Havana Best Friends

by Jose Latour

  Pablo and John turned left onto Havana Street and after three blocks took a right onto the seedier Empedrado Street. Watching them walk side by side, two candidates for the priesthood returning to the San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary were reminded of the David and Goliath story. A dark-skinned black youngster and a white teenager approached the strange pair.

  “Mister, mister, cigars, guitars, girls …,” they accosted John in English.

  “I’m with him,” Pablo said in Spanish, glaring at them. They weren’t impressed by the news and ignored the short man with the stumpy ponytail. “Girls, beautiful. Cohibas, forty dollars. Fine guitars, eighty dollars.”

  “No,” said John.

  “Coke? Marijuana?”

  “No.”

  “I’m taking him to Angelito’s,” said Pablo, again in Spanish, trying to act nonchalant.

  That stopped the hustlers cold. They turned their backs and disappeared into a doorway. John stared at the narrowest sidewalk he had seen in his life, not more than twenty inches wide.

  “Now, look up, at the … balcón? You say balcón in English?”

  John frowned in incomprehension.

  “The balcón of the house on the next corner,” Pablo said, extending his arm and pointing.

  Four young women leaned on the railing of a wrought-iron balcony projecting from the top floor of an old, dilapidated two-storey house. Light from a nearby streetlamp made it possible to see that two of the whores sported shorts, a third had a miniskirt on, the fourth a French-cut bikini bottom. All wore halter tops and from their necks hung chains and medals. Gazing down at the street below, they were sharing a laugh.

  “Interested?” Pablo asked.

  “Let’s take a closer look.”

  As they climbed a marble stairway, Pablo said this was La Casa de Angelito, Angelito’s house, according to his translation. Greeted warmly on the landing by a white, effeminate bodybuilder in green Lycra shorts and a pink tank top, they were showed into a dim living room with four loveseats, a CD player, a minibar, and side tables for drinks and ashtrays. Three French windows opened onto the balcony where the women remained, unaware that potential clients had arrived. The body-sculpting fanatic clapped his hands and ordered, “Girls, saloon.”

  One of the hookers upstaged the others completely, John realized. She was one of those precious few women from all walks of life who try to underplay their devastating sex appeal and fail miserably. The blessing or curse of her sexiness – depending on the final outcome – is as indefinable as inexorable, impossible to disguise or accentuate with clothing, jewellery, or perfumes. A gorgeous American actress worth maybe a hundred million who had the seductiveness of a refrigerator sprang to mind. And here in Havana, in a tumbledown whorehouse, he was facing a two-bit hooker capable of driving tycoons and presidents and kings nuts, and him too, truth be told.

  No older than twenty, she had a lovely face framed by long chestnut-coloured hair. Something of a child’s sweetness and innocence survived in her dark pupils and gentle smile. Her naked body had to be a sight for sore eyes, he was sure, and he felt tempted to ask her to undress and pace up and down the living room until he remembered that he had an assignment to carry out.

  “Is this the best you can do?” he asked Pablo, apparently unimpressed.

  The Cuban was taken aback. “You don’t like?”

  “Can we shop around some more?”

  Pablo marched John to Marinita, three blocks east, where they had a beer, then to Tongolele, five blocks south. Everywhere the short bald Cuban was greeted with affection. John noticed his guide was somewhat hyped up when they left Tongolele. The next stop was La Reina del Ganado, in San Isidro, translated by Pablo as “The Queen of Cattle.” The tourist learned that the name was derived from a Brazilian soap opera, El rey del ganado – “The King of Cattle” – whose main character owned hundreds of thousands of cattle. The brothel proprietress’s herd, comprising some twenty women, was displayed posing naked in a snapshot album. She only showed it to foreigners who were not attracted to any of those immediately available at her house. John peered at each photograph, carefully considered three promising candidates, finished a Cuba Libre, then turned to Pablo.

  “Tell you what. This guy at the hotel gave me an address in Guanabo, claims there are fine chicks there. Let’s go get the car and drive over. If I don’t find a broad I really like, we’ll come back to the first place you took me to and I’ll settle for the brunette.”

  Pablo didn’t like the idea, but he had decided to humour John all the way. He found it strange that after leaving the tunnel under Havana Bay, John didn’t ask for directions. He must have been to the beach on his own, the Cuban figured. The tourist remained silent, eyes on the road, observing the hundred-kilometre speed limit, air conditioner on, windows closed.

  The Cuban didn’t feel like making small talk either. He had been very upbeat all day at the office, overjoyed at the prospect of making in one night what many Cubans don’t earn in a year of hard work. He had even sniffed a line at Tongolele’s and bought four more fixes in premature celebration. But now he was feeling uptight. Pablo admitted to himself that the motherfucker was hard to please; he could kiss one of the two Cs goodbye.

  What if the bastard found a woman to his taste in Guanabo? Then he wouldn’t make a penny, since it wouldn’t be as a result of his procuring. He would make a hundred only if they returned to Angelito’s for the brunette the asshole had eyed so hungrily. He had to concoct a story to make him turn back. Maybe if he said that AIDS had struck down hundreds of people in Guanabo? He lit a cigarette and mulled over alternatives for most of the twenty-minute ride.

