"Maybe you're a little hard on yourself."
"If I were hard on myself, I'd cut my throat."
"Don't do that."
"Why not?"
"I've noticed that few people are good at cutting their own throat."
"Interesting. A Cuban man would have said, 'Oh, but it's such a pretty throat.' Everything with them leads to sex, even suicide. That's why I like Russians, because with them suicide is suicide."
"Our talent."
Isabel looked thoughtfully aside. She had the emaciated allure of a Picasso, he thought. Blue Period. Wonderful, the two most depressed people in the house had connected like magnets. He caught Walls's anxious glances in their direction. At the same time he noticed that Luna remained by the door.
"How long are you going to be in Havana?" Isabel asked.
"A week, then back to Moscow."
"Is it snowing there now?" She rubbed her arms as if imagining them cool.
"I'm sure it is. Your Russian is extraordinarily good."
"Yes? Well, in my family Moscow was like Rome to Catholics, and, before the Special Period, to speak Russian was useful. Are you a spy like Sergei?"
"It seems to have been a great secret. No."
"Claro, he isn't a very good spy. He says if they needed a good agent in Havana they never would have sent him. He was going to help me get to Moscow and from there, of course, I could go anywhere. Maybe you can help me." She scribbled an address on a piece of paper and gave it to him. "We will talk tomorrow morning. Can you come just at that time?"
Before Arkady could beg off, Walls joined them. "You're missing everything," he told Isabel.
"I wish I could," she said. "We were talking about Sergei."
"Were you?" he asked Arkady. "Where is the good comrade?"
"A good question."
Shouts erupted in the living room, and a moment later Hedy rushed past them through the hall. The santero and the Canadian followed.
"Oh, no," Walls said. " I didn't mean this real."
"What do you mean?" Arkady asked.
"She's possessed."
Isabel was unfazed. "It happens all the time. This whole island is possessed."
The backyard was dark, but Hedy had kicked over the soup cauldron and spun on the coals as sparks nested in her hair. She swung out of the fire, her spandex dulled by ashes, golden hair pulled into tufts, while the santero ran after, trying to pull something invisible from her body. The Canadian looked ready to retreat to someplace tame and far away. As Luna burst into the yard the santero spread his arms helplessly and put Hedy between himself and Luna.
Erasmo squeezed his chair through and told Arkady, "Luna says he is going to kill the santero if he doesn't get the spirit out of Hedy. The santero says he can't."
"Maybe he should try again." Arkady saw the ice pick in Luna's hand.
As Luna yanked Hedy aside, her halter strap broke and one breast spilled out like a loose eye. Luna seized the santero by the neck and bent him belly-up between the trees. The Canadian bolted through the crowd as it poured into the yard and pushed Arkady forward. No one else moved except Abuelita, who shoveled her hands into the fire, rose to her toes and poured a bright stream of live coals over Luna's back. As Luna wheeled on her Arkady caught the sergeant's wrist, which was like grabbing the iron wheel of a locomotive, bent it back and up in the "come along" grip as taught to the Moscow militia and ran Luna headfirst into the wall. Luna bounced off, leaving a pink imprint on the cement. Blood ruby-spotted his white shoes.
Arkady decided he had not swung the sergeant hard enough.
"Now you're fucked de verdad." Luna wasn't even breathing hard, he'd barely started.
"Parate." A small woman with a needle-sharp voice stepped in between. Since she was in a skimpy top and shorts and not a PNR uniform, it took Arkady a moment to recognize his new colleague, Detective Osorio. Where she had come from and how long she had been taking in the scene with her grim little gaze he didn't know. A straw bag hung from one hand and in the other was a Makarov 9-mm. He recognized the gun right away. She didn't raise it or aim it, but it was there. Luna recognized the gun, too. He lifted his hands to signify not surrender or shyness but an awareness of growing complications, his own duties as an officer, and that he was done only for the time being.
"Truly fucked," Luna told Arkady on his way out.
