Night Work (3 page)

“Cousins. They live here.”

“You paid the jailer to let you make a call.”

“Yes,” in a defeated voice.

“You, what's your name?” Cassidy said to the man by the sinks.

“Javier.”

“Javier, pick up your gun. Two fingers by the tip of the barrel. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I understand.” He had a thick Cuban accent and his voice was tight with strain. He was slim and not more than five feet six inches tall. He wore a white shirt and black trousers. His black hair was oiled tight to his skull and a neat, narrow mustache was a black line on his lip. He looked at Cassidy with a mixture of fear and anger.

“Bring it to me. If you do something stupid, I'll shoot you.”

Javier crouched and picked up the gun by the barrel tip and carried it to Cassidy, who put it in his jacket pocket. “Go get the other one in the stall. Same deal.” The man on the floor shifted. Cassidy kicked him. “Lie still.” Javier brought the second gun to Cassidy. “Does he have a gun?” Cassidy gestured toward the boy with the broken nose.

“No.”

“You, turn out your pockets. Slowly.” The boy obeyed. “Lift your shirt.” There was no gun tucked in his waistband. “All right. The three of you into that stall. Shut the door. Stay in there for five minutes.”

“You are not going to call the police?” Javier asked.

“No.” If he called the Miami cops he'd be held up for at least a day.

“We had to do it. You know this?”

“Why?”

“He is family. They will kill him if you take him back.”

“He killed three men.”

“Men of no importance.”

“They were important to somebody, and he has to answer for it.”

The man on the floor must have hit his head hard, because he wobbled when he tried to stand. Javier and the boy helped him into the stall and closed the latch.

“Okay. Let's go.”

He sensed the tension rise in Echevarria. This was his last chance. He was steeling himself for it. Now or never. Cassidy held his eyes and pressed the gun barrel against Echevarria's side. The courage went out of him, and he slumped. Cassidy tugged on the cuffs, and Echevarria went with him. He opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. He pulled Echevarria toward the end of the corridor, stopping to drop the two guns he had taken from the Cubans into a mailbox.

The young woman from the airlines was waiting at the gate. She flicked them with her smile and said, “Have a nice flight.” The gate agent took the tickets from Cassidy and they walked out into the afternoon glare. The sun was still high in the sky, and the temperature was in the seventies, forty degrees warmer than New York the day before. They crossed the tarmac to where the plane waited in heat shimmer. Bright script on the fuselage read
TROPICANA SPECIAL
. They went up into the DC-6, and the attendants began rolling the ramp away as they went into the plane and the stewardess shut the door and then showed them to seats at the rear.

The plane was full. Most of the passengers were men, and most of them were drinking. Maybe some of the women aboard were married, but probably not to the men they were with. This was party time. They were headed for Havana, out of the loop of their normal lives. There were no rules. One of the women spotted the handcuffs. She was a tall brunette in a tight skirt that hobbled her at the knees and a tight gold shirt that strained to hold her breasts. She swayed down the aisle carrying a drink in a tall glass and tapped on the handcuff chain with a long red fingernail while she leaned in to examine Cassidy with eyes as wide as an owl's.

“Have you been a bad boy?” Her breath was warm and smelled of rum.

“No. I'm the good boy. He's the bad boy.”

“What'd he do?”

“You know those tags on mattresses that say ‘Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law'? He removed one.”

She blinked while it penetrated. “You're kidding me. You're a kidder, aren't you? And you're kidding me.”

“Cross my heart.”

“Kidder.”

“What's going on here?” He gestured at the plane, the party, at the man with an orchid clenched between his teeth as he danced in the aisle.

“The Special? It's from the Tropicana Club. They send it for the high rollers. You know, to get them in the mood.”

“Hey, Alice, come sit down,” a man called from near the front of the plane.

“I'm coming, Georgie.” She slapped Cassidy on the shoulder, said “Kidder,” and stilted away up the aisle on high heels, looking like something from the original blueprint for sex, her ass swaying just a little more than it had to. She checked once over her shoulder to make sure Cassidy was getting the benefit.

