by Philip Kerr
23 I
DROVE ALFREDO LÓPEZ BACK TO FINCA VIGÍA. He was in bad shape, but I didn’t know where the nearest hospital was, and neither did he. “I owe you my life, Gunther,” he said. “And a great deal of thanks.” “Forget it. You don’t owe me anything. But please don’t ask me why. I’m through explaining myself for one day. That bastard Quevedo has an annoying habit of asking questions you’d rather not answer.” López smiled. “Don’t I know it?” “Of course. I’m sorry. It was nothing compared to what you must have been through.” “I could use a cigarette.” I kept a pack of Luckies in the glove box. At the junction of the road north into San Francisco de Paula I pulled up and put one in his mouth. “Here,” I said, finding a match and lighting it. He puffed for a moment and nodded his thanks. “Let me do that for you.” I fetched the cigarette from his lips. “Just don’t expect me to come into the bathroom with you.” I put the cigarette back in his mouth and drove on. We reached the house. There had been a strong wind the previous night, and some of the ceiba tree’s leaves and branches were strewn across the steps in front of the house. A tall Negro was picking them up and putting them in a wheelbarrow, but he might just as easily have been putting them on the ground, as if someone had ordered the man to honor López’s return with a carpet of palms. Either way, he was making slow work of it. Like he’d just got two numbers on the bolita
. “Who’s that?” asked López. “The gardener,” I said. I pulled up next to the Pontiac and switched off the engine. “Yes, of course. For a moment—” He grunted. “The previous gardener committed suicide, you know. Drowned himself in the well.” “I guess that explains why no one here seems to drink water very much.” “Noreen thinks there’s a ghost.” “No, that would be me.” I looked at him and frowned. “Can you make it up the steps?” “I might need a bit of help.” “You should be in a hospital.” “That’s what I kept on telling Quevedo. But by then he’d stopped listening to me. That was after he gave me the free manicure.” I got out of the car and slammed the door. Around there, that was like ringing the doorbell. I went around to the passenger’s side and opened the door for him. He was going to need a lot of that in the coming days, and I was already imagining myself driving away again, leaving her to it. I’d done enough. If he wanted to scratch the back of his head, Noreen could do it. She came out of the front door as López stepped out of the car and swayed like a drunk who still had room for more. Gingerly he held on to the window pillar for a moment with the inside of his wrists and then put his spine into a smile for Noreen as she hurried down the steps. His lips parted, and the cigarette he was still smoking fell onto his shirt-front. I grabbed the cigarette, like the shirt actually mattered. It was a sure thing he wouldn’t be wearing it to the office again. Lots of blood on sweat-stained white cotton was hardly fashionable that year. “Fredo,” she said, anxiously. “Are you all right? My God, what has happened to your hands?” “The cops were expecting Horowitz at their annual fund-raiser,” I said. López smiled, but Noreen wasn’t amused. “I don’t see what there is to joke about, Bernie,” she said. “Really I don’t.” “You had to be there, I guess. Look, when you’ve finished getting stiff with me, your legal friend here deserves to be in a hospital. I’d have driven him to one myself, but Fredo insisted we drive here first and convince you that he’s all right. I guess he rates you a higher priority than playing the piano again. That’s quite understandable, of course. I feel much the same way.” Noreen wasn’t listening to most of that. She retuned her wavelength the moment I said “hospital.” She said, “There’s one in Cotorro. I’ll take him there myself.” “Hop in and I’ll drive you.” “No, you’ve done enough. Was it very difficult? Getting him out of police custody.” “A little more difficult than putting a request in the suggestion box. And it was the army that had him, not the police.” “Look, why don’t you wait in the house? Make yourself at home. Fix yourself a drink. Ask Ramón to make you something to eat if you want. I won’t be long.” “I really ought to be running along. After the events of this morning, I feel a pressing need to renew all my insurance policies.” “Bernie, please. I want to thank you properly. And speak to you about something.” “All right. I can put up with that.” I watched her drive him away and then went inside and flirted with the drinks trolley, but I was in no mood to play hard-to-get with Hemingway’s bourbon, and swallowed a glass of Old Forester in less time than it took to pour. With another large one waiting in my hand, I took a tour of the house and tried to ignore the obvious comparison between my own situation and that of a trophy on Hemingway’s wall. I’d been bagged by Lieutenant Quevedo just as surely as if I’d been shot with an express rifle. And Germany now looked about as far away to me as the snows of Kilimanjaro or the green hills of Africa. One of the rooms was full of packing cases and suitcases, and for one stomach-churning moment I thought she might be leaving Cuba until I realized that Noreen was probably getting ready to move into her new house in Marianao. After a while, and another drink, I walked outside and climbed the four-story tower. It wasn’t difficult. A half-covered staircase on the outside went right up to the top. There was a bath on the first floor and some cats playing cards on the second. The third floor was where all the rifles were kept, in locked glass cabinets, and the way I was feeling it was probably just