Lawrence Block - Killing Castro

“I want two tickets on a Miami plane tomorrow night,” he said. “Got a pair open?”

The clerk checked his book, admitted that a pair of seats to Miami did in fact exist for a flight leaving Havana Airport at 7:15.

“That’s fine,” Garrison said. He pushed his forged identification paper to the clerk. The man scanned the white slip and nodded approval.

“For two tickets,” the clerk said, “you must have two papers.”

“I only have mine,” Garrison said. “My friend is not with me at the moment.”

The clerk sighed. “It is a rule,” he said.

“A rule which could not be eased?”

The clerk thought it over. Garrison reached for his wallet, managed to open it and extract several bills without making a show of it. He could have bought another forged paper from the old forger on La Avenida Blanco, but he had guessed that it would be simpler and cheaper to bribe the airlines clerk. He put two American twenties on the counter, thought for a moment, then added another twenty to the pile.

The bills vanished. The clerk produced the pair of tickets and sold them to Garrison. Garrison paid with Cuban bills, pocketed his change.

“You must be at the airport by seven,” the clerk said.

“Fine,” Garrison said. “There won’t be any problem at the airport?”

“Not if you have tickets.”

Garrison nodded. He turned and left the airline office, caught a taxi to the Nacional. He stopped at the bar for a drink and nursed it for half an hour. It was a daiquiri, crisp and cool. He sipped his drink and patted the pocket that held his airplane tickets. There might be additional trouble at the airport, of course, but another twenty dollars or so would cure the trouble.

It was all a matter of timing, he thought. Planning and timing, that was the whole thing. The guy who said you couldn’t have your cake and eat it was a man who didn’t work things out carefully enough. If you timed things right, there was no reason in the world why you couldn’t do both.

He ordered another drink, sat over it for ten minutes more, then wandered into the Nacional casino. He won thirty dollars at roulette, lost ten at the crap table, put five more into the slots. He left the casino fifteen dollars to the good, went to the hotel restaurant and spent most of his winnings on a steak dinner. The steak wasn’t quite as rare are he liked it but it was good meat and his appetite was excellent.

He smoked a cigar with his coffee. The waiter brought him an English newspaper and he read the latest story on the attempt on Castro’s life, the ambush that misfired in Oriente. Castro’s limousine had sped to safety in Santiago, leaving the rebels and a detachment of government regulars to battle it out along the roadside. Garrison scanned the story quickly. Nothing much was new—the Communists were claiming the assassination attempt was an American plot, calling attention to the American who had been killed with the rebel forces. There was no identification of the corpse, but the description seemed to fit Matt Garth.

Garrison finished his coffee, folded the newspaper. So they’d tried once, he thought. And they had failed. Well, it figured. He’d been half-hoping one of the other clowns would make things easy for him by shooting Castro and saving him the trouble. Wishful thinking. He had to do it himself, and it had been a waste of money to hire the other four men in the first place. He would kill Castro, and he would wind up with the money and with Estrella, and that would be that.

He paid his check and left a tip. He went outside, walked along the street and around the block, finishing his cigar and tossing the butt into the gutter. On the way back to the hotel he passed the plaza, saw the steps of the Palace of Justice where Castro would speak. They had erected stands where some spectators would be able to sit, had barricades to prevent a mob from starting a riot that might endanger Castro’s life.

Garrison laughed softly. They hadn’t done anything about the windows in the Hotel Nacional. And his window was in the perfect spot. All the barricades in the world wouldn’t stop his rifle bullet.

“Garth is dead,” Turner said.

Hines looked at him. “How do you know?”

“I heard the radio. It’s all over the country, for Christ’s sake. You’d be better off if you could speak the language.”

“Well, what—?”

“Rebel ambush in the east,” Turner said curtly. “It flopped. Castro got through and the ambush force was wiped out. The next day they found a dead American in the middle of things.”

“It was Garth?”

“They didn’t give his name,” Turner said. “But the description fits him. The older fellow—Fenton—was with him, the way I remember it. Fenton must have gotten away.”

Hines didn’t say anything. Turner let his cigarette fall from his lips to the basement floor. He stepped on it, his hands busy with the casing of the bomb. This was his role. He was preparing the bomb, getting it ready for Hines. Then he would leave, would fade into the city and make a home for himself there. He was out the twenty grand now. If the ambush had worked he would have collected it, but now it didn’t matter; even if Hines was successful, he himself was out of the picture. He was a Cuban citizen and that was that.

He sighed, put the bomb down. “Garth is dead,” he repeated. “Do you want to die, Jim?”

“Damnit—”

“Because you will,” he went on. “Win, lose, or draw, you’ll never get out of Cuba alive. You probably won’t get Castro in the first place. The bomb won’t go off.”

“You sure of that?”

“No. I did my best with it and it should explode on impact. But I don’t know a hell of a lot about bombs. It might turn out to be a dud.”

“And it might set off an earthquake in Chile. Don’t tell me everything that might happen, Turner. It doesn’t scare me.”

Turner shook out another cigarette and lit it. “All right,” he said. “Suppose you luck out and the bomb goes off. Suppose you heave it in the right place and you get Castro. Then what?”

“I give up. What?”

“Then they tear you to pieces, you damned fool. You won’t get out of the crowd. They’ll eat you alive.”

“You’re nuts.”

“And if you get away, you still won’t make it out of the country. You think the Luchar babe will lift a finger for you? She doesn’t give a damn if you live or die. She’s a fanatic and fanatics only care about their cause. She wants you to kill Castro. She doesn’t give a flying damn what happens to you after that.”

Hines didn’t say anything.

“Do you want to die, Jim?”

“Go to hell, Turner.”

“Jim—”

Hines was next to him now. Hines reached out a hand, took the cigarette from Turner’s lips, dropped it and squashed it. “I ought to belt you,” Hines said. “I ought to slug you in the mouth.”

“Go ahead.”

“You chickened out,” Hines went on. “Fine. That’s your business and not mine. But I made a hell of a mistake about you, Turner. I really did. Remember that first night. I had you pegged as a guy with guts. I thought, hell, here’s a guy who’s been around, who knows things. I thought you were a real man.”

“I changed a lot.”

“No kidding. You—”

“I learned how to relax. I stopped being hunted. It makes a difference, Jim.”

“You chickened out.”

Turner didn’t say anything. He hadn’t expected to convince Hines but it didn’t hurt to try. And he hadn’t expected to change Hines’ mind about going through with the bombing, but again it hadn’t hurt him to try. If Hines tossed the bomb he was going to get killed. And Turner didn’t want to see that happen. He liked the kid.