Outside Snake’s window a slice of Miami moon hung like the blade of a freshly sharpened scythe. It was February 25, 1964, the night a dozen armed men in stocking masks came for the Morales family.
Snake was twelve. Christened Manuel Ricardo Morales, early on he was tagged Culebra, or Snake, for his long, sinewy body. A lean kid with a quirky brain. At a clinic on Calle Ocho a Cuban médico put a name to his condition. The boy recorded everything he heard or read or saw and could recite it back flawlessly. Its scientific label: eidetic memory.
“A gift from God,” the medic said.
His cross to bear, Snake would come to believe.
Snake’s joys: the everlasting Miami heat, lush ocean winds. Exploring the city streets on his Schwinn Sting-Ray, circling out from his Little Havana neighborhood mile by mile. But more than anything: the golden hours he spent in the company of his sister, Carmen. A girl devoted to Christ and the purity of her soul. She and she alone could ease Snake’s lonesome heart.
After midnight on that airless February night, Snake lay awake. Beside him in the dark, the radio buzzed with Cassius Clay’s triumph. The brash Clay had humiliated Liston, exposed him as a clumsy oaf and quitter.
Clay was Snake’s idol, had been for the past few months while he trained on Miami Beach and showed up daily on the sports pages of The Miami Herald. A tall young man, handsome to the point of prettiness, a loudmouth, unafraid of any man. Everything Snake was not.
As the announcers babbled about the new champ, Snake reran the six rounds, every punch and duck, Clay taunting, backpedaling, side-wheeling, jabbing, jabbing, staying just out of range. Two cuts opening around Liston’s eyes in the second round. Slinging blood, he struck wildly. Clay danced and punched, jab, jab, hook, right cross, straight right hand, smearing the bloody face, his own eyes wide. Liston striking air and air again. Jab, jab.
Next round, cuts repaired, Sonny came out brawling. Clay ducked and dodged. Punch after furious punch grazed Cassius but did no damage. Falling back, falling back, Cassius let Liston tire himself out.
Les Keiter’s radio voice called every feint and bob, every thudding strike.
Between rounds four and five Cassius rubbed furiously at his eyes, complained he was blinded by something evil on Liston’s gloves. The goop used to seal Liston’s cut, the wintergreen liniment on his shoulder, or something more devious.
Eyes on fire, Clay wanted to quit, but Dundee dragged the stool away, shoved him into the ring, Dundee screaming this was his chance, his one and only. Blind or not, he had to fight.
Clay stumbled out and Liston attacked with chopping lefts and rights, trying to finish it. Cassius wiped at his stinging eyes, backpedaling, stiff-arming, but getting hit again and again. Biggest, baddest heavyweight of all time throwing bombs at a sightless man. Liston stalked and Keiter cranked his voice higher, Sonny was close to a knockout, body blows, fists slammed chin and nose.
But Cassius survived. Somehow he held on, survived.
In the sixth his eyes were clear and it was his turn. Snapping left after left, jab and hook and straight right hand, smacking Liston. While the champ, flat-footed, gasping, could only paw at Clay. An empty shell. Done.
When the bell rang to start the seventh, Liston stayed on his stool.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Howard Cosell yelled. “Sonny is not coming out, he’s not coming out. Clay’s the first one to see it. It’s Cassius Clay, Cassius is the winner and new heavyweight champion of the world.”
And Clay roared, “I am the king. I upset the world. Give me justice.”
Snake pumped a fist, joining with Cassius in celebration for all newcomers, all outcasts, all those who were gravely underestimated.
Later during the postfight chatter Snake heard noises outside, and rose to see. Two cars rumbled into the driveway and doors flew open and men poured out. Glint of metal in their hands. They swarmed the house.
He woke his brother, Carlos.
“It’s happening,” Snake said. “Get up, it’s happening.”
Over and again his father warned that Fidel’s reach was long. Snake’s dad was from Varadero, Cuba, an exile strangling on hate, enraged at the injustice, the terrible disaster at the Bay of Pigs. Forever ranting. Happy for Kennedy’s assassination. That traitor, he said. That coward.
