"She's with me," Arkady said. He had worked his way back along the dock to the tender and the sailboat, berthed one behind the other. "We were just admiring the boats."
The baron glanced around at the beer cans on his deck until he noticed that Arkady meant the Gavilan.
"Yeah, sure, that's a fucking classic. A genuine rumrunner, everything but the bullet holes."
Rumrunner? Arkady liked that. That smacked of Capone.
"Fast?"
"I'd say so. You're talking a V-12, four hundred horses, sixty knots, faster than a torpedo boat. 'Cept with a woodie you spend all day at the dock sanding, varnishing, polishing."
"That's a drawback," Arkady agreed.
"No time to fish. Of course, they do all the upkeep for him here. He gets special treatment. Where you from?"
"Chicago."
"Really?" The baron digested that. "You fish?"
"I wish I could. I don't have enough time."
"Locals keeping you otherwise occupied?" The baron's eye returned to Ofelia, who kept her face blank of comprehension.
"Busy."
"Well, it's a fish or fuck world, it really is. I'll tell you what, the last thing in the world I want is lift the embargo. Cuba is cheap, beautiful, grateful. Take away the embargo and it'll be 'nother Florida in a year. Hell, I'm a man on a pension, I'd hardly be able to afford Susy here." He pointed with his free hand to the girl in the hammock, whose eyes had returned to the shopping network and a new item, a clock in a crystal elephant. Arkady remembered Rufo's list of names and phone numbers. Susy and Daysi. Did the other girl peroxide her hair for a daisylike effect? Arkady could tell that Ofelia had caught the name too.
"What do you mean, 'special treatment'?" he asked the baron.
"The owner of that boat is George Washington Walls. Their hero. Hey, I was a fireman twenty years, I know about heroes. Heroes don't put a gun to no pilot's head."
"You're not just...?" Arkady raised his eyebrows delicately.
"Racist? Not me." The baron waved his arm toward the jineteras and Ofelia as proof.
"For example, then?"
"For example." The baron was hot now. He hung on to a guy wire for balance and pointed to the hookup servicing the tender. "Check out the power lead installed specially for him just yesterday. Now, look at mine." Where the Alabama Baron's lead dipped into the water was the typical splice in a bag that was filthier than the others. " I understand they're clever devils here and they got American boats and European boats with whole different electrical frequencies and they got to jury-rig a new line for every boat that hooks up, but I'm a fireman and I know hot lines and water. Get this lead in the water and spring a little leak and you will fry yourself some very surprised fish. All I'm saying is, how come Senor Walls has himself the only berth in the entire marina with a new power lead?"
"And if a swimmer was in the water?"
"Kill him."
"Heart attack?"
"Stop it cold."
"And there would be burn marks?"
"Only if he touched the line. I've seen bodies in tubs with a hair dryer, same thing. Look at her" – the baron gave Ofelia an approving nod – "like she understands every word."
The very statement that Teresa had gone back to the country made Ofelia believe that the jinetera was lying low in Havana in the rooms of her friends. Calling from the DeSoto, Ofelia tried the numbers Rufo had listed for Daysi and Susy, and when neither phone answered, Ofelia called Blas.
"It's not like a bolt of lightning but yes" – the doctor agreed with her – "if a live wire falls into water, there would obviously be a charge."
"How strong?"
"It depends. Submerged in water, power is diffused exponentially depending on the distance from the source. Then there is the size and physical condition of the victim, and the peculiarities of each individual heart."
"A fatal charge?"
"Depending. Alternating current, for example, is more dangerous than direct current. Salt water is a better conductor than fresh."
"Leaving marks?"
"It all depends. If there was contact, there would be a burn. Farther away, a person might only experience a tingle in his extremities. But the heart and the respiratory center of the brain are regulated by electrical impulses and an electrical shock can initiate fibrillations without necessarily causing trauma to tissue."
"Meaning," Ofelia said, "that somewhere between too near and too far to a live wire in water, a victim could suffer a heart attack and there would be no entry or exit mark, no burns, absolutely nothing?"
There was a silence at the doctor's end. Traffic rattled on the Malecón. Arkady seemed to be enjoying his cigarette enormously.
