“What do you think, my friend?” asked Manolo as he switched on the engine and the Count smoked the final remnants of the cigarette he’d not dared light at María Antonia’s.
“Drive to headquarters, we’ve got to talk to the Boss and see whether we can’t interview today the deputy minister responsible for the enterprise,” said the Count as he took one last look down the almost lugubrious passageway to the home which was Rafael Morín’s birthplace. “Why didn’t he find a way to get his mother a house?”
The car proceeded along the Avenue of October Tenth towards Agua Dulce, and Manolo accelerated down the hill.
“Just what I was thinking. Rafael Morín’s lifestyle and that homestead don’t fit.”
“Or are too good a fit, right? Now what we need to know is where he got to on the afternoon of the thirty-first, or find out if he really was at the enterprise and why he told Tamara he’d be here with his mother.”
“You’ll have to catch up with Morín or find a babalao to read the bones and clear the way, right?” the sergeant replied as he stopped the car at the traffic lights on the corner of Toyo. On the pavement opposite, the queue to get the vital Sunday bread ration was a block long. “Hey, Conde, Vilma lives just round that corner.”
“And how did you get on last night?”
“Just great, that girl’s a scorcher. You know, I’ll probably get married, the whole bit.”
“Uh-huh. You know, Manolo I’ve heard that one before, but I wasn’t asking you about Vilma and your sex life but about work, but just watch it. If you and your carryings on get you AIDS, I’ll visit you in hospital once a month and bring you some good novels.”
“What’s got in to you today, Maestro? You woke up as sharp as a razor.”
“Take it easy. Yes, I woke up really going for it. I’m up to here with Rafael Morín and when I heard his mother talking I felt sick, as if I’d done something wrong . . .”
“All right, but don’t take it out on me,” the sergeant protested, as if he felt hard done by. “Look, El Greco and Crespo have been looking for Zoilita all night, and we agreed they’d report to me at ten am, so they’ll be expecting me. I asked for a report on all missing persons over the last two years, and I’ll get that at eleven, and we can see if there’s another case like this or whatever, Conde, but all this is quite crazy.”
“When we get to headquarters, also phone the guy responsible for security at the enterprise and see if Rafael went there on the afternoon of the thirty-first. If it turns out he did, get him to arrange for us to see the person on duty.”
“All right. Can I tune into some music?”
“Where did you get that aerial from?”
“If you’ve got friends . . .” He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Switched on the car-radio and looked for a music programme. He tried two or three and finally plumped for “Oh, vida” sung by the pure voice of Benny Moré in a programme entirely devoted to his music.
“I think you’re exaggerating, Conde,” Manolo commented as they listened to “Hoy como ayer” and drove through the Plaza de la Revolución. “You may not like it but this is just another case, and you can’t spend your day going from one bad mood to another.”
“Manolo, my grandfather used to say ‘Born a donkey die a horse . . .’ That’s progress enough for me.”
“Lieutenant, the major says you should go to see him as soon as you get here. He’s up in his office,” said the duty officer, and the Count returned his salute.
On Sunday morning the peace and quiet in the street also permeated headquarters. All the routine cases, those which had gone on too long and didn’t look as if they’d ever be solved, those which followed normal procedures and were of no great import, were adjourned for the day, and the detectives disappeared and left headquarters eerily calm. Secretaries, office workers and researchers, identikit and forensic workers took the day off, and for twenty-four hours headquarters lost the stormy frenetic pace it had the rest of the week. Only those on permanent duty or engaged in urgent investigations were working in that building, which seemed bigger, darker and less human on Sunday mornings, when it was possible to hear the click of the dominoes with which the policemen condemned to guard duty attempted to relieve their boredom. Only the Boss had worked every Sunday for the last fifteen years: Major Rangel demanded that every thread in the fabrics being woven by his subordinates pass through his hands, and he followed the movement traced by each investigation with the passion of a man possessed, from Monday to Sunday. The Count knew that the warning from the duty officer was more than an order, it was a diktat from his chief, and he asked Manolo to look out the reports and expect him in the incubator in half an hour.
The peace in the building persuaded him he should wait for the lift. The lights indicated it was on its way down, fourth, third, second, and the door to the cage opened like the theatre curtain the Count always imagined, and he now practically collided with the man getting out.
“Maestro, weren’t you going to make Sunday a day of rest?”
Captain Jorrín smiled and slapped him on the shoulder.
“And what about yourself, Conde? You want to win a refrigerator?” he quipped as he took him by the arm and pulled him towards the Department of Information. The Count tried to explain the Boss was expecting him but told himself the major could wait.
“How’s your case going, Captain?”
“I think it’s going real well, Conde,” said Jorrín the veteran, almost smiling. “A witness has come forward who can probably identify one of the boy’s killers. We now know there were at least three and according to our witness they’re very young. We’re going to do the identikit portrait now.”
“You see, Maestro, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, right?”
