Havana Blue (24 page)

“But didn't he say anything else?”

“What else do you expect him to say, Condesito?”

“I don't know. But you never told me. I'd have spoken to Andrés, the one who studied with us. He's a fantastic doctor.”

“Don't you worry, this doctor is good too.”

“What do you mean ‘don't worry', dear? You never do say anything. Tomorrow I'll talk to Andrés about the tests, and Skinny should ring . . .”

Josefina put the saucepan down and looked at her son's friend.

“Should ring no one. Not a word to him, please?”

Then the Count decided to pour out another dose
of coffee and light another cigarette, but not to hug Josefina and tell her he was really scared.

“Don't worry. I'll call. The stew smells good, doesn't it?” And he walked out of her kitchen.

 

 

Mario Conde's strolls down memory lane always ended in melancholy. When he crossed the watershed of his thirtieth year and his relationship with Haydée petered out in the last whimpers of unbridled sexual combat, he found he liked remembering in the hope that he would improve his life and treated his destiny like a guilty party he could bury under reproaches and recriminations or moans and groans. His own work suffered from such an attitude, and though he knew he wasn't a hard or particularly wise man, or even exemplary in his behaviour, although some of his colleagues considered him a good policeman, he thought he might have been more useful in another profession, but he then transmuted his gripes into punctilious efficiency that earned him a reputation he considered fraudulent and quite inexplicable. And now Tamara had come back to disturb the considerable calm he'd reached after his fallout with Haydée by dint of nights at baseball games, drinking, nostalgia-provoking music and overflowing plates, while he chatted to Skinny, all the time wanting it not to be true, for Skinny to be skinny again, for him never to die and not look like a giant greasy meatball, shirtless and trying to soak up the midday sun in his backyard. The Count saw the rolls of fat gather over his belly and the small red spots covering his back, neck and chest, like bites from voracious insects.

“What you thinking about, you wild man?” he asked as he ruffled his hair.

“Nothing, you savage. I was thinking about the whole Rafael business, and my mind suddenly went a complete blank,” his friend responded, looking at the clock. “What time they coming to pick you up?”

“I'm off now. Manolo will be here in two ticks. If I can't come tonight, I'll ring you and tell you where it's at.”

“But don't think too much. You'll get indigestion.”

“Do I have any choice, Skinny?”

“No, my friend. Just clear some of the shit out that head of yours because what's fucked won't get unfucked by you spending your whole day thinking. You know, it's just like baseball: if you're going to win, you need a good set of bongos. And ours rumble away, even when we're awake. That's why you and I almost beat the lanky coal-merchants from the high school in Havana, you remember that?”

“Like it was yesterday,” he replied and stood up ready to hit and then took a swing. They both watched the ball fly off and hit the fence right under the scoreboard in the loneliest reaches of centerfield.

 

 

“Surprise, surprise!” exclaimed Lieutenant Patricia Wong in English, her eyes vanishing with her laughter as her right hand brandished the stapled papers which seemed to be the source of her cheerfulness. China's outburst of excitement went through the Count like a transfusion: went straight into his body and began to course through his veins at a startling rate, making his heart beat fast.

“Have we got him?” he asked as he searched his jacket pocket for a cigarette and almost shouted when he saw his comrade's eyeless face sway affirmatively.

“Fuck, we've finally got something,” snorted Manolo,
intercepting in midair the cigarette the Count was lifting to his lips. The lieutenant, who hated his colleague's sporadic but often repeated jape, forgot his usual insults and pulled up a chair next to Lieutenant Patricia Wong.

“Come on, China, how's it looking?”

“Like you said, Mayo, like you said, but more complicated. Look, this is what must be behind it all and we still have to review a stack of paper, one hell of a stack,” she emphasized and started looking for something among the forms. “But it's red hot, Mayo, just listen. In the last half of 1988, which is all we've looked at, Rafael Morín went on two trips to Spain and one to Japan. He's got more flying hours than Gagarin . . . Look, he went to Japan to do business with Mitachi, but more of that later.”