"You could put it that way," Blas finally said.
"Why didn't you say so before?"
"Everything in context. Where would a neumático encounter an electrical wire in the middle of the sea?" There was a burst of static and Blas changed the subject. "Have you seen the Russian?"
"No." She met Arkady's eyes with hers.
"Well," Blas said, "I notice that he left a new photograph of Pribluda for me."
"Have you matched it to the body yet?"
"No. There are other murders, you know."
"But you will try? It's important to him. You know, as it turns out he's not a total idiot."
Since they'd skipped breakfast, they stopped at a park table for ice cream. Huge leathery trees overhung a playground and a shooting gallery. Ofelia was going after Teresa and Arkady wanted to see Mostovoi's apartment again, but at the moment the detective looked like a movie star on the Riviera, lips pink with strawberry.
"We can meet here later and have ice cream for dinner," Arkady said. "At six? And if we miss each other, then ten o'clock at the Yacht Club and we'll see what that has to do with Angola."
Ofelia was suspicious. "What will you do in the meantime?"
"A Russian named Mostovoi has a picture of a dead rhinoceros I want to take a look at."
"Why?"
"Because he didn't show it to me before."
"That's all?"
"A simple visit. And you?"
"You said last night when you followed Luna he was pushing a cart of what looked to you like black-market goods. Well, what goods? Maybe they're still there. Someone has to see."
"You're not going alone?"
"Do I look crazy? No, I'll take plenty of help, believe me," Ofelia said. She looked very composed for a moment and then pulled down her dark glasses in shock.
Arkady turned to face two girls in maroon school jumpers. They had green eyes and hair streaked with amber and held cones of ice cream close enough to drip on his shoulder. An energetic gray-haired woman in a housedress and sneakers followed with a vengeance.
"Mama," Ofelia asked, "why aren't the girls in school?"
"They should be in school but they should see their mother from time to time, too, don't you think?" Ofelia's mother took in Arkady. "Oh my God, it's true. Everyone's meeting a nice Spaniard, a little Englishman, you found a Russian. My God."
"I just asked her to bring some toiletries," Ofelia told Arkady.
"She looks unhappy," Arkady said.
"Don't offer her your chair."
But the deed was done and her mother was settling in where Arkady had been.
"My mother," Ofelia muttered as an introduction.
"My God," her mother said.
"My pleasure," Arkady said.
With a pride Ofelia couldn't suppress, "My daughters Muriel and Marisol. Arkady."
The girls rose on tiptoe for his kiss.
"Where do you even find a Russian?" her mother asked. "I thought they were gone like the dodos."
"He's a senior investigator from Moscow."
"Good. Did he bring food?"
"They look just like you," Arkady told Ofelia.
"You dressed so nice." Muriel looked Ofelia up and down.
"Those are new clothes." Ofelia's mother took a second look.
&nb
sp; "No hablo espanol," Arkady said.
"Just as well," Ofelia assured him.
"He bought them?"
"We are working together."
"Then that's different, that's absolutely different. You're colleagues exchanging gifts of esteem. I see possibilities here."
"It's not what you think."
"Please, don't disabuse me when I have hopes. He's not so bad. A little lean. A week or two of rice and beans and he'll be fine."
"Do you like him?" Marisol asked Ofelia.
"He's a nice man."
"Pushkin was a Russian poet," her mother said. "He was part African."
"I'm sure he knows that."
"Pushkin?" Arkady thought he heard something to hang on to.
"Does he have a gun?" Muriel asked.
"He's not carrying a gun."
"But he can shoot?" Marisol asked.
"The best."
"The target gallery!" the girls shouted together.
"They see you so little," Ofelia's mother said. "You shouldn't begrudge them a little fun, and your Russian marksman can show off."
The shooting gallery was a gutted bus on blocks, the back end replaced by a counter of air rifles that faced an array of American jet planes and paratroopers cut from soda cans. Behind them, on a black dropcloth, an artist had added cutout stars and comets and a vista of the Malecón with drivers shooting from convertibles. Sound effects were supplied by a tape of machine-gun fire. The sisters pushed Arkady into an open space at the counter.
