Havana Red (2 page)

“Hey, Credence,” they agreed again: they liked to hear Tom Foggerty's tight voice and the elemental guitars of Credence Clearwater Revival.

“Theirs is still the best version of Proud Mary.”

“That's not even up for discussion.”

“He sings like a black, or rather sings as if he were fucking God.”

“Fucking right.” And were surprised as they looked each other in the eye: both felt simultaneously the painful inevitability of the morbid replay they were engaged in. They'd repeated that same dialogue, the same words, on other occasions, often, over twenty years of friendship, and always in Skinny's room, and its periodical resurrection brought back the feeling
they were entering an enchanted realm of perpetual, cyclical time, where it was possible to imagine all was pristine and eternal. But so many visible signs, so much skulking behind shame, fear, rancour and even affection, gave notice that only the remastered voice of Tom Foggerty and the Credence guitars had any permanence. The baldness threatening the Count and not-so-skinny Skinny's sick flab, Mario's inveterate sadness and Carlos's intractable illness were all too conclusive proof, among a thousand others, of a wretched decline entirely in the ascendant.

“It's some time since you saw Red Candito?” Skinny asked when the song came to an end.

“No kidding.”

“He was here the other afternoon and told me he'd given up his line in shoe-making.”

“What's he into now?”

Skinny looked at the cassette player, as if suddenly something about the machine or song had distracted him.

“What's up, you sly bastard?”

“Nothing's up . . . He's got a
piloto
and he's selling beer . . .”

The Count nodded and smiled. He could smell his friend's intentions from several miles.

“And he asked me why we didn't go and pay him a visit one of these days . . .”

The Count nodded and smiled again.

“You know I can't go to that kind of place, Skinny. It's illegal and if something happens . . .”

“Mario, don't fuck around. In this heat, with your shit-awful face . . . and it's only a couple of minutes to Candito's place . . . A few beers. Come on, let's off.”

“I can't, you bastard. Fucking remember I'm a policeman . . .” his weak-willed arms feebly hoisting flags proclaiming SOS . . . “Don't keep on, Skinny.”

But Skinny did. “I'm damned desperate to go and I thought you'd jump at the chance. You know I never get out, I'm more bored than a toad under a rock . . . A few cold beers. Just for my birthday, right? And you're practically not a policeman any more . . .”

“But what kind of bastard have you turned into, Skinny? Your birthday's not until next week.”

“All right. All right. If you don't want to, we won't . . .”

 

The Count brought the wheelchair to a halt outside the entrance to the building. He wiped the sweat away again, as he looked at a passageway lined with doors on both sides. His arms hung heavy after the effort of pushing his friend's two hundred and fifty pounds more than ten blocks, and the two hills he'd gone up and down. A light flickered in the dark at the end of the passage and the glare from television screens and voices of the characters in the latest soap emerged from every open door in the place. “Tell me, Mama, who's to blame for everything that's happened? Please tell me, Mama,” asked someone who'd surely suffered terrible things in that life in daily episodes that craved to be the real thing. Then he put his handkerchief away and walked towards Candito's door, the only one still shut. As he pushed the wheelchair he tried to hide his face between his arms: I'm still a policeman, he thought, as the temptation from those clandestine beers drew nearer, with the cool, delectable oblivion their consumption would deliver.

He knocked and the door opened as if they were expected. Cuqui, the mulatta who now lived with Candito, had only to stretch out her arm to turn the door handle. Like all those living in the block, she too was watching the soap, and her face seemed to reveal
the astonishment of the character finally discovering the whole truth. “I'm to blame,” the Count thought of saying, but he restrained himself.

“Come in, come in,” she insisted, but her voice retained something of the hesitancy of the character in the soap: she refused to believe, and perhaps that was why she shouted into the room, and kept her eyes trained on the newcomers: “Candito, you've got visitors.”

