Havana Gold (25 page)

 

Far too many mysteries by half, the Count told himself. He wanted to think about the mystery concocted around Lissette's death, but the unexpected riddle of Karina's disappearance kept getting in the way, where could she have got to last night, he rang her again after speaking to Lázaro and the same female voice as on the previous night spoke to him: “No, she didn't come here yesterday, but she phoned and I gave her your message. She didn't ring you?” That statement was like a gust coming from the poop deck, swelling the sails of his doubts and fears and setting them off at top speed across a choppy, uncertain Sargasso Sea. He knew the company Karina worked for
was based in El Vedado, but his enthusiasm prevented him doing his policeman thing and he'd never asked her for her exact address, after all, she lived around the corner from Skinny, and he didn't dare ask the woman at the other end of the line. Karina's mother? Something irrevocable had happened, as on the night of the eighteenth, he thought. Leaning against the window in his office, he looked at the defiant crests of the weeping figs and their evergreen leaves that resisted everything. He wished time would fly, so he could go home and wait next to his phone. She'd ring him with a good excuse, he tried to tell himself. I was on duty and forgot to tell you. We had a work crisis and I stayed back, and you know how terrible the phones are, I couldn't get through, my love. But he knew he was lying to himself. A miracle? Only a miracle of springtime, old Machado would say, also touched by a love that finally eluded him.

He heard someone open his office door. Manolo, carrying a sheaf of papers, flopped down in the big chair, imitating the exhaustion of a victorious runner. He was laughing.

“It's a real pity about the lad, but he's shot it, Conde.”

“He's shot it?” asked the lieutenant, allowing the flow of his thoughts to get back on track. “What has the laboratory got to tell us?”

“The semen belongs to Lázaro. No doubt about that.”

“And Yuri and Luis?”

“What you'd thought, they caught the bus first and left Lázaro at the stop. They say they always went together to the stop in La Víbora and then got off to go to Acosta Avenue, but that night he told them to go, that he was going to catch the 174 so as not to have to walk so far.”

“And the white shirt?”

“Yes, it was his and he'd taken it that night. She'd sometimes wash clothes for him. Poor Lázaro, and he had it all on a plate, didn't he?”

“Yes, poor Lázaro, he doesn't know what will hit him. And what did they tell you about the party?”

“It was different to the one Lázaro invented. They say that when she got drunk she got very stroppy because Lázaro told her to give him the physics and maths exams and she started to talk straight, she wouldn't give him any more exams, because he played the big man with everyone else saying what was going to come up and he would get her into trouble, that was all he wanted her for, apart from
it
, they say she said, and then told them to clear off. Luis says it's true Lázaro used to sell the answers to the exam questions, but she didn't know. Sly sod, wasn't he? Well, Lázaro tried to calm her down but she insisted on the three of them going, and even almost pushed Lázaro out when Yuri and Luis were already on the stairs. They both told the same story, step by step. Then, when they found out about the teacher's death they went to talk to Lázaro and decided it would be best
not to say they'd been there that night. They thought it best in order not to create problems for themselves, but Yuri says it was Lázaro's idea they should keep quiet.”

The Count lit a cigarette and glanced briefly at the data Manolo had brought from the central laboratories. He left them on the table and went back to his window, stared at a single scrap of skyline and said: “Then Lázaro went back from the bus stop. He didn't have a key, so she opened the door. He persuaded her she'd made a mistake and they had sex on the living room sofa. A great reconciliation, I can almost hear the background music. But why did he kill her?” he wondered, and lost sight of the scrap of skyline he'd selected when he saw Lázaro on Lissette, saw his face at last, as he tightened the towel round her throat, tighter and tighter, until his oarsman's arms slackened after all that effort and the enigmatically beautiful face of the girl locked for ever in that absurd rictus, between pain and uncertainty. Why did he kill her?

