouble,” Connolly said. The men who heard it laughed. “Perez, go back in there and tell them they can get off.”
Fidel Castro’s followers straggled out of the doors at either end of the car and coalesced near the middle around the tall figure of their leader. Like Fidel, most of the men were bearded, and most of them, like their leader, wore khaki fatigues as if about to go out on patrol. There were a number of women in the group, and all of them were dressed in fatigues. Some of them glanced at the cops who watched them and looked away again, and their laughter had a nervous edge of bravado. Cops had never been their friends in Cuba. Castro seemed unaffected. He looked out over their heads with genial curiosity, a large cigar clenched in his teeth.
“All yours, Detective,” Connolly said. “And good luck to you.”
Cassidy approached the Cubans with Orso at his shoulder, and people stepped aside and nodded to them, deferring, but when they got close to Castro, two men stepped in to block them. Cassidy looked past them to Castro and said in Spanish, “My name is Michael Cassidy. I’m a detective with the New York Police Department. We’re here to escort you to your hotel.”
Castro gestured to the two men, and they stepped aside. He stepped forward and offered his hand, taking the cigar out of his mouth with the other. “Michael Cassidy, you are a friend of Carlos Ribera, my friend. He said you are a good man. I am happy to meet you.” His English was heavily accented. He was a big man, tall and bulky, and his beard, though full, was scraggly and unkempt. His hand, when Cassidy shook it, was surprisingly soft, the hand of the lawyer he had been, rather than the guerrilla fighter he had become. His fatigues showed no insignia of rank, but the way people looked at him, waited for him, moved around him made it clear that he was their leader.
“Is Carlos here?”
“He is somewhere. He was on an earlier train. You know Carlos. He goes where he wants when he wants.” He laughed. “So, show us where we are to go.”
They went up the stairs to the main hall, cops at the front and at the back, leading fast and pushing hard. They wanted Castro and his party across the street and under cover in the hotel, but he did not seem to feel their urgency. He stopped in the middle of the vast main concourse and looked up at the vaulted ceiling. He raised his arms wide as if to embrace it all and told his followers in Spanish, “It was modeled after the Baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome, and is as big inside as St. Peter’s.” Then he laughed. “Of course this was not built to the glory of God, but to the glory of commerce.” He waved his cigar like a baton, and charged the wide marble steps that led to Seventh Avenue, and his police escort hurried to keep up.
When Castro led his followers out onto the sidewalk at Seventh Avenue, they found thousands of people packed behind the wooden sawhorses the Department had set up for crowd control. At the sight of Castro cheers exploded, “Viva la revolución!” “Viva Fidel!” “Cago en la leche de Batista!” “Arriba el Movimiento 26 de Julio!” Signs and placards supporting Castro and the 26th of July Movement danced and swung above the heads of the crowd that surged against the barriers and the uniformed cops who manned them. Among the shouts of approval, Cassidy heard other voices of protest. “Abajo Fidel.” “Donde esta mi hermano?” “Asesino, asesino.” A fight broke out deep in the crowd. A man went down with his head bloodied by the wooden pole of a placard that read, “Fidel brings peace and prosperity.”
“This way,” Cassidy said, and took Castro’s arm to lead him through the cleared area between the barriers and across Seventh Avenue where four cops wearing white gloves had brought traffic to a halt. Horns blared in protest. Castro pulled away and plunged into the crowd grabbing hands, hugging, kissing women. He was quickly surrounded by people, cut off from his escort. Past him, Cassidy could see two men fighting through the crowd toward Castro. One of them carried a placard calling for Castro’s death. The other held a heavy pole from which he must have ripped a sign, because pieces of white cardboard were still stapled near the top. The man swung the pole like a bludgeon, and two people went down, and the path cleared in front of them. Cassidy pushed into the crush, but the dense pack of admirers trying to get near the Cuban leader held him back.
“Orso! Orso!” His partner saw the problem and slammed into the crowd. His charge threw people back, but the two men coming for Castro were going to get there first. Cassidy dug for his gun, but someone hit him hard on the ear, and the only reason he did not fall was there was no room. And then in front of him a man drew a silver revolver from under his shirt. “Gun! Gun! Man with a gun!” He threw himself forward. Someone grabbed his jacket. He jerked an elbow back and it smacked something hard. He heard a grunt of pain, and whoever it was let go, and he plunged ahead. Where was Castro? There, head and shoulders above the crowd, an easy shot, not twenty feet away. The gunman struggled to turn. Cassidy grabbed the back of someone’s collar and jerked him to the ground and went into the gap the man left and jumped on the gunman’s back. He crooked his left arm hard around his throat. As he rode him to the ground he reached over the man’s shoulder with his right hand and clasped it over the gun. The gunman pulled the trigger and the hammer came down on the web between Cassidy’s thumb and forefinger, tearing the flesh. Cassidy ripped the gun from the man’s hand and slammed it against the side of his face, and he grunted and tried to throw him off. Cassidy hit him again; the man sagged. He pulled his handcuffs from his belt, jerked the man’s hands behind his back, and cuffed him.