Snake’s dad was no dad. His mom, no mom. No baseball in the backyard, no Saturday trips to the beach. Not a kiss good night or questions about his day. A father who spent every free hour organizing a militia. Dozens of exiles rode with him into the Everglades each weekend in boots and camouflage to target practice, rehearse assault plans.
Back in Cuba, Jorge Morales was a machetero. A simple cane-cutter who swung his long blade twelve hours a day down the endless rows. Now earning his wage as a barber on Flagler Street, but his real work was commanding his two dozen men, each on fire with the same fury. Crush the tyrant this time. Liberate their homeland. Do it without the gutless Americans. Snake’s mother went along, cooked for the troops and smiled, fighting for a place in Jorge’s heart. Nothing left over for her children.
“There’s another woman,” Carmen told Snake. “I hear them through the walls, fighting about her.”
“Another woman?” Snake was bewildered.
Carmen shook her head. Snake too innocent to hear more.
If it weren’t for Carmen, Snake would not have known love’s name. She was two years older, fourteen. Asleep down the hall. Long raven hair, brown eyes glistening with confidence, a faithful glowing smile, a body swelling toward womanhood. Carmen recited her prayers and saved her pennies for Sunday candles at St. Michael the Archangel. She had surrendered her heart to God. In the Morales house, that residence of rage, guns, and camouflage, Carmen was the soft, true core. The shine, the goodness. Snake’s soul.
So certain was Snake’s father that Fidel would one day try to crush him, he rented a room in their cramped house to two brothers in arms. Always a sentry awake by the front window, gun in hand, waiting for just such a night.
But on that evening his father’s bodyguards had gathered by the radio, listening to young Clay dethrone the brute Liston. Hours later all of them were still lounging in the Florida room at the back of the house. Drinking rum, puffing cigars, paying no attention to the dangerous night.
As Snake brought his brother awake, the intruders broke inside. Blasts in the living room. Screams and howls and answering gunfire. A crater exploded in the boys’ wall and a chip of plaster carved a bloody groove across his brother’s forehead. Before Carlos could wail, Snake clamped the boy’s mouth and stood listening to the thunder of handguns.
Beneath his feet the terrazzo trembled. Snake hissed Carlos quiet, then went to the window, pushed out the screen.
One man stood guard, stocking over his head. Snake ducked.
“Under the bed,” he said. “Get under the damn bed. I’ll get Carmen.”
“I’ll kill them.” Face bloody, Carlos drew from beneath his bed a long machete. It was their father’s, still holding a gleaming edge. Weeks before, Carlos had smuggled it out of the cluttered garage and hid it below his mattress so he could toy with it in the moonlight each night before sleep.
“Give me that,” Snake said, and pried the heavy blade from Carlos’s hand. “I’m going for Carmen. You stay here.”
Snake shoved Carlos into the dusty hideaway below the box spring.
At the door, Snake peeked out to see men in the living room. Stocking masks and dark clothes. Their backs to him as they fired at the last resisters in the Florida room. Snake pressed against the wall and inched toward Carmen’s room, carrying the machete’s dreadful weight.
One of the invaders turned his way. Snake flattened into the shadows. When the man swung back to fire at the holdouts, Snake threw himself forward, made it to Carmen’s open door, and lunged inside.
A man was there. Blocky head, thick shoulders. His hair cut in a burr.
The man was sitting on the side of her bed, his right hand moving under Carmen’s sheets. In her white nightgown his sister was suffering the assault in silence. Her eyes found Snake’s as he entered the room.
Snake raised the cane-cutter and stole forward until he was just behind the man.
Her eyes on Snake, Carmen said, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”
The machete was cocked high when the blocky man swiveled, his face hidden in shadows. Snake faltered for a heartbeat, then emptied his lungs of a scream, and brought the blade down, striking the man’s outstretched hand. Metal clashed bone, and the machete spun from his grip.
