“And you want my opinion as to who gets the nod?”
“Right. I know you’re not too well versed on exile politics, but I thought you might have picked up some opinions from the Cadre.”
Kemper faked deep thought. Steady now, make him wait—
Stanton threw his hands up, “Come on, I didn’t tell you to go into a goddamn trance about—”
Kemper snapped out of it—bright-eyed and forceful. “We want far-right-wingers susceptible to working with Santo and our other friends in the Outfit. We want a figurehead leader who can maintain order, and the best way to re-stabilize the Cuban economy is to get the casinos operating on a full profit margin. If Cuba stays volatile or the Reds take over again, we’ve got to be able to draw on the Outfit for financial assistance.”
Stanton laced his hands around one knee. “I was expecting something a bit more enlightened from Kemper Boyd the civil rights reformer. And I’m sure you know that the donations of our Italian friends only account for a tiny percentage of our legitimately funded government budget.”
Kemper shrugged. “Cuba’s solvency depends on American tourism. The Outfit can help insure that. United Fruit is out of Cuba now, and only a bribable far-right-winger will be willing to de-nationalize their holdings.”
Stanton said, “Keep going. You’re close to persuading me.”
Kemper stood up. “Carlos is down at the Guatemala camp with my lawyer friend. Chuck’s going to fly him to Louisiana in a few days and hide him out, and I’ve heard that he’s getting more pro-exile by the day. I’m betting that the invasion will succeed, but that chaos will reign inside Cuba for some time. Whoever we install will fall under intense public scrutiny, which means public accountability, and we both know that the Agency will be subjected to intense scrutiny that will limit our deniability in all matters pertaining to covert action. We’ll need the Cadre then, and we’ll probably need a half-dozen more groups as ruthless and autonomous as the Cadre, and we’ll need them to be privately funded. Our new leader will need a secret police, and the Outfit will provide him with one, and if he falters in his pro-U.S. stance, the Outfit will assassinate him.”
Stanton stood up. He looked bright-eyed verging on feverish.
“I don’t have the final say, but you sold me. Your pitch wasn’t as flowery as your boy’s Inaugural address, but it was a good deal more politically astute.”
AND PROFIT-MOTIVATED—
Kemper said, “Thanks. It’s an honor to be compared to John F. Kennedy.”
Fulo drove. Néstor talked. Kemper watched.
They cruised Cadre turf in random figure-eights. Slum shacks and housing projects zipped by.
Néstor said, “Send me back to Cuba. I will shoot Fidel from a rooftop. I will become the Simón Bolívar of my country.”
Fulo’s Chevy was packed with dope. Powder puffed out of plastic bags and dusted the seats.
Néstor said, “Send me back to Cuba as a boxer. I will beat Fidel to death with bolo punches like Kid Gavilan.”
Rheumy eyes popped their way—local junkies knew the car. Winos pressed up for handouts—Fulo was a well-known soft touch.
Fulo called it the New Marshall Plan. Fulo said his handouts inspired subservience.
Kemper watched.
Néstor stopped at drop sites and sold pre-packaged bindles. Fulo backstopped all transactions with a shotgun.
Kemper watched.
Fulo spotted a non-Cadre transaction outside Lucky Time Liquors. Néstor sprayed the transactors with .12-gauge-propelled rock salt.
The transactors dispersed every which way. Rock salt tore through your clothes and made your skin sting like a mother humper.
Kemper watched.
Néstor said, “Send me back to Cuba as a skin diver. I will shoot Fidel with an underwater spear gun.”
Street-corner rummies sucked down T-Bird. Glue fiends sniffed rags. Half the front lawns featured dilapidated jalopies.
Kemper watched. Cab calls squawked up the squawk box. Fulo drove from Darktown to Poquito Habana.
Faces went from black to brown. Incidental colors shifted and went more pastel.
Pastel-fronted churches. Pastel-fronted dance clubs and bodegas. Men in bright pastel guayabera shirts.
Fulo drove. Néstor talked. Kemper watched.
They passed parking-lot crap games. They passed soapbox orations. They passed two kids pummeling a pro-Beard pamphleteer.
Kemper watched.
Fulo glided down Flagler and traded cash for prostitute street talk.
