Castro realized that if Franklin and Marlis somehow recognized him, they could with one well-placed phone call generate more business for themselves, and perhaps even the gratuity of a lifetime. Once Castro gave a subtle tug on his good earlobe, three stocky men in guayaberas materialized to escort the voluble cleaners off the premises. Meanwhile Fidel slipped into his room and changed into a bathing suit, an absurd vermilion slingshot which was (Cuban intelligence had assured him) the prevailing beachside attire of old, pallid, pudgy male tourists.
The outfit worked too well, the swimsuit a beacon. Strolling alone on the sand, Fidel was scarcely a hundred yards from the motel when a gum-popping prostitute offered to “rock your world, Gramps,” for fifty U.S. dollars. Her efforts at detaching his red thong were interrupted by a wiry ferret-eyed man who roughly knocked Castro down, stuck a pistol in his belly, and stripped off the gold Cartier wristwatch he’d received as a gift on a state visit to Paris.
Fidel didn’t recognize the robber, but he recognized the prison tattoos on the man’s grimy knuckles. Combinado del Este! With amazement Castro realized he was being mugged by a thug that he himself had sprung from prison and put on a boat to Key West in 1980. The bleak beautiful irony made him cough up blood.
Numbed by the morphine, Fidel felt more indignity than pain as the mugger ran away. Before the old man could rise to his knees, a red-haired urchin no older than six plucked the hairpiece from his scalp and dashed down the beach, shouting to his mother that he’d found a dead crow.
Castro, feeling himself hoisted by the armpits, reasonably anticipated dismemberment or evisceration.
“Easy,” said the voice, which belonged to a motel security guard. The cheap badge on his shirt said “Joe Sereno.” Fidel was grateful to see him.
“You all right?” Sereno asked. “Man, you don’t look so good.”
In perfect English, Castro gasped, “What is this craziness? These monsters?”
“Just another day at the beach.” Sereno smiled ruefully. “The problem, see, it started when they went to topless. The guys, old tourist guys like yourself, come down here to stare at the cuties. Am I right? The gangs, hookers, scumbags—they all know this. So they hang on this stretch, just waiting.”
Fidel morosely dusted the grit from his chest. Sereno gently led him back toward the Odyssey. “I mean, you’re a criminal it’s not such a bad deal. Get a tan. Enjoy the naked babes. Mug a few Germans and Canadians, and that’s your day.”
“Why,” rasped Castro, “aren’t these terrible people in jail!”
Joe Sereno burst out laughing. “Where you from, old-timer—Mars? Come on, let me take you back to your room.”
“Thank you, officer.”
“By the way, there’s something I gotta ask.”
Fidel’s jaws clenched. The security guy was eyeing him closer now, the way the cleaners had.
“Your name,” said Sereno, “it’s not really Garcia, is it?”
Less than two hours later, a chartered Gulfstream jet landed at the Opa-Locka airport, where it was met by a black Chevy Blazer. Four men got out and moved toward the plane. The tallest one walked slowly, as if in pain. The others could be seen helping him up the stairs. Minutes later, a station wagon arrived and a fifth person, a woman in a long gown, was led to the jet.
The flight plan indicated the Gulfstream would be heading nonstop to Kingston, Jamaica. This was a fib. The destination was Havana. Fidel Castro was going home to die.
Miami was too damn scary. The deal was off.
The remaining severed head, the one Juan Carlos Reyes imagined would make him president of Cuba, belonged to another expendable Castro double, Jose Paz-Gutierrez.
This fact was known to Castro himself, Cuban State Security, the CIA, and of course Lilia Sands, who—on numerous long-ago lonely nights, when Fidel was away—had slept with Jose Paz-Gutierrez at a farmhouse in Camagiiey. Of course she’d saved a lock of Jose’s hair, as she did for all her lovers.
No one was less surprised than Lilia when Reyes’s DNA expert matched with.9999995 certainty the hair from Lilia’s cigar box with the severed head in the red Gott cooler. Her secret glee at fooling the munchkin-sized millionaire was tempered by a pang of wistfulness, for of all the Castro doubles Lilia had slept with, Jose Paz-Gutierrez had been the best—the one whose embrace most reminded her of Fidelito himself, the one whose earlobe she had once chomped off in ecstasy, just as she had Fidel’s.