by Philip Kerr
“That’s going to take a lot more time than might seem reasonable.” She shrugged. “You’d better show them in anyway.”
I went back up on deck and nodded them below.
They shuffled in through the cabin door, their faces pink with embarrassment when they saw Melba still in bed, and if I hadn’t been enjoying that, I might not have noticed the NCO lay his eyes on her and then lay them on her again, only the second time wasn’t for the obvious reason, that she belonged in a picture on a bulkhead above his hammock. These two had met before. I was sure of that and so was he, and when the Amis came back to the wheelhouse, the NCO drew his officer aside and said something quietly.
When their conversation became a little more urgent, I might have got involved but for the fact that the officer unbuttoned the holster of his sidearm, which prompted me to go to the stern and sit in the fisherman’s chair. I think I even smiled at the man on the fifty-caliber, only the fisherman’s chair looked and felt too much like an electric chair for my liking, so I moved again and sat down on the icebox, which had room for two thousand pounds of ice. I was trying to appear cool. If there had been any fish or any ice in the box, I might even have climbed in beside them. Instead, I took another bite from the bottle and did my best to keep a grip on the thin line holding my nerves. But it wasn’t working. The Amis had a hook in my mouth, and I felt like jumping thirty feet into the air just to try and get it out.
When the officer came back to the stern he was carrying a Colt .45 automatic in his hand. It was cocked, too. It wasn’t pointed at me yet. It was just there to help make a point: that there was no room on the boat for negotiation.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you both to accompany me back to Guantánamo, sir,” he said politely, almost as if there wasn’t a gun in his hand at all and like a true American.
I nodded slowly. “May I ask why?”
“It will all be explained when we get to Gitmo,” he said.
“If you really think it’s necessary.”
He waved two sailors to come aboard my boat, and it was just as well he did, because both of them were between me and the machine gun when we heard a pistol shot from the forward compartment. I jumped up and then thought better of jumping any more.
“Watch him,” yelled the officer, and went below to investigate, leaving me with two Colts pointed at my belly and the fifty-caliber pointed at my earlobe. I sat down again on the fisherman’s chair, which creaked like a chain saw as I leaned all the way back and stared up at the stars. You didn’t need to be Madame Blavatsky to see that they weren’t looking good. Not for Melba. And probably not for me.
As things turned out, the stars weren’t good for the American NCO either. He staggered up on deck looking like the ace of diamonds, or perhaps the ace of hearts. In the center of his white shirt was a small red stain that grew larger the longer you looked at it. For a moment he swayed drunkenly, and then dropped heavily onto his backside. In a way he looked the way I was feeling now.
“I’m shot,” he said redundantly.
2
CUBA, 1954
It was several hours later. The shot sailor had been taken to a hospital in Guantánamo, Melba was cooling her high heels in a prison cell, and I had told my story, twice. I had two headaches, and only one of them was in my skull. There were three of us in a humid office in the building of the U.S. Navy masters-at-arms. Masters-at-arms were what the U.S. Navy called the sailors who specialized in law enforcement and correctional custody. Policemen in sailor suits. The three who’d been listening to my story didn’t seem to like it any better the second time. They shifted their largish backsides on their inadequate chairs, picked tiny bits of thread and fluff from their immaculate white uniforms, and stared at their reflections in the toecaps of their shiny black shoes. It was like being interrogated by a union meeting of hospital porters.
The building was quiet except for the hum of the fluorescent lighting on the ceiling and the noise of a typewriter that was the size and color of the USS Missouri; and every time I answered a question and the Navy cop hit the keys on that thing, it was like the sound of someone—me probably—having his hair cut with a large pair of very sharp scissors.
Outside a small grilled window, the new day was coming up over the blue horizon like a trail of blood. This hardly augured well, since, not unreasonably, it was already clear that the Amis suspected me of a much closer acquaintance with Melba Marrero and her crimes—plural—than I’d admitted. Clearly, since I wasn’t an American myself, and smelled strongly of rum, they found this relatively easy.