“Go on, go on,” insisted the Count.

“Listen, he went to Spain for sixteen and eighteen days respectively and to Japan for nine, and in each case had to wrap up four contracts, except on his first visit to Spain when there were only three. He had a heap of dollars for marketing expenses – I'd never imagined people got so much – I'll tell you exactly how much later. There's a sheet that lists them by the business contacts to be made, but cop this, he'd always double his numbers, as if he were going to work or be away more time. That's bad enough, but the daily expenses beggar belief, Mayo. The pro-formas he must have filled in for the three trips I mentioned aren't here, but what's more incredible is that he filed a claim for expenses for a trip to Panama that was cancelled and didn't reimburse them. I can't explain that. Any auditor would spot it.”

“Yes, it's odd, but is there more?” the lieutenant asked as Patricia put the sheets on top of the desk. His
glee began to wane; such hamfistedness didn't bear the stamp of Morín.

“Hey, wait a minute, Mayo. Let me finish.”

“On your way, China, show us you're better than Chan Li Po.”

“I will. Look, this is the fuse to a real time bomb: the import and export enterprise holds an account in the Bank of Bilbao and Vizcaya in the name of a limited company registered at a post box number in Panama and which has a branch in Cuba. It's a kind of corporation and is called Rose Tree and was apparently set up to sidestep the American embargo. The Rose Tree account can be accessed via three signatures: those of Deputy Minister Fernández-Lorea, our friend Maciques and, naturally, Rafael Morín, but there always had to be two signatures . . . You with me?”

“I'm giving it my best, my most heartfelt shot.”

“Well, hold on to your chair now,
macho
: if I've not been misled by the papers here, because there are others that aren't where they should be and I don't want to slander anyone, but if I'm not mistaken, a big amount was taken out in December and isn't tied to any big deal signed around then.”

“And who was responsible?”

“Don't be naïve, Mayo, only the bank knows that.”

“OK, so I'm naïve . . . Now shock me: how big is ‘big', Patricia?” he asked, getting ready to hear the figure.

“A good few thousand. More than a hundred, more than two hundred, more than . . .”

“Fuck me,” exclaimed Manolo, who started searching for another cigarette. “And why did he need all that?”

“Wait a minute, Manolo, if I were an oracle I wouldn't be chewing dust and paper here.”

“Forget it, China, just carry on . . .” the Count begged
her, mentally reviewing an image of Tamara, Rafael's speech on his first day at school, the head of the camp ringing that bell, their playing field on October Tenth, the cocky unfailing laugh of the man who'd gone missing, and he laughed and laughed.

“I think it's all about Mitachi. Mayo, the Japanese weren't coming till February, and Rafael had first to go to Barcelona to make a purchase from a Spanish limited company I've still not checked out, but I bet you anything that Japanese capital is involved. And if that's so, I'll take a second bet, that it's Mitachi capital.”

“Hold on, China, hold on, explain yourself.”

“Hell, Mayo, you going brain dead?” protested Patricia, as her smile engulfed her eyes. “It's as clear as water: Rafael Morín must be doing business with Mitachi as an individual and was playing with money belonging to the enterprise or, rather, the Rose Tree. You on my wavelength now?”

“And how!” said Manolo, taken aback and trying to smile.

“And you reckon papers have gone missing, China?”

“That's right.”

“Could they be in other filing cabinets?”

“Could be, Mayo, but I don't think so. If it were just one . . .”

“So they've been removed?”

“Could be, but what's odd is that they didn't take everything, including the ones for the daily allowances that Morín himself could doctor.”

“So too many of some and not enough of others?”

“More or less, Mayo.”

“China, I know why there are too many of some, and I think I know where to find the missing ones.”

