Voodoo Eyes (23 page)

Gwenver’s fingers closed around the gun.

And Max heaved over the table. The marble edge smacked the pistol out of Gwenver’s hand and on to the floor. The ashtray, glasses and Coke bottle followed, smashing. The table landed on its side and split in two, as the cloth fell softly over the mess, covering it like a shroud.

Gwenver sprang to his feet and grabbed his chair. He edged back towards the billowing drapes, stabbing the legs at Max. Mingus grabbed at the chair as Gwenver lunged. He caught a leg and pulled in hard. Gwenver tilted forward, off balance, feet tangled. Max sidestepped and threw a straight right at Gwenver’s head, his fist thundering into the man’s temple. Gwenver staggered back on rubberised feet, his pupils revolving up into his skull, his mouth dropping open. Max hit him again with a left hook to the chin and put him down cold.

Max picked up the pistol, which felt much lighter than a loaded gun should. He cracked the cylinder. There was a shiny round in every chamber. He upended them into his palm. When he saw what he was holding he almost laughed. The bullets were made of wood: six perfectly sculpted little ammo statuettes, spray-painted gold and copper, coated in varnish, and accurate right down to the make and calibre stamp at the base. The gun itself had been decommissioned – a metal rod was welded inside the barrel and the firing pin had been removed. No wonder Gwenver hadn’t pointed it at him.

He patted Gwenver down. He tossed out his wallet – crammed with convertible peso notes – a set of keys and both notebooks. He flicked through the black one. It was an address book. No full names, just initials, addresses and phone numbers.

He looked under B.

AHB, DB, IB, JB …

VB.

Address: 87 Calle Ethelberg (Angola), Havana.

No number.

He pocketed the books.

Gwenver’s legs twitched. He gasped and groaned. Then he spluttered. Max turned him on his back. There was blood coming out of his mouth and his eyelids were chattering.

Max heard the windchimes again, behind the drape. He got up and pulled it back. He was staring at an empty kitchen with dirty pots on the cooker and a few dishes by the sink. The breeze was coming through the back door, which had been wedged open a crack, and it was riffling the metal chimes hanging over the window.

He went back to Gwenver, whose eyes were now open and glassy.

When he saw Max leaning over him he looked confused and lost. He started feeling about the floor and looking at his weird surroundings, his scrambled head chasing sense through deep fog.

Then he hit clarity and tried to get up.

Max pushed him back down with his foot.

‘Tell me about Vanetta Brown,’ Max said.

‘Fuck you!’

‘When d’you last see her?’

‘Fuck you!’

Max grabbed Gwenver in a headlock and started choking him. Gwenver tried to wriggle free, slapping and kicking at the floor.

‘Talk to me you piece of shit or I’ll snap your fucken’ neck!’

Just then the restaurant door flung open and the waiter rushed in. He clocked Gwenver and Max on the floor and stopped to assess the scene, his lips moving wordlessly, as if costing the damage. Other people began to come through the door, men with bats.

Max let go of Gwenver, whose head hit the floor with a crack like colliding billiard balls.

Max fled through the kitchen and slammed out the back door. He was in a narrow alley, a main road at either end, daylight scorching his vision.

He turned right and started running.

Behind him he heard shouting.

He didn’t look back.

29

Max waited daylight out at the Hotel Naçional.

He couldn’t find Calle Ethelberg on any Havana street map and it didn’t appear in either of his guidebooks. As for Angola, the only mentions of it were in relation to Cuba’s past military campaign in the African country.

He tried the hotel’s internet, which was unrestricted to tourists, but he drew the same blank. Vanetta Brown, he concluded, lived in a part of town the state didn’t want tourists to see or find out about – either because it was an unphotogenic dump or because it was secret.

He went out shortly after 10.30 p.m. and headed up La Rampa, the main road linking the outskirts of downtown Havana to the Malecón, into which it spilled like a concrete tributary.

