“Thank you.”
“Just doing my job. The good of the tenants is my concern.”
The apartment looked much the same as when Cassidy last saw it, but it already had the musty, airless smell of an uninhabited place. He did not expect to find anything of note, but there was always the chance that Fuentes had slipped in. He walked down the corridor to Fuentes’s room. As far as he could tell no one had been there since the day Garza y Mendoza had been killed. He opened bureau drawers and closed them again. He looked in the closet. The clothes still hung neatly and nothing seemed to be missing. He sat at the desk and let his eyes drift over the room. Sometimes if you did not look directly but let your glance slide, you picked up something out of place. Not this time. He checked his watch. Okay. You came. You looked. You didn’t find anything, another long shot fired and missed. Time to go.
Drago Peck opened the front door with a flourish. “Everything copacetic, Detective?” The slang sounded weird coming with a thick Balkan accent.
“Yes. Everything’s fine.”
“Let me get you a taxi.”
“No, thanks. I’m going to walk for a while.”
“What is it with cops? You don’t like taxis?”
“What do you mean?”
“When that other cop came down with Mr. Fuentes, I had a cab right here. Mrs. Mendelstein was just getting out. I said, here you are gentlemen. He said, no thanks. They were going to walk. What is it with you guys, walking when there are perfectly good cabs to carry you where you want to go?”
Cassidy turned away without answering. He went back over his conversation with Orso in the hospital after Fuentes escaped. Orso said there had been no taxi outside the building when they came down, so they walked toward Broadway and the nearest call box. Did I get it wrong? No. That’s what he said. Why the lie?
* * *
Cassidy found Orso on one of the cots in the co-op room behind the squad room. He sat up rubbing his eyes when Cassidy came in.
“Time to go,” Cassidy said.
“Any coffee left in the pot?”
“I think so.”
“Give me a minute. I’ve got to splash some water on my face. Man, I was deep down.” He got up and stretched and shuffled to the bathroom. He came out to the squad room a couple of minutes later carrying a cup of coffee. Cassidy sat with his feet up on his desk smoking a cigarette and watched him come. Again he noticed that Orso, usually sleek, and fastidious, was pasty and tired-looking. His hair was hastily combed, and his suit coat was wrinkled.
“What’s with you?” Orso asked.
“Nothing.”
“The way you’re looking at me.”
“Tony, nothing. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Casey Allen.”
“Yeah? Did you talk to the Hopkins broad?”
“I did.”
“What’d she say? Was she banging the carpenter?”
“Yup. And the wife came by one day.”
“Oh, boy. She got a whiff, huh?”
“It’s what it looks like.”
“Broads, man. What are you going to do?” As if that said it all. He checked the clock. “We better get out of here. If we’re late Clarkson’s going to get his panties in a bunch.”
“Yeah, let’s go.” Cassidy stood up and ground the cigarette out in the full ashtray on his desk.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he lied.
Orso studied him and then shrugged. “Okay.”
They did not talk much on the walk to Central Park. Orso seemed preoccupied and nervy. Once he said “Ah, shit” under his breath, and when Cassidy asked what was up, he said, “Nothing. Nothing. Hey, after this is over, let’s go to Toots’s and get shitfaced.”
“Sure.”
Orso smiled and said, “Okay, good.” But worry came off him like heat.
* * *
The twins Terry and Jerry Brasoli and their cousin Will Horner made their way toward the Central Park Mall and the Naumburg Bandshell. They were dressed in their Parks Department uniforms. Terry wheeled the tall canvas bucket that concealed his rifle among the rakes and hoes. Will pushed a wheeled garbage can. Every once in a while he paused to stab a piece of trash with the nail end of his pickup stick. Four times he stopped at trash cans the Parks Department maintained in the hope that people would take the trouble to drop their trash there rather than on the ground. At each one Jerry and Terry shielded Will while he removed a small package from the wheeled garbage can and placed it at the bottom of the trash can and covered it carefully with trash.
