“What’d they ask for to let you out?”
“I was to let them know Castro’s schedule. I was supposed to make sure the maintenance shed was clear, make sure no one but me checked it. That was all.”
“But you knew what they were going to do.”
“Sure I knew, but I wasn’t going to let myself look at it hard.” He looked over at Cassidy. “You ever do that, not look at something hard ’cause you don’t want to see what you’re going to see?”
“All the time.”
“How’d you figure it out?”
“I didn’t, really. But you’ve been fucked up all week, and you’ve been worrying about money in a way you never did before. Then I went back to the general’s apartment to see if Fuentes had been back. The doorman let it drop that there was a cab in front when you came out with Fuentes, but that you didn’t want to take it. That’s not what you told me, so I thought about that for a while.”
Orso reached for a cigarette from the pack on the table. His hand brushed his service pistol. When he drew his hand back, he pulled the gun toward him. “Did they send you to bring me in?”
“No. I came on my own.”
“Because I’m not going in, so you might as well take off.” His hand covered the gun.
“She gets to clean it up, I guess. The blood all over the wallpaper, the shit and piss on the floor. Gets to look at you and then clean it up.”
“Fuck you. I can go to the park.” His grip on the gun was white knuckled.
“Sure. Why not? Some mom and her six-year-old can find you.” Cassidy pulled another cigarette. “You’re not going to do Detta any good dead.”
“I’m not going to do her any good in jail.”
“Who says you’re going to jail?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Mike. You can get away with a lot of crap in the Department, but they can’t let this slide.”
“The shooters are dead. The hoods and Sanborn aren’t going to talk about it. I’m the only one who knows.”
Orso looked at him with the beginning of hope.
“Have they contacted you since last night?”
“No.”
“Castro’s leaving on an afternoon train. Do you think they’ll try for him again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. They’ve got a lot at stake.”
“That’s what I think.”
* * *
Cassidy left. Orso sat at the table and pulled the gun close. He stuck his finger in the trigger guard and spun the gun on the tabletop. It stopped with the barrel point at the bed. He spun it again. It pointed at him. He spun it again. It pointed at him again. He lit a cigarette and thought about his choices.
28
Castro’s train was scheduled out of Penn Station at four o’clock. The security briefing took place in his suite in the hotel on Seventh Avenue. The living room of the suite was thick with cigar smoke and crowded with bearded men in fatigues and with cops. There had been a few women in cocktail dresses when Cassidy arrived. They popped up like flowers after a rain wherever Castro went in the city. One of them was in the bedroom with Castro, and the others, exotic birds among the khaki and uniformed men, ignored each other and focused on the closed door in nervous anticipation of a summons. Cassidy knocked on the door and announced his presence and with Ribera’s help shooed the protesting women out. “Sometimes,” Ribera said, “I think he is trying by himself to father an entire new generation of free Cubans.”
“Pleasant work if your back holds out,” Cassidy said.
“Until recently I did not understand how strong an aphrodisiac power is. They come scratching at his door at night like cats. I’ll be happy to get him back to his wife and mistress. Let them sort him out.”
“I’ll be happy to have him on a train out of here.”
“Sometime you will have to tell me what happened last night. We’ll get drunk on good Cuban rum and tell each other the truth about things. I will explain to you about art and love, and you will tell me how three assassins were able to hide inside the security perimeter.”
“I have no idea. It was lucky I was close by.”
“It will take a lot of rum, I suspect. In vino, veritas. Was Dylan there?”
“Yes.”
“But you made her go.”
“Yes.” Ribera put an arm around Cassidy’s shoulder and hugged him. “You’re a good man, Michael. Slava is in Roosevelt Hospital speaking Spanish, very little English, and no Russian.”
“Get him out of town before I have to arrest him.”
