Lawrence Block - Killing Castro

They were out of the caves finally and Turner took his first look at Cuba by daylight. The sun was bright, the sky empty of clouds. The air, while warmish, was clear and fresh, especially after the stale air of the caverns. He filled his lungs with it, killed his cigarette. Moreno had a car parked nearby and Turner and Hines got into the back seat. In Spanish Moreno said that he was going to drive them into Havana.

“Just like that?”

Moreno said it was simple, that no one would stop the car. He was taking them to the home of some members of the underground, he explained. These members were not known to the police. There was a room in the basement, a safe room, and Turner and Hines would live there. They would be fed, they would have beds to sleep in. And from there they could murder the Communist bastard Castro, the betrayer of revolutions, the murderer of women and children, the pig, the ladron , the hijo de la gran puta , the maricon , the hombre sin cojones —

All of this came in a steady stream that sounded as though it had been memorized from a prepared speech. Turner didn’t bother listening to the end of it. It was more fun looking out the window.

The highway between Matanzas and Havana had been built within the past several years and looked it. It was wide and traffic moved at a steady pace. The cars, Turner noticed, were mostly old ones. Almost all were American models, with an occasional Volkswagen and Renault tossed in. The newest one Turner spotted was a Fifty-eight Buick. The road ran parallel to the shore but a good distance away from it. There were cane fields on both sides, fields broken by an occasional gas station or roadside restaurant.

Turner glanced at Hines. The kid was looking out the window, too. “It’s pretty,” he said.

“You sound surprised.”

“It’s not what I expected.”

“What did you have in mind? Guns and barbed wire?”

“Something like that.”

Turner shrugged. “I don’t know politics,” he said. “They don’t interest me. But I’ve been a few places, done a few things. I used to ship out, short term cargo stuff, up and down the coast and around the gulf.”

“I know.”

“You meet people, sailors. That’s where I picked up Spanish. I’ve shipped with Cubans. It’s not that bad down here, Jim.”

“You think Castro’s a bargain?”

“I think he’s a bastard and a son-of-a-bitch. He found a little power and it went to his head. This happens. But Batista was just as big a bastard. The average Joe didn’t eat steak and still doesn’t. A few years ago he had to be satisfied with beans and rice and was happy to get that. One revolution later and he’s still eating the same crap. They’ve got wholesale executions and no democracy and it’s easy to find a lot of reasons to put Castro down. But you get back to the average Joe and he doesn’t care about these reasons. He’s more interested in eating better and being pushed around less. And all the things he finds wrong he can sit back and blame the Yankees for them, because that’s what Loudmouth Castro tells him, over and over again, ad nauseam . He figures Castro and the people around him are Communists but he also figures he’s got nothing to lose. So don’t look around for barbed wire. They don’t need it yet. The average Joe is still on Castro’s side or, at least, not definitely against him.”

“How about the underground? Aren’t they average Joes, Turner?”

“No. Maybe they’re rebels, sharp guys with a yen for more and better. Maybe they want power on their own. Hell, maybe they’re crooks or nuts or cranks or rapists or—”

Hines pointed to the driver.

“Forget him. He doesn’t understand English. None of the gang at the cave understood English.”

“How do you know?”

“I tested them last night. I told them all to go home and drop dead. They didn’t even frown. We’ll be getting into Havana pretty soon. What do you think of the setup?”

“It sounds okay.”

“Yeah? Maybe it does, I don’t know. The way it looks from here, we got quite a little game to play. Our boy’ll be guarded six ways and backwards. I don’t know about you, but I want to get out of this alive. I’m in it for the dough.”

“I’m in it for revenge.” said Hines. “But it’s not revenge if you get yourself killed in the bargain. Ever read The Cask of Amontillado by Poe?”

“No.”

“Oh,” Hines said. “It’s a short story. About revenge. One guy seals another guy in a wall in a wine cellar, just seals him in alive and leaves him there. Anyway, one of the lines says that in order to make revenge come off you have to get away with it.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Turner said. “But I don’t think we can seal our boy in a wine cellar. How are you with a gun?”

“I don’t know. I never used one.”

“Not even in ROTC?”

Hines colored. “I managed to cop out of that. I brought a note from my doctor telling them I was a bed-wetter. I’m not, really, I just—”

Turner laughed out loud. “Oh, to hell with it,” he said. “I used to be fair with a rifle but it’s been a long time. And you have to be lucky. There’ll be a crowd around and taking a pot shot at Castro would be like buying a lottery ticket. That much chance of it working. I was thinking about a bomb.”

“A bomb?”

“The homemade kind, the kind you throw. We’ll blow him to hell and then figure out a way to get home. How does it sound?”

“It sounds fine,” Hines said. “I guess.”

Turner rolled down the window next to him and flipped out his cigarette. Hines said something, some conversational feeler, but he didn’t bother listening or answering. He didn’t feel like talking any more. They were hitting the outskirts of Havana now, passing through middle-class suburbs. Turner saw Morro Castle on the right, La Cubana fortress on the left. Then there was the bridge, a wide modern span across the strait separating Havana Bay from the ocean.

And they were in the city.

It was a city, he thought. It could have been part of New York or Philly or Charleston or San Diego. It didn’t feel foreign. The people in the streets were Cuban and the signs were in Spanish, but there were neighborhoods like that all over the States—Spic Harlem in New York, Ybor City in Tampa, Mex Town in San Diego. Hell, the neighborhood here was a little poorer, the people were more down at the heels. But Spanish Harlem and Ybor City weren’t exactly the Ritz. He noticed a prostitute soliciting, a cop ignoring her.

“I heard Castro closed the whorehouses,” he said to Moreno in Spanish. “Made hustling against the law.”

“There are still prostitutes,” Moreno said.

“I figured there were. She didn’t look like a nun.”

Moreno managed a shrug, an expressive one. “There will always be putas ,” he said.

“Yeah. Well, thank God for that.”

“You wish to meet a girl?”

He laughed. “No,” he said. “I’m just a sightseer. This place of yours much farther?”

It wasn’t. Moreno turned a corner into La Avenida de Sangre and pulled up at the curb. The Avenue of Blood, Turner thought. And Matanzas meant slaughter. Christ on wheels.

The house Moreno led them to was a two-story frame dwelling. It needed paint. There was a front porch, and an old man rocked on it in silence, a thin black cigar in his mouth. His eyes looked up sleepily, then looked away.

“He is old and quiet,” Moreno said. “ El Viejo , the old one. Toothless and harmless, no? You may see that his hand is inside the jacket of his suit. There is a gun in his hand. He knows me. Otherwise you would have been shot before you entered this house.”