I've got to get laid. Maybe that's why I can't sleep. It would be worth the experiment. Even if I didn't sleep, at least there'd be something for the effort.

The engines revved, spat smoke, the propellers flicked and then blurred into their rhythm, and the pilot came on the intercom to welcome them aboard the Tropicana Special and to announce in a western twang that “it's time for all you good folks to strap this plane to your bodies so we can take off for Havana and have some fun.”

*   *   *

“May I bring you a drink, Detective?” The stewardess smiled and bent over enough to let Cassidy look down her dress.

“I'd like a martini, dry, on the rocks, a twist, if you have it.”

“And for your, uh, um,” she struggled with it. “Would he like something?”

“Please bring Mr. Echevarria a Cuban rum on the rocks. A double. Thank you.”

She went to the back of the plane to fill the order. At the front of the plane a small stage was set where a few rows of seats had been removed. A man in a bolero jacket and skintight pants got up on it and sang a suggestive song about rum and a woman and a beach and the moon.

The drinks came and the stewardess went away. The singer finished his song, and three women in split skirts and bikini bras got up and did a dance that would have been banned in thirty of the forty-eight states, and a couple of the passengers got up and tried to match them until they were shouted down.

A man rose from a seat near the woman who thought Cassidy was a kidder and walked back to perch on the arm of the empty seat across the aisle. He was in his late thirties, Cassidy guessed. He was about six feet tall and had a boyish Irish face and thick hair that looked like he combed it with his fingers. He wore linen trousers and a dark blue cotton shirt open at the throat, and he had the easy open manner of someone comfortable in his skin, a man with some power and used to wielding it without second thoughts. He raised his glass in a toast and took a sip. “The lady up there says you're a cop.”

Cassidy nodded and said nothing. Handcuffed prisoners drew people the way animals in the zoo did—proximity to danger, but the danger caged.

“Do you mind if I ask what he did? I kind of didn't believe the business about the mattress tag.”

“He killed some people.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Uh-huh.” That didn't seem to bother the man. Maybe that was one of the benefits of having power. People died, you lived. “Why'd he do it?”

“You'll have to ask him.”

“Why'd you do it?”

Echevarria pulled at his drink and looked at the man with a flat stare. “Go fuck yourself.”

The man laughed. “Yeah, you're right. Prurient interest about another man's misfortune. But I can't do that. It's against my professional code. See, I'm a senator, and the code says we fuck other people, never ourselves. What happens when you get to Havana?”

“There'll be some cops meeting the plane. I turn him over to them, spend the night, the next day I'm on vacation.”

“A vacation in Havana's not bad duty.”

“You know Havana.”

“I do. I like Havana. I get down here a couple of times a year. Fact-finding missions for the good of the Commonwealth, of course. And the fact is there is nothing a man could want that Havana cannot give you.” He grinned. “Where are you from, Detective?”

“New York.”

“Nothing I can do for you, then. You're not a constituent. I'm sorry.”

“I'll have to struggle along without you, then.”

“I'll buy you drink. They're free.”

“Thanks, I've got one.”

“Okay. Nice talking to you. See you around.” He went back up the aisle, stopping to talk to people, touching others on the shoulders, offering a sip of his drink to a pretty woman. His laughter carried to where Cassidy was sitting. A man who took life in big bites, Cassidy thought.

*   *   *

When the plane landed, the stewardess asked Cassidy to wait until the rest of the passengers were off. Maybe they thought someone coming off The Special in handcuffs would kill the party spirit. The young senator paused by his seat. “Where are you staying?”

“I don't know. I haven't thought about it.”

“There's the Hilton. American owned, if that's important to you. To me, what's the point? You could be in the Miami Hilton, the Los Angeles Hilton. I like the Nacional. It's got a casino, of course, but if you're really looking for that kind of action, the Tropicana's the place to gamble. Besides, they flew you here. You might as well give them the custom.”

“I'll give it some thought.”

“You don't gamble?”

“Not for money.”

“See you. Have fun.” He went on, youthful and confident, worlds to conquer.

Fresh air blew in through the open door, soft and tropical, and carrying the smell of the ocean and the scent of flowers Cassidy could not name.

