Havana Bay ar-4 Page 17

  Steering wide of the snorkelers, Walls continued down the canal to a turnaround. Fishing boats with rod racks and flying bridges slid by, speedboats as low and colorful as sun visors, and power yachts with sun lounges and Jet Ski launches, oceangoing palaces of affluence and indolence sculpted in white fiberglass. The shouts from a volleyball court were pure American.

  "Texans," Walls said.» Cruising people from the Gulf, they leave their boats here year round."

  Along the canal people washed out lockers, carried baskets of food and plastic bags of laundry, pushed trucks of bottled gas. Walls eased to a stop at the inner end of the canal, where a market sold CopperTone and Johnnie Walker Red. Outside, a Cuban girl in a Nike shirt sat with a blond boy. His shirt had a portrait of Che.

  O'Brien shook Arkady's hand again in an enthusiastic double grasp." You're staying next to the santero, I understand. We'll talk tomorrow."

  "About a 'position'? I don't think I'm qualified. I know nothing about casinos."

  "The way you handled Sergeant Luna you sound eminently qualified to me. As for casinos, we'll give you the grand tour of all the famous sin spots of Havana. Right, George?"

  Walls said, "You could have your own boat right here, Arkady. Girls come at night, knock on the side of the boats. They'll cook and clean, too, just to stay on board."

  Arkady glanced around at his putative yachting neighbors.» What are the Americans like?"

  Walls tried half a smile.» Some are free spirits and some are the same rednecks I tried to leave thirty years ago. One son of a bitch from Alabama wanted me to autograph my wanted poster. He said it was a collectible. I was ready to slice and collect his fucking nuts."

  "Ah, well," O'Brien said, "to be a souvenir, that has to be a form of death. Arkady, you'll consider the offer?"

  "It's an unbelievable offer."

  "Seriously, think about it," O'Brien said.» I understand, it's tough to leap even from a sinking ship."

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was death and death. Leaving by the marina's traffic gate, Arkady encountered a fisherman staggering under the weight of a marlin mounted on an enormous wooden plaque. The fish was caught in midflight, dorsal fin fanned, spear challenging the sky, the entire animal a metallic blue so unreal it could have been a small submarine, and Arkady remembered once walking with Pribluda in Moscow, following the river to the Church of the Redeemer. It was spring, and where the river sluiced in turgid, rubbery folds under the Alexander Bridge men fished with long, whiplike poles. Pribluda asked, "What man in his right mind would eat a fish caught in Moscow. Such a fish would have to be tougher than a boot. Renko, if you ever see me with a fishing pole in the middle of Moscow, do me a favor. Shoot me."

  Ofelia reached the pool at the Casa de Amor and heard Los Van Van on the radio in a room overhead singing "Muevete!" — Move it! — and it was as if wooden claves were dancing down her spine and she thought, not for the first time, how she distrusted music. So it had been a shock for her to put her fingers on the Russian's vein and feel the rhythm of his pulse.» Don't mess unless you want to be messed with" was one of her mother's favorite sayings. Along with "Don't move your ass unless you're advertising." Sometimes she thought, Moving your ass, that was the Cuban Method. That was why life was such a mess, because at the worst times and with the worst of men some signal would trickle down from her brain and say, "Muevete!" On the street in the shade of ceiba tree sat a '57 Dodge Coronet with private plates she had been allotted for surveillance work. Its front bumper hung on wires from too many collisions. She knew the feeling.

  Since the shore on this stretch of Miramar was stone flats and coral rubble, the Casa de Amor was built around a pool area, empty except for two boys playing table tennis. Early afternoon was the time when most jineteras and their new friends from abroad would be riding rickshas around Old Havana, sipping mojitos in the Bodeguita del Medio or listening to romantic music in the Plaza de la Catedral. Later, boutique hopping and dinner in a paladar, where a plate of rice and beans could cost a Cuban's weekly salary, back to the Casa de Amor for a little sex and then the long evening out at the dance clubs.