One girl said Castro was queer. One girl said Castro had a 12″ chorizo. All the girls wanted to know one thing: When’s this big invasion gonna happen?
A girl said she picked up a rumor down at Blessington. Ain’t that big invasion next week?
One girl said Guantánamo was gonna get A-bombed. One girl said, You’re wrong—it’s Playa Girón. One girl said flying saucers would soon descend on Havana.
Fulo drove. Né stor polled strolling Cubans up and down Flagler.
They’d all heard invasion rumors. They all shared them with gusto.
Kemper shut his eyes and listened. Nouns jumped out of run-on Spanish.
Havana, Playa Girón, Baracoa, Oriente, Playa Girón, Guantánamo, Guantánamo.
Kemper caught the upshot:
People were talking.
On-leave trainees were talking. Agency-front-group men were talking. The talk was innuendo, bullshit, wish fulfillment and truth by default—speculate on enough invasion sites and you’ll hit the right one out of sheer luck.
The talk constituted a minor security leak.
Fulo didn’t seem worried. Néstor shrugged the talk off. Kemper categorized it as “containable.”
They cruised the side streets off Flagler.
Fulo monitored cab calls. Néstor talked up ways to torture Fidel Castro. Kemper looked out his window and savored the view.
Cuban girls blew them kisses. Car radios churned out mambo music. Street loafers gobbled melons soaked in beer.
Fulo clicked off a call. “That was Wilfredo. He said Don Juan knows something about a dope drop, and maybe we should go see him.”
Don Juan Pimentel had a TB cough. His front room was littered with customized Barbie and Ken dolls.
They stood just inside the door. Don Juan smelled like mentholated chest rub.
Fulo said, “You can talk in front of Mr. Boyd. He is a wonderful friend of our Cause.”
Néstor picked up a nude Barbie. The doll wore a Jackie Kennedy wig and Brillo-pad crotch hair.
Don Juan coughed. “It is twenty-five dollars for the story, and fifty dollars for the story and the address.”
Néstor dropped the doll and crossed himself. Fulo handed Don Juan two twenties and a ten.
He tucked the cash in his shirt pocket. “The address is 4980 Baiustrol. Four men from the Cuban Intelligence Directorate live there. They are terribly afraid that your invasion will succeed and that their supply from the island will be, how you say, removed. They have at the house a very large supply of single shots packaged to sell in order to make quick money to, how you say, bankroll their resistance to your resistance. They have over a pound of heroin ready to be sold in these small amounts where there is to be the, how you say, most profit.”
Kemper smiled. “Is the house guarded?”
“I do not know.”
“Who would they sell the stuff to?”
“Certainly not to Cubans. I would say to the negritos and the poor whites.”
Kemper nudged Fulo. “Is Mr. Pimentel a reliable informant?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Is he strongly anti-Castro?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Would you trust him not to betray us under any circumstances?”
“Well … that is hard to …”
Don Juan spat on the floor. “You are a coward not to ask such questions to my face.”
Kemper judo-chopped him. Don Juan clipped a doll rack an
d went down gagging for breath.
Néstor dropped a pillow on his face. Kemper pulled his .45 and fired through it point-blank.
His silencer ate up the noise. Blood-soaked feathers billowed.
Néstor and Fulo looked shocked. Kemper said, “I’ll explain later.”
REBELS RESCUE CUBA! COMMIES PANDER POISON DOPE IN RAPACIOUS REVENGE!
HEROIN HOLOCAUST! PUSHER CASTRO GLOATS! DESPERATE DICTATOR IN EXILE! DOPE DEATH TOLL MOUNTS!
Kemper printed the headlines on a dispatch sheet. Tiger Kab swirled all around him—the midnight shift was just coming on.
He wrote a cover note.
PB,
Have Lenny Sands write up Hush-Hush articles to accompany the enclosed headlines. Tell him to expedite it and to check the Miami papers over the next week or so for background details and call me if necessary. This, of course, pertains to the invasion, and my feeling is that we’re very close to a go-date. I can’t go into my plan in detail yet, but I think it’s something you’d appreciate. If Lenny finds my orders confusing, tell him to extrapolate off the headlines in the inimitable Hush-Hush style.
