Havana Black (20 page)

“And who do you want to rough up?”

“A blonde who's probably not blonde, a North American citizen who has a Cuban passport, a hitter
who can slam hard and a man who stole the shoes from my dreams . . . Will you just repeat the bit about my having carte blanche?”

The Colonel seemed to hesitate. He looked at the Count, studied his hands, thought about what he should do as the lieutenant added: “Colonel, you can't always be orthodox and patient in order to reach the truth: sometimes you have to strike back and dig out the truth from wherever it is hidden. And this blonde, despite all my efforts to keep her here, will return to the States in two days. And if she goes, the fucking truth goes with her. Do you understand? Besides, I only have nine hours left to present you this case giftwrapped. Now I want to hear you repeat yourself, please.”

Molina smiled briefly and lit another cigarette, after offering the Count one.

“Lieutenant, either you are mad or I'm the one who's mad for telling you this: go for it, you've got carte blanche . . . And may God look favourably upon me.”

 

 

If time had been on his side, the Count would have preferred a different scenario: for example, to keep Miriam in his hot cubicle for a couple of hours, as if he'd forgotten all about her and under the apparent supervision of two uniformed men who wouldn't respond if she asked a question. That would have made things easier, he thought, as he watched Miriam smile calmly, after she'd asked: “So, you're going to put me inside?”

Sergeant Manuel Palacios, who had brought her into Headquarters, looked over the woman to the Count and waved a hand, warning him to prepare himself: he'd certainly already taken more than his fair
share when he'd asked Forcade's widow to accompany him there.

“Nobody is going to put you inside,” the Count said finally, “unless you've done something that merits your being there, of course.”

“And what might I have done?” She returned to the attack, with that sour persistence the Count had met before.

The woman had guts, he told himself, and almost rejoiced he hadn't been pronged on the bars of her eyelashes. Or was that ripe fruit from Paradise still worth tasting? He had time perhaps, he consoled himself, ever a greedy sod.

“The fact is I don't know, Miriam, but I am sure of one thing: you know much more than you've let on.”

“And what do you reckon I know?”

“I told you: what your husband was looking for in Cuba . . .”

“And I've told you more than once: he came to see his father. Or did they make a mistake when they allowed him in?”

The Count again regretted he didn't have time to soften her up, although he also thought such gentle techniques wouldn't have produced the goods with this hard-bitten woman. Worst thing of all was that if Miriam blocked all routes in, he'd have no paths along which to progress the case: Fermín still hadn't said anything to incriminate himself and Gómez de la Peña had been sent home blubbering at dawn, after he'd sworn a hundred times he didn't know his extraordinary Matisse was a fake and didn't know where Miguel Forcade went on that fatal night after he'd visited him. To cap it all, the ultra-efficient Candito had called him that morning to confirm what the Count suspected: the Havana underworld was not
involved in the death and castration. “So why did they cut his tail off, Red?”

“You find out, Count, that's why you're the policeman on this job, isn't it?”

As a false trail, to hint at revenge, jealousy, or was it another queer affair? Who can tell . . .? Now what did he have left? Perhaps he should try his luck with a loose cannon, like Adrian Riverón, suspected of the heinous crime of being a closet smoker, Miriam's friend and ex-fiancé and now perhaps her confidant; or go back to talk to the dead man's mother, who didn't seem to have the slightest idea of what world she was living in. And old Forcade? he wondered, as his consciousness felt certain all paths had been blocked. After all, everybody insisted Miguel had returned to Cuba to see his father and that apparent lie might be the one and only truth.

“So he came to see his father?”

“I've told you so at least ten times. Why won't you believe me?”

“No, I believe you, Miriam, but tell me just one thing, what's your father-in-law's mental state?”

She seemed surprised by the question that dragged her from the circle of denials and rejections behind which she had fenced herself.

“He's been slightly mad ever since I've known him. And now he's eighty-six I think he's gone even crazier . . .”

“But he's not ga-ga, is he?” he asked tightening the rope, and the rope twanged.

“He is as far as I'm concerned. The poor guy doesn't know which planet he's on . . .” she replied, after hesitating briefly, and the Count knew he'd hit the bull's-eye. Smiling, the policeman seized his moment.

“You must forgive me, Miriam, but I have to ask you
to stay here at Headquarters. Only for an hour or so. I'll soon be back and we can continue our conversation. OK?”

“Do I have any choice in the matter?”

The Count's smile broadened a little: he tried to appear charming, even relaxed and cheerful, as he told her: “I don't think so,” and went out into the corridor before she could batter him with appeals to civil, consular and democratic rights that she'd no doubt take to the UN Security Council. Manolo, who'd followed him at a speed accelerated by his fear of being left alone with Miriam, asked him on tenterhooks. “But what are you going to do, Conde?”

“Head with you to the Forcade household. But first of all find two guys to stay and keep a watch on her. Tell them to put her in another office, not to leave her by herself and not to talk to her . . . And get a move on, because El Zorro rides again,” he said, taking out the avenging sword of the defender of the poor, and slicing through the air three times, zas, zas, zas, engraving there the indelible
Z
of the masked righter of wrongs.

 

 

Miguel's mother welcomed them with a confused smile and the usual accumulation of magnesia at the corners of her mouth. She was perhaps glad to see them, as they might be bearers of the faintly good tidings of the capture of her son's murderer. Nervously the aged lady asked them in and the Count took advantage of a possible confusion to touch on a matter he'd not yet broached.

“What beautiful lamps, señora,” and he walked over to the genuine Tiffanys and trailed his fingers over the lead veins on the standard lamp whose glass panes
imitated a fruit tree till he found the authenticating signature: yes, it was. “I'd never seen one of these . . .”

She nodded proudly, and also walked over to the lamp.

