Havana Best Friends (10 page)

“We are notifying the General Directorate of Prisons, they will inform your father.”

Elena nodded as she dabbed at her lips with a handkerchief.

“If he wants to attend the wake, they’ll probably give him a pass. A guard might accompany him.”

“A guard?”

“It’s standard procedure.”

“I see.”

“The body will be sent to the funeral home on 70th at 29B before noon. They’ll make all the funeral arrangements. Did you call your mother?”

Elena sobbed, then stifled her tears. “Yes, I did. Early this morning. She’s coming as soon as she can.”

Trujillo paused to ponder whether he should or shouldn’t. He decided he should.

“Elena, there’s something I didn’t tell you last night,” he said. “I didn’t want to embarrass you further in the presence of your
neighbours, but you should know that four doses of cocaine were found on your brother.”

“Cocaine?” She couldn’t take it in. In her mind’s eye she was seeing her brother’s sewn-up body, the skewed head, the chalk-white face. Again, she felt queasy.

“Yes, cocaine. Plus the videos. We are checking them now. It seems they are pornographic. So, it’s possible that Pablo was somehow involved with people who engage in unlawful activities. Now, I know you told me that you two didn’t get along, lived separate lives, but I must ask you to make a special effort, try to recall things which might be significant, who his friends were, who we could question to learn what …”

Trujillo stopped because Elena was shaking her head emphatically. She was brushing aside his request and the dreadful memory simultaneously. “I thought I had made myself clear, Captain,” she said. “I don’t know the first thing about my brother’s private life. We were complete strangers. When people came to visit him I was not introduced, they ignored me, and of course I locked myself in my bedroom. I didn’t listen in on their conversations. My brother and I never talked about our problems. We never went out together. Well …”

Trujillo let a moment of silence slip by. “Well, what?”

“Well, we hadn’t gone out together in twenty years, at least. Then, a few days ago …”

Elena told the story of the joggers. Trujillo sensed a glimmer of hope. She told him that she never learned the couple’s last name; she also gave him the
paladar’s
address. Elena didn’t remember if they’d mentioned the hotel where they were staying. The captain took notes.

“Like I said, it was the only time my brother and I went out together in … I don’t know, maybe twenty, twenty-one years, since we were kids. And we met these people by accident. They had nothing to do with Pablo or me.”

“Okay, Elena. But I need to ask your parents a couple of questions.”

“Oh, no, please. They don’t know anything. I mean, how could they?”

“I have to ask anyway, Elena. Your brother may have written to your mother, or visited your father, and you wouldn’t know it. Right?”

Elena nodded.

“He may have asked for their advice on something related to what caused his death.”

“You don’t know … you didn’t know my brother.”

It was Trujillo’s turn to nod. He ripped off a corner of a page from his daybook and jotted down his phone number. “You remember anything, learn anything, need anything, give me a call. If I’m not there, leave a message and I’ll call you back. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, slipping the piece of paper into her purse.

“You don’t have a phone?”

Elena shook her head. She parted her lips, as if about to add something, then closed them again. They’d had a phone for as long as she could remember; but in 1990, Pablo hadn’t paid the bill during the four months she spent training special-education teachers in the province of Holguín. When she returned to Havana she found that the phone company had removed their ancient Kellogg. Her protests were ignored; the phone was not reinstalled. She stood up.

“Are you leaving now?” Trujillo asked.

“I am, yes.”

“I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”

Twenty-five minutes later the captain, on his way back to the DTI, ran through what he had to do: check on the videos, give Major Pena the funeral home’s address, find out about the joggers. He hadn’t asked Elena a question he knew he should have asked.
Where were you the night before last between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.?
Instinct told him it wasn’t necessary.

Pena was waiting for him. There had been a violent robbery at a dollars-only store and it had been assigned to Trujillo. Money for black-market gas, Trujillo assumed, then asked Pena to call Prisons and the Ministry of Tourism as he scribbled down the details. At close to ten he left for Luyanó accompanied by two rookie lieutenants from the LCC, a police dog, and its handler.

When Trujillo got back to the DTI at ten past three, Pena said he had already examined thirty-two of the forty-three videos. They were all porn, master copies that must have undergone the whole post-production process in Cuba. The bedrooms were nicely furnished and decorated, the photography and lighting very professional, the women young and attractive, the men with oversized dicks. All kinds of sex had been filmed, except child porn. The Ministry of Tourism had not yet called, so Trujillo went home, had a late lunch, then took a long nap.

His wife was still not back when he woke at half past six. He showered, donned his uniform, and headed back to his unit. Before going home himself, Pena had left the Ministry of Tourism’s fax on Trujillo’s desk. Only one couple with the names Sean and
Marina had stayed at a Cuban hotel in the last two weeks. They were Sean Abercorn and his wife, Marina Leucci, Canadians who had spent six nights at the Hotel Nacional. Passport numbers and the room number were included, as was a copy of their bill. They had checked out early in the morning on May 27, three days before Pablo Miranda was murdered.

Trujillo spent the next half-hour on the phone, talking to Immigration officials at Havana’s International Airport. Yes, those two people had boarded a flight bound for Toronto on the same day they left the Nacional. Trujillo sighed. A dead end.

He had supper at the unit, then asked for a Ural motorbike, got a Combi station wagon, and headed straight for Marianao. The funeral home had originally been a two-storey private residence. At some point after its owners left Cuba, it had been transformed into a mortuary. The place had been renovated and painted in a suitably depressing dark chocolate, but most of its rooms were too small for its present function and in the summer, lacking air conditioning, it was stifling.

Elena and Gladys, the only mourners at Pablo’s wake, sat on rocking chairs in stunned silence in a second-floor room. They would be there all night, as is the Cuban tradition. Pablo would be buried the next day. In the time they had spent together, Elena had told her mother what she had learned, omitting nothing significant.