  When Cuban couples came to the Casa de Amor to consummate their passion, no rooms were ever available. But for "love couples" ofjineteras and tourists, yes, there was always a room with fresh sheets, towels and a vase with a long-stemmed rose. Ofelia had discovered that complaints to the police had gone nowhere, which merely meant that the police themselves were protecting the motel. At the room rate of $90 a night, the cost of first-class accommodations at the Hotel Nacional, there was reason to protect such a gold mine, even if the gold was mined with the sweat of Cuban girls.

  A heavyset woman in coveralls swept the street with a branch besom at a steady six strokes a minute. Ofelia stationed herself by an ice machine under the stairs to the second floor and listened to the music and occasional footfall from the rooms overhead. Only the middle two units were occupied-just as well, since her manpower and time were so limited. The boys at the Ping-Pong table finished one game and started another.

  The Russian, she had decided, was a disaster to be avoided. Just the light in his eyes was like the ember of a banked fire warning, "Don't stir." It was bad enough he was a danger to himself; his story about Luna was insanity. Here was a man who threw Luna halfway up a wall and then acted modestly surprised when the sergeant's head split open. How Renko had banged up his head, she didn't know. Maybe there was something to his story about the bat. In her opinion, though, Renko was a goat whose brilliant idea of catching a tiger was to stake himself down. He would bring the tiger, might bring all the tigers in the jungle, what then? Which was a shame because he wasn't a bad investigator. To return with him to Casablanca and watch him draw out the fisherman Andres was an instruction in police work. He wasn't dumb, just crazy, and at this point she was afraid to be with him and afraid to leave him on his own.

  The street sweeper dropped her broom in a can. Over Ofelia's head a door closed, and two pairs of footsteps made their way the length of the balcony, Ofelia keeping pace below. She placed herself under the stairs as they came down. It wasn't until the couple stepped down to pool level that they were aware of the convergence on them of Ofelia, holding herself as tall as she could in her PNR gray and blue, and the street sweeper, who dropped her broom to show her own uniform and gun.

  The tourist was a redheaded man in a shirt, shorts, sandals, a Prada bag around his thick neck, his arm draped like a freckled sausage over the girl's shoulder. He said, "Scheisse."

  Ofelia recognized Teresa Guiteras. The girl was black, smaller than Ofelia with a mop of curls and a yellow dress that barely reached her thighs. Teresa protested, "This time it's love."

  During a public-works frenzy in the thirties, Cuba had built police stations in the style of Sahara forts. The one on the west end of the Malecon was particularly sun-blasted, white paint peeling off battlements, a radio mast on the roof, a guard sheltering in the shade of the door. Air-conditioning had never been introduced and the interior stifled, with historic scents of piss and blood. The police regularly mounted campaigns against jineteras, cleaning up the Malecon and Plaza de Armas. The next night the same girls would be back, but paying a little more to the police for protection. Because Ofelia's minor operation was directed at corrupt officers of the PNR rather than at the girls, she was not popular with the other detectives, all male, who shared her office. When she returned with the girl, she found the wall behind her desk newly decorated with a poster of Sharon Stone straddling a chair, and taped in the center of the poster the regulations concerning premature discharge of a weapon. Ofelia stuffed the poster into a wastebasket and set a tape machine with two radio-style microphones on the desk. The third person in the room was Dora, the patrol sergeant who had been the watch by the pool, an older woman with a face mournful from experience.

  Teresa Guiteras Marin was fourteen, a tenth-grade student from the country town of Ciego de Avila, although she had already been warned befo
re by Ofelia about soliciting tourists near the Marina Hemingway. Ofelia asked how and where Teresa had met her friend (by chance on the Malecon), what money or rewards had been offered or given (none except for a Swatch, a friendship token), whose idea was the Casa de Amor (his), who paid at the reception desk and how much (he did, she didn't know how much, but he also bought her a rose that she would like to go back to the room for). Finally, Ofelia asked whether she had seen or paid or communicated in any fashion with any member of the PNR. No, Teresa swore she hadn't.

  "You understand that if you do not cooperate, you will be fined a hundred pesos and entered in the register of prostitutes. At fourteen."

