Havana Bay ar-4 Page 25

  "That's one way to look at it."

  "Good. But what this picture has to do with the future I don't know and neither do you. You just like to play games with time."

  She was all too accurate about that, Arkady thought. She was right about a lot.» There are two ways back to whatever happened to Pribluda. One is Mongo and the other, I think, is through O'Brien and Walls."

  "Well, your friend O'Brien is nuts if he thinks he's going to start a casino. Not while Fidel is alive. No casinos. That would be complete surrender. And let me tell you something else, two men like O'Brien and Walls are not going to share their fortune with someone who lands in a plane from Russia." Ofelia hesitated to ask, "Do you have a plan?"

  "According to a note on Rufo's wall something about Angola is happening at the Yacht Club tomorrow night." He looked at his watch and corrected himself.» Tonight. We might drop in."

  "Angola? What has Angola got to do with this?"

  "Rufo wrote 'Vi. HYC 2200 Angola.'"

  "This is some plan."

  "I'd also like to find Rufo's cell phone."

  "He didn't have one. In Havana cellular phones come from CubaCell, which is a joint venture between Mexico and Cuba. Anyone with dollars can get one, but I called CubaCell myself and they have no listing for Rufo Pinero."

  "He had a phone, we just haven't found it. I'd like to push that phone's memory and learn who his best friends were."

  This was the way he was at the boatyard, Ofelia thought. Absolutely certain about something invisible. The problem was that she agreed. A hustler like Rufo was incomplete without a cell phone.

  There was an explosion of laughter outside as a couple walked by to a different unit. Ofelia felt compelled to explain how she knew about the Rosita, the system of jineteras and police. From the Ministry of the Interior an officer like Luna could protect Hedy and a whole string of girls at tourist bars, hotels and marinas. The Rosita was safe because it was under the wing of the police in the Playa del Este. She added, "Luna also does things for his own protection. He and Rufo were involved together in political activities, silencing dissidents. Maybe some of those people are anti-Cuban but Luna and Rufo sometimes went too far."

  "Did Mongo?"

  “No.”

  "Captain Arcos?"

  "I don't think so."

  "And were they all involved in Santeria, too, like the ceremony I saw?"

  "That was not Santeria." Ofelia touched her necklace.» Leave the spirits to me."

  The second time was not as ravenous but just as sweet. Pleasure left alien for so long made the skin a sensual map to be explored in detail from an undercurve of the breast to the pink of the tongue to the fine hairs of her brow.

  She had a variety of endearments in Spanish. He simply liked the name Ofelia, the way it filled the mouth and spoke of dreaminess and flowers.

  The second time had a slow rhythm that rolled up the spine. He wouldn't know the beat but Ofelia did, the steady rocking of the tall drum, the sideways shake of the shells on the gourd, the quicker pace of hourglass drums and then the mounting acceleration of the iya, the biggest drum with the deepest pitch and in the center of its skin a red resinous circle that spread the warmer it grew until she felt herself stretched to the breaking point, breathless while he held on, his heart pounding like a machine that hadn't worked in ages.

  "Now I know everything," Ofelia murmured.» I know all about you."

  She laid her head on his shoulder. The oddest thing, he thought, was how well she fit. Staring up at the dark, he felt he was free-floating now, as far from Moscow as a man could get.

  "What does peligroso mean?" he asked.

  "Dangerous."

  "A man said that at the Hemingway marina. We can start there."

  In the dark Ofelia told him about the priest in Hershey, the town where she grew up.

  The priest was not only Spanish but so frail that people said it was his cassock that held him up. He became a scandal, though, when he fell in love with the manager's wife. The manager and his wife were American. Hershey was American. There were two great smokestacks of the mill belching black smoke and the wooden shacks of the workers, but in the center of town was a road of shade trees and cool stone houses with screened windows for Americans, where only Americans or Cubans with work passes were allowed. There was a baseball and basketball team run by the Americans, and American women taught school for Cuban and American children. Both the wife and the priest taught school.

