Havana Bay ar-4 Read online

  Two young uniformed policemen, one white, one black, patrolled the seawall. Although they carried radios, handguns and batons, their orders seemed entirely in the negative: don't lean against the wall, don't listen to music, don't fraternize with girls. Although they seemed to pay no special attention to the house, Arkady thought it would be a little wiser to escape in the evening.

  He cleaned the carpet because it was too depressing to look at his own dried blood. The music below had changed to a work-theme salsa accompanied by a power drill; Arkady wasn't sure whether he was above a flat or a factory. Not all the blood came out of the rug; enough remained to suggest a mottled rose.

  Luna could scrub the bat and Arkady was sure that the entire ball team was willing to swear the sergeant had been gamboling on a field with them. How many players were there on a side in baseball? Ten, twenty? More than enough witnesses. Bugai wouldn't lodge a protest. Even if he did find the nerve, to whom would he complain but Arcos and Luna? The only communication that Arkady could expect between the embassy and Luna was the question "Do you have a Zoshchenko working there? No? Thank you very much."

  Arkady shaved for morale's sake, working around the damage on his face, and tried to comb his hair over the repair on his brow. When the nausea let up he celebrated by changing into a clean shirt and pants, so that he looked like a well-groomed victim of a violent crime. He also tied another knife to a broom to use as a spear and, giddy with achievement, peeked through the balcony shutters.

  A PNR patrol car appeared about every forty minutes. In between, the patrolmen fought their own war against boredom, sneaking a cigarette, staring at the sea, watching Havana girls in their variety strut by in shorts and platform shoes.

  In the late afternoon Arkady woke with an enormous thirst and a headache aggravated by the noise below. He had aspirin and water while he admired Pribluda's variety of pickled garlic heads and mushrooms. He just didn't feel like food at the moment, and when he turned away from the refrigerator he realized that Change had disappeared. The doll that had sat in the corner was gone.

  When? During Luna's lecture on the finer points of baseball? With the sergeant or of Change's own volition? The missing doll was reminder enough that a patrol car was due in a minute and that Luna was overdue. Through the shutters he saw two black girls dressed in matching pedal pushers of citrus yellow teasing the PNRs.

  Some vacations stretched and some seemed to fly by in a moment, not even time for a tan. Arkady decided that when man-sized dolls started walking around it was time for him to go, too, and camp at the embassy whether he was welcome or not. Or the airport. Moscow's airports, for instance, were full of people going absolutely nowhere.

  Arkady put on his precious coat with the phone list and picture in one pocket and keys and knife in the other, and cleared the chair and bag of cans from the door. He still had Pribluda's car key. Who knew, he might be able to drive. As he tottered down, the stairs pulsated underfoot.

  From the street door he saw the girls and the two PNRs bantering and posturing. Behind them the Cuban sky was gold edged in blue, more mixed day and night than a simple sunset. As a car limped by, my God, a two-seater Zaporozhets belching black smoke, Arkady slipped out into the long shadow of the arcade.

  Chapter Eight

  Wearing a cherry-red halter and denim shorts with a Minnie Mouse patch on a back pocket, Ofelia sat in an aquamarine '55 DeSoto outside the Casa de Amor and asked herself: Was it cigar fumes? Something in the rum? The two spoonfuls of sugar in cafe cubano that made men crazy? If she saw one more young Cuban girl on the arm of one more fat, balding, lisping Spanish tourist, Ofelia would kill.

  She'd pulled enough of them in. Some were family men who had never before been unfaithful but suddenly found it unnatural to spend a week in Havana without a chica. More were the sort of human slugs who came for Cuban girls, as before they had traveled to Bangkok or Manila. It wasn't white slavery anymore, it was sex tourism. More efficient. And it wasn't white, anyway. What tourists in Cuba wanted were mulatas or negritas. The more northern the European, the more guaranteed that he was after the experience of a black girl.

  The Casa de Amor was originally a motel, ten units with patios and sliding aluminum doors around a swimming pool. A heavyset woman in a housedress read a paperback in a metal chair on a lawn that had been paved over and painted green. In the office was a register and selections of condoms, beer, rum, Tropicola. The tip-off that something wrong was going on was that the pool water was clean. That was for tourists.

