Havana Blue (21 page)

The lift stopped on his floor, and the Count looked at the clock on the wall: he was ten minutes late and wasn't inclined or in the mood to invent some excuse. He opened the door to his cubicle and was blessed by Patricia Wong's smile.

“Good morning, friends,” he greeted them. Patricia stood up to give him the usual kiss, and Manolo looked at him distantly and didn't open his mouth. “What a nice smell, China,” he complimented his colleague and stopped for a moment to contemplate, as he always did, that impressive woman who was half-black and half-Chinese. Almost six feet tall and one hundred and eighty pounds distributed carefully with the best
of intentions: her breasts small and no doubt very firm, hips like the Pacific Ocean, and buttocks that inevitably provoked a desire to touch or mount them and jump up and down, as if trampolining, to check out whether such a prodigious rump was for real.

“How are you, Mayo?” she asked, and the Count smiled for the first time that day on hearing that “Mayo” which was for Patricia Wong's exclusive use. Besides, she helped his headaches with her little jars of Chinese pomade and fed his most hidden, never acknowledged superstitions: she was like a good luck charm. On three occasions Lieutenant Patricia Wong, the detective in the Fraud Squad, had presented him on a plate the solution to three cases that seemed about to evaporate in the innocence of the world.

“Still waiting for your father to invite me to eat another plate of bittersweet duck.”

“If you'd seen what he cooked yesterday,” she began as she struggled to fit her hips between the sides of the armchair. Then she crossed her long-distance runner's legs, and the Count saw Manolo's eyes were about to flee behind his nostrils. “He prepared quails stuffed with vegetables and cooked them in basil juice . . .”

“Hey, wait a minute, give us the full story! What did he stuff them with?”

“First, he crushed the basil leaves in a little coconut oil and boiled them. Then added the quail which was already bread-crumbed, basted in pork-fat and stuffed with almonds, sesame and five kinds of uncooked herbs: Chinese bean, spring onion, cabbage, parsley and a little something else, and finished it off with a sprinkling of cinnamon and nutmeg.”

“And was it ready to eat?” asked the Count, his morning enthusiasm peaking.

“But it must have tasted foul, I bet?” interjected
Manolo, and the Count gave him a withering look. He wanted to say something cutting but first tried to imagine the impossible mixture of those strong, primary flavours that could only be blended by a man with old Juan Wong's culture, and decided Manolo might be right, but he didn't give up.

“Ignore the boy, China, his lack of culture will be the death of him. But you stopped inviting me long ago.”

“And you never ring me, Mayo. You even sent Manolo to bring me in on this job.”

“Forget it, forget it, it won't happen again.” He stared at the sergeant, who'd just lit a cigarette at that hour of the morning. “And what's up with this guy?”

Manolo clicked his tongue, meaning, “Leave me alone”, but he needed to talk.

“Oh, only a terrible row with Vilma last night. Do you know what she said? She reckons I invented an excuse about work in order to go out and lay someone else.” And he looked at Patricia. “And it's all his fault.”

“Manolo, give me a break, please?” the Count pleaded, looking at the dossier open on the table. “You're in a really bad state if you're telling people I force you to do things . . . Did you explain to Patricia what we're after?”

Manolo nodded reluctantly.

“Yes, he told me, Mayo,” Patricia intervened. “You know, I don't hold much hope we'll dig anything important out of the paperwork. If Rafael Morín is in some scam and as efficient as they say, he'll have hidden his clothes before taking a dip. We can but try, I suppose.”

“You've got a team together?”

“Yes, two specialists. And you two as well?”

The Count looked at Patricia and then at Manolo.
He realized his headache had disappeared but tapped his forehead and said:

“Look, China, just take Manolo along. I've got a number of things to see to here . . . I've got to read the reports which have come in . . .”

“There are none,” the sergeant informed him.

“You looked at everything?”

“Nothing from the coastguards or the provinces, the Zoilita business will gradually sort itself, and we've arranged to see Maciques at the enterprise.”