as well I hadn’t brought any keys. The uppermost story was furnished with a small desk and a large library full of military books. I stayed there for a long while. I didn’t much care for Hemingway’s taste in literature, but there was no arguing with the view. Max Reles would have liked it a lot. From each of the windows the view was all you could see. For miles around. Right up until the moment that the light began to fade. And then some. When just a ribbon of orange was left over the trees, I heard a car and saw the Pontiac’s headlights and the little chieftain’s head coming back up the drive. When Noreen got out of the car she was alone. By the time I had descended the tower, she was in the house and fixing herself a drink with a bottle of Cinzano vermouth and some tonic water. Hearing my footsteps, she said, “Freshen your glass?” “I’ll help myself,” I said, coming over to the little table. She turned away as I came alongside her. I heard a little peal of ice cubes as she upended the tall glass and swallowed the frozen contents. “They’re keeping him in for observation,” she said. “Good idea.” “Those fucking bastards pulled out all his fingernails.” Without López around to see the funny side of that, I was through making jokes about it. I hardly wanted Noreen getting sharp with me again. I’d had enough of that for one day. I just wanted to sit down in an armchair and have her stroke my head, if only to remind me that it was still on my shoulders and not hanging on anyone’s wall. “I know. They told me.” “The army?” “It certainly wasn’t the Red Cross that did it.” She was wearing navy blue slacks and a matching bouclé cardigan. The slacks weren’t particularly slack in the only place it counted, and the cardigan seemed to be short a couple of little plaited leather buttons on the lower slopes of her bosom. Her hand sported a sapphire that was the bigger sister of the two in her earlobes. The shoes were dark brown leather, as were the belt around her waist and the handbag she had tossed onto an armchair. Noreen had always been good at matching things. It was only me that seemed to clash with the rest of her. She looked awkward and ill at ease. “Thanks,” she said. “For what you did.” “I didn’t do it for you.” “No. And I think I can understand why. But thank you anyway. I’m sure it’s the most courageous thing I’ve heard of since I came to Cuba.” “Don’t tell me that. I feel bad enough already.” She shook her head. “Why? I don’t understand you at all.” “Because it makes me sound like what I’m not. In spite of what you once thought, angel, I was never cut out to be a hero. If I was anything like the person you think I am, I wouldn’t have lasted half as long as I have. I’d be dead in some Ukrainian field, or forgotten forever in some stinking Russian prison camp. Not to mention what happened before all that, in those comparatively innocent times when people thought the Nazis were the last word in true
evil. You tell yourself you can put aside your principles and make a pact with the devil just to keep out of trouble and remain alive. But you do it often enough, and it gets so that you’ve forgotten what those principles were. I used to think I could stand apart from it all. That I could somehow inhabit a nasty, rotten world and not become like that myself. But I found out that you can’t. Not if you want to see another year. Well, I’m still alive. I’m still alive because, if the truth be told, I’m just as bad as the rest of them. I’m alive because other people are dead, and some of them were killed by me. That’s not courage. That’s just this.” I pointed at the antelope head on the wall. “He understands what I’m talking about even if you don’t. The law of the jungle. Kill or be killed.” Noreen shook her head. “Nonsense,” she said. “You’re talking nonsense. That was war. It was
kill or be killed. That’s what war is. And it was ten years ago. Lots of men feel the way you do about what they did in the war. You’re being much too hard on yourself.” She took hold of me and put her head on my chest. “I won’t let you say those things about yourself, Bernie. You’re a good man. I know it.” She looked up at me, wanting me to kiss her. I stood there, letting her hold me tight. I didn’t pull away or push her off. I didn’t kiss her, either. Although I badly wanted to. Instead I grinned at her, tauntingly. “What about Fredo?” “Let’s not talk about him right now. I’ve been stupid, Bernie. I can see that now. I should have been honest with you from the beginning. You’re not really a killer.” She hesitated. Her eyes were filling with tears. “Are you?” “I love you, Noreen. Even after all these years. I didn’t know it myself until quite recently. I love you, but I can’t lie to you. A man who really wanted to have you would do that, I think. Lie to you, I mean. He’d say anything to get you back at all costs. I’m certain of it. Well, I can’t do it. There has to be someone in this world you can tell the truth to.” I took hold of her elbows and looked her squarely in the eye. “I’ve read your books, angel. I know what kind of a person you are. It’s all there, between the covers, hidden under the surface like an ice-berg. You’re a decent person, Noreen. Well, I’m not. I’m a killer. And I’m not just talking about the war. As a matter of fact, I killed someone only last week, and it certainly wasn’t a case of kill or be killed. I killed a man because he had it coming and because I was afraid of what he might do. But mostly I killed him because I wanted to kill him. “It wasn’t Dinah who killed Max Reles, angel. It wasn’t even any of his Mafia friends in the casino, either. It was me. I killed him. I shot Max Reles.”
24 A
