Havana Best Friends (7 page)

“Captain Trujillo, at your service.”

“This is Captain Lorffe, from Fingerprints, LCC.”

“Yes?”

“You have a pen and paper?”

“Just a minute.”

Trujillo searched his shirt pockets. He found a bus ticket and a ballpoint.

“Okay.”

“Pablo Carlos Miranda Garcés,” Captain Lorffe dictated slowly. “A Cuban citizen. Born August 17, 1965, in Havana. The address on his identity record is 2406 Third A, between 24th and 26th Streets, Miramar, Playa.”

Trujillo copied everything down, then confirmed he’d got it right. “Okay. Thanks. Now, Captain, I mean no disrespect, but that ten-print was taken from a dead man. I’ve got to notify the relatives. Any chance of mistaken identity?”

Trujillo heard Lorffe sigh. “The card I’ve got has the prints of Pablo Carlos Miranda Garcés. There are more corresponding simple ridge characteristics than I’ve got hairs on my head. Now,
if someone at the Identity Card office in Playa fucked up and misfiled this guy’s original impressions; if you left the IML card on your desk and somebody changed it; if someone –”

“I hope nothing like that happened,” Trujillo cut in. “Thanks a lot, comrade.”

Back in the dormitory, the DTI captain grabbed his briefcase, pocketed the key ring found on the corpse, had supper in the mess hall, then asked for a Lada from the car pool, got a Ural Russian motorcycle with sidecar, and rode to Miramar. First he questioned the man in charge of surveillance in the CDR.
^*
José Kuan lived around the block from Pablo Miranda, on 26th between Third and Third A.

Kuan was the son of Chinese immigrants and appeared to be in his late thirties, so Trujillo estimated he was probably in his early fifties. He lived in a third-floor apartment with his wife and two boys, both under ten, and was assistant manager at a state-owned enterprise that marketed handicrafts. Kuan’s children were watching TV in the living room, so he walked Trujillo to the couple’s bedroom. His wife brought the captain a cup of espresso, which he accepted gratefully.

Yes, a man named Pablo Carlos Miranda Garcés lived around the block. Kuan said the guy was short, bald, worked at a joint venture two blocks away. Trujillo wrote down the company’s name and address. No, he hadn’t seen him in the last few days. No, he wasn’t married, far as he could tell, lived with his sister. No, she wasn’t married either. Nobody else lived there.

Trujillo asked to see the Register of Addresses. Kuan opened a closet and produced a file, with a page for each household in the
area covered by the CDR. The one for the dead man’s apartment also bore the name of Elena Miranda Garcés, and gave the woman’s date of birth. The name Gladys Garcés Benítez, born in 1938, had been crossed off in red ink in 1987 just after she moved to Zulueta, Villa Clara. Her surname was identical to the siblings’ second surname. If she was still alive, Trujillo calculated, their mother would be sixty-two now.

“What can you tell me about this Pablo Miranda?” Trujillo asked.

The man fidgeted with the pages of the register, his eyes evading the cop’s. In his eleven years in the force, Trujillo had seen this body language time and time again. Men and women who don’t want to rat on neighbours, stumped for a reply.
Then why do they accept the position?
he used to ask himself when he was a rookie. Now he knew the answer: it was for fear that declining would be taken as unwillingness to fulfill revolutionary duties, something with adverse implications.

“Well, actually I don’t know him very well, you know. He doesn’t mix much with the neighbourhood crowd. I guess he works a lot.”

“You know the kind of company he keeps? People he goes out with?”

“No. I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”

“Does he have a car?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Goes out a lot?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“What about his sister?”

Relief spread across the man’s face. “She’s a very nice person.”

“Different from her brother?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” He looked flustered. “But she is sweet. Always polite, gentle, and beautiful too.”

Trujillo nodded and repressed a smile. Was the man attracted to the sister? Well, he had a very pretty
mulata
all for himself. What more could a man hope for? Then he remembered that human aspirations are unlimited.

“Well, Comrade Kuan, there’s something I should tell you. Pablo Miranda was found dead this morning in Guanabo.”

The news left the man speechless.

