Fever City (34 page)

H
astings watched the country changing beneath him, the blue promise of the Pacific poorly traded for the equivocal collage of basalt, granite and bruised desert; of lonely roads leading to box canyons and dried riverbeds.

Dead ends.

The click of ice brought him back to the dark, internal reality of the jet plane; of the private claustrophobia of his plans. He reduced them all to a basic, understandable formula: things would work out and everyone would live, or they wouldn't, and everyone would die. Three JTS Browns, a fistful of cashews and a half-pack of Pall Malls later, and Hastings was in Dallas.

He stepped out of the plane, the passenger in front almost tripping down the airstair, the sun angling cunningly into everyone's eyes. Welcomers huddled behind the rope at the other end of a tarmac sticky with afternoon heat and purging jet air, anxious faces peering past him—Hastings, always the invisible man.

Hastings snatched his suitcases from a passing trolley as he walked towards the terminal, Albert Luchino's smile giving way to surprise when he saw his face. He reached for the larger of the suitcases, which held his matériel. Hastings passed him the smaller one instead. ‘What happened to you?'

‘Someone didn't like my driving . . . '

Luchino tossed him a set of car keys and pointed to a burgundy Citroën DS19 Cabriolet. ‘Maybe you need more practice . . . '

Hastings glanced in the rearview mirror as they left Love Field. A red and white '58 DeSoto Firesweep pulled out after them, riding high through traffic on its blinding chrome. ‘Anyone you know?'

Luchino glanced in the side mirror. ‘Our friends from Miami . . . '

Miami. Candy-coloured cars and Technicolor shirts. Domino bars with grandpas and gunrunners. CIA listening posts, tapped phones and juiced horses out at Hialeah Park. Always Boom, Bubble, Bust. And now the biggest Bang of all threatening to explode right over the city, a mushroom cloud menace from the sunny south. Castro, Commies and the Kremlin. They did it once, they could do it again. Sub the missiles in, hide them in the jungle and then take the city out with a single OSA torpedo boat.

Miami.

So hot it was atomic. Too big to ignore, too wild to take seriously. CIA were bossing the whole operation, no questions asked. Its agents were going to take down Fidel their way. That meant dirty money and lots of it. Cocaine cash. Gunrunner payoffs. Big Oil dollars by the fifty-five-gallon drum. CIA were loaded. They ran the show. And now Miami CIA had come to Dallas, which meant they knew about the hit and were going to stop it. Or they were going to let it happen. Hell, Hastings thought, they could even be controlling the hit. Anything was possible when you had a room full of exiles, agents and gangsters loaded on Cuba Libres and Gran Coronas playing “who's got the biggest dick”.

'I can lose them . . . '

‘Don't. It's better for us to know where we can find them, if we need to,
n'est-ce pas
?' French, the language of diplomacy, always served with two bottles of wine. One to get you to talk. One to silence you, maybe forever. Luchino turned, offering Hastings a Gitanes Maïs as he studied his face. ‘They asked me to find some files . . . '

Hastings leant forward, the lighter's flint suddenly loud behind the shelter of glass. He straightened, the wind back in his hair. ‘Did you get them?'

Luchino gave a Gallic shrug. ‘They sent me to the wrong offices.
Quel bordel!
And you . . . ?'

‘I got them . . . But couldn't keep them.' He watched Luchino out of his peripheral vision. A smile. ‘Old Man Bannister has them now.'

Luchino shook his head. ‘Such a pity . . . ' He pointed to a turnoff heading west. ‘Do you know what was in these files?'

‘Monroe and Kennedy mainly.'

‘
Mais oui
. . .
Cherchez la femme!
' The DeSoto kept going straight ahead. Even Miami CIA weren't that careless. They were working a team. Hastings's eyes kept flicking back to the mirror. ‘It's the Pontiac Bonneville.' Luchino sent the last word quivering with his French accent. Hastings still couldn't spot it. ‘Red . . . ' The car was lying far back, concealed behind a Chevy pickup. The driver was very good. ‘Don't worry, my friend, it took me the long time with this one too. He is the most talented . . . So, have you told Monsieur Roselli about the files being missing?'

‘Not yet.'

‘I don't think he will like it.'