Orso put a hand under his arm and pulled him to his feet. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Castro?”
“Not a scratch. Looks like he didn’t even know it was happening.”
Castro was still glad-handing his admirers. “There were two guys who were headed for him, one with a sign, one with just the post.”
“I guess they took off. You’re bleeding, Mike. Your hand.”
“Yeah. Goddamn it. Here, give me your handkerchief, will you?”
Orso hesitated. “It’s silk.”
“Oh, for christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, yeah. Here.”
Cassidy wrapped his hand. The man on the ground groaned and tried to roll over. Cassidy got his good hand under the man’s arm and levered him to his feet. There was blood, and dirt from the street on the side of his face. He glared at Cassidy. “¿Por qué hiciste esto a mí?”
“Shut up.”
“What’d he say?” Orso asked.
“He wanted to know why I did it to him.”
> Orso laughed.
Castro was suddenly at Cassidy’s shoulder. “What happened to José?” He looked concerned. “He’s bleeding.”
“You know this man?”
“He is one of my bodyguards.”
“He had a gun.”
“As I said, he is one of my bodyguards.”
“He can’t carry a gun in this city. How many other of your men are carrying?”
“I don’t know. Some.” Castro shrugged it away as unimportant.
“Okay, let’s get everybody over to the hotel and sort this out.” It was going to be a long week.
* * *
“We’ll give the guns back to your men when you leave New York,” Cassidy said. “You won’t need them here. You’ll be covered by a hundred cops every time you leave the hotel.” They were alone together in the bedroom of Castro’s suite in the Statler Hilton across from Pennsylvania Station. The window was open, and the traffic noise drifted up from the street.
Castro shrugged. “Bueno. It is all unnecessary. I am sure there are many things the police could be doing in this city besides watching me.” Cassidy noticed that Castro used Spanish when he wanted to assert his authority, English when he wanted to please. “I do not need your protection.” He took a long cigar from a box on the table, flicked a wooden match with his thumbnail, and carefully applied the flame to the cigar end, rolling it until he had an even burn.
“We have information that there may be an attempt on your life.” Attempt on your life sounded formal, bland, without danger.
Castro dismissed the idea with a wave of the cigar. “They can’t kill me. Batista and his army tried for three years and could not. Thousands of men with thousands of guns. Do you believe in destiny, Detective?”
“No.”
“I have a destiny to lead my people out of the poverty and despair they have lived in for generations, to free them from the oppression they have suffered. This cannot be done in a few months. It will take years and years. No one is going to kill me before I fulfill that destiny.”
“No one’s going to kill you in New York, because we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen. After that, you’re on your own.”
Castro smiled and opened his arms. “Very well, I am in your hands. I could not feel safer if I was home in my own bed.”
The living room of the suite was crammed with Castro supporters, and they burst into cheers when he appeared in the bedroom door. Women presented themselves to be kissed, and men moved close to warm in his presence. Castro worked the room, hugs for the women, strong handshakes and clasps of the arm for the men. Smiles through the beard. Laughter. Occasionally he offered a cigar or bent to whisper in an ear, marks of favor, of intimacy, and those who received them glowed when he moved on. Three young women dressed not in fatigues but in tight cocktail dresses watched him with proprietary interest and glared at each other. Cassidy knew Castro was married but, what the hell, surely the revolutionary leader of a country should be granted some leeway in such mundane matters as women.
The door opened at one side of the room and Susdorf and Cherry came out of the bathroom. “Don’t you think that’s carrying the partner thing a little too far?” Cassidy said. Cherry flushed with anger, his automatic response to most things.
Susdorf, a man with a literal bent, said, “It’s hard to find a private place to talk here. We just stepped into the bathroom for a moment to share some information.”
“Are you afraid the NYPD is going to leak something?”
“No, no, of course not. Director Hoover has put protocols in place that we have to adhere to. We’ve received some information pertinent to the operation here, and we needed a couple of minutes to talk it over.” A serious business carrying the burden of the Director’s directives.
“Are you going to tell me, or am I outside the protocols?”
“No, no. We were going to reach out for you.”
“Shall we step back into your office?”
Susdorf looked around at the people in the room. “Yes, I think that would be a good idea.”
