Havana World Series

by Jose Latour

  Bitterly, Fermín realized that his physical appearance could be restored, but that his manhood had dissolved in the shame of confession, in the cold sweat on his forehead whenever he recalled Talavera and the wide, high torture chair. The corporal had shown him in fifteen seconds how little he knew himself. He had been convinced he was tough and loyal, ready to die rather than double-cross his buddies. And today, his nails growing again, his money and prestige lost, he was getting ready for another act of treason, just to keep his nuts hanging down there. Feeling sure that he didn’t fear death was no consolation; a lesser threat could obviously break him wide open.

  Where was Wheel? Holed up, no doubt about it. But the dude loved his wife and kids too much. Any day now he’d risk a night visit to see them and the motherfuckers would collar him. What about Ox? No dame, no family, nothing. Nobody would find out his phone number; he’d jerk off if bedding a broad might jeopardize his freedom; to party he’d listen to music on the radio and swill a beer a night. Ox had always sneered at people who bragged about how tough or loyal they were. Ox had said once that human behavior couldn’t be predicted. How right he was! No, Ox wouldn’t go to the library this Friday or any other. Of course not. Then, how come he could not shake off this sense of doom?

  …

  At two o’clock sharp the alarm rang and Benigno Ureña opened his eyes. His wife had never grown used to his napping position—his interlaced fingers resting on his chest, like a corpse in a casket. Ureña placed his arms alongside his body and flexed both hands to restore his blood circulation as the clock’s spring wound down and the ringing decreased, then ceased. After a few seconds he lumbered off the bed, marched to the bathroom, and like all big-bellied men took a leak trying to judge the accuracy of the spout by ear. The sergeant flushed the toilet and went back to the bedroom. He dressed, combed his hair, sipped from the demitasse of freshly brewed espresso presented by his wife, then kissed her good-bye and left the rented house where he had resided for the past eight years.

  Behind the wheel of his already rare ’47 Kaiser Custom, Ureña squinted at the north wind, low clouds, and cold drizzle which were launching a gray attack on the city. He enjoyed the uncharacteristic gloomy weather with the same delight shared by most people getting 340 sunny days a year. Driving up Forty-second Street, he took in the pedestrians hurrying under umbrellas, raincoats, or newspapers, the brilliance of neon signs against the day’s opacity, his defective right windshield wiper. On Kohly Avenue his mind moved back to Contreras.

  He knew that every week the odds of Ox stopping by the library got better. On the seventeenth he would have bet a year’s wages against it; today he wouldn’t risk a month’s. The sergeant had seen many hardened, astute criminals flunk the isolation test. If the man hadn’t had the foresight to hop aboard something and get the hell out of his turf, he would come back to find out how things were going. Ureña wanted very much to collar Contreras and charge him with murder and theft, but if Ox was killed on the spot he would be accountable.

  Ureña had been a very mature twenty-one in 1933 when General Machado fell from power. Angry mobs had taken to the streets and avenged the countless murders committed by the dictator’s henchmen. One cruel torturer in particular had been dragged to his death in the streets, leaving a trail of blood and flesh on the cobblestones. The obese sergeant knew about the burgeoning revolution, suspected that the present dictatorship was near its end, and feared a new settlement of accounts. Not a good time to sully his reputation, the sergeant thought. He had to wangle his way out of this.

  At 2:36 P.M. Ureña pulled over to the curb at the corner of Twenty-fifth and Thirty-second Streets, and four minutes later he entered the Bureau’s squad room on the third floor. He swapped a few jokes with colleagues, made sure that both unmarked cars were ready, then informed Talavera and Brunet they would depart at four sharp. From his locker he picked up the prisoner’s clothes and a fine cigar, and then went down to the basement. Arrested men were held incommunicado in individual cells, excluded from due process by virtue of the suspension of constitutional rights. The jailer accompanied Ureña to the cell and opened the gate as the sergeant eyed the prisoner knowingly. Fermín followed the rule of standing up at the rear.

  “Here, Gallego, get dressed.”

  …

  In his cabin, Contreras watched the drizzle through the wooden window shutters, cocking an ear to the soft murmur it made as it fell on the surrounding foliage. The smell of wet earth wafted into the room. He awaited his first outing with anticipation tempered by concern. To reassure himself, with his left elbow he brushed the butt of the gun on his waist.

