Night Work (2 page)

The cop on duty was a gangly redhead named O'Hara. He had big knuckled hands and bony wrists, and he wore black cowboy boots with his uniform. He led Echevarria to a holding cell, pushed him in, and locked the door.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” Cassidy said.

“Anything special with him?” O'Hara asked.

“Feed him and water him, and stand well back. He talks an awful lot of bullshit. You listen to him for five minutes you're going to want to reach in and slap him silly.”

He caught a taxi to the Fontainebleau where he had reserved a room, took a shower, and then went out to Joe's and ate stone crabs and drank a twenty-dollar bottle of Puligny-Montrachet. He went back to the hotel and lay in bed in the dark room and listened to the thump and hiss of waves on the sand eight floors below and waited for sleep to come. He had been running on empty for weeks, wired on coffee, cigarettes, and booze. If he slept, there were bad dreams of running and gunfire, hard, bright, ugly images that disappeared so quickly when he woke gasping and panicked that he could not capture one of them. He had had vivid dreams since childhood, dreams in which he was both asleep and awake. Days, weeks, or months later he would be somewhere in the city, and he would recognize that this was what he had dreamed, this street, that person; an overheard conversation as he passed two people in a doorway; that window with the three women behind it; that man with the oily smile who beckoned him from an alley mouth. The dreams were random. Sometimes they came true, sometimes they did not, but disappeared to wherever dreams go. For years he tried to find markers in them that would allow him to separate the prophetic from the run of the mill, but he could not, and then a few years back something had changed. He had walked a dark street one night, and as he walked he understood that he had dreamed these moments, dreamed the walk, the dark night, the danger that lay ahead in the shadows. The dream had predicted this, had warned him, and because of that warning he had been able to kill the man who waited in the darkness to kill him.

For a while after that, the prophetic dreams had come often, and he had been able to hold on to them after waking. Usually they predicted something mundane, an unlooked-for meeting with an old friend, the recognition of a room as he entered that he had only seen before in a dream, a conversation in a restaurant, but they had also helped him solve the murder of a young woman found dead on the ice at Wollman Memorial Rink, and to track down a serial killer. He had begun to think of the dreams as a talent, a resource, something that he could develop. Through his brother, Brian, he had found a sympathetic neurologic researcher at Cornell Medical College who had run tests and found nothing out of the ordinary, no explanations. “We don't know the capabilities of the human brain. We do know that we use only a fraction of its capacity.” He had asked Cassidy to keep notes on all his dreams and especially on the ones that came true, and he had done that for a while, but then the dreams changed. They became more fragmented, more chaotic, and he woke unable to remember them.

For the last few weeks, sleep had come hard, and the dreams were harsh and splintered, and they left him with feelings of dread and impending loss, but with no understanding of what it was he was going to lose.

That night Cassidy dreamed of Dylan—Dylan, his lost love, who had not troubled his dreams for years.
He was in a tunnel, a place he had never seen before, dark and oppressive, claustrophobic. A line of figures shuffled past him. They were pale and insubstantial, the color of faded roses from head to foot. They scuffed by heads down, identical, featureless. Then one raised its head, and it was Dylan. Gunfire, and the figures began to fall until only she was left standing, eyes wide and pleading.
He awoke drenched in sweat, gasping for air.

*   *   *

In the morning O'Hara was still on duty. “Overtime. I'm trying to pay off a goddamn boat I bought. A friend told me a boat's just a hole in the water into which you piss money. What'd I know? I'll go get him. He offered me five grand to let him go. I might've done it if I could've figured out the story.”

“He offered me ten.”

“Shit. For ten I would've done it and taken my chances.”

O'Hara brought Echevarria out. Echevarria's suit was rumpled. His hair was mussed, and he was unshaven. He wouldn't meet Cassidy's eyes and he avoided looking at O'Hara.

“Did you feed him?” Cassidy asked.

“Jailhouse oatmeal and jailhouse coffee. I wouldn't call it food, and he didn't eat it.” He took Echevarria's personal effects from a drawer and slid them across the desk and Cassidy saw a look pass between them.

