Havana Bay (27 page)

"Not a bad guess."

O'Brien smiled in a not unkind way.» Ask yourself
this, Arkady, will you be missed in Moscow? Is there
anyone you can't say good-bye to on the phone? Is
there anyone you'll miss?"

"Yes," Arkady said, a second late.

"Sure. Let me tell you about the saddest picture in the world. The saddest picture in the world is in the
Prado Museum in Spain, it was painted by Goya and
it's a picture of a dog in the water. You just see its head
and muddy water swirling around and the dog's big
eyes looking up. The dog could be taking a swim, except
that the title Goya gave it is
Drowning Dog.
I look at
you and I see those eyes. You're drowning, and I'm trying to give you a hand out of the water. Have you
got the nerve to take it?"

"And the money?" Arkady asked, just to play the
fantasy out.

"Forget the money. Yes, you'd be rich, have a Cuban villa, car, boat, girls, whatever, that's not the point. The
point is you'd have a life and you'd be enjoying it."

"How would I do that?"

"Your visa can be changed," Walls took over.» We
have friends who can extend your visa and you can stay as long as you like."

"You wouldn't worry then about me being at the
Havana Yacht Club?"

"Not if you were on the team," Walls said.

 
 
"We're not offering a free ride," O'Brien said, "but
you'd be part of something big, something to be proud
of. All we're asking in return is one miserable token of
trust from you. Why were you at the Havana Yacht
Club? How did you get the idea?"

Before Arkady could answer, the boat was sur
rounded by upwelling light. He looked over the side,
and in the water a thousand spoons reflected the sun.

"Bonito," O'Brien said.

"They always go east to west?" Arkady asked.

"Against the current," Walls said.» Tuna go against
the current, so do the marlin, and eventually the boats
do, too."

"A strong current?"

"The Gulf Stream, sure."

"Going towards the bay?"

"Yes."

First one and then by the dozens the fish exploded
from the water. Iridescent, glassy arcs surrounded the
Gavilan
and salt spray rained. In seconds the entire
school had scattered, replaced by a long dark shape with blue pectoral wings.

"Marlin," Walls said.

Without apparent effort the big fish kept pace within
the shadow of the boat, a faint veil of pink trailing
behind him.

"He's taking his time," Arkady said.

"Hiding," said Walls.» He's an assassin, that's the
way he operates. He'll slice up a whole school of tuna
and then come back to feed."

"Do you fish?"

"Spearfish. Evens the odds."

"Do you?" Arkady asked O'Brien.

"Hardly."

From above, the marlin's sword was thin as a drafts
man's line, unsheathed yet almost invisible. The men
were transfixed until the marlin sank into deeper water,
blue into blue.

They took Arkady not back to the Yacht Club but
through fishing boats along the western shore. On the
outer dock of the Marina Hemingway a trio of Frontier
Guards in fatigues lazily waved the boat in. The
Gavilan
steered to the inner dock, where a hook for weighing
fish stood among the thatched parasols of a cantina and
disco stage, the smell of grilled chicken and blare of
amplified Beatles. An empty swimming area was defined
by floats, but snorkelers had gathered along the canal where Walls started veering toward an open berth. Not Hemingway, but an old man in a hat with a band of miniature beer cans waved Walls away and shouted
angrily at swimmers,
"Peligroso! Peltgroso!"

Steering wide of the snorkelers, Walls continued
down the canal to a turnaround. Fishing boats with
rod racks and flying bridges slid by, speedboats as low and colorful as sun visors, and power yachts with sun lounges and Jet Ski launches, oceangoing palaces of
affluence and indolence sculpted in white fiberglass. The
shouts from a volleyball court were pure American.

 
 
"Texans," Walls said.» Cruising people from the Gulf,
they leave their boats here year round."

Along the canal people washed out lockers, carried
baskets of food and plastic bags of laundry, pushed
trucks of bottled gas. Walls eased to a stop at the inner
end of the canal, where a market sold CopperTone and
Johnnie Walker Red. Outside, a Cuban girl in a Nike
shirt sat with a blond boy. His shirt had a portrait of
Che.

O'Brien shook Arkady's hand again in an enthusiastic double grasp.» You're staying next to the
santero,
I
understand. We'll talk tomorrow."

"About a 'position'? I don't think I'm qualified. I
know nothing about casinos."