"He should feel right at home," her mother said.
"Pump it." Muriel pushed the rifle into his hands.
"You have to pump it," Ofelia said as she paid.
"First the planes, first the planes," Marisol said.
The rifle was a toy with a tiny bead at the tip of the barrel. He fired at a particularly mean-looking bomber, and the paratrooper next to it jumped.
"What are you aiming at?" Ofelia asked.
"I'm aiming at everything."
The wrong target was the best he did. Kids around him made planes hop, spin, dance, but for all the shiny, dangling invaders every other shot of his thudded ignominiously into the backdrop.
"He must be high up in the police," her mother said. "I don't think he ever shot at anything."
The girls pushed a rifle into Ofelia's hands. She gave the lever two quick pumps and aimed at a big bomber from Tropicola.
"I think the bead's a little off," Arkady suggested.
The bomber pinged and spun.
"No, Mama," Marisol complained. "In the center."
Balancing her glasses on her forehead and tucking the stock more firmly against her cheek, Ofelia pumped and fired at a more steady pace. Silvery planes swung and paratroopers sang and danced. A comet, too, for good measure. The glasses dropped down over her eyes, it didn't matter, she had half the targets swaying at once. Arkady thought of the plane that had brought him less than a week ago, which now seemed an age. Here he was out in the open with Luna looking for him, but what better camouflage was there than a Cuban family? What could be more strange and more natural? Twelve hits with twelve shots earned Ofelia the prize of a can of lighter fluid that her mother tucked into a net bag. As she said, "Everything counts."
Appeased, the girls allowed themselves to be kissed by Ofelia and taken in hand by their grandmother, who dipped into her bag to give Ofelia a plastic toiletries bag and something wrapped in greasy newspaper. "Banana bread from Muriel's bananas. You remember the bananas?"
"I can't take this bread."
"Your daughters helped make it. They would feel much better if you did."
Muriel and Marisol made their eyes huge.
"Okay, okay. Thank you, girls." A farewell round of kisses.
"Feed it to him," her mother advised. "And take care of him."
Chapter Twenty-Three
* * *
What Arkady remembered of Mostovoi's accommodations on the sixth floor of the Hotel Sierra Maestra were a runway balcony of parked tricycles and, within, a living room with movie posters, African artifacts, a plush shag rug, leather sofa and a balcony facing the sea. He also recalled a front-door lock and deadbolt, a sensible precaution considering the cameras and equipment inside. And in case he thought of rapelling athletically by rope from the hotel roof down to Mostovoi's oceanview balcony, he had noticed in Rufo's videotape Sucre Noir that the sliding glass door was jammed shut by a steel bar. Spetznaz troops knew all about swinging in through glass doors; Arkady did not. Also, the trick was not just getting in, it was getting Mostovoi out and taking another look at the photographs on the wall.
Mostovoi was correct in calling his hotel Central Europe. The cafe and boutique of the Sierra Maestra were Russian, the graffiti on the elevator door was Polish and the entire lobby was empty. Even the smell of rancid oil from the popcorn machine at the entrance stairs couldn't conceal a standing funk of cabbage.
The last time Arkady had visited, Mostovoi had switched a photograph of a sailboat for the safari picture. Or perhaps he had given away the rhino since often tired of seeing a dead animal on his wall. The safari picture, however, had looked like the exotic centerpiece of his private gallery, and Arkady wanted to see it on his own before Mostovoi could rearrange the pictures again. The idea was to get Mostovoi out in a rush.
Arkady may not have been a marksman or a commando, but one valuable thing he had learned was that fuel for mayhem was everywhere. Behind a door marked ENTRADA PROHIBIDA filthy drapes lay on a three-legged chair of black leatherette set between plastic bags of corn kernels and potato chips and containers of cooking oil. Arkady made sure the other lobby exits were unlocked before he carried the chair and drapes to the popcorn machine and returned for the chips and oil. He opened the containers and poured the viscous oil down the hotel steps, threw the drapes on the oil, added the bags of chips to the drapes and lit the last bag with his lighter. Rufo's lighter, actually. The plastic bag caught nicely and potato chips, dry and saturated with grease, were by weight about the best kindling on earth. The chair and drapery were polyurethane, a form of solid petroleum. Cooking oil had to get hot enough to vaporize, but when it did it was a hard fire to put out. Then he climbed the stairs to the sixth floor.