  Traffic went in and out. At this point Ofelia was expert at telling a German (pink) from an Englishman (sallow) from a Frenchman (safari shorts), but what she was waiting for was a Cuban uniform. The law was useless. Cuban law excused a man for making sexual advances, assuming it was a masculine given, and put the burden of proof on Ofelia to prove that the girl initiated the approach. Now, any Cuban female over the age of ten knew how to incite a male into making the first overt proposal. A Cuban girl could make Saint Jerome make the first advance.

  The police were worse than useless, they preyed on the girls, demanding money for letting them into hotel lobbies, for wandering around the marina, for allowing them to take tourists to places like the Casa de Amor, which was supposed to be for conjugal activities between Cuban couples who couldn't find sufficient privacy at home. Well, jineteras had the same problem and could pay more.

  Traffic went in and out the office, the girls steering in their clients like little tugboats. Ofelia let them go. Someone in authority had arranged matters at the Casa de Amor, and what Ofelia wanted more than anything else was for some sleazy PNR commander to check his operation, see her in the car and invite her to join his string. A badge and gun rested in her straw bag. The look on his face when she brought them out? Vaya.

  Sometimes Ofelia felt it was her against the world.

  This one feeble little campaign of hers against an industry that was nearly official. The Ministry of Tourism discouraged any real crackdown on jineteras as a threat to Cuba's economic future. If they deplored prostitution, why did they always add that Cuba's were the most beautiful, healthiest prostitutes in the world?

  The week before, she had picked up a twelve-year-old jinetera in the Plaza de Armas. One year older than Muriel. That was the future?

  She hadn't given Renko a lot of thought until she gave up surveillance at the end of the day and visited the IML to check whether the dead Russian was tagged for transport and, when she found the body wasn't, looked for Bias. She found the director working at a laboratory counter.

  "I'm looking into something," Bias said.» I am not investigating, but you made such a point about the syringe I think you especially will be interested."

  His instrument was a camcorder modified to fit onto a microscope. The microscope eyepiece had been removed so that the camera could focus directly on a grayish paste spread on a specimen slide. A cable led from the camcorder to a video monitor. On its screen was a magnified version of the paste with gradations in color that ran from tarry black to chalk white. In front of the monitor was an embalming syringe.

  "Rufo's needle?" Ofelia asked.

  "Yes, the syringe stolen from here, from my own laboratory, and found in the hand of Rufo Pinero. Embarrassing but also informative because the tissue packed into a needle shaft, you know, is a core sample as good as a biopsy."

  "You squeezed it out?"

  "For curiosity's sake. Because we are scientists," Bias said as he moved the slide in minute increments under the camera.» Working backward: brain tissue, blood corresponding to Rufo's blood type, bone, cocheal material from the inner ear, skin and more blood and skin. What's interesting is the last blood, which actually would have been the first blood in the needle shaft. Tell me what you see."

  The screen was a stew of cells, larger ones solid red, the smaller cells with white centers.

  "Blood cells."

  "Look again."

  With Bias you always learned, she thought. On the s
econd look, many of the red cells seemed crushed or exploded like overripe pomegranates.» There is something wrong with them. A disease?"

  "No. What you see," he told her, "is a battlefront, a battlefront of whole blood cells, fragments of blood cells and clumps of antibodies. This blood is hemolyzed, it is at war."

  "With itself?"

  "No, this is a war that only occurs when two different blood types come into contact. Pinero's and…?"

  "Renko's?"

  "Most likely. I'd love to have a sample from the Russian."

  "He says he wasn't touched."

  "I say otherwise." He was definite, and she knew that when Bias was definite he was almost always right.

  "Will you test for drugs?" she asked.

  "No need. You weren't at the autopsy, but I can tell you that on Rufo's arm are the tracks of old injections. Do you know how much a new syringe is worth to a user? This proves Rufo had two weapons."

  "But Renko is alive and Rufo is dead."

  "I admit that is the baffling part."

  Ofelia thought of the cut in Renko's coat. That was from the knife. Why wouldn't the Russian mention a wound from the needle?