"You okay?" Walls asked Arkady. "I'm sorry about this. Typical Cuban party. Too many spirits in one place. Now you'll have to excuse me, my investor has a head start."
Abuelita dusted ashes from her palms. In the middle of the yard Hedy looked down at her torn halter and the dirt on her shiny shorts and burst into tears. Arkady went into the house to look for Mongo and the drummers, but they had all left. Osorio followed him with an expression that said fools were multiplying.
Chapter Ten
* * *
While he and Osorio put Erasmo to bed Arkady looked around at what the mechanic afforded himself for living quarters: a small space enlarged by the fact that his cot, counter, table and chairs were all cut to half height. On a pillow of gold African cloth was a collection of military medals and campaign ribbons. The photographs on the wall reflected more glory than Erasmo had let on. A hospital-bed scene of Erasmo being visited by two men in military fatigues – a tall, swarthy man in aviator glasses who would have passed as Armenian in Russia, the other older with a full gray beard and wiry brows, unique and unmistakable, the Comandante himself. Neither man wore officer's insignia on his cap or shoulders; this was, after all, an egalitarian army. Castro was as puffed with pride as a father. The second visitor seemed to focus more ruefully on Erasmo's shortness of limb.
"The Cuban general in Angola," Osorio said.
Another picture showed the same distinguished friends on the deck of a fishing boat, this time with Erasmo strapped into the fighting chair. Family pictures displayed friendly, affluent men and women at swimming pools, bridge tables, dancing. Or children on baseball fields, bicycles, ponies. And the entire family in formal suits and ballroom gowns at champagne receptions and Christmas parties. In one wide photomontage they and hundreds more like them spread up and down the grand double stairway of a white mansion.
"He'll sleep a long time," Osorio said.
" 'Unconscious' is the word."
Just as Luna had been the last man Arkady wanted to encounter, the last place he'd expected to see again was Pribluda's apartment, but at Osorio's insistence he climbed the steps with her. Although he thought he had tidied up fairly well, as soon as he turned on the light the detective noticed a difference.
"Dried blood on the carpet. What happened here?"
"You don't know? You work with Luna and Arcos."
"Only for this case because Russians are involved."
"You weren't surprised to see the sergeant come after me with an ice pick?"
"All I saw was you throwing him into a wall."
"It's a tense relationship. After all, he did beat me with a baseball bat. I think it was a baseball bat, he said it was."
"He hit you?"
"You know nothing about that?"
"This is a serious charge."
"Other places, not here. Here, my experience is, not much is investigated."
"As a matter of fact," Osorio said, "I did ask your friend, Erasmo, before he passed out, what happened to you. He said you told him you fell down the stairs." See, Arkady thought, that was the penalty of ever telling less than the truth. Osorio's eye fell on the empty corner chair. "What did you do with Chango?"
"What did I do with Chango?" Arkady asked. "The doll? Only in Cuba would this question come up. I don't know. Either Luna took him or Chango left on his own. How did you find me?"
"I was looking for you. You weren't here, so I followed the drums."
"Naturally." Arkady touched the cut on his hairline to feel if it had split open.
Osorio set her bag on the parlor table. " Let me see your head. You cleaned up all the other evidence of
this so-called attack."
"Detective, I've been here three days and I've seen the PNR excuse itself from two violent deaths. I don't think you're going to investigate mere assault."
She pulled his head down, brusquely turned it one way and then the other and ran her fingers over his scalp. "What do you claim Luna said?"
"The sergeant mentioned that he'd prefer I stayed off the street."
"Well, you didn't."
He winced as she parted the hair around a cut. "I didn't get far."
"What else?"
"Nothing." Arkady wasn't about to strip and show her the bruises on his back and legs and he wasn't going to hand over the Yacht Club picture so it could be delivered straight to the sergeant. That he still had it was the luck of tossing his passport with the picture inside a shoe.
Osorio released his head. "You should see a doctor."
"Thanks, that's helpful."
