Night Work (5 page)

No. That could not happen. He would have to think of something very smart to get her out of there, but if he could not think of something smart, he would do something anyway, wouldn't he? What had he said to the Senator on the plane when he asked if Cassidy gambled? Not for money.

He drank the rum and stood by the window and thought about the prison, about entrances and exits, about how far the cell block was below-ground, how thick the doors were, which cell she had entered. He tried to remember how many guards and warders he had seen and whether the warders had been armed with more than wooden batons. How would he get in? How would they get out? Evening turned to night. The rum went down in the bottle. Maybe a change of position would spark something. Maybe if he lay down on the bed.

Something woke him. A thump. A bang. Something. He lay in the darkness and listened. Was that a scream from somewhere outside? He got up and went to the window. Cries rose from below. He opened the window wider and looked down. People milled outside the hotel. Smoke curled from one wing. A siren wailed in the distance and was joined by another and then another. He checked his watch. It was only nine o'clock.

He opened the door and went out into the corridor. Guests from other rooms were in the hall talking to each other in tense, bewildered tones. He heard the word “bomb” in Spanish and in English, and Castro, and rebels. A door opened along the corridor and the two men from the elevator came out and went down the hall to find out what was going on. They had pulled their door mostly closed when they left. Cassidy nudged it open with his toe and looked in. A movie camera sat on a table near the far wall. It was pointed toward a rectangle of glass in the wall. Cassidy recognized it from his time in Vice, a camera, a one-way mirror, and people on the other side unaware that they were being filmed. So who was it and who wanted the leverage the film would give?

Cassidy crossed and looked through the one-way. In the next room, the young senator from the plane was on the bed straining through improbable gymnastics with two young women, one the color of dark honey, and the other of chocolate. They all seemed to be having a good time. As Cassidy watched, one of the women glanced at the one-way and then shifted to be sure the senator's face was clearly visible.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?”

The two men from the room were back. They looked angry and dangerous. One had a knife or razor scar that ran from his ear to his chin. The other had the thickened eyebrows of an ex-pug. “Who the fuck are you?” Scar tissue asked.

“Nobody. Just passing by. Saw the camera and thought, cool, guys are in the movie business. I always thought it would be cool to be in the movie business.” He used the talk to close the distance on the two men. He figured the pug would be the more dangerous of the two. He'd know how to hit, and he'd know how to avoid getting hit.

“The movie business? What are you, a wise guy? What, you walk into someone's room, no one asked you?”

“Sorry.”

“Fucking right you're going to be sorry.”

Cassidy swept up a ceramic table lamp and smashed it against the side of the pug's head and then backhanded the wreckage of the lamp across the scar's face. When his hands went up to defend himself, Cassidy kicked him in the balls, and then turned to see how the pug was doing. He was on his knees on the floor, dazed and bleeding from the ear. Cassidy kicked him in the head, and he fell over, unconscious. He turned back to the man with the scar. He was bent over, holding himself and sucking for air that would not come. Cassidy punched his head with the remains of the lamp, and the man went down hard. It took a minute to tie their hands with lamp cords, and then Cassidy took the reel of film out of the camera and left the room.

The people in the corridor were at the far end where a window looked down on whatever was happening below. Cassidy went to the door next to the room with the movie camera and knocked. There was no answer. He slapped the door hard a couple of times with the palm of his hand.

“Go away.” Muffled by the door.

“Senator, you've got to get out of there.”

“We don't want any.” Muffled giggles.

Cassidy banged again. “Senator, it's Michael Cassidy. The cop from the plane. You've got a problem.”

The door opened. The Senator wore a towel and had a drink in his hand. “I'm very busy, Mike. I'm doing a little fact-finding in here.”

“Uh-huh, well you're fucked and you're fucked.” He held up the reel of film. The senator seemed to understand what it meant. His face turned serious. “I'm in room five-oh-six across the hall,” Cassidy said. “I'll buy you a drink.” The senator nodded and went back inside the room.