I know you’re somewhere in Nicaragua or Guatemala, and I’m hoping this pouch gets to you. And try to think of WJL as a colleague. Peaceful co-existence doesn’t always mean appeasement.
KB
Kemper stamped the envelope: C. ROGERS/NEXT FLIGHT/URGENT. Fulo and Néstor walked by, looking befuddled—he never explained why he killed Don Juan.
Santo Junior had a pet shark named Batista. They drove to Tampa and dumped Don Juan in his pool.
Kemper pulled a phone into the men’s room. He rehearsed his pitch three times, complete with pauses and asides.
He called Bobby’s secretary. He told her to turn on her tape recorder.
She jumped to it. She bought his perfectly honed urgency.
He lauded. He gushed. He praised exile morale and combatreadiness. The CIA had a brilliant plan. Their pre-invasion security was water-tight.
He raved like a skeptic newly converted. He inserted New Frontier rhetoric. His Tennessee drawl oozed convert righteousness.
The woman said she’d rush the tape to Bobby. Her voice quivered and broke.
Kemper hung up and walked out to the parking lot. Teo Paez swung by and passed him a note.
W. Littell called. Said all is well with CM. CM’s N.Y. lawyer says Justice Dept. agents are searching Louisiana for CM. W. Littell says CM should stay at Guat. camp or at least out of country for awhile.
Ward Littell in ascent—truly amazing.
A breeze kicked in. Kemper stretched out on a tiger-striped hood and looked at the sky.
The moon hovered close. Batista had bright white teeth the same color.
Kemper dozed. Chants woke him up. He heard GO GO GO GO GO— that one word and nothing else.
The shouts were ecstatic. The dispatch hut boomed like a giant echo chamber.
The invasion date was set. It couldn’t be anything less than that.
Santo fed Batista steaks and fried chicken. His pool was an Olympic-sized grease spill.
Batista bit Don Juan’s head off. Néstor and Fulo turned away.
He didn’t. He was starting to enjoy killing more than he should.
67
(Rural Nicaragua, 4/17/61)
PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS!
Six hundred men chanted it. The staging site shook behind that one word.
The men jumped into trucks. The trucks locked in bumper-to-bumper and headed down to the launch dock.
PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS—
Pete watched. John Stanton watched. They jeep-patrolled the site and watched everything click into on-go status.
On-GO at the dock: one insignia-deleted U.S. troop ship. On board: landing craft, mortars, grenades, rifles, machine guns, radio gear, medical gear, mosquito repellent, maps, ammo and six hundred Sheik prophylactics—a Langley shrink foresaw mass rape as a victory by-product.
On-GO: six hundred Benzedrine-blasted Cuban rebels.
On-GO at the air strip: sixteen B-26 bombers, set to hammer Castro’s standing air force. Dig their blacked-out U.S. insignia—this gig was non-imperialisto.
PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS—
The abbreviation fit the destination. John Stanton got the chant going at reveille—that shrink said repetition built up courage.
Pete chased high-octane bennies with coffee. He could see it and feel it and smell it—
The planes neutralize Castro air power. The ships go out—staggered departures from a half-dozen launch sites. A second air strike kills militiamen en masse. Chaos spawns mass desertion.
Freedom fighters hit the beach.
They march. They kill. They defoliate. They link up with on-island dissidents and reclaim Cuba—weakened by dope and propaganda foreplay.
They were waiting for Bad-Back Jack to okay the first air strike. All the orders had to emanate from the Haircut.
PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS—
Pete and Stanton jeep-patrolled the site. They had a short-wave set rigged to the dashboard—site-to-site communication made easy.
They had direct feeds to Guatemala, Tiger Kab and Blessington. They were radio contained at that level—only Langley direct-channeled to the White House.
The order came down: Jack says to send six planes out.
Pete felt his dick go limp. The radio man said Jack wants to move real cautiously.
Six from sixteen was a big fucking reduction.
They kept circuiting the site. Pete chain-smoked. Stanton fretted a Saint Christopher medal.
Boyd pouched a message three days ago—some cryptic Hush-Hush orders for Lenny Sands. He forwarded the information. Lenny said he’d write the stuff up quick.