  She had angelic blond hair that shone through the mantilla she wore to church. All Ofelia could remember about the husband was that his Oldsmobile always gleamed because it was always being washed. The problem in Hershey was the heavy soot that came from burning bagasse, the sugarcane after the juice had been pressed out. Bagasse burned very hot and produced soot as thick as fur. It was well known among maids who worked in the houses that the manager drank, and when he was drunk he hit his wife. One time when he came to school and began to drag her out, the priest stepped in between and that was probably when all three realized that the priest and the wife were in love. Everyone saw, everyone knew.

  Then all three disappeared the same night. Weeks later when men cleaned ash from the furnaces at the mill, they found a crucifix and pieces of bone. They recognized the priest's crucifix from around his neck. Everyone assumed that the manager killed him and threw his body in the oven and took his wife back to the States and that was the end of it, except, a year later, someone came back from a trip to New York and said he had seen the manager's wife walking on the street arm in arm with the priest, who wasn't dressed like a priest anymore but just an ordinary man. Everyone else in Hershey laughed at this account because they remembered the priest, how timid he was. But Ofelia believed because she had seen that very same priest fight a bull.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ofelia had gone out earlier, and he didn't recognize her at first when she returned in skintight white jeans, white tube top and white-rimmed dark glasses, and carrying bags of coffee, sugar, oranges. She had a blinding new aura, he thought, like a nuclear reactor when control rods were withdrawn, and she had for him a shirt with the embroidered design of a polo player, short-brimmed straw hat, fashionable hip pack, sunglasses.

  "Where did you find these?"

  "There are hotels in the Playa del Este with dollar boutiques. It's your friend Pribluda's money, but I think he would approve, no?"

  He picked up the shirt.» I don't think it's me."

  "You have no choice. Luna has a picture of you. In case he circulates it, we have to make you look different."

  "I'm never going to look Cuban."

  "Not Cuban, no. If people can mistake a tourist for you, maybe they'll mistake you for a tourist."

  The truth she admitted only to herself: that she had experienced a shameful thrill walking into boutiques with so much money. She had also added a new comb and brush to her floppy straw bag. Necessities for a certain role. And to dress a man was a pleasure she felt in the marrow of her bones.

  She folded his coat over a chair.

  "We paid for two nights, we can leave your coat here for now."

  The Playa del Este offered the overwhelming nothingness of sand and sea and houses wearing a sun-bleached memory of color rather than color itself. A billboard announced the imminent construction of a French hotel by a "Socialist-Leninist Brigade of Workers," and down the beach rose ranks of new hotels already built. Ofelia drove, and Arkady discovered that to ride in Ofelia's DeSoto, a vintage monster with wedge-shaped fins, was to be invisible. A white tourist with an attractive Cuban woman was instantly categorized and dismissed. For the first time, he fit in because there were examples of him and Ofelia everywhere, a tall Dutchman and a nearly miniature black girl sitting at a table under a single Cinzano parasol that constituted a sidewalk cafe, a Mexican with a blonde jinetera taking the air in a bicycle cab, a beefy Englishman with a girl tottering on new platform shoes. Ofelia identified their nationality at a glance. What Ark
ady noticed was that each couple held hands but had no conversation.

  "They each have a fantasy," Ofelia said.» He that he can leave his ordinary life and live like a rich man on an island like this. She that he will fall in love with her and take her away to what she thinks is the real world. It's better they can't communicate."

  But Ofelia, too, felt a welcome invisibility in her dark glasses and jeans, in the attitude of her chin, and when they passed the plate glass of a gift shop she saw the reflection of a perfectly acceptable jinetera and tourist, perhaps slightly more handsome than usual.

  At the approach of a Cuban girl the guard at the gate of the Marina Hemingway started from his box, only to step back in when he saw Arkady escort her around the barrier. He led Ofelia by the marina shop and across the grass to the dock where George Washington Walls had left him off after his visit to the Havana Yacht Club. The same loud volleyball game seemed to be in progress. Other Americans trafficked back and forth with bags of laundry. A boy in cutoffs hand-trucked cases of beer to a blue-water yacht the size of an iceberg, yet Ofelia treated the sight of three canals filled with million-dollar power yachts as offhandedly as Cleopatra reviewing her barges. Perhaps she was unimpressed, he thought, because of the Cuban girl suspended in a hammock from a sailboat boom.

