“Chickenshit shakedowns,” Garcia muttered.
“Shut up!”
Garcia 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. Garcia 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,” Garcia 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.”
Garcia shook his head. Carpetbaggers—definitely a Skip Wiley word.
“Dead greyhounds,” Garcia said mockingly. “I’m sure Castro couldn’t sleep for days.”
“Just drive, goddammit.”
“I never understood your stake in the group,” Garcia went on. “I think, what the hell does a hard-core like Jesus 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 anti-communism, Garcia. 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.”
Garcia’s patience was frayed. He knew all about Jesus 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.
Garcia pretended not to notice. He drove at a steady sixty-five, hands damp on the wheel. Bernal 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 rear-view mirror. Once he had tapped his brakes, and whoever was following had flashed his brights in reply. Garcia 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.” Garcia 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 Garcia’s car disappeared, heading toward Card Sound.