‘There's nothing to like or dislike. The Old Man's better than him, that's all.' The Old Man was better than all of them. And always would be, until the day someone was able to kill him. Hastings was hoping that day would come soon.

The road was taking them out of town, past used-car lots, scrap metal yards and cemetery rows of nodding derricks futilely fanning the air. The red Pontiac had pulled back half a mile in the thinning traffic. Careful. Astute. The driver was a pro.

An enormous ranch house began to grow on the flat horizon, casting long shadows before it; a fata morgana of the oil lying under the earth, mapping it through the absence of light. Staking it out. Hastings didn't like the look of their destination. His internal Geiger counter was cracking cricket noises. If he didn't know any better, he'd suspect this was a setup, that Luchino was going to do what the others couldn't off Point Dume. ‘When did you get into Dallas?'

‘Yesterday.'

‘And you've already been out here?'

‘They brought me straight to this house. Everyone is here, my friend. It's bigger than we ever imagined. Bigger than—' Luchino's voice was lost in the blast of a truck heading east, big wheels spinning dangerously close, smashing Texas distance. A curtain of dust and grit aftershocked them, the whisper of sand peppering the windshield.

‘What's that you said?'

‘I said, it's bigger than us . . . Here, you turn in.'

Hastings spun the wheel, skidding the back tires, raising a flag of dust to the red Pontiac: here we are, come and get us.

They were stopped by a large contingent of armed sheriffs, Texas Rangers and Dallas police. A man in white short sleeves stepped out from behind them, his face falling apart when he saw Hastings. The man's left arm was bandaged below the elbow. Blood oozed through the dressing, attracting the humming appreciation of flies.

One of the sheriffs turned to the man. ‘They clean?' Hastings watched the man struggling with the answer. He half-nodded, looking away.

‘
Ça alors!
' Luchino stared back as Hastings drove on towards the house, passing a slim stand of cottonwoods where a dozen government cars stood in the shade of branches pelleted with the black tremor of crows. ‘What did you do, fuck his girl?'

‘The Old Man did that to him.'

‘Fucked his girl . . . ?'

‘Cut his arm . . . '

‘So why does he give that look to you?'

‘He thought I was dead.'

‘Why would he think this?'

‘Because he threw me off a cliff last night.'

‘
Putain de merde!
' Luchino shook his head in disbelief. ‘What chance. In Corsica if we threw you off the cliff, you would not come back.'

‘I believe it.'

‘You want me to kill him?'

‘I'll take care of him later, but tell me his name, if you know it.'

‘
Mais oui
, he is Fiorini, a troublemaker, but down here, they are calling him Frank Sturgis.' He laughed. ‘Americans and their names . . . '

The red Pontiac squealed as it turned off the road, not even slowing, the police jumping back, allowing it to power past. It hot-rodded after them, pulling up outside the homestead just ahead of Hastings and Luchino. A man jumped out without opening the door, stocky and dynamic; more like a circus acrobat than a mercenary, in white T-shirt, denim and blue suede shoes. ‘Hemming. Operation 40.' He said it with false modesty, as though he expected them to be awed by the news; as though he didn't give a fuck who they were. He was the star, they were the extras. Hemming strode into the house, past the envious gaze of a posse of agents, sweat stains tarnishing their suits. Their ties were all unloosened, their jackets all buttoned up. That meant J. Edgar was very close.

‘What's Operation 40?'

Hastings got out of the car. ‘Just another name . . . ' Like all the other names thugs and killers gave themselves to feel superior to the people they killed. To justify what they had become. Hastings and Luchino didn't have that luxury. They were individuals without names. They were professionals; stone-cold assassins about to break the number one rule: never let it become personal.

Agents stood in front of the door, blocking the way. Roselli stepped out of the house, wiping the sweat away from his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. He pointed to Hastings and Luchino. ‘Let 'em through.' Hastings stepped into the damp, shadowy house. ‘The shooters are out the back, behind the stables.' Hastings went first, barking his shin on a little green card table hiding in the darkness. ‘Jesus Christ, watch where you're going. You don't want to look like a meathead in front of our guests.'