“I'll feed him. We've got time. They canceled our flight, mechanical trouble. I'm waiting to see what they can get us on.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. Good luck, then.” O'Hara was suddenly eager to see them go.

“You all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Fine. Just beat, man. Just beat. Too many hours on, not enough hours off.”

Cassidy read the evasion but let it go. He snapped the cuffs on and led Echevarria down to the coffee shop. The booths were hung with tinsel. A small plastic Christmas tree crowded the cash register at the check-out desk. Their waitress wore a Santa hat with a soiled white fringe. Christmas was still a few days off, but the spirit in the Miami airport was already worn out.

Christmas—the children ripping the paper off carefully wrapped packages in their eagerness, the adults quietly satisfied giving and receiving well-considered presents, the Christmas dinner at Leah's table, the only one big enough to accommodate the entire family. The toasts full of humor and love. Cassidy would miss it this year.

He had already bought presents for his brother, Brian, his sister, Leah, their children and spouses, and for his father and stepmother and had left them in Leah's care. He loved being with his family, but Christmas was rough. He usually accepted, even prized, that he was alone, free of responsibilities to someone else, but Christmas highlighted what he did not have. When he got the assignment to extradite Echevarria, he put in for vacation. Who knows what might happen during ten days in Havana? He might get laid. He might turn a corner and fall in love.

Echevarria complained about the booth Cassidy chose, the service, and the food when it came. The coffee was swill. His hamburger was overcooked. Cassidy's eggs were disgusting.

“Fifteen thousand dollars.”

“I don't need fifteen thousand dollars.” Cassidy put the paper aside.

“Don't be stupid. You're a cop. You make no money. Everybody needs fifteen thousand dollars.

Cassidy shook his head.

“Okay. Twenty.”

“Get up.”

“Why?”

“I have to buy cigarettes.”

“Twenty thousand. I have it in a Miami bank. We can go there now.”

“Do me a favor, Echevarria. Shut up.” Money did not tempt him. He had grown up in a household that had money. His mother inherited hers from family holdings that got their start when Boston was still a village. His father made his in the Broadway theater after a brief, lucrative career running booze during Prohibition. Neither had any reverence for the stuff. His mother spent hers wildly to show contempt for the hard, narrow, tightfisted rules of her upbringing. His father spent his, because what the hell, there would always be more tomorrow. When his mother killed herself, Cassidy inherited more money than he thought he would ever need and his indulgences were few. He liked to buy art from the studios of the artists he knew who worked in Greenwich Village where he owned an apartment from which he could see the river. He liked to eat in good restaurants. He hoped that when he got older some perverse and expensive passion would kick in so that he could fling money around like confetti. Somebody once said that money was for throwing off the backs of trains. Maybe he could work up to that.

There were few people traveling at that time of day, and the concourse was not crowded. A boy of about ten walking with his parents noticed the handcuffs and pointed. “Look, Mom, Dad, a bad man. Look.” His mother hushed him and pulled him along, but the boy kept looking back over his shoulder as they went, drawn by the mystery of evil.

Echevarria, wrapped in thought, made no comment, but a minute later he slowed and pulled on the handcuffs and Cassidy stopped. Echevarria's face was pale and his voice was tight and harsh. “Do you think I'm kidding you?
Paredón
. This is what they will do to me. This is where you take me. To the wall.”

“You've been extradited to stand trial for murder.”

“Trial? There will be no trial. They don't need a trial to send you to the wall.”

“Maybe you shouldn't have shot those guys.”

“You think this is about the men I killed?” He snorted. “They were nothing. Peasants, hired gunmen,
nada
. They have killed many themselves. They would have killed me. No, they don't kill me for them. Nobody cares about them.”

“Their mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers?” Cassidy said it mildly.

“Their mothers are whores. Their sisters are whores. Their lovers are whores. Their brothers are the same as they are. The reason they are going to kill me is that I stole from a bigger thief than I am. The second biggest thief on the island. The first is, of course, President Batista. Do you know who the second is?”

“No.” Cassidy tugged on the cuffs and started walking again.