* * *
A hundred uniformed cops had gathered on the vast paved terrace in front of the Naumburg Bandshell by the time Cassidy and Orso got there. Television crews from the local networks set up their cameras and strung cable out to generator trucks. Police barriers had been erected to limit the entry points for people who were coming to hear Castro speak. Even though he was not scheduled to arrive for two more hours, people were already there. Some brought signs saying Viva Fidel, Viva La Revolución, or M-26-7, commemorating the 26th of July Movement. Folding chairs had been set up on the pavement, but many people chose to sit on the grass or on the park benches that surrounded the paved area. Some brought picnics. Children played games among the trees. Three men with guitars and a trumpet played mambos while a fourth added percussion with claves, short, thick dowels of wood. Men and women danced in front of them to rhythms rarely heard on the Upper East Side.
Cassidy and Orso walked the perimeter. They were not looking for anything specific, just something out of place, something that did not belong. They had been cops for a long time, and they had learned to trust instinct. If it felt wrong, it probably was wrong. Four men in Parks Department uniforms were loading bags into a green Parks Department van. Cassidy showed them his badge. “Guys, you’re going to have to move this van outside the perimeter.”
“Sure, Officer,” said a tall, sharp-faced man with a salt-and-pepper buzz cut. “We’re all done here.” He gestured to a strip of turned earth with freshly planted bushes. “Acid soil, man. You’ve got to throw the lime at it.” He picked up a last bag of fertilizer and threw it in the back of the van. The tall man stripped off his gloves and stuffed them in his back pocket. “What’ve you got going here, a concert or something?”
“Castro’s going to give a speech.”
“Who?”
“Fidel Castro.”
“Who’s he?”
“The Cuban guy. The revolutionary.”
“Huh? Never heard of him. Well, take it easy.” The men got in the van and drove away. Cassidy stared after it.
“What?” Orso asked.
“I don’t know. Something he said, but I can’t get ahold of it.”
“It’ll come.”
They found a small duffel bag a couple of hundred yards from the bandshell stage, but all it held was an old baseball glove, cleats, and a well-used sweatshirt. A Parks maintenance shed sat on a knoll a little farther on. “I’ve got it,” Orso said.
He opened the door, blocking the entry with his bulk. It was dark inside the shed and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.
Three men in Parks Department uniforms looked back at him. One of them held a brutal-looking machine pistol.
“Anything?” Cassidy asked from behind him.
“No.” Orso picked up something from the floor, and turned and shut the door. “A padlock on the floor. A good place for it, huh? I’m going to lock it up.” He ran the lock through the hasp and snapped it shut, and rattled it as if to make sure it was solid. The screws that held the hasp were loose in their holes, and one good kick from inside would open the door. He took a roll of orange police department sealing tape out of his pocket and slapped it across the padlock and door frame.
25
Castro’s motorcade drove through the 72nd Street entrance to the park, lights and sirens, as the sun set over the buildings on the west side burnishing the roofs a
nd spires with golden light. The cars parked inside the perimeter, and Castro led his fatigue-wearing entourage toward the bandshell as the crowd began to cheer. Chief Clarkson walked at Castro’s side, and the group was flanked by Headquarters’ cops, crisply dressed, square-jawed, clear-eyed, commanding presences coincidentally in range of the TV and press cameras.
Cassidy did not like it that the cops in front of the bandshell were as relaxed as if they were guarding a Boy Scout picnic rather than a controversial foreign dignitary with dedicated enemies. At the briefing the day before Chief Clarkson had announced that the FBI was discounting the rumor of the three men in the Lincoln and the assassination attempt. They would still be on guard for disruptions and possible violence from Batista loyalists, but it had been decided on high that a professional hit was unlikely. When Cassidy joined the blue-coated crowd, Carlos Ribera was asking Clarkson to remove the barriers that had been erected to keep people back from the front of the bandshell and Castro.
“It is not going to happen, Mr. Ribera. It is a basic rule of crowd control in a situation like this to keep people a safe distance from the principal,” Clarkson said.
