Night Work (40 page)

The crowd quieted when Castro moved to the podium and began to speak. His amplified voice sounded metallic from the speakers hung in the trees. His English was heavily accented, but slow-paced, and clear. “We wish to express our sympathy for the American people which we have always loved and are fond of. All Americans in the last months congratulated us, have seen how much freedom and happiness there is in Cuba. I have sincere sympathy for the people of the United States and I am grateful. Things have been said about our revolution which are not true, that we are Communists, that we are the enemy of Democracy. Many times in the history the truth is now known, many times in history the lie is more powerful than the truth. In this case the trust is opening its own road by the help of the people. The American people say how can they help us. I can answer. There are many ways, their friendship, their sympathy, and many other ways. We are not asking for money from the U.S. government or anybody. We are trying to solve our economic difficulties by only working in Cuba.”

Cassidy only half listened. He smelled tobacco smoke, and rum, and burning charcoal and grilling meats from small braziers people had brought to the park, smells that reminded him of Havana rather than New York. Was Dylan somewhere among the mass of people? Would he find her? The crowd shuffled and sighed like a huge animal. Occasionally Castro's voice rose in passion, and when it did, people cried out in agreement. Cassidy looked for Orso, but he could not find him. He saw Bonner and Newly and recognized a few other plainclothes officers. Uniformed cops moved through, spinning their nightsticks down on their lanyards and snapping them back up to meat-slap their palms, the beat cop's visible tic of authority meant to suppress any thoughts of disorder.

*   *   *

“He's been going more than seven minutes now,” Jerry Brasoli said. “Fucking guy loves the sound of his own voice.”

Terry Brasoli had cut a hole in the cloth covering one of the windows and had been watching Castro on the stage of the bandshell. “He doesn't move much. A lot of waving the hands around, but he doesn't move the body much.”

“Head shot?” Jerry whispered at his shoulder.

“No. He moves his head while he talks, ducks forward sometimes. Body shot.” It was what his instructors at sniper school taught him. If you're not sure of a head shot, go for the center mass of the body. Better to knock the target down than to miss completely. You might have a chance to put another round into him while he's on the ground. If he hit him in the chest, the hollow points would blow out his heart and lungs, a sure kill. No reason to fuck around with a head shot. “Let's do it.”

Jerry took a remote-control garage-door closer out of his pocket and put it on the stack of fertilizer bags where he could reach it easily. Will took down the black cloth in front of the rifle rest and then pulled the Uzi around from his back so that it hung by its strap across his belly. He pushed the selector lever at the top of the grip behind the trigger group forward from safety to single shot to fully automatic. “Okay.”

Terry took a stance with his elbows planted firmly on the top fertilizer bag. Will slipped a small sand bag under the forestock to steady it. Terry put his eye to the scope, and the side column of the bandshell jumped into view. He adjusted left, and the people seated on the stage swung quickly past. He hit the podium, went by, overcorrected and went by the other way, and then found his target and steadied. Castro's face was clear in the scope, his bushy, untrimmed beard and mustache, his heavy-lipped mouth and prominent, fleshy nose. There was a slight time lag between the movement of his lips and the words that came tinnily from the speakers hung near the maintenance shed. Terry adjusted the rifle. Castro was a big man, and the podium rose only to his stomach. The microphones on the podium would not interfere with the shot. The scope slid to Castro's chest. His shirt was open at the throat. Terry settled the crosshairs on the first button below that vee. There was no wind that evening, nothing to affect the bullet's flight. Three hundred yards of open space to a big stationary target; the man was as good as dead.

*   *   *

Cassidy stood on a park bench and looked over the heads of the people listening to Castro's speech. If Clarkson and the FBI were wrong and there was a three-man team in the city to kill Castro, this is the time for it. He was as exposed as he ever would be. One shot, and then disappear into the crowd. Where would they set up to shoot? His back and sides are protected by the bandshell. The shot would have to come from in front. They would need a little elevation to be above the crowd. He turned his head and something about the colored lights in the trees pricked his memory. The dream—
lights in the trees, the droning voice, fighting with his brother who was not his brother, the woodshed in Mexico.

Jesus, the shed. The fucking shed
. He turned on the bench.
Where was it? There.
It was about fifty yards away.
No. We checked it. It was empty. Orso sealed it, padlocked it and sealed it.

Orso.

With a sick feeling, he suddenly knew what was going to happen. He jumped down and began to force his way through the crowd toward the shed on the rise of ground under the trees.
Above the crowd. A clear shot of maybe three hundred yards. Movement. There, in the window. There's something in the fucking window.
People in the crowd were intent on Castro, and they did not want to move for Cassidy. Someone elbowed him. A big man in a guayabera shirt shoved him with his belly and called him
cabron.
He stepped on someone's foot and drew a shout and a shove. He was not going to get there in time.

Cassidy pulled his gun, but he could not take the shot. There were people in the line of fire.
Don't let him shoot yet. Give me time. Give me time.

*   *   *

Terry Brasoli worked the rifle bolt and chambered a round. He moved his head forward toward the scope until his right eye was just behind the ocular lens. Both eyes open. It was one of the first things his instructor told him.
You don't drive with one eye shut, do you, son?
Terry minutely ticked the rifle left and up until the crosshairs centered on the first button of the target's shirt. He touched the trigger with the first pad of his index finger. He focused on his breath and listened to his heartbeat and shut out all things that did not belong in the moment. All that was left was the target and the trigger, his breathing and his heartbeat. Three breaths, and then at the bottom of the third, between heartbeats, squeeze the trigger and let the shot be a surprise to you and the target. One …

*   *   *

Cassidy stumbled over someone's leg and almost went down. He saved himself by grabbing a man's shoulder. “Sorry,” and lurched on.
Too far away. Too far away.

