Killing Castro

by Lawrence Block

  It was at the university that Fidel’s future was molded. He entered the Law School, became embroiled in student affairs. He was an impressive figure—tall, good-looking, with strong features, a quick mind, and a fine speaking voice. In a short time he had become a prominent campus figure, an artist at political manipulation.

  But in the summer of 1947 Castro’s revolutionary zeal interrupted his academic studies. He joined an expeditionary force training in the hills of Oriente, preparing to invade the Dominican Republic to overthrow Trujillo, the island republic’s long-term dictator. There Fidel got his first taste of military life, a taste which developed with the years.

  The invasion was premature, and a failure. The Dominican government got wind of the plans and sent a note of protest to the Cuban government. The Cuban president was quick to co-operate with Trujillo. Frigates of the Cuban navy intercepted the invasion force and squelched the attempt. Castro himself jumped overboard with his submachine gun in hand and swam to shore holding the gun high overhead.

  Fidel returned to the university once more and turned his sights on campus politics. He accepted Communist support in the campaign for election to the vice-presidency of the Law School’s student government, then spun around to unleash a spirited campaign against the campus Communists. When the president resigned, Castro stepped to the helm of the student government.

  He was learning. He was a natural politician, quick to sense the twists and turns of the game, ready to cement allegiances for his own personal gain. He was a pragmatic idealist—his goals were high and worthy, but he was willing to use less than idealistic means to achieve those goals. Fidel went on, continuing with his studies, advancing himself as a politician. Cuban politics were disorganized at the time. Batista had been living abroad in voluntary exile at Daytona Beach, Florida, since 1944; in that year he had finally held an honest election, the first since 1933, and had been beaten badly. But the administration which followed Batista was almost as corrupt, furthering the interests of the Cuban upper classes to the exclusion of the poor. Fidel dreamed of a free Cuba, her land redistributed to the peasants, her citizens equal before the law. In 1948 Fidel married; a year later his first son was born. In 1950 he graduated from the University of Havana and hung out his shingle as a lawyer. His idealism prevailed, and he spent the bulk of his time defending men and women of the lower classes, rarely collecting a fee. The common people of Havana knew Castro. They saw him as a good man, a man with their interests at heart. And how did Castro see himself? As an embryonic politician, a man with a future in Cuba. In those days, living in Havana, defending the poor in the Cuban courts, maybe Fidel Castro did not dream of revolutions. After all, Batista was in exile in Florida. The government was corrupt and reforms were needed desperately, but maybe he figured there was no reform which could not be achieved through legal means.

  After all, in the elections of 1952, Fidel Castro intended to run for congress.

  But there were no elections in 1952. That was the year Batista, hungry once more for power, returned from Daytona Beach to Cuba. On March tenth he entered Camp Columbia. His vast fortune had been depleted in a divorce settlement and he intended to rebuild it, squeezing the money from the island of Cuba. He seized control of the army and sent the legitimate government running for their lives.

  Batista’s coup was conducted swiftly and efficiently. In no time at all he had complete control of the government. Foreign nations extended diplomatic recognition to him and the Cuban people themselves did not dare to raise their voices against him. But one young lawyer in Havana had different ideas. He saw only that a corrupt dictator once again had his grip on Cuba. He knew that this was wrong, and he tried to do something about it.

  Castro submitted a brief to the Cuban courts contesting the Batista government. The brief was thrown out. He wrote a letter to Batista, calling for honest elections and representative government. The letter, of course, was ignored.

  Batista remained in power.

  And then Fidel Castro realized something. He saw that the Batista dictatorship was not the sort to be ousted through parliamentary means. He saw that the reforms he envisioned, the redistribution of land and the social progress, would not come about gradually. Batista’s Cuba was a toy for the rich, run for the benefit of corrupt Cuban politicians.

  Batista could not be reformed. He could only be overthrown. He could not be changed but had to be thrown out bodily. The only politics which would work in Cuba were the politics of the knife and the Sten gun, the politics of guerrilla warfare in the hills and underground intrigue in the cities.