 

The blue smoke smells like spring: fresh and sharp. Steamy and evanescent, the smokes floats from mouth to lungs, from lungs to brain and dawns behind the eyes, which perceive the glint of a new day in everything, a heightened perception and sensitivity revealing shafts of mother-of-pearl lucidity never grasped before. The world, the whole world, becomes broader and nearer, and shiny, while the smoke disperses, transforms into
breath lost to each blood cell and neuron that is awake and on full alert. Life is beautiful, isn't it, people are beautiful, your hands are big, your arms powerful, your knob huge. Thanks, smoke.

Marijuana was among the things Christopher Columbus discovered without imagining he had. Those Indians “with charred sticks in their mouths” looked too happy to be mere smokers of tobacco on the verge of emphysema. Dried grass, dark leaves, blue smoke that made it possible to mistake sad, disconsolate Columbus for a pinkish god out of a mystery lost in the Indians' mythical memory. A good joint. A leaf too lethal by far when they discovered that Columbus wasn't God, and they weren't his chosen spirits.

But smoking it is a pleasure, is to float over the dust of hours and days, knowing we are all powerful: able to create and believe, to be and not to be where nobody can be and not be, while the imagination soars as blue as the smoke and breathing is easy, seeing is easy, listening supreme joy.

Poor Lázaro, he'll go to the bonfire like an Indian, without blue smoke or dawn lights, already sentenced to the first space in the seventh circle of hell, to burn eternally with those who've wrought violence on their neighbour.

He walked into the boss's secretary's office and was surprised by Maruchi's smile. She waved at him, wait,
wait, stop, and tiptoed from behind her desk over to the Count.

“What's got into you, my girl?”

“Keep your voice down, young man,” she insisted, her hands urging him to lower the volume, as she whispered. “Hey, he's in there with Cicerón and Fatman Contreras and he asked me to take them coffee. Do you know what they were talking about when I went in?”

“About a corpse.”

“About you, young man.”

“About a corpse,” confirmed the lieutenant.

“Don't be silly. He was telling Fatman and Cicerón you'd put them both on the trail of two big cases. That you'd uncovered. What do you reckon?”

“The Count tried to smile but failed.

“Very nice.”

“Ugh, don't be so boring . . .” she said assuming her normal tone of voice.

“Tell him I'm here, go on.”

The head of office returned to her desk and pressed her red intercom button. A tinny voice asked “Yes?” and she announced his presence: “Major, Lieutenant Conde is here.”

“Tell him to come in,” the metallic voice replied.

“Maruchi, thanks for the headlines,” said the Count and he stroked the secretary's hair. She smiled, a flattered smile that surprised the Count. Could this darling really
fancy him? He went over to the glass door and rapped it with his knuckles.

“Go on, come in,” shouted the Major, and the Count opened the door.

Wearing his uniform and official decorations, the Boss was standing behind his desk as if commiserating over another deceased – “me,” thought the lieutenant, with the two mourners opposite: Captains Contreras and Cicerón.

“You're in good company,” he quipped to relieve the tension, and saw Fatman Contreras smile as he stood up, his veins swelling as he suddenly hauled up his three hundred pounds of flesh and bone.

“How are you, Conde?” And he held out his hand. Shit you, thought the lieutenant, dropping his poor hand on Contreras's, whose smile broadened when he unleashed all his pressure on the Count's defenceless fingers.

“Fine, Captain.”

“All right, sit yourselves down,” the Boss ordered. “Well now, Conde, where are you at with your case?”

The Count sat in the sofa that was to the Major's right. He put the envelope he'd brought down by his side and tapped it before replying.

“It's all here. I brought the tapes in case you want to hear them. And tomorrow the public prosecutor will receive our report.”

“That's all fine and dandy, but what did you turn up?”

“Lázaro San Juan, just as we thought. The party took place, with two other friends, they drank rum, smoked marijuana and she rowed with Lázaro when he asked her for the physics and maths exams. The problem was that Lázaro sold the exam answers for five pesos a time. It was a good deal, because there were the answers to as many as ten questions and he had a select, faithful clientele.”

