Garcia's patience was frayed. He knew all about Jesus Bernal Rivera, born in Trenton, New Jersey, son of a certified public accountant and product of the Ivy League; a man who had never set foot on the island of Cuba.
"You're a phony," Garcia told him, "a pitiful phony."
Bernal raised the stubby shotgun and placed the barrel against the detective's right temple.
Garcia pretended not to notice. He drove at a steady sixty-five, hands damp on the wheel. Bernal would never shoot him while the car was going so fast. Even with the gun at his head Garcia was feeling slightly more optimistic about his chances. For ten miles he had been watching a set of headlights in the rear-view mirror. Once he had tapped his brakes, and whoever was following had flashed his brights in reply. Garcia thought: Please be a cop.
After a few tense moments Bernal put the shotgun down. "Not now," he said, seemingly to himself. "Not just yet." Garcia glanced over and saw that a crooked smile had settled across the bomber's griddled features.
The Turnpike ended at Florida City, and the MG was running on fumes. Brian Keyes coasted into an all-night service station but the pumps were off and he had to wait in line to pay the attendant. He watched helplessly as the taillights of Al Garcia's car disappeared, heading toward Card Sound.
Catching up would take a miracle.
Keyes had arrived at police headquarters just as Jesus Bernal and Garcia were getting in the car. He had spotted the shotgun, but there had been no time to get help; all he could do was try to stay close and hope Bernal didn't see him.
Everything was going smoothly until he'd checked the gas gauge.
Keyes hurriedly pumped five dollars' worth. He ran back to the bullet-proof window and pounded on the glass.
"Call the police!" he shouted at the attendant. The man gave no sign of comprehending any language, least of all English.
"A policeman is in trouble," Keyes said. He pointed down the highway. "Get help!"
The gas station attendant nodded vaguely.
"No credit cards," he said. "Much sorry."
Keyes jumped into the MG and raced down U.S. Highway One. He turned off at Card Sound Road, a narrow and seemingly endless two-lane lined with towering pines. The road ahead was black and desolate, not another car in sight. Keyes stood on the accelerator and watched the speedometer climb to ninety. Mosquitoes, dragonflies, and junebugs thwacked the car, their jellied blood smearing the windshield. Every few miles the headlights would freeze a rabbit or opossum near the treeline, but there was no sign anywhere of human life.
As the road swung east, Keyes slowed to check some cars at a crab shanty, then at Alabama Jack's, a popular tavern, which had closed for the night. At the toll booth to the Card Sound Bridge, he asked a sleepy redneck cashier if a black Dodge had come through.
"Two Cubans," she reported. " 'Bout five minutes ago. I 'member cause they didn't wait for change."
Keyes crossed the tall bridge at a crawl, studying the nocturnal faces of the crabbers and mullet fishermen lined along the rail. Soon he was on North Key Largo, and more alone than ever. This end of the island remained a wilderness of tangled scrub, mahogany, buttonwood, gumbo-limbo, and red mangrove. The last of the North American crocodiles lived in its brackish bogs; this was where Tommy Tigertail had recruited Pavlov. There were alligators, too, and rattlers, gray foxes, hordes of brazen coons, and the occasional shy otter. But mostly the island was alive with birds: nighthawks, ospreys, snowy egrets, spoonbills, limpkins, parrots, blue herons, cormorants, the rare owl. Some slept, some stalked, and some, like the scaly-headed vultures, waited ominously for dawn.
Keyes turned off on County Road 905, drove about half a mile, and parked on the shoulder. He rolled down the window of the MG and the tiny sports car immediately filled with insidious bootblack mosquitoes. Keyes swatted automatically, and tried to listen above the humming insects and the buzz of the night-hawks for something out of place. Perhaps the sound of a car door slamming, or human voices.
But the night surrendered no clues.
He went another mile down the road and parked again; still nothing but marsh noises and the salty smell of the ocean. After a few minutes a paunchy raccoon waddled out of the scrub and stood on its hind legs to investigate; it blinked at Keyes and ambled away, chirping irritably.
He started the MG and headed down 905 at high speed to blow the mosquitoes out of the car. He was driving so fast he nearly missed it, concealed on the east side of the highway, headfirst in a dense hammock. A glint of chrome among the dark green woods is what caught Keyes's eye.
He pumped the brakes and steered off the blacktop. He slipped out of the sports car and popped the trunk. Groping in the dark, he found what he was looking for and crept back to the spot.
The black Dodge was empty and its engine nearly cold to the touch.
The two men stood alone at the end of a rutted limestone jetty, poking like a stone finger into the sea. A warm tangy wind blew from the northeast, mussing Garcia's thin black hair. His mustache was damp from sweat, and his bare arms itched and bled from the trek through the hammock. The detective had given up all hope about the car in the rearview mirror; it had turned off in Florida City.
Jesus Bernal seemed not to notice the cloud of mosquitoes swarming around his head. Garcia thought: perhaps they don't sting him—his blood is poisoned and the insects know it.
Fevered with excitement, Bernal's face glistened in the water's reflection. His eyes darted ratlike and his head jerked at each muffled animal noise from the woods behind them. In one hand Bernal clutched the sawed-off shotgun, and with the other waved a heavy police flashlight, lacing amber ribbons in the blackness.
Jesus was already contemplating the journey back to the car, alone. The shotgun probably would be empty by then, useless. He grew terrified just thinking about the ordeal—what good was a flashlight against panthers! He imagined himself imprisoned all night by the impenetrable hammock; at first disoriented, then panicked. Then lost! The sounds alone might drive him insane.
For Jesus Bernal was scared of the dark.
"What's the matter?" Garcia asked.
"Nothing." Bernal ground his dentures and made the fear go away. "This is where we say adios."
"Yeah?" Garcia thought it seemed an odd place for an execution. The jetty provided no concealment and the echo of gunfire would carry for miles across the water. He hoped a boat might pass soon.
Jesus Bernal fumbled in his khaki trousers and came out with a brown letter-sized envelope, folded in half.
"Open it," he wheezed. "Read it aloud." He aimed the flashlight so Garcia could make out the document, which had been typed neatly. It appeared much longer than any of the communiques from the Nights of December.
"What is this, you writing a book?" the detective grumbled.
"Read!" Bernal said.
Garcia took his eyeglasses from a shirt pocket.
There were two identical sections, one in English and one in Spanish:
"I, Alberto Garcia Delgado, hereby confess myself as a traitor to my native country of Cuba. I admit to the gravest of crimes: persecuting and harassing those brave revolutionaries who would destroy the dictator Castro, and who would liberate our suffering nation so that all Cuban peoples may return. With my despicable crimes I have dishonored these patriots and shamed my own heritage, and that of my father. I deeply regret my seditious behavior. I realize that I can never be forgiven for using my police authority to obstruct what was good and just. For this reason, I have agreed to accept whatever punishment is deemed fitting by my judge, the honorable Jesus Bernal Rivera—a man who has courageously dedicated his life to the most noble of revolutionary callings."