The captain shook hands with Elena before she introduced him to her mother. The resemblance was obvious. It was a delight, Trujillo reflected, to find a sixty-two-year-old woman whose beauty lingered on, undefeated by the passage of time. Her eyes were puffy after so much crying, she didn’t dye her grey hair and wore a simple, old-fashioned, and well-worn dress, yet it was
obvious that Gladys Garcés had once been a strikingly beautiful woman. After a decent interval and two cigarettes, Trujillo asked her two questions. No, she hadn’t heard from her son in the last two years. No, she had no idea why anyone would harm a hair on his head.

Later he asked if they had had anything to eat. They had. Would they like some espresso? Yes, they would. In the cafeteria he sipped one himself and brought them two in glasses. For the following hour, and a half the cop and the two women sat in silence, occasionally lifting their eyes to people who crossed the hall in endless comings and goings, as they kept vigil for three other deceased. Every fifteen or twenty minutes Gladys sighed deeply, stood up, approached the casket, contemplated the body of her son, wept, blew her nose, then returned to her seat.

It was close to eleven when Manuel Miranda arrived. He was short, but unlike his son, his baldness was limited to a widow’s peak and a shiny spot on the back of his head. He was of slight build and wore Cuban blue jeans, a light-blue long-sleeved shirt, and lace-up boots. He had been spared the humiliation of prison guards, and Trujillo concluded that the man was on the pass system. After serving twenty years, he had to be. Some prisoners were allowed monthly visits to their families after four or five years.

Miranda approached the coffin and stared at Pablo for almost a minute. His face revealed no emotion; his gaze was unflinching. Then he turned and fastened his eyes on Elena. She rose to her feet. Gladys watched in fascination as father and daughter embraced and Elena started to sob inconsolably. She was at least three inches taller than her father, four in her pumps, and he had to lift his cheek to hers. A few moments later she returned to the rocking chair, sniffling. Miranda bent forward and kissed his
ex-wife’s cheek. Fresh tears streamed down her face and she blew her nose once again. For a moment, it seemed as if they were a family again. To allow the mourners some privacy, Trujillo moved to a rocking chair a few yards away.

Miranda nodded at Trujillo before hitching up his pants and sitting by his daughter. The captain wondered why a sizable percentage of Cuban men over the age of fifty always hitch up their pants before sitting down. They have bigger balls or what? Well, in this particular case, certain that Major Pena wouldn’t overstate the bravery of another man, it wouldn’t surprise him if the guy had baseball-sized
cojones
.

It took Elena about ten minutes to tell her father what had happened. He whispered a few questions, listened to his daughter’s replies, nodding from time to time. Once they were through, the ex-general lifted his gaze to the police captain and, grabbing the arms of the rocking chair, pulled himself up. He tilted his head, making it clear he wanted to talk to him. Both ambled over to the opposite wall, then eased themselves onto chairs.

Up close, creases and brown spots showed Miranda’s age. The expression on his face, particularly in his eyes, was that of a man accustomed to giving orders. Trujillo wondered whether he was a prison trustee. Probably. There was also a measure of misgiving in the brown eyes, something the captain interpreted as:
Will this dumb-looking, lanky bastard be capable of finding out who killed my son?

“My name is Manuel Miranda.”

“I’m Félix Trujillo. I’m with the DTI.”

They shook hands.

“My daughter tells me you are conducting the investigation, and that you … suspect my son was murdered.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

The general was imperious now, as if ordering a subordinate to explain himself. Trujillo considered the question for a moment. “When was the last time you saw your son?”

Miranda didn’t seem to resent having his question ignored. “I can’t tell you exactly. Prison records will show when. Maybe two, three months ago.”

“He went to visit you?”

“Right.”

“Did he tell you anything I might find relevant to his case?”

The man considered the question for a moment, then shrugged. “He didn’t tell me anything out of the ordinary. But for the second time he presented me with a hundred dollars. The first time I asked him how he made this money. He said part of his pay at the corporation was in dollars.”

“When was the first time he gave you a hundred dollars?”

“Last Christmas.”

“So, Pablo didn’t tell you anything that might suggest he was involved in something illegal or dangerous?”

“He did not.”

“He didn’t mention that he was buying or selling something on the side, mixing with the wrong people, screwing some married broad?”

The instant he said it, Trujillo realized it was the wrong thing to say. Yet, it was a valid assumption. Oh yeah, this prisoner of all people would say it was a more than valid assumption.

Miranda narrowed his eyes. “He never said he was trafficking in anything, if that’s what you mean. He did mention he was screwing some of the best broads in Havana, but the way he
talked, it sounded as if he was referring to unattached women who just want to have a good time. You know: the nightclub, the food, the drinks, some money. He never mentioned a specific woman by name. It was just women, in general.”

“So, there was no reason for you to worry about your son, his lifestyle?”

Miranda glanced at the two women, then looked back at the police officer. “Maybe I should have questioned him about the money. But I knew he was working at the corporation, I know foreign partners give the staff bonuses in dollars to make them more motivated. So, I didn’t lose sleep over his giving me money.”

Trujillo offered his packet of Populares to Miranda, who shook his head. The captain lit one. “Now, comrade, I know who you are, the positions you held. A man like you makes many friends, but many enemies too. You think this could be a politically motivated crime? In revenge for some revolutionary duty you performed in the past?”

Miranda lifted his eyes to the ceiling, then shook his head and grinned. “That theory would provide hundreds of suspects. I’ve done many things: killed people in combat, commanded firing squads, sent men to prison, taken hundreds of prisoners, but all that happened so many years ago I doubt anyone would still harbour enough anger to … kill my son, who had nothing to do with any of that.”