  Teresa slipped her feet from her platform sandals and drew her legs up onto the chair. She had all the mannerisms of a child, the pouty lip and downcast eyes.

  "I'm not a prostitute."

  "You are. He paid you two hundred dollars to be with him for a week."

  "A hundred and fifty."

  "You sell yourself too cheaply."

  "At least I can sell myself." Teresa played with a curl, wrapping it around a finger.» That's more than you ever see."

  "Maybe. But you had to buy false residence papers to stay in Havana. You had to pay a room illegally to sleep in, then pay the Casa de Amor to screw in. Most of all, you have to pay the police."

  This was a doublethink that drove Ofelia crazy. Teresa didn't consider herself a prostitute, no. Jineteras were students, teachers, secretaries merely making extra money. Some parents were proud of how their little Teresas helped to support the family; in fact, some regular visitors to Cuba didn't dare arrive without presents for their favorite chica's mother, father, little brother. The problem was AIDS, which was like throwing young girls into the maws of a dragon. Only you didn't have to throw them, they lined up to dive.

  "So now you work two places," Ofelia said." Days you're at the Casa de Amor, nights you're at the boats. Is that the kind of life you want to lead?"

  Teresa's eyes shone through her hair." It's better than school."

  "Better than the hospital? Did you check this German friend of yours?"

  "He was clean."

  "Oh, you have a laboratory?"

  It was like arguing with children. They would never be infected, they took vitamins, anise, vinegar. The men refused to wear condoms because they hadn't come around the world to smoke half a cigar.

  "Hija, listen. Unless you give me the name of police who take money from you I will enter your name in the register of prostitutes. Whenever there is a sweep of prostitutes you will be dragged away. And if you are ever caught again you will be sent to a reeducation farm for two years minimum. That's a nice place to grow up."

  Teresa pulled up her knees and glowered. Her pout was exactly like Muriel's. She was three years older.

  Herr Lohmann had been waiting in an interrogation room. He folded his arms and tilted back in his chair as Ofelia examined his visa. He spoke lederhose Spanish.» So I have one room at the Hotel Capri and another at the Casa de Amor? I paid for both. Twice the money for Cuba."

  "How did you even know about the Casa de Amor?"

  "The girl told me. She's not exactly a virgin, you know."

  "To be clear," Ofelia said.» You are forty-nine. You are having sex with a fourteen-year-old girl, a student. You did this regardless of the laws of Cuba for the protection of children. Are you aware that you could be spending six years in a Cuban jail?"

  "I doubt that very much."

  "So you are not afraid."

  "No."

  She opened his passport and flipped through stamped pages.» You travel quite a lot."

  "I have business to attend to."

  "In Thailand, the Philippines?"

  "I'm a salesman."

  "Based?"

  "In Hamburg."

  His passport photo was a head and shoulders of a respectable burgher in dark suit and tie.

  "Married?"

  "Yes."

  "Children?"

  No answer.

  "Here for?"

  "Business."

  "Not for pleasure?"

  "No. Although I enjoy other cultures." He had teeth like a horse." I was at the bar at the Hotel Riviera and this girl asked if I could buy her a cola."

  "To enter the lobby of the Riviera she had to be with a man. Who was it?"

  "I don't know. In Havana I am approached by a lot of men who want to know do I need a car, a cigar, whatever?"

  "Were there any police in the lobby?"

  "I don't know."

  "You are aware that it is against Cuban law for Cuban citizens to visit a hotel room."

  "Is that so? Sometimes I stay at hotels in the countryside run by the Cuban army. When I bring a girl I just pay double. You're the first one to make a fuss."

  "You left the Riviera and went to the Casa de Amor, you and Teresa. According to the guest register at the Casa de Amor you signed in as her husband, Sr. Guiteras."

  "Teresa took care of that. I never went in the office."

  Ofelia looked at notes she had taken of a phone call.» According to the Riviera, you arrived there at the beginning of your visit with a friend, an Italian."

  "A male friend."

  "Named Mossa. He took the room next to you?"

  "So?"

  "Wasn't he also in the room next to you at the Casa de Amor?"

  "So?"

  "The two of you met Teresa and her friend together?"

