Havana Bay (6 page)

"I'm not interested and I don't have one hundred
dollars."

"Fifty dollars. Usually I wouldn't let them go for so
little, but..." Rufo spread his hands like a millionaire
temporarily out of change.

"I'm just not interested."

"Okay, okay." Rufo was disappointed but amenable.» You know, when I was here before, I think I left my cigarette lighter. Did you see it?"

Arkady felt as if he were trying to leap from a plane
and people kept dragging him back. There was no
lighter in the living room. Arkady searched the bath
room and bedroom, no lighter. When he returned to
the front, Rufo was digging through the paper bag of
Pribluda's effects.

"There's no lighter there."

"I wanted to make sure you had everything." Rufo held up the lighter.» Found it."

"Good-bye, Rufo."

"A great pleasure. I'll be back in an hour. I won't
bother you before." Rufo backpedaled to the door.

"No bother, but good-bye."

Arkady pulled back the coat sleeve from his arm as
soon as Rufo went downstairs and with his thumb he
found his vein and snapped it with a finger. The urge
to be done was so strong now that he stayed at the
open door to finish the job. The light on the stairwell
below went out. See, now he needed a lighter. Typical
socialist collapse, a bulb here, a bulb there. In the light from the room his exposed arm looked like marble. A
samba drifted from another apartment. If
Cuba
sank
into the sea, probably the water would percolate with
sound. His throat was dry and sore. He leaned on
the wall, took the long syringe from his pocket of his
coat, tentatively touched his vein with the needle and
a red dot appeared and wrapped around his wrist,
 
which he wiped to keep the cashmere clean. But he
heard someone climb the steps and, syringe in hand,
deciding not to end up as a public spectacle, slipped
inside his door and rested against it. Feet stopped at
his door.

"Yes?" Arkady asked.

"I forgot the cigars," Rufo said.

"Rufo—"

As soon as Arkady opened the door Rufo carried him
past the apartment's cream-and-gold dining chairs and
into the far wall's collected works of Fidel, and pressed
Arkady by the neck to the cabinet with a forearm.
Perhaps Rufo was big but he was quicker on his feet
than Arkady had imagined. He pinned Arkady with one
arm and pulled the other until Arkady realized that his
overcoat was pinned to the cabinet by a knife that Rufo
was trying to free for a second thrust. The flapping of
Arkady's open coat had misled him. Rufo's other prob
lem was the embalming syringe that stood from his left
ear, which meant that six centimeters of steel needle
was buried in his brain. Arkady had struck back without
thinking because the attack had come so fast. The
addition to Rufo's head slowly gained the Cuban's
attention, his eyes lifting sideways for a glimpse of the barrel and returning perplexed to Arkady. Rufo stepped
back to grope at the syringe like a bear bedeviled by a
bee, turning his head and wandering in a circle, leaning
sideways lower and lower until he dropped to a knee
and pushed with the opposite foot, squeezing his eyes
shut until he finally pulled out the needle. Rufo blinked
through tears at the long, red shaft and looked up for
an explanation.

Arkady said, "All you had to do was wait."

Rufo rolled onto his back, his eyes still turned to the syringe as if it contained his last thought .

 
Chapter Three

Not that she would tell Renko, but Ofelia Osorio had
once worked on a Cuban factory ship built by the
Russians and complete with Russian advisers, so she
was not only practiced in dealing with overbearing "big
brothers" from the north but skilled in fending them
off with a gutting knife. Earlier, as an idealistic Young Pioneer she had served as a delegate to a World Youth
Conference in Moscow and toured Lenin's Tomb,
Lumumba University and the subway. She remembered
how subway riders drew in their faces at the sight of
someone black. Cubans only touched their forearms to
indicate someone dark. Russians recoiled as if from a
snake. At least, at home. At sea, they were willing
enough to experiment.

It wasn't only Russians. Vietnamese investigators
came to
Havana
and Ofelia trained both men and
women. When she visited
Hanoi
she discovered that
her best female students had been relegated to typing
and that after dinners of international solidarity the
plates Ofelia used were washed twice.

What was interesting was that when European and
Asian men met Cuban girls in
Cuba
they were like
gluttons in a candy store. Decent family men became
animals the moment they landed. Cartoons posted on
the streets warned girls to be sure their tourists arrived
with condoms. There were vice squads, usually run by detectives putting together their own strings
ofjineteras.
A great word,
jinetera.
Jockey, especially descriptive of
a girl astride a bouncing pig. In addition to Ofelia's
homicide caseload, and with half-hearted official sup
port, she had put together an operation of her own
against corrupt police. At any rate, she was mentally
armed for a visiting Russian investigator, the worst of
all possible combinations.