  Bias had registered the fact that she was still in her shorts and halter, black curls shining, a glow on her brown skin.» You know, there is a meeting next month in Madrid I have to attend. I could use someone to help with the projector and charts. Have you ever been to Spain?"

  The doctor was popular with the women on his staff. In fact, an invitation to accompany him to an international conference on pathology was one of the prizes of the institute. He was admired, sometimes awe-inspiring, connected to the highest government elite, and all Ofelia could really say against him was that his lower lip, nested in his trim beard, was always wet. Somehow that was enough.

  "It sounds nice but I have to help take care of my mother."

  "Detective Osorio, I've asked you to two conferences now. Both important, both in fascinating places. You always say you have to take care of your mother."

  "She's so frail."

  "Well, I hope she gets well."

  "Thank you."

  "If you can't go, you can't go." Bias pushed aside the microscope and camera as if they were dinner gone cold. Ofelia's eyes, however, were fixed to the monitor, to a magnified terrain of warring blood cells where she saw a new answer.

  Chapter Nine

  There were more PNRs stationed on the Malecon than Arkady had expected. Taking the first street from the water, then avoiding a patrol car at the next corner, he found himself behind the block he had just left and at an alley with a flat-faced, vintage American Jeep in house-paint red. Behind it were two more Jeeps, green and white, each with new roll bars and upholstery. They shone under lamps strung out from a humming generator set inside open garage doors where a man in coveralls inspected an inner tube he held in a tub of water. He raised a white, amiable face and carried the tube to an air hose.

  "Needs air," he said in Russian.

  "I suppose so," Arkady said.

  Inside, under a caged bulb hanging on a cord, a Jeep sat on ramps over a mechanic working on his back. As the engine revved a rubber hose taped to the exhaust pipe funneled white smoke to the alley. There were other signs of the garage's makeshift nature, the lack of work pits and hydraulic lifts. An engine hung on chains from an I beam above garage disorder, tanks, tool cabinets, oilcans, ammeters, tires, tire lever and well, a folding chair behind a worktable of mallets, a board of car rings on hooks, vises and clamps and greasy rags everywhere, a beaded curtain marking off a personal area, and Arkady realized that he was directly below Pribluda's parlor. A boom box vied for volume next to the Jeep. Since the hood was open, Arkady could see a transplanted Lada engine resonating like a pea in a can. A knit cap, smudged face and dirty beard rolled out from under the car to study Arkady from an upside-down angle.

  "Russian?"

  "Yes. Everyone can tell?"

  "It's not so hard. Have an accident?"

  "Kind of."

  "In a car?"

  "No."

  The mechanic looked up at the object of his labor.

  "If you need a car you could do worse than this. A '48 Jeep. Try to get parts for a '48 Jeep. The best I can do is a Lada 2101. I had to eliminate the differential and adapt the brakes. It's just the seals and valves now that are driving me crazy." His eyes strained to watch something he was reaching for under the car. The engine raced and he winced.» What a shit rain." He rolled back under and shouted, "See any tape?"

  Arkady found wrenches, goggles, welding gauntlets, buckets of sand, but reported no tape.

  "Mongo isn't there?"

  "What is a Mongo?" Arkady wasn't sure he heard right because of the music.

  "Mongo is a black man in coveralls and a green baseball cap."

  "No Mongo."

  "Tico? Man working on a tire?"

  "He's there."

  "He's looking for a leak. He'll be looking all day." After what Arkady had to assume were strong words in Spanish the mechanic said, "Very well, we'll perform heart surgery by going in through the ass. Find me a hammer and a screwdriver and get a pan ready."

  Arkady handed him the tools.» You like Jeeps?"

  The mechanic rolled under the car.» I specialize in Jeeps. Other American cars are too heavy. You have to put in Volga engines and Volgas are hard to find. I like a tough little Jeep with a little Lada heart that goes takatakataka. Are you sure you don't want a car?"

  "No."

  "Don't be put off by appearances. This island is like a Court of Miracles, like in medieval Paris, where the lame could walk and the blind could see because all these cars are still running after fifty years. The reason is that the Cuban mechanic is, by necessity, the best in the world. Could you turn the radio up?"

  Unbelievably, the volume had another notch. Maybe this was a Cuban-made radio, Arkady thought. Meanwhile, the violent whacks from under the Jeep made his head throb.

