Cuban Death-Lift (6 page)

I moved quietly up the cement stairs, holding the railing, taking my time.

At the top of the stairs on the second floor I could hear muted Spanish coming from beyond the door of the public restroom. I put my ear to the door and listened, deciphering only bits and pieces of the conversation; a word here, and a word there. But then one word in particular caught my attention:

So they did know who I was.

And they had been following me.

I waited for a moment longer, listening, then pushed open the door. The shock on their faces was apparent, but immediately stifled by looks of contrived disinterest. I went ambling up to the biggest of them, smiling my best smile, trying to look small and friendly and harmless.

But I wasn't feeling harmless.

Maybe these two characters were the tail end of the CIA's security leak.

Maybe my identity as one of Stormin' Norman Fizer's troubleshooters was no secret after all.

The big guy with the gold chains had a sharp, angular face with black feral eyes and a mustache that had enjoyed a lifetime of vanity and expensive wax. The smaller one, the anchorman, stood behind him, his shoulder to me—afraid to ignore my entrance completely. He wore a burnt-orange blazer which said “TV 1” on the lapel.

“Geez,” I said, “are you guys really gonna put my picture on television?” I was still moving toward the big guy, the one who had kicked the dog.

“No habla,”
he said.

But his eyes told me that he had understood.

“I saw you aiming that camera at me, and I just wanted to ask what time I'm gonna be on, 'cause I sure don't want to miss it.”

The big guy was still backing up, but he didn't look frightened. If anything, his face showed contempt.

The bright-blue news camera with its shoulder brace rested against the metal booth which contained the stool, and I stood between the camera and the two Cubans. The urinal was behind them, and the big guy looked as if he was tired of backing up anyway. He might have been an inch taller than me, but I had the weight.

And either way, it didn't matter.

Still bearing my stupid smile, I reached down deliberately and hefted the camera up with my left hand.

“This sure is some fancy setup.”

“Get your hands off that!”

It was the big guy with the gold chains.

“Well, you sure do learn English fast,” I said innocently. He took a step toward me, and I stopped him with a glare. I began to fiddle with the butterfly screws on the side of the camera, talking all the while. “You know when you two first pissed me off?”

They said nothing.

“You first pissed me off when you were filming me down at the fuel docks and didn't even have the courtesy to try and interview me first.”

One of the butterfly screws went twisting across the floor.

“Hey, dammit, there's film in there!”

I cut the big guy off. “I mean, why would you two want my picture and no sound to go with it?”

“I don't know what your problem is, mister, but if you expose that film we're going to the police!”

I ignored him, still working on the second screw. “And do you know when you really pissed me off? It was when you kicked that poor stray dog. I just can't tell you how mad it makes me to see a grown man kick some poor defenseless animal.

“But do you know what your mistake was?” The final screw came off, and in one swift motion, I jerked the film cassette out, kicked the john door open, and tossed the film into the stool. “Your big mistake,
cabrón,
was that that dog wasn't defenseless. Because I've just appointed myself as his honorary bodyguard.”

The big guy with the gold chains was better than I thought he'd be.

I expected him to shove me. Or take a big roundhouse swing at me.

That's what the inexperienced ones usually do. They're reluctant to fight, or they want to immediately go for a knockout like the hero of a western movie does it.

But this guy, obviously, was not what you would call inexperienced.

He faked a big right hand, and when I leaned away from it he drove his left foot up in a snapping upper-cut kick.

Luckily, I got most of it with my shoulder.

The anchorman acted like he wanted to get behind me—maybe just to escape, or maybe to try and get a crack at the back of my head.

I couldn't wait to find out. I cocked my left fist back, looking at the big cameraman all the while, then let the anchorman have a full—and completely unexpected—right to the solar plexus, that vulnerable center of nerve endings and tissue located below the soft veeing of the rib cage.

He went down with a loud
oomph,
kicking his legs wildly like a cartoon character overcome with laughter.

“What the hell is this all about?” The big guy's Spanish accent was much stronger with emotion now. He eyed his friend nervously, reluctant to take his attention completely off me. “It was just a goddam dog.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Why were you filming me?”

“I wasn't filming you.”

I slapped him with forehand and backhand across the face, backing him up to the urinal. “Not polite to lie,” I said evenly.

His face was red with slapping, and his forehead was white, leached of blood. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I'll tell you.”

Waiting for him to explain, I relaxed. A stupid thing to do. I was off guard just enough so that his next snapping kick caught me full in the kidney and sent me wheeling against the wall.

He was on me in a second, choosing to go with some nasty infighting. He was big and tough and strong. But not strong enough. You never want to wrestle shoulder to shoulder with someone who spent his boyhood working the double trapeze.

It's just not healthy.

I got my fingers wrapped around his biceps, squeezing, swinging him back and forth at will. In any fight there comes a moment—long before the fight has ended, usually—when one man realizes that he is overmatched and bound to lose.

In the ring, the victim of the sudden insight sets about not trying to win, but only to lose more slowly.

In a street fight, he tries to get the hell away.

And that's what the big cameraman tried now. He twisted away from me, took a long, lurching step toward the door, then came to an abrupt, ripping halt when I grabbed him by the back of his silk shirt.

My hands on his shoulders, I swung him around, nailed him full-fisted on the side of the neck, and he went backpedaling across the room, crashing into the urinal.

Water from the broken urinal was spraying everywhere. From outside, I could hear the forlorn blast of whistle signals and the moist
proppa-proppa-pop
of the Coast Guard choppers escorting in boatloads of refugees. In the strange clarity of the moment, it seemed as if I were back in Nam.

