Havana Best Friends (31 page)

Miranda wondered whether it could be panic. He should explore that. He had never been afraid to die, not even after having acquired a taste for all the good things in life he would miss if he died: adventures in faraway places, respect, authority, power, recognition, and sex, the ultimate thrill. He was certain that a quick way out, like the death sentence, would be better than suffering from terminal cancer and languishing in a bed for months. He was not in fear of divine intervention either. He didn’t believe in God, the Devil, or any of that crap. No, it wasn’t panic.

What then? Age? His four old gunshot wounds? Possibly. There’s a first for everything, including knees. Over the years he had gradually witnessed how other, more virile parts of his body declined.

Could it be love? Love for the best that had come out of him, the finest woman he had known in his life, better than his mother, her mother, his aunts, cousins, nieces, exceedingly superior to the kindest and most beautiful among the rather long list of women he had been involved with?

He was beginning to understand why his knees had given way. From love for his daughter and the dread that he would never see her again. That could be it. And he remembered all the time lost, the years of wars, states of alert, mobilizations, training camps, prison. The thousands of hours of staff meetings, Party cell meetings, meetings at the Ministry of the Armed Forces, plenary meetings of the Central Committee. The time spent with women
on beaches, yachts, in mountain resorts and bedrooms. Miranda shook his head. No,
that
was okay. And to top it all, his prison sentence. The antithesis of a good father, that’s what he was. Shit. He was feeling remorse! Yes, people do change with age.

He should hope never to see her again. It would mean she had got away, sold the diamonds, become a rich woman, left behind her sad, traumatic past. A new worry crept in. She was not prepared for the world she would face abroad. And she would show it. People would take advantage of her. Maybe Marina would teach her the ropes, help her out. Well, it was out of his hands now. A bus came into view a few blocks away. He stood. Knees firm.
Good luck, Elena
, was the mental message he sent to his daughter while dusting off the seat of his pants.

I
t was a quarter to one when Trujillo left Pena’s office after reporting that he had failed to make even a tenuous connection between the murdered cop and Pablo Miranda. They were entirely different in features, height, weight, and backgrounds. Evelio Díaz wasn’t carrying dollars or cocaine fixes; his watch hadn’t been stolen. There were no bite marks on his body. According to other young officers from his unit, the rookie was calm and relaxed, happily married, monogamous, studious. The only similarity was the way both had died.

On his way to the mess hall, Trujillo yanked out his messages from his pigeonhole. He was standing in line, three guys away from where the clean aluminium trays were stacked, when he read, “Zoila Pérez, CDR 45, Zone 6, Playa, phone 24–5576, called at 20:55. Miranda murder case.” The piece of paper made him stop dead in his tracks. Staring at the floor he tried to remember the face of the woman, but to no avail. It was too strange a
coincidence, he reflected. There had to be some connection. Trujillo turned on his heels, left the mess hall, and strode to his desk in the huge squad room. He flipped the pages of his daybook back to June. There it was: Zoila Pérez, President, CDR 45, Phone 24–5576. He approached the desk where two direct lines were supposed to serve thirty detectives. It was a Sunday, lunch hour, and both were free. He dialled the number.

“Hello?” a man’s voice answered.

“May I speak to Comrade Zoila Pérez, please?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Captain Félix Trujillo.”

“Just a minute.”

Trujillo ran the tip of his tongue over his lips and rested his left buttock on a corner of the desk. His daybook was open, a ballpoint resting on the day’s page. When Zoila said hello the first time he was sneezing, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

“Hello?” the woman said again.

“Oh, excuse me, comrade. I have a cold. Just a moment.”

She heard him blow his nose into a handkerchief.

“I’m returning your call.”

“You should take care.”

“Yeah, well, you know how it is. A note here says you called concerning the Pablo Miranda case.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Could you fill me in on what’s new?”

Zoila Pérez repeated what she had reported to the duty officer the night before: foreigners visiting Elena, a rental parked on the street, the pounding on the wall. The only fresh information she supplied was the rental’s plate number, which the captain jotted down before asking pretty much the same questions the
duty officer had asked: had Zoila seen or heard something that made her suspect Elena was in danger? Did it appear she’d been coerced into letting these foreigners into her apartment? What had the pounding on the wall sounded like?

“Have you seen Elena today?” Trujillo asked once Zoila had filled him in.

“Well, yes. This morning, around nine, I saw her coming into the building arm in arm with a much older man she was animatedly chatting with.”

“The tourist?”

“No. The tourist is younger, and taller.”

“Had you seen this man before?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe, but I don’t think so. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

“Elena seemed okay? Her normal self?”

“Oh, yes.”

“The rental still there?”

“No.”

“Okay, comrade, thanks. Are you going to spend the rest of the day at home?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“I might drop by later on.”

“Feel free to come.”

The captain took the stairs to the second floor, but his superior officer was nowhere to be seen. He found the major eating lunch in the mess hall. Trujillo sat on the same granite bench and suppressed a sneeze before telling Pena what he had just learned.

“Maybe this couple are the same people who took Pablo and Elena to the
paladar,”
Trujillo speculated at the end of his summing up.

Pena followed the logic of this. “Then again, they might not be. But suppose they are. So what? They left Cuba three days before Pablo was murdered.”

“I know. But it’s so … strange a coincidence. They leave and three days later Pablo is murdered; they reappear and one of our men is murdered in the same way. Don’t you think we should check them out?”

“It’s a long shot, but we might as well. Let’s start with the rental. I’ll call the company, find out to whom it was rented, then maybe ask radio cars to search for it. Will you go and see Elena Miranda?”

As he was about to answer, Trujillo had a sudden coughing fit. Officers sitting close by stared. Pena handed him his glass of water; the captain sipped.