“Fidel wants the barriers down. He understands the risk, but he wants the people close.”
“It is not Mr. Castro’s decision. It is a matter of New York City Police Department protocols.”
Ribera rolled his eyes at Cassidy. What do you do with an idiot like this?
Castro appeared at Ribera’s shoulder. “Why are the barriers not removed?” He asked in his heavily accented English.
“I explained to Mr. Ribera that Department protocols require the crowd be kept back a safe distance,” Clarkson explained.
“Que cabron. Que mariconada,” Castro said. And then in English as he loomed over Clarkson, pressing him with his bulk, “I am not a man on a balcony. I am a man of the people, and I will speak to my people in the way that is right. If you do not remove the barriers, I will not speak here. I will go to the newspapers and tell them how this country that talks about freedom of speech refused to allow me to speak to my people in a free way.”
The muscles bunched in Clarkson’s jaw. He was used to command not being commanded, and he loathed the threat to his authority, but he was a political animal and he weighed the embarrassment of Castro leaving against the unlikely threat of assassination. “Captain Moore, please have the barriers removed. And I want ten men stationed along the pavement in front of the bandshell.” The last was an ineffective measure of security, but at least it gave him a gesture of control. He turned to Castro. “Will that satisfy?”
In reply, Castro smothered him in a hug and rubbed a bearded kiss across the top of the smaller man’s head. “You are a good man, and a democrat, and I salute you.” He released him, and Cassidy could see he was amused and pleased by Clarkson’s discomfort.
Ribera took Cassidy’s arm and drew him aside. “One more night, and then we are out of here. Boston, Canada for a few days, and then home. I will be able to breathe again when we get him to Havana.” He offered Cassidy a cigar from his leather case, but Cassidy lit a cigarette and then offered the match until Ribera’s cigar was drawing well. “Michael, I want to apologize for my anger the other day.”
“Not necessary. I was talking out of turn.”
“No. I confess the executions at La Cabaña trouble me, and I make excuses for them. I understand the need for revenge, for blood. We are not so civilized that we can always be true democrats, and the men who go to the wall there deserve their deaths for the things they have done. It troubles me, because I hoped we would be better than they were. But things will be better. They have to be. I have to believe in this man, because if not Fidel, I am without hope for my country and my people again.” He put an arm around Cassidy’s shoulders and hugged him hard. “You and I will always be good friends, Michael. At least we have that out of all the politics and lying and crap.”
“At least we have that,” Cassidy said. “Carlos, I saw Dylan the other day.”
“Yes, she told me.”
“Is she here?”
“I don’t know, but probably.”
“And her husband?”
“Yes.” He put a sympathetic hand on Cassidy’s shoulder. “Let it go, Michael. She is not the same person she was when you met her. You are not either. You cannot go back.”
“Tell her I want to see her.”
“Michael, don’t do this to yourself.”
“Tell her.”
“All right. I’ll tell her.” He squeezed Cassidy’s shoulder and shook his head in mock despair. “The heart wants what the heart wants. Who can deny it?”
Someone called for Ribera. Cassidy watched him walk away, a big bear of a man trailing smoke and rum and energy. He wondered how long it would be before Castro broke his heart. Then, spurred by a sense of unease he could not stifle, he walked back into the crowd.