  "What's so dangerous here?" Ofelia asked.

  "I don't know. You've been here before?"

  "Once or twice. You go ahead. I'm looking for someone."

  Among the sameness of fiberglass boats the Gavilan had a dark, distinctive silhouette, and Arkady picked it out at the slip Walls had been heading for when he was waved off by a harbor master yelling "Peligroso!" at snorkelers. There were no swimmers in the water now, and Arkady couldn't see any problem. The seaplane tender nudged peacefully against the tire fenders of the dock while lines fed electricity from a shoreside outlet box over the boat's brass rail. No swimmers, no shouts, only the deep throbbing of a motor yacht taxiing down the canal.

  He continued along the canal, seeing no obstructions in the water, no flotsam by the dock. A galvanized pipe led water to each slip; a foreign crew was washing down a three-story megayacht, spraying one another, drinking the water, so it was even potable. American boats in Cuba made for an interesting community, grandiose white palaces mixed in with raffish fishing boats mus-tached with stains, all bending the law by even being where they were. Arkady had no experience on yachts himself, but having spent some time in Vladivostok around factory ships and trawlers, he knew a little about bringing power on board, and what caught his eye about the waist-high electrical distribution boxes spaced along the dock of the Marina Hemingway was how few had ordinary outlets to plug into. Instead, a power line led from the box while another led from the boat, and where they met the lines were spliced and taped together, the connection protected from water by a clear plastic shopping bag taped at the ends. He worked his way to an empty outdoor bar at the far end of the dock. Fully half the hookups he saw on the way went through spliced and bagged electrical lines sitting in water between the hull of the boat and cement wall of the dock.

  The transom of the Alabama Baron was smeared with fish guts and scales, although the jinetera in the sailboat's hammock didn't look like a fisherman to Ofelia. The girl had the Julia Roberts look from the film Pretty Woman, very popular in Cuba, tons of hair, myopic eyes, pouty lips, and she was watching a bracelet being sold on a portable television connected to a small satellite dish bolted to the dock. Ofelia recognized the Home Shopping Network, also very popular in Cuba among those with access to dishes. The woman on the television laid the bracelet across her wrist to let the light play on the stones. The sound was off, but the price flashed in the corner of the screen.

  "That's beautiful," Ofelia said.

  "Isn't it? Good price, too."

  "Diamond?"

  "Same as. Last week, they had a chain for the ankle with the same stones. You think that's a good price, but wait." The woman on the television spread the bracelet on a bed of velvet and added a pair of earrings.» See, I knew. You order too soon and you don't get the earrings. You have to know to wait and then pick up your phone and give them your credit-card number and the bracelet's yours in two days." Julia Roberts glanced over.» You're new here."

  "I'm looking for Teresa."

  The television woman brushed back a mantle of hair to model the earrings, left, right, frontal. Another girl in a top and thong came out of the cabin. Her hair was almost as short as Ofelia's but peroxided blonde.» You know Teresa?"

  "Yes. Luna told me she would be here."

  "You know Facundo?" The girl in the hammock sat up.

  "I met him."

  "Teresa's real upset," the blonde knelt by the rail and whispered.» She was next door when Hedy got her throat slit. They were close."

  "She got run in, too," Julia Roberts said.» Some police bitch gave her a tough time. For helping feed her family, you know."

  "I know," said Ofelia.

  "Teresa's scared," the blonde said.» She went home to the country. I don't think she's going to be here for a while."

  "Is she afraid of the sergeant?" Ofelia asked.

  "You met the sergeant, what do you think?" Julia Roberts said.» With all due respect, what do you think? I just know him, but Teresa and Hedy were his private girls, understand?"

  The blonde checked out Ofelia's vital points.» Aren't you a little old to be doing this? What are you, twenty-four, twenty-five?"

  "Twenty-nine."

  "Not bad."