When Major Rangel told me, You don't have to wear your uniform here, you shouldn't work in uniform, and I saw him there in his olive-green jacket, his rank embroidered on his epaulettes and round his collar, and looking so impressive, I thought it was a joke, that I should resign there and then because it was almost like giving up being a policeman when you'd only just made it. The first time I went into the street in uniform, after I'd passed out the Police Academy, I felt half embarrassed, and half that I was really somebody, the gear fitted me like a glove and gave me something extra, made me stand out, and I thought people were always going to be looking at me, even if I didn't want them to, because I wasn't like everybody else. I did and didn't like that; it was really peculiar. As a kid I'd spent my life in disguise; as I was so skinny, I wasn't like other kids who wanted to be policemen, generals or astronauts. I dressed up for a while as Zorro, then as Robin Hood and then as a pirate with a patch over my eye and should probably have gone into acting and not the force. But I did become a policeman, and the fact is from the start was thrilled to be in uniform and really thought I was seriously playing at being a policeman until the day I drove up to a shack in El Moro in an academy patrol car. When we got out of the car, we were immediately surrounded by lots of people, I reckon the whole barrio was there, and everybody looking at us, I straightened my cap: it wasn't mine and wasn't new. I pulled up my trousers and put on my dark glasses, I had an audience. I was important, right? The woman who'd suffered the attack had already been taken to hospital. There was a god-awful silence, because we'd arrived, you know, and a grey-haired black man, who was really old, the chair of the committee for the block, said “This way,
comrades” and we went into a small house – it had a zinc roof and its walls were part un-plastered brick, part cardboard and part zinc – and when you went in you felt like an uncooked loaf on the tip of the spatula entering the oven, and you don't understand why there are still people who live like that, and there she was on the small bed, and I almost fainted. I don't even like telling people, because I remember and see it as if it were yesterday, and can feel the heat from the oven: the sheet was splattered in blood; there was blood on the ground, on the wall, and she was curled up and motionless, because she was dead; her fatherin-law had killed her while attempting rape, and later I discovered she was only seven years old, and I cursed the day I became a policeman, because I really thought these things didn't happen. When you're a policeman, you find out they do, and worse, and that's your job, and you begin to doubt whether you should do everything by the book or whether you should just get your pistol out and put six bullets into the guy who'd done it. I almost asked to leave, but I stayed in there, and was sent to headquarters and the major told me: you mustn't come in uniform and you'll work with the Count, and I think you'll get to like being in the force. You don't understand me, do you? Although I no longer walk the streets in uniform and people don't know who I am, I couldn't care less, and you've helped me not to care less, but people like Rafael Morín have helped me more. What a specimen! Whoever gave him the right to gamble with what's mine and yours and the old man's who's selling newspapers and the woman's who's about to cross the road and who'll probably die of old age without knowing what it is to own a car, a nice house, to stroll around Barcelona or wear perfume worth a hundred
dollars, and is probably off right now to queue for three hours to get a bag of potatoes, huh Count? Whoever?

 

 

“Oh, it's you? How are you, Mario? Do come in, Sergeant,” she greeted them with an embarrassed smile, and the Count kissed her on the cheek like in the old days and Manolo shook her hand; they exchanged pleasantries and walked towards the living room. “Anything new, Mario?” she asked finally.

“There's always something new, Tamara. Papers have gone missing at the enterprise, and it could be evidence against Rafael.”

She forgot her irrepressible lock of hair and rubbed her hands. She suddenly shrank, seemed defenceless and embarrassed.

“Of what?”

“Of thieving, Tamara. That's why we're back.”

“But what did he steal, Mario?”

“Money, loads of money.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” she exclaimed, eyes glistening; and the Count thought she might cry now. He is her husband, after all? He is the father of her child, isn't he? Her boyfriend from their school days, right?

“I want to inspect the safe that's in the library, Tamara.”

“The safe?” That was another surprise and came as a relief. She wasn't going to cry.