  After a last drag, he threw the stub out. He hadn’t made plans beyond seeing Fermín. Later he’d make up his mind, decide if it was safe to spend the night with Teresa, send out for fried rice and shrimp-filled wontons from the Segunda Estrella de Oro, maybe even visit an optometrist tomorrow morning. He also had a fantasy: cruising by the Capri in a taxi. The phone rang and he approached the bedside table where it stood. It was 3:02 P.M.

  “Hello.”

  “Your taxi is waiting, Señor Suárez.”

  “Be right over.”

  He followed the walkway, covering his head with a copy of that morning’s Diario de la Marina, and with long strides headed straight for the clinic’s entrance. With dyed hair, lacking a mustache, wearing a dark blue muslin suit over a white dress shirt, a sky-blue tie, and glittering black shoes, he looked in his mid-forties. The gardener, one of the antibatistianos who admired Contreras by virtue of Pedro’s unbridled imagination, watched him openmouthed.

  “Ain’t you gonna use your car, Señor Suárez?”

  “No, Felipe. The doctor prescribed me some pills and I’m not supposed to drive while on them.”

  “Ahh,” the good man said, trying to figure out whether he had been told a joke or a coded message.

  The ’54 Plymouth had ample space in the backseat, partly by design and partly because the driver was a very short Spaniard close to sixty who had to pull the front seat all the way forward to reach the pedals.

  Contreras asked to be taken to the corner of Galiano and San Rafael Streets, shot a backward glance, then reclined on the seat. The car left the neighborhood, took the right lane of 100th Street, and crept along twenty kilometers below the speed limit, which suited the passenger fine. As they turned onto Rancho Boyeros Avenue, Contreras relaxed and looked out the window, a rare pleasure for a man who nearly always drove. A traffic cop waited out the rain beneath the Mambo Club’s porch, his Harley-Davidson leaning left and looking sad, probably because her rider was sweet-talking a hooker. Near the fountain popularly known as Paulina’s bidet, after a president’s mistress, Contreras noticed for the first time the bubblelike skylights atop a sports complex.

  He recalled his amazement at the transformed Havana he’d found after nine years in the slammer. His line of business had demanded that he absorb all the changes before beginning operations. It took him a while to learn all he needed to know about modern locks, safes, and alarm systems; about the new generation of snitches, fences, dope dealers, freebooters, hoodlums, cops, motherfuckers, and cocksuckers. Leyland buses, painted white, had replaced trolley cars; there were new office buildings, stores, and cinemas. Self-service cafeterias were a novelty to him, as were cars with automatic transmission. Even bras were easier to unhook, for God’s sake! A whole new world for the same old fools.

  The Plymouth took Ayestarán Avenue. The suburban quietude became like a crazy symphony played by roaring buses and trucks, blaring radios and jukeboxes, a jet of steam escaping from a laundry’s boiler, peddlers crying out their wares, gurgling sewers, bawling schoolchildren getting a kick out of returning home under the rain, the continuous squelching of tires on the wet asphalt.

  He got out of the taxi in the heart of downtown Havana and entered Woolworth’s to mix with the crowd. Fifteen minutes later he was back on the sidewalk, where he hailed another taxi, asked to be taken to the interprov
incial bus terminal, then leaned back on the seat of the ’55 Ford. For five blocks it stopped raining, but as the vehicle took a right on Reina Street, a real torrent began. The number of pedestrians flagging down occupied cabs increased with each passing minute.

  The temperature had dropped a little by the time Contreras arrived at the bus terminal. He took a granite stairway to the second floor, crossed a long and wide waiting room, reached a wall parallel to 19 de Mayo Street. From an aluminum-and-glass window he peered at the National Library’s main entrance, almost three hundred yards away. He would need to use binoculars to identify people coming in and out the place, something impossible to do in the presence of fifty or sixty waiting passengers. Contreras chose a nearby wooden bench and spread out his wet newspaper to hide behind it and read.