On a light blue Formica table covered with coffee-colored cigarette burns lay a number of files and a couple of guns wearing tags on their trigger guards as if they might have been for sale. One of them was the little Beretta pocket pistol Melba had used to shoot the petty officer, third class; and the other was a Colt automatic stolen from him several months earlier and used to murder Captain Balart outside the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana. Alongside the files and the pistols was my blue and gold Argentinean passport, and from time to time the Navy cop in charge of my interrogation would pick this up and leaf through the pages as if he couldn’t quite believe that anyone could go through life being the citizen of a country that wasn’t the United States. His name was Captain Mackay, and as well as his questions there was his breath to contend with. Every time he pushed his squashed, bespectacled face toward mine I was enveloped in the sour aura of his tooth decay, and after a while I started to feel like something chewed up but only half digested deep inside his Yankee bowels.
Mackay said with ill-disguised contempt, “This story of yours, that you never met her until a couple of days ago, it makes no sense. No sense at all. You say she was a chica you were involved with; that you asked her to come away on your boat for a few weeks, and that this accounts for the considerable sum of money you had with you.”
“That’s correct.”
“And yet you say you know almost nothing about her.”
“At my age, it’s best not to ask too many questions when a pretty girl agrees to come away with you.”
Mackay smiled thinly. He was about thirty, too young to find much sympathy for an older man’s interest in younger women. There was a wedding band on his fat finger, and I imagined some wholesome girl with a permanent wave and a mixing bowl under her chubby arm waiting for him back home in some Erector Set government housing on a bleak naval base.
“Shall I tell you what I think? I think you were headed for the Dominican Republic to buy guns for the rebels. The boat, the money, the girl, it all adds up.”
“Oh, I can see you like the addition, Captain. But I’m a respectable businessman. I’m quite well-off. I have a nice apartment in Havana. A job at a hotel casino. I’m hardly the type to work for the communists. And the girl? She’s just a chica.”
“Maybe. But she murdered a Cuban policeman. Very nearly murdered one of mine.”
“Perhaps. But did you see me shoot anyone? I didn’t even raise my voice. In my business, girls—girls like Melba—they’re one of the fringe benefits. What they get up to in their spare time is—” I paused for a moment, searching for the best phrase in English. “Hardly my affair.”
“It is when she shoots an American on your boat.”
“I didn’t even know she had a gun. If I’d known that, I would have thrown it over the side. And maybe her, too. And if I had any idea that she was suspected of murdering a policeman, I would never have invited Senõrita Marrero to come away with me.”
“Let me tell you something about your girlfriend, Mr. Hausner.” Mackay stifled a belch, but not nearly enough for my comfort. He took off his glasses and breathed on them, and somehow they didn’t crack. “Her real name is María Antonia Tapanes, and she was a prostitute at a casa in Caimanera, which is how she came to steal a sidearm belonging Petty Officer Marcus. That’s why he recognized her when he saw her on your boat. We strongly suspect she was put up to the assassination of Captain Ba
lart by the rebels. In fact, we’re more or less sure of it.”
“I find that very hard to believe. She never once mentioned politics to me. She seemed more interested in having a good time than in having a revolution.”
The captain opened one of the files in front of him and pushed it toward me.
“It’s more or less certain your little lady friend has been a communist and a rebel for quite a while now. You see, María Antonia Tapanes spent three months in the National Women’s Prison at Guanajay for her part in the Easter Sunday conspiracy of April 1953. Then, in July of last year, her brother Juan Tapanes was killed in the assault on Moncada Barracks led by Fidel Castro. Killed or executed, it’s not clear which. When María got out of prison and found her brother dead, she went to Caimanera and worked as a chica to get herself a weapon. That happens a lot. To be honest, quite a few of our men use their weapons as currency for buying sex. Then they just report the weapon stolen. Anyway, the next time the weapon turns up it’s been used to kill Captain Balart. There were witnesses, too. A woman answering María Tapanes’s description shot him in the face. And then in the back of the head as he lay on the ground. Maybe he had it coming. Who knows? Who cares? What I do know is that P.O. Marcus is lucky to be alive. If she’d used the Colt instead of that little Beretta, he’d be as dead as Captain Balart.”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“He’ll live.”
