Havana Bay

Havana
Bay

BY

Martin Cruz Smith

Chapter One

A police boat directed a light toward tar-covered pilings
and water, turning a black scene white.
Havana
was
invisible across the bay, except for a single line of lamps
along the seawall. Stars rode high, anchor lights rode
low, otherwise the harbor was a still pool in the night.

Soda cans, crab pots, fishing floats, mattresses, Styrofoam bearded with algae shifted as an investigation team
of the Policía de la Revolución took flash
shots. Arkady waited in a cashmere overcoat with a
Captain Arcos, a barrel-chested little man who looked
ironed into military fatigues, and his Sergeant Luna,
large, black and angular. Detective Osorio was a small brown woman in PNR blue; she gave Arkady a studied
glare.

A Cuban named Rufo was the interpreter from the
Russian embassy.

"It's very simple," he translated the
captain's words. “You see the body, identify the body and then go home."

"Sounds simple."

Arkady tried to be agreeable,
although Arcos walked off as if any contact with Russians was contamination.

Osorio combined the sharp features of an ingenue
with the grave expression of a hangman. She spoke and
Rufo explained, "The detective says this is the Cuban
method, not the Russian method or the German
method. The Cuban method. You will see.»

Arkady had seen little so far. He had just arrived at
the airport in the dark when he was whisked away by
Rufo. They were headed by taxi to the city when Rufo received a call on a cellular phone that diverted them to
the bay. Already Arkady had a sense that he was
unwelcome and unpopular.

Rufo wore a loose Hawaiian shirt and a faint resemblance to the older, softer Muhammad Ali.» The detec
tive says she hopes you don't mind learning the Cuban method.»

"I'm looking forward to it."

Arkady was nothing if
not a good guest.

"Could you ask her when the body
was discovered?"

"Two hours ago by the boat."

"The embassy sent me a message yesterday that Pribluda was in trouble. Why did they say that before
you found a body?"

"She says ask the embassy. She was certainly not
expecting an investigator.»

Professional honor seemed to be at stake and Arkady
felt badly outclassed on that score. Like
Columbus
on
deck, Captain Arcos scanned the dark impatiently, Luna
his hulking shadow. Osorio had sawhorses erected and stretched a tape that read NO PASEO. When a motor
cycle policeman in a white helmet and spurs on his
boots arrived, she chased him with a shout that could
have scored steel. Somehow men in T-shirts appeared
along the tape as soon as it was unrolled—what was it
about violent death that was better than dreams? Arkady
wondered. Most of the onlookers were black;
Havana
was far more African than Arkady had expected,
although the logos on their shirts were American.

Someone along the tape carried a radio that sang,
"La fiesta no es para los feos. Qué feo es, senor. Super feo, amigo mió
. No puedes pasar aqui, amigo. La fiesta no es
para los feos.»

"What does that mean?" Arkady asked Rufo.

"The song? It says, 'This party is not for ugly people.
Sorry, my friend, you can't come. '"

Yet here I am, Arkady thought.

A vapor trail far overhead showed silver, and ships at
anchor started to appear where only lights had hung moments before. Across the bay the seawall and man
sions of
Havana
rose from the water, docks spread and,
along the inner bay, loading cranes got to their feet.

"The captain is sensitive, " Rufo said, "but whoever was right or wrong about the message, you're here, the body's here.»

"So it couldn't have worked out better?"

"In a manner of speaking.»

Osorio ordered the boat to back off so that its wash
wouldn't stir the body. A combination of the boat's
light and the freshening sky made her face glow.

Rufo said, "Cubans don't like Russians. It's not you,
it's just not a good place for a Russian.»

"Where is a good place?"

Rufo shrugged.

This side of the harbor, now that Arkady could see
it, was like a village. A hillside of banana palms over
hung abandoned houses that fronted what was more a cement curb than a seawall that stretched from a coal
dock to a ferry landing. A wooden walkway balanced on a black piling captured whatever floated in. The day was
going to be warm. He could tell by the smell.

"Vaya a cambiar su cam, amigo. Feo, feo, feo como
horror, senor.»

In
Moscow
, in January, the sun would have crept like
a dim lamp behind rice paper. Here it was a rushing
torch that turned air and bay into mirrors, first of nickel and then to vibrant, undulating pink. Many things were
suddenly apparent. A picturesque ferry that moved
toward the landing. Little fishing boats moored almost
within reach. Arkady noticed that more than palms
grew in the village behind him; the sun found coconuts,
hibiscus, red and yellow trees. Water around the pilings
began to show the peacock sheen of petroleum.

Detective Osorio's order for the video camera to roll
was a signal for onlookers to press against the tape. The ferry landing filled with commuters, every face turned
toward the pilings, where in the quickening light floated
a body as black and bloated as the inner tube it rested
in. Shirt and shorts were split by the body's expansion.
Hands and feet trailed in the water; a swim fin dangled casually on one foot. The head was eyeless and inflated like a black balloon.

"A
neumdtico"
Rufo told Arkady.» A
neumdtico
is a
fisherman who fishes from an inner tube. Actually from
a fishing net spread over the tube. Like a hammock. It's
very ingenious, very Cuban.»

"The inner tube is his boat?"