  …

  At 4:06 P.M. two cars cruising 20 de Mayo Avenue turned left on a side street, coasted past the General Accounting Office, and parked on the huge esplanade that was Plaza Cívica, facing the José Martí Memorial. The two men in the ’58 Austin Cambridge debated something for half a minute, then the passenger got out. Wearing a raincoat over a rumpled suit, he crossed Rancho Boyeros Avenue to enter the National Library. Six minutes later the Austin’s driver did the same, under a newspaper.

  Inside a ’56 Studebaker, Sergeant Ureña and Fermín Rodríguez remained deep in thought as raindrops drummed on the car’s roof. The handcuffed Fermín had to use both hands to roll down the passenger’s window a little. Ureña imitated him. A cigar protruded from the handkerchief pocket of the prisoner’s jacket. The dashboard clock said 4:25 when Fermín asked a question.

  “Has it been raining long?”

  “Since one,” Ureña said. They talked weather for two or three minutes and concluded what most people—except weather forecasters—felt certain of: Winters had been colder when they were kids.

  Fermín also broke the next silence. “He won’t come.”

  “We’ll see. Here.”

  Ureña handed the bald man a matchbox. Fermín raised his hands, drew the cigar out, bit its end off, lit it, returned the matches. “Thanks.”

  He meant it. Cutting down from five or six cigars a day to one a week had been an ordeal. The only thing that made him look forward to Fridays was the damn cigar.

  “Well … let’s do it,” the sergeant said as he pocketed the matches. “I’ll take the cuffs off, you go in.”

  Fermín raised his eyes to the sky through the windshield. “I’ll get soaked.”

  “Nah. It’s a drizzle. Cover yourself with this newspaper. Walk fast, but don’t run, ’cause if the notion crosses my mind that you’re trying to get away, I’ll go for your legs. But I’m a lousy shot and might get you in the head. Anyway, I’ll get you—you can bet on it.”

  Under an umbrella lent to him by the desk sergeant, Ureña followed Fermín. With the cigar clenched between his teeth, the prisoner entered the library. Ureña slowed down, and at the building’s portal paused to let the umbrella drip away.

  “Look, Leticia, the bald midget,” Evelina whispered as she saw Fermín approaching the subject-matter wooden cabinets.

  “Something strange is going on,” Leticia said in the low tone demanded of reading room attendants. “They always come on Fridays, at the same hour. Neither is interested in what they pretend to read. They size up everyone and leave just like they came in, one by one.”

  “But … they don’t even glance at each other,” Evelina observed.

  “I know, I know. It’s so bizarre!”

  “It’s like a Hitchcock movie.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “What?”

  “Here comes the fat man.”

  …

  Mariano Contreras glanced at his watch and returned to page 8, but in fact his eyes remained glued over a headline as he figured out his next move. He waited three more minutes, until a female voice boomed over the loudspeakers announcing an immediate departure. Then he rose to his feet and left the place. Nine cabs waited in line; he chose the next to last, a ’54 green Chevy driven by a bespectacled man in his mid-forties.

  “Where to, sir?”

  “I’m meeting a lady. Let’s circle the library back there for a while. Then we’ll go to Hotel Presidente.”

  The man turned the ignition, a faint smile on his lips. Some dame playing the field, he figured. A headscarf would cover her head, big dark sunglasses her eyes, and she’d talk in whispers to her Don Juan. A perfect run with a nice fare and a juicy tip.

  A stream from a terrace drainpipe fell on the Chevy’s roof as it left the terminal’s covered entrance. The dashboard clock said 5:22 when the cabdriver took a left on Bruzón Street. The drizzle and the overcast sky made him turn on his city lights. He circled the library twice clockwise, as his passenger eyed the sidewalks closely. At the beginning of the third lap, Don Juan changed his mind.

  “Look, pardner. Take Independencia, go up the library’s ramp, and pull over. I’ll see if she’s inside, waiting for the rain to let up.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Here, take this couple of coconuts and wait for me,” Contreras said as he handed over two one-peso bills to the driver. “Sit tight, and your patience will be rewarded.”

  “Don’t worry, pal. I’ve been there. But today, to be frank, the weather is against you.”

