“I’ll kill them.” Face bloody, Carlos drew from beneath his bed a long machete. It was their father’s, still holding a gleaming edge. Weeks before, Carlos had smuggled it out of the cluttered garage and hid it below his mattress so he could toy with it in the moonlight each night before sleep.
“Give me that,” Snake said, and pried the heavy blade from Carlos’s hand. “I’m going for Carmen. You stay here.”
Snake shoved Carlos into the dusty hideaway below the box spring.
At the door, Snake peeked out to see men in the living room. Stocking masks and dark clothes. Their backs to him as they fired at the last resisters in the Florida room. Snake pressed against the wall and inched toward Carmen’s room, carrying the machete’s dreadful weight.
One of the invaders turned his way. Snake flattened into the shadows. When the man swung back to fire at the holdouts, Snake threw himself forward, made it to Carmen’s open door, and lunged inside.
A man was there. Blocky head, thick shoulders. His hair cut in a burr.
The man was sitting on the side of her bed, his right hand moving under Carmen’s sheets. In her white nightgown his sister was suffering the assault in silence. Her eyes found Snake’s as he entered the room.
Snake raised the cane-cutter and stole forward until he was just behind the man.
Her eyes on Snake, Carmen said, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”
The machete was cocked high when the blocky man swiveled, his face hidden in shadows. Snake faltered for a heartbeat, then emptied his lungs of a scream, and brought the blade down, striking the man’s outstretched hand. Metal clashed bone, and the machete spun from his grip.
The man made no sound, just stared at his mutilated hand, the first two fingers hanging by threads of gristle. Blood washing down his sleeve. On the man’s pinkie finger, a large diamond ring sparkled. A fat, ugly diamond.
When the man dropped to his knees, Carmen tore out of bed.
“Come on, Snake. Come on.”
She scrambled out the window and dropped into the long spring grass. A second later, machete in hand, Snake landed beside her, and from the adjacent window Carlos jumped onto the lawn and rolled to his feet.
The sentry spotted them as they neared the street. Sprinting through the warm night air, Snake heard gunfire, three blasts, four. Snake slowed when he heard the shots, falling back a step behind Carmen, and out of the darkness his sister slung her arms around him, tackling, dragging him to the lawn. They fell side by side, and her face came to rest inches away, blood pouring from her temple. Her eyes lingered on his for a second, then rolled upward to make the acquaintance of her God.
Snake drew a breath, the black night spinning. Then he grabbed the machete and found his feet.
The attacker was stalking toward them, head craned forward, peering through the silk stocking. A shiny pistol wavered before him.
Carlos fled across the street. By then neighbors were spilling from their houses, calling out to one another through the darkness.
Snake charged the man.
A slug whisked by his ear; another plowed into the soil at his feet. Snake flew across the yard and gored the man’s belly, drove him backward. The two fell, and Snake rolled away and drew the blade free and hacked at the man, chopped and chopped until the killer no longer moved.
When Snake looked up, the invaders were fleeing the house. One of them saw their fallen comrade and started toward him, but a woman called out, “Leave him, let’s go.”
A woman.
They ran to the cars, slammed doors, roared away. Beside him a neighbor squatted over the body of Snake’s victim and rolled back the stocking that covered the dead man’s face. He was a short, narrow man with a thin mustache. Snake stared into his empty eyes but did not know him.
Then sirens.
While a medic treated Carlos’s gash, detectives questioned Snake. Had he seen any of the bad men? Could he identify them? Snake said nothing.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Old Snake was dead. New Snake was emerging from sloughed-off skin.
“You boys have relatives in Miami? Aunts, uncles?”
Snake shook his head. There was no one. The police officer eyed him strangely, this child, this killer.
A sharply handsome man with a birthmark on his cheek leaned close to the policeman and whispered and the officer nodded, then said to Snake:
“This good citizen has offered to look after you boys until the state of Florida in its infinite wisdom decides what the hell to do with you.”
Snake voiced no protest. Going home with the man was what came next. Resisting was useless. The world’s machinery operated according to laws absolute and unstoppable.