Ten minutes later he knocked on Cassidy's door.

“Do you know who owns this hotel?” Cassidy poured some scotch into a glass, added ice, and passed it to the senator, whose hair was wet from the shower.

“No.”

“A couple of people, fronts, but mostly Meyer Lansky. Do you know who that is?”

“Sure. He's a gangster.”

“Yeah, well, he's
the
gangster. Some people call him the Mob's accountant. Some say he's the brains behind all the illegal gambling in the States. He's got Batista in his pocket and Batista's given him license to run gambling in Cuba. He's one of those guys who thinks long-term. The film, the girls, you, that's long-term thinking. It's always good to have some weight with a U.S. Senator. Maybe assigning you a room with a one-way mirror wasn't coincidence. Where'd you find the girls?”

“They found me in the bar.” The senator grinned and shrugged at his own gullibility. His eyes were wary, but he didn't seem badly shaken by anything that had happened. Maybe he was one of those people who was used to people cleaning up after him. Maybe he was one of those men who liked to walk to the edge of the cliff just to see how high the fall might be. “What about you? Are you thinking about long-term benefits?”

Cassidy tossed the reel of film to the senator. “You should burn this, unless you collect them, reminiscences for your old age.”

The senator bounced the reel in his hand as if weighing it. “You think I'm an idiot, don't you?”

“I haven't thought about you at all. I saw what they were doing. I didn't like it, so I stopped it.”

“Okay. Thanks.” The senator waited to see what came next.

“You're welcome.” Cassidy headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs.”

*   *   *

The lobby was full of people, some in bathrobes, some in party clothes. The lights of ambulances and fire engines and police cars flicked through the glass of the doors and windows and painted the walls in streaks of red and blue.

Outside, the fire trucks and ambulances and police cars were parked at angles. They had come fast, and the men in them had gotten out fast, but after that they had discovered there wasn't much to do. An explosion had blackened the façade of the casino wing, and the glass had blown into some of the ground-floor windows, but that was the extent of the damage. Flashbulbs flared. Cops and uniformed SIM officers stood talking in clumps. A group of firemen put more energy than necessary into extinguishing flames in a grouping of small ornamental palms.

A cop grabbed Cassidy's arm and pushed him back toward the other tourists. Cassidy gestured toward the group of uniformed officers bunched near the casino entrance. “
Estoy con el Coronel Fuentes.
” The cop stepped back and touched the brim of his hat and nodded.

Fuentes seemed unsurprised to see him.

“What happened?” Cassidy asked.

“The bomb went off before she could get it inside.” He nodded toward where Sergeant Lopato crouched by a young woman who lay on the sidewalk. Light from the hotel windows fell on her. She wore a yellow party dress. The dress was dark with blood. Her left side was heavily bandaged. Blood had flowed from under her and pooled at the raised sill of the entrance. One foot still wore a green high-heeled shoe. She moaned, and Lopato leaned close and said something to her. She moved her head from side to side, either in refusal or in pain.

“It blew her left arm off,” Fuentes said. “Clearly she meant to carry it into the casino. Maximum damage, hey? Dead tourists. Innocent Americans killed. The outrage. The terror. Now the tourists don't come. The economy suffers. The new order rises. The old order falls. A good plan when you're sitting with your Communist friends in a house by the beach drinking rum and making revolution. Who would look twice at a pretty girl in a pretty dress carrying her purse into the casino? No one. We want pretty girls in the casino. And what is she thinking as she comes here, hey? She will walk in and leave the purse under a table, maybe the roulette table, play a few spins, and then walk out. Maybe she plans to stop on the Malecón to watch, and then home to her friends, full of excitement. The description of the explosion, the noise, the fire, the screams of the capitalist oppressors. And she is the hero. A good plan. Only one problem. A bad timer, or a bad fuse. The stupidity of amateurs.”