“All right, that's fine,” the Count tried to wriggle out. He'd not seen eye to eye with statistics for some time and took pains to avoid that kind of routine research. “I won't be much use to you there, will I? And I want to see the Boss. I'll come and see you around ten o'clock, all right?”

“All right, all right,” parroted Manolo, shrugging his shoulders. Patricia smiled, and her slanted eyes vanished into her face. Could she see anything when she laughed?

“See you soon,” said Patricia, grabbing Manolo by the arm and dragging him out of the cubicle.

“Hey, China, wait a minute,” the Count asked, and he whispered in her ear. “What did the quail taste like yesterday?”

“What the kid said,” she whispered back. “Foul. But Dad scoffed the lot.”

“Just as well.” And he smiled at Manolo as he waved goodbye.

 

 

“Business deals involving lots of money are like jealous women: you can give them no reason to complain,” said René Maciques, and the Count looked at Manolo; the lesson was for free and he'd got it quite wrong.
René Maciques was barely forty and not the fifty he'd imagined; and was no librarian but a television presenter persuasively using his voice and hands and constantly trying to tidy his bushy eyebrows with index finger and thumb. He was wearing a guayabera that seemed enamelled, it was so white, with a white embroidered pattern down the sides that was even brighter, and he flashed a glib gleaming smile. Three gold pens poked out from one pocket, and the Count thought only an asshole would try to show off his status with a display of pens. “If one is involved in that kind of business, one has to look trustworthy, appear relaxed as if the deal were already signed and exude quiet conviction. As I said, like a jealous woman: because at the same time, one must hint, quite matter-of-factly, that signing is no life or death matter, that one is aware of more attractive options, although one knows this couldn't be bettered. Big business is a jungle where every animal is dangerous and one needs more than a rifle over one's shoulder.” And the Count thought, the king of the metaphor, this one! “And I know no comrade more adept than Rafael at doing deals. I had the opportunity to work a lot with him here in Cuba and in negotiations abroad, on really challenging contracts, and he behaved like an artist, sold at the top and always bought at below market price; and buyers and sellers were very satisfied, although they knew in the end that Rafael had hoodwinked them. And best of all: he never lost a customer.”

“And why did he spend
his
time sealing these deals if he had experts in the different areas?” asked Mario Conde at the cue for applause for the speech from an unexpectedly silver-tongued Maciques.

“Because he felt fulfilled doing it and knew he was the best. Each commercial area within the enterprise
has its own expertise, whether according to line or geographical area, do you see? However, if the deal were very important or threatened to get stymied in some way, Rafael would advise the experts, draw on the business contacts he'd established over the years and enter the ring.”

So he was a torero as well? the Count wanted to ask because he guessed Maciques might be a hard nut to crack as his obsolete if irrefutable verbiage spewed out. He looked down at his notebook, where he'd written BIG MONEY BUSINESS, and allowed himself a moment for thought: was Rafael Morín everything he was cracked up to be? Although from a considerable distance, he'd seen the social and professional rise of a man now declared missing. He leaped like a clever, well trained acrobat, one who jumps fearlessly into the void because they've put in place a safety net that assures them, up you go, just do it and you'll triumph, I'm here to protect you. Marriage into a wealthy family was half the battle: Tamara, her father, and her father's friends, must have smoothed the path for him, but for justice's sake he must accept the rest was down to him, no doubt about that. When Rafael Morín spoke from a microphone at high school twenty years earlier, his mind was already dead set on the idea of making it, of climbing all the way to the top, and was getting in training. At the time people's ambitions were usually abstract and vague, but Rafael's were already well formed, and that's why he got on the fast track and set out to secure every certificate, every recognition, every award and to be a perfect paragon, self-sacrificing and worthy, cultivating
en route
friendships that would at some stage be useful, yet he was never out of breath or without a smile. And he showed himself to be extremely able, always ready to make the slightest
sacrifice to skip over several steps on the ladder to heaven, conveying good vibrations, trust, forging an image of himself as ever prepared and possessed with the necessary flexibility that made him look useful, malleable and reliable: a man who took on and completed every task he was charged with and quickly bounced back for the next. The Count was familiar with these stories of lives that blow with the wind and imagined the infallible cocky smile he'd put on when speaking to deputy minister Fernández-Lorea about how well things would turn out, Comrade Minister, according to the latest estimates received. Rafael Morín would never have argued with a superior, would only have had exchanges of opinion; he'd never have refused to carry out a ridiculous order, would only have offered constructive criticism and always through the right channels; he'd never have taken a jump without testing the safety net that would welcome him lovingly and maternally, if he had an unexpected fall. So where had he gone wrong?

