Free Killing Castro by Lawrence Block

the one a New Orleans contact had put him wise to. You didn’t need a passport or a visa to stay in Cuba. All you needed was an identification paper and they gave you that as you got off the boat. And that little old man had given him one that couldn’t look more like the real thing. You didn’t even need the damned thing while you were in Cuba—nobody ever asked for it—but you had to have it to leave the country. And Garrison planned to leave the country the day Castro died.
    His eyes opened. He grinned, looked at the ceiling, closed his eyes again. The simple way. He was an American businessman on vacation, a real estate speculator who occasionally took a taxi to look at a piece of property. He stayed in a top hotel, ate at good restaurants, tipped a shade too heavily, drank a little too much and didn’t speak a damned word of Spanish. Hardly an assassin, or a secret agent, or anything of the sort. They searched his room, of course, but this happened regularly in every Latin American country. It was a matter of form. Actually, it tended to reassure him, since they searched so clumsily that he knew they were not afraid of him. Otherwise they would take pains to be more subtle.
    The simple way. He stood up, naked and hard-muscled, and walked to his window. He’d been careful to get a room with a window facing on the square. The square was La Plaza de la Republica, a small park surrounding the Palace of Justice. Parades with Fidel at their head made their way up a broad avenue to that plaza. Then Fidel would speak, orating wildly and magnificently from the steps of the palace. From his window Garrison could see those steps.
    With the rifle properly mounted on the window ledge, he could place a bullet in Fidel’s open mouth.
    He drew the window shade and returned to the bed. Maybe he wouldn’t even have to use the gun, he thought. Maybe one of the four idiots—Turner or Hines or Garth or Fenton, wherever the hell they all were—would save him the trouble. He was in no hurry. If one of the others killed Fidel, that was fine. He got his twenty grand just the same, with no risk and no work. If not, then he set up the gun and squeezed the trigger. The rifle would be dismantled and tucked away in the room before Fidel knew he was dead. The Beretta could stay where it was, in the television set. And he would be on the next boat to the mainland.
    There was a knock on the door. He sighed, raised himself on one elbow. “Who is it?”
    “Estrella. Let me in, ’arper.”
    The name on his identification papers was John Harper, a simple enough name which happened to begin with the one letter Estrella couldn’t manage. He stood up, wrapped a bath towel around his middle and opened the door for her. She came inside.
    She was very young and very beautiful. She had a tiny waist, solid breasts and hips, a red rosebud of a mouth and deep brown eyes that a man could get lost in. She was a prostitute; Garrison had managed to pick her up without trying very hard one night in the hotel’s bar. Now she came to his room every evening. Sometimes she would tell him that she was in love with him. Other times she would not say a word, would simply make love with him in fiery silence.
    Now she ran a soft hand over his chest. “You take a bath,” she said. “All you Yankees, every minute you take another bath. You take too many baths, ’arper.”
    “And you don’t take enough.”
    She pouted. “You don’t like how I smell?”
    His hands cupped her taut buttocks, drew her close. She was a full head shorter than he was. He lowered his face and inhaled the sweet animal fragrance that rose between her breasts.
    “I like how you smell,” he said. “You smell of sex. You smell like you want to get into bed.”
    “And you? You don’ wan’?”
    “I wan’, Estrella.”
    “You make fun how I talk. Don’ I talk awright?”
    “You talk like a magpie. Come here, Estrella.”
    She came into his arms again and he held her close. She wore