“Yes, I know. But that doesn’t solve everything . . . Just imagine if we finally get our hands on the murderers, and they turn out to be under eighteen. Already murderers, just imagine. That’s the real problem. It’s not just a boy who’s been kicked to death, but the fact that there are three others who will end up inside for a good few years and they’ll never become the people they should have turned into. They’re killers.”
The Count studied the wrinkles furrowing Captain Jorrín’s face and felt his arm in the desperate grip of a man who’d spent half a life hunting criminals.
“At the start I thought we’d react like doctors,” he said, staring him in the eye. “That with time we’d get used to the blood.”
“No, I hope that never happens. These things must hurt, Count. And if one day they don’t, that’s the time to give up.”
“Good luck, Maestro,” he said, opposite the Department of Information, and rushed off towards the staircase.
Maruchi’s table was also enjoying the Sunday magic: it was completely clean, and apparently sad and abandoned, without the flower the young woman brought daily. When he was by the office door he heard the major’s voice, knocked softly and heard him say: “Come on in.”
The Boss sat behind his desk, in civilian dress, wearing a grey-and-white striped pullover that emphasized his handsome chest and showed off his muscular neck. The major’s eyes pointed him to a chair while he continued on the phone. He was talking to his daughter; something was amiss, “Don’t be upset, Mirna, after all . . . All right, yes, phone your mother and tell her I’ll pick her up to go and have lunch with you, a good idea.” He added “give the kid a kiss from me, right” and hung up. All that time he spoke in a warm charming tone, never grumbled, the most pleasant sample the Count had ever heard from his broad repertoire of voices.
“What a bloody mess,” rasped the major after retrieving the Davidoff 5000 he’d just lit. “Another one who’s gone missing: my son-in-law. But we know where he is. He’s gone off with a nineteen-year-old bimbo. And my stupid daughter still loves him. Can you believe it? That’s why I don’t think I’ll ever retire. You can have a thousand problems here, staff problems, calls from on high, cases that prompt them, but I
prefer this madhouse to being at home and having to sort out the hassles there. Do you know what Mirta, my other daughter, wants? You’ll never bloody imagine . . . She met an Austrian at university with hair down to here, who’s travelling the world saying there’s a hole in the ozone layer here and the sea’s being polluted there, and she says she’s going to marry him, that he’s the most sensitive man in the world and she’ll go anywhere to be with him. Do you know what that means? Well, I don’t even want to contemplate the prospect, but I can tell you one thing for nothing, Conde, she’ll not marry him. And now this business with my son-in-law.”
“I thought Austrians were an extinct species. Have you ever seen an Austrian?”
The major looked at his cigar.
“No, the truth is I’d never seen one before clapping my eyes on this fellow.”
The Count smiled, and although he wasn’t sure whether he should, he chanced his arm: “Look, just tell your daughters you have a lieutenant who’s available and single, a fine upstanding lad, with a good brain, who’s looking for a partner and better still if she’s the major’s daughter.”
“You know,” replied the Major, unsmiling, “that’s all I need . . . You know, it’s turned cold, hasn’t it?”
“Who told you to act the hero and wear only a pullover?”
“I left my coat in the car; I didn’t think it would be so bad. How’s your case going?”
“So, so.”
“Like how?”
“I don’t really know. We’ve got several leads, but only one going anywhere: we don’t know where Rafael Morín was on the afternoon and evening of the thirty-first. He told his wife he was going to his mother’s and his mother that he was going to the enterprise, and his secretary says the thirtieth was the last day they worked. We’re also investigating a woman he knew called Zoila and nobody knows where she’s been since the first. And the other lead is that it seems he was having an affair with his secretary.”
“And what if he lied so as to cover up what he was doing on the afternoon of the thirty-first because he was up to no good, and it’s got nothing to do with his disappearance?”
“Uh-huh. What I want to do is talk to deputy minister Alberto Fernández-Lorea. Today, if possible. I can’t get the party out of my head, and I need you to ring him.”
“You can ring him.”
“I’d prefer you to. Remember I’m only a sad policeman, as someone told me yesterday, and he’s a deputy minister.”
The major leaned back in his chair and began to rock. He puffed on his cigar and exhaled a blue curl of smoke. He was enjoying himself. Mario Conde, meanwhile, pulled one of the major’s telephones to his side of the desk and started to dial a number.
“Take this, the phone’s ringing in Fernández’s house,” he said and waved the phone. The major grunted and accepted the inevitable.
“I don’t think anybody’s there,” he retorted, and just as he was starting to put the phone down he stopped and said: “Yes, I can hear you, is that Comrade Fernández-Lorea’s house?” He got a positive response and then told him he was needed for questioning. “Yes, today if it’s no bother . . . Of course . . . In an hour’s time? That’s fine, see you then and many thanks. Lieutenant Mario Conde. Yes,” and hung up.
“Satisfied?”
“Pass my message on to your daughters,” said the Count, as he got up and straightened his pistol.
