Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [36]
Garrison nodded.
“Meaning you buy and you sell?”
“That’s right.”
“This trip business or pleasure?”
“A little of both,” Garrison drawled, slipping into his role. “Pleasure before business, I always say. Sort of a motto of mine. But if a chance comes along to make a dollar or two—”
“Up to you, of course,” call-me-Les said. “But I wouldn’t sign anything, wouldn’t put out any cash, wouldn’t buy any Cuban real estate. Not if I were you I wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Burley moistened his lips. “Same reason I’m closing shop and getting the merry hell back to the States. Don’t know what I’ll get into once I’m back there. Been in Cuba for years and years. More or less have to go into something concerning tobacco, what with my name. You understand?”
Garrison didn’t.
“Burley,” call-me-Les said. “Burley tobacco. For pipe smoking. Just a coincidence, but a funny one. Don’t you think?”
“Oh,” Garrison said. “Certainly.”
“I’ll find something in the States. Not like this country—there a man with drive and know-how still finds opportunities. This place used to be like that. Now they’re turning it Socialist, even Communist. And that’s why you’re a damn fool to pay out good money for a piece of property here. You wouldn’t have it long enough to enjoy it. You’d just buy the blame thing and watch them take it away from you.”
Garrison nodded thoughtfully. Actually he wasn’t paying much attention to Burley. He was thinking about Estrella, remembering the last time they had been together. Now he noticed that Burley was eyeing him, waiting for him to say something.
“You mean confiscations,” he said. “I thought they were done with that.”
“Not by a long shot. It’s just starting. Oh, they took over the big companies already, the oil and the land. Maybe that’s enough for Castro. It’s beginning to look as though nothing’s enough for that boy, but I guess you never know.”
“No?”
“Nope. Because he plays ball with the Russians. He gets guns and aid and God-knows-what from them, and that means trouble. I’ll betcha he has an idea he’ll kinda parlay this whole thing into an empire. You know—commissar of all South America, or something like that.”
Burley moistened his lips again. “But he won’t last forever. The Commies like him now because they can use him. He’s useful, he’s handy. But they’ve got their eye on the whole South American setup and they want it for themselves. And if by some fluke he ever got hold of it, they’d knock him off so fast he wouldn’t know what happened to him. He’d find himself on the outside looking in. After that he’d find himself on the inside, looking out.” He guffawed at his own joke and then spent the next ten minutes explaining it.
Garrison waited. A slender girl brought drinks and he swallowed half of his. In a few minutes, he thought, it would be time to go to Estrella. She would be better company than this idiot of a cigar salesman who insisted on being called Les. Garrison had had the totally monotonous experience of hearing Burley recount in detail his amatory adventures since age sixteen, and now he was explaining the political picture in Cuba. It was hard for Garrison to decide which was less interesting. Sex was more exciting to him than politics, but at the same time Burley had a way of making any subject a bore.
“You see what I mean, Harper?”
“Sure,” Garrison said automatically. “Sure, Les.”
“So just you watch. I’ve got a hunch Castro’ll be dead within the next two months. Want to bet on it?”
“No bet. I think you might be right.”
Of course he will, Garrison thought. I’m going to kill him, you poor damned fool. I’ve got the gun in my room. Want to have a look at it?
“Here’s how it goes, Harper. Castro gets killed—by the Commies, who would rather have their own man in than him. He’s bullheaded and overconfident and he can be ordered around only as long as he’s getting something out of this Russian deal. Actually, he has no strong convictions. He just likes to run off at the mouth. You know what they used to call him at the university? Loudmouth!
“And you know what