* * *
Ex-Sergeant Paco Lopato stood in the shadows of a tree on the north side of the plaza and watched Cassidy walk away from the front of the bandstand. He should have known that this man would be part of the security around Castro. He had been a stone in his shoe since the first meeting in Havana. He looked at the men and women in fatigue uniforms crowding around Castro. Did he recognize any of them? He did not think so, and he did not think any of them would recognize him. Many of the men he had dealt with at La Cabaña were dead, and besides, he did not look like the fearsome Sergeant Lopato, who they had only seen in the uniform of SIM. He had cut his hair short. He wore a red, black, and white guayabera shirt, the colors of the 26th of July Movement, black trousers, and canvas shoes with rubber soles good for running. It would be so easy to walk over with a smile on his face, offer greetings in Spanish, and then pull the big .45 from where it was hidden under his shirt and shoot Castro boom, boom, boom. But it would not be as it was in the restaurant. These men and the police would not freeze or run at the sound of the gun. They had heard guns before. They would have him before he ran ten yards. No, he would do as Colonel Fuentes had suggested. He would wait to see if the gringos’ killers did what they were hired to do. If they did, then good, there would be nothing for him to do. If they missed, and if in the confusion the opportunity presented itself, he would kill the man. It would give him pleasure. But he would not do it if there were a chance of being caught. He had learned that caution from Colonel Fuentes, who, he knew, was nowhere near the killing ground in Central Park that evening. What had the priests said when he was small? Work hard and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Difficult to enjoy if you were dead. Still, if the thing were possible, he would be ready, and if he missed him here, there would be another time.
He checked to see that the gun did not show under his shirt and joined a group of people who were moving toward the newly opened space in front of the bandshell.
* * *
Night came. The stage where Castro would speak was bathed in hot light from banks of spots. Technicians set up a microphone and a podium. The streetlamps that lined the park’s paths came on, and there were colored bulbs strung through the trees. Cassidy moved through a crowd that had grown from hundreds to thousands, a crowd that gave off an electric hum of excitement that rose and fell in pitch.
More musicians had joined the small band of guitars and trumpet, and a hundred people were dancing in front of them. Onlookers ringed them. Some of them swayed and moved to the rhythm, and every once in a while the music would seize one or two of them and pull them out of the circle of watchers and into the dance. Cassidy turned away and pushed through the throng. What was it that made him uneasy? There was a dream fragment waiting tantalizingly at the edge of consciousness. What was the dream? It remained beyond his capture.
* * *
Waiting did not bother the three men in the maintenance shed. It was part of the job, and they were used to it. Each went about his business silently, automatically. If they had to speak, they did it in whispers. They used penlights, shaded to narrow beams to help with t
heir preparations. Jerry pinned black cloth squares over the glassless windows to block anyone looking in. Will pushed the wheeled trash can in front of one of the windows and wedged it so it would not move. He piled bags of fertilizer on top until the last was level with the windowsill.
Terry removed the rifle from among the rakes and hoes. He unwrapped the cloth that cushioned the gun and laid it across the fertilizer bags while he hunted for the second wrapped tube at the bottom of the bag that held the Unertl 8 power scope and the suppressor that would reduce the sound of the shot to a cough. He clicked the scope home and threaded the suppressor onto the barrel. He took five shells from his pocket and pressed them down one by one into the magazine. The bullets were hollow points designed to spread on impact and smash their way through flesh and bone for maximum damage. They had agreed they would wait until Castro had spoken for ten minutes, enough time for the latecomers to settle in, but not so long that people in the crowd would get bored and begin to move around. Castro would be in his rhythm then. They would know how he moved on the stage. Did he leave the podium and walk while he talked? Did he hold still, and if he did, was there a rhythm in that, a predictable moment in his movements where he paused to gesture, to emphasize a phrase, a moment where he would be easy to kill?
The crowd quieted when Castro moved to the podium and began to speak. His amplified voice sounded metallic from the speakers hung in the trees. His English was heavily accented, but slow-paced, and clear. “We wish to express our sympathy for the American people which we have always loved and are fond of. All Americans in the last months congratulated us, have seen how much freedom and happiness there is in Cuba. I have sincere sympathy for the people of the United States and I am grateful. Things have been said about our revolution which are not true, that we are Communists, that we are the enemy of Democracy. Many times in the history the truth is now known, many times in history the lie is more powerful than the truth. In this case the trust is opening its own road by the help of the people. The American people say how can they help us. I can answer. There are many ways, their friendship, their sympathy, and many other ways. We are not asking for money from the U.S. government or anybody. We are trying to solve our economic difficulties by only working in Cuba.”
Night Work Page 30