“Call me at home tonight and tell me what’s new,” the major demanded in a decidedly authoritarian tone. “Lots of luck,” he added and gazed once more at the wonderfully pure ash of his Davidoff.
The Count went down to his second-floor cubicle. Sergeant Manuel Palacios was waiting for him, seated in his chair behind his desk.
“No clues from the list of missing people, Conde. They’re all mad or geriatric, husband and wives who’ve done a bunk, youths hiding from their parents, children kidnapped by divorced parents and only one case in October of a woman forcibly abducted by an unrequited lover. And there’s only one case of disappearance that’s still open: a twenty-three-year-old who’s been missing from April of last year, although people suspect he employed primitive means to leave the island,” explained Manolo, and his voice and eyes looked bored. “I also spoke to the head of security at the enterprise, and luckily it was his wife who also works there who was on duty on the twelve to eight shift, and Rafael Morín didn’t pay a call, though René Maciques did.”
“Maciques, the friend . . . And Zoilita?”
“She’s another kettle of fish. From what Greco and Crespo found out, that girl is a tasty item and people like to get a lick. They still don’t know where she’s fucking holed up, for she gets around, is a real mover and is on file as a hooker, but no criminal record as yet. She’s just as likely to be on the arm of a Mexican as with a Bulgarian living in the block of flats for Soviet Bloc bureaucrats or spending a fortnight at the International in Varadero, but all her boyfriends have cars, money and good positions. You can imagine. And when she gets bored she makes china plates and other ornaments that aren’t at all bad. Nobody saw her the day she left, and nobody knows what she did for New Year’s Eve. She’s not checked in at any hotel, and her brother hasn’t the slightest idea where she might be.”
The Count listened to the tale of Zoilita’s goings on and thought he’d really like to talk to her. He stood up and walked over to the window.
“We must find her. I have a real hunch that nympho is up to something with Rafael Morín.”
“Should we put a search out for her?”
“Yes, dig her out from under the ground or the guy she’s with or wherever the fuck,” growled the Count, and he thought of Tamara again. Damn Tamara, he told himself and remembered that at some stage he should speak to Baby-Face Miki. He could see the pure blue sky from his window and finally told Manolo: “Go on, put a search out for her and see you downstairs. A deputy minister is expecting us to call.”
He lived on Seventh and Thirty-Eighth, in a threestorey building with a redbrick façade and big balconies that looked out on the boulevard. A path of flagstones embedded in the earth crossed the green sward of well-clipped lawn and led to an elegant building that was modern despite being thirty years old, and also somewhat humble in comparison to the surrounding mansions. The Count and Manolo silently climbed up the steps and rang the bell to the flat that occupied an entire second floor: the first high-pitched fanfare from Mendelssohn’s Wedding March rang out the other side of the door. Manolo laughed and shook his head.
“Do come in, please. I was expecting you,” said their host when he opened the door, and the Count thought: I know him. Alberto Fernández-Lorea was a man nearing fifty, but he still looked in good shape. I bet he doesn’t smoke and goes for runs in Martí Park, thought the Count who was trying to remember where he’d seen him before. The deputy minister’s athletic body, his lank abundant hair parted down the middle and the build of a man in his prime might have suggested Vargas Llosa’s Scribe on the crest of the wave, and that would have been spot on.
The deputy minister invited them to sit down and excused himself for a moment – “I’m sorry, if you don’t mind” – and walked over to the unpolished wood partition separating the living room from what was probably the kitchen-diner. It was a very large living room, perhaps disproportionately so, from what the Count could see of the flat, and he recalled how it was there Rafael Morín had danced and eaten, talked and laughed in what was probably his last public appearance. It was a splendid space, and through the balcony windows you could see the high branches of a leafless Royal Poinciana, and the Count thought how in summer the tree would be a joy to the eyes when orangey flowers bedecked every branch.
Fernández-Lorea came back, and the Count was quite sure his face was more than familiar, but where have I seen this guy before? He racked his brains: the extra information might be a bonus.
“Well, please feel free to start,” the deputy minister suggested, and his voice resounded several decibels above
what was necessary for such a meeting. He’d settled down in an armchair with plastic piping and rocked gently to and fro. “We’re all very worried about the whereabouts of Comrade Rafael Morín.”
The Count contemplated the man’s languid eyes and felt he could say nothing: he was thinking about how he should address him. Comrade Deputy Minister sounded hollow, officious and too smarmy; Fernández by itself, simply impersonal; Alberto, beyond the pale, an expression of nonexistent intimacy, and he wanted that exchange which had started so tentatively to be over and done with.
“Comrade Deputy Minister Fernández,” he said finally, and the very sound of those words made it feel like an exercise in self-flagellation, “you know, this is a very unusual case, disappearances as such hardly exist in Cuba so we’ve been forced to spread our net as wide as possible. For the moment, we’ve discounted the idea of a kidnapping or any illegal departure from the country . . .”
Havana Blue Page 11