“Don't be sarcastic,” the Major interjected.

“I'm not being sarcastic.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I swear I'm not, Boss.”

“I told you never to swear anything in front of me.”

“Well, I won't.”

“Well, are you going to continue with your report or not?”

“I'll continue,” sighed the Count, delaying before lighting up another cigarette. “She kicked them out of the house, that was her drunken state talking, it seems, but Lázaro went back after his friends caught their bus. She opened up for him, they made up, had sex and he lit another joint he'd brought along. They smoked it between them, always from his hand, that's why there were no traces on her fingers. And then he asked her for the exams again. The bastard had got the habit. She dug her heels in and tried to kick him out again and he says she struck him in the face and he lost his temper and
went for her, started hitting her and before he realized it had strangled her. He says he doesn't know how he could. Sometimes these things happen, being high on loads of dope doesn't help . . . now he's crying. It was an effort, but he's crying. I'm sorry for the kid, he made his confession without looking at us. He asked me to let him stand by the window and talked the whole time staring into the street. It's not going to be easy for him. It's all here,” he repeated tapping the envelope again, which sounded like a warning drumbeat in the silence.

“A pretty tale, is it not?” asked the Boss getting to his feet. “A boy at Pre-Uni and his teacher as protagonists and a headmaster, a dealer in stolen motorbikes and dope peddler in supporting roles; a bit of everything: sex, violence, drugs, crime, alcohol, fraud, currency swindles, black-marketing, sexual favours and just deserts,” he said and suddenly switched his tone. “It makes you want to vomit. Tomorrow I'll have your report sent everywhere, Conde, everywhere . . .”

And he went back to his seat and the battered cigar he'd been fighting all afternoon. It was a sad, dark cheroot, all dark ash and acrid aroma. He took two drags, as if taking a necessary but foul medicine, and said:

“Contreras and Cicerón have been telling me about the case's other ramifications. That Pupy sang so much they almost had to kick him to shut him up. We got further up the pole thanks to him, to three functionaries
working in foreign embassies, two fellows from Cubalse, the wholesale people, three from INTERTUR, two taxi drivers and a load of pimps.”

“Eight for starters,” smiled Contreras.

“And the marijuana racket is a fuse that keeps burning and we'll watch where it takes us. The peasant from Escambray seems straight out of some film scenario: they supplied him with drugs to sell as his own to various dealers like Lando. We've caught three more. And we'll get the man in Trinidad who supplied the peasant and we'll go on until the bomb explodes, because we've got to find out where that marijuana came from and how it got into Cuba, because this time I don't swallow the story about how they found it washed up on the seashore. Until the bomb explodes . . .”

“And the shit hits the fan,” whispered the Count very quietly.

“What was that?” asked the Major.

“Nothing, Boss.”

“But what did you say that I didn't catch?”

“That the shit will hit the fan. And not only in La Víbora Pre-Uni.”

“Shit will hit the fan, right,” agreed the Major as he tried in vain to get a drag out of his blackened cigar. “And it's coming my way already,” he said, looking appalled and showing the ersatz cigar to them all. He stood up, walked over to the window and threw the cigar
into the street, as if he hated it. Which, of course, he did. When the Major turned his back to the group, Cicerón looked at the Count and smiled: raised his right arm and gave a V for Victory sign.

The Major went back to his desk and leaned his knuckles on the wood. The Count prepared himself for his harangue.

“Although it goes against the grain, Conde, I have to congratulate you. You were the person who unravelled the piece-of-shit stories we got from Pupy and Lando and you solved the Pre-Uni business. The currency swindle and purchases from diplomatic shops will bring in other people and the Central American marijuana will take us into the stratosphere, I'm quite sure, because this is no low-level operation. So I congratulate you on all these fronts, but tomorrow after you've delivered your report, I want you to go home, make yourself comfortable, in pyjamas and all, and don't you show your face back here until the disciplinary committee calls you in.”

“But Rangel . . .” Contreras tried to interject only to be interrupted in turn by the Boss.