They passed through a large kitchen, the smell of sourdough bread and cinnamon apples following them outside. The sunlight was even more intense after the gloom of the interior. The air was thick with flies and the keening country perfume of hay and manure. Horses whinnied inside the stables, cuffing the wood impatiently with powerful hooves. More cars were parked out back, sitting hot and forsaken in the sun. A table was set up under a big dogwood, crowded with jugs of beer pearled with evaporating frost, a servant setting down bowls of potato salad and barbecued Elgin sausages. A group of men watched them approaching, whispering to each other. Luchino nodded to them, pouring beers for himself and Hastings. Hastings burnt his fingers picking up a sausage and dipping it in chili. ‘You actually going to eat that shit, Daddy-O?' the one called Hemming said. Hastings's mouth went hot with the sausage, then spicy with the bite of sauce, then ice-cold with the beer. It was the first time he had felt truly alive since the Mexican's coffee on the beach at Point Dume. He was suddenly ravenous. ‘Like, don't it bug you, chowing down on chopped-up guts?'

‘
Andouillette
?' Luchino asked, nibbling the tip of a sausage, then pulling a face. ‘
Rien à voir.
'

Silence as the men exchanged looks. Hemming narrowed his eyes. ‘So who's the French cat?'

‘Corsican . . . ' Hastings said, filling a plate with potato salad and sausage. He felt as if he hadn't eaten in a week.

A snort of contempt, posing as humour. A man with a heavy goatee and wearing green military fatigues stepped forward. ‘There's a difference?'

‘Have we met?' Luchino asked, his voice tight with control as he refilled Hastings's glass.

Hemming nodded to the bearded man. ‘He's Loran Hall. You've heard of him. Deputy commander.' He nodded towards a very large man speaking in Spanish to a group of Cubans by the stables. ‘And that's El Jefe himself: David Sánchez Morales. One very dangerous mother. He started Operation 40.' Hastings stared at the powerfully built man with his grey hair and dyed moustache. Vanity always meant trouble in their line of work. It required prudence, not preening. Nuance, not narcissism. ‘Ex-82nd Airborne.'

Hall laughed, speaking to Luchino. ‘82nd whipped your sorry French asses during the war.'

‘I am Corsican, not French. And I fought alongside your countrymen, not against them.'

Hall muttered something under his breath to Hemming, then turned back to Luchino with a sneer. ‘Shit . . . Corsica. Cuba. The same goddamn thing. Tiny fucking islands causing way too much trouble.'

It never failed to amaze Hastings how blind people could be to the imminent threat of death. It was as though Hall had just deliberately glued his head to a railroad track in front of a rapidly approaching locomotive. Luchino stepped around Hastings, sliding a steak knife under his hand, ready to deliver a fatal lesson in manners to the red-eyed young man with a rash under his beard. ‘Wait till this is over . . . ' Hastings whispered. Luchino froze. Intelligence guided his instincts. He believed in honour, not pride. But what had just passed between Hastings and Luchino—call and response; restraint and control—had gone unheeded by Hemming and Hall, who were too busy strutting their own importance to realize they were dancing on snakes.

‘The three of us control the fucking Cubans.' Hemming pointed to the stables, where a dozen Cubans rested on their haunches, watching out of the corner of their eyes as Morales addressed them. ‘Nobody talks to them without going through us, understand?' Like all young hotshots, what Hemming really needed was a swift hard kick in the ass. ‘And that goes for those fucks-in-suits over there . . . ' Hastings glanced over at five men, two heavy and three thin, who were talking to Roselli on the back porch of the homestead. CIA. Who else? he thought. Two of them were even smoking pipes.

Hastings served himself more sausages and salad, the raking of the spoon against china chiming musically. Hall shook his head. ‘Shit, man, are you here to work, or just for the free lunch?'

Hastings looked up at Hall. ‘That mouth of yours is so big, I bet I could shove this plate right down your throat . . . '

In the silence that followed they all could hear the sound of cooking coming from the kitchen's open windows: the spatter of hot fat stinging griddles.

‘Whoa . . . Slow down, Daddy-O. No need to blow the jets. We're all friends here.'

‘I thought we were all just killers . . . '

Hall took a step towards Hastings, a sheathed bowie knife strapped below his right knee. Ostentatious and threatening. Always cover for unreliable and scared. Hastings could disarm him, chop his beard off and shove it up his ass before he'd even know what had happened. ‘What the fuck is your problem, man . . . ?'