Meyer knew it. All the old men knew it. They had paid good money for it. But nobody else knew it, except the man who killed Ben Siegel.
“Earl is in a prison outside of Havana,” said the young man.
“He will be moved tomorrow at 4 P.M. to the airport. The car will travel through Cerro down the Avenue Mangiari before bringing him to the airport for deportation. It’ll be a single car driven by two plainclothes policemen, a black 1948 Buick Roadmaster. Swagger will be in back, handcuffed. They’ll be on that road about 4.15 P.M. Tell me, Mr. Lansky, will it still be said after tomorrow that Meyer never killed?”
Lansky just looked at him, but he was thinking how fast he could get hold of Frankie Carbine, and at the same time seeing at last exactly why it had been ordained that Frankie would come to him.
Chapter 52
“Well, Mr. Swagger,” said the man from the embassy, “the Cubans have finally seen the light. You’ll be relieved to know this is your last day in Cuba.”
He’d been here close to a week. In truth, it had been all right. The Cubans in this small place treated him well, and in a funny way it was a pleasure to be in a world where things made sense. No one whispered bad advice, no one tried to manipulate him against his own best instincts. They just fed him well and left him alone.
“Swell,” he said. “I’m flying out of here?”
“You’ll catch the 5.30 Air Cubana back to Miami. Courtesy of the State Department, you will then be flown back to St. Louis. From there you are on your own. Of course the Cubans have made it clear, you are never to return.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
“Well, that’s fine. Your belongings were picked up from the hotel, though the clothing you bought on the government expense account is of course government property and has been remanded to government inventory.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“We had your suit cleaned.”
“Ain’t you boys going out of the way, or what?” Earl said.
“Do I detect some sarcasm in your voice, sir? You have been in violation of the law and we have worked very hard to make this as pleasant as possible for you. Cuban justice can be extremely brutal, and you have been treated quite gently.”
Earl just smiled.
“You will be released at 4:00 into the custody of two Cuban police officers. You will be handcuffed. Those handcuffs will not be removed until you are at the gangway to the aircraft. You will then board the aircraft and that will be that.”
“Fine by me.”
“I want your assurances you will cause no trouble. You have already been an embarrassment. You are to make no scene with the policemen. You will willingly allow the handcuffs until you reach the plane. You are to get on that aircraft and be gone. Is that clear? The deal we worked out with the Cuban State Police is dependent upon it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Thank you, Mr. Swagger. Now this interview is at an end. I suggest you clean up. Your clothes will be brought to you and you will be on your way.”
The man rose officiously, and without ceremony turned and left. Even the Cuban guard in the interview room, an amiable English-speaker named Tony, seemed baffled by the coldness. He was a good guy who’d buddied up to Earl a little bit, even gone and gotten him extra cigarettes.
“Earl, that man, he’s got a pickle up his ass.”
“Don’t he, though?”
Tony led him to his cell in the deserted place. No locking was necessary; it was run more like a hotel. Earl waited until another guard brought him his suit on a hanger, with shoes, socks, under-drawers and a shirt. Then he wandered down to the shower room, took a nice one, dried, came back and got dressed. Looking at his watch, he saw it was close to 4:00.
Out of here, he thought.
Finally. What a goddamned waste!
In the ’38 Buick parked down the street from the jail, Frankie Carbine sat in the front seat with the binoculars, next to a darker guy from SIM who was guaranteed reliable and was running the car that day for Captain Latavistada, who sat in back. He could see the place just fine, blown up ten times, a stairway out of a blocky municipal structure that had long since lost its polish. A heavy-gauge locked cyclone fence ran the perimeter, wearing a gnarled tangle of barbed wire. A couple of cops in their dark uniforms were stationed outside, but in the Cuban way both men were relaxed behind sunglasses on chairs, smoking and paying little enough attention to anything.
Frankie looked at his watch.
It was almost 4:00.