The man drove them away in his black Cadillac. His large house faced the dark shimmer of Biscayne Bay. Silk sheets on the beds, plush pillows. Carlos fell instantly asleep, but Snake stared into the darkness and thought.
For days the massacre filled the news. Before the killers left, they’d painted slogans on the walls of the Moraleses’ house. Viva la Revolución. Viva Fidel. Death to all traitors. This was clearly Castro’s work, the TV people proclaimed. His spies were everywhere. The bloodbath was meant to stifle dissent and put fear into the dozens of other exile groups in Miami that were organizing small armies to stage attacks on Cuba.
The man Snake hacked to death was named Humberto Berasategui. Though he worked as a Miami plumber, it was clear that Berasategui was a communist sympathizer, an agent in league with the dictator.
Local Cubans called for U.S. retaliation. Full-scale invasion. Hundreds rallied in the street and marched with placards, chants of hate and war. Eight people, including Snake’s parents and Carmen, had been butchered by the pack of devils.
Snake saw himself on television, led away by the man with the birthmark. The mayor of Miami, Stanton King, had charitably opened his Coconut Grove home to the two orphaned boys.
“We’ll find the boys a good family,” the mayor said to the camera. “No matter how long it takes.”
“Be good, Snake,” Carlos whispered. “I like it here.”
The day following the murders, FBI agents interviewed the boys while King chatted nearby with police. The same questions as the night before. What had Snake seen? A big man with a square head. That’s all? He no longer has two fingers on his right hand, Snake said. The men looked away as if chilled.
Later he heard Gladys, the housekeeper, gossiping with the yardman.
“Those FBI boys’ll catch the killers,” she said. “You mark my word, G-men are as smart as they come, they’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“No, ma’am. Not with them Cubans mixed up in it,” the gardener said. “Them people got so many secrets, so much bad blood going back to that damn island, back to the dawn of time, you watch, there ain’t going to be no bottom to it.”
That evening King didn’t speak to the boys, just sat in his study and drank can after can of Country Club malt liquor.
At dawn the next morning another group of federal men arrived. Secret Service, the housekeeper whispered. Dark suits, rigid haircuts. They scoured the mansion, poked through closets, inspected the hot, dry attic.
Late that night three black limousines rolled up. A tall man with a belly climbed out of the largest car, surrounded by agents. Stanton King met him in the drive, shook his hand.
“Look there, boys. The president of these entire United States. Mr. LBJ himself. Most powerful man in the world.” Gladys stood beside them at the front window as the two men mounted the steps.
“Big deal,” Carlos said.
“You gonna remember this all the rest of your life. Isn’t many people get to see the president up close in their own house. That’s how important Mr. King is. They saying he run for governor next. That’s why LBJ came over after his Democrat get-together. Pay his respects to Mr. King. Talk business.”
The group came inside and went into the study and shut the door. Lyndon Baines Johnson. February 27, 1964. Two days after C
assius. Two days after Carmen died, trusting in the grace of a merciful God. Snake prayed she found him.
Snake lay down on his bed and switched on his radio. Through the wall he could hear Carlos’s television set blaring Napoleon Solo’s voice in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. On his own radio was one of Carmen’s favorite Beatles song, “I Saw Her Standing There.”
With the radio playing softly, Snake was staring into the dark when a Secret Service man appeared in his doorway and summoned him downstairs. Snake wore new Superman pajamas, blue and red with elastic cuffs at the ankles and wrists. Gladys stood on the landing, watching Snake descend the stairs, her face slack with astonishment.
In the study, the president came to his feet and walked over. A large man with a congenial smile, iron gray eyes. He bent forward and held out his paw, and Snake raised his hand to shake. The man’s flesh was cool and dry. He seemed both radiant and weary, as if his great storehouse of vitality was under heavy strain, drawn down by responsibilities too enormous to imagine.
“I’m awful sorry to learn of your loss, son. Awful sorry.”
