Havana Bay (8 page)

Arkady discovered he fostered a killer's calculation
 
hat even if his story was implausible, the truth was
no more plausible. He was also a little bemused by his own reaction to the attack. He had defended himself instinctively, the way a man about to dive resists being
pushed.

He had no idea why he had been attacked except that
it had to do with his friend Pribluda. Not that Pribluda
was a friend in the ordinary sense. They shared no
tastes, interests, politics. In fact, truth be told, Pribluda
was in many ways a terrible man.

Arkady could imagine him now bringing out the
vodka and saying, "Renko, old pal, you're fucked. You
are in a crazy country, in a foreign land where you
know nothing, including the language." Pribluda would
hunch forward to touch glasses and grin that ghastly
smile of his. He had the habit of loosening a button, a
collar, a cuff with each glassful, as if drinking was
serious work.» All you can be sure of is that you know
nothing. No one will help you because of your brown
eyes. Everyone who steps forward as a friend will be an
enemy. Everyone who offers to help is hiding a knife
behind his back. Cheers!" The colonel would make a grand gesture of throwing the vodka's cap into the sea.
That was his idea of panache.» Do you appreciate
logic?"

"I love logic," Arkady might say.

"This is logic: Rufo had no reason to kill you. Rufo
tried to kill you. Ergo, someone sent Rufo. Ergo, that someone will send someone else."

"A nice thought. Was that a present to take home?"

Arkady would nod in the direction of the man-sized
doll brooding in the corner. The way its shadow shifted when the breeze pushed the lamp was a bit unnerving.»
Charming." He fished from his coat a piece of note-paper on which he had written Rufo's address and the
house key he had lifted off the body before Luna
arrived.

"What I think you should do," Pribluda would
steamroll on, "is lock yourself with a gun and oranges,
bread and water in a room at the embassy, maybe a
bucket for personal needs, and don't open the door
until you go to the airport."

In his mind, Arkady asked, "Spending a week in
Havana
hiding in a room, wouldn't that be a little
perverse?"

"No. Killing Rufo when you were going to kill
yourself,
that's
perverse."

Arkady went down the hall to the office and returned
with a map of the city that he spread under a lamp.

"You're leaving?" Pribluda was always horrified when
Arkady quit before the bottom of the bottle.

Arkady searched for a street called Esperanza and
wrote down Rufo's address on a piece of paper. He
thought, I'm not just going to sit and wait. I also have your car key. If you want to help, tell me where the car
is. Or give me your code.

Pribluda's ghost, insulted, disappeared. Arkady, on
the other hand, was wide awake.

Stepping onto the street in a foreign city in the middle
of the night was diving into a dark pool without
knowing how deep the water was. An arcade of columns
ran the length of the block, and he didn't emerge
into faint, gassy light until he reached the lamp at the
corner. He continued along the boulevard because its
long curve against the sea simplified the problem of
orientation.

Although he listened for the stir of a car or a footfall,
all he heard was his own echo and the surge of the
ocean on the other side of empty traffic lanes. On the way he passed a mural of Castro painted up the side of
a three-story building. The figure appeared to be a giant walking through his city, his head obscured in the dark
above streetlamp level, wearing his characteristic mili
tary fatigues, legs in mid-stride, right hand tossing a
salute toward an unseen someone vowing
"A Sus Ordenes, Comandante!"
Well, Arkady thought, the Coman-
dante and he made a strange pair of insomniacs, a
furtive Russian and a sleepless giant on patrol.

Six blocks on was a dark hotel front and a taxi, the
driver's head cradled on the steering wheel. Arkady
shook the man and, when one eye squinted open, held
up Rufo's address and a five-dollar bill.

Arkady sat up front as the taxi flew like a bat through
the blackout, the driver yawning the entire way as if
nothing short of a collision was worth waking up for,
slowing only when mounds of urban rubble loomed in
the headlights. Rufo's address was stenciled on the front
of a low, windowless house on a narrow street. The cab fumbled away while, with Rufo's lighter, Arkady found
the right key; when he had taken the house key off the dead man before calling the PNR Arkady noticed how
like his own house key Rufo's was, a Russian design
with a star stamped on the grip, no doubt a souvenir of
socialist commerce. It did occur to him that if Detective
Osorio had tried to enter with the keys he had left on
Rufo she was frustrated and annoyed.

The door opened to a room narrow enough to make
claustrophobia creep up his back. He walked the lighter
flame between an unmade daybed and a low table with
a ceramic ashtray-and-nude and a stack of TV and
stereo, tape deck and VCR. A minibar looked ripped
out of a hotel suite. A pedestal sink was lined with
minoxidil, vitamins and aspirin. An armoire held,
besides clothes, boxes of Nike and New Balance running
shoes, cigar boxes, a library of videotapes and copies of
Windows '95, a regular emporium. He opened a door to glimpse a filthy toilet, ducked back into the room
and moved more slowly. Tacked to the walls were newspaper articles headlined
gran exito de equipo
cubano
and, over a photo of a young world-beating
Rufo raising his boxing gloves,
pinero triunfa en
ussr!
Framed pictures showed groups of men in team
jackets in
Red Square
, at Big Ben, the
Eiffel
Tower
.
Arkady turned the photos and copied names he found on the back. Names and numbers were also scribbled
on the wall by the bed.

