Havana Bay (15 page)

The police were worse than useless, they preyed on
the girls, demanding money for letting them into hotel
lobbies, for wandering around the marina, for allowing them to take tourists to places like the Casa de Amor,
which was supposed to be for conjugal activities
between Cuban couples who couldn't find sufficient
privacy at home. Well,
jineteras
had the same problem
and could pay more.

Traffic went in and out the office, the girls steering
in their clients like little tugboats. Ofelia let them go.
Someone in authority had arranged matters at the Casa de Amor, and what Ofelia wanted more than anything
else was for some sleazy PNR commander to check his
operation, see her in the car and invite her to join his
string. A badge and gun rested in her straw bag. The
look on his face when she brought them out?
Vaya.

Sometimes Ofelia felt it was her against the world.
 

This one feeble little campaign of hers against an indus
try that was nearly official. The Ministry of Tourism discouraged any real crackdown on
jineteras
as a threat
to Cuba's economic future. If they deplored prostitu
tion, why did they always add that Cuba's were the
most beautiful, healthiest prostitutes in the world?

The week before, she had picked up a twelve-year-
old
jinetera
in the Plaza de Armas. One year older than
Muriel. That was the future?

She hadn't given Renko a lot of thought until she
gave up surveillance at the end of the day and visited
the IML to check whether the dead Russian was tagged
for transport and, when she found the body wasn't,
looked for Bias. She found the director working at a
laboratory counter.

"I'm looking into something," Bias said.» I am not
investigating, but you made such a point about the
syringe I think you especially will be interested."

His instrument was a camcorder modified to fit onto
a microscope. The microscope eyepiece had been
removed so that the camera could focus directly on a grayish paste spread on a specimen slide. A cable led
from the camcorder to a video monitor. On its screen
was a magnified version of the paste with gradations in
color that ran from tarry black to chalk white. In front
of the monitor was an embalming syringe.

"Rufo's needle?" Ofelia asked.

"Yes, the syringe stolen from here, from my own
laboratory, and found in the hand of Rufo Pinero.
Embarrassing but also informative because the tissue
packed into a needle shaft, you know, is a core sample
as good as a biopsy."

"You squeezed it out?"

"For curiosity's sake. Because we are scientists," Bias
said as he moved the slide in minute increments under
the camera.» Working backward: brain tissue, blood
corresponding to Rufo's blood type, bone, cocheal
material from the inner ear, skin and more blood and
skin. What's interesting is the last blood, which actually would have been the first blood in the needle shaft. Tell me what you see."

The screen was a stew of cells, larger ones solid red, the smaller cells with white centers.

"Blood cells."

"Look again."

With Bias you always learned, she thought. On the
second look, many of the red cells seemed crushed or
exploded like overripe pomegranates.» There is some
thing wrong with them. A disease?"

"No. What you see," he told her, "is a battlefront, a
battlefront of whole blood cells, fragments of blood cells
and clumps of antibodies. This blood is hemolyzed, it is at war."

"With itself?"

"No, this is a war that only occurs when two different
blood types come into contact. Pinero's and...?"

"Renko's?"

"Most likely. I'd love to have a sample from the
Russian."

 
 
"He says he wasn't touched."

"I say otherwise." He was definite, and she knew that when Bias was definite he was almost always right.

"Will you test for drugs?" she asked.

"No need. You weren't at the autopsy, but I can tell you that on Rufo's arm are the tracks of old injections.
Do you know how much a new syringe is worth to a
user? This proves Rufo had two weapons."

"But Renko is alive and Rufo is dead."

"I admit that is the baffling part."

Ofelia thought of the cut in Renko's coat. That was from the knife. Why wouldn't the Russian mention a wound from the needle?

Bias had registered the fact that she was still in her
shorts and halter, black curls shining, a glow on her
brown skin.» You know, there is a meeting next month
in Madrid I have to attend. I could use someone to help
with the projector and charts. Have you ever been to
Spain?"

The doctor was popular with the women on his staff.
In fact, an invitation to accompany him to an inter
national conference on pathology was one of the prizes
of the institute. He was admired, sometimes awe-
inspiring, connected to the highest government elite,
and all Ofelia could really say against him was that his
lower lip, nested in his trim beard, was always wet. Somehow that was enough.