"The way you handled Sergeant Luna you sound
eminently qualified to me. As for casinos, we'll give you
the grand tour of all the famous sin spots of Havana.
Right, George?"

Walls said, "You could have your own boat right
here, Arkady. Girls come at night, knock on the side of
the boats. They'll cook and clean, too, just to stay on board."

Arkady glanced around at his putative yachting
neighbors.» What are the Americans like?"

Walls tried half a smile.» Some are free spirits and
some are the same rednecks I tried to leave thirty years ago. One son of a bitch from Alabama wanted me to
autograph my wanted poster. He said it was a collect
ible. I was ready to slice and collect his fucking nuts."

"Ah, well," O'Brien said, "to be a souvenir, that
has to be a form of death. Arkady, you'll consider the
offer?"

"It's an unbelievable offer."

"Seriously, think about it," O'Brien said.» I under
stand, it's tough to leap even from a sinking ship."

 
Chapter Fifteen

 
There was death and death. Leaving by the marina's
traffic gate, Arkady encountered a fisherman staggering
under the weight of a marlin mounted on an enor
mous wooden plaque. The fish was caught in midflight,
dorsal fin fanned, spear challenging the sky, the entire
animal a metallic blue so unreal it could have been a
small submarine, and Arkady remembered once walking
with Pribluda in Moscow, following the river to the
Church of the Redeemer. It was spring, and where the
river sluiced in turgid, rubbery folds under the Alexander Bridge men fished with long, whiplike poles. Pribluda asked, "What man in his right mind would eat
a fish caught in Moscow. Such a fish would have to be
tougher than a boot. Renko, if you ever see me with a
fishing pole in the middle of Moscow, do me a favor.
Shoot me."

 
Ofelia reached the pool at the Casa de Amor and heard
Los Van Van on the radio in a room overhead singing
"Muevete!"
—Move it!—and it was as if wooden claves
were dancing down her spine and she thought, not for the first time, how she distrusted music. So it had been
a shock for her to put her fingers on the Russian's vein
and feel the rhythm of his pulse.» Don't mess unless
you want to be messed with" was one of her mother's
favorite sayings. Along with "Don't move your ass
unless you're advertising." Sometimes she thought,
Moving your ass, that was the Cuban Method. That was
why life was such a mess, because at the worst times
and with the worst of men some signal would trickle down from her brain and say,
"Muevete!"
On the street
in the shade of ceiba tree sat a '57 Dodge Coronet with
private plates she had been allotted for surveillance
work. Its front bumper hung on wires from too many
collisions. She knew the feeling.

Since the shore on this stretch of Miramar was stone
flats and coral rubble, the Casa de Amor was built
around a pool area, empty except for two boys playing
table tennis. Early afternoon was the time when most
jineteras
and their new friends from abroad would be
riding rickshas around Old Havana, sipping
mojitos
in
the Bodeguita del Medio or listening to romantic music in the Plaza de la Catedral. Later, boutique hopping and
dinner in a
paladar,
where a plate of rice and beans
could cost a Cuban's weekly salary, back to the Casa de
Amor for a little sex and then the long evening out at
the dance clubs.

When Cuban couples came to the Casa de Amor to
consummate their passion, no rooms were ever avail
able. But for "love couples"
ofjineteras
and tourists, yes, there was always a room with fresh sheets, towels and a
vase with a long-stemmed rose. Ofelia had discovered that complaints to the police had gone nowhere, which
merely meant that the police themselves were protecting
the motel. At the room rate of $90 a night, the cost of
first-class accommodations at the Hotel Nacional, there was reason to protect such a gold mine, even if the gold
was mined with the sweat of Cuban girls.

A heavyset woman in coveralls swept the street with
a branch besom at a steady six strokes a minute. Ofelia
stationed herself by an ice machine under the stairs
to the second floor and listened to the music and
occasional footfall from the rooms overhead. Only the
middle two units were occupied—just as well, since her
manpower and time were so limited. The boys at the
Ping-Pong table finished one game and started another.

