Tourist Season (41 page)

“When I was very young, my job was to visit the businessmen and collect contributions for
La Causa.
I had four blocks on
Calle
Ocho, three more on Flagler Street downtown. A man named Miguel—he owned a small laundry—once gave three thousand dollars. And old Roberto, he ran bolita from a café. Zorro rojo, the red fox, we called him; Roberto could well afford to be a generous patriot. Not all these businessmen were happy to see me at their door, but they understood the importance of my request. They hated Fidel, with their hearts they hated him, and so they managed to find the money. This is how we survived, while traitors like you ignored us.”

“Chickenshit shakedowns,” García muttered.

“Shut up!”

García picked up the turnpike at the Tamiami Trail and drove south. Traffic thinned out and, on both sides of the highway, chintzy eggshell apartments and tacky tract-house developments gave way to pastures, farmland, and patches of dense glades. García now had no doubt that Bernal planned to kill him. He guessed, cynically, that it would probably be a simple execution; kneeling on the gravel of some dirt road, mosquitoes buzzing in his ears, the shotgun blast devoured by the empty night. The fucking turkey buzzards would find him first. The buitres.

Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to piss the little runt off. Maybe he'd get excited, maybe a little careless.

“So what about your pals?”

“Idiots!” Bernal said.

“Oh, I'm not so sure,” García said. “Some of that stuff was ingenious.”

“That was mine,” Bernal said. “The best stuff was mine. The kennel club bombing—I thought it up myself.”

“A pile of dead dogs. What the hell did that prove?”

“Quiet,
coño
. It proved that no place was safe, that's what it proved. No place was safe for tourists and traitors and carpetbaggers. Any idiot could see the point.”

García shook his head. Carpetbaggers—definitely a Skip Wiley word.

“Dead greyhounds,” García said mockingly. “I'm sure Castro couldn't sleep for days.”

“Just drive, goddammit.”

“I never understood your stake in the group,” garcía went on. “I think, what the hell does a hardcore like Jesús care about tourists and condos? I think, maybe he just wants his name in the papers. Maybe he's got nowhere else to go.”

Bernal made a fist and pounded the dash. “See, this is why you're such a dumb cop! Figure it out, Garcia. What really happened to the movement? Everyone in Miami got fat and happy, like you. Half a million Cubans—they could stampede Havana anytime they wanted, but they won't because most of them are just like you. Greedy and prosperous. Prosperity is killing anticommunism, García. If our people here were starving or freezing or dying, don't you think they'd want to go back to Cuba? Don't you think they'd sign up for the next invasion? Of course they would, by the thousands. But not now. Oh, they are careful to wave flags and pledge money and say Death to the bearded one! But they don't mean it. You see, they've got their IRAs and their Chevrolets and their season tickets to the Dolphins, and they don't give a shit about Cuba anymore. They'll never leave Florida as long as life is better here, so the only thing for us to do is make life worse. That's exactly what the Nights of December had in mind. It was a good plan, before the great Señor Fuego cracked up, a good plan based on sound dialectic. If it came to pass that all the snowbirds fled north—chasing their precious money—then Florida's economy would disintegrate and finally our people would be forced into action. And Cuba is the only place for us to go.”

García's patience was frayed. He knew all about Jesús Bernal Rivera, born in Trenton, New Jersey, son of a certified public accountant and product of the Ivy League; a man who had never set foot on the island of Cuba.

“You're a phony,” Garcia told him, “a pitiful phony.”

Bernal raised the stubby shotgun and placed the barrel against the detective's right temple.

García pretended not to notice. He drove at a steady sixty-five, hands damp on the wheel. Bemal would never shoot him while the car was going so fast. Even with the gun at his head Garcia was feeling slightly more optimistic about his chances. For ten miles he had been watching a set of headlights in the rearview mirror. Once he had tapped his brakes, and whoever was following had flashed his brights in reply. García thought: Please be a cop.

After a few tense moments Bernal put the shotgun down. “Not now,” he said, seemingly to himself. “Not just yet.” García glanced over and saw that a crooked smile had settled across the bomber's griddled features.