  The following year, on the 26th of July in 1953, he began.

  THREE

  When Garrison walked out on Hiraldo, he went to a bar a block away. The air was warm and close. He walked quickly, eyes front. He knew there was a man behind him but he did not turn around.

  The bar was dark and dirty, filled with Cubans. Garrison stood near the rear and nursed a glass of draft beer. He saw his tail come in, a hollow-eyed Cuban wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Now he had a problem. The tail could be one of Hiraldo’s men checking up on the would-be assassins. But he could just as easily be somebody else’s man. Fidel’s, for example.

  Garrison thought it over. He finished his beer, left the bar, caught a taxi. His tail followed him out of the bar and stepped into an old Mercury idling at the curb. The Merc pulled out and stayed behind the taxi.

  “In case you didn’t know,” the cabbie said, “you got a tail.”

  “I know,” Garrison said.

  “Want to lose him?”

  “No,” Garrison said. “Pretend you don’t know he’s there. Find me a cheap, quiet hotel. A dump.”

  The cabbie found one, an ancient building with a neon sign that said Hotel and nothing more. Garrison climbed four crumbling wooden steps, walked into a lobby that smelled of disinfectant and stale beer. A clerk wearing a green eye shade took Garrison’s three dollars in advance and gave him a key to a room on the third floor. There was no elevator. Garrison climbed the stairs and let himself into his room, locking the door behind him.

  There was an unmade bed, a dresser with cigarette burns around the edges, a cane-bottomed wooden chair. Garrison turned on the light and sat on the edge of the bed. After ten minutes had passed he turned out the light. It was their move, he thought. Let them make it. He figured they’d give him time to get to sleep, then sneak in to do their dirty work. He’d fool them—if his ruse worked—and hand them their heads.

  He waited for half an hour—it seemed like an eternity—ears alert for the slightest sound.

  They were sloppy. He heard their footsteps on the staircase, heard unintelligible whispering in the hallway. He tiptoed to the door as he heard the scratching of a knife blade prying the door open. Then silence.

  The door moved inward. Garrison had his gun in his hand, the sleek Beretta he carried in a special pocket sewn into his jacket. He held the gun by the barrel now. This had to be silent. Even in a cheap fleabag hotel you didn’t take chances with gunfire.

  There were two of them, two Cubans standing in his room, letting their eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. One—the fellow who had been driving the Mercury—had a large revolver in his hand. The other held a knife.

  The gun first. Garrison was close, close enough to reach out and touch them, close enough to smell their sweat. His body relaxed, shifted into gear, unwound in fluid motion. The Beretta went up and then down. There was a dull thud, a shifting, a grunt. The man with the gun fell, face forward, into the room.

  Garrison pushed the door shut and crouched, ready to spring.

  Now it was cute. Now they were alone in total darkness, he and the one with the knife, a switchblade stiletto with a four-inch blade.

  Garrison had the advantage; he could see better, his eyes were used to the dim light. But the Cuban was smart, refusing to make a move until he could make out Garrison’s silhouette. Tense moments idled by before the man lunged like a cobra, the knife coming
up in a liquid underhand motion. Garrison dodged, grabbed for the Cuban’s arm, missed.

  The knife snaked in again. Garrison backed off, bumped into the bed and cursed. The Cuban was ready for another try and Garrison ducked just in time, the knife moving wide over a shoulder. The Cuban was breathing hoarsely, moving in for the kill—he hoped. Garrison got away from the bed, found the cane-bottomed chair, hefted it and threw it. It took the knife artist in the chest and sent him reeling backwards, but he came up quickly, the knife still in his hand.

  Time pressed Garrison. The other Cuban, the one on the floor, was coming to. Garrison heard him trying to struggle to his feet and he knew it was now or never. He wished he still had his Beretta, but that was gone, probably under the bed.

