Music drifted outside: a soft last-call ballad.
The exit door never opened. Jukebox noise covered the whole–
Littell crawled over to Tony. Littell picked the corpse clean: watch, wallet, key ring. Print-sustaining switchblades shoved in hilt-deep–yes, do it.
He pulled them free. He got his legs. He ran down the alley until his lungs gave out.
13
(Miami, 1/3/59)
Pete pulled up to the cabstand. A mango splattered on his windshield.
The street was void of tiger cars and tiger riffraff. Placard wavers prowled the sidewalk, armed with bags full of too-ripe fruit.
Jimmy called him in L.A. yesterday. He said, “Earn your five fucking percent. The Kennedy bug went down, but you still owe me. My Cubans have been batshit since Castro took over. You go to Miami and restore fucking order and you can keep your five fucking–”
Somebody yelled, “Viva Fidel!” Somebody yelled, “Castro, el grande puto communisto! “ A garbage war erupted two doors down: kids tossing fat red pomegranates.
Pete locked his car and ran into the hut. A redneck type was working the switchboard, solo.
Pete said, “here’s Fulo?”
The geek yuk-yuk-yukked. “The trouble with this operation is half the guys are pro-Batista and half the guys are pro-Castro. You just can’t get guys like that to show up for work when there’s a nifty riot in progress, so here I am all by myself.”
“I said, ‘Where’s Fulo?’
“Working this switchboard is an education. I’ve been getting these calls asking me where the action is and ‘What should I bring?’ I like Cubans, but I think they’re prone to untoward displays of violence.”
The geek was cadaver thin. He had a bad Texas drawl and the world’s worst set of teeth.
Pete cracked his knucldes. “Why don’t you tell me where Fulo is.”
“Fulo went looking for action, and my guess is he brought his machete. And you’re Pete Bondurant, and I’m Chuck Rogers. I’m a good friend of Jimmy and some boys in the Outfit, and I am a dedicated opponent of the worldwide Communist conspiracy.”
A garbage bomb wobbled the front window. Two lines of placard wavers squared off outside.
The phone rang. Rogers plugged the call in. Pete wiped pomegranate seeds off his shirt.
Rogers unhooked his headset. “That was Fulo. He said if ‘el jefe Big Pete’ got in, he should go by his place and give him a hand with something. I think it’s 917 Northwest 49th. That’s three blocks to the left, two to the right.”
Pete dropped his suitcase. Rogers said, “So who do you like, the Beard or Batista?”
o o o
The address was a peach stucco shack. A Tiger Kab with four slashed tires blocked the porch.
Pete climbed over it and knocked. Fulo cracked the door and slid a chain off.
Pete shoved his way in. He saw the damage straight off: two spics wearing party hats, muerto on the living-room floor.
Fulo locked up. “We were celebrating, Pedro. They called my beloved Fidel a true Marxist, and I took offense at this slander.”
He shot them in the back at point-blank range. Small-bore exit wounds–the cleanup wouldn’t be that big a deal.
Pete said, “Let’s get going on this.”
o o o
Fulo smashed their teeth to powder. Pete burned their fingerprints off on a hot plate.
Fulo dug the spent rounds out of the wall and flushed them down the toilet. Pete quick-scorched the floor stains–spectograph tests would read negative.
Fulo pulled down the living-room drapes and wrapped them around the bodies. The exit wounds had congealed–no blood seeped through.
Chuck Rogers showed up. Fulo said he was competent and trustworthy. They dumped the stiffs into the trunk of his car.
Pete said, “Who are you?”
Chuck said, “I’m a petroleum geologist. I’m also a licensed pilot and a professional anti-Communist.”
“So who foots the bill?”
Chuck said, “The United States of America.”
o o o
Chuck felt like cruising. Pete co-signed the notion–Miami grabbed his gonads like L.A. used to.
They cruised. Fulo tossed the bodies off a deserted stretch of the Bal Harbor Causeway. Pete chain-smoked and dug the scenery.
He liked the big white houses and the big white sky–Miami was one big shiny bleach job. He liked the breathing room between swank districts and slums. He liked the shitkicker cops out prowling–they looked like they’d be hell on rambunctious niggers.