He felt like screaming. It was so close. He tried to keep his pulse and his heart calm, but all he could think about was putting a full magazine into the strunza that killed Ben Siegel. He’d smelled it on him the first second, that stink of death. The guy was a stone killer; he had to be paid back in kind for what he’d done.
Frankie hoped he just riddled his guts. Then, he’d walk around and the guy would be lying there, bleeding and crying for mercy, and Frankie saw himself taking out his Colt .45, leaning over, and pressing it against the man’s eye.
“Familiar, strunza? Like you done to Bennie.”
BLAM!
He’d blow that eye clean out of its socket and the world would see what happened when you went against the outfit. Mr. L would be so proud; all the old men of New York, they would be proud too, and Frankie could come back anytime he wanted. But he wouldn’t. He and Ramon, they would take over—
“Frankie, are you all right?” asked Latavistada from the backseat.
“Yeah, fine.”
“Frankie, you should relax. Don’t get too excited. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be easy,” said Ramon, who had the Mendoza 7mm machine gun and a batch of clips.
“It’s almost time, Ramon,” Frankie said.
“Yes it is, my friend. We will do this thing and then the world will be ours.”
“You let me do it,” said Frankie, patting the machine pistol that lay across his knees. “This guy and I, we had words. We had problems. He’s a big guy, he smacked my head at Moncada. Today he learns what a mistake that was.”
“Yes, Frankie. The privilege of the first shots goes to you. You shoot him good, Frankie. Nothing fancy, just a burst into him, and watch his head as the bullets destroy it, and then I finish with the heavier gun, the two policemen, any witnesses. Then we pull our pistols and make certain. It is a very good plan.”
“Oh, fuck, here they come.”
Ramon spoke briefly in Spanish to the driver, who started the car.
And here they came indeed. It was a big Roadmaster, another Buick, dead black, with four pissholes on the side, driven by two plainclothes men from the state police. One puffed a big cigar. Both wore sunglasses and Panamas and guayabera shirts, burly men in their thirties, handsome after the dark Cuban fashion, one a negro, the other white. Both looked comfortable, settled, on the way to a meaningless detail.
Frankie stroked the Star machine pistol on his knees. He was ready. Christ, was he ready.
Frenchy watched from a bodega across the way. He hid behind two bunches of bananas and looked through a dirty pane of glass to the station. For some reason he knew he ought to be there. He wasn’t sure why, he just felt obligated.
The transaction unfolded without drama. How could there be drama? Frenchy just watched as Earl came out, in his suit, his hands behind him where they’d been manacled. There was no tension in him, as everybody seemed to be buddies. The two cops led him down the stairs to the car, and a third walked behind, talking to Earl, laughing with him.
He watched Earl. He was the same as he’d been when Frenchy first laid eyes upon him seven years ago, perhaps more etched with age, perhaps a few pounds heavier, but essentially the same man, the eternal noncommissioned officer, blessed in battle, narrow otherwise in vision, the salt of the earth, the man who’s made it happen for four thousand years of war. Now he, Frenchy, little Walter who’d been so mischievous in prep school, was planning his execution.
Frenc
hy tried to feel something but one of his talents was the way in which he disconnected himself from events he planned or executed. He didn’t really have a conscience, though flashes of regret would occasionally pass through him. He’d once imagined something better for Earl, and maybe part of getting him down here was a way of making something up to the man for the way Hot Springs had ended, though he’d tried to make up for it in other ways, too. But it hadn’t worked out. You couldn’t save an Earl Swagger from his own nature. You couldn’t make him see the point, you couldn’t get him to bend. He wasn’t a bender.
The car passed and sped down the road.
Frenchy made the sign of the cross. Not that he believed in such hocus-pocus; it just seemed appropriate somehow.
Via con dios, amigo, he thought, and turned back to buy a banana.
The policeman next to Earl was talkative, as the car picked up some speed and headed out into traffic.
“So, you’re a cop, right?”
“Back in the States, yeah. State cop.”
“Ah, we are state policemen, too. It’s a good job, is it not, señor? People show you respect.”
