“What was it about the pair of boots?”
“Raoul and I were specialists. We called ourselves the ordnance supply corps. We had a group of ten. We’d raid small army posts. Homemade bombs. Lots of fire power. Sneakers, blackface, absolute discipline. Hit hard, grab weapons and high tail it the hell out. Raoui was very proud of a pair of paratrooper boots he had. I said one guard area was clear, and Raoul went in, but I missed one of them. The son of a gun must have been asleep behind a bush. He cut loose with a weapon on full automatic, and as Raoul dived for cover, one slug tore the heels off both boots and stung his feet so badly he thought he’d been hit. From then on he wore sneakers like everybody else on our little team.”
We had measured each other. I liked the way he had explained the boots. He had the look. I can’t explain what it is. Raoul has it, in smaller measure. Sam Taggart had it, also in lesser degree. This Paul Dominguez was so slender as to look almost frail, but no sane man who’d had a good long look at him would try pushing him around. It isn’t class. It isn’t a special style. It isn’t anything in his eyes. Perhaps you can call it the smell of a man who lives by absolutes. If you take him on, you have to be prepared to kill him, because there is no other way of winning. I realized that Felicia Novaro had that flavor too-and his eyelashes were as long as hers.
“Raoul says you used to play those games too,” he said.
“In a different war. You didn’t go on the picnic?”
He shrugged. “I went over there to a training area. Man, I didn’t like the way it was shaping up. First, it was too soon. The big sell was still working. Full bellies and new schools. In the second place, it was too holy grail. A nice clean mission against the infidel, banners waving. Like the Children’s Crusade. In the third place, too many different people were promising too many different things. And there were dog fights between the groups going in, with no guarantee of any decent communication between the invasion and the working underground. I’ll go back. I’ll go back when it is going to be bloody and professional and smart, like forty simultaneous landings of small infiltration groups coordinated with massive sabotage from within. I’ll go in when we accept the fact it will take a year to make a good dent in the worker’s paradise, land of peace and freedom. Nobody is going to have to trade me for four cases of headache remedies. I’ll trade myself for about two dozen red hot reds. Big talk, huh? In the meanwhile, McGee, I sell sports cars. If there is anything I can help you with, let me know.”
I started it. I had intended to let him in on bits of it, the pertinent little parts of it. But doing it that way made me sound like a bystander buzzard, watching death, waiting for the tidbits. And I found myself wanting his approval, even though I didn’t have very much self-approval in this thing. He had that way about him, to make you seek his understanding. So I backed up and started again. It took a long time. When I got to the end of Nora, it uncorked a little more emotional involvement than I had intended to show, hoarsening my voice.
When I had finished, he got up without a word and brought two more bottles of beer back to the table. “My youngest kid,” he said, “the other day he fell off a chair. He jumped up and gave that chair such a hell of a kick, he nearly broke his toes.”
I saw what he meant. “It isn’t like that, Paul. Tomberlin had something to do with it. He took Mineros down there. He lit the fuse.”
“It was already an unstable situation. Carlos Menterez was too sociable. Sooner or later somebody who wanted him dead was going to find him. Once he had to leave Cuba, Menterez was an embarrassment to everybody, even to the little wolf pack of crypto-fascist exiles in Mexico City who think they can rebuild a Batista-type regime in Cuba when a power vacuum occurs after a successful invasion. God knows they funneled enough money out to finance it, but they don’t realize how fast the world is changing. Those boys you talked about, in the white car. Luis and Tomas. They would be with that group. And those people know that their crazy dream would need the goodwill of families like the Mineros. So they would have to get the word back that what happened was all Menterez’s doing. They would have to disavow Menterez, and explain how it had happened. If they could have found your friend Taggart and killed him, it would have been a goodwill gesture.”
“To whom? Who is left, for God’s sake?”
“Senora Mineros, the matriarch. In Cuba she lost a son, a daughter-in-law and a grandson to Menterez. In Mexico she loses the other son and another grandson. There are left I think, two more grandsons, the younger sons of Rafael. They are about fifteen and sixteen. And the other daughter-in-law, Rafael’s widow. Remnants, and tradition, and a hell of a lot of money. The family still exists. There would be property claims in Havana, a basis for cooperation. Oh yes, and there is another one too. Her brother. Esteban Mineros. An old man.”
“So you can assume word got back to the family about Taggart.”
“Yes, word that he would get in touch with Tomberlin to sell him what he had taken from Menterez, the statuettes Tomberlin wanted. Then it would be necessary to make some arrangement with Tomberlin so they could get their hands on Taggart. From what you say they got the gold, all but one piece of it, and missed the man.”
“When I talked to Sam, he at first wanted me to help him get the gold back. Then he decided to sell the one piece he had left. He seemed to think he was in a good bargaining position. He said something about being able to raise political hell.”
“All kinds of hell, man. Figure it out. The Mineros mystery. The Menterez collection in Tomberlin’s possession. An anonymous letter to any good reporter out here could create an international incident. The Castro propaganda machine could have a lot of fun with it.”
“So who killed Sam?”
“Rhetorical question? If he’d died easy, I could make up a list of names. But it sounds like a very personal execution. There were three young Talaveras. Two died on that boat. Maria and her brother, Manuel. There is a third brother, a little older. Ramon. Not only Maria’s brother, but a very good friend of Enrique Mineros. It surprises me he was not with them.”
“He would use a knife?”
“He is a very intense man. And he would consider it an obligation.”
“You know all these people?”
“I used to know them well. Just as Raoul used to know them well. Upper class Havana was a small community, McGee. But now there is… a considerable financial difference between us. Raoul and I came out later. It is the Castro equation, my friend. The later you left, the cleaner you were plucked. So we no longer travel in the same circles.”
“What does Ramon Talavera look like?”
“Slender. Dark hair. Medium height. Pale. A quiet man. Unmarried. Do you think he should be punished-if he is the one? Do you see these things in such a cloudy way, my friend?”
“No. But if he did, he was pretty damned coldblooded about it.”
“Somebody, for hire, kills his brother, his sister and his best friend with a knife. Man, you can expect a certain amount of indignation.”
“It all comes down to Tomberlin.”
“The way my kid kicked the chair.”
“But he does have the gold.”
“It isn’t his. Okay. Is it yours?”
“I’ll ask you a question. Maybe it was Ramon Talavera who decided it wasn’t just that Sam should keep on living. Is it just that Tomberlin should be the only one who winds up ahead?”
“Greed or justice?”
“A little of both. Plus curiosity.”
He smiled. “That’s an answer I like.”
“Do you know the man?”
“I met him once. At a banquet at a big hotel. One of the rare times when the latino guest list is so big, it includes Pablo Dominguez. He is a grotesque. He likes the Spanish-Americans. I think it is a taste for our women. Apparently he can be depended upon to give money to certain causes. I think he is tolerated. I think he is a man who would have to buy his way into any kind of group.”