Like in a puppet theatre, Red Candito's saffroncoloured head peered out from behind the curtains hiding the kitchen and the Count got the code: having visitors was different to having customers, and Candito should show himself cautiously. But as soon as he saw them, the mulatto broke into a smile and walked over.

“Fucking hell, Carlos, you persuaded him,” he said, as he shook hands with his two old school friends.

“I told you I'd come and here I am, right?”

“You bet, come inside. I've still got some stuff left. Hey, Cuqui, get a nice snack for these mates of mine and forget the soap, go on. Whenever I look at it, they're spewing out the same bullshit . . .”

Candito sorted the furniture so Skinny's chair could cross the room, raised the curtain which hid the kitchen and opened the patio door: some six tables, all full, halted the Count in his tracks. Candito looked him in the eye and nodded: yes, he could go in. But for a moment from the kitchen the Count scrutinized the customers: they were almost all men, only three women, and he tried to identify the odd face. He instinctively touched his belt to check his pistol wasn't there, but calmed down when he didn't recognize anyone. Any of those characters could have had run-ins with him at Headquarters and the Count didn't like the idea of bumping into them in a place like this.

The cheap marble tables were round, iron legged and piled high with bottles. A cold bright light lit the space and a cassette recorder played at top volume the mournful songs of José Feliciano, whose voice did its best to drown out the drinkers' voices. By the sink, two metal tanks sweated ice against the heat. Candito walked over to a table in one corner, occupied by two awesome-looking specimens. He spoke quietly. The men agreed to give up their seats: one was huge, fair-haired, a good six feet tall with long, dangling arms, a face as cratered as the moon's surface; the other was smaller, his skin so black it was blue, and he just had to be a direct grandson and universal heir to Cro-Magnon man himself: Darwin's theory of evolution was reflected in the exaggerated jutting of his jaw and the narrow forehead where the eyes of a wild beast of the jungle glinted yellow. Red Candito gestured to the Count to push Carlos's chair nearer and to the men to bring three beers.

“What did you tell that pair of troglodytes?” the Count mumbled as they sat down.

“Calm down, Conde, calm it. You're anonymous here, right. Those guys are my business legs.”

The Count turned to look at the big blond, who was now approaching the table with their beers; he placed them on the table and then, without a word, walked over to the tanks.

“They're your bodyguards, you mean?”

“They're my legs, Condesito, and they have a hundred uses.”

“Hey, Candito,” Skinny butted in. “What's a lager cost these days?”

“Depends how you get it, Carlos. Right now it's tricky and I sell it for three pesos. But yours is on the house, and no arguing, OK?” And he smiled as Cuqui
appeared with a plateful of strips of ham, and cheese with biscuits. “All right, darling, carry on relaxing with that soap.” And he stroked her backside farewell.

The ice-cold beer restored a degree of peace to the Count's over-heated spirit, and he regretted gulping down the first bottle almost in one go. Now he was only irritated by the aggressive volume of the music and the sensation of vulnerability he felt at turning his back on the other customers, but he realized it was Candito who had to survey the remaining tables and decided to stop worrying when the blond guy replaced the empty bottle with a full one. Efficiency was returning to the island.

“What are you up to, Conde?” Candito drank in small gulps. “I've not seen you in ages.”

The Count tried the ham.

“I'm in the doghouse, because they suspended me after I had a row with an idiot there. They've put me on form-filling and won't let me as much as look into the street . . . But you've switched tack completely.”

Candito took a long swig from his bottle.

“No choice, Conde, and you know it: you can't let yourself get burnt in any business. The shoes thing was half down the shoot and I had to change track. You know it's real hard in the street and, if you don't have a peso, you're no longer a player, you know.”

“If you get caught, you'll be in dire straits. God won't spare you one hell of a fine . . . And if they catch me here, I'll be in the doghouse for the rest of my life.”

“Don't get like that, Conde, I tell you there'll be no dire straits.”

“You still go to church, I suppose?”

“Yes, sometimes. You've got to keep on good terms with some people . . . Like the police, for example.”

“Stop talking shit, Candito.”