* * *
Assistant Deputy Chief Holloway was in charge of the briefing. The consensus among the street cops was that Chief Clarkson was keeping his distance in case there was another fuckup. Chief Holloway looked like everything you would want in a cop. He was tall, broad-shouldered, flat-bellied, trim in his tailored uniform. He had thick, dark hair with elegant flecks of gray at the temples. He was square-jawed, and cleft-chinned, and when he smiled, his teeth were as even and white as Chiclets. He clapped his hands twice for silence.
“Gentlemen, after last night’s incident, the New York City Police Department feels that we should take extraordinary precautions to make sure that Mr. Castro’s departure from this city is a safe one. You’ve all been briefed on the plan, and we think it will minimize any danger to Mr. Castro. Sergeant Olotka, would you stand up, please. A large man rose from a chair in the corner of the room. His beard was not as long and scraggly as Castro’s, but he was about the same size as the Cuban leader, and in the fatigues he wore he could easily be mistaken for him from a distance. “Sergeant Olotka has volunteered for duty as a decoy. He and the rest of the Cuban group will leave the front of the hotel on my signal. Uniformed officers will escort them quickly cross Seventh Avenue and into Penn Station. They will proceed directly to Track Nine, where the train is waiting and will enter the second-to-last car, which has been reserved exclusively for them. They will be covered all the way by more than sixty officers. We feel that this public display will draw the attention of anyone out there who means to harm Mr. Castro. At the same time, those people will have no access to their target. Mind you, after last night’s incident, we do not believe that there is another threat. This is purely a precautionary measure. At the same time, the real Mr. Castro, with a small escort, will take a separate elevator to the basement of the hotel, access the steam tunnels that connect it with Penn Station, and will proceed to Track Nine unseen. Any questions?”
There were none.
“Thank you, gentlemen. I will see you downstairs in the lobby in ten minutes.” Chief Holloway smiled, touched a finger to his forehead in salute, and left the suite.
“We’re going to adjust a couple of things about that plan,” Cassidy told the assembled crowd after the chief left.
* * *
The tunnels that led from the hotel basement to Penn Station were dim corridors lit by wide-spaced, naked bulbs. The walls were brick and stone, and the floors were concrete. Asbestos-wrapped pipes carried water and steam from generator plants buried fifty feet below the streets. The pipes were old and some of them leaked at the joints, so the floor was wet in places. The air was thick and it smelled of mold and hot stone and the tunnels echoed with mechanical clicks and bangs and the hiss of steam. Every once in a while, Orso could hear the scratching run of rats along the asbestos wrappings.
Orso stood in a deep alcove in one of the tunnels. There was a metal door at his back, and behind it he could hear the whirr and clank of machinery, but he had no idea of what it was or what it did. He stubbed out a cigarette and resisted the temptation to light another. He checked his watch. Maybe he isn’t coming. Maybe this was over. Ahh, fuck, man. How did I get here? Little by little, and then in a rush, the way most bad things happened. Maybe he isn’t coming.
He heard the scrape of shoes on concrete. Moments later Diego Fuentes stopped just down the tunnel from the alcove. He held a stubby, black machine pistol that Orso did not recognize. When he saw that Orso was a
lone, he let it dangle.
“Detective.”
“Colonel.”
“Is everything in order?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
Orso led him along the tunnel toward the hotel basement, coldly conscious of a man with a gun at his back. He stopped where two more tunnels came in from the left and the right. “One of us on either side.”
Fuentes nodded. “And the stairs you told me about? The exit?”
Orso led him ten feet into the right-hand tunnel. An iron gate blocked metal stairs that rose toward the distant thump and rush of traffic on the street. He pulled on the gate, and it opened. Fuentes stepped in and looked up the stairs. “Where does it end?”
“In the lobby of a building on Thirty-first Street.”
“Very good.” He stepped aside and let Orso lead them back to the intersection of the tunnels. “How far are we now from the hotel kitchen?”
“About twenty-five yards. I paced it off like you asked.”
“So, in the end now, who will it be? How many?”
“Detective Cassidy. Mr. Ribera. Castro.”