“The fact is, that Tiffany is a rare object. They only made five of this model. Can you imagine? I know because we've had several visitors wanting to buy them. My husband knows all about it, but has always refused to sell anything without Miguel's permission, because my son asked him to try to preserve everything . . .”

“Because it all belonged to Miguel, didn't it?”

“Yes, he brought it all here.”

“I really don't understand how he could give up so many beautiful pieces . . .” the Count let drop, in case the hare jumped.

The old lady rubbed her hands, perhaps wet with perspiration, and confessed: “I don't either.”

The Count gazed on her as benignly as he could, and dived in at the deep end: “Caruca, we still don't know what happened to your son. We have an inkling, and need a little help from you . . .”

“But in what way?”

“We need to speak to your husband right away.”

She rubbed her hands again, surprised by the kind of help sought. Her eyes had now moistened, as if irritated by an unexpected cloud of smoke.

“But he's an invalid and hasn't been out of the house for ages. He lives in his own world, what can he know . . .?”

“That doesn't matter. I spoke to him yesterday and it's clear his mind is in good working order, and we want to talk about things that happened some years ago. May we?”

“The fact is he was very influenced by Miguel's . . .” she whispered, trying to erect a final parapet to protect
her husband from the interminable shadow produced by her son's death.

“Caruca, it can only be worse if he never knows who the savage was that killed Miguel, and worse still if they go unpunished. Tell Dr Forcade that my mind has exhausted all possibilities and my only option is to exchange opinions with him. Tell him in those words.”

The old lady hesitated a few seconds, but the Count knew her defences were vulnerable, like the digestive system that could return that white paste to her lips. The policeman was ready to reopen the wound, but she nodded.

“Wait a minute. I'll get him in a fit state and tell him you want to see him, because your mind has exhausted all possibilities and your only option is to exchange opinions with him.”

She didn't wait for a reply but headed for the stairs. She took short, visibly confident steps.

“Hey, Conde, what's a lamp like that worth?” asked Manolo when the old lady had vanished from sight.

The policeman lit a cigarette and lamented, as always, that he couldn't find an earthenware or metal ashtray. He only saw objects that should be on display in a museum: bone china, sculpted glass, rococo style pieces that ran the risk of dying at the clumsy hands of a Mario Conde.

“I don't know, Manolo, but it could run to several thousand . . . What would you do with a lamp like that, you could sell for fifty thousand dollars?”

“Me . . .?” came the surprised response, and he smiled. “Well I'd sell it and and paint the town and nobody'd stop me – not even by tying me up. What about you?”

“I'm an artist, Manolo, remember . . . But I'd also
sell up and they'd have to tie me up with you. I swear on the sliver of liver I've got left . . .”

The two policemen devoted almost ten minutes to improving or destroying their lives with the fifty thousand dollars they had earned so easily, until Caruca peered over the rail to the top floor to say: “You can come up now.”

When he was by her side, the Count asked quietly: “How is he today?”

“I don't know, quite tired, but he says it's fine, he wants to speak to you.”

Thank you, Caruca, you'll see how important it is,” the Count reassured her before going into the bedroom.

The Count found the weary old man seated on a wood and willow armchair, looking more brittle and vulnerable now he was away from his plants. Behind him the Count contemplated an altar built into the wall, where he saw the central dominating image of a crowned Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, flanked by a bleeding St Lazarus escorted by his dogs and a jet-black Virgin from Regla. That altar, the Count recalled, immediately cursing his memory, was almost a replica of the one that had always been in his parents' house, on the wall where they placed the cradle of the newly born. A Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre like theirs, wearing a blue robe and golden crown, floating on a choppy sea from which three small men in a boat were praying to her, could well be the first image the eyes of the Count and his sister had retained, the same sister who, in order to accede to her red Communist Youth card, persuaded her mother it would be better to dismantle the altar that had always been there, on the finest wall in that room where they were conceived and received their first notions of love.
The Count felt his anger rise and took another look at the Virgen de la Caridad before returning alarmed to real time; old Forcade must have spoken to his wife in the ten minutes she'd taken to come back, because the old man's face, almost always motionless, was now wet with tears streaming from his bright-red bloodshot eyes, as if his weary skin were hurrying them on their way. The pyjamas he wore, elegant and buttoned to the neck, helped emphasize that image of an end as desired as it was nigh, and completely accepted.

“Good day, Dr Forcade,” said the Count, daring yet again to grip one of the old man's withered hands.

“A bad day and a bad year,” replied the old man, his tears disappearing down the bloody well of his eyes.

“I'm sorry to bother you again, but you know as well as I do how important it is we chat a little more.”

“Was every path really blocked?”

The Count let go of the defeated hand.

“You know they were always closed off. And you, who must know what I'm thinking, won't deny me the opportunity to confirm my belief that you alone hold that key.”

“Not even if I were St Peter . . . But let's assume that I
do
hold it. Why should you suppose I'm going to help you?”

“That is easier to explain: because you want us to find the person who killed your son. And I'm even surer now, after your wife told me that in all these years you didn't sell a single piece of what he left when he went. I can imagine at some point you needed . . .”

“That's true, more than once. And you're also right in what you assume I must be thinking: I certainly want you to find who did this to Miguel. Do you know something I never told you yesterday? I am a Christian, as you can see, though in my work I'm considered to
be a scientist and many people say that science and religion are irreconcilable. But it's not true: I spent almost seventy years studying plants and I think one can only understand the spirituality of those beings if one assumes them to be creatures created by God, because in many ways they are more perfect than humans . . . In many ways. And as a Christian I should believe in forgiveness rather than earthly punishment, but as a man of this world I also think there is guilt people should begin to pay for down here. Don't you agree? And then let God forgive those he chooses to forgive . . .”