Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [16]
Turner and Hines helped the Cuban with the bodies. They waited in the darkness while the man rowed out to sea in the small boat. It seemed to take forever before he returned, the boat empty of human cargo now.
“It is done,” he said. “Let us go. Quickly.”
He led them now to Bellamar. Guides led visitors through the limestone grottoes, but these guides went off duty at eight in the evening and did not return until seven in the morning. Hines and Turner were led through a cavern, along an underground trail. There were no lights. After a long stretch of darkness the Cuban flicked on a pocket flash and they could see where they were going.
They spent the night deep in the heart of Bellamar, far past the point where guides led turistas. There, four other men sat around a fire on which a pot of chili beans and rice was cooking slowly. Turner and Hines ate the beans and rice and drank wine from a jug. A sad-eyed Cuban strummed an out-of-tune guitar and sang songs.
The catacombs, Turner thought. A batch of crazy Christians hiding from the Romans. He took a long drink of wine and remembered the night before they had boarded the boat, the night in Miami, the rare steaks and the Canadian Club and the two hustlers. It had been good for the kid, for Hines. It had taken some of the tension out of his eyes. That was good.
And it had been good for Turner. First the steaks, prime strip sirloins fresh from the broiler. They had been burned on the outside and raw in the middle, the way steak should always be. The Canadian Club was good to wash the food down with, and the girls were there by the time the meal was done.
Two girls. One was a redhead and the other a blonde, and what the hell difference did it make if they had started life with the same shade of mouse-brown hair? They were a redhead and a blonde now. The redhead was a little taller, and the blonde’s breasts were a little larger, and they both knew as much about love-making as anyone else in the world. Maybe more.
It started out as a party, with the bottle passing from mouth to mouth, with the four of them sitting on the long couch and getting happily gassed. It finished up as an orgy, a full-blown orgy, a pretty fine way for Hines to lose his virginity. He lost it on the floor with the blonde at about the same time that Turner was enjoying the redhead on the couch.
Then they had traded off. And then they traded back, and at one point Turner watched with clinical detachment while the blonde and the redhead made love to Hines at the same time, the young novice jumping from one to the other with great agility, keeping both girls whimpering and thrashing. And, since turnabout was only fair play, then it had been his turn with both girls.
A good evening. A valuable evening, because all the liquor and all the lust made time run away, made death and murder and pursuit take a back seat to more immediate sensual excesses. And that was vital; you had to forget murder now and then or you went out of your mind.
Murder. Assassination. Killing. Slaughter. Matanzas.
The wine made sleep come in a hurry. Turner woke up around six. Hines was shaking him awake.
“We’re supposed to get out of here,” the kid was saying. “The guides come on in an hour. We have to leave before they start or we’re stuck here until tonight.”
Turner shook himself awake. He had slept in his clothes and he felt grimy. He sucked on his teeth, coughed, spat out phlegm. He found a crumpled cigarette in a shirt pocket and lit it. The smoke helped him wake up.
He yawned and stretched. Moreno, the sad-eyed guitar player of the night before, was the only Cuban who was awake. The others lay sleeping around the ashes of the campfire. They were all hunted men, Turner knew. They stayed in the caves all of the time. Moreno grinned quickly and passed the wine jug to Turner. Turner took a long swallow, offered the jug to Hines. The kid shook his head and Turner had another drink. He was awake now. It was time to get going.
“¿A donde vamos?” he asked Moreno. “Where are we going?”
“Habana.”
“¿Como?” he asked.