“Only three? You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Why not more? Why not ten men around him? If it was my operation, I would have many men.” He watched Orso closely.
“Cassidy knows you’re working for Lansky and Trafficante, and they’ve got lines into every precinct in town. He’s pretty sure there’s a leak in the security detail. He’s afraid that if he involves a lot of men, it’ll get out.”
“Yet he told you.”
“I’m his partner.”
“Yes. Lucky for us.” Contempt in his voice.
“Fuck you.”
Fuentes ignored him. He looked back down the tunnel toward Penn Station and whistled shrilly. Moments later there were footfalls in the dimness, and then a man dressed in a Con Edison jumpsuit appeared. He carried the twin of Fuentes’s machine pistol. He was a big man with wiry black hair hacked short and a broad, flat, high-cheekboned face. “Detective Orso, this is Sergeant Lopato.” The big man stopped, nodded to Fuentes, and then turned to inspect Orso carefully as if weighing how much trouble he would offer if it came to that. The machine pistol looked small in his hand.
“I thought you said it was just the two of us,” Orso said.
“Yes, well, when a man offers you a plan, it is always better to change it a bit so it becomes your plan, not his. What kind of gun do you carry, Detective?”
“A Smith and Wesson thirty-eight.”
“May I see it?”
Orso pulled the gun from the holster on his hip and held it with the barrel slanted toward the floor at Fuentes’s feet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lopato shift the muzzle of the machine pistol toward him.
“May I look at it?” Fuentes held out his hand.
“Sure.” He turned the pistol around and handed it to Fuentes butt first. Fuentes dropped it in his jacket pocket. “If you don’t mind. Until this is over.”
Orso shrugged. “Colonel Fuentes, we have a deal, remember. Castro, okay, but not my partner.”
“It is up to him, not to me. If he is sensible, we will have no problem, but he must be sensible, otherwise…” He shrugged away his responsibility in the matter. Now, we will change the plan a little more. The basement is this way, no?” He inclined his head up the tunnel.
“This is a better place. We take them from both sides. There’ll be people in the kitchen down there.”
“Yes. I know. Still, I think we will go to the basement.” Lopato led. Fuentes went last. Orso was sandwiched between them.
* * *
Cassidy used his left hand on the control lever to start the service elevator down from Castro’s floor. After a minute, he took his pistol out of its shoulder holster and held it down by his side. The two men behind him felt the tension too, and both of them breathed heavily. One of them had had garlic for lunch.
“This is what happens when an artist becomes involved in politics,” Ribera said. “Instead of studying the beauty of a nude model in his studio, he is riding down in an elevator that smells of garbage to meet a man with a gun.”
“Twenty-two yards from the elevator to the tunnel intersection. Orso’ll be in the left-hand tunnel, Fuentes in the right,” Cassidy reminded him.
“Tell me again why we are doing this.”
“You said that Colonel Fuentes was dangerous. If he missed here, he’ll try again in Boston. If he missed there, he’ll try again in Canada. This way we know where and when he’s coming.”
“I get no comfort in knowing this.”
“Orso will have him covered, but we need him to make the attempt, otherwise he walks away.”
“Yes, you told me all this. So why is it that I want to throw up?”
“Olotka, are you okay?”
“Yeah, Mike, I’m good.” The big bearded detective laughed. “First time I ever volunteered to get shot at.”
“Almost there.”
* * *
Orso could hear the elevator grinding down. They were in a wide, short hallway outside the kitchens. Three serving carts loaded with dirty room service dishes were against one wall. He could see into the kitchen through the glass panels in the big double doors. Men in white moved past the windows carrying pots or roasting pans or dishes. A man walked by bent under the half side of beef on his shoulder, another followed with a metal tray of raw chickens. They moved quickly, concentrating on their tasks, and no one looked back at him through the windows.
The elevator whined down the shaft.
Fuentes and Lopato stood on either side of the elevator doors, Fuentes on the left, Lopato on the right. Their machine pistols were centered on the doors. Orso knew they would shoot as the doors opened and the passengers were still trapped in the car. Fuentes ignored Orso, but Lopato watched him.
