Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [10]
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,