And now?
What am I? Dear lord, who have I become and in whose service am I prepared to do this deed? Why is this what you have to do to get a nice house in Washington and pretty clothes for your wife and a good school and college education for your son?
He had no answers and the questions hurt. He decided to go down to the restaurant, have some dinner, and turn in early.
The bar on the porch of the Casa Grande was jammed. A variety of smaller carnival parties had somehow collected into a single one, and two or three competing mambo quintets wandered the floor, issuing manifestos of pleasure and rhythm. Everybody was smoking, everybody was touching, everybody was shaking. It was an orgy of human groping. It overlooked the park and all the tables were crowded.
He headed toward the bar with his usual routine in mind, which was to enjoy the sense of celebration, the closeness of other if strange human beings, but not to drink and lose himself. He slid through the throng, dodging dancers, slipped through darkness, found a relatively isolated spot at the bar at the end of the long porch, and parked on a stool.
"Senor?"
"Ah, rum and coke. Charge me the whole ticket, but no rum. Put an umbrella in it. Okay?"
"Of course, senor."
Soon enough it came, soon enough he was sipping, looking out to the square where the real action was, where the life of the city at play really took off. The smoke seethed, the bar was strung with lights, the music rose and jiggled.
He smoked, had another drink, enjoyed a brief if debilitating fantasy about bringing Junie and the boy down here, hoping they'd enjoy what was so special about it, yet knowing they wouldn't. An hour or so dragged itself by, and he thought enough time had passed so that he could get to sleep.
Instead he saw someone waving at him from a busy table of Americans, all of whom were staring at him with equal parts adoration and passion. She detached herself and he recognized her immediately: the woman Jean-Marie Augustine, the Filipina, rapturously beautiful tonight in a low-cut tropical dress that showed her smooth mahogany shoulders, her cleavage, and the tightness of her body through hips and legs, down to pretty red toes in some kind of high-heeled sandals. She had a flower in her hair and as she approached, he tried not to feel excited at her attraction to him and his to her, and he tried not to be intoxicated by the intensity of her sweet perfume, and he wondered, near panic, what the best way to get out of here fast would be.
"Well, hello," she said.
"Hi, there. I thought you were a Havana gal."
"Oh, I am, definitely. But carnival. I mean, you have to come. It's the best show on earth."
"These folks know how to throw a party, that's for sure."
"Oh, and this year, they say the fireworks might be on the ground as well as in the sky. I had to come up and get a look at it."
"I wouldn't pay too much attention to rumors. They're always wrong."
"Except that what would the famous Sergeant Swagger be doing up here if there weren't something big going on? You don't seem the type to come up for a big party."
"I just do what these young kids tell me."
"You're quite the celebrity. The man who bested the mighty Hemingway. Now they say you're up here on some secret mission for the boys on the third floor, to defend our interests. The bodyguard who became a government agent and saved the banana for America. God bless the banana, staff of life."
"I don't even like bananas, not a bit. But between you and me, I don't think these boys could find the sky if they didn't have a sign marked 'up.'"
She laughed.
"Look, why don't you join us? It's some businesspeople, all wealthy and connected. The Bacardi crowd. They know who you are. They'd like to bask in your glamour. It would be like John Wayne or Joe DiMaggio coming over and sitting with them. You'd find it pretty amusing, I think. Most of them are worthless."
"Once they saw what a down-home buckra I was, they'd go back to yakking about the stock market. I really ought to head upstairs. I don't think there's a chance in hell of a thing happening here, because nothing on this island happens on time, but I ought to be ready just in case."
"So mysterious. But that's what I'd expect from the manhunter."
"You are well informed, I have to say."
"Down here, everybody talks, everybody gossips. You can't keep a secret. All right, Sergeant Swagger, mystery man of the Caribbean, I'll go away and let you do your duty, as all marines must. You still have my card, right?"
"Yes I do, Mrs. Augustine."
"Please call me Jean. Everybody does. I'm just Jean, the famous Jean of the Havana smart set."
"Jean, then."
"So if you need help and these young kids you're working for, even though you detest them, can't do a thing for you, you call me."
"Sure."
"And thanks for being such a good guy that night with that big jerk. You were terrific. Guys like you, always married, always decent. Always. Just my luck."
She gave him a kiss on the cheek, squeezed his arm and slipped away through the crowd.
He finished the rumless-and-Coke, threw down too much money on the bar, and found a quiet way out.
He showered but could not sleep. He lay in the darkness, waiting for it to come but it didn't. He tossed, turned, tried to quell his mind. The smell of the woman was still in his mind, and possibly what she represented: a whole world of unimagined possibility. And this business too, with its promise of the fancy job in Washington, some idea of a big house, a fine school for the boy, a sense of becoming something so far beyond what he was supposed to become it disturbed him.
Somewhere in there he actually drifted off. But it was a shallow, restless sleep, broken by dreams. In one of these he was back in the water off Tarawa, that moment of the war's darkest horror, where the Higgins boats had gotten caught on the reef and they had a whole thousand-yard walk in neck-deep water under heavy Jap fire. The tracers were white-blue, like snakes or whips that lashed or struck across the water, and it was so deep and heavy you could hardly move and there were times when the island ahead disappeared behind swells and the ships behind disappeared too, and there you were, one man, neck-deep in water, defenseless-alone, it seemed, on the face of a watery planet.
Gunfire.
Then he realized the gunfire wasn't in his brain.
He snapped awake and listened as the shots rang through the night.
He got up, raced to the westward-facing window and opened the curtain, pushed the shutters open wide.
Facing the square, he saw nothing but the flicker of gas lamps in the park, but he knew the gunfire came from behind, to the east.
Frenchy called three minutes later.
"It's happening. The idiot attacked the Moncada Barracks. There's a gunfight going on there now. We can get him. How soon can you be set?"
"I'm ready now," said Earl. He hung up the phone, picked up the rifle case and headed downstairs.
Chapter 39
The mulatto Cartaya stood before them all and once again sang his song, a catchy tune that bore an embarrassing similarity to a famous English seaside rhythm.