A doctor had been standing nearby trying to get Fuentes's attention. Fuentes ignored him. Finally the doctor could not wait any longer. “
Coronel
…” He lifted his black bag to show Fuentes.

“No. No drugs. Not until she speaks to my sergeant. Give her drugs, she goes to sleep. She wakes up in the hospital, she has courage she does not have now.” He said it in English for Cassidy's benefit.

“She's going to die if you don't let me attend her.”

“She came here to kill. If she dies, she dies. So what?”

The girl cried out, a high wail that trailed to a whimper. It sounded like a plea.

“If she lives,” Cassidy said, “you can question her again and again. If she dies, you get nothing.”

“Your professional opinion, Detective?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

Lopato stood when Fuentes approached him. The two men talked together in low voices. Then Lopato squatted by the girl again and asked her a question. She did not respond. Lopato put his hand on the blood soaked bandage that covered her ruined shoulder and squeezed.

The girl screamed.

Some of the firemen walked away quickly.

Lopato leaned down and asked her something again. When she did not answer, he clamped her shoulder. She screamed again. Her feet drummed on the terrace stones, and she died.

Fuentes looked over at Cassidy and shrugged.

*   *   *

He did not think he would sleep. And then he woke and somewhere in the night an idea had come. He examined it in daylight. It seemed half-baked, but it was all he had, so he went to look for the senator.

Cassidy found him eating breakfast in the dining room. The senator looked freshly showered, rested, and serene, as if nothing that had happened the night before had touched him. He indicated the chair opposite him at his table. “Sit down. Have some breakfast. I recommend the papaya, and the coffee is wonderful. I don't know why you can't get a decent cup of coffee in the States.”

A waiter came and poured coffee for Cassidy, took his order, and went away.

“I guess you heard what all the excitement was about.” The senator mopped egg yolk with a piece of toast. “A rebel bomber blew herself up, one of Castro's people, they say.”

“Yes. I saw her.”

“I hear she was pretty.”

“Not when I saw her.”

“They can't win. Batista's got a big army, well equipped. We've been supplying them and training them for years. I don't think a bunch of ragtags are going to beat them.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“She must have known she could die doing it. She must have known the bomb could go off while she was still there.”

“And?”

“Do you think there are any men in Batista's army who would blow themselves up for him?”

The senator pushed his plate away. “That's an interesting thought. Dedication over equipment. Commitment beats heavy weapons.”

“The American Revolution.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. It doesn't always work. Mostly God is on the side of big battalions. That's the gospel up in Washington. Still, an interesting thought.”

The waiter brought Cassidy's food, scrambled eggs, a piece of papaya, a fried plantain.

“I apologize for last night. I insulted you. You did me a service and I asked what you wanted in return. It comes, I suppose, of working in a town where nobody offers anything for free. I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine. You begin to think everyone acts that way. Sorry.”

“Forget it. And at the risk of disillusioning you, I need your help.”

“Come on.” He looked a little angry.

“The world's full of disappointments.”

“Yeah, yeah. What do you need?” He was not happy.

“Are you really down here to do some fact-finding?”

“That's what it says on my schedule and on my receipts.”

“Are you busy today?”

“Maybe a cigar factory in the afternoon. We've still got a couple of tobacco growers down near the Connecticut border. Some of them sell wrappers to the Cuban cigar makers. Why?”

“Do you know La Cabaña?”

“The fortress across the harbor next to El Morro.”

“It's a prison. I need to get in there.”

“Sure. Why?”

“I have to get someone out.”

That didn't seem to disturb him, but it made him pause. “Who?”

“A woman.”

“Uh-huh. What's she in for?” The interest of a born conspirator began to show.

“I don't know. Politics. But whatever it is, they're going to kill her.”

“So what's happening here? Are you following your dick or your brain?” This from a man who had done both.

“Both.”

“You know her.”

“Yes.”