"Don't be insulting. Listen, I'm only saying that since there's no evidence here that you haven't compromised and your story has changed already once and since officers of the Ministry of the Interior do not beat visitors from other countries, even from Russia, another explanation is more likely. Considering the blows you took to your head, you may not be responsible for what you say."
He wondered why Osorio had insisted on coming to the apartment. He also wondered why she was dressed like a vamp with platform shoes and carrying a big straw bag. " Detective, what are you here for?"
"Because I want you to go home alive."
While he tried to come up with an answer to that the lights in the room faded and went dark. He stepped out to the balcony and saw that the problem wasn't only in the apartment; an entire arc of buildings along the Malecón had gone black.
Arkady fed Pribluda's turtle by the illumination of Rufo's lighter and then lit a cigarette and inhaled wonderful, pain-soothing fumes. Osorio sat in the dark at the table.
"A power outage," Osorio said.
"I know the feeling."
"You should stop smoking."
"That's my biggest problem?" He found candles above the sink, lit the fattest one and joined the detective.
"Besides Sergeant Luna and your friend downstairs, who else did you know at the santero's?"
"No one," Arkady said. " I'd heard of Walls."
"Everyone in Cuba knows George Washington Walls."
"Luna arranged the show for him. I think Luna's going to arrange a show for me. You may not be safe here." Arkady had not intended to stay in the flat himself. She reached into her bag and laid out a Makarov 9-mm, the same police issue as in Moscow. " Would you have used that on Luna?"
"He knows I have the bullets. The patrolmen you see on the street, they have guns but they don't have bullets."
"There's a comfort." He saw her lay a toiletry kit by the gun. "What is that for?"
"I'm staying the night."
"I appreciate the gesture, Detective, but you must have some place to be. A home, a family, a beloved pet."
"Are you offended to have a woman protect you? Is that it? Do Russians suffer from machismo?"
"Not me. But why do it if you don't believe me about Luna?"
"Luna is not the one I worry about. Dr. Blas examined the syringe that you say Rufo attacked you with. The doctor wasn't supposed to, but he did, to look for signs of drugs."
"Were there?"
"No, only blood and brain tissue of Rufo's and traces of a different blood type altogether."
"Maybe he stabbed someone else."
"Did he? Where did Rufo get the syringe?"
"Dr. Blas said he stole it at the institute."
"Yes, that's what the doctor said. I have a different answer. Wasn't that Rufo's lighter you used?"
"Yes, I suppose it is."
"Light it."
He did as she asked and the flame became a resonating circle between them. Osorio reached into the light and pushed his coat and shirt sleeve up his forearm to show two dark bruises on the artery.
"That's why I came back."
Arkady regarded the marks with the expression of a man surprised to find himself tattooed.
"Rufo must have scratched me when we were struggling."
She ran her finger lightly along the vein. " These are punctures, not scratches. Why did you come to Havana?"
"I was asked, remember?"
He blew out the flame, but he felt her eyes still intent on him. He no longer knew why he had answered a summons he could have easily ignored, but exhuming the reason was more than he cared to do for the Policía Nacional de la Revolución. All the same, control of the situation had clearly passed to the hands of the detective.
Because of the heat they camped on the balcony in metal chairs. Streetlamps were still lit, and the balcony was a vantage point to see Luna if he returned on the ocean side of the Malecón. Osorio seemed to have a different concern, following Arkady's every move, as if he might suddenly execute a dive to the pavement. Perhaps candy-colored top and shorts were jinetera fashion – she'd given him a brief account of the surveillance – but as they only accentuated how fine-boned she was, with hair in rows of black curls and her eyes set under extravagant lashes, it was like being tended by a child. Why he was with her rather than pounding at the door of the Russian embassy for asylum he didn't know.
A wave collapsed along the wall, and he wondered whether the fishing lights farther out rode ebb or flow. He couldn't see the village of Casablanca across the bay, but the lighthouse cast and retrieved its beam. Osorio nudged him and he saw sitting on the seawall the girl who had been possessed at the santero's. Hedy appeared freshly cleaned and shined and had engaged the attention of a late-night stroller wearing the elegantly blousy shirt of a European male on vacation.