"It sounds nice but I have to help take care of my
mother."

"Detective Osorio, I've asked you to two conferences
now. Both important, both in fascinating places. You always say you have to take care of your mother."

"She's so frail."

"Well, I hope she gets well."

"Thank you."

"If you can't go, you can't go." Bias pushed aside the
microscope and camera as if they were dinner gone
cold. Ofelia's eyes, however, were fixed to the monitor,
to a magnified terrain of warring blood cells where she
saw a new answer.

 
Chapter Nine

There were more PNRs stationed on the Malecon than Arkady had expected. Taking the first street from the water, then avoiding a patrol car at the next corner, he
found himself behind the block he had just left and at
an alley with a flat-faced, vintage American Jeep in
house-paint red. Behind it were two more Jeeps, green
and white, each with new roll bars and upholstery. They
shone under lamps strung out from a humming gener
ator set inside open garage doors where a man in
coveralls inspected an inner tube he held in a tub of
water. He raised a white, amiable face and carried the
tube to an air hose.

"Needs air," he said in Russian.

"I suppose so," Arkady said.

Inside, under a caged bulb hanging on a cord, a Jeep sat on ramps over a mechanic working on his back. As
the engine revved a rubber hose taped to the exhaust
pipe funneled white smoke to the alley. There were
other signs of the garage's makeshift nature, the lack of work pits and hydraulic lifts. An engine hung on chains
from an I beam above garage disorder, tanks, tool
cabinets, oilcans, ammeters, tires, tire lever and well, a
folding chair behind a worktable of mallets, a board of
car rings on hooks, vises and clamps and greasy rags
everywhere, a beaded curtain marking off a personal
area, and Arkady realized that he was directly below
Pribluda's parlor. A boom box vied for volume next to
the Jeep. Since the hood was open, Arkady could see a transplanted Lada engine resonating like a pea in a can.
A knit cap, smudged face and dirty beard rolled out
from under the car to study Arkady from an upside-
down angle.

"Russian?"

"Yes. Everyone can tell?"

"It's not so hard. Have an accident?"

"Kind of."

"In a car?"

"No."

The mechanic looked up at the object of his labor.

"If you need a car you could do worse than this. A
'48 Jeep. Try to get parts for a '48 Jeep. The best I can
do is a Lada 2101. I had to eliminate the differential
and adapt the brakes. It's just the seals and valves now that are driving me crazy." His eyes strained to watch
something he was reaching for under the car. The
engine raced and he winced.» What a shit rain." He
rolled back under and shouted, "See any tape?"

Arkady found wrenches, goggles, welding gauntlets,
buckets of sand, but reported no tape.

"Mongo isn't there?"

"What is a Mongo?" Arkady wasn't sure he heard
right because of the music.

"Mongo is a black man in coveralls and a green
baseball cap."

 
 
"No Mongo."

"Tico? Man working on a tire?"

"He's there."

"He's looking for a leak. He'll be looking all day."
After what Arkady had to assume were strong words in
Spanish the mechanic said, "Very well, we'll perform heart surgery by going in through the ass. Find me a
hammer and a screwdriver and get a pan ready."

Arkady handed him the tools.» You like Jeeps?"

The mechanic rolled under the car.» I specialize in
Jeeps. Other American cars are too heavy. You have to
put in Volga engines and Volgas are hard to find. I like
a tough little Jeep with a little Lada heart that goes
takatakataka.
Are you sure you don't want a car?"

"No."

"Don't be put off by appearances. This island is like
a Court of Miracles, like in medieval Paris, where the
lame could walk and the blind could see because all
these cars are still running after fifty years. The reason
is that the Cuban mechanic is, by necessity, the best in
the world. Could you turn the radio up?"

Unbelievably, the volume had another notch. Maybe
this was a Cuban-made radio, Arkady thought. Mean
while, the violent whacks from under the Jeep made his
head throb.

"So you sell cars?" Arkady shouted.

"Yes and no. An old car from before the Revolution,
yes. To buy a new car requires approval from the
highest level, the very highest. The beauty of the system
is that no car in Cuba is abandoned. It may look
abandoned, but it's not." One more whack.» The pan,
the pan, the pan!"