Daysi 32-2007

Susy 30-4031

Vi. Aflt. 2300

Kid Choc. 5/1

Vi. HYC 2200
Angola

The only sense Arkady could make of the list was
that he had been the visitor arriving on Aeroflot at 2300
hours, eleven at night, and that there seemed to be
another visitor from Angola due at almost the same late
hour. Anyway, the list was a lot of phone numbers for
a room with no phone or phone jack. Arkady remem
bered that Rufo had had a cell phone when they met at
the airport, although when Arkady had searched Rufo's
body later, the phone was gone.

On a hook hung an elegant, ivory-colored straw hat
with "Made in
Panama
" and the initials RPP stamped on the sweatband. He searched the bureau, felt under
the pillow and mattress, flipped through videos that all
seemed to be boxing films or porn for more personal
labels. The minibar held airline nuts and healthful
bottles of Evian. There was no sign of any visit by Luna
or Osorio, no fingerprint dust of burned palm fronds,

Most important, he found no reason for Rufo to try
to kill him. Rufo had put some planning into the attack.
The running suit made sense for the same reason painters wore coveralls, and he felt that the same
thought had registered with Osorio. But why bother killing someone who would be gone from the scene in
a matter of hours? Was Rufo after something or was it
simply open season on Russians in
Havana
?

As he stepped outside, the light of dawn showed next to the apartment a scarred wall in bullfight red that said
gimnasio atares.
At the curb in a PNR sedan was
Detective Osorio. She fixed her eyes on Arkady long
enough to make him squirm before she put out her
hand.» The key."

"Sorry." Arkady fished in his pocket and gave her the key to his apartment in
Moscow
. He could always break
into his own home if need be.

"Get in the car," Osorio said.» I would like to lock
you into a cell but Dr. Bias wants to talk to you."

With his trimmed beard and whiff of carbolic soap, Dr. Bias was the Pluto of a personal, genial underworld,
welcoming Arkady back to the Institute de Medicina
Legal and praising Osorio.

"Our Ofelia is very intelligent. If Hamlet had an Ofelia
half as smart he would have solved the murder of his father the king in short order. Of course, they wouldn't
have had much of a play." Two young women in snug
IML T-shirts walked by in the corridor; the doctor's eyes
approved.» We were trained by the FBI in
Washington
and
Quantico
until the Revolution, then by the Russians
and Germans. But I like to think we have our own style. Your problem, Renko, is that you have no confidence in
us. I noticed that the first time you were here."

"Is that it?" Arkady asked.

He thought his problem was that Rufo had tried to
kill him, but the director seemed to have a bigger
picture. They walked by a glass case with two head shots
of men with slack mouths and closed eyes.

"Missing persons and unidentified dead. For the
public to see." Bias picked up his thread.» When you
think of
Cuba
you think of a
Caribbean
island, a place
like
Haiti
, a country like
Nicaragua
. When we say, for
example, we have identified a body as a Russian, you
wonder how good is that identification, how qualified
are these people who are telling me to accept this body and take it home? When you see a body retrieved from
the water the way dogs play with bones, you question
how careful the police work is. That is why you stole Rufo's key and went to his room on your own. I go to international conferences all the time and I meet people
who don't know
Cuba
and have the same misgivings.
So, let me tell you something about myself. I have a
medical degree from the
University
of
Havana
with a
specialty in pathology. I have studied at the Superior
School of Investigation in
Volgograd
, in
Leipzig
and
Berlin
. Last year I lectured at Interpol conferences in
Toronto
and
Mexico City
. So, you have not been
dropped off the end of the earth. Some enemies of
Cuba
want to isolate us, but we are not isolated. The inter
national aspect of crime does not allow us to be isolated.
I will not allow it."

They passed a handcuffed man in a chair. He lifted a
face of old scars and fresh bruises.

"Waiting for his psychological evaluation," Bias explained.» We have other experts in forensic biology,
dentistry, toxicology, immunology. A Russian might
find this hard to believe. You used to be the teacher and
we used to be the students. Now we are the teachers in
Africa
,
Central America
,
Asia
. Our Ofelia"—Bias nod
ded to Osorio, who had been gliding along modestly—
"has taught in
Vietnam
. There is no ignorance here. I
will not allow it. As a result, I am pleased to say that
Havana
has the lowest rate of unsolved homicides of
any capital city in the world. So when I say who a body
is, that's who he is. But Detective Osorio tells me that
you are again hesitant about the identification of
Colonel Pribluda."