"Italian is the official language of jineteras." Ofelia had dropped her voice.
"So I've heard. It's Hedy, the girl from the santero's. At least she's on her feet again."
"Not for long." Osorio laid down the words like a bet.
There were times when Arkady thought Osorio spoke with the satisfaction of a hangman. "So, just what happened to her? She was possessed but the santero couldn't help her?"
"The drummers were Abakua."
"So?"
"Abakua is from the Congo and she was possessed by a Congo spirit. Santeros don't deal with Congo spirits."
"Is that so? That sounds awfully... departmental."
Osorio narrowed her eyes on him. "We can believe in Santeria, Palo Monte, Abakua or Catholic. Or any combination. You think that's impossible?"
"No. It's amazing the things I believe in: evolution, gamma rays, vitamins, the poetry of Akhmatova, the speed of light. Most of which I take on faith."
"What did Pribluda believe in?"
Arkady thought for a moment because he liked the question. " He was hard as a barrel and did a hundred sit-ups every day, but he thought the key to health was garlic, black tea and Bulgarian tobacco. He distrusted redheads and people who were left-handed. He liked long train trips so he could wear pajamas day and night. He never picked a bad mushroom. He still called Lenin 'Ilyich.' He warned you never to say the devil's name because he might come. In the bathhouse he washed first, then steamed, which is more polite. He said vodka was water for the soul."
Hedy and her new friend walked out of view. Osorio stretched her feet out onto the balcony rail, ostensibly getting comfortable, though there was little comfort in deck chairs. Arkady noticed that the soles of her feet were a delicate pink.
Arkady said, "I know that Dr. Blas has determined that Pribluda had a heart attack and he has a point about the fishing gear seeming to be intact. But maybe there was more than fishing gear. If you told me Pribluda keeled over trying to run a marathon, I might believe it. Basking in the water, no. Let me ask, how well do you know Dr. Blas? Can you depend on his honesty?"
She took a moment to answer. "Blas is too vain to be wrong. If he says a heart attack, it was a heart attack. Have the body examined in Russia if you wa
nt, they'll tell you the same thing."
"There are other questions that can only be answered here."
"There will be no investigation," Osorio said.
"An investigation of Rufo?"
"No."
"Of Luna?"
"No."
"Of anything?"
"No." Her disdain would have flattened a man of any sensitivity.
A black swell moved under the beam of the lighthouse. There were times when he could almost feel the sea reach out to him like a wonderful, dreamless sleep. The balcony faced north toward familiar constellations. The truth was that he didn't believe in an expanding universe anymore; he believed in an imploding universe, a furious rushing together of everything down a celestial drain to a single point of absolute nothing. He sensed Osorio's eyes watching him.
"I have two daughters, Muriel and Marisol," she said. "Do you have children?"
"No."
"You're married?"
"No."
"Married to your work? Dedicated? Che was like that. He was married and had children, but he gave himself to the Revolution."
"More like divorced from my work. Not like Che, no."
"Because you have the same..."
"Same what?"
"Nothing." After a space, she asked, "You like Cuban music? Everyone likes Cuban music."
"It has a certain beat."
"It has a beat?"
"Primarily."
There was a longer pause.
"You play chess, then?" Osorio tried.
Arkady lit a cigarette. "No."
"Sports?"
"No."
"Cuba invented baseball."
"What?"
"Cuba invented baseball. The Indians who lived here, the ones Columbus found, they used to play a game here with a ball and a bat."
"Oh."
"You never read that?"
"No, what I read in Moscow was that Russia invented baseball. There is an old Russian game with a ball and bat. The article said that Russian emigrants to the United States took the game with them."
"I'm sure one of us is right."
"The only difference is that Sergeant Luna used a steel bat."
"Aluminum."
Havana Bay Page 11
