Philip Kerr - The Shot

Tom shrugged. ‘Then don’t be. Wait for me at the Hotel Plaza. In the rooftop bar.’

‘I’ll be there,’ she said angrily. ‘But I don’t expect to see you again.’

‘You will,’ said Tom. ‘But just in case you lose your nerve waiting for me, here’s the money I owe you.’

Celia took the dollars and squeezed them down the front of her brassiere. Then he was gone.

‘Crazy American,’ she said, telling herself that now she had been paid she was under no obligation to meet him anywhere. But she was still in the fifth-floor azotea of the Plaza, with its splendid view of the old Bacardi building — an excellent place to hear every word spoken from the balcony of the presidential palace — when, at ten minutes after ten, the Big Barbudo began to speak.

Listening to the speech from the Agramonte side of the crowded plaza, Tom was surprised at how gentle and high-pitched the leader’s voice was. He had been expecting someone who sounded tougher, as befitted a guerrilla leader and heavy smoker of large cigars. Even so, the content of the speech — which was about the ten days Castro had spent in New York — lacked for nothing in its harsh criticism of the American way of life.

The United States was not the golden land of opportunity people thought it was. Blacks were oppressed. The poor were downtrodden. The press told lies. Truth existed nowhere. Everyone was motivated by money.

Tom agreed with a lot of what Castro said. When he went to the movies and saw representations of life in small-town America he sometimes wondered if any of these Utopian places, with their white picket fences, beautiful children, friendly cops, and sober fathers, had ever existed except in the minds of the non-American immigrants who had dreamed them up. The real America — the America he knew, and where he had been raised — was a harder, less sentimental place than anybody ever expected, and the reality was sure to be a disappointment for the majority of Cuban refugees who went there. It was no great shakes, but at least they belonged in Cuba. Tom thought Castro was probably right to tell his people that they were better off where they were. It almost seemed a pity to interrupt him.

Tom studied the balconies and windows of the apartment buildings surrounding the plaza carefully, and found them bristling with spectators. Whereas in the afternoon he had seen these people as a potential drawback, he was now inclined to think of them as a possible advantage. With so many people in those buildings he might easily slip away and make his escape. At least he might, always supposing he had some good identity papers.

In the cigar factory most of the lights were on and there were figures moving on top of the roof. Probably security guards, he thought. So the factory was definitely out of the question.

Puffing on a large Upmann, he glanced at the crowd around him and then dropped down on to his haunches to light the fuse of the firecracker he had between his ankles. It was a small mortar bomb, the kind of thing they’d thrown at him during his army training. By the time anyone else had noticed what was happening Tom had slipped away into the crowd, heading south down Agramonte. There was a sudden push behind him as the crowd quickly parted around the mortar, adding some urgency to his progress. Seconds later, the things exploded. Quite harmlessly he was sure, although several women screamed with fright. To Tom’s ears it had sounded — very like a shot from a .50-calibre machine-gun. He turned in the crowd to try to gauge the reaction. Apart from the crowd’s momentary panic, nobody did very much. A couple of soldiers started to move towards the source of the explosion and then seemed to change their minds. There was even some laughter as shock turned to relief.

Just as interesting was the reaction from the floodlit balcony of the presidential palace. The Big Barbudo looked like a little bearded puppet. And he hardly hesitated — even worked the explosion into his speech: the American imperialists were stupid and naive if they thought they could defeat the revolution with their little bombs, he yelled with outrage.

The crowd cheered and began to chant: ‘To the Wall! To the Wall!’

Hearing this cry taken up, Tom judged it best to be away from the scene as quickly as possible even though he was not afraid of being caught by the police. The people were more unpredictable than the security forces. To his surprise the sound of a second explosion, almost as loud as the first, was now heard, and Tom wondered if the little mortar had actually been two. Either that or some enthusiastic Fidelista had fired his weapon into the air. Not that the prime minister was at all deterred.

And he was still extemporising upon these two explosions when, some ten minutes later, Tom reached the rooftop bar of the Plaza Hotel. He figured the Big Barbudo could get at least an hour’s worth of rhetoric out of the incident. Maybe even two.

Johnny Rosselli swirled his Smirnoff on the rocks around his glass and then pressed it against his forehead, like a cold compress. ‘Try the antipasto, Tom,’ he said. ‘It’s the best in town.’

Tom Jefferson was meeting Rosselli at Leone’s, an Italian restaurant opposite the Gulfstream Park racecourse, and virtually on the county line. Out of season it was a quiet place and Tom wondered that they had bothered to open at all.

‘Celestine, eh che se rigga? Come se va?’ said Rosselli, waving the proprietor towards him, embracing the man fondly and speaking Italian with him for the next fifteen minutes. A couple of times while they were speaking, Celestine, who was younger than Rosselli, put his hands together and rocked them back and forward in a gesture of benediction, saying, ‘ Sa benedica , Giovanni. Sa benedica .’

Tom studied the menu and decided to have the antipasto and some gnocchi. Then he lit a cigarette and waited patiently for the chiacchiera to conclude, helping himself to some Chianti when that arrived, and generally wondering if the food would be better than Gerardo’s on Biscayne Boulevard at 163rd Street, which was the best Italian restaurant he knew, and Mary’s favourite.

Celestine took their order personally, and since Tom and Rosselli were the only people in the place, he wondered if they hadn’t opened especially for the Don. When at last Rosselli sat down, he rubbed his well-manicured hands excitedly and asked Tom if he liked food.

‘I like food,’ said Tom.

‘How about Italian food?’

It seemed a little late to be asking a question like that, but Tom just nodded back politely and said he liked Italian food a lot.

‘Ever been to Italy?’ asked Rosselli.

‘Nope.’

‘I was born there. A little town near Cassino, called Esperia.’

‘Really?’

‘So you might say casinos are in my blood.’

It wasn’t much of a joke, but Tom tried a smile anyway, just to be pleasant. He wasn’t much of a smiler.

‘Take this place. It used to be the Colonial Inn, a gambling joint before the fucking puritans took over this town. That’s when I first got to know it.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve been coming here ever since. I’m like that, I guess. I stay with someone, through the good times and the bad times. You work with me, you’ll learn that about me. I’m always there for my friends.’

‘That’s good to know,’ said Tom, who didn’t care much one way or the other.

Rosselli rubbed his hands some more, and then lit an Old Gold. ‘Is that my feasibility study?’

Tom handed over the document he had prepared.

‘If that’s what you want to call it,’ he said. It always irritated him the way some people tried to bury what was being said when the subject got around to murder. Just one time he’d have liked a client who came right out and asked him to kill some sonofabitch.