“That’s a nasty cold you’ve got.”

Trujillo nodded.

“What are you taking for it?”

Trujillo shook his head.

“Nothing?”

The captain sipped some more water before answering. “I went to the pharmacy yesterday evening, on the way home. There’s nothing available, not even Aspirin. My mother brewed me some herbal tea.”

“Did you see the doctor?”

“Ours, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Go see him. He’s got some caplets that work wonders, donated by a Swedish solidarity group.”

“I will.”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“Go get a tray and join me.”

Halfway through his plate of rice, black beans, boiled potatoes, and green salad, Trujillo said he would visit Elena, explain that a policeman had been murdered just like her brother, then ask whether she had heard from the Canadians. Pena opposed this approach, saying it was too crude. The major was in favour of telling her about the new murder, then waiting for her reaction. If she mentioned the Canadians, fine; if she didn’t, it would be odd. Next Pena asked for and copied Zoila’s phone number and the rental’s plates on his packet of Populares. Following a lousy espresso, they left the mess hall, smoking.

The major accompanied Trujillo to the doctor’s office. He watched gravely as a very young doctor examined the captain’s throat, then shook his head sadly at the burning cigarette. Not before taking the patient’s pulse and blood pressure did the doctor prescribe the caplets, two days in bed, and as much water as he could drink. A male nurse gave Trujillo four oversized yellow caplets and instructed him to take one every twelve hours. Trujillo swallowed the first immediately. Fifteen minutes later, driving a Ural motorcycle with sidecar, he was on his way to Miramar.

There were no rooms available at the Sevilla, but the desk clerk, a courteous middle-aged woman, sympathized with the nervous-looking deaf mute and called a colleague at the Deauville. Two minutes later she hung up and with a smile assured Marina they could spend the night at a nearby hotel, on Galiano between Malecón and San Lázaro. As the taxi driver opened his trunk by
the Deauville’s main entrance, a bellhop materialized out of nowhere and, frowning at the antiquated suitcase, seized their baggage. With a practised eye Marina surveyed the lobby in three seconds: two-star, inexpensive, old, the kind of place tour operators book for low-cost, no-frills sightseers.

At the desk, Marina said they were the people sent from the Sevilla and gave her name. The clerk checked a clipboard, nodded, grinned, then asked for identification. Marina threw some fast sign language at Elena. The teacher could easily lip-read the word
passport
, but the hand movements looked pathetically spurious. The clerk stared for a moment. That good-looking woman was deaf? Elena opened her handbag and surrendered the document.

Marina filled the cards and gave Elena hers to sign. In the instant before placing the ballpoint on the thick paper, the teacher realized she could no longer sign her name. She panicked. What was her new name? She moved her eyes to the right line. Christine Abernathy. She signed a CA followed by an indecipherable scribble. Was the woman also a little stupid? the desk clerk wondered.

As soon as the bellhop pocketed the dollar and closed the door of room 614 behind him, Elena turned to Marina. “Dammit, I almost …”

She stopped in mid-sentence when Marina repeatedly pressed her forefinger over her lips.

“What?”

Marina edged closer and whispered in her ear. “This room may be bugged.”

Elena frowned, partly in incomprehension, partly in disagreement. “You think so?” she murmured as she gazed around the
room. Two single beds, a cheap chest of drawers, a closet, a bathroom, a sash window framed by thin curtains, an air conditioner, a TV set, two white plastic armchairs.

Marina turned on the air conditioner and the TV before spelling out Sean’s precautions when in Cuba. Then she suggested sticking to the same routine, just to play it safe. After all, Christine was a deaf-mute; it would seem odd to hear a conversation going on in their room. Elena agreed to communicate in a low voice as banality reached new peaks in a Spanish quiz show. They sat on the beds, facing each other. Elena crossed her ankles and interlaced her fingers. Marina tucked both feet up beneath her and supported herself on her right arm.

Initially, the simplicity of the plan remained unaltered. They would leave the hotel in a few minutes, a couple of friends taking a walk, buy a carry-on at one of the dollars-only stores on Galiano Street, then return to the Deauville, move Elena’s things from the old to the new suitcase, and leave for the airport. At this point they frowned simultaneously and stared at each other, albeit for different reasons.

“The hotel people will wonder,” Elena said, knitting her brow.

“Which airport?” Marina asked.

“What?”

“Which airport should we go to?”

“You’re losing me now.”

Marina inhaled deeply before beginning to whisper her explanation. “When I realized that Sean and the cane had disappeared, I assumed he had betrayed me. How could I know what had happened? So I went to the airport to see if I could catch him there, threaten him with exposure …” She tried to choke back tears and failed.

Elena felt sorry for her. They hadn’t been married, but it seemed as if something had been going on between them. “What I can’t understand,” she said as Marina paused to wipe away a tear, “is how this man could enter your room and abduct Sean without your waking up.”

“I can’t figure it out either,” Marina said, shaking her head. “I was exhausted after all the excitement, sleeping like a log, but there must’ve been some noise. The guy had to knock on the door, must’ve threatened Sean. How come I didn’t hear a thing?”

“Beats me.”

“Well, as I was watching out for Sean at the airport – really pissed off, you know, believing he had screwed me – I tried to picture what he’d do. And it suddenly came to me he wouldn’t go to
that
airport because he’d figure it was the first place I’d think of. You follow me?”

“I don’t think so.”

Marina shifted her weight to her left arm and slid her legs in the opposite direction. “Suppose you’re running away – well, we
are
running away – first thing you should do is play devil’s advocate. ‘Where would they look for me?’ Which is the same as, ‘What places should I avoid?’ Do you understand what I’m saying?”