When an interval passed, Snake withdrew his hand from the president’s grip and stepped back. Barefoot, in his cartoon pajamas, feeling foolish. The three Secret Service men were looking away from the scene. Stanton King stared at the rug, as if the president and the boy gave off a painful glare.
“Nobody can replace a boy’s father and mother, but I’m certain Mr. King will do his damnedest. You’ll be well taken care of, son. Count on it.”
“My sister, Carmen,” Snake said. “No one can replace her.”
LBJ nodded solemnly.
“You’re right, son. Your sister, too. A terrible loss.” LBJ looked around at the other men, then turned back to Snake. “You’re a brave boy. It took courage to fight back like you did. You’re a hero, a credit to your nation.”
Snake had nothing to say. He’d killed one man, maimed another, but it had not been enough to save Carmen. All he felt was the black chokehold of guilt.
When Mayor King told Snake he could go, the boy turned from Lyndon Johnson and went back to his room, shut the door, and lay down, inhaling the heavy scent of night-blooming jasmine that clogged the air beyond his window.
He devoted that sleepless night and many nights to come replaying what happened. Searching for a clue he had missed, anything that might give his life direction. But the yardman was right. There was no bottom to it. Like a cavern branching down endlessly into the limitless black heart of the world.
In the hours of that everlasting night Snake made a vow—his own mission. Inch by inch he would wriggle to the bottom of that bottomless cave, and one day shine his light in the face of the monster who resided there. Find out what happened and why. Then take his vengeance.
Whatever it took. However long. Until then, he’d be Cassius. Wait for his eyes to clear, backpedal, stay out of range. Survive, survive.
CHAPTER ONE
“You hate Miami.”
“It’s not my favorite dot on the map,” Thorn said. “But I don’t hate it.”
They stood on the pine dock that rimmed the boat basin.
Sugarman set his new laptop on the seat of a canvas deck chair. He’d been showing off the computer, and Thorn had been trying hard to feign interest as Sugar flashed through dozens of digital photos of his twin daughters, zoomed in and out on their beautiful smiles, showing Thorn how to filter away messy backgrounds, crop off the edges.
Now Sugar took a swallow of his Bud and watched Thorn tug his red-and-white bobber toward the center of the basin. It was a muggy April afternoon, closing in on suppertime with the sun drifting behind the sabal palms on the western edge of Thorn’s property. A gust off the Atlantic riffled the lagoon, and for a moment the water went opaque, then a moment later the breeze died and the rocky bottom came back into focus fifteen feet below.
“You ever spent seven consecutive days in Miami?”
“Not that I recall.”
“You’ll freak, Thorn, you’ll break out in boils.”
“Oh, I’ll survive.”
“So what’s the deal? Alexandra’s quitting her job? Going to do search and rescue full-time?”
“She and Buck have to pass final certification. But yeah, Miami PD is setting up a team. She’s first in line.”
“Lost children, old people wandering off? Cadavers?”
“That’s the idea.”
“That’s why she hasn’t been down lately? This extra work?”
“Part of the reason, yeah, but I’ve been going up there. All of us slogging around the Everglades. I mind Lawton while she and Buck search for scented dummies.”
“First I heard of that.”
Thorn gave another light tug on the line.
“It’s interesting work. Puzzle solving, following clues.”
“Not just the dog sticking its nose up in the air, then taking off?”
“A little more complicated than that.”
“Well, that mutt’s smarter than I thought he was,” Sugarman said.
“He’s a Lab. Even the dumb ones are smart.”
Thorn watched his bobber drifting with the incoming tide.
“Twenty years snapping photos of corpses, working around hard-ass homicide cops, I see how she’d find search dogs more stimulating.”
Thorn was silent, focused on the bobber.
Sugar said, “Why doesn’t Lawton come down here, spend seven nights at scenic, relaxing Club Thorn?”
He gestured at the house behind them, the one-story Cape Cod where Thorn had grown up. Tucked in an insolated cove, it faced into the steady Atlantic winds.