  A few moments later the taxi went up the driveway and parked by the left curb. The cabbie turned off the lights, cut the ignition, pulled the emergency brake, then turned on the radio. Contreras followed the sidewalk and reached the building’s wide portal, where he shook and folded his newspaper. As though profoundly interested, he read the names of thirty-six continental patriots engraved on the deep red granite. Having read about Bolívar and Washington, he guessed the remaining names also belonged to illustrious founding fathers from North, Central, and South America. Pretending to be at a loss, he crossed the threshold and entered a huge circular lobby, where a thin, white-haired woman smiled encouragingly at him.

  “Can I be of assistance, sir?”

  Contreras shrugged his shoulders, smiled apologetically. “Well … no. The rain, you know? Just passing time.”

  “Have you visited us before?”

  “No.”

  “Come in, come in. Take a look while you wait for it to clear up.”

  Contreras returned her smile. Gripping the newspaper behind his back with both hands, turning his head frequently, he paced along the polished marble floor. Beyond the lobby, to the right, two elevator doors, one closed, the other wide open; an old man in a gray uniform inside the cage. The attendant nodded politely. Contreras nodded back, then looked left to a wide pink-marble stairway, its majesty ruined by aluminum handrails.

  He kept up his apparently distracted snail’s pace through a long hallway, glancing at the glass cabinets in which sat rare editions, approaching the gray marble counters, the one to the right devoted to periodicals, the other to books. He greeted Evelina and Leticia with a smile and stepped up to the huge mahogany cabinets storing the library’s collection by subject, author, and title. Craftsmen had done a remarkable job. There were 140 drawers on each side. He pulled one out; it slid smoothly. Several hundred cards, perforated at the bottom, were held in place by a bronze rod. Contreras raised his eyebrows, tilted his head, curved his lips in admiration, then closed the drawer. He edged his way forward to the left reading room, the spot Gallego had suggested.

  “That guy, twenty years ago …,” Leticia intimated, a subtle, sultry nuance in her voice.

  Evelina inclined her head in agreement. “Yeah, and you were five and I was seven then.”

  Contreras heard a gust of rain hitting the tightly shut horizontal panes of aluminum windows. Above them, through glass windows, a virtually black sky could be seen. Long fluorescent lamps were spaced out evenly along the ceiling’s acoustical tile. He lowered his gaze to the reference section. Large shelves housing encyclopedias, dictionaries, yearbooks, and legislative summaries served as movable pa
rtitions that formed a rectangle where four unoccupied reading tables stood. With his next two steps Contreras reached the forty-by-fourteen-yard reading room. Fifteen tables formed three lines at its center; six writing desks lined each side. It was 5:40 P.M.

  Fermín was reading something at a central-line table, a cigar stump between the fingers of his right hand. Contreras’s peripheral vision registered and dismissed six or seven bookworms; he took a step forward to simulate a casual encounter. Out of the corner of his eye, he sensed movement to his right. At the end of the reading room a fat man jerked to his feet and stared at the newcomer. Contreras was taking a second step when his brain compared the rotund face with stored images and immediately flashed a warning to every organ, nerve, and muscle. His suprarenal glands began to operate in emergency mode.

  Contreras’s right hand flew to his waist; the newspaper fell to the floor. The last time he had seen Benigno Ureña lit up his mind’s eye: two or three years earlier, as their cars waited out a red light. The sergeant hadn’t seen him, perhaps lost in thought on how to collar somebody, or just dog-tired, but Contreras had committed his profile to memory. He was heavier now, had a receding hairline, an indifferent expression on his face. The sergeant stood motionless, staring at him wide-eyed, empty hands at his sides. Contreras was drawing the Colt to shoot him, hesitating if he ought to, when Fermín jumped from his seat, shouting and pointing.

  “CUIDADO!”

  Contreras turned left, raising his weapon. A smiling thin man was forcing back the slide of an automatic. Contreras pulled the trigger. The bullet ricocheted off an aluminum molding. Talavera lost a fraction of a second while instinctively dodging. The corporal lifted his gun again, and a frantic Contreras fired three more shots. The first two slugs ended up embedded in books on a shelf, but the third pierced the lower part of the torturer’s windpipe, snapped the seventh cervical vertebra and the spinal cord, then exited through the upper back, making a hole the size of a lemon. Talavera’s smile remained in place as he fell, staring vacantly, his legs feebly kicking.