This was an event of incredible carnage. The bullets tore into pillows and sent puffs of feathers exploding into the air, to fill the room with snow, while at the same time the mattress itself leapt as if in great animal pain as bullets buckled it. As the magazine wore itself out, the bed gave up the ghost, so to speak: it tilted crazily as rounds tore away the two far-side legs, a spring popped from the mattress like a dying snake, dust flew, empty shell casings flew, the whole a drama of extraordinary sensual pleasure.
Then the gun was dry.
Mother of God!
He knelt, pulled the old mag out, and was reaching into his pocket for another when a naked man flew out of the bathroom with a look of abject terror on his face, eyes bugged like fried eggs, flaccid body so white and pale with fear it was almost a comical scene from a movie. To make it more ridiculous, this naked figure had shod himself with his mistress's slippers to protect his feet from the glass, so there he was, immense, white, terrified, naked, his equipment flopping, running like a bunny rabbit and poor Captain Latavistada could only watch him go, for he could not get the magazine into the gun fast enough.
'Frankie!' he screamed.
The doors blew open and Frankie stared into the terrified, scrambled face of his quarry.
This was it. The Star machine pistol came up, the range was five feet, six at the outside, the mark was jaybird naked and terrified to see another gunman, and Frankie fired.
Except he didn't.
Fungool, it didn't work.
He looked at it in his hands, saw various knobs set this way and not that, jiggered them and then the gun fired but did not stop. It ate a magazine in two seconds, and the bullets just rose on the house, cutting a stitchery of dust and then flying off into space.
But the naked man, meanwhile, threw himself off the balcony and ran amazingly fast, pink slippers flying from his feet as he disappeared into some jungle shrubbery. Frankie had his.45 out by this time and sent seven pills into the weeds after him, maybe hitting him, maybe not. The captain was next to him, and clearly he was not yet done shooting, for he heaved the machine gun upwards and unleashed another whole, jolting, jackhammering magazine that more or less chewed up the area into which the man had disappeared.
'Ha!' said the captain, his face aglow with sweat. 'It's wonderful, eh? Such fun! Hunting men, god, what sensual pleasure! How alive one feels!'
'Uh, he seems to have gotten away.'
'Possibly. But he is naked and wounded and in a jungle. I do not think he will get far.'
Frankie nevertheless had a sense of great disturbance in the world. He knew a bad thing had happened, and he would have some explaining to do to Mr. Lansky. Then he peered back into the house and saw nothing but devastation; it had been shot to pieces.
'Ramon,' he asked nervously, 'shouldn't we get out of here before the police come?'
Ramon looked at him, incredulous.
'Senor Frankie, you forget. We are the police.'
Chapter 33
He lay naked in thornbushes. Every bit of him hurt. His heart would not stop hammering. It was now dark. His mind was still scattered. He was in jungle. He had run naked through jungle for what seemed hours. He had no idea what to do. He yearned for guidance and courage, but none came.
And then a lot came.
He had a moment of perfect clarity. It all fell together: the government had tracked him here. Those were members of the Secret Police. They had come to kill him, so that El Presidente could sleep without fear of his throat being cut in the night.
At last he knew what to do, and what came next, and where his destiny lay. It was not in strikes or speeches or elections.
I shall, he thought, now make a war.
Chapter 34
'Well?' said Pashin.
'Well, what?' said Speshnev.
'Well, where is he?'
'Where it is safe.'
'Where it is safe. But do you know where it is safe?'
'Actually, I do not.'
They sat in Jose Marti square in the old town, two men, one elegant in his western banker's clothes, the other rather bohemian, in floppy linens, with a red bandanna about his head and well-worn espadrilles on his crusty feet. This one also wore sunglasses, circular and aesthetic, protecting the poet's delicate eyes from the sun. One might consider it a meeting between T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, if one were so given.
Speshnev took a banana out of his pocket, peeled it, and began to eat it.
'He has run away. He has broken contact,' Pashin explained to him. 'You were sent here to manage him and control him, and then to kill a man sent to kill him. Instead, you save that killer-twice, twice! — and now the subject has fled your ministrations and I am left to explain all this to Moscow. Possibly he has given up politics altogether, bought a farm and is busy raising babies in the countryside.'
'The banana: fountain of potassium. Have one, Pashin.'
'I am not a monkey. Bananas are for monkeys.'
'Two propositions, both debatable. Anyhow, this one will never give up politics. He's too idiotic. He actually believes in the mumbo-jumbo of destiny. Besides, he loves to practice speeches in the mirror and admire his fabulous heroism and beauty. No, I sent him because after the murder of El Colorado, I feared a general purge. It's how these fascisto-imperialists always work. Relax. Have a banana. Fuck your secretary.'
'Ah! You are so disrespectful. We have a mission and you take better care of an American gangster who was sent here to kill the man you were sent here to protect than you do of the man you are to protect.'
'Actually, I believe I have protected him very well.'
'You are so arrogant, Speshnev. You think you know so much more than we younger men.' Pashin looked away, pinching the bridge of his nose in pain. It was clear he was getting pretty much roasted on a daily basis by blistering memos from Moscow.
Speshnev enjoyed the young bastard's pain. 'Have you thought of antacids for that stomach queasiness, Pashin?'
Pashin sighed mightily, with the air of a man resigned to the Roman legionnaires driving in the spikes. It was an unpleasant necessity to be gotten over. But then he turned and stared directly at the older man.
'It may interest you to learn yours is not the only operation in Cuba, and that I believe mine will yield far more bountiful benefits than yours. Mine is professional, disciplined, carefully managed. This shit of yours was dreamed up by some old romantic on the upper floors of Dzerzhinsky Square and it's all very melodramatic, very old Comintern, but utterly useless in a world of jet planes and atom bombs. Mine will be the far greater contribution.'
'And if not, your uncles and brothers and cousins will say so anyway, so what difference does it make?'
'You must find the young man, you must bring him under control, you must reestablish your influence. That is not a romantic quest, that is a hard order, direct from the top. And, you must do it soon, do you understand? Let us say toward the end of the month, by, say, the last week of July. Do you understand?'
'I do.'
'I want progress.'