  "I-am-trying-to-sleep," a deep voice in American came from the bowels of the sailboat, and a form struggled up the galley steps. It had to be the Alabama baron himself, Ofelia thought. He wore a Houston Astros cap, shorts and a Hawaiian shirt that couldn't cover a sunburned belly that he salved by rolling a can of beer over its expanse. He loomed over the two Cuban girls on his boat.» Talk-talk-talk-talk-talk-Jesus-Kayrist-you-women-talk. Whoa," he said as he caught sight of Ofelia, "the talent contest may still be open."

  "She's with me," Arkady said. He had worked his way back along the dock to the tender and the sailboat, berthed one behind the other.» We were just admiring the boats."

  The baron glanced around at the beer cans on his deck until he noticed that Arkady meant the Gavilan.

  "Yeah, sure, that's a fucking classic. A genuine rumrunner, everything but the bullet holes."

  Rumrunner? Arkady liked that. That smacked of Capone.

  "Fast?"

  "I'd say so. You're talking a V-12, four hundred horses, sixty knots, faster than a torpedo boat. 'Cept with a woodie you spend all day at the dock sanding, varnishing, polishing."

  "That's a drawback," Arkady agreed.

  "No time to fish. Of course, they do all the upkeep for him here. He gets special treatment. Where you from?"

  "Chicago."

  "Really?" The baron digested that.» You fish?"

  "I wish I could. I don't have enough time."

  "Locals keeping you otherwise occupied?" The baron's eye returned to Ofelia, who kept her face blank of comprehension.

  "Busy."

  "Well, it's a fish or fuck world, it really is. I'll tell you what, the last thing in the world I want is lift the embargo. Cuba is cheap, beautiful, grateful. Take away the embargo and it'll be 'nother Florida in a year. Hell, I'm a man on a pension, I'd hardly be able to afford Susy here." He pointed with his free hand to the girl in the hammock, whose eyes had returned to the shopping network and a new item, a clock in a crystal elephant. Arkady remembered Rufo's list of names and phone numbers. Susy and Daysi. Did the other girl peroxide her hair for a daisylike effect? Arkady could tell that Ofelia had caught the name too.

  "What do you mean, 'special treatment'?" he asked the baron.

  "The owner of that boat is George Washington Walls. Their hero. Hey, I was a fireman twenty years, I know about heroes. Heroes don't put a gun to no pilot's head."

  "You're not just…?" Arkady raised his eyebrows delicately.

  "R
acist? Not me." The baron waved his arm toward the jineteras and Ofelia as proof.

  "For example, then?"

  "For example." The baron was hot now. He hung on to a guy wire for balance and pointed to the hookup servicing the tender.» Check out the power lead installed specially for him just yesterday. Now, look at mine." Where the Alabama Baron's lead dipped into the water was the typical splice in a bag that was filthier than the others.» I understand they're clever devils here and they got American boats and European boats with whole different electrical frequencies and they got to jury-rig a new line for every boat that hooks up, but I'm a fireman and I know hot lines and water. Get this lead in the water and spring a little leak and you will fry yourself some very surprised fish. All I'm saying is, how come Senor Walls has himself the only berth in the entire marina with a new power lead?"

  "And if a swimmer was in the water?"

  "Kill him."

  "Heart attack?"

  "Stop it cold."

  "And there would be burn marks?"

  "Only if he touched the line. I've seen bodies in tubs with a hair dryer, same thing. Look at her"-the baron gave Ofelia an approving nod-"like she understands every word."

  The very statement that Teresa had gone back to the country made Ofelia believe that the jinetera was lying low in Havana in the rooms of her friends. Calling from the DeSoto, Ofelia tried the numbers Rufo had listed for Daysi and Susy, and when neither phone answered, Ofelia called Bias.

  "It's not like a bolt of lightning but yes"-the doctor agreed with her-"if a live wire falls into water, there would obviously be a charge."

  "How strong?"

  "It depends. Submerged in water, power is diffused exponentially depending on the distance from the source. Then there is the size and physical condition of the victim, and the peculiarities of each individual heart."

  "A fatal charge?"

  "Depending. Alternating current, for example, is more dangerous than direct current. Salt water is a better conductor than fresh."