The Russian, she had decided, was a disaster to be
avoided. Just the light in his eyes was like the ember of
a banked fire warning, "Don't stir." It was bad enough
he was a danger to himself; his story about Luna was
insanity. Here was a man who threw Luna halfway up a
wall and then acted modestly surprised when the
sergeant's head split open. How Renko had banged up his head, she didn't know. Maybe there was something
to his story about the bat. In her opinion, though,
Renko was a goat whose brilliant idea of catching a tiger
was to stake himself down. He would bring the tiger,
might bring all the tigers in the jungle, what then?
Which was a shame because he wasn't a bad investiga
tor. To return with him to Casablanca and watch him draw out the fisherman Andres was an instruction in
police work. He wasn't dumb, just crazy, and at this
point she was afraid to be with him and afraid to leave
him on his own.

The street sweeper dropped her broom in a can. Over
Ofelia's head a door closed, and two pairs of footsteps
made their way the length of the balcony, Ofelia keeping
pace below. She placed herself under the stairs as they
came down. It wasn't until the couple stepped down to
pool level that they were aware of the convergence on
them of Ofelia, holding herself as tall as she could in
her PNR gray and blue, and the street sweeper, who
dropped her broom to show her own uniform and gun.

The tourist was a redheaded man in a shirt, shorts,
sandals, a Prada bag around his thick neck, his arm
draped like a freckled sausage over the girl's shoulder. He said,
"Scheisse."

Ofelia recognized Teresa Guiteras. The girl was black,
smaller than Ofelia with a mop of curls and a yellow
dress that barely reached her thighs. Teresa protested,
"This time it's love."

During a public-works frenzy in the thirties, Cuba had built police stations in the style of Sahara forts. The one on the west end of the Malecon was particularly sun-
blasted, white paint peeling off battlements, a radio
mast on the roof, a guard sheltering in the shade of the door. Air-conditioning had never been introduced and
the interior stifled, with historic scents of piss and
blood. The police regularly mounted campaigns against
jineteras,
cleaning up the Malecon and Plaza de Armas.
The next night the same girls would be back, but paying
a little more to the police for protection. Because
Ofelia's minor operation was directed at corrupt officers
of the PNR rather than at the girls, she was not popular
with the other detectives, all male, who shared her
office. When she returned with the girl, she found the
wall behind her desk newly decorated with a poster of
Sharon Stone straddling a chair, and taped in the center
of the poster the regulations concerning premature
discharge of a weapon. Ofelia stuffed the poster into a wastebasket and set a tape machine with two radio-style
microphones on the desk. The third person in the room
was Dora, the patrol sergeant who had been the watch
by the pool, an older woman with a face mournful from
experience.

Teresa Guiteras Marin was fourteen, a tenth-grade
student from the country town of Ciego de Avila,
although she had already been warned before by Ofelia
about soliciting tourists near the Marina Hemingway. Ofelia asked how and where Teresa had met her friend
(by chance on the Malecon), what money or rewards
had been offered or given (none except for a Swatch, a
friendship token), whose idea was the Casa de Amor
(his), who paid at the reception desk and how much
(he did, she didn't know how much, but he also bought
her a rose that she would like to go back to the room
for). Finally, Ofelia asked whether she had seen or paid
or communicated in any fashion with any member of
the PNR. No, Teresa swore she hadn't.

"You understand that if you do not cooperate, you
will be fined a hundred pesos and entered in the register
of prostitutes. At fourteen."

Teresa slipped her feet from her platform sandals
and drew her legs up onto the chair. She had all the
mannerisms of a child, the pouty lip and downcast eyes.

"I'm not a prostitute."

"You are. He paid you two hundred dollars to be
with him for a week."

"A hundred and fifty."

"You sell yourself too cheaply."

"At least I can sell myself." Teresa played with a curl,
wrapping it around a finger.» That's more than you ever
see."

"Maybe. But you had to buy false residence papers
to stay in Havana. You had to pay a room illegally to sleep in, then pay the Casa de Amor to screw in. Most
of all, you have to pay the police."
 

This was a doublethink that drove Ofelia crazy.
Teresa didn't consider herself a prostitute, no.
Jineteras
were students, teachers, secretaries merely making extra
money. Some parents were proud of how their little
Teresas helped to support the family; in fact, some
regular visitors to Cuba didn't dare arrive without
presents for their favorite
chica's
mother, father, little
brother. The problem was AIDS, which was like throw
ing young girls into the maws of a dragon. Only you
didn't have to throw them, they lined up to dive.