"So is that why I'm here? I wondered."
"Earl, this is nothing formal. Just think about things. You have several futures ahead of you. You can stay in Arkansas and be a state cop and probably, given your skill and integrity, end up in command. But again, some wiseguy politician or newspaper joe may cut you off at the knees if it earns him three extra votes or some kind of prize."
Earl said nothing.
"Or…well, you just think about the or. The or could be something you never dreamed of. Someone has noticed your talent, your skill, and there's no reason you should waste it in Arkansas. Nobody ever made it in Arkansas. Look at Boss Harry and Fred C. Becker: they're the best Arkansas has managed. No need for you to be a big fish in a microscopic pond like Arkansas."
"I like Arkansas."
"Buy a summer house there."
They turned up the Prado and navigated its leafy broadness, sliding by the mock-Paris cafes, the heavily ornamental central strip with its stone benches, palms and statues, passed the Sevilla-Biltmore where the gangsters lived, then turned left to the Plaza.
"Just think about it," said Roger.
"What was your name again, son?" Earl said to Roger.
Roger let out a long sigh of exasperation. "All right, show the Ivy League hotshot how little you think of him because he never fought on Iwo Jima. Let me tell you, though, I seem harmless and silly because I'm supposed to seem harmless and silly. It's called cover. It's what we do. For the record, my name is Roger St. John Evans. Roger Evans. I told you I was in codes? That was cover, too. I'm a senior case officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, head of Havana station, reporting directly to the Caribbean Desk in Langley, Virginia, directly to Plans, directly to the Director of Central Intelligence. That makes me important. I am important, take it from me. Walter-Frenchy-is my no. 2."
"Well, I'm sure you're very important, sonny. Now I want you to take a hike, because I have to have a talk with young Walter here and what he says and how he explains some things between us has a lot to do with whether I'm staying or whether I'm on the next plane home."
"Sure," said Roger. He leaned forward to Walter and said, "Don't blow it!"
Time ticked away as the two men sat in the car next to the pie-shaped, five-story building that was the Plaza. Across from them the Parque Central began to fill up; Havana was an exceptionally busy town and today would be no different. Cubans in straw hats and white suits came and went along the street and on to jobs in Old Havana, in the buildings along the Prado, here, there everywhere. Old ladies set up their tables and began the day's worth of rolling cigars for the touristas. It was a little early yet for pimps and touts, but they would be there, you could be sure.
Finally Frenchy said, "Well, Earl, I'm up front, but you're in the driver's seat. They want you. It's something, let me tell you."
Between Earl and the young man lay a whole gulf of mistrust. Frenchy had been a member of Earl's raid team in Hot Springs some years earlier, in an ugly little war against mobsters, supposedly for the moral betterment of mankind. But Frenchy was wild then, and made mistakes, some innocent people were killed, and it was decreed by frightened higher authorities that he should be let go. Off he went, spewing fury and screaming betrayal.
A week later, the team was mysteriously ambushed in a rail yard, after being set up by someone with an unusual sense of its weaknesses and vanities. Seven good men died that night and only Earl and one other made it out. Within six months, the tables and wheels of Hot Springs were up and running, so it had all been for nothing. It still left a dark, rancid taste on Earl's tongue. He hated to think on it; it got him riled in ways unnecessary for a calm life.
"You don't tell me nothing. You understand? Was a time when I thought I might come looking for you so's we'd have a little talk, get some things straightened out."
"Earl, there's nothing to be straightened out."
Earl looked at him and Frenchy held the gaze square and hard. There was no evasion, no furtiveness of the eyes, none of the things you saw when you had a crook before you, as Earl had had before him now a thousand or so times. Earl watched: the boy didn't breathe hard and shallow, his eyes didn't flutter left to recall or right to make something up, his throat didn't dry or crank up a quart or two of liar's phlegm. He held steady, maybe even a little too steady. That was the thing about Frenchy, damn his skills, he could look anybody square in the eye and tell him anything and say it with such passion he made you believe it.
"Does this Roger kid know what a little snake he has working for him?"
"Earl, I never did you or any of them any harm. I heard about it when I got back from China. I looked for you, because I wanted to know what happened, too. When I heard that Bugsy Siegel got pasted, I figured Mr. Earl paid him a call."
"Like as if I'd waste my time on city trash like that. No, he wasn't part of what happened in Hot Springs."
"Neither was I. Ask me any question. I'll go over it with you day by day, I'll cite time, date, location. I'll account for it all. You try your hardest to trip me up, but you won't be able to do it, because there's nothing for me to trip up on."
"What I know is you got canned, and both the old man and I fought as hard as we could against that. Some fights with some assholes you just don't win. Next, you disappear. A week later we are turned inside out by someone who knew us so well he played it straight to our weaknesses, to that old man's silly vanity, to his memories. Only two of us walked away."
"You and Carlo Henderson."
"That left seven good men and one great one to die in a rail-yard."
"I'd bet he didn't go unavenged."
"There was justice paid out, and I'd do it again in a second, even if it was evil killing work. But that ain't got nothing to do with you. We were talking about the great D. A. Henderson and seven good men."
"I remember D.A. He was a good hand. Earl, I had not a thing to do with it. I left town, I drifted to Washington, I went to work in a small unimportant department of the government, I had a lucky break and met some people-through a girl, actually-and got a small, unimportant job in the Agency. A nothing job. In there, I worked hard and met some more people and got some training and got the China assignment. I saw some things, but you know we lost China, and some men were stained by it. Their careers are finished. I just barely survived and I'm still at it. Going nowhere except fetching coffee for this Harvard asshole Roger who thinks he's the next Director. Anyhow, that's the story, the whole story."
Earl just studied him.
"Truth is, you could be spinning a lie or saying the word of God and I wouldn't know. Some-very damned few-criminals have that gift. But most don't. Not hardly nobody does. I never saw it in fifteen years in the Marine Corps. But it exists, I have learned that as a cop."
"Earl, I'll take a polygraph."
"You could beat that."
"Earl, you just watch and wait and make up your own mind. You belong in the major leagues, not out on some lousy Arkansas state route, handing out tickets. You'll see."
Earl shook his head.
"I need some sleep," he finally said.
"Earl, tonight there's the big party. You'll see it's the world you belong in. I know you, Earl. I know where you belong."
Chapter 14
"I must say, Speshnev, you've quite a queer notion of doing business," said Pashin.
"How so?" asked Speshnev. They sat at a disagreeable cafe in Centro, just off Zanja Street, just down from the Barrio Chino, for their weekly. The coffee was strong and sweet, the smell of tobacco stronger. All about them throbbed the Cuban working classes, in whose cause they so energetically labored.
"You were assigned to shadow a man who could be an opponent. And, if necessary, kill him. You establish surveillance, you penetrate the target, you even manage to enter the zone with an automatic. Then, astonishingly, you save his life when fate is about to give you exactly what we needed and expected of you. I wonder what the meaning of that decision is?"