Lawrence Block: Killing Castro

Hiraldo said: “It will be held for you.”

“And suppose you welsh?”

Hiraldo didn’t understand. Turner explained that Garth wanted a guarantee of payment.

“Like half in advance, half later,” Garth said.

Hiraldo would not go along with that. He explained another system, something involving the deposit of the funds in a bank account in some manner which would be a guarantee of good faith all around. Fenton did not bother listening to the explanation. The money hardly mattered. The money was unimportant, irrelevant, immaterial. Money was good only for what it would buy. The money would buy very little for Fenton. What he wanted had no price tag, was carried on the shelves of no department store.

No, the money was unimportant. Of course one could not help but wonder where it was coming from. A band of impoverished Cuban refugees would hardly be able to scrape together a round sum of one hundred thousand dollars. Who was financing the assassination? Tobacco and sugar planters? Oil refiners? Batista fascists hungry to regain power? Americans unwilling to tolerate a Communist nation ninety miles offshore?

Interesting questions, Fenton thought. Fascinating questions. But, like the money itself, irrelevant and immaterial as far as he himself was concerned. Just as irrelevant and immaterial as the money.

What mattered was the action, the purpose. No matter who his opponents and what their motives, this man called Fidel Castro was an evil force in the overall scheme of things, a dictator who had to be destroyed. And he, Earl Fenton, would be a contributor to his destruction. That mattered, that was important. That and little else.

Fenton lit another cigarette from the first. This new cigarette had a filter tip, and Fenton looked at it for a moment before putting it back in his mouth. Bad form, chain-smoking. Bad for your health. Even if they were filtered, cigarettes could hurt you. He sucked smoke into his lungs, winced, hoped no one had noticed the wince. So little time…

So little time to act, to exist. To kill, of course. He had time for that. Time to kill—that was what it was, what it all boiled down to, and the unintentional word play summed it all up. Time to kill.

Time to kill Castro. Because the man was rotten, the man deserved to die. All Fenton knew was what he read in the papers. Castro executed, and Castro dictated, and Castro was a despot, and Castro was probably power mad, and Castro had to die. That was all.

“You will divide now,” Hiraldo was saying. “Two and two and one. You—Turner—will go with Hines. Fenton, you will go with Garth. You, Garrison, will—”

“Hold on, Hiraldo.”

“Mr. Garrison?”

Garrison took a breath, let it out in a long sigh. Fenton watched him, saw the assurance of the man, the lazy strength. “If you want somebody to follow your stage directions,” he said, “find another boy.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean,” Garrison said. “If I play this game, I play it my way. I don’t follow somebody else’s plan. We—the five of us—do the shooting, the killing, the dirty work. We’ll write our own script.”

“And you think I wish to plan this assassination? This removal of a tyrant?”

“I don’t know what you wish,” Garrison told him. “I don’t care what you want. All I know is what I want, and that is to go to Cuba, get Castro, then come back here and pick up twenty grand. That’s all. And I want to do it my way.”

Hiraldo seemed partially amused, partly irritated. Fenton watched the play of emotions over his face.

“Let me explain my position,” the short Cuban said.

“I’m listening,” Garrison told him.

Hiraldo said: “Believe me, I have no intention of… uh… drawing the plans for the assassination. I am not an assassin.”

“Congratulations.”

Hiraldo ignored the interruption. “As you may know,” he said, “it will be somewhat difficult for you five to enter Cuba. You cannot go in a body. You cannot take a boat or fly in a commercial plane. You cannot—”

“We can’t walk on water,” Garrison snapped. “Get to the point.”

Hiraldo’s tone was icy. “I am planning a landing,” he said. “A landing of five men. Two, and two, and one.”

“Go on.”

“Turner and Hines will go to a house in Miami. They will be expected. They will be escorted to a boat, a fast private ship which will put them ashore on the northern coast of Cuba. They will be met by sympathizers and introduced into the city of Havana.”

Garrison said nothing.

“Fenton and Garth will go to another house,” Hiraldo continued. “A house here in Tampa, in Ybor City. They will soon be taken to a private airstrip off the Tamiami Trail. A plane will be waiting there. It will take them to Oriente Province, to the hills where rebels, at this very moment, are fighting the butcher who—”

“Skip the speeches, Hiraldo.”

The Cuban sighed. “They will meet these freedom fighters who will help them in any way they can. And you, Mr. Garrison—”

“—will get to Cuba under my own power,” the man said. “And I’ll do as I damn please, and will play it whatever way I want. I don’t need your boats or your planes or your sympathizers or your freedom fighters. I don’t want a goddamned soul to know where I am or what I’m doing. You got that straight, Hiraldo?”

“I have it straight.”

“Fine,” Ray Garrison said. “I’m glad we understand each other. I’m going to Cuba. When your boy Castro is dead, I’ll be back. Have the money waiting for me.” He stood up, his big body uncoiling easily. For the first time he seemed to be aware of Fenton, of Turner, Hines and Garth. “You boys take it easy,” he said. “Don’t let this spic hand you a hard time. I’ll see you all in Cuba.”

And Fenton watched Ray Garrison walk out of the room.

After that it was simpler, quieter, easier. After that, Fenton could sit at ease, smoke one cigarette after the other and think his own thoughts while Hiraldo talked of trivia. He, Fenton, was supposed to go with Garth, to live in a house in Ybor City and take a plane to the Oriente hills. And from there, somehow, they were supposed to kill Castro. It seemed improbable, at best. But he would see what happened. He lit a cigarette from a butt, ground the butt under his heel. Hiraldo talked too much, as Garrison had said. Hiraldo dealt in words, not deeds, and wordy men were what Fenton was trying to escape.

So little time…

He remembered the beginning. The beginning of awareness, at any rate, if not the beginning of it all. How could you pin down beginnings?

Maybe the beginning was long ago. Maybe it all started with birth, many years ago, in Lynbrook. A nice town, Lynbrook. Quiet, peaceful and typically New England. He had been born there and he had lived there, had gone to school, then moved on to the bank. His life was a mirror of the town—quiet, peaceful and typically New England. No wife, because there had never been a woman with whom he’d fallen in love. No mistress; a bank teller in a tiny town cannot afford an affair. Just the job, a few friends, a glass of beer and a book in the evenings, a cup of coffee and the morning paper at dawn. Was that the beginning?

No, he thought. That was the foundation, perhaps. The groundwork. That prepared him, made him a man ready to wait a few more years for retirement, a man who had saved money painstakingly for those years of leisure, the good years, the lazy, self-indulging years a man like himself looked forward to.

Then it began.

It had begun with a pain—a small pain in the chest that came often enough to send him to his doctor. Maybe a heart condition, maybe he would have to start taking it easier.

But it turned out to be something worse—something frightening, inevitable and inexorable. It was a little six-letter word which translated itself into a smaller, colder five-letter word.