“I have to notify his sister now and conduct a search of his apartment. As you know, witnesses from the CDR must be present. I need you to come with me, please. The president too, if possible.”

The president of the CDR, Zoila Pérez – a.k.a. “Day-and-Night,” after a TV series sponsored by the Ministry of Interior – was a fifty-eight-year-old bookstore saleswoman who lived on the second floor of the dead man’s building, front apartment. Zoila had earned her sobriquet and the position of CDR president after trying to persuade neighbours that an American invasion was imminent. She never missed her citizen’s watch and was always willing to stand in for sick (or allegedly sick, or sick and tired)
cederistas
.

To Zoila, every stranger was a suspect, especially at night, and she reported enemy activity at the drop of a hat. In her wild imagination, couples necking in the Parque de la Quinta were camouflaged soldiers from the expeditionary force’s vanguard, so no less than two or three nights a week she picked up her phone and called the nearest police precinct. Desk sergeants familiar with her paranoia thanked her politely, hung up, then chuckled before bellowing to other cops in the squad room, “Hey, guys, that was Day-and-Night. Chick giving her boyfriend a handjob in the
park is a marine getting ready to open mortar fire on Day-and-Night’s apartment building.”

Now, having learned what happened to Pablo, she was wringing her hands in desperation when Trujillo pressed the buzzer of Elena Miranda’s apartment. It was the kind of news Zoila hated. A full-scale imaginary invasion she could live with; the real murder of a neighbour was too unnerving.

Nearly a minute later, Elena opened the door, wearing only a robe and flipflops. Wow, Trujillo thought. She saw the pained expression on Zoila’s face, an embarrassed Kuan, a poker-faced police officer. Bad news, she thought, and asked, “What happened?”

“Elena, this is Captain Trujillo, from the Department of Technical Investigations of the police,” Zoila said.

“What’s the problem, Captain?”

“Can we come in, Comrade Elena?” Trujillo, trying to sound casual, flashed his ID.

“Sure, excuse me, come right in. Have a seat.”

Elena eased herself on to the edge of a club chair, Trujillo sat across from her, Kuan and Zoila on the chesterfield.

“I’m afraid I have bad news for you, Comrade Elena,” Trujillo began. “Your brother, Pablo, was found dead this morning.”

Elena felt a shiver down her spine, a numbness, a sense of loss.
Shock, for the third time in my life
. Locking eyes with the police officer, she nodded reflectively, pursed her lips, interlaced her fingers on her lap, swallowed hard. “An accident?” she asked.

“We’re not sure yet. He died from a broken neck and a head injury. He may have taken a fall, or he may have been murdered.”

“You’re sure it’s my brother?” She sounded unnerved.

“We’re positive, comrade.”

“Can I see him?”

“Actually, if you are his only relative in Havana, you must identify him. His body is at the IML. Tomorrow morning …”

“Where?”

“The morgue. You can go there tomorrow morning. At eight. It’s on Boyeros and the Luminous Fountain. Are you his only relative?”

“In Havana, yes. There’s our mother … and father.”

“Can you notify them?”

“Well, I can call my mother, but my father is in prison.”

To conceal his surprise, Trujillo unclasped his briefcase, opened his diary, drew out his ballpoint. He cast a baleful eye at the informers, but they were staring at Elena as if it were news to them too. Both had moved to the neighbourhood years after Elena’s father was sentenced and nobody had bothered to tell them the story.

“Tell me his name and where he’s serving time. Maybe I can get him a special pass to attend the wake and the funeral.”

“His name is Manuel Miranda and he is at Tinguaro.”

Trujillo took his time writing the three words. Tinguaro was a small, special prison fifteen kilometres to the south of Havana for those who had occupied high-ranking positions in the Cuban party, government, or armed forces before being convicted for some non-political crime. Men deserving special consideration because they had won battles, done heroic deeds, followed orders to the letter, been willing to die for the Revolution. Yes, the name Manuel Miranda definitely rang a tiny bell at the back of his mind.

“I’ll see what I can do, comrade. Now, I need to examine your brother’s personal belongings. His papers, clothing, anything that can shed light on what happened to him. Comrades Kuan
and Zoila are here as witnesses. We would appreciate it if you could take us to his bedroom and any other room where he kept his things.”