“What will happen to her?”
“We’ll have to hand her over to the police in Havana.”
“I imagine that’s what she was worried about in the first place. Why she shot the petty officer. She must have panicked. You know what they’ll do to her, don’t you?”
“That’s not my concern.”
“Maybe it should be. Maybe that’s the problem you’ve got in Cuba. Maybe if you Americans paid a little more attention to the kind of people who are running this country—”
“Maybe you ought to be a little more concerned about what happens to you.”
This was the other officer who spoke now. I hadn’t been told his name. All I knew about him was that dandruff fell off the back of his head whenever he scratched it. All in all, he had rather a lot of dandruff. Even his eyelashes had tiny flakes of skin in them.
“Just suppose I’m not,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“Come again?” The man with the dandruff stopped scratching his head and inspected his fingernails before beaming a frown in my direction.
“We’ve been over this all night,” I said. “You keep asking me the same questions and I keep giving you the same answers. I’ve told you my story. But you say you don’t believe it. And that’s fair enough. I can see the holes in it. You’re bored with it. I’m bored with it. We’re all bored with it, only I’m not about to cash my story in for another. What would be the point? If it sounded any better than the original, I’d have used it in the first place. So the fact now remains that I can’t see any point in telling you another. And since I don’t care to do that, then you’d be forgiven for thinking that I don’t really care whether or not you believe me, because it seems to me there’s nothing I can do that’ll convince you. One way or another, you’ve already made up your minds. That’s the way it is with cops. Believe me, I know, I used to be a cop myself. And since I no longer care whether or not you believe me, then it would be entirely fair for you to conclude that I don’t seem to give a damn what happens to me. Well, maybe I do and maybe I don’t, but that’s for me to know and you to decide for yourselves, gentlemen.”
The cop with the dandruff scratched some more, which made the room look like a snow scene in a little glass ball. He said, “You talk a lot, mister, for someone who doesn’t say very much.”
“True, but it helps to keep the brass knuckles off my face.”
“I doubt that,” said Captain Mackay. “I doubt that very much.”
“I know. I’m not so pretty anymore. Only, that ought to make it easier for you to believe me. You’ve seen that girl. She was every sailor’s hard-on. I was grateful. What’s the expression you have in English? ‘You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’? And if it comes to that, then neither should you, Captain. You’ve got nothing on me and plenty on her. You know she shot the petty officer. It’s obvious. And it only starts to get complicated when you try to tie me in to some kind of rebel conspiracy. Me? I was looking forward to a nice vacation with lots of sex. I had plenty of money with me, because I was planning to buy myself a bigger boat, and there’s no law against that. Like I already told you, I have a good job. At the National Hotel. I have a nice apartment on the Malecón, in Havana. I drive a newish Chevy. Now, why would I give all that up for Karl Marx and Fidel Castro? You tell me that Melba, or María, or whatever her name is, that she’s a communist. I didn’t know that. Maybe I should have asked her, only I prefer talking dirty when I’m in bed, not politics. She wants to go around shooting cops and American sailors, then I say she should go to jail.”
“Not very gallant of you,” said Captain Mackay.
“Gallant? What does it mean—‘gallant’?”
“Chivalrous.” The captain shrugged. “Gentlemanly.”