The man made no sound, just stared at his mutilated hand, the first two fingers hanging by threads of gristle. Blood washing down his sleeve. On the man’s pinkie finger, a large diamond ring sparkled. A fat, ugly diamond.
When the man dropped to his knees, Carmen tore out of bed.
“Come on, Snake. Come on.”
She scrambled out the window and dropped into the long spring grass. A second later, machete in hand, Snake landed beside her, and from the adjacent window Carlos jumped onto the lawn and rolled to his feet.
The sentry spotted them as they neared the street. Sprinting through the warm night air, Snake heard gunfire, three blasts, four. Snake slowed when he heard the shots, falling back a step behind Carmen, and out of the darkness his sister slung her arms around him, tackling, dragging him to the lawn. They fell side by side, and her face came to rest inches away, blood pouring from her temple. Her eyes lingered on his for a second, then rolled upward to make the acquaintance of her God.
Snake drew a breath, the black night spinning. Then he grabbed the machete and found his feet.
The attacker was stalking toward them, head craned forward, peering through the silk stocking. A shiny pistol wavered before him.
Carlos fled across the street. By then neighbors were spilling from their houses, calling out to one another through the darkness.
Snake charged the man.
A slug whisked by his ear; another plowed into the soil at his feet. Snake flew across the yard and gored the man’s belly, drove him backward. The two fell, and Snake rolled away and drew the blade free and hacked at the man, chopped and chopped until the killer no longer moved.
When Snake looked up, the invaders were fleeing the house. One of them saw their fallen comrade and started toward him, but a woman called out, “Leave him, let’s go.”
A woman.
They ran to the cars, slammed doors, roared away. Beside him a neighbor squatted over the body of Snake’s victim and rolled back the stocking that covered the dead man’s face. He was a short, narrow man with a thin mustache. Snake stared into his empty eyes but did not know him.
Then sirens.
While a medic treated Carlos’s gash, detectives questioned Snake. Had he seen any of the bad men? Could he identify them? Snake said nothing.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Old Snake was dead. New Snake was emerging from sloughed-off skin.
“You boys have relatives in Miami? Aunts, uncles?”
Snake shook his head. There was no one. The police officer eyed him strangely, this child, this killer.
A sharply handsome man with a birthmark on his cheek leaned close to the policeman and whispered and the officer nodded, then said to Snake:
“This good citizen has offered to look after you boys until the state of Florida in its infinite wisdom decides what the hell to do with you.”
Snake voiced no protest. Going home with the man was what came next. Resisting was useless. The world’s machinery operated according to laws absolute and unstoppable.
The man drove them away in his black Cadillac. His large house faced the dark shimmer of Biscayne Bay. Silk sheets on the beds, plush pillows. Carlos fell instantly asleep, but Snake stared into the darkness and thought.
For days the massacre filled the news. Before the killers left, they’d painted slogans on the walls of the Moraleses’ house. Viva la Revolución. Viva Fidel. Death to all traitors. This was clearly Castro’s work, the TV people proclaimed. His spies were everywhere. The bloodbath was meant to stifle dissent and put fear into the dozens of other exile groups in Miami that were organizing small armies to stage attacks on Cuba.
The man Snake hacked to death was named Humberto Berasategui. Though he worked as a Miami plumber, it was clear that Berasategui was a communist sympathizer, an agent in league with the dictator.
Local Cubans called for U.S. retaliation. Full-scale invasion. Hundreds rallied in the street and marched with placards, chants of hate and war. Eight people, including Snake’s parents and Carmen, had been butchered by the pack of devils.
Snake saw himself on television, led away by the man with the birthmark. The mayor of Miami, Stanton King, had charitably opened his Coconut Grove home to the two orphaned boys.
“We’ll find the boys a good family,” the mayor said to the camera. “No matter how long it takes.”
“Be good, Snake,” Carlos whispered. “I like it here.”
The day following the murders, FBI agents interviewed the boys while King chatted nearby with police. The same questions as the night before. What had Snake seen? A big man with a square head. That’s all? He no longer has two fingers on his right hand, Snake said. The men looked away as if chilled.
