Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [42]
He didn’t know how to tie it together again.
“Jesus,” he said. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“That’s up to you.”
“I can’t go ahead and throw the bomb—”
“Sure you can. I’ll put it together for you. It only takes one person to heave it. If we both go, it only makes it easier for them to spot us.”
“But—”
“You can even take my share of the dough. That makes it forty thou instead of twenty.”
“I don’t care about the money!”
“Hey,” Turner said. “Calm down, kid.”
“You don’t know, damn you. You don’t understand a goddamn thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“About everything. Joe was my brother, damn it, and Castro killed him. So I have to kill Castro. Can’t you get that into your fat head?”
“So kill him! I don’t care—”
“Goddamn it! You know what I found out, Turner? Castro had a right to kill Joe. Joe was a turncoat, he got power happy and tried a coup of his own. Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m over here getting some kind of cockeyed revenge for my hero of a brother who had it coming all along! Isn’t that one for the goddamned books? Here I am living in a cruddy cellar and scheming like some kind of comic-strip character and it’s all for revenge. And Joe doesn’t deserve being avenged in the first place. How do you like that, Turner? And what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
He sat there, glaring. He was waiting for Turner to say something but the older man was silent, watching him with cool eyes. He felt like a nut now, like some kind of an idiot. He’d been shouting at the top of his lungs like a kid with a tantrum.
“Jim—”
“I’m sorry, Turner. I lost control.”
“Forget it. Jim, get the hell out of here. I didn’t know about Joe. How did you find out?”
“From the Luchar broad.”
“Are you sure she was telling it straight?”
“Yeah. I’ve checked around and … oh, hell, she wouldn’t have any reason to lie to me. If she was going to lie she’d do it the other way, Turner. She’d want me to stay revenge-happy so I wouldn’t blow the assassination. She wasn’t lying. It’s straight. Joe must have gone a little nutty or something. He probably lost his edge the same way Castro did. Power does that to a person. It happens all through history. But it takes a little of the steam out of … out of me, damn it. It’s like shooting the governor because your brother went to the chair for a murder he committed. It makes it silly.”
“Yeah.”
“Turner? What do I do now?”
“What I told you. Get the hell out.”
“Out of Cuba?”
“Uh-huh. Get the first boat back to the States and stay there. You’re not a criminal, kid. You’re young, you can go back to school and start fresh. You’ve got a story to save up and tell your own kids someday. In the meantime you can live instead of dying. Because if you stay in Havana they’re going to kill you, Jim. This game was a last chance for me. I figured there might be a nice easy way to bump Castro and stay alive. But there isn’t, and I can stay alive without it.”
“But—”
“And so can you. Look, you don’t care about the money. Remember? And the revenge seems kind of pointless now. So throw your hand in.”
“I don’t know.”
Turner took out a cigarette, lit it. He took a deep drag, let the smoke out in a thin stream. The air in the cellar was dense and the smoke stayed in a long, snakelike column as it rose slowly to the ceiling.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“I’m staying right here until Saturday. There are three other guys in on this, don’t forget. God knows where they are, but they’re supposed to be somewhere around here in Cuba. Ray Garrison, Matt Garth, Earl Fenton. You remember them?”
“I remember.”
“Yeah. Well, there’s no law saying we have to be the ones to hit Castro. They might get him first. If that happens, we have our twenty grand apiece without any risk. So I’m sticking around to see if maybe that’ll happen. It would be nice.”
Hines didn’t say anything.
“Saturday night,” Turner went on, “I clear out. Don’t ask where I’m going because I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’ll hole up somewhere for the time being so that Lady Luchar and her hired