Traffic was sparse, but both sidewalks were congested with flocks of young people descending on the seafront in chatty, perfumed waves. The Malecón was where Havana’s young hung out, their communal stoop. They filled up the length of the promenade and stood five deep on the sidewalk or sat back to back on the wall, facing the city or the sea, making sure to pick the dry spots, where the waves and sea spray wouldn’t catch them. It was a kind of informal street party where they’d break out guitars and have singalongs, read poetry or perform plays and amateur gymnastics; they’d eat roasted peanuts out of paper flutes bought from roving vendors and pass around bottles of white or yellow Havana Club, the cheapest kind. Max kept out of their way, but he couldn’t keep himself from looking at them. They might have been poor, but every last one was dressed to kill, the girls in tight jeans, sheer tops and heels; the boys in polo shirts with the collars up, laceless sneakers and pants worn at half-mast. But these Cuban kids were not like their spring-break equivalents in Miami. They were the quietest he’d ever known a crowd of young people to be. He guessed why and had it confirmed. They were being watched and filmed from unmarked cars parked in the sideroads: the state was chaperoning its young like a harsh, possessive and deeply unloved parent – and crushing a little of their vitality along the way.

He turned left at the Calle L intersection and made for the Habana Libre, originally and briefly the country’s first Hilton before Castro seized it on behalf of the revolution and transformed its plushest suites into his headquarters. The building was imposing in a drab and functional way, a monolithic blue-and-white rectangle that seemed to have been designed by an architect mistaking Havana for a coastal town in New Jersey.

Parked outside the entrance was a row of taxis, each car painted a shade of eyesore yellow. At the head of the line were four vintage Checker cabs and an Aerobus, both of which Max had only ever seen in old movies. A quintet of Soviet matchboxes followed these, and, trailing back like an interminable series of suspense dots, a line of coco cabs – pod chairs on three wheels powered by moped engines.

Max went up to the first Checker driver and told him where he wanted to go. The driver asked him to repeat the address and when Max did, he shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know where it was. The next driver, who’d overheard the first, did and said the same thing, but he was a bad actor. He couldn’t look Max in the eye any more than he could keep the nervousness from his face. Max bypassed the Aerobus and went up to a man leaning against a Lada, his head hidden by a newspaper.

‘I no’ take you,’ he said softly from behind the paper he didn’t bother to lower. ‘No one here take you. No’ even coco.’

‘Why not?’

‘We no’ go.’

‘Why?’

‘Camino muerto.’

‘What?’ Max’s grasp of Spanish was at best tenuous. A lifetime living in Miami and he’d only recently got to first base with the language, and that purely by enforced osmosis.
‘Camino muerto?
That means “dead road”?’

‘Si.’

‘So – what? – the name’s changed? Is that it? I got the name wrong?’

‘You can no’ go.’

Some people came out of the hotel and got into the first Checker cab.

‘What about Angola?’ asked Max. ‘Where’s that?’

‘Angola?’ The driver lowered his paper and smiled. He had a round face and thin shoulders. ‘Angola is in Africa,
señor.’

‘You know where I mean.’

‘My brother was soldier in Angola.’

‘You don’t want to take me?’

‘To Africa? I need visa.’

‘You’re a real funny guy. Look, I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you well.’

‘No señor. Lo siento.’

‘A lot of money.
Mucho dinero.’

The driver looked at his paper.

‘OK. Why don’t you just give me the directions?’

‘Try by La Coppelia.’ The driver nodded to where Max had come from. ‘Is possible you find person
muy desesperado.
Them take you to
Habana nuevo,’
the driver said.

‘Habana nuevo?
New Havana? What’s that?’

‘
Buenas suerte.
’ His newspaper went back up. Max noticed it was upside down.

La Coppelia was a vast ice-cream parlour built on an entire block on La Rampa. Each weekend Cubans of all ages would line up for two scoops and – money permitting – a fruit juice. Service was slow, stifled by demand, and there weren’t ever enough places to go around, despite the saucer-shaped parlour’s two floors. Once inside, people liked to stay a while. Prospective customers would have to wait, patiently and quietly, sometimes standing in the baking heat for hours, so determined were they to add a small dash of sweetness and colour to lives well short on both. Tourists flocked there too. It was in the Things To
So
Do section of the brochure. They had their own queue, shorter and faster than that of the locals. Most came out disappointed with the quality of the ice cream. It was a microcosm of Cuba, they said: basic flavours, not enough milk, portions too small, every shortfall in composites masked by excessive sugar. Still, they consoled themselves, it was nice to see what ordinary Cubans did for fun.