“Ah, cortés. Caballeroso. Yes, I see.” I shrugged back at him. “And how would that sound, I wonder. She was only trying to protect me? Give her a break, Captain, she’s just a kid? The girl had a tough childhood? All right. If it makes any difference, you know, I really think the girl was scared. Like I already said, you know what will happen when you hand her over to the local law. If she’s lucky, they’ll let her keep her clothes on when they parade her around the police cells. And maybe they’ll beat her with an ox-dick whip only every other day. But I doubt it.”
“You don’t sound too upset about it,” said the cop with dandruff.
“I’ll certainly pray for her. Maybe I’ll even pay for a lawyer. Experience informs me that paying is more useful than praying. The Lord and I don’t get on the way we used to.”
The captain sneered.
“I don’t like you, Hausner. The next time I speak to the Lord, I’m just liable to congratulate him on his good taste. You’ve got a job at the National Hotel? Fuck you. I never liked that damned hotel either. You’ve got a nice apartment on Malecón? I hope a hurricane comes and wipes it out, you Argentine cocksucker. You don’t care what happens to you? Neither do I, pal. To me you’re just another South American greaseball with a smart mouth. You can’t think of a better story? Then you’re dumber than you look. You used to be a cop yourself? I don’t want to know, you piece of shit. All I want to hear from you is an explanation for how it is that you were helping a murderer escape from this miserable fucking island you call home. Did someone ask you a favor? If they did, I want a name. Someone introduced you? I want a fucking name. You picked her off the sidewalk? Give me the name of the damned street, you asshole. It’s talk or lock, pal. Talk or lock. We went fishing tonight and we caught you, Hausner. And I get to toss you in my ice locker unless you tell me everything I want to know. Talk or lock and I throw away the fucking key until I’m satisfied there’s no information left in your lying body that you haven’t puked onto the goddamn floor. The truth? I don’t give a shit. You want to walk out of here? Give me some plain, straightforward facts.”
I nodded. “Here’s one for you. Penguins live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Is that plain enough?”
I pushed the chair back on two legs, which was my first mistake, and smiled, which was my second. The Navy captain was surprisingly quick on his feet. One moment he was staring at me like I was a snake in a bassinet, the next he was yelling as if he’d hammered his own thumb, and before I could wipe the smile from my face, he’d done it for me, kicking the chair away and then grabbing the lapels of my jacket and lifting my head off the floor only so that he could punch it back down again.
The other two each caught one of his arms and tried to pull him off, but that left his legs free to stamp on my face like someone trying to put out a
fire. Not that this hurt. He had a right as big as a medicine ball, and I wasn’t feeling anything very much since it had connected with my chin. Humming like an electric eel, I lay there waiting for him to stop so that I could show him who was really in charge of the interrogation. By the time they got a ring in his pointy nose and hauled him off, I was just about ready for my next wisecrack. I might have made it, too, but for the blood that was pouring out of my nose.
When I was absolutely sure no one was about to knock me down again, I got off the floor and told myself that when they hit me again it would be because I had truly earned a beating and that it would have been worth it.
“Being a cop,” I said, “is a lot like looking for something interesting to read in the newspaper. By the time you’ve found it, you can bet there’s a lot that’s rubbed off on your fingers. Before the war, the last war, I was a cop in Germany. An honest cop, too, although I guess that won’t mean much to apes like you. Plainclothes. A detective. But when we invaded Poland and Russia they put us in gray uniforms. Not green, not black, not brown, gray. Field Gray, they called it. The thing about gray is you can roll around in the dirt all day and still look smart enough to return a general’s salute. That’s one reason we wore it. Another reason we wore gray was maybe so that we could do what we did and still think we had standards—so that we could manage to look ourselves in the eye when we got up in the morning. That was the theory. I know, stupid, wasn’t it? But no Nazi was ever so stupid as to ask us to wear a white uniform. You know why? Because a white uniform is hard to keep clean, isn’t it? I mean, I admire your courage wearing white. Because let’s face it, gentlemen, white shows everything. Especially blood. And the way you conduct yourselves? That’s a big disadvantage.”