Arkady heard a glutinous gush. In a single move, the
mechanic swung the pan under the Jeep in his place
and shot out on his cart, rolling across the floor until
he backhanded a column of tires and swung to a stop
and sat up, grinning. He was a robust specimen with
the smirk of near disaster, and looked so much like a
test pilot after an interesting landing that it took Arkady
a moment to notice that the mechanic's coverall legs
ended at leather pads at the knees. When he wiped his face and removed his cap his hair rose into a salt-and-
pepper mane too unique for Arkady not to recognize
the short man from Pribluda's photograph of the
Havana Yacht Club, simply far shorter than Arkady had
expected.

"Erasmo Aleman," he introduced himself.» You're
Sergei's friend?"

"Yes."

"I've been waiting for you."

Erasmo pushed his cart with wooden blocks edged in
tire tread to maneuver around his garage at full speed,
washing at a cut-down sink, wiping his hands at a barrel
of rags. The radio was down to half throat.

"I saw a policewoman take you upstairs a couple of
nights ago. You look ... different."

"Someone tried to teach me baseball."

"It's not your sport." Erasmo's eyes went from the
bruise on Arkady's cheek to the Band-Aid on his head.

"Is this Sergei?" Arkady produced the snapshot of Pribluda with the Yacht Club.

"Yes."

"And?" Arkady pointed to the black fisherman.

"Mongo," Erasmo said, as if it were self-evident.

"And you."

Erasmo admired the picture.» I look very handsome."

"The Havana Yacht Club," Arkady read the back.

"It was a joke. If we'd had a sailboat we would have called ourselves a navy. Anyway, I heard about the body
they found across the bay. Frankly, I don't think it's Sergei. He's too pigheaded and tough. I haven't seen
him for weeks, but he could come back tomorrow with
some story about driving into a pothole. There are
potholes in Cuba you can see from the moon."

"Do you know where his car is?"

"No, but if it were around here I'd recognize it."

Erasmo explained that diplomatic license plates were
black on white and Pribluda's was 060 016; 060 for the
Russian embassy and 016 for Pribluda's rank. Cuban
plates were tan for state-owned cars, red for privately
owned.

"Let me put it this way," Erasmo said, "there are
state-owned cars that will never move so that private
cars can run. A Lada arrives here like a medical donor
so that Willy's Jeeps will never die. Excuse me." He
turned down a salsa that threatened to get out of hand.

 
"The reason for the radio is so the police can say they
don't hear me, because you're really not supposed to make a garage out of your apartment. Anyway, Tico
likes it loud."

Arkady thought he understood Erasmo, the type of
engineer who labors happily below the deck of a sinking
ship, lubricating the pistons, pumping out the water,
somehow keeping the vessel moving while it settles in
the waves.

"Your neighbors don't complain about the noise?"

"There's Sergei and a dancer in this building, both
out all the time. On one side is a private restaurant,
they don't want the police visiting because it costs them
a free dinner at the least. On the other side lives a
santero
and the police certainly don't want to bother
him. His apartment is like a nuclear missile silo of
African spirits."

"A
santeror

"As in Santeria."

"He's a friend?"

"On this island a
santero
is a good friend to have."

Arkady studied the picture of the Havana Yacht Club.
There still was some message in it that he didn't
understand. If he was going to be beaten over the head
he wanted to know why.

"Who took the picture?"

"Someone passing by. You know," Erasmo said, "the
first time I met Sergei, Mongo and I saw him standing
next to his car on the side of the road, smoke pouring
from the hood. Nobody stops for anyone with Russian
plates, but I have a weak spot for old comrades, no?
Pues,
we repaired the car, only a matter of a new clamp
on a hose, and as we talked I discovered how little of
Cuba this man had seen. Cane fields, tractors, combines,
yes. But no music, no dancing, no fun. He was like the
walking dead. Frankly, I thought I'd never see him
again. The very next day, though, I was on First Avenue
in Miramar and I was fishing with a kite."

"With a kite?"

"A most beautiful way to fish. And I became aware that this Russian, this human bear from the day before,
was standing on the sidewalk and watching. So I showed
him how. I have to tell you that we never saw Russians
alone, they always moved in groups, watching each
other. Sergei was different. In our conversation he mentioned how much he wanted a place on the Male-
con. I had the rooms upstairs I certainly wasn't using
and one thing led to another." For a disabled man,
Erasmo was constantly in motion. He rolled backward
to a refrigerator and returned with two cold beers.» '51
Kelvinator, the Cadillac of refrigerators."