  "So you sell cars?" Arkady shouted.

  "Yes and no. An old car from before the Revolution, yes. To buy a new car requires approval from the highest level, the very highest. The beauty of the system is that no car in Cuba is abandoned. It may look abandoned, but it's not." One more whack.» The pan, the pan, the pan!"

  Arkady heard a glutinous gush. In a single move, the mechanic swung the pan under the Jeep in his place and shot out on his cart, rolling across the floor until he backhanded a column of tires and swung to a stop and sat up, grinning. He was a robust specimen with the smirk of near disaster, and looked so much like a test pilot after an interesting landing that it took Arkady a moment to notice that the mechanic's coverall legs ended at leather pads at the knees. When he wiped his face and removed his cap his hair rose into a salt-and-pepper mane too unique for Arkady not to recognize the short man from Pribluda's photograph of the Havana Yacht Club, simply far shorter than Arkady had expected.

  "Erasmo Aleman," he introduced himself.» You're Sergei's friend?"

  "Yes."

  "I've been waiting for you."

  Erasmo pushed his cart with wooden blocks edged in tire tread to maneuver around his garage at full speed, washing at a cut-down sink, wiping his hands at a barrel of rags. The radio was down to half throat.

  "I saw a policewoman take you upstairs a couple of nights ago. You look … different."

  "Someone tried to teach me baseball."

  "It's not your sport." Erasmo's eyes went from the bruise on Arkady's cheek to the Band-Aid on his head.

  "Is this Sergei?" Arkady produced the snapshot of Pribluda with the Yacht Club.

  "Yes."

  "And?" Arkady pointed to the black fisherman.

  "Mongo," Erasmo said, as if it were self-evident.

  "And you."

  Erasmo admired the picture.» I look very handsome."

  "The Havana Yacht Club," Arkady read the back.

  "It was a joke. If we'd had a sailboat we would have called ourselves a navy. Anyway, I heard about
the body they found across the bay. Frankly, I don't think it's Sergei. He's too pigheaded and tough. I haven't seen him for weeks, but he could come back tomorrow with some story about driving into a pothole. There are potholes in Cuba you can see from the moon."

  "Do you know where his car is?"

  "No, but if it were around here I'd recognize it."

  Erasmo explained that diplomatic license plates were black on white and Pribluda's was 060 016; 060 for the Russian embassy and 016 for Pribluda's rank. Cuban plates were tan for state-owned cars, red for privately owned.

  "Let me put it this way," Erasmo said, "there are state-owned cars that will never move so that private cars can run. A Lada arrives here like a medical donor so that Willy's Jeeps will never die. Excuse me." He turned down a salsa that threatened to get out of hand.

  "The reason for the radio is so the police can say they don't hear me, because you're really not supposed to make a garage out of your apartment. Anyway, Tico likes it loud."

  Arkady thought he understood Erasmo, the type of engineer who labors happily below the deck of a sinking ship, lubricating the pistons, pumping out the water, somehow keeping the vessel moving while it settles in the waves.

  "Your neighbors don't complain about the noise?"

  "There's Sergei and a dancer in this building, both out all the time. On one side is a private restaurant, they don't want the police visiting because it costs them a free dinner at the least. On the other side lives a santero and the police certainly don't want to bother him. His apartment is like a nuclear missile silo of African spirits."

  "A santeror

  "As in Santeria."

  "He's a friend?"

  "On this island a santero is a good friend to have."

  Arkady studied the picture of the Havana Yacht Club. There still was some message in it that he didn't understand. If he was going to be beaten over the head he wanted to know why.

  "Who took the picture?"

  "Someone passing by. You know," Erasmo said, "the first time I met Sergei, Mongo and I saw him standing next to his car on the side of the road, smoke pouring from the hood. Nobody stops for anyone with Russian plates, but I have a weak spot for old comrades, no? Pues, we repaired the car, only a matter of a new clamp on a hose, and as we talked I discovered how little of Cuba this man had seen. Cane fields, tractors, combines, yes. But no music, no dancing, no fun. He was like the walking dead. Frankly, I thought I'd never see him again. The very next day, though, I was on First Avenue in Miramar and I was fishing with a kite."