  "Wrong. I found Teresa and he connected on his own."

  "You found her?"

  "Or she found me. It makes no fucking difference. Girls develop faster here." He smoothed his hair back.» Look, I have always been a supporter of the Cuban Revolution. You can't arrest me for being attracted to Cuban girls. They're very attractive."

  "Did you use a condom?"

  "I think so."

  "We looked in the wastebaskets."

  "Okay, no."

  "I think for your own sake we will have you examined by doctors and send a medical report to your embassy."

  His smile sealed. As he pressed against the table his shirt opened to a gold chain, body heat, the smell of stale cologne. He whispered, "You know, you're even better looking than Teresa."

  At that moment Ofelia suffered the fantasy that Renko was with her and that he picked up the German the way he had picked up Luna and rammed the German into the wall.

  "The doctor will make a thorough examination," Ofelia said and left the room.

  The detective room wasn't as empty when she went back. The Sharon Stone poster was back on the wall, and Teresa looked sideways at the plainclothes detectives, Soto and Tey, sharply dressed men who bent over the paperwork on their desks and exchanged smirks. If Ofelia had any other place to question the girl she would have used it.

  Teresa announced, "Singa tu madre. I'm not saying anything against my friends."

  "Good girl," Soto said."With the right friends you don't have to say nothing."

  "Osorio has confused sex and crime," said Tey.» She's against both."

  "It's been so long, right?" said Soto.

  "I'd be happy to help her remember," offered Tey.

  "You can't touch me," Teresa told Ofelia.» I don't have to tell you nothing."

  "Don't listen to them." Ofelia felt her neck get hot.

  "Don't listen to them? They're not on my ass, you are. You're the bitch, not them. I make ten times what you make. Why would I listen to you?"

  "Congratulations, I am putting you on the official list of whores. You will be examined by a doctor and sent out of Havana."

  "You can't."

  "It's done."

  But when she went into the hall with Dora, all Ofelia could think of were her own daughters and she didn't have the heart to order Teresa's name onto the register.

  "Tell her I did, though," she said.» And have the doctor look at her. And have the doctor examine our tourist all over and draw some blood and make it painful."

  "So what is the point of wh
at we're doing if we let her go?" Dora was sick of sweeping streets.

  "I'm not after girls, I am after corrupt police."

  "Then you're after men, and in the PNR there are a couple of us and thousands of them. From the top down, everybody winks. They think you're a fanatic and you know what the real problem is? You're not."

  Ofelia returned to the Casa de Amor because although she might have lost Teresa it was just possible that Lohmann's Italian friend and his girl hadn't yet left the motel. This time, she decided, she would question them right in the room, not even go close to the station house. If that was against procedure, well, procedure guaranteed humiliation and failure. She didn't need Dora along, she didn't need anyone. This was on her own.

  When Ofelia was angry she took steps two at a time. The rooms were set back between dividers for privacy's sake and hanging on the doorknob of the unit next to Lohmann's was a plastic tag that said do not disturb.

  The two boys were playing their endless table tennis, but otherwise no one was around. Maybe she was in luck. Maybe she was stupid. She certainly wasn't going to be appreciated, not if the girl was anything like Teresa. What poor Cuban girl wouldn't think she was in heaven at a motel like this? Then shopping at a boutique for a swimsuit that would show off her cute bottom? Or trying on cat-eyed Ray-Bans or a Gucci scarf?

  She knocked on the door.» Housekeeping."

  The radio still played. The pool was a blue lens. The boys played, the sound popping off their paddles. A breeze tugged on the lazy fronds. Ofelia took a deep breath and caught the faint smells of barnyard and butcher. There was no answer to her knock.

  "Police," she said.

  The door was unlocked but blocked and she had to use all her strength to enter, and since someone had turned the air-conditioner off and the temperature was in the eighties, it was like gaining admission to an oven of ripe smells of blood and body waste. In opening the door she had rolled a body to the side, and she tried to pick her way across a floor covered with a fallen chair, emptied bureau drawers, clothes and sheets to the drapes on the other side. She drew them open and all the light in the world flooded in.