Havana Gold (21 page)

The Count placed his hand on his thigh and stopped his leg from swinging.

“Yes, you do, José Luis, and you're going to tell me.”

“I really don't, lieutenant,” the skinny youth protested and tried to sound sure of himself again, “I wasn't one of her little gang.”

“Look,” said the Count taking his battered notebook out of his back pocket. “Let's do one thing. Trust me: nobody will ever know we talked about this. Ever. Write down the names of her little gang. Do me this favour, José Luis, because if one of them had anything to do with Lissette's death and you don't help me, you'll never forgive yourself later on. Help me,” the Count repeated, as he handed the youth his notebook and pen. José Luis shook his head, as if to say, “Why the fuck did I ever leave that classroom?”

If they were the last act of the Creation, after six days in which God experimented in every imaginable way and created out of nothing heaven and earth, plants and animals, rivers and woods, and even man himself, that wretch Adam, women must be the most perfect, most considered invention in the universe, starting with Eve herself, who had showed herself to be much wiser and able than Adam. That's why they have all the questions and all the answers, and I'm just one truth and one doubt: I'm in love, but, but with a woman I can't get to know. Really, Karina, who are you?

The Count peered over the balcony and gazed at the restless contours of Santos Suárez, focussing on the spot on the horizon where he'd located Karina's house. The need to penetrate that woman via the hitherto inviolable keyhole of her hidden history now became an obsession calling on the best impulses of his intellect. He returned his notebook to his pocket because he again felt the oppressive presence of that torrid wind on the fourth floor that wouldn't agree to leave the last flowers of spring or Mario Conde's perennial melancholy in peace.

Under the aggressive midday sun the roof terraces were like red deserts, off-limits to human life. One floor lower, opposite, the Count sought out the window that made him a peeping tom to a matrimonial drama and found
it open, as on that first day, but the scene had changed: behind a sewing machine, taking advantage of the bright light streaming in, the woman was hard at work and listening to the chatter of the man who was rocking in his chair. They now performed a rather classic, recherché domestic drama that included the action of drinking coffee from the same cup. End of soap, thought Conde as he shut his balcony window and switched off the lights in the flat. For a moment he tried again to imagine what happened six days ago and realized it must have been something horrific: as if a ruthless Lent storm had let rip there before tyrannizing the city. Standing up in the halfdark, opposite the chalk profile on the tiles, the Count saw the back of a man striking a woman, gripping her neck and squeezing it tight. He only needed to touch the white shirt on the shoulder to see a face – one of three possible faces, all three strangers to him – and end that business he now thought most pathetic.

He went down to wait for Manolo, but stopped off on the third floor. He knocked on the door of the flat underneath Lissette's and after his second knock confronted a face he felt was remotely familiar: an old man he calculated was in his eighties, with his scant wisps of grey hair and elephant ears about to take flight, was peering at him through the half-open door.

“Good day,” said Conde, taking his police credentials out of his pocket. “It's to do with the girl in the top
flat,” he explained to the corrugated cardboard ear the old man presented, which nodded affirmatively when its owner seemed about to open the door.

“Take a seat,” the old man suggested and the Count entered a space similar but different to the one he'd just left. The old man's living-room was full of solid, antique mahogany and wickerwork furniture that matched the glass cabinet and centre table. But everything appeared to be recently turned and polished by a master carpenter.

“Beautiful furniture,” conceded the Count.

“I made them, almost fifty years ago. And I keep them like this,” he said, really proudly. “The secret is to clean the dust off with water and alcohol, and not to use the solutions they sell these days to bring out the shine.”

“It's good to make things like this, isn't it? That are beautiful and lasting.”

“What?” the old man whimpered, who'd forgotten to re-orientate his hearing aids.

“They are very beautiful,” said the Count raising his voice several decibels.

“And they're not the best I made, by a long way. Do you remember the Gómez Menas, the millionaires? I made them a library and dining room of genuine African ebony. That was what you called wood: hard, but elegant to fashion. God knows where that landed up when they all left.”

“Someone's got them, don't you worry.”

“No, I don't worry. For hell's sake, at my age I'm
immunized against practically everything and rarely worry. Pissing properly is my biggest concern in life, can you credit that?”

The Count smiled and, seeing an ashtray on the coffee table, ventured to take out a cigarette.

“You're a Canary islander, aren't you?”

The old man's smile bared teeth ravaged by history.

“From La Palma, the Pretty Isle. Why do you ask?”

“My Granddad was from there and you're like him.”

“Then we're almost fellow countrymen. Come on, what can I do for you?”

“Look, the day it happened upstairs,” said the Count, who thought it inappropriate to mention the word death here, where it seemed nigh, “there was a party or something similar. Music and booze. Did you see anyone go upstairs?”

“No, I just heard the din.”

“Was anyone here with you?”

“My wife, who's just gone out on a few errands, but the poor dear is deafer than me and heard nothing . . . When she removes her gadget . . . And my children don't live here anymore. They've lived in Madrid for the past twenty years.”

“But you've seen some of the people who visit Lissette, haven't you?”

“Yes, a few. But there were lots, you know? Particularly young lads. Not very many women, you know?”
“Lads in school uniform?”

The Old Man smiled, as did the Count, because he saw in his half smile the cheekiness his Granddad Rufino adopted when talking to women who told him they were divorced. That kind of smile had the Count believing for many a year that divorcées were whores.

