Killing Castro by Lawrence Block Page A

it back against her wrist until she moaned with pain. The knee tried again, and this time he lost patience, burying a hamlike fist in the softness of her flat stomach so that she doubled up in agony and made a sound like a man when you shot him in the guts with a small-caliber pistol.
    He hit her again, in the same spot, and the fight sagged out of her like air from a punctured tire. He struggled with his own clothing now, opened his pants, readied himself.
    There was a gunshot. A bullet passed far over Garth’s head. Garth froze, waiting.
    Then a voice. Fenton’s. Harsh, cold, crisp, unafraid.
    “Get up, Garth. Get up, you pig, or I’ll shoot you where you are. I’ll kill you, Garth.”
    There was no room for doubt in the tone of the little man’s voice. It was not easy for Garth to get up. He was primed, ready, and it was not at all easy to give up now when the prize was there on the ground ready to be taken.
    He got up.
    “Button your pants. Then get the hell away from her, Garth, and stay away from her. Because if you go near her again I’ll kill you. You’re an animal, Garth. Get away from her and leave her alone.”
    Garth walked away, ashamed and bitter. He hated Fenton and he hated the girl and he loathed himself with a flat, dull loathing. He had had her there and he had not taken her. That rat Fenton had fouled things up, that rat bastard.
    He went back to his blanket and found his cigarettes.
    The café was on Calle de las Mujeres Bonitas, the street of the pretty women. There were no pretty women around, none that Turner could see. But he was not anxious to meet any, not just now. Now all he wanted to do was sit where he was sitting, sip the glass of good red wine he had at hand, and talk with Ernesto.
    Ernesto was a thick-set Cuban with a walrus mustache and sleepy eyes, a man’s man who talked easily, swore freely, drank heavily and, if he was to be believed, fornicated incessantly. Turner had met him there, at the café, two days ago. Turner had bought him a glass of wine. Then Ernesto had returned the favor. They took a table together and talked.
    They were talking now.
    “It seems to me that you have no problem,” Ernesto was saying in Spanish. “You have killed a whore and her lover, true? And so the North American police would hang you.”
    “They take a dim view of murder.”
    “So,” Ernesto said. “In North America, there you have a problem. But here, in Cuba? No problem, no problem at all.”
    “What about extradition?” Turner asked. He knew the States had an extradition treaty with Cuba; they had one with every Latin American country, even with Brazil now. But in Brazil there were loopholes. You could marry a local girl and immunize yourself from extradition. Or you could get to the right official with enough money.
    “There is a treaty,” Ernesto allowed.
    “So I have a problem—”
    “No. In the old days, in the days before the revolution, then you would have had a problem. But these days things are not so good between Señor Castro and your government, true? Your government says that a man named Turner is a criminal, a murderer. And our Señor Castro laughs, because he knows that this Turner has killed no one in Cuba. So there will be no extradition. You have broken no laws here and you may remain here.”
    It was something Turner had thought of before. Cuba was as good as Brazil and as safe. But there was still the matter of twenty thousand dollars.
    “I would need money,” Turner said. “Where would I work?”
    Ernesto shrugged magnificently. “Why work? I do not work. It is not necessary to work.”
    “But I have no money.”
    “Ah,” Ernesto said. “It is not difficult to get money. One buys, one sells. One acts as an agent in such transactions. One lives cleverly, making oneself useful to others. Look at me, my friend. Before the revolution, I worked for a man named Antonio Torelli. Señor Torelli was a gangster from New York, a man who owned a casino here in