“Leave off, gents,” interrupted Skinny. “These beers are dead and gone. Tell them to pour me another, Red.”

Candito lifted his arm and said: “Three more.”

The fair-haired guy served them again. The melodious drunken voice of Vicentico Valdés was now playing on the cassette recorder – confessing he was sure he knew where to find the moon's missing earrings – and, as he downed his third beer, the Count felt he was relaxing. The fact that he'd been in the police for more than ten years had created tensions which pursued him. Only in a few places, like Skinny's, could he get rid of certain obsessions and enjoy the gut pleasures of old times, the times they were talking about now, when they were students at La Víbora high school and dreams of the future were possible and frequent, because Skinny was skinny then, walked on both legs and hadn't been injured in the war in Angola, Andrés wanted to be a great pitcher, Rabbit insisted on rewriting history, Candito showed off his effervescent, saffron Afro hair and the Count devoted himself to beating out his first tales as an aborted writer on an Underwood.

“Do you remember, Conde?” Candito asked, and Mario said of course he remembered that story, a story he hadn't even listened to just now.

Blondie brought a fourth round of beers, and Cuqui a second plate of titbits, which Skinny Carlos threw himself at. The Count was bending over to get a piece of ham, when Candito stood up, making his chair fall over.

“Bastard!” somebody shouted.

With no time to get up, the Count turned his head and saw a mulatto put his hands to his face and totter backwards, as if in flight from the big blond bruiser
standing in front of him holding a bottle. Then the prehistoric black came up behind the guy, shouting bastard, bastard, stood firm on his simian fighting legs and delivered a quick flurry of hooks to the guy's kidneys that brought him to his knees. Big Blondie, meanwhile, had turned his back on his companion to look at the rest of the tables, hands on hips, threatening: The first to try it . . . But nobody else did.

The Count, now on his feet, saw Candito walk past him, reach the penitent mulatto and grab his shirt collar. Blood spurted from one of his eyebrows, as the small black, on the other side, gripped his hair and whacked him round the ears with a wash-brush.

“Let him be,” shouted Candito, but the black kept on with the brush. “Let him be, for fuck's sake,” he shouted and let go of the mulatto's shirt to grab the hand of the black, who only then loosened his grip. The Count observed with almost scientific interest the collapse of the macerated mulatto: he fell to his right and his head resounded on the cement like a dry coconut. No, he wouldn't have stood much more.

Blondie walked over to the cassette recorder and changed the music: Daniel Santos was the latest guest for the night. Then, in no great hurry, he went after the mulatto, held him up under the armpits, while the little black took his ankles. They went out though a door at the back of the yard which the Count hadn't noticed.

Candito looked at his other customers. For a moment only Daniel Santos's voice could be heard.

“Nothing happened, get it . . .?” he said finally. “If anyone wants another beer, then ask me, right?” and he lifted up the chair knocked over by his speed of take-off.

The Count had already sat down and Skinny was wiping away the sweat that had started to bathe every inch of his fat body.

“What happened, Red?” Skinny took a long, long swig.

“Don't worry. As they say: aggro that goes with the trade.”

“The guy was after me, right?”

Now Candito gulped down his beer and took a piece of cheese without looking up.

“I don't know, Conde, but he was after somebody,” he breathed loudly, still chewing.

“And how the fuck do you know, Red, if the guy didn't say a word?” Skinny couldn't get over his shock.

“You don't give them time to speak, Carlos, but he was after somebody.”

“Fuck, they almost killed him.”

Red smiled and wiped his forehead: “The real bitch is that's how it's got to be, my friend. Here it's the law of the jungle: respect is respect. Now neither that guy or any of the people here or anybody who hears the story of what happened will dare try it on.”

“And what will they do with him now?” Curiosity gnawed at Skinny, who was sipping his drink nervously.

“They'll put him out to rest till he cools off. And after he pays for what he's drunk, we'll send him home because he needs to get some early shut-eye today, don't you reckon?”