Later he heard Gladys, the housekeeper, gossiping with the yardman.
“Those FBI boys’ll catch the killers,” she said. “You mark my word, G-men are as smart as they come, they’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“No, ma’am. Not with them Cubans mixed up in it,” the gardener said. “Them people got so many secrets, so much bad blood going back to that damn island, back to the dawn of time, you watch, there ain’t going to be no bottom to it.”
That evening King didn’t speak to the boys, just sat in his study and drank can after can of Country Club malt liquor.
At dawn the next morning another group of federal men arrived. Secret Service, the housekeeper whispered. Dark suits, rigid haircuts. They scoured the mansion, poked through closets, inspected the hot, dry attic.
Late that night three black limousines rolled up. A tall man with a belly climbed out of the largest car, surrounded by agents. Stanton King met him in the drive, shook his hand.
“Look there, boys. The president of these entire United States. Mr. LBJ himself. Most powerful man in the world.” Gladys stood beside them at the front window as the two men mounted the steps.
“Big deal,” Carlos said.
“You gonna remember this all the rest of your life. Isn’t many people get to see the president up close in their own house. That’s how important Mr. King is. They saying he run for governor next. That’s why LBJ came over after his Democrat get-together. Pay his respects to Mr. King. Talk business.”
The group came inside and went into the study and shut the door. Lyndon Baines Johnson. February 27, 1964. Two days after Cassius. Two days after Carmen died, trusting in the grace of a merciful God. Snake prayed she found him.
Snake lay down on his bed and switched on his radio. Through the wall he could hear Carlos’s television set blaring Napoleon Solo’s voice in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. On his own radio was one of Carmen’s favorite Beatles song, “I Saw Her Standing There.”
With the radio playing softly, Snake was staring into the dark when a Secret Service man appeared in his doorway and summoned him downstairs. Snake wore new Superman pajamas, blue and red with elastic cuffs at the ankles and wrists. Gladys stood on the landing, watching Snake descend the stairs, her face slack with astonishment.
In the study, the president came to his feet and walked over. A large man with a congenial smile, iron gray eyes. He bent forward and held out his paw, and Snake raised his hand to shake. The man’s flesh was cool and dry. He seemed both radiant and weary, as if his great storehouse of vitality was under heavy strain, drawn down by responsibilities too enormous to imagine.
“I’m awful sorry to learn of your loss, son. Awful sorry.”
When an interval passed, Snake withdrew his hand from the president’s grip and stepped back. Barefoot, in his cartoon pajamas, feeling foolish. The three Secret Service men were looking away from the scene. Stanton King stared at the rug, as if the president and the boy gave off a painful glare.
“Nobody can replace a boy’s father and mother, but I’m certain Mr. King will do his damnedest. You’ll be well taken care of, son. Count on it.”
“My sister, Carmen,” Snake said. “No one can replace her.”
LBJ nodded solemnly.
“You’re right, son. Your sister, too. A terrible loss.” LBJ looked around at the other men, then turned back to Snake. “You’re a brave boy. It took courage to fight back like you did. You’re a hero, a credit to your nation.”
Snake had nothing to say. He’d killed one man, maimed another, but it had not been enough to save Carmen. All he felt was the black chokehold of guilt.
When Mayor King told Snake he could go, the boy turned from Lyndon Johnson and went back to his room, shut the door, and lay down, inhaling the heavy scent of night-blooming jasmine that clogged the air beyond his window.
He devoted that sleepless night and many nights to come replaying what happened. Searching for a clue he had missed, anything that might give his life direction. But the yardman was right. There was no bottom to it. Like a cavern branching down endlessly into the limitless black heart of the world.
In the hours of that everlasting night Snake made a vow—his own mission. Inch by inch he would wriggle to the bottom of that bottomless cave, and one day shine his light in the face of the monster who resided there. Find out what happened and why. Then take his vengeance.
Whatever it took. However long. Until then, he’d be Cassius. Wait for his eyes to clear, backpedal, stay out of range. Survive, survive.