  The Cuban charged but Garrison was ready. He sidestepped, moved in hard, catching the Cuban with a hand on his wrist and another hand on his upper arm. His own knee came up quickly. With the knee under the Cuban’s elbow it was very simple. He broke the man’s arm as easily as he would have snapped a twig. The stiletto clattered to the floor. The Cuban moaned like a girl, went to his knees, and Garrison knocked him out with a kick to the temple.

  Another kick sent the other Cuban off to sleep again.

  He switched on the light and went through their pockets. The knife wielder carried a few bills and a handful of change, nothing more. Garrison took the money. The man with the gun had a wallet containing a Cuban driver’s license, a passport, more money. The passport had a recent date.

  Castristas, Garrison thought. Fidel’s bullyboys. And they had come to kill him. So Castro’s men suspected something was cooking. Well, that made it harder. They might know something was cooking but they didn’t know what. Garrison shrugged his shoulders—twenty grand was a lot of money, the kind of dough you don’t get unless there’s danger in the deal.

  And this pair wouldn’t make trouble. Garrison grinned, found the stiletto. The man who held the gun, the driver, was stirring again. Garrison cut his throat easily, then slit the throat of the other Cuban. He wiped his prints from the knife, the door, the various articles of furniture in the room he might have touched. He found his Beretta, returned it to the pocket where it belonged and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  He left the hotel. The maid would find a surprise in the morning. If they had maids in such a dump. And if anything could surprise them.

  He laughed, a quick private laugh. Then he caught a cab and rode to the Splendora.

  The Splendora was a medium-priced hotel in downtown Tampa where Garrison was registered under the name of David Palmer. He went to his room on the top floor and packed his suitcase. That wasn’t difficult—Garrison traveled light. The suitcase, when full, contained one lightweight cord suit, one pair of tennis sneakers, two summer shirts, a few changes of underwear and a few pairs of socks. There was one book, a slim volume of poems by Rimbaud. Garrison did not read much but he happened to like Rimbaud. He carried his suitcase to the lobby, paid his bill and checked out. He left no forwarding address.

  His car, an old blue Ford, was parked near the Splendora. He had bought the car in New Orleans a week ago as David Palmer and had driven it to Tampa. Now he put his suitcase in the trunk and locked it. There was a gun in the trunk, a high-powered rifle with a scope sight that had cost a little more than the car. It, too, had been purchased in New Orleans. He got behind the wheel and drove out of Tampa.

  Garrison was thirty-seven. In 1924, while Coolidge was being re-elected President of the United States, Ray Garrison was being born in a town about as far from Tampa as you could go without leaving the country. The town was Birch Fork, in Washington, a very small town in the central part of the state. He lived in Birch Fork for seventeen years. Then he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

  When he thought about it, which happened rarely, it occurred to him that the history of those seventeen years in Birch Fork was best told in terms of the weapons he had owned. He was, first, a solitary child and, next, a solitary youth. He spent those early years in the woods. He never went without a weapon.

  When he was seven he made a slingshot. The stock was made of strong wood and the sling was a stout rubber band. The slingshot was inaccurate at first, but he worked on it and with it, practicing constantly. Before long he was able to get squirrels and jack rabbits, sometimes a bird or two. He didn’t kill the small game out of blood lust but simply for target practice. It just wasn’t the same when you shot at pop bottles or tin cans. You needed a living target to make it all real.

  When he was eleven his father bought him a BB gun for his birthday. He loved the gun, but it was inexpensive and the barrel was untrue. First he learned to make up for the gun’s inaccuracy by aiming a little high and wide. Then one day the gun irritated him. He took it apart, hammered out the slight dent that was ruining the gun’s aim, and put it back together again.

  Three years later he got a .22. This he bought himself, out of money he had earned at odd jobs and chores, and it was a beautiful gun with a highly polished stock and gleaming metal parts. This was a real gun, not a toy, and he was good with it. A year or two later he added a shotgun to his collection. He hadn’t liked shotguns at first—the wide pattern they cast seemed to him to be making things too easy for the hunter—but he quickly learned the subtleties of the shotgun and grew to like it.

