CHAPTER 31

FIDEL CASTRO REALLY ENJOYED rum. Especially Cuban rum, not that gasoline you bought in most liquor stores. For him, Methusalem was the only label he’d deign to let pass his lips. It was from a bottle of that Cuban nectar that he was pouring a healthy portion into a crystal goblet at that precise moment.

Life was good. Life was particularly good this evening. He’d disposed of a nettlesome problem and enjoyed doing it. He’d never liked St. Ives from the first time he’d met him. The man had money, dressed well, talked in a cultivated manner, but from the start Castro had seen through all that, seen the man for what he really was. A pig. A pig all prettied up, but still a pig.

A dead pig.

He leaned back his head and laughed heartily. The two employees that were riding with him in the back of his limousine glanced at each other and smiled. El patron laughed much of the time like that. Whenever he did, they usually benefited, for he was a generous man with those who labored for him, and when he was in a good mood, there were usually bonuses and other gifts. For instance, he was sharing his good Cuban elixir with them, filling their own glasses whenever they got low.

“Senòr Castro,” one of them, a small, pockmarked Cuban from Miami said to his employer. “You got that gringo good, eh?”

“Si, muy bueno!” They all laughed. “Vasta macoule,” he said, and pretended to spit and they burst out laughing even harder.

El patron was about half in the bag. And as high as he could get. All the way from New Orleans he and his men had snorted thick lines on the solid silver serving tray he kept in the limo for just that purpose. This was the good stuff, the uncut product. As his driver turned up the lane, he wiped the last of the powder off and ran his finger with it inside his gums, smacking his lips in satisfaction.

“Ah,” he said, a big, fat, satisfied sigh. Life was indeed good.

And there was the Big Boss. The one who’d called him several days before to tell him their old arrangement was back in place, that C.J. St. Ives was no longer in charge of anything.t his bank, not his wife, not even his life. It was unsaid during their conversation, but Castro knew it was his duty to eliminate the man. That should be accomplished by right about now, he thought as the limo braked in the drive before the main house.

His driver ran around and held open the door and Castro swung his feet out. Ah, there was the good senòr now. He was trundling down the walk from the mansion in his wheelchair, his hand lifted in welcome.

Wait till he hears how I have performed, Castro thought, standing and stepping forward to greet his long-time powerful friend and ally, Senòr Titus Fuller Derbigny.

If his brain hadn’t been slowed by the recent effects of at least a quarter-gram of top-grade cocaine...if the buzz born of swilling almost half a bottle of the best Cuban rum in less than an hour hadn’t obscured his thinking...or if the glow of self-satisfaction wasn’t clouding his vision, the sight of the crippled man in the wheelchair swiftly rising to stand might have registered on Fidel Castro’s consciousness a little bit sooner than it did. His reflexes and reaction time might have been sufficient to speed up the synapses and electrical connections slogging through his brain and he might have been able to make the movie that was unfolding in slow-motion before his redlined eyes speed up enough to bring his own gun up to answer the problem of the machine gun that magically appeared in the other man’s hands.

Or maybe not.

The Cuban drug lord’s last mortal act was to throw his hands up in front of his face and cry out a word so queer and out-of-place that it seemed to hang in the air long seconds after the last burst of .45-caliber bullets had torn through his and his associates’ bodies.

Mama!

Castro’s mouth froze forever in the last syllable of his cry and Reader Kincaid tore off the white wig that was beginning to itch, walked over and poured another fusillade of lead into the dead drug czar’s body, his teeth bared in what Eddie Delahousie had called his “Dr. Death” face.