Arkady took his time. The alarm, an old-fashioned clapper on a bell, sounded before he was halfway up, and by the time he reached the stairway door on Mostovoi's floor and looked down, the blaze was a brilliant orange accelerated by the grease of the chips while darker flames lapped at the chair and drapes. Residents lined the balconies for the spectacle of motorcycle police leading a red fire-engine pumper and a tank. The hotel was only blocks away from Miramar's embassy row and Arkady had expected a fast response. A bald Mostovoi in shorts peeked out his door, ventured to the balcony rail with the other residents on his floor and jumped back before his door latched behind him. Spectators on the sidewalk scattered as the oil ignited with an orange whoosh all the way from the popcorn machine down to the street. The effect of shore breeze over the hotel created just enough vacuum to draw black smoke toward the building. Plastic silk floated up as a fireman with a bullhorn waved for the gawkers on the balconies to evacuate. Arkady stood aside rather than be stampeded by families rushing down. Mostovoi's flat was nearer the stairs at the other end of the balcony. He hopped out again in pants, shirt, toupee, camera bags slung every which way off his shoulders, shoes in hand, the dapper sort who hated to be hurried. Even as Mostovoi started down the far stairs Arkady walked to the door, pulling Pribluda's wallet from his new hip pack as he went. Burdened with gear, Mostovoi hadn't paused to turn the deadbolt, the door was only on the latch. Arkady selected a credit card; he'd seen this done in movies, but he'd never actually tried it. If it didn't work, he'd just wait for Mostovoi to return. He slipped and wiggled the card in the jamb as he turned the knob and swung his hip into the door. Three hits and he was in.
The apartment looked again like the residence of a middle-level Russian diplomat abroad decorated with souveni
rs of a man who had seen much of the world, who cleaned for himself better than most bachelors, with an interest in books and the arts, who kept his own creative efforts under wraps. The photograph Arkady had noticed in the videotape was on the wall, back in its place between the pictures of a colleague at the Tower of London and a circle of friends in Paris.
It was a photograph of five men with assault rifles, one standing and four kneeling around a dead rhinoceros. Now he could see that the poor animal's feet were shredded and its stomach winking with shiny intestine. The men were not hunters but soldiers, one Russian soldier and three Cubans. Mostovoi, twenty years younger and balding even then. Erasmo, his beard mere boyish wisps. A coltish, skinny Luna cradling an AK-47. Tico with the bright, reckless smile of a leader, not the nearsighted focus of a man searching for leaks in an inner tube. And standing behind them in a safari jacket of many pockets, George Washington Walls. On the bottom border was written, "The best demolition team in Angola shows a fellow revolutionary their new mine-sweeping device." The rhinoceros's legs were pulp to the knees. Arkady considered the beast's frenzy of agony and confusion when it had wandered into a minefield, and he also thought of the callousness men develop in the midst of trying to stay alive. Tico and Mostovoi were on the ends of the group. By Tico's knee was the flattened pot of a pressure mine. By Mostovoi's was the convex rectangle of a claymore, an antipersonnel mine with the warning in English "This Side to Enemy." It was a good photograph, considering that Mostovoi had most likely set the camera's timer and run to take his place, considering the sharp African light, considering that mines were probably still all around. Arkady could almost hear the flies.
Arkady moved through the rest of the apartment before Mostovoi returned. On his first visit Arkady hadn't seen the autographed photographs in the hallway of Mostovoi with famous Russian film directors or the erotic boudoir series of Cuban girls that seemed to have been shot in his own bed. Arkady looked in the bureau, night table and under the pillow. A side table held a laptop, scanner, printer. The laptop denied him access as soon as he turned it on. The chances of hitting Mostovoi's password were remote. There was no gun in the drawer or under the bed.
Havana Bay Page 26