“Well, I agree that it’s a good job, but there’s been days when I’ve wished I got a little more respect.”
The man in the backseat with him laughed.
“Oh, yes, the bad ones, they have to be instructed. That is why all policemen must have big hands so that when they strike a bad one, he knows he has been struck and therefore he shows respect and feels fear.”
“That’s pretty much my theory, too,” said Earl.
The driver barked something at Earl’s seatmate, and watched Earl in the rearview mirror briefly.
“He doesn’t like it?” Earl asked.
“He thinks I talk too much.”
“You do talk too much, Davido,” said the driver. “You always talk too much. A policeman should not talk so much.”
“So, I like to enjoy myself. Anyhow, this man is not a criminal but an American policeman, a man very like ourselves.”
“That’s fine, but do your duty.”
They drove now through a slum, and the traffic grew heavy. The streets were full, and now and then the cars jammed up, sometimes even halting.
“I don’t want to miss my plane,” Earl said. “It’s a great country, but I have had a better run of luck in my time.”
“Look,” said Davido, “he’s a policeman too, and my cousin Tony vouches for him. We can take his cuffs off. A policeman shouldn’t be in no cuffs.”
They broke free of the traffic as the buildings dropped away, yielding to fields and huts. The car speeded up.
“Well, I think you should put them back on when we get to the airport,” said the driver. “Who knows who is watching.”
“I don’t want to get you boys in any trouble,” said Earl.
“No, it’s no trouble—” but then Davido laughed as Earl withdrew his hands, uncuffed, from behind him.
“Did you see that? Jaime, did you see that? He slipped the cuffs! Amazing! How did you do that?”
“I’ve worked a lot with these here old-style cuffs. There’s tricks to shake ’em a boss con once showed me. You didn’t set ’em tight enough. I was able to shift my wrist and bring some pressure in a certain spot. You need to have a lot of strength in your fingers. I’ll show you how to set ’em up so no bad guy ever does the same to you, okay? Maybe save you getting your throat cut one fine night.”
“See, this is a very helpful man,” said Davido, and it was only because Earl had rotated toward him, was not sitting back with his hands locked behind him, that he was able to see the black car scoot out from behind, accelerate to equal their speed, and the barrel of the gun rise, behind it the grim and determined face of Frankie Carbine.
“Faster! Faster!” barked Frankie.
“No, no, not here,” corrected Ramon from the backseat.
But Frankie could hardly control himself. His whole body shook in fury and hunger. He leaned forward, his eyes bugging, his breathing hard.
“It’s too crowded ahead,” Ramon warned. “We’d never get away. Wait till the road is clear, and we are out of the traffic. Then we pass him and bzzzzzzt!, it is finished, and off we go.”
Frankie settled back, but some incredible fever gripped his brain. He wanted to get in close, open up, watch the death and be done with it. Ahead the unmarked police car poked along, completely oblivious to the executioners so close behind. Frankie could see Earl and the cop in the rear, talking, even laughing now and then. They all seemed to be having a pretty good time. It filled him with rage. It was so wrong. Blowing out Ben Siegel’s eye, then having a wonderful time in Cuba. His breath came harshly, through a dry nose and mouth, almost hurting as he sucked at the air, as if there weren’t quite enough air available.
“Frankie, this is hunting. You must be patient for your shot. We wait for the ideal moment and it will come when it comes. To rush is to fail. Corporal, you are doing an excellent job of driving. Frankie, see how the corporal is doing. He is smooth, relaxed, in command. He has perfect control. He knows exactly when the moment will be, and he will spurt ahead. Bzzzzzzzt!”
The corporal, some kind of Indian with a dark though not negro face, laughed, showing white teeth. His eyes glittered like another true killer’s; this was extreme pleasure for him.
The car ahead slowed, tangled in traffic. The corporal pulled expertly to the side of the road, let two cars glide by, then slid back in line. He didn’t want to get too close, but just to stay in contact, to be close enough to spring when the moment arrived.
