Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [11]
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