And that this is what I was meant to do.

Always.

The anchorman wasn't out. But he pretended to be when I bent over him and ripped his press credential tag off his blazer. I checked the big cameraman's pulse, then took his credentials, too.

I'd give them to Fizer and have them checked out.

“Thanks for the interview,” I said as I opened the bathroom door. The anchorman was too scared to even pretend that he had not heard.

Back on the cement wharf, in the shadow of
Sniper,
the lean shepherd had finished the stew and was lapping down water in great gulps.

The shepherd wagged its tail and went on lapping water.

The tail swung harder, the dog's whole butt end moving. He stopped drinking and stared up at me, a new light in his eyes.

The shepherd turned back to the water as I walked to the payphone by the old barracks.

 

By the time I got back, Fizer was standing on the cement dock beside
Sniper.
He wore the obligatory business suit—this one an eggshell white.

“Very tropical,” I said.

“The suit? Yeah, all I need is a big porch and a mint julep. You about ready?”

I nodded. “Where's Santarun?”

He checked his watch. “Should be here any minute.” He had a funny look on his face. “Dusky, there's something I didn't know about the lieutenant that I have to tell you. . . .”

“Right,” I said. “But before he gets here, I have to tell you about a little run-in I just had with a couple of television newsmen who I think are plants.”

That caught his attention. So I told him the whole story and gave him their credentials.

He looked them over, then said, “I don't recognize the names, but I'll run them through the computers.” He smiled wryly. “And if they turn out to be real newsmen, I'll come and visit when they jail you on assault charges.”

“Right,” I said. “Sure.”

“Is that the dog?”

The shepherd had curled up on
Sniper
's aft deck. Its tail thumped lazily when Fizer motioned toward it.

“Yeah, and I'd appreciate it if you see that it gets to Big Pine Key.”

I told him the address, and explained why.

Fizer eyed the shepherd. “Doesn't look like much of a watchdog to me.”

“All it needs is something to protect. I doubt if he's ever had the chance.”

At that moment, one of the Navy's blue Chevy Nova staff cars came wheeling up and skidded to an abrupt halt. The driver got out, face aloof, somber.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “That's not Santarun, is it?”

“That's what I was trying to tell you a moment ago. I didn't know. . . .”

The lieutenant lifted a sea bag and a suitcase from the car, slammed the trunk, then came walking toward
Sniper
: dark; long-legged walk; a haughty figure in jeans and black T-shirt that offered nothing but challenge.

Lieutenant Santarun was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. . . .

She was one of the aloof ones. It's all too common among the truly beautiful females. Maybe they have to be—I don't know. Maybe it's some kind of emotional fence to keep out the mass of adoring males. Or maybe it really is a form of conceit. Whatever it was, this Lieutenant Santarun had a ton of it. Norm made the introductions. He kept it businesslike, playing his part: he didn't know me; I was just a charterboat bum hired to take this woman to Mariel Harbor.

“Captain MacMorgan—Dusky, was it?”

I nodded.

He motioned toward Lieutenant Santarun. “This is Androsa Santarun, my client. As I told you, Ms. Santarun's father is still living in Cuba. Your job is to see that she gets to Mariel Harbor safely and picks up her father, then see that they both make it back safely.”

“No problem,” I said. “It shouldn't take us more than—”

“Mr. Fizer,” she interrupted. It was a flat, corporate voice with only the slightest trace of an accent. “Did you apprise Mr. MacMorgan of who will have the final decision-making responsibility in regard to anything which concerns this trip?”

Norm almost stammered. “Well, I was just about to . . .”

She turned to me. Her hair was a lustrous blue-black, piled severely atop her head. It served only to accentuate the fine feminine lines of her face, the smooth, clear olive skin, and her piercing mahogany eyes. There was something tough about those eyes. Something tough and challenging—oddly incongruous with the lithe, ripe contours plainly outlined by jeans and black T-shirt. Her breasts were small but well formed. Her legs were long, tapering from thighs to hips with only a curved implication of pelvic hinge. There was a proper narrowing of waist, and the sensual impact of womanhood where jeans and plain brown belt converged. I had to force my eyes back to meet hers.

“The boat is mine, ma'am,” I said, hating myself for having to show deference to anyone—male or female—who would presume to take control of
Sniper.
“I make the decisions when it comes to my boat.”

Her eyes widened ever so slightly, and she moved a fraction of a step closer to me. “Mr. MacMorgan, it may be your boat but it's my charter. I think it wise before we even get started to establish what your role will be. You are being paid and paid well for this trip. And I don't think it unreasonable to demand that I have control over matters concerning it—”

“As long as it doesn't endanger the boat,” Norm added quickly. He looked at me in the level manner of a lawyer trying to protect his client. “I'm afraid that's the deal, Captain MacMorgan. Are you still interested?”

I thought about it for a moment, cursing myself silently for ever letting myself get involved. In the fishing guide business, you get a bellyful of unpleasant strangers aboard the boat you treasure. The good ones are a joy—but the ones like this Santarun, the haughty ones are nothing but a big pain in the ass. No, I wasn't still interested. But I had committed myself. Was I such a ridiculous male chauvinist animal that I would balk at being under the command of a woman? Not normally. But aloofness and arrogance in men or women are nothing more than symptoms of some deeper character flaw—and that's exactly why I liked to work alone. Goddammit, I have enough problems of my own to have to worry about the potentially deadly shortcomings of others.

But I had no choice. Not if I didn't want to let Norm down.