Max walked around the entire block looking for transport with a desperate soul at the wheel. It was poorly lit, most of the street lamps dead, every few feet a big blue plastic bin on wheels was parked in the gutter, overflowing with putrefying heat-baked trash. Roaches were crawling all over them, fighting each other to get first bite at the filth inside. Every so often a breeze would cut through the heat and blow the foul and fetid smell in his face, making his eyes smart and his gut convulse.

The prostitutes came at him quick and furtive. Even through the feeble light and blankets of make-up, he could see they were too young, that they belonged with the Malecón lemmings. Their approaches were strictly by the book. Some would try to strike up conversations, some asked him for the time or a light, some dropped the pretence and cut straight to the chase – ‘You like go with me?’ – while a couple, unsure of his nationality, propositioned him in three or four different languages before getting round to English.

After two fruitless turns, he stopped by the La Coppelia sign to reassess. A bike taxi wobbled past, ridden by a tiny, decrepit-looking black man with round pebble glasses and a baseball cap. His feet barely reached the pedals. He looked at Max as he passed, the ambient light turning his specs into two bright white dots. He grinned and waved. Max ignored him. When the driver reached the end of the road, he doubled back. This time he stopped, dismounted and came over. He was in a white vest, white shorts and beaten-up tennis shoes with holes in the toecaps. He was out of breath and sweating hard. He looked about sixty.

Jesus, no, Max thought as he braced himself for the hustle. He was flat out of patience.

‘Hola,
my frenn!’

‘No
gracias,’
Max pre-empted him.

‘No
gracias?’
The man was surprised. ‘Why
no gracias?’

‘No,’ said Max. ‘Whatever it is you’re selling or offering. Thank you but no thank you.’

The man frowned. His face was so furrowed he looked like a prune.

‘You no’ want taxi?’

‘You call that a
taxi
?’ The passenger part was a wire-covered trailer hitched to the back of the bike. Its seat was a wooden plank covered with filthy-looking cushions. The bike itself was listing to one side.

Then Max thought about it. He told the man where he wanted to go. The man looked doubtful and very worried.

‘I’ll give you a thousand pesos.’

‘
Tourist
peso?’

‘Yeah. Half now. Half when you bring me back’.

The man looked up and then down the road.

‘Mil pesos?’

‘Si.
Prometo.’

‘OK. Vamos.’

Down La Rampa they went, bumping and rattling along the uneven road. Max held on tightly to the wire basket as the bike hurtled towards the Malecón, every bounce and hard landing jolting his spine and threatening to throw him out of the seat. The driver – who’d introduced himself as Teofilo – whooped and hollered, sticking his feet out in the air and waving his hands around.

‘I like go
fas’!
I like go fas’!’ he yelled.

When the surface flattened out, Teofilo started struggling. Veins popped out of his slight bare calves and sweat rained down his back, as if his body had sprung a leak. He grunted and groaned, breathed heavily, and cursed frequently. They were overtaken by bendy buses stuffed with sorry-looking passengers, coco cabs, horse-drawn carts, pack horses, a trotting donkey, people on foot.

After an eternity they reached the Prado, which was crowded with tourists going in and out of bars and restaurants, spilling out of hotels, cruising around in open-topped cars, camcorders and digital cameras canning and pickling the view.

They clattered slowly through side streets until the next main road, when an exhausted Teofilo grabbed the back of a passing truck, letting it pull them along. With his free hand, he took a swig of water, wiped his face with a rag and tipped his cap at a group of girls looking in the window of a clothes store.

‘You strong man!’ Teofilo yelled at Max.

‘Strong?’

‘Yes, strong man. Drink much beer, yes!’

‘I don’t drink beer.’

‘You drink much milk, yes!’

Max understood what he was getting at. ‘You mean I’m fat? Heavy?’

‘Yes, strong fat man, hebby man, drink much milk!’

‘It’s all muscle.’ Max laughed.

The street forked off at a set of traffic lights and Teofilo let go of the truck and they went left. The road curved gradually and began to dip. They glided down.