* * *
“Two more floors,” Cassidy said. “When the doors open, we go out fast. Turn right, and there’s a door, then steps down to the steam tunnels. I go first, Olotka next, Ribera last. The steam tunnel is badly lighted, and I think he’ll let us close before he makes a move, but if he sees it’s not Castro, he’ll go for Orso and try for the stairs, so keep your head down, Olotka, and stay close behind me. He’s expecting Castro. He’ll see Castro.”
* * *
Fuentes hissed at Lopato and jerked his head toward the elevator. The elevator indicator showed the car a floor above them. Lopato set himself in a shooter’s stance, feet at shoulder width, knees bent, left hand to guard against the gun barrel’s need to rise as it fired.
Orso wondered that they did not hear his heart pound, that they weren’t warned by the noise. Tension squeezed him breathless. The elevator was seconds away from arriving. When the doors opened, the men in the elevator would be slaughtered. And it was on him, all on him.
Orso shook a cigarette loose and put the pack back in his pocket. He pulled out a book of matches and dropped it. “Shit.” Lopato threw a look his way as he bent to pick it up, saw what he was doing and turned back to the danger of the elevator.
The elevator arrived. Whoever was running it missed the landing, and they could hear it maneuver up and then down again.
Fuentes and Lopato snicked off their safeties.
Orso pulled his hideout gun from its ankle holster.
The elevator came to rest.
Orso stepped forward and shot Lopato in the head. The hideout gun was a little Browning .25 automatic, and it made a high, flat crack like someone snapping a shingle. He turned and fired two shots at Fuentes as fast as he could pull the trigger. The first hit him in the cheek and blew a spray of blood against the wall. The second hit him in the chest. A .25 has little stopping power. It rocked Fuentes, but did not put him down. Orso fired again and missed. Fuentes turned and triggered his machine pistol. Three bullets hit Orso. They smashed him back against one of the service carts and he went down in a wreckage of dirty dishes and silverware.
The
elevator doors started to open. Fuentes swung the machine pistol toward them. Cassidy, warned by the gunfire, filled the gap between the doors, and as the gun tracked toward him, he shot Fuentes twice in the chest. In reflex Fuentes’s finger tightened on the trigger, and bullets stitched up the wall next to the elevator and across the ceiling. Cassidy shot him again.
The bullet Orso had fired into Lopato’s head had not penetrated his thick skull. It had hit the bone and then torn a groove under the skin around to his forehead where it exited over his right eye. He pawed at his face, trying to clear the blood that poured into his eyes so he could see to shoot. Cassidy stepped out of the elevator and shot him, and Ribera and Olotka cleared on either side of him and shot Lopato again and again until he slammed against the wall and slid to the floor.
The room stank of cordite, and the blast of shots made Cassidy’s ears ring. As he went toward Orso, he was vaguely aware of the faces that crowded the glass panels of the kitchen doors. “Tony, Jesus, Tony.” Orso made a gesture with one hand to show that he was all right. Then he slipped away into darkness.
29
“Is he going to be all right?” Alice asked.
“They don’t know. He’s still unconscious. They got the bullets out, which they say is a good thing, but they don’t know.”
Raindrops pecked at the bedroom windows and slithered down the glass. The lights across the river in New Jersey were muted to a glow. A foghorn moaned somewhere as a ship slid down the tide toward the open sea. Cassidy could feel Alice’s warmth down the length of his body. He took the cigarette back from her, took the last drag, and stubbed it out in the ashtray on the bedside table. He offered her a sip of his bourbon.
“No, thanks. Not now. Maybe later.”
He was desperately tired, but he could not sleep, and the bourbon did nothing to blunt the jaggedness inside him that kept him awake. The liquor and the darkness let him talk, and the story came out slowly, and to him it sounded like something that had happened to someone else.
Night Work Page 32