"Thanks."

"To Sergei," Erasmo proposed. They drank and his
eyes tabulated the damage on Arkady, "That must have
been a long flight of stairs. Nice coat. A little warm,
no?"

"It's January in Moscow."

"That explains it."

"Your Russian is very good."

"I was in Cuban army demolitions in Africa assigned
to work with Russians. I can say in ten different ways in
Russian, 'Don't step on that fucking land mine.' But
Russian boys are always stubborn, so he blew himself
into very small pieces and I lost both legs. As a living
symbol of internationalist duty and in place of my limbs
I was honored with my very own Lada. From that Lada
came two Jeeps and, voila, I had a garage. I have Him to thank."

"God?"

"El Comandante." Erasmo gestured as if stroking his beard.

"Fidel?"

"You're getting it. Cuba is a big family with a
wonderful, caring, paranoid papa. Maybe that describes
God, too, who knows? Where did you serve?"

"Germany. Berlin." For two years Arkady had moni
tored Allied radio transmissions from the roof of the
Adlon Hotel.

"The rampart of socialism."

"The crumbling dike."

"Crumbled. Dust. Leaving nothing standing but poor
Cuba, like a woman naked to the world."

They drank to that, the first food Arkady had in a
day, the beer's alcohol a mild anesthetic. He thought of
the black fisherman that Olga Petrovna had seen with
Pribluda. There was time to go to the embassy later and
hide away.

"I'd like to meet Mongo."

"Can't you hear him?" Erasmo turned the radio off
and Arkady heard what could have been a rolling of
stones in surf if stones shifted to a beat.

Walking in the
santero's
door, Arkady was unprepared.
When Russians were taught about Cuba, all they read
about was white men like Che and Fidel. What Russians
learned about blacks were the Western crimes of imperi
alism and slavery. The only blacks they encountered in
Moscow were the miserably cold African students
imported to Patrice Lumumba University. The musicians
in the
santero's
front room were different. They were
black men with lined faces, dark glass and blackness
wrapped around them, with little accent marks like white
golf caps or dreadlocks or Mongo's green baseball cap,
but with a mantle of shadow vibrant in the candlelight.
The entire room floated in the watery light of forty or
fifty candles placed on a side table and along the wain
scoting. No more than settling in, a drummer lazily
slapped the wooden boxes he sat on, two others cocked their heads to listen to tall, narrow drums as they tapped
the heads and Mongo shook a gourd draped in seashells.
Bells, sticks, rattles lay at his feet. He put the gourd down
to pick up a metal plate that he hit with a steel rod to
produce notes so fine and bright it took Arkady a while
to recognize the instrument as the blade of a hoe. A tablecloth hung over a mirror. When Arkady tried to approach Mongo, a fat man in a cloud of cigar smoke
chased him and Erasmo away.

 
"The
santero,"
Erasmo told Arkady.» Don't worry,
they're just warming up."

The mechanic had changed from his coveralls to a
pleated white shirt he called a guayabera, "the very
height of Cuban formality," but with telltale grease on his hands and his beard he looked like a corsair in a
wheelchair. He pressed on through a kitchen and hall
way until he led Arkady to a backyard where, under two
spindly coconut palms crossed like an X, an old black woman in a white skirt and a Michael Jordan pullover
stirred a cauldron simmering on coals. Her hair was
gray and cropped as short as cotton.

Erasmo said, "This is Abuelita. Abuelita is not only
everyone's grandmother, she is also the CDR for our block. The Committee for the Defense of the Revolu
tion. Informers usually, but we are blessed with Abuel
ita, who dutifully watches from her window from six in
the morning and sees nothing all day long."

"Did she ever see Pribluda?"

"Ask her yourself, she speaks English."

"From before the Revolution." Her voice was young and whispery.» There were a lot of Americans and I was a very sinful girl."

"Did you ever see the Russian here?"

"No. If I saw him, then I would have to report him
for renting from a Cuban, which is against the law. But he was a nice man."

A pig's head bobbed in the stew. A bottle came
Erasmo's way; he took a long drink and shared it with
Abuelita, who drank daintily and passed it to Arkady.