Two soldiers were waiting at the bottom of the ramp, a colonel for command presence and a sergeant to do any heavy lifting. They were dressed in gray military uniforms with polished leather belts crossing their chests and pistols in polished leather holsters at their waists. The colonel was a tall man in his late thirties. His uniform was severely tailored to emphasize his slimness. His cavalry boots gleamed. He had a narrow, tanned face with a pointed chin and a nose like a hawk's beak. The sergeant was a big man, thick through the chest and shoulders, heavy-legged. Coarse black hair like wire forced its way out from under his hat, and his face was flat and broad with small dark eyes set deep. Indian blood. A gray Jeep was parked near the fence, a driver behind the wheel.

The colonel smoked a thin cigar, which he waved genially at Cassidy as they started down the ramp. Cassidy felt the drag on his wrist as Echevarria held back, and heard Echevarria suck in breath. He jerked on the cuffs to move him. He wanted this over with now. He wanted to be free of Echevarria. He looked forward to being in Havana, anonymous, solo, no rules, no responsibilities.
Who knows what he might find? He might even get lucky.

“Detective Cassidy, yes?”

“Yes.” Cassidy shook the colonel's hand.

“I am Colonel Diego Fuentes. SIM.”

It sounded like “seem” to Cassidy. “Seem?”

“Servicio de Inteligencia Militar. Military Intelligence. Yes?”

“You're not a cop? I was expecting cops.”

“True, I am not a member of the Havana Police Department, but in our system my duties often overlap theirs. In this case, the men this
cabron
killed were soldiers, therefore the case falls under our jurisdiction.” He showed Cassidy even white teeth in a smile that did not reach his eyes. Then he stepped around to face Echevarria, who waited at the base of the boarding ramp.

“Ahh, Señor Echevarria,
bienvenido
.” He punched Echevarria hard in the mouth. Echevarria cried out and stumbled back, pulling Cassidy with him. The punch split his lips, and blood flowed and he buried his face in his sleeve to staunch it. Fuentes stepped forward, fist cocked to hit him again.

Cassidy blocked him. “No.”

“Please?”

“He's my prisoner. You don't hit my prisoner.”

“You're in Cuba. He is in Cuba. In Cuba I do what I want.”

“Uh-uh. He's my prisoner until you sign for him. Please don't hit my prisoner.”

The big sergeant shifted and put a hand on his gun butt. Cassidy held Fuentes's eyes. He did not know how far the colonel would push it, or how hard he'd push back.
Why? Why for a shit like Echevarria? Because he's my prisoner
. He waited.

The muscles in Fuentes's jaw bunched and jumped. He licked his lips. He glanced at his sergeant.

Cassidy waited.

Fuentes took a deep breath.

Was it coming now?

Fuentes let the breath out and smiled and made a throwaway gesture. “Of course. Of course. You are right. We are civilized men. We must adhere to the rules. We must obey the proprieties.” He smiled and waved toward the waiting Jeep. “Come. We'll go to La Cabaña and sign papers. I will relieve you of the burden of Señor Echevarria. You will stay in Havana, yes? You will see what a wonderful city we have. Anything you want. You tell me. I will arrange.”

They started for the Jeep. Cassidy noticed that the sergeant fell in behind them, but there was nothing to do about that.

Fuentes prodded Echevarria with a finger like a gun. “You are a lucky man, Echevarria. You have an American to protect you. Of course we are all lucky to have America as our friend. All of Cuba. Where would we be without our big brother to watch over us, to tell us what to do, to sell us Coca-Cola? Poor little Cuba without America, eh?”

He was smiling all the time, but Cassidy could hear Fuentes's anger burn just below the surface of the smile and the cheer. He recognized anger. Anger was no secret to him. It coiled under his skin. He listened to its whisper all the time.

*   *   *

The fortress of La Cabaña crowned a two-hundred-foot hill on the eastern side of Havana's harbor. Centuries under a tropical sun had yellowed the stone blocks of its massive walls. Old cannon stuck out from the embrasures. It was a place of power from which men ruled until other men breached the wall and threw them out and took the power and waited for the men who would come to throw them out. The endless cycle.