“Yes, a goodly number.”

“And could you identify any if you had to?”

The old man hesitated. And finally shook his head.

“I don't think so: when you're twenty everybody looks alike . . . And the same goes at eighty. But let me tell you something, my compatriot, something I decided not to tell the others, but as I like you . . .” He paused to swallow and held out a hand of strong fingers whose joints were like badly tied knots. “That girl was a bad piece of work, and that's from me, a man who's seen two wars in his lifetime. It's not surprising she had this bother. Once they were jumping up and down in one of their parties as if they'd gone mad, and I thought the ceiling would crash down on us. I don't like interfering in other's people's lives, ask around, if you like . . . because I won't let anyone interfere in mine. But that day I had no choice but to go up and tell them to stop jumping so much. And do you know what she said: she said I should be ashamed to protest . . . that I should clear off with my lousy children, because I was the father of lousy kids who'd left the island and more besides, and
that she'd do what she wanted in her house. Obviously she was drunk, and she could say that because she was a woman, because if a man had said that to me I'd have been the one who'd have killed her . . . OK, I've done it, now, right? And if I'm going to be in pain when I'm pissing, prison or Central Park, it's all the same. She was bad, my compatriot, and people like that can make any man flip. That's all I have to . . . Look, I'm a shitty old man who can hardly even speak and even the food I eat hurts me, and I'm living on borrowed time. But I'm glad it happened to her, and say as much quite without remorse and without expecting God's forgiveness, because I've known that dickhead's not existed for quite some time. What do you reckon?”

 

“Conde, Conde, Conde,” Manolo jumped up and down as happy as a birthday boy, when the lieutenant came out of the building. “I think we've got it,” he said, pointing at his closed fist.

“What happened, then?” asked Conde trying not to seem too enthused. In truth, the conversation with the old carpenter had depressed him: it must be terrible to live thinking about the pain from your next pee. But he liked the mixture of love and hate still bubbling up in that lunatic on the edge of the grave.

“Look, Conde, if what I found on the Pre-Uni lists checks out, then we're all done here.”

“But what did you find, pal?”

“Listen to this. I made a list one by one of the names of Lissette's pupils, beginning with this year's lot, and then went on to the previous lot, who are now in their last year. I came across José Luis, who got ninety-seven in chemistry, and ninety-two in everything else. I reckon he's a top student, don't you? You know, I was getting fed up of listing names and marks and it left me cold until I reached the last name on the last list from last year. You do know that the lists are alphabetical, don't you?”

The Count wiped his hand over his face. Do I hang or behead him? he pondered.

“Get to the point, guy.”

“Hell, Conde, keep your hair on, the best about all this is the suspense. It was just what I found. You write down name after name and finally, when there's only one pupil left, you get to the name that can get us to the bottom of this pile of shit.”

“Lázaro San Juan Valdés.”

The sergeant's surprise was spectacular: he raised his arms as if a dog had bitten him, dropping all the papers, like a crestfallen child.

“Hell, Conde, you knew all along?”

“A little bird whispered in my ear when I left Pre-Uni,” smiled the Count, showing him the sheet of paper that bore three names: Lázaro San Juan Valdés, Luis Gustavo Rodríguez and Yuri Samper Oliva. “Yes, San Juan, as in
Orlando San Juan, alias Lando the Russian. Hey, Manolo, how many San Juans are there in Havana?”

“Fuck his mother's cunt, Conde, it's got to be him,” replied Manolo, as he ran after the list of names the wind was blowing away.

“Off we go to headquarters, then. And put your foot down if you want, because you've got leave today,” he said, although he had to withdraw his authorization six blocks on.

 

“Hey, Conde, I'm really hungry.”

“And do I live on air?”

“Don't force me to go upstairs now,” begged Manolo when they walked into headquarters.

“Go on then, get something to eat and tell them to keep something back for me even if it's only bread. I'm going up.”

Sergeant Manuel Palacios went down the passage to the canteen, as his chief pressed the lift button. The figures, on the board, showed it was on its way down but Conde kept his finger on the button until the doors opened and then pressed for the fourth floor. In the corridor he decided to make a pit stop in the lavatory. He'd not urinated since he'd got up, almost six hours ago, and he anxiously watched a spurt of dark, fetid pee hit the bowl and raise reddish foam. My kidneys are fucked, he thought, as he hurriedly shook himself. That
must be why I'm losing weight, and he remembered the old carpenter and his wee worries.

He returned to the corridor and pushed on the door to the Drugs Department. The main room was empty and the Count was afraid Captain Cicerón was out on the street, but he rapped the glass in his office door.

“Come in,” he heard and turned the door handle.

Lieutenant Fabricio was sitting in one of the office chairs nearest to the desk. The Count looked at him and his first thought was to leave but he stopped himself: he had no reason to beat a retreat and decided to be pleasant, like any well-bred citizen. Hang on, he thought.

“Good afternoon?”

“What was that?” came the reply.

“Where's the captain?”

“I don't know,” came the reply, as Fabricio put the papers he was reading down on the desk, “I think he's having lunch.”

“You think or don't know?” asked the Count, making an effort not to seem supercilious.

“Why do you need to see him?” asked Fabricio, slowing the pace of the exchange.

“Please, tell me where he is, it's urgent.”

Fabricio smiled and asked: “And can't you tell me what's it's about? If it's concerning Lando, I should say I'm in charge of that case now.”