 

The Turnpike ended at Florida City, and the MG was running on fumes. Brian Keyes coasted into an all-night service station but the pumps were off and he had to wait in line to pay the attendant. He watched helplessly as the taillights of Al García's car disappeared, heading toward Card Sound.

Catching up would take a miracle.

Keyes had arrived at police headquarters just as Jesus Bernal and Garcia were getting in the car. He had spotted the shotgun, but there had been no time to get help; all he could do was try to stay close and hope Bernal didn't see him.

Everything was going smoothly until he'd checked the gas gauge.

Keyes hurriedly pumped five dollars' worth. He ran back to the bullet-proof window and pounded on the glass.

“Call the police!” he shouted at the attendant. The man gave no sign of comprehending any language, least of all English.

“A policeman is in trouble,” Keyes said. He pointed down the highway. “Get help!”

The gas station attendant nodded vaguely.

“No credit cards,” he said. “Much sorry.”

Keyes jumped into the MG and raced down U.S. Highway One. He turned off at Card Sound Road, a narrow and seemingly endless two-lane lined with towering pines. The road ahead was black and desolate, not another car in sight. Keyes stood on the accelerator and watched the speedometer climb to ninety. Mosquitoes, dragonflies, and junebugs thwacked the car, their jellied blood smearing the windshield. Every few miles the headlights would freeze a rabbit or opossum near the treeline, but there was no sign anywhere of human life.

As the road swung east, Keyes slowed to check some cars at a crab shanty, then at Alabama Jack's, a popular tavern, which had closed for the night. At the toll booth to the Card Sound Bridge, he asked a sleepy redneck cashier if a black Dodge had come through.

“Two Cubans,” she reported. “ 'Bout five minutes ago. I 'member cause they didn't wait for change.”

Keyes crossed the tall bridge at a crawl, studying the nocturnal faces of the crabbers and mullet fishermen lined along the rail. Soon he was on North Key Largo, and more alone than ever. This end of the island remained a wilderness of tangled scrub, mahogany, buttonwood, gumbo-limbo, and red mangrove. The last of the North American crocodiles lived in its brackish bogs; this was where Tommy Tigertail had recruited Pavlov. There were alligators, too, and rattlers, gray foxes, hordes of brazen coons, and the occasional shy otter. But mostly the island was alive with birds: nighthawks, ospreys, snowy egrets, spoonbills, limpkins, parrots, blue herons, cormorants, the rare owl. Some slept, some stalked, and some, like the scaly-headed vultures, waited ominously for dawn.

Keyes turned off on County Road 905, drove about half a mile, and parked on the shoulder. He rolled down the window of the MG and the tiny sports car immediately filled with insidious bootblack mosquitoes. Keyes swatted automatically, and tried to listen above the humming insects and the buzz of the nighthawks for something out of place. Perhaps the sound of a car door slamming, or human voices.

But the night surrendered no clues.

He went another mile down the road and parked again; still nothing but marsh noises and the salty smell of the ocean. After a few minutes a paunchy raccoon waddled out of the scrub and stood on its hind legs to investigate; it blinked at Keyes and ambled away, chirping irritably.

He started the MG and headed down 905 at high speed to blow the mosquitoes out of the car. He was driving so fast he nearly missed it, concealed on the east side of the highway, headfirst in a dense hammock. A glint of chrome among the dark green woods is what caught Keyes's eye.

He pumped the brakes and steered off the blacktop. He slipped out of the sports car and popped the trunk. Groping in the dark, he found what he was looking for and crept back to the spot.

The black Dodge was empty and its engine nearly cold to the touch.

 

The two men stood alone at the end of a rutted limestone jetty, poking like a stone finger into the sea. A warm tangy wind blew from the northeast, mussing García's thin black hair. His mustache was damp from sweat, and his bare arms itched and bled from the trek through the hammock. The detective had given up all hope about the car in the rearview mirror; it had turned off in Florida City.

Jesús Bernal seemed not to notice the cloud of mosquitoes swarming around his head. García thought: perhaps they don't sting him—his blood is poisoned and the insects know it.

