Havana Gold (13 page)

“I'd love to live in Vienna. I'd try my arm at leading the girls' choir. Twenty-year-old . . . Does Vienna have police?”

“In the letter she told me she'd been to Geneva with her husband, to one of those meetings about whales, and
you know where she went: to Zino Davidoff's tobacconist shop. She says it's a beautiful place and bought me a box of five cigars . . . You can't imagine how much I miss her, Mario. I don't know why my little girl had to leave here.”

“Because she fell in love, Boss, what more do you want? Look, I'm also in love and if I'm told we're going to New Orleans, I'll go with her.”

“New Orleans? You're in love? What's this all about?”

“No, it's just to listen to blues, soul, jazz and the like.”

“Off you go, Mario, I can't stand any more. You've got forty-eight hours to settle this one. If not, don't even bother coming for your pay at the end of the month.”

The Count got up and looked at his boss. He dared again: “That's OK, love feeds . . .” he declared on his way to the door.

“You'll be starving soon enough . . . Hey, did you hear about Jorrín? He had a bad turn on Wednesday night. It was very peculiar: a pre-heart attack, they say. I went to see him yesterday and he asked after you. He's in the Clinic on Twenty-sixth. You know, Mario, I think that's it for Jorrín the policeman.”

The Count thought about Captain Jorrín, the old seadog at headquarters. And remembered how he'd never met up with him outside the walls of that building in ten years. He was always promising to pay him a call, to sit down with him and have a coffee, a few shots of rum,
and talk about what people usually talk about – and in the end he never kept his promise. Were they friends? He felt unbelievably guilty when he told his chief: “How shitty, right?” and walked out leaving his chief wrapped in a cloud of blue, fragrant Davidoff 5000 smoke, a 14.2 centimetre Gran Corona, from the 1988 Vueltabajo crop, sold in Geneva by the tsar himself: Zino Davidoff.

 

There are people who are luckier and can trust to the fate God or the devil has planned for them. I'm not one, I'm a disaster, and worse still, I sometimes take a gamble, and you know, fuck everything up. What is going to happen now? Yes, it's true. I thought about giving you a ring and telling you, but shied off. I was scared: scared you might connect me with what happened, scared my wife might find out, scared they'd find out at Pre-Uni and lose their respect for me . . . I'm not ashamed to tell you: I'm afraid. But I wasn't involved in what happened. How could I ever do anything like that? I was mad about her and even thought of talking to my wife and telling her, but Lissette didn't want me to, she said it was too soon, she didn't want to go public, she was too young. A disaster. No, just two months ago. When we were at the school camp. You know it's different there, more relaxed than in school and it almost started like a game, she was still Pupy's girlfriend, the biker, and I thought it was no go, that it was just a dirty old man's wishful
thinking – but when we returned to Havana, one day when we finished a meeting around seven, I asked her if she'd invite me for a coffee and that's how it began. But I'm sure nobody knew. Do you think I could ever harm her? I think Lissette was one of the best things to happen to me, she gave me a reason to live, to do crazy things, to abandon everything, even to forget my fate, because she might be my fate . . . Out of jealousy? What jealousy? She'd split up with Pupy, she swore it was all over, and when you're forty-six and a woman twenty years younger says that you just have to believe her or go home and sweep the backyard and devote yourself to chicken-breeding . . . I was going to see her earlier that day, but this job is hell, if it's not Juan, it's Pedro, and if it's not the Party it's the Town Hall, and I left here around six-thirty. I was at her place just over an hour, no longer, because when I got home the eight-thirty soap was beginning . . . Well, yes, we did have sexual relations, that's reasonable enough, isn't it? A positive? That's right, how did you find out? So, you know the whole lot, don't you? Yes, I spent that whole night at home. I had to prepare a report for the following day, that's why I left Pre-Uni so late that day. Yes, my wife was there and one of the children, the youngest, the other's sixteen and goes out almost every night, he's got a girlfriend now. Yes, my wife can confirm that, but please, is it really necessary? Don't you believe me? I know, it's your job,
but I'm a person, not a lead . . . What do you want, my world to collapse around me? Who do you want me to swear by? No, she wasn't going with anyone else, I do know that for a fact, they must have raped her, for she was raped, wasn't she? Didn't they rape and then kill her? Why do you force me to talk about all this, for fuck's sake? It's like being punished because I believed I could still feel I was alive, alive like her . . . I'm scared . . . Yes, he's a good student, has he done something? Just as well. Yes, the office will give you the address . . . But what's going to happen now? My wife? If I'd been lucky . . .