"Better than a boat. A boat needs gasoline.»

Arkady pondered that proposition.

"Much better.»

A diver in a wet suit slid off the police boat while an officer in waders dropped over the seawall. They clam
bered as much as waded across crab pots and mattress
springs, mindful of hidden nails and septic water, and
cornered the inner tube so that it wouldn't float away.
A net was thrown down from the seawall to stretch
under the inner tube and lift it and the body up
together. So far, Arkady wouldn't have done anything
differently. Sometimes events were just a matter of luck.

The diver stepped into a hole and went under.
Gasping, he came up out of the water, grabbed onto
first the inner tube and then a foot hanging from it.
The foot came off. The inner tube pressed against the
spear of a mattress spring, popped and started to deflate. As the foot turned to jelly, Detective Osorio shouted for
the officer to toss it to shore: a classic confrontation
between authority and vulgar death, Arkady thought.
All along the tape, onlookers clapped and laughed.

Rufo said, "See, usually, our level of competence is
fairly high, but Russians have this effect. The captain
will never forgive you.»

The camera went on taping the debacle while another
detective jumped into the water. Arkady hoped the lens
captured the way the rising sun poured into the win
dows of the ferry. The inner tube was sinking. An arm
disengaged. Shouts flew back and forth between Osorio
and the police boat. The more desperately the men in
the water tried to save the situation the worse it became.
Captain Arcos contributed orders to lift the body. As
the diver steadied the head, the pressure of his hands
liquefied its face and made it slide like a grape skin off
the skull, which itself separated cleanly from the neck;
it was like trying to lift a man who was perversely
disrobing part by part, unembarrassed by the stench of
advanced decomposition. A pelican sailed overhead, red as a flamingo.

"I think identification is going to be a little more complicated than the captain imagined, " Arkady said.

The diver caught the jaw as it dropped off from the
skull and juggled each, while the detectives pushed the
other black, swollen limbs pell-mell into the shriveling
inner tube.

"Feo, tan feo. No puedes pasar aqui, amigo. Porque la fiesta no es para los feos.»

The rhythm was... what was the word? Arkady
wondered. Unrelenting.

Across the bay a golden dome seemed to burst into
flame, and the houses of the Malecon started to express
their unlikely colors of lemon, rose, royal purple,
aquamarine.

It really was a lovely city, he thought.
Light from the high windows of the autopsy theater of
the Institute de Medicina Legal fell on three stainless-steel tables. On the right-hand table lay the
neumdtico's
torso and loose parts arranged like an ancient statue
dredged in pieces from the sea. Along the walls were
enamel cabinets, scales, X-ray panel, sink, specimen
shelves, freezer, refrigerator, pails. Above, at the ob
servation level, Rufo and Arkady had a semicircle of
seats to themselves. Arkady hadn't noticed before how
scarred Rufo's brows were.

"Captain Luna would rather you watched from here. The examiner is Dr. Bias."

Rufo waited expectantly until Arkady realized he was
supposed to react.

"The
Dr. Bias?"

"The very one."

Bias had a dapper Spanish beard and wore rubber
gloves, goggles, green scrubs. Only when he appeared
satisfied that he had a reasonably complete body did he
measure it and search it meticulously for marks and
tattoos, a painstaking task when skin tended to slide
wherever touched. An autopsy could take two hours, as
much as four. At the left-hand table Detective Osorio
and a pair of technicians sorted through the deflated inner tube and fishnet; the body had been left tangled
in them for fear of disturbing it any more. Captain
Arcos stood to one side, Luna a step behind. It occurred to Arkady that Luna's head was as round and blunt as a
black fist with red-rimmed eyes. Already Osorio had
found a wet roll of American dollar bills and a ring of
keys kept in a leaky plastic bag. Fingerprints wouldn't have survived the bag, and she immediately dispatched
the keys with an officer. There was something appeal-
ingly energetic and fastidious about Osorio. She hung
wet shirt, shorts and underwear on hangers on a rack.

While Bias worked he commented to a microphone
clipped to the lapel of his coat.

"Maybe two weeks in the water," Rufo translated. He
added, "It's been hot and raining, very humid. Even for
here."

"You've seen autopsies before?" Arkady asked.

"No, but I've always been curious. And, of course,
I'd heard of Dr. Bias."

Performing an autopsy on a body in an advanced
stage of putrefaction was as delicate as dissecting a soft-
boiled egg. Sex was obvious but not age, not race, not
size when the chest and stomach cavities were dis
tended, not weight when the body sagged with water
inside, not fingerprints when hands that had trailed in
the water for a week ended in digits nibbled to the
bone. Then there was the gaseous pressure of chemical
change. When Bias punctured the abdomen a flatulent spray shot loudly up, and when he made the Y incision
across the chest and then to groin, a wave of black
water and liquefied matter overflowed the table. Using a pail, a technician deftly caught the viscera as they
floated out. An expanding pong of rot—as if a shovel
had been plunged into swamp gas—took possession of the room, invading everyone's nose and mouth. Arkady
was glad he had left his precious coat in the car. After
the first trauma of the stench—five minutes, no more—
the olfactory nerves were traumatized and numb, but
he was already digging deep into his cigarettes.