Fevered with excitement, Bernal's face glistened in the water's reflection. His eyes darted ratlike and his head jerked at each muffled animal noise from the woods behind them. In one hand Bernal clutched the sawed-off shotgun, and with the other waved a heavy police flashlight, lacing amber ribbons in the blackness.

Jesús was already contemplating the journey back to the car, alone. The shotgun probably would be empty by then, useless. He grew terrified just thinking about the ordeal—what good was a flashlight against panthers! He imagined himself imprisoned all night by the impenetrable hammock; at first disoriented, then panicked. Then lost! The sounds alone might drive him insane.

For Jesús Bernal was scared of the dark.

“What's the matter?” García asked.

“Nothing.” Bernal ground his dentures and made the fear go away. “This is where we say
adiós.”

“Yeah?” García thought it seemed an odd place for an execution. The jetty provided no concealment and the echo of gunfire would carry for miles across the water. He hoped a boat might pass soon.

Jesús Bernal fumbled in his khaki trousers and came out with a brown letter-sized envelope, folded in half.

“Open it,” he wheezed. “Read it aloud.” He aimed the flashlight so garcía could make out the document, which had been typed neatly. It appeared much longer than any of the communiqués from the Nights of December.

“What is this, you writing a book?” the detective grumbled.

“Read!” Bernal said.

García took his eyeglasses from a shirt pocket.

There were two identical sections, one in English and one in Spanish:

“I, Alberto garcía Delgado, hereby confess myself as a traitor to my native country of Cuba. I admit to the gravest of crimes: persecuting and harassing those brave revolutionaries who would destroy the dictator Castro, and who would liberate our suffering nation so that all Cuban peoples may return. With my despicable crimes I have dishonored these patriots and shamed my own heritage, and that of my father. I deeply regret my seditious behavior. I realize that I can never be forgiven for using my police authority to obstruct what was good and just. For this reason, I have agreed to accept whatever punishment is deemed fitting by my judge, the honorable Jesus Bernal Rivera—a man who has courageously dedicated his life to the most noble of revolutionary callings.”

García thrust the document back at Jesus Bernal and said, “I'm not signing it, chico.” He knew time was short.

“Oh, I think you'll reconsider.”

“No way.”

Garcia lunged forward, his arms reaching out for the shotgun. Jesus pulled the trigger and an orange fireball tore the detective off his feet and slammed him to the ground.

He lay on his back, staring numbly at the tropical stars. His head throbbed, and his left side felt steamy and drenched.

Jesús Bernal was a little wobbly himself. He had never before fired a shotgun, and discovered that he had not been holding the weapon properly. The recoil had hammered him squarely in the gut, knocking the wind out. A full minute passed before he could speak.

“Get up!” he told García, “Get up and sign your confession. It will be read on all the important radio stations tomorrow.”

“I can't.” Garcia had no feeling on his left side. He probed gingerly with his right hand and found his shirt shredded and soaked with fresh blood. Jagged yellow bone protruded from the pulp of his shoulder. He felt dizzy and breathless, and knew he would soon be in shock.

“Get up,
traitor!
” Jesus Bernal stood over the detective and waved the gun like a sword.

García thought that if he could only get to his feet he might be able to run to the woods. But when he tried to raise himself from the gravel, his legs convulsed impotently. “I can't move,” he said weakly.

Jesus Bernal angrily stuffed the document into his pocket. “We'll see,” he said. “We'll see about this. Are you prepared to receive your sentence?”

“Yeah,” Garcia groaned. “What the hell.”

Bernal stalked to the tip of the jetty. “I chose this spot for a reason,” he said, pointing the gun across the Atlantic. “Out there is Cuba. Two hundred miles. It is nearer than Disney World, Mr.
Policía.
I think it's time you should go home.”

“I don't believe this,” said Al García.

“Are you much of a swimmer?” Jesús Bernal asked.

“Not when I'm fucking paralyzed.”

“Such a baby. But, you see, this is your sentence. The sentence which—you have agreed—befits your treasonous crimes. Alberto García, maggot and traitor, I hereby command you to return at once to Cuba. There you will join the underground and fight the devil in his own backyard. This is how you will redeem yourself. Perhaps you may someday be a hero. Or at least a man.”