Havana Gold (24 page)

“Cry then, you bastard. I can't stop myself.”

 

The wind blew from the south, bringing the smell of withered flowers and burnt oil, the effluvia of deaths from yesteryear and yesterday, as cars and buses halted in the cemetery's main avenue. The funeral car had driven a few yards on to allow the mourners to show off their years of experience and form an improvised,
disciplined queue, without numbers or fear of being left empty-handed, ready to follow the coffin to its final resting-place. The queue was headed by Jorrín's wife and two children who the Count didn't know, then Major Rangel and other high-ranking officers, all wearing uniforms and stripes. It was far too sad a spectacle for the Count's tender sensitivities: his head, liver, heart and soul hurt; and when they were level with the cemetery's main chapel, he told Manolo, “Go on, I'll catch you up,” and he separated out from the procession that advanced like a sleepy snake. The sun was hurting Conde's eyes, breached his sunglasses, and he sought out the shadow of a weeping willow and sat down on one side of the pavement. He was one of the few officers who hadn't come to the ceremony in full uniform and he changed the angle of his pistol as he flopped on the low wall. The silence in the cemetery was intense and the Count was grateful. He had enough noises inside himself and declined to listen to the more or less predictable eulogy that would wind up the mourning for Captain Jorrín. A good father, good policeman, and good colleague? You don't come to a cemetery to learn what you already know. He lit a cigarette and, the other side of the chapel, saw a group of women changing the flowers on a grave and dusting the gravestone. It seemed a social rather than meditative act and the Count remembered he'd been told about the existence of a Miraculous One, in
that cemetery, and that people often came to ask for mysterious help from her understanding spirit that was in step with the times. He stood up and went over to the women. Three sat on a bench next to the grave and two were still cleaning briskly, sweeping up leaves and earth left by the wind, re-arranging bunches of flowers in the earthenware jugs. All wore black scarves round their heads, dressed like timeless Spanish village women, swapping more or less accurate rumours about up-and-coming reductions in the weekly egg quota price increases. Without asking their permission the Count sat on the bench next to the women and looked at the grave and the flowers, candles, black rosary beads and blurred picture of a woman behind a glass frame.

“She's the Miraculous One, isn't she?” the policeman asked the nearest woman.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you look after the grave?”

“It's our turn once a month. We clean and tidy it and help people who come to ask for something.”

“I want to ask for something,” the Count replied.

He didn't look like a pilgrim, so the woman, a black woman well into her sixties with arms of soft ham, looked at him for a second before she spoke.

“She's given lots of evidence of her power. And one day the Church will recognize her for what she is: a miracleworking saint, a creature beloved of the Lord. If you can
bring her flowers, candles, things like that, it helps when you ask, because it lights up her path, but all you really need is faith, lots of faith, and then you ask her for help and say a prayer. An Our Father, a Hail Mary, whatever you prefer. And ask from the bottom of your heart, with lots of faith. You understand?”

The Count nodded and remembered Jorrín. They must be saying goodbye to him now; no doubt the Boss, a companion of thirty years standing, would speak of his record of unstinting service to society, family and life. Then he looked at the grave opposite and tried to recall a prayer. If he was going to ask for something, he'd do it properly, trying to recover the scattered bits of the faith he'd reneged on, but he didn't make it past the first lines of the Lord's Prayer that he confused with fragments of Mario Benedetti's
Lord's Prayer for Latin America
– that had become so popular during his time at university, when an urgent Latin Americanization of Cuban culture was decreed and strident rock groups transformed into pathetic, chameleon-like adepts of Andean and Altiplano folklore, panpipes, tambourines and ponchos included, and some even sang in Quechua and Aymara rather than Spanish. But now faith was what was crucial. Which faith? I'm atheist, but I have faith. In what? In almost nothing. Too much of a pessimist to have space for faith. But you'll help me, Miraculous One, won't you? Huh-huh. I'll only ask for one thing, though it's a very big
one, and as you work miracles, you'll help me, because I need a miracle as big as this cemetery to get what I want, you understand? . . . I hope so and that you're hearing me: I want to be happy. Is that so much to ask for? I hope not, but don't forget, Miraculous One, all right?

“Thanks a lot,” he said to the black woman when he stood up. She'd been looking at him all that time and smiled.