Lenny always delivered. Ward Littell always surprised.
That Teamster book hand-off was superb. Littell’s brown-nose job on Carlos was better.
Boyd had them lodged at the Guatemalan campsite. Marcello glommed a private phone line and ran his rackets biz long-distance.
Carlos liked fresh seafood. Carlos liked to throw big dinner parties. Littell had 500 Maine lobsters air-shipped to Guatemala daily.
Carlos turned crack troopers into salivating gluttons. Carlos turned said troopers into coolies—trained exile guerrillas shined his shoes and ran his errands.
Boyd was running the Marcello operation. Boyd gave Pete one direct order: LEAVE LITTELL ALONE.
The Bondurant-Littell truce was Boyd-enforced and temporary.
Pete chain-smoked. Cigarettes and bennies had him parched. His hands kept doing things he didn’t tell them to.
They kept circuiting. Stanton sweated his clothes wringing wet.
PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS!
They parked by the dock and watched troops climb the boarding plank. Six hundred men hopped on in just under two minutes.
Their short-wave set sputtered. The needle bounced to the Blessington frequency.
Stanton plugged in his headset. Pete lit his zillionth cigarette of the day.
The troop ship creaked and waddled. A fat Cubano puked over the stern.
Stanton said, “Our government-in-exile’s in place, and Bissell ended up approving those far-right boys I recommended. That’s good, but that fake-defector charade we cooked up backfired. Gutiérrez landed the plane at Blessington, but the reporters that Dougie Lockhart called in recognized Ramón and started booing. It’s not a big thing, but a fuck-up’s still a fuck-up.”
Pete nodded. He smelled vomit and bilge water and oil off six hundred rifles.
Stanton unhooked his headset. His Saint Christopher was fretted shiny to dull.
They kept circuiting. It was gas-guzzling Benzedrine bullshit.
Please, Jack:
Send some more planes in. Give the orders to send the boats out.
Pete got wild-ass itchy. Stanton blathered on and on about his kids.
Hours took decades. Pete ran lists in his head to shut Stanton out.
<
br /> The men he killed. The women he fucked. The best hamburgers in L.A. and Miami. What he’d be doing if he never left Quebec. What he’d be doing if he never met Kemper Boyd.
Stanton worked the radio. Reports crackled in.
They heard that the air strike fizzled. The bombers nailed less than 10% of Fidel Castro’s air force.
Bad-Back Jack took the news hard. He responded in cuntish fashion: no second air strike just yet.
Chuck Rogers squeaked a call in. He said Marcello and Littell were still in Guatemala. He dropped some late-breaking stateside info: the FBI invaded New Orleans in response to fake Carlos sightings!
It was Boyd’s doing. He figured erroneous phone tips would keep Bobby diverted and help cover Marcello’s tracks.
Chuck signed off. Stanton clamped his headphones down and kept his ears perked for stray calls.
Seconds took years. Minutes took fucking millenniums.
Pete scratched his balls raw. Pete smoked himself hoarse. Pete shot palm fronds off of trees just to shoot something.
Stanton rogered a call. “That was Lockhart. He says our government-in-exile’s close to rioting. They need you at Blessington, and Rogers is flying in from Guatemala to pick you up.”
They detoured by the Cuban coast. Chuck said it added nil time to their flight plan.
Pete yelled, “Let’s get low!”
Chuck throttled down. Pete saw flames from two thousand feet and half a mile out.
They swooped below radar level and belly-rolled along the beach. Pete jammed binoculars out his window.
He saw aircraft wreckage—Cuban and rebel. He saw smoldering palm groves and hose trucks parked on the sand.
Air-raid sirens were blasting full-tilt. Dock-mounted spotlights were pre-dusk operational. Pillboxes had been set up just above the high tide line—fully manned and sandbagged.
Militiamen crowded the dock. Dig those little geeks with Tommy guns and aircraft ID guides.
They were eighty miles south of Playa Girón. This stretch of beach was red-alert ready. If the Bay of Pigs was this fortified, the entire invasion was fucked.
Pete heard muzzle pops. Little chickenshit pepperings went bip-bip-bip.
Chuck caught on—they’re shooting at us.