 

Hospitals are suffused with an odour of pain and sorrow: ether, anaesthetics, aerosols, alcohol you can't drink . . . The one test Conde wanted never to face again was being admitted to hospital. The months when he watched over Skinny's agonizing sleep, when he was skinnier than ever, on his front in bed, his back shattered, his legs useless and that colour of murky glass in his eyes, had given him memories for ever of the unique smell of suffering. Two operations in two months, all his hopes dashed in two months, his whole life changed in two months: a wheelchair and paralysis creeping like a slowly burning fuse, eating up nerves and muscles until one day it would reach his heart and burn him to death. Once again he recognized that hospital odour as he walked through
the foyer – empty at that time in the afternoon – and, without saying a word, he almost rubbed his police credentials in the eyes of the guard who came between them and the lift.

They looked for a signpost on the third-floor corridor. Room 3-48 must be on the left, according to the notice sergeant Manuel Palacios had seen, and they walked on counting off the even-numbered cubicles.

The Count looked in and saw Captain Jorrín's unshaven face on the raised head of a Fowler bed. By his side, on the indispensable chair, a tired-looking woman in her fifties stopped swaying gently and stared at them questioningly. She got up and walked towards the corridor.

“Lieutenant Mario Conde and Sergeant Manuel Palacios,” said the Count by way of introduction. “We're colleagues of the captain.”

“Milagros, I'm Milagros, the wife of . . .”

“How is he?” asked Manolo, peering in again.

“He's better. He's sedated so he can sleep,” and she glanced at her watch. “I'll wake him up. He's got his medicine at three.”

The Count went to stop her, but she was already on her way to the sleeping form and whispering something while she stroked his forehead. Jorrín's eyes strained to open a fraction, his eyelids flickering as he attempted a smile.

“The Count,” he said, and lifted an arm to shake the lieutenant's hand. “How are you, sergeant?” he also greeted Manolo.

“Maestro, how could you do this? I think they'll try you for insubordination and then shut down headquarters,” smiled the Count and forced Captain Jorrín to respond.

“Conde, even good cars end up as scrap.”

“But a new part will get them back on the road.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Tell me how you feel.”

“Strange. Very sleepy. I get nightmares . . . Do you realize this is the first time in my life I've dozed off after lunch?”

“It's true,” said his wife, and she caressed his forehead again. “But I tell him he's got to look after himself now. Isn't that so, lieutenant?”

“Of course it is,” agreed the Count knowing full well the cliché was absurd: he knew that Jorrín had no desire to look after himself, he wanted to get up, go back to headquarters, and get back on the street hunting out bastards, murderers, thieves, rapists, embezzlers – because that, and not sleeping at midday, was what he was about in life, and he did it well. Everything else was a more or less slow death, but death all the same.

“How's it going, Conde? Out with this lunatic again?”

“No alternative, maestro. I should leave him here and take you with me. Perhaps they'll operate on him and make a human . . .”

“I was surprised you hadn't called in.”

“I only just found out. The Boss told me. I'm busy on a case.”

“What are you up to?”

“Nothing out of this world. A petty theft.”

“He can't speak for very long,” his wife piped up, now holding one of his hands. You could see the mark left by the plaster and the needle from a saline solution. Jorrín in defeat. Unbelievable, the Count told himself.

“Don't worry, we'll be off now. When are they going to kick you out of here, maestro?”

“I don't know yet. In three or four days. I've got a case pending and I want to see . . .”

“Don't worry about that now. Someone will take it on. Not as well as you, but someone will. All right then, we'll come tomorrow. I'll probably want to ask you a thing or two.”

“Get better, captain,” said Manolo shaking his hand.

“Make sure you do, Conde.”

“You bet, but look after yourself, maestro, not many of us good'uns left,” replied the Count, holding the old timer's hand in his. Although he recognized a nicotine stain on the fingers that even darkened the nails, it wasn't the tough hand he was used to and that alarmed him. “Maestro, I realized today we'd never exchanged a word outside headquarters. What a disaster!”

“A police-style disaster, Conde. But you just have to accept them. Although you know there's no such thing as a happy policeman, that you're a guy nobody can trust and that sometimes even your own children are scared of you because of what you stand for, although your nerves go to pieces and you're impotent at the age of fifty . . .”

“What's that you're saying now?” his wife interjected, trying to keep him calm. “Get some rest, go on.”

“A police-style disaster, maestro. See you around,” said the Count letting go of the captain's hand. Now the hospital reeked of suffering and of death.