But whatever was holding up the progression suddenly vanished, and the traffic lurched into motion. For a while, they drove through dense city streets, sometimes coming close to their prey, sometimes sliding back inconspicuously.
Then their quarry turned, found a broader road, and accelerated. The corporal adjusted accordingly, and the buildings on either side fell away, giving way to peasant shacks, small shops, unused, scraggly plots of land and the odd bar or so. Overhead, the scream of a multi-engined plane at a low altitude suggested they were approaching the airport.
And then, suddenly, a car between them and the police car pulled over. Ahead beckoned open road, no oncoming traffic, and the opportunity for the clean kill.
“Vamos!” said Ramon, for this was the moment, but the corporal had read it too, and was already accelerating. Frankie twisted sideways and back, lifting the machine pistol, vaguely aware of Ramon in back bringing his heavier gun up to rest on the window frame. It was now, it was happening.
Almost in slow motion, the cars closed distance, and in even slower motion the corporal began to drift to the left, floating out in the oncoming traffic lane, not lurching as if in attack, but in a fluid, controlled maneuver that could not be read as aggression until too late.
The black Roadmaster seemed to be standing still as the corporal closed with it, and the back window came into range. Frankie saw Earl leaning slightly forward, around the man on his left. He saw this over the barrel of his gun.
But at that moment came the squeal of brakes as ahead a school bus lurched into view, pulling out from behind a stand of trees into the oncoming lane. The car heaved, shuddered and the corporal braked through deceleration and slipped back just in time to miss the head-on.
The bus flashed by.
“Now go, go!” screamed Latavistada, and the corporal punched it hard, this time overtaking the car.
But Frankie knew: he’d been seen.
Earl smiled at his new policeman friend, and twisted his arm as if to show him the trick with the cuff—though actually coiling that arm and tensing. He knew what he had to do. He suddenly uncoiled, driving the point of his elbow with a sick thud into the hinge of the jaw on the right side of the man’s face, a clean, pure, knockout blow if ever there was one. The echo of the thud filled the car but Earl was almost faster than its meaning, for he was up, leaning forward into the front seat as the driver looked up at him, eyes wide in fea
r but way behind in the reaction.
Earl uncoiled another blow to the head and felt the solid, shuddering jolt, but this man was quicker by a bit, and tougher too, and he didn’t go out but just went back, moaning. His foot reflexively hit the brake and the car skewed sideways, pulling up a screen of dust, its tires screaming against the pavement and then the dust of the shoulder until all purchase was lost and it lurched into a gully. Earl hit the man again and he sat back, in a fog.
One second passed as Earl forgot who he was and why he was there. Then it all came back to him. He hit the door of the car, pulled it open, rolled out, and scrambled up the embankment. He saw the black car of the two gunmen slewed over as well. The gun barrels swept toward him and he went down, slid into some bushes.
No fire came. He’d been too fast. He crawled desperately away, and thorns and burrs and sharp leaves tore at him, but no pain could halt him. When he thought he was far enough away, he rose and ran blindly, to put as much distance as he could between himself and his hunters.
Chapter 53
Frenchy had taken down all the Harvard crap. Out went the tennis rackets, the pennants, the photos of the ’47 tennis squad clustered smiling and blond around that stupid trophy. He threw out all messages from Roger, who wanted his personal goods back. He had a certain police detective visit Roger and suggest, unsubtly, that Roger get the hell out of Cuba. Word reached him that Roger had obeyed his order.
Frenchy no longer wore boola-boola blue blazers and tennis flannels but instead dark tropical suits, bespeaking a man of gravitas and intensity. He fired Roger’s secretary in an ungentle fashion, and promoted a new girl from the pool who would be loyal entirely and absolutely to him. To make sure of that, he proposed that night, and the next started screwing her hard. He changed the locks on all the file cabinets and the security vault. He had the carpenters nail down the windows. He forbade the janitor to come in unannounced. He directed that all correspondence to Roger St. John Evans be destroyed immediately.