Elena was shaking her head emphatically, two tears sliding down her cheeks. “I don’t have the key to his bedroom. We … well, Captain, he put a lock on the door to his room. I don’t have the key to it.”

Trujillo produced Pablo’s key ring. “Do you recognize this?”

Elena nodded. The last shadow of doubt evaporated.

“It was found in a pocket.”

“Come with me, please.”

When Elena switched on the light, the visitors saw a filthy mess. Ten or fifteen cockroaches scurried in search of hiding places. Under a table supporting a colour TV and a VCR were a roll of tissue paper, old newspapers, and a broken CD player; a pile of soiled sheets and towels and underwear lay on top of the unmade bed; slippers under a writing table; three ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts, several empty and crushed packets of Populares on the floor; shoes and socks all over. It reeked of human sweat and grease, and dirt.

As Trujillo professionally searched the bedroom and the embarrassed witnesses stared, Elena, leaning in the doorway, occasionally fighting back tears and biting her lip, wondered why she and her brother had become enemies, when the split had begun, what part of the blame was hers. Memories kept coming, the way waves wash over a beach, only to ebb away and be absorbed by the sand.

Elena couldn’t recall the rejection she must have felt from the beginning. She was three when her mother had come home with a screaming, crying, red-faced newborn demanding her mother’s full attention. Had the baby sensed that she hated him? Was it possible for an infant to sense repulsion?

Her sources were family stories, funny anecdotes told by her mother. Like the morning she found Elena sucking from the bottle she was supposed to be using to feed her brother. It was how she learned why the boy was always hungry so soon after having been fed by his improperly supervised sister. Or the day she covered his face with her excrement. Or the evening she fed him a quarter-pound of raisins, which Pablo happily chomped away on, and nearly dehydrated him from acute diarrhea. As teenagers, when these and other stories were recounted, Elena and Pablo swapped cursory smiles, made jokes, but in her brother’s eyes there was a strange gleam, as if he were thinking,
See, see how it was you who started it all?

According to her mother, Elena was amazed by Pablo’s penis. What did he need it for? Once he learned to stand and walk, she had wanted to pee standing up too. Elena remembered vividly the day when, at age seven, she was found fondling her brother, aged four. Her mother spanked her like never before, so she figured she had done something terrible and for many years the memory hid at the back of her mind as some unspeakable atrocity she had to atone for. After the professor of child psychology at the University of Havana expounded on sexual games among children, Elena felt enormously relieved. The guilt disappeared and her sexuality improved noticeably.

As part of her atonement and to stave off their growing antagonism, but if so unconsciously, she tried hard to become her
brother’s favourite playmate. The Parque de la Quinta was their playground. She learned to throw a baseball and skate and ride a bike as he learned to swing a bat, ride a scooter, then a tricycle. They were envied by many other children in the neighbourhood, those who didn’t have fathers with the special connections required to get such toys for their children.

In practical terms, however, their childhood was largely fatherless. Manuel Miranda had been a major in the revolutionary army – the highest rank – since 1958, aged twenty-one. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant two months after joining the rebels in the Sierra Maestra, he was made captain four months later, then appointed major two weeks before Batista fled and the regular army collapsed. By the time the rebels reached Havana he was a living legend: a hundred stories portrayed him as a fearless, highly adventurous young man who laughed in the face of death.

Major Miranda had a few wild months in 1959 Havana. Only five-feet-four, his self-assurance, shoulder-length hair, and personal history made him the third most sought-after man in the Cuban capital (after Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos). The statuesque Gladys Garcés, one of the chorus girls at the world-renowned Tropicana, was two inches taller and two years older than the major, and danced the way palm fronds sway in the afternoon breeze – with an almost magic sensuousness. They met, made love, and the country boy lost his heart for the first time. He didn’t want to wake up from the dream and persuaded the young woman to quit the cabaret and marry him in June. After four years of nightclub life and several dozen men, Gladys was too well versed in the vagaries of passion to fall madly in love with anyone, but she felt in her bones that marrying a swashbuckling hero considerably reduced the uncertainty of a future in which
millionaires, business executives, and their bejewelled mistresses were threatened species.