“So where did he get the money to give the presents he gave?” asked the Count when he finally managed to read the only thing he'd jotted down. And was surprised how quickly René Maciques responded.

“I imagine he saved it from his daily allowances.”

“And would that be enough for the hi-fi system he had at home, to buy his mother Chanel N° 5, for the big and small gifts he gave his subordinates and even to say his name was René Maciques and rent a room at the Riviera and take a twenty-three-year-old sparkler to dine at L'Aiglon? Are you sure, Maciques? Did you know he used your name with the women he picked up or did he never tell you, even in confidence as it were?”

René Maciques got up and walked towards the air conditioning unit built into the wall. Fiddled with the
controls, straightened the curtain that had got caught up in one corner of his office. Perhaps he felt cold. That same night, while pondering the latest twist in the fate of Rafael Morín, Lieutenant Mario Conde recalled this scene as if he'd lived it ten or fifteen years earlier, or as if he'd never wanted to experience it, because Maciques returned to his chair, glanced at the policemen and no longer looked like a television presenter but the timid librarian the Count had imagined when he said:

“I just refuse to believe that, comrades.”

“That's your problem, Maciques. I've no reason to lie to you. Now tell us about those presents.”

“I told you: they must have come from what he saved out of his daily expense allowance.”

“And could that run to so much?”

“I've no idea, comrades, you'd have to ask Rafael Morín.”

“Hey, Maciques,” said the Count as he stood up, “would we also have to ask Rafael Morín why you came here at lunchtime on the thirty-first?”

But René Maciques smiled. He was back on camera, stroking his eyebrows, when he said:

“What a coincidence! I came to do just that,” and pointed at the air conditioning unit. “I remembered I'd left it switched on and came to turn it off.”

Now the Count smiled and put his notebook back in his pocket. He was praying Patricia would find something that would allow him to pulverize René Maciques.

 

 

The only time Mario Conde shot at a man, he'd learned how easy it was to kill: you aim at the chest and stop thinking as you pull the trigger; the act of firing
almost spares you the moment the bullet hits the man and knocks him to the ground like a hail of stones where writhing, wracked in pain, he does or doesn't die.

The Count was on leave that day, and for months he'd tried, as with everything else in his life, to find the thread to the tangled events that had put him, pistol in hand, in front of a man and forced him to shoot. It was two years after they moved him from the General Information Department to Investigations, and he'd met Haydée while investigating a violent robbery that had taken place in the office where she worked. He chatted to her a couple of times and realized the future of his marriage with Martiza was a thing of the past. Haydeé became the obsession of his life, and the Count thought he'd go mad. The passionate onslaught of their love, expressed daily in rooming houses, borrowed flats and other happy hunting grounds, was violently animal and offered him innumerable unexplored pleasures. The Count fell outrageously in love and performed the most extravagantly satisfying sexual deviations he'd ever experienced. They made love time and again, never endingly. When the Count was exhausted and blissful, Haydée knew how to extract that little bit more: he only had to hear her releasing a powerful yellow jet of pee or feel the magnetic tip of her tongue licking its way up his thighs and curling round his member to want to start all over again. Like no other woman, Haydée made him feel a male object of desire, and in each encounter they played love-games like inventive explorers or pent-up celibates.