*   *   *

Two … Terry's finger took up slack on the trigger. In the scope, the target licked his lips. Terry took in the third breath and started to let it out, his heartbeat a steady thump in his ears. Three … Now.

The rifle slammed back. The back end of the scope drove into Terry's face, cutting him above the eye. The rifle spat, and the bullet went high into the night sky.

*   *   *

Cassidy saw a man step up next to the window and drive the rifle barrel back with palm of his hand. The man put his back against the wall between the window and the door. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and his hair was white in the backwash of light from the bulbs in the trees and the streetlamps. Slava.

*   *   *

“What the fuck?” Jerry grabbed his brother to steady him.

“Go, go!” Terry yelled and swung the rifle toward the door. He could feel the blood flowing down his face and blinked to clear his eye. His heart hammered in his chest.

Will swung the Uzi around and fired a burst through the door and then kicked the door open and went out hard and low. Slava stepped away from the side of the shed and shot him twice. Will staggered and turned and tried to bring the Uzi up. Slava shot him again, and Will tripped over death and went down.

A man with a rifle appeared in the door of the shed and shot Slava. The man came out of the shed working the rifle bolt, and Dylan stepped around the corner of the shed and shot him twice. The man dropped the rifle, touched himself lightly where the bullets had entered his chest, said “Shit,” sat down hard, and then tipped over on his side.

Jerry grabbed the garage door remote and pushed the button. The four explosive packages he had left in the trash cans near the perimeter went off one by one. He jerked a .45 automatic from his belt and followed his brother and cousin out the door with a scream of rage and fear.

*   *   *

Cassidy saw the explosions jerk Dylan around in surprise. The man with the gun burst out of the shed.

“Dylan! Gun! Gun!”

She started to turn. The man brought his gun up.

Cassidy shot him. The bullet took Jerry high in the left shoulder and turned him. Cassidy shot him again. The bullet hit him in the chest and knocked him back a step, but he did not go down. Cassidy shot him again, and he fell, twitched, and lay still.

The crowd ran in panic from the gunfire and explosions.

Dylan knelt next to Slava, who rolled over with a groan and tried to sit up.
That was part of the dream too.
She put a hand on his shoulder and said something to him in Russian, maybe
stay down
, because he lay back breathing hard. Cassidy picked up his gun and pocketed it. “Where is he hit?”

“His leg.” She pulled a scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around his thigh and tied it off.

“How did you know they were in the shed?”

“Where else could they have been? I walked by once and saw there was something over the windows, maybe black cloth, and I wondered why the Parks people would go to the trouble. So we watched. When the cloth came off, we saw the gun.”

Cassidy heard shouts of men approaching. If they were running toward the danger they were cops. “Dylan, you've got to go. You're cover won't hold. There are people here who know about you from last time.”

“What about Slava?” He was jealous of the concern in her voice.

“How's his cover?”

“Good. Iron. Cuban passport.”

“Then go. I'll look out for him.” She hesitated for a moment, then touched Cassidy on the hand, got up, and walked away into the darkness.

*   *   *

Ex-Sergeant Lopato had worked his way down toward the front of the stage and was only ten feet from the line of cops guarding it when the four explosions went off. Unlike the people around him, he did not turn to look back. He put his hand on the gun under his shirt and watched what happened in front of him. The cops tensed. Some of them drew their guns. There was no panic onstage. Some of the fatigue-wearing
barbudos
moved in close to Castro and pulled him back from the podium. A man Lopato recognized as the artist Ribera said something to Castro. They argued for a moment, and then Ribera and the other men herded Castro toward the back of the bandshell where there was an exit door. Lopato saw there was no chance of an action here. He would report back to Colonel Fuentes. They would have to do it another way. With luck there was still a good chance of success.

 

26

No one wanted to be in Deputy Chief Clarkson's office at eleven thirty at night. It was the time of postmortem, a time to assign blame, a time for alliances, a circling of wagons. An assassination attempt on a visiting dignitary, Commie or not. Three dead men. Heads would roll, but if you could place yourself correctly in the drama, the less likely it would be your head. They had already gone over the events from every angle, but to Cassidy they were like the blind men trying to describe the elephant. People had their individual pieces, but when you put them together there was no clear picture of what they were looking at.

Yes, Orso had padlocked the shed door and taped it. Yes, other cops had seen the tape intact minutes before the shootings. How did the three men get into the shed? A mystery.

A detective from the 22nd said he saw a woman with a gun, but no one could corroborate and it was dropped, so maybe Dylan was in the clear.

Slava was identified as one of Castro's security men.

Susdorf and Cherry and the FBI came in for abuse. They were the ones who had first identified the possible assassins, three men in a Lincoln. How did the FBI drop the ball? But Susdorf had spent years in bureaucratic skirmishes, and he was quick to point out that the FBI had been allowed no role in Castro's security setup. They had been granted status as observers only. If the FBI had been in charge, the security cordon would have been very different. Clarkson recognized this line of argument as unproductive for the Department, and cut it off. He left the room to confer with his masters on the top floor and reappeared to dismiss the gathering with the warning that they were not to discuss what had happened until further notice, which meant the official version had not yet been massaged into an acceptable shape.

Castro was to remain under hermetic security until his train left the next day and he became another city's problem.

Cops gathered around to congratulate Cassidy on his shooting. When he got clear, Orso was gone.

*   *   *

Alice was asleep when he got home, but she woke when he came into the bedroom carrying the glass of bourbon he had craved over the last tedious hour in Clarkson's office. She sat up and turned on the bedside light. “I tried to stay up, but I fell asleep.” She pushed the shade down so her bruised face was in shadow. “You look tired.”

“I am.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

She reached for the glass and took a sip of his whiskey and then a drag off his cigarette. “Bad day?”

“You have no idea.”