She lived in a
solar,
an alley of one-room apartments,
aptly named for the way it soaked in the heat of the
day. In spite of the late hour, Muriel and Marisol, her
two daughters, were spread languorously on the cool of
the floor intent on a television show about dolphins. The girls were eight and nine with dark hair flocked
with gold, and the blue glow of the screen lapped up to
their chins like a coverlet. Her mother tipped on the
rocking chair pretending to be asleep, a silent reprimand to Ofelia for coming home so late, letting rice and beans
simmer on the burners. Two could play at that game. It
was a scandal that the mother of a PNR detective would spend the day running errands for everyone in the
solar,
going for cigarettes for one house, standing in line for a
pair of shoes for another.» Hustle or starve," the old
woman would respond to protests.» With your big pay
and our family rations, your daughters will eat two days
out of three. You know the joke, 'What are the three
achievements of the Revolution? Health, education and
sports. What are the three failures? Breakfast, lunch and
dinner.' They say Fidel tells that joke. Why?" Ofelia only
argued to a certain point because her mother was right.
Besides, there were so many other things to argue about
with her mother. The week before, Ofelia had come
home to find that a portrait of Che had been moved to
make way for a picture torn from a magazine of Celia Cruz. Who would displace the greatest martyr of the
twentieth century with a fat, old traitor from
Florida
? Her mother, without a second's hesitation.

Ofelia wrapped her belt around her holster, stripped
and folded her uniform neatly on a hanger. As a
detective she could go in plain clothes or not, but she
enjoyed the reassurance of the blue pants, the gray shirt with PNR shield on the pocket, the cap with its own
embossed shield. Also, wearing a uniform saved on her
clothes, which were basically two pairs of jeans. She
slipped through the curtain into an alcove that served
as bathroom, vanity, and shower stall, automatically
turning on the Walkman that hung from a string. The
radio was a prize found on the Playa del Este on a
family trip. She had told her girls to ignore the "love
couples" of
jineteras
and their tourists, but after Muriel
had stumbled upon something as incredible as a radio
the size of a clamshell she and her older sister watched
the beach like vultures, ready to search the sand for
treasure as soon as any "couple" left.

Water came in lukewarm rivulets, but it was enough.
It ran over her forehead and neck and trailed from her
hands. She was secretly pleased with her hair, which was
cut short and as soft as a cap of Persian lamb. The
music was insinuating and percussive.
Your cigar fell
down. You told me how good it was and how all the
women liked your big cigar. We hardly started smoking
and your cigar fell down.
Ofelia let her shoulders relax
and roll to the beat. Water ran out the drain between
her feet. In the mirror above the sink she saw herself
begin to fog. A thirty-year-old woman who still looked like a black cane cutter's daughter. Although she wasn't
vain she hated a tan line—better to be the same brown
all over. She leaned forward to let water run off her hair like threads of glass.

The detective in her wondered about the dead Rus
sian they found in the water. She would have expected
much more interest from his embassy and the fact that
they seemed ready to dispose of him like a dog hit on the street was practically proof that he had obviously
been up to no good. The bay, after all, was a perfect
vantage point for smuggling, infiltration, to spy on
shipping. As the Comandante himself said, there was no
more vicious enemy than a man you had once called
friend.

The new Russian was a bit of a contradiction. The
plush coat was a sure sign of corruption, while the poor
state of the rest of his clothes indicated a complete
disregard for appearance. One moment he seemed a
reasonably alert investigator, and the next he disap
peared into some private train of thought. He was pale
but with eyes deep-set in shadow.

The soap was a sliver her mother had obtained from
a friend who worked in a hotel and so luxurious that
Ofelia drew out the shower, the most private moment
of the day despite the voices from other apartments in
the
solar.
One song's worth was what she allowed herself
to save the batteries.

Dressed in a pullover and jeans, she ladled rice to
Muriel and beans to Marisol and an obscure, deep-fried
gristle that her mother refused to identify. From the
refrigerator she took a plastic Miranda soda bottle filled with chilled water.

"On the cooking show today they showed how to fry
a steak from grapefruit skin," her mother said.» They turned a grapefruit skin into steak. Isn't that amazing? This is a revolution that is more amazing all the time."

"I'm sure it was good," Ofelia said.» Under the
circumstances."

"They ate it with gusto. With gusto."

"This is also good." Ofelia sawed into the gristle.»
What did you say it was?"

"Mammalian. Did you meet any dangerous men
today, someone who might kill you and leave your daughters without a mother?"

"One. A Russian."

It was her mother's turn to be exasperated.» A
Russian, worse than a grapefruit skin. Why did you join
the police? I still don't understand."

"To help the people."

"The people here hate you. You don't see anyone
from
Havana
who joins the police. Only outsiders. We were happy in Hershey."

"It's a sugar-mill town."

"In
Cuba
, what a surprise!"

"You can't move to
Havana
without a permit. I'm an
expert in police work. They want me here and I want to
be here and so do the girls."

This was one issue where Ofelia could always count
on her daughters' support.

"We want to be here."