 

“Off to the Zoo,” came the order from the Count as he got into the car, and Manolo didn't dare ask: do you want to see the monkeys? He knew that the Count was feeling low as he lifted his matador's cape to let him in. He switched on the engine and drove out on to Twenty-sixth Avenue and soon slowly drove the few blocks to the Zoo. “Park close to a shrub for shade.”

They left behind the ducks, pelicans, bears and monkeys and Manolo stopped the car next to an ancient poplar tree. The southern wind was still blowing and whistling insistently through the foliage in the park.

“Jorrín's dying,” the Count commented and lit a cigarette on the fag end he'd been smoking. He looked at his fingers and wondered why they weren't nicotinestained.

“And you'll kill yourself if you go on smoking like that.”

“Piss off, Manolo.”

“On your head, pal.”

The Count looked to his right at a group of kids watching the skinny, aging lions that preferred not to walk, worn out by the hot breeze. The air stank of old piss and new shit.

“I'm at a loss, Manolo, because I don't think Pupy or the head were involved in what happened on Tuesday night.”

“Look, Conde, let me tell you . . .”

“Go on, tell me, that's why we've come here.”

“Well, the head has a good alibi and it seems to stand up. It's his word and his wife's, if his wife is in agreement. And if Pupy didn't really sleep with Lissette the night she was killed, what are we left with? The party: rum, music and marijuana. That's where it's at, right?”

“Looks like it, but how are we going to unravel this particular skein? And what if Pupy lied to us? I don't think he needed to set up an alibi with so many people, but then there aren't many people with blood group O and the last person with her was that, group O.”

“Do you want me to tighten the screws on him?”

The Count threw his cigarette out the window and shut his eyes. The image of a woman dancing in the shadows came to his mind. He shook his head, as if
trying to frighten that happy, inappropriate shade away. He didn't want to mix up potential bliss with the sordid nature of work.

“Leave him with Contreras for a bit and then we'll squeeze him some more until the juice comes out . . . And let's check out the head's story down to the last second. He's going to find out what it is to be really scared . . .”

“Hey, Conde, what do you think about the Mexican tourist who was Lissette's boyfriend? Mauricio, right?”

“Yes, so Pupy said . . . And the marijuana is from Central America or Mexico. Can that Mexican have given it to her?”

“Conde, Conde,” Manolo then got alarmed, and even rapped the steering-wheel. “And what if the Mexican came back?”

The lieutenant nodded. Manolo had his uses.

“Yes, that could be. We must speak to Immigration. Today. But meanwhile I'm going to have another go at unravelling the skein. Marijuana: I don't why, but I'm sure that's where we've got to go. All right, get this piece of junk moving. This zoo smells of ammonia. Anyway, I've always thought of zoos as being like a kick up the backside. Let's go and call the Head of Immigration – take the coastal road.

 

The sea, like the enigma of death or the excesses of destiny, always provoked an obsessive fascination in the
mind of Mario Conde. That dark, unfathomable expanse of blue attracted him in a way that was at once morbid and pleasant, like a dangerous woman you prefer not to flee. Others before him had felt the same secretions from that irresistible seduction and that's why they'd responded to her siren call. Nothing in his intimate memory was at all related to the sea: he was born in a poverty-stricken, arid barrio buried deep in the city's hinterland. But perhaps his awareness as an islander, inherited from the distant insular origins of his great-grandfather Teodoro Altarriba, alias the Count, a Canary Island swindler who crossed an ocean searching for another island far from creditors and police, was prompted by the simple vista of water and waves, of the line of the horizon where his eyes now lingered, as if he wanted to see beyond that illusory border, apparently the final frontier for all hopes. The Count, sitting by the coast, thought again of the rare perfection of the world that divided its space up to make life richer and more complex yet, at the same time, separate men and even their thoughts. At one time in his life such ideas and fascination for the sea related to a desire to travel and explore and fly over other worlds from which the ocean separated him – Alaska and its explorers and sledges, Australia, Sandokan's Borneo – but he'd long since assumed his destiny as a man who'd downed anchor with no wind in his favour. He then settled for a dream – knowing it was only a dream – that
he would at some point live facing the sea, in a house of wood and tile always exposed to the smell of the brine. In that propitious house he'd write a book – a simple, moving story about love and friendship – and devote his afternoons, after his siesta in the long porch open to breezes and dust clouds, to casting lines into the water and reflecting, as now, as the waves splashed his ankles, on the mysteries of the sea.