Fifteen years ago when Kate Truman, his adoptive mother, died, Thorn shuttered the place and settled into a stilt house a few miles south on the opposite side of the island. Then last year a fire turned his stilt house to cinders, and all these months later, he still hadn’t found the heart to clean up the debris, much less rebuild. So he’d returned to the white wooden house where he’d spent his youth, opened it up, aired it out, and for the past few weeks he’d been adjusting to the ghostly echoes. Scenes from his youth replaying at odd moments, a whiff of a baseball glove, a moldering fishing rod, would set off long rambles through his teenage years.
“While she’s in Tampa taking her tests, she gave me a list of projects she needs done, a roof leak, that kind of thing. So I putter around while Lawton’s at day care, take charge of him in the evening. Seven nights, how bad is that?”
“Alex never really liked the Keys, did she?”
“She likes it fine, but all the driving back and forth gets old, an hour each way, traffic getting worse all the time. Her life is up there.”
“In Miami.”
“Yeah, Miami. The streets, the hum.”
“And your life is here, the water, the hush.”
“You trying to say something?”
Sugarman tightened his lips.
“All right. You want the barefaced truth?” He drew a wary breath. “Ever since Alex stopped coming down here, you’ve been seriously gloomy.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m serious. Bleak. Moodier than usual.”
“Funny, I thought I was feeling pretty bubbly.”
“You? Bubbly?”
“Relatively speaking, I mean. Relatively bubbly.”
“Okay, so when’s the last time you tied a bonefish fly?”
Thorn tugged his line, scanned the basin.
“A month ago? Two months?”
“Two’s about right.”
“So what’ve you been doing for income?”
“I’m getting by.”
“You’re surviving on chunky peanut butter and beer. Raiding the penny jar. Can’t even afford Red Stripe, drinking Budweiser, for godsakes.”
“You volunteering to be my financial planner?”
“Tell you what I will do,” he said. “I’ll go up there myself, babysit the old man. Lawton and I get along fine. You stay here, get to work.”
“Nice try,” Thorn said. “But I need to do this.”
“What you need is to get back to what makes you sane.”
“So now I’m insane?”
“You’re mopey, Thorn. And you been hitting the long-necks hard. Starting early, a six-pack before the sun goes down. You need to get your groove back, my man.”
“My groove?”
“Oh, jeez, now I get it.” Sugar shook his head. Something so obvious taking so long to dawn. “You’re thinking about moving up there, aren’t you? That’s what this is about. Desert the Keys, move in with Alexandra. Jesus, Thorn. That’s it, isn’t it? Live in freaking Miami.”
“Here it comes.” Thorn nodded to his left. “Ten o’clock, five yards.”
He angled to his right along the dock and tugged the bobber so it was floating a few feet ahead of the big snook’s path.
“And, hey, what’s with the bobber?” Sugar said. “Where’s your fly rod?”
“I want to catch this fish, not play with it.”
Sugarman leaned out and watched the snook swim past the finger mullet that dangled below the bobber.
He and Sugar went back to grade school. Though it felt like they went back further than that. Brother yin and brother yang. Sugar was the only guy on earth who could give Thorn the level of shit he did. Tell that kind of truth.
He’d been a Monroe County sheriff’s deputy, now a security consultant, a term he liked better than private eye. Half Jamaican, half Norwegian. Pale blond mother, Rasta father. A lucky blend. Inherited the laid-back genes of the ganja man and the chiseled cheekbones and long limbs and elegant moves of his lovely mom. Her cold focus. After those two abandoned him when he was still a toddler, his scruples were shaped by a foster mom who raised him in the tropical poverty of Hibiscus Park, Key Largo’s ghetto. Crack houses and heroin dens, rusty cars up on blocks; the only lawful neighborhood business was a hubcap stand along the overseas highway. After a childhood like that, Sugarman had developed an indestructible gristle at his core. He grew up quiet and clear-minded, a man so strictly principled, so secure in his humane convictions, that on countless occasions he’d served as Thorn’s true north, hauling him back onto the proper path just as Thorn was about to lurch over some fatal precipice.
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