“Come back whenever you want, sir.”

“I think I might,” he said waving at the women, who'd switched from the topic of eggs to the chickens that had yet to reach the butchers. The usual story: the chicken or the egg? He walked back to the central avenue and, on his right, saw the mourners coming back from the burial. He adjusted his glasses and went to look for the car, hoping he'd be able to sit down. He felt weak and ridiculous and he knew he was going soft. It's as if I were in meltdown. Bloody shit. He tried his door but it was locked like Manolo's. He saw the radio aerial on the back seat. He distrusts even the dead, he thought. And then thought: will she grant me my miracle?

 

“How did it go?”

Greco, in uniform, was waiting for them under the almond tree planted by the entrance to the parking lot at headquarters. He barely saluted when Conde came over and replied.

“Plain sailing. We got to his house at eight, as Manolo told us, called in his mother, explained it was a routine investigation connected to Orlando San Juan, and then called him in – he was still asleep. The search carried out by Cicerón's people brought nothing to light, Conde.”

“What did you make of him?”

“He's a bit loud-mouthed and protested to start with, but I think it's pure show.”

“Did you tell him anything else?”

“No, not a thing. Crespo's with him upstairs in your cubbyhole. It's all set up as per instructions.”

“Up we go, Manolo,” he then said and they went into a building that was quiet at a time when it was usually bustling. They found the lift waiting for them, doors open, in the lobby. Miracles already? wondered the Count and pressed the button to his floor. When they were in the corridor, Manuel Palacios took a deep breath and filled his lungs, like a deep-sea diver about to take the plunge.

“Shall we begin?”

“Be tough,” said the Count following him.

Manolo opened the door to the cubicle where bald Crespo and Lázaro San Juan were sitting. Crespo stood up and saluted Manolo with almost a martial air.

“Bring him here, Crespo,” asked the sergeant.

Still in the corridor, the Count saw the boy come out. He was handcuffed and he'd lifted his hands to his forehead.

“Take off the handcuffs,” he ordered Crespo and looked at Lázaro San Juan's face; although it bore no similarity to Lando the Russian's, family traits were in evidence – an apparently absent gaze and almost straight, lipless mouth. He looked older than a youth who'd just celebrated his eighteenth birthday. His body was endowed with a firm, adult bone structure, and layered in rippling muscle. A few spots on his face betrayed his youth, but not even the red acne pimples obscured his masculine grace. His hair was parted down the middle and he didn't seem scared. Lissette was a woman who ate well and badly with equal relish, because it was a way to eat twice. That boy must have been her favourite dish, thought Conde. Tough on the digestion.

They processed awkwardly along the corridor and entered the lift. They went up to the next floor and walked out into a similar corridor, one lined with glass and aluminium doors. They went through two doorways and opened a wooden door that led into the tiniest of cubicles that was in semi-darkness. There was a curtain down one side. Manolo pointed Lázaro to the only chair and the youngster sat down. Crespo switched the light on.

“Lázaro San Juan Valdés?” asked Manolo and the youngster nodded. “An eleventh grade student at La Víbora Pre-Uni, correct?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“All right, do you know why you're here?”

The youngster looked around him, as if trying to get an idea of where he was.

“I was told it was an investigation into Pre-Uni.”

“Do you know or can you imagine what kind of investigation?”

“I think it's to do with Lissette the teacher. I was in the lavatories the other day when your colleague came in and asked about her.” He replied looking at Conde.

“That's right,” Manolo continued, “it's about her. Lissette the teacher was murdered on Tuesday the eighteenth, at around midnight. She was strangled with a towel. Someone had sexual contact with her just before. Someone gave her a good beating just before. But before that, lots of alcohol was drunk in her place and marijuana smoked. What can you tell us about any of that?”

The youngster looked back at Conde, who'd lit a cigarette.

“Nothing, comrade, how could I?”

“Are you sure? Call Greco,” Manolo addressed Crespo. The policeman picked a phone up and whispered something. He hung up. In the meantime, Manolo leafed through a small notebook he was holding and opted to read, an apparently enthralling read, while the Count smoked and looked all casual, as if present at a very familiar performance. Seated in the centre of the
tiny room, Lázaro San Juan shifted his gaze from one to the other, as if waiting for them to award him a deferred mark in a final examination. Doubt grew in his gaze, for all to see, like a well-nourished weed.

