“And you hired him,” Moran said.
“Well, actually I never met the guy in my life till tonight. He was Nolen’s boy.”
“You’re using Nolen,” Moran said. “What’s the difference?”
“George, you got a suspicious mind and now you’re getting off on something else,” Jiggs said. “What we’re talking about here, all the guy does is spray-paint some bullshit on de Boya’s gatepost. It doesn’t matter the guy can swim or not, what I want you to look at here is the way de Boya handled it. He call the cops? It’s an act of vandalism, you get a fine, maybe ninety days chopping weeds for the county-uh-unh, de Boya believes in capital punishment.”
“You delivered him,” Moran said.
“You want to look at it that way,” Jiggs said, “I offered him up, like a sacrifice so you can see where we’re at here.”
Moran opened the car door.
“George, just a minute. Let’s consider the documented fact you got something going with the guy’s wife.”
Moran slammed the door closed and Jiggs raised his hand, a peace sign.
“I’m not questioning your intentions, George. Where I live down on the South Beach-Hotel Lamont, sounds like class, uh? You should see it-down there you fall in love with some old Jewish broad on food stamps or you go uptown a mile and find a hooker. No, true love is beautiful, George; but in seeking it you got to be sure and keep your nuts outta the wringer.” Jiggs paused and the inside of the car was quiet except for a faint ticking sound, the engine cooling down. “I’ll bet you asked his wife-I’ll bet it came up in conversation and you asked her where the general keeps his going-away money. Am I right?”
Moran opened the car door again.
“The only point I want to make about this evening, George-de Boya does that to a spray-painter, what’s he gonna do to a guy he finds out’s been jazzing his wife, room one sixty-seven the Holiday Inn? He’s already pretty sure. The man’ll believe anything I tell him.”
Moran got out of the car this time. He said, looking in at Scully, “You want to tell him, Jiggs? Tell him.” He swung the door closed and walked off toward the motel office.
Maybe it was the only way. Let it happen.
TRUJILLO HAD SAID he was riding a tiger and if he ever fell off the tiger would devour him.
“Please don’t talk like that; put it out of your mind,” Andres had told the old man, the Benefactor, who not only ruled his country for thirty years he owned it and was worth-with his sugar, his rice, his sisal, cattle, cement, his tobacco-some $800 million the day he fell off the tiger and was devoured.
Andres had tried for the next few days to transfer bank accounts and titles to property, searching for people he could trust to help him, and finally had to run for his life to Miami by way of San Juan with less than twenty thousand in cash and a cardboard box of photographs.
They hung in his study, all that was left of that time. Photos in black and white of Andres with Trujillo, with Peron, with Batista, with Anastasio Somoza, with Pérez Jimenez of Venezuela. A photo with U.S. Marine officers taken when U.S. Marines maintained tranquility and could be trusted. There was the photo of Andres holding the submachine gun that belonged to Trujillo’s brother, Arismendi. They would go out on Trujillo’s yacht-Andres and Arismendi, who was called Petán-and fire the submachine gun at the sharks off Monte Cristi, the sharks gorging on the rotten meat the sailors threw over the side, the two of them having a splendid time blowing the man-eaters to pieces.
Here it was another kind of boat-ride with a different species of shark circling, waiting for the boat to tip over. Riding this boat or riding a tiger it was the same end if you weren’t careful. Trujillo had got old and failed to listen, failed to keep his enemies frightened of him. Which was easy enough to do.
Choose one from a group of suspected enemies and shoot him. Or drown him, it didn’t matter. The others would look at the ground or close their eyes, not wanting to meet the eyes that would choose the next one.
But he had stared at Moran and Moran had not looked at the ground or at the man drowned in the pool. Moran had stared back at him. Perhaps he should have given Moran to the Mendoza brothers to be taken to sea with Rafi. It was possible Moran was not involved in the plot, but Jiggs Scully had made a point saying, “Either way you got to do Rafi. So let Moran watch and have second thoughts in case he is involved. Give him pause, as you say.” Jiggs said he had questioned Rafi and there was nothing to learn from him, he was a “third stringer.” Whatever that meant.
Jiggs said he had discovered Rafi through informants and was closing in on the others. Jiggs saying so much, Jiggs finding out about this plot and the people taking part in it. Jiggs giving, he said, all his time to it. But not saying anything about being paid.
Andres, the day before, had called Jimmy Cap to discuss this with him, to say he appreciated Jimmy Cap’s concern, sending Jiggs to help. See if he had actually sent him. But Jimmy Cap was in Buffalo for several days and could not be reached.
So now late at night Andres sat behind his seven-foot desk drinking Cognac, staring vacantly at his past life in photographs, wondering what was taking place in the present.
Trying to see it clearly without interruptions.
First Corky. Corky in the doorway, a manila envelope under his arm, saying the business with Rafi Amado was finished. Then, remembering the manila envelope, coming into the study only far enough to place the envelope on de Boya’s desk next to the brandy decanter, Corky reaching out, not wanting to intrude himself. “It came today from Marshall Sisco.” The door closed. Andres picked up the envelope marked personal & confidential.
Almost immediately the door opened again and Andres put the envelope down.
Now Mary stood in a white dressing gown that reached to the oriental carpet. She said, “Who was here?” She said, “Andres, what’s going on?” Curious, perhaps alarmed.
But not without insolence. The way she always stood with her thin legs apart, one foot pointed out, shoulders slightly drooped. Demonstrating the bored insolence of American women as she asked her insolent questions. “Will you please tell me?”
He walked over to her.
“Andres-”
And closed the door in her face.
He returned to his desk trying to remember at what point he had left his mind, interrupted-ignoring for the moment the envelope Corky had brought-yes, he remembered now.
The cartridge was already in the tape machine on his desk, the recording of a phone conversation made earlier this evening at his office in the Biscayne Tower. A conversation with an old friend, Alfonso Silva, who was Cuban and zealously anti-Castro, a survivor of the Bay of Pigs, a former agent of the CIA and member of Leucadendra Country Club. Andres pushed the ON button, listened patiently to their voices, sipped cognac, then began to stroke, gently, his dark cap of lacquered hair as he heard:
ANDRES: You know the one named Scully who works for the ITALIANS. Tell me again what you think of him.
ALFONSO: He does what we have spoken of before. Anything you want. If you trust those people you trust him. It’s a decision you have to make.
ANDRES: But his appearance… How is he able to get information on the street? He’s not one of us.
ALFONSO: With money. How else? Miami is a city of informants. What do you want to know?
ANDRES: He sent me two brothers, Mendoza…
ALFONSO: Ave Maria.
ANDRES: You know them? He said they worked for the CIA.
ALFONSO: They went to Cuba to do some work and were arrested and put in prison. Now they come back on the boatlift from Mariel. They wear red and white beads?