The bathroom was barely big enough for the three of them. Cassidy went in first and leaned against the sink, forcing Susdorf and Cherry to stand one behind the other, and Cherry had to butt up hard against his partner’s back to make room to close the door. Susdorf flinched and then leaned past Cassidy and flushed the toilet and spoke over the rush and gurgle of water. “We’ve been running down those reports of an assassination attempt. What we’ve got so far is three men headed north in a Cadillac or a Lincoln sedan with Florida plates. We’ve alerted Highway Patrol and State Police and our local FBI offices.”
“That’s it?”
“At the moment, but we’re confident we’ll have more information soon.” He didn’t look like a man who was confident.
“Florida?”
“Yes.”
“There are a lot of Cubans in Miami, people who took off when Batista got kicked out. I’m sure some of them want Castro dead.”
“We have no information that the men coming are Cuban, but if we learn something, we’ll reach out to you.”
“Terrific.”
Susdorf checked him for sarcasm.
“I guess we can go now if Agent Cherry would open the door.”
Cherry pushed up against Susdorf again while he opened the door, and Susdorf gave Cassidy a pained smile and started to back out of the room. Cassidy stopped him. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
“No.”
Cassidy spoke to the cops manning the door to the suite and then stopped by the room down the corridor the Department had set up as command headquarters. A metal coffee urn sat on a folding table next to a plate of doughnuts. There were ten uniformed cops in the room, and their conversations died when Cassidy entered. He picked up mimeographed copies of Castro’s schedule and took the elevator to the lobby while he read one.
He went to the desk and showed the clerk his badge and asked for the manager. The desk clerk went away carrying one of Cassidy’s business cards and came back with a tall, dignified man with the wary eyes of someone who was called when there was a problem. He wore a tailored black suit with a white shirt and a dark blue tie swimming with small yellow fish and he held Cassidy’s card between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m John Quincy, the day manager. May I help you, Detective Cassidy?” Helpfulness and reserve. Tell me your problem and I will do everything I can, but some things cannot be solved. We both know that.
“Eight twenty-four, the suite where Mr. Castro is staying. Did the Cubans send an advance party to the room before Mr. Castro arrived?”
“An advance party? No.”
“Nobody went into the rooms after they were cleaned.”
“Nobody but the FBI agents.”
“Tell me about the FBI agents.”
“An Agent Susdorf and Agent Cherry. They had two other men with them who they did not introduce. They said they had to make a security check. Is there a problem?”
“No. No problem. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
Cassidy found Orso in the bar off the lobby. It was too early for the evening drinkers, and the room was empty except for the bored bartender, elbows on the bar, reading The Racing Form, and one cocktail waitress with dyed blond hair and eyebrows plucked to thin curved lines. She sat beside Orso in a booth while he read her palm. He held her wrist and traced a line on her hand, which made her giggle and jump. “And this one,” Orso said, “means you are adventurous in love. Hmm, I could use a little adventure.”
“You be careful,” she said, not meaning it.
“And this one,” he ran a finger lightly over her hand, and she twitched and sucked in her breath. “Whoa, this one.”
“What?”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you about this one.”
“You better.”
“Hmmm, later.”
“What you mean, later? I’ve got to go to work.”
“I’ll pick you
up when you’re done. What time do you get off?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t even know you.”
He still held her wrist, and he ran his finger over her hand again, and she giggled.
“Don’t you want to know what this one means?”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” She gave him a look up from under her fake eyelashes.
“What time?”
“Eleven.”
“I’ll see you then.” He released her hand.
The woman stood up and said “Excuse me” to Cassidy, and stilted off on high heels, smoothing her skirt with her hands.
Cassidy sat down across the table in the booth and told Orso about the meeting with Susdorf and Cherry in the bathroom of Castro’s suite.
“What’s that all about, the bathroom and all?” Orso asked.
“They’ve got a bug in Castro’s suite.”
“Okay. Why does that put them in the bathroom?”
“They don’t want to be on tape saying something Hoover might not like.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, and neither do they. He might not like their tone of voice. He might not like their use of the passive voice or the subjunctive. Who knows what God likes or doesn’t like? Better safe than sorry.”
“Jesus. And I thought working for the Department was a pain in the ass. What’s our deal with Castro?”
“We’re with him tomorrow for lunch at the Overseas Press Club, and then the Bronx Zoo.” He slid Orso a mimeographed copy of Castro’s schedule. “Let’s get out of here and find a real bar and I’ll buy you a drink.”
Orso pocketed the schedule. “Thanks, but I can’t. I’ve got to meet a guy about something.”
“I’ll walk with you, buy you a drink when you’re done.”
“No. Thanks, Chief, but I better not. I don’t know how long this is going to take. Could be a while. I’ll see you in the morning.” A half smile that was not a smile at all, and he got up and went out. Cassidy watched him go. Why was he lying? What made him so nervous? The hell with it. Orso led a complicated life. If he didn’t want to tell, why should he? Let it go.
Night Work Page 22