Two knocks on the wooden door, and in walked Greco's sharp-pointed bones. I'm surrounded by skin and bones. I'm even turning skin and bones, recalled the Count. Greco was carrying a piece of paper. He handed it to the Count and left. The lieutenant glanced at it and nodded, when he looked up at Manolo. Lázaro San Juan's gaze flew from one to the other. Still waiting for his mark.

“All right, Lázaro, we'll get down to the serious stuff. On the eighteenth you were in the house of your teacher Lissette. Your fingerprints are there. And it's very likely you were the one who went to bed with her that night: your blood is group O, the same as the man whose semen she had in her vagina when she died.” Manolo walked towards the curtain which was to the left of Lázaro, drew it back to reveal the translucent glass that, as in a game of mirrors, gave a to-scale reproduction of the room where they were, but with less backdrop, action and characters. “Your cousin, Orlando San Juan, sits in there, accused of possessing and peddling drugs, attempted illegal departure from the country and the theft of a motor launch belonging to the State. He has confessed to all his crimes and told us moreover that
on the eighteenth, at around 7.30 p.m., you went to his house and stayed there for a while. Moreover it transpires that the marijuana your cousin possesses is the same kind as the stuff that turned up in the toilet in Lissette's place. As you can see, Lázaro, you're more trapped up in this tale of drugs and murder than mincemeat in a pie. Even if you don't confess, any court will have a ball with all these facts I've given you. What's more, the colleague who brought me these papers has just gone to get Luis Gustavo Rodríguez and Yuri Samper, your little Pre-Uni friends, and when we talk to them, you bet they will confirm lots of things. OK, as you can see, very serious stuff. You got anything to say?”

The Count watched the mutation take place. It was like a wave that advanced from the guts and surfaced through the skin. Lázaro's muscles lost their ripple and his chest deflated. His hair was no longer neatly parted down the middle, but awry like a badly fitting wig. The spots on his face turned dark and he no longer seemed beautiful, strong or young and instinct told the Count that they'd reached the epilogue to that tale. Why would he have killed her? Why would an eighteenyear-old youth do something so bestial and definitive as that? Why could the quest for happiness end in that degeneration that had only just begun and would never finish, not even after the ten, fifteen years Lázaro San Juan was going to spend surrounded by the degrading
rigours of prison life, by murderers like himself, thieves, rapists and conmen, who would fight over the dark heart of his beauty and youth like a trophy they would sooner or later devour with great pleasure. No miracle would save this Lazarus.

“All right, all that's true, except for the idea I killed her and went to bed with her, I swear on my mother. I didn't kill her and wasn't with her either that day, and Luis and Yuri will tell you that's so, you'll see. Yes, she thought up the party, told me about it during break at Pre-Uni, hey Lacho – that's what she called me – you know what? Why don't you drop by tonight for a while, I'll have rum? She and I, you know, were an item for a few months, from December, she partied with me and I'm only human and we started to go to bed, but nobody knew in Pre-Uni, and I told only Luis and Yuri and they swore not to tell, and that was it, nobody knew. Then I told them, come one, let's go and have a drink or two, and had the bright idea of going to Lando's and stealing a few of the joints he liked smoking, I knew he put them inside a packet of Marlboro, one of the cardboard kind, in a pocket in his jacket in his bedroom, because I saw him take one from there once and I went and stole a few but only two or three times. And that was all, I met up with my pals on the street corner near her house and we went up at about eight-thirty, started to drink, listen to music and dance and I lit a joint and we smoked but she
didn't because she said she wanted more rum. Yuri went as far as El Niágara and bought two more bottles with the money she'd given him, and that was all, she was half drunk when we left at about eleven, we were incredibly hungry because she never had any food in the house, and we went to the stop and caught our buses, they the number 15 and me the 174, that drops me nearer my house, and that was all, that was that. We found out the next day and were incredibly scared and decided it would be better not to say anything to anybody, because somebody would jump to conclusions, like you have. That was all, I swear to you. I didn't kill her or go to bed with her that night. I swear I didn't. You ask Yuri and Luis who were with me, you ask them, go on . . .”