Echevarria stopped talking while Cassidy bought cigarettes at a newsstand. He offered one but Echevarria waved it away impatiently and pulled him out into the concourse so he could go on. His face was pale and he was sweating from his urgency. He looked around quickly to see that they were not overheard. “General Roberto Fernández Miranda.” He waited expectantly, but he saw that the name meant nothing to Cassidy. “He is President Batista's brother-in-law. He has the concession for all the slot machines in the casinos and bars. He owns the parking meters in Havana. Do you know now much he makes from the parking meters? Half a million dollars a month. From parking meters.
Coño!
Half a million a month.”

“So you took some of it and killed the men who were protecting it.”

“He owed me money. He refused to pay. He thought because he was a big man he did not have to pay. This is the thinking of peasants when they get power. My family came to Cuba in 1705 with a land grant from King Felipe number five. Batista and his people are jumped up
negros
from the cane fields, greedy shits without honor. They put on suits and think they are no longer monkeys.”

“You're an unpleasant bastard, Echevarria. Stop talking to me.” Cassidy had never met a criminal who could not rationalize what he had done. And why did men think killing was a simple solution to a complex problem?

“You won't help me.”

“No.”

“All right, then.” He nodded as if something had been decided.

“Detective Cassidy?” A young woman in an airline uniform looked from Cassidy to Echevarria as if unsure who was the handcuffed, who was the handcuffer.

“Yes.”

“We've found you a flight. It's the Tropicana private charter, but I've explained the circumstances and they've agreed to take you. We'll have to hurry. They're holding the plane for you. I've had your bag put aboard. If you'll follow me.” She was blond and pretty and wore a light blue cotton uniform of a broad-shouldered, quasi-military design, and she walked fast, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor. She had a smile that went on and off like a light. Every once in a while she would throw a look over her shoulder to make sure they were still with her. The smile would light. Her eyes would find the handcuffs. The smile would snap off.

“I have to use the men's room,” Echevarria said.

“There'll be one on the plane.”

“No. Now. I have to now.”

The young woman from the airline stopped and flashed her professional smile to cover her mild embarrassment. “If you need to use the facilities, there's time. The gate's at the end of the corridor. I'll meet you there.” She smiled and went away.

Echevarria paused at the men's room door to let Cassidy go first. Cassidy put his hand on the door to enter.

Politeness suddenly from this arrogant shit? The look between Echevarria and the jailor O'Hara. Cassidy hesitated. Echevarria's hand slammed against his back and shoved him toward the door. Instead of resisting, Cassidy went with it and crashed the door, yanking Echevarria with him.

There were three of them in the men's room. One man was on the left next to the sinks under a mirror. Another was near the urinals on the opposite wall, and the third was waiting behind the door. The one by the urinals held a small automatic. The one by the sinks showed no gun, and the man near the door had been rammed back when Cassidy crashed through. The one with the gun brought the pistol up. Echevarria, surprised by Cassidy's lunge through the door, staggered as he came into the room, and Cassidy used the momentum to sling him by their handcuffed wrists into the gunman before he could pull the trigger. Echevarria's weight knocked the gunman back into the urinals. He hit his head and went down, and the gun spun away across the floor. Cassidy snatched his gun from under his arm as the man by the sinks tried to get a pistol from his pocket. It caught on the cloth, and before he could untangle it, Cassidy stepped forward in the small room, dragging Echevarria by the cuffs, and touched his gun barrel to the man's forehead.

“Don't.”

The man's eyes crossed as he looked at the gun.

“Drop it.” The man dropped the pistol, and it clattered on the tile floor. Cassidy shifted his aim to the man behind the door. The door had hit him in the face. He was crouched by the wall whimpering with his hand covering a smashed nose while blood ran down his chin. When he saw Cassidy point the gun, he raised his hands and stood up, and Cassidy could see that he was not more than sixteen years old. The man on the floor by the urinals moaned. Cassidy kicked his gun into one of the stalls and pulled Echevarria to his feet. The adrenaline was burning out, and he could feel shakes coming on in reaction. He ground the barrel of his pistol into the side of Echevarria's neck. “Who are they?” His voice sounded harsh.