  He never ate what he killed, never brought it home, never stuffed it, skinned it or mounted it. He was interested in guns, and in the sport. He was not interested in dead bodies.

  Then 1941, and Pearl Harbor, and the Marines. He was in all the way, in for the whole Pacific campaign, jumping from one ugly little island to the next, with men dying around him and in front of him. He used an M-1, a BAR and a machine gun. He learned hand-to-hand combat. He lived in death’s presence, and looked it squarely in the face. He thought often of death, wondered about it, hoped he would avoid it. He went through the war without a wound, without a scratch.

  And the war was over. The Marines knocked off Guadalcanal and Tarawa and Iwo and the rest, and then some bastard of a flyboy pushed a lever and stole the show. A bomb hit Hiroshima, and a few days later another one hit Nagasaki, and then the war was over and he came back to the States again.

  When he got back to Birch Fork his home was gone. His mother and father were dead, and there was no reason to stick around. One day he went into the woods with his rifle and took a shot at a squirrel or two, but the thrill was gone. When you were used to hunting men you didn’t get much kick taking pot shots at a squirrel. He packed, again, and headed for Chicago.

  For a few years he floated. Then one night in a bad section of St. Louis a man started a fight and pulled a knife on Garrison. Ray took it away from him and broke the blade on the bar top. Then, with his hands, he beat the other man to death.

  The police didn’t get there in time. They’d been nowhere near the place and by the time they got there Ray was in a fat man’s apartment. The man told Garrison he was okay, there was work for someone like him. He asked Garrison was he good with a gun and Garrison just smiled.

  That’s ancient history, he thought now, the car hugging the road and heading south from Tampa. Ancient history. All those years with the mob, all those syndicate jobs for fast, clean cash, they were done with. The syndicate wanted too much. They wanted to own you, and Garrison didn’t want to be owned. So he worked freelance now. He worked for whoever hired him, did an average of four jobs a year, at an average of five grand a job. When not on an assignment, which was ninety percent of the time, he loafed. He floated around the country, stayed in good hotels, read Rimbaud. He liked Rimbaud.

  He was in Key West in the morning. The little island was quiet, warm. He parked the car in a field, unlocked the trunk, broke down the high-powered rifle and packed it in his suitcase with his clothes. He went through his wallet, destroyed the few pieces of identification made out to David Palmer. He didn’t need the car now, didn’t need Palmer. He picked up the suitcase and lugged it down the main street of
the town. He stopped at a restaurant for breakfast, ate a double order of ham and eggs and drank a quart of cold milk.

  The counterman was short and bald. “I want to charter a boat,” Garrison told him.

  “Fishing?”

  Garrison shrugged. “A speedy little launch. Something quick and easy. Who do I see?”

  The counterman thought about it. “Try Phil Di Angelo,” he suggested. “You can most times find him down at the fourth pier, or at the Blue Moon, it’s a bar down there.”

  Garrison thanked him and left. He tried the docks and didn’t find Di Angelo. In the Blue Moon the bartender pointed to a dark, unshaven man sitting alone with a bottle of beer at a table in the back. Garrison carried his suitcase across the dirty floor and sat down near Di Angelo. The man looked up. He had been drinking, Garrison saw, but he was not drunk.

  “You’ve got a boat for hire,” Garrison said.

  Di Angelo looked at him. “You wanta hire her?”

  “I might. Is she fast?”

  “Fast and trim. The fishing’s so-so now, not too good and not too bad. You won’t get a sail, if that’s what you’re looking for. No sail and no tarpon. We might have some fun.”

  “I don’t fish.”

  “No?” Di Angelo’s eyes were shrewd, appraising. “Go on, man.”

  Garrison said “I want to go to Cuba. Havana.”

  “You crazy?”

  “No.”

  “You must be crazy.”

  Garrison didn’t say anything. He waited for Di Angelo to make up his mind.

  “I could do it, man. It’ll cost you.”

  “How much?”

  “A grand.”