  It was quarter past twelve when John took a left at the crossing of Vía Blanca and 462nd, coasted down to the town’s main thoroughfare, then glided along until he confidently turned off the boulevard and, heading inland, followed a street for three blocks before taking a left, killing the lights, and pulling over.

  “This is it?” Pablo asked, struck by the strangeness of his surroundings. To their left, behind a barbed-wire fence, the rear of a huge, one-storey warehouse stretched all the way along the block. On the other side of the street several modest houses had the wooden slats of their front windows wide open, the residents likely in bed, electric fans turning at top speed to keep mosquitoes away and fight the heat, lights off. Somewhere close a dog barked unenthusiastically. Streetlight was provided by a low-wattage bulb on an electricity pole fifty metres away.

  “Yeah, let’s go.”

  As John was locking the car, Pablo reached the sidewalk and stood by his side.

  “Listen, John, I don’t want to worry you,” Pablo began, sounding concerned. “But last year, many people here in Guanabo have …”

  Pablo didn’t know what happened to him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a swift, unexpected movement and started turning his head, but an instant after John’s fist smashed into his temple all his systems collapsed and he keeled over.

  The tall, overweight man looked around as if he had all the time in the world. The dog kept barking. Lifting the limp body by the armpits, John manoeuvred Pablo into a sitting position and, crouching behind him, grasped the bald man’s chin with his right hand and the back of his head with his left, then in one swift motion he yanked up and around with all his might. Pablo’s cervical vertebrae snapped.

  Kneeling by the body, John savagely bit twice into the left side of his victim’s neck. He spat in disgust several times before producing a plain envelope containing four fifty-dollar bills folded in half. With the edge of his fingernails he removed the money and tucked it into a pocket of the dead man’s pants. Finally, he freed Pablo of his cheap watch, his wallet, and his shoes.

  Panting, with beads of sweat on his forehead, he stood up, dusted his knees, and scrutinized both ends of the block. The dog kept barking, insistently now, goaded by the scent of death. John unlocked the driver’s door, slid behind the wheel, dropped Pablo’s personal possessions on the pass
enger seat, and turned the ignition. The car crept away for two blocks, its lights off, before he took a left and returned to the town’s main street. He felt the repugnance of one who has just squashed a big bug under the sole of his shoe.

  After he’d dumped the Cuban’s belongings into a sewer in Old Havana, John thought about going back to Angelito’s and screwing the sexy whore. But after close to a minute grabbing the wheel with both hands and pursing his lips, he shook his head, sighed resignedly, and drove to the Hotel Nacional.

  2

  As is often the case, the crime scene had been contaminated by the time the Guanabo police, at the crack of dawn, arrived in response to a phone call made nine minutes earlier. Nobody had touched the corpse, but the truck driver who found it on his way to work, and the relatives and neighbours to whom he excitedly announced his discovery, had got near enough to raise doubts on any footprint, fibre, or hair that they might find. Tire prints in the grit alongside the curb had also been trampled.

  The Guanabo police are not equipped to deal with a homicide and rarely see one, so they confined their participation to cordoning off the area, questioning people, stationing guards, then radioing the DTI*, the LCC**, and the IML†, all three of which have headquarters in the Cuban capital.

  At 7:11 a.m., with dawn becoming early morning and the tide starting to turn, three LCC specialists and Captain Félix Trujillo from the DTI arrived in a Lada station wagon. They listened in silence to the lieutenant who met them. No neighbour had heard or seen anything unusual before or after going to bed, curious onlookers had ruined the corpse’s immediate surroundings, nobody there knew the dead man.

  The IML experts would carry out the on-site inspection of the body, take it to the morgue, gather whatever evidence was on it, perform the autopsy, and help in trying to identify who it was, so the LCC people just eyed the corpse from a distance before taking photographs and measuring distances.

  The IML’s white Mercedes-Benz meat wagon arrived at 7:49 a.m. Three men and a woman in white smocks, olive-green trousers, and lace-up black boots got out, shook hands with the cops, exchanged a few words. Captain Trujillo seemed especially delighted to see Dr. Bárbara Valverde, an attractive, thirty-three-year-old, dark-skinned black pathologist. She learned from him the few known facts, then pulled out an aluminium scene case from the back of the van, opened it, passed around latex gloves and plasticized paper booties to her assistants, slipped on a pair of gloves, a surgical mask, and booties. She closed the case, approached the corpse, swatted away the flies, put the case down, and crouched by it. The body lay prone, face supported on the left cheek, both arms at the sides, legs slightly bent to the right. Down the street, senior citizens gaping behind the police line frowned and murmured in confusion. A woman examining a dead man? She a necrophiliac or what? The younger voyeurs pooh-poohed them into silence.

  The first thing the pathologist noticed was the lump at the base of the neck. She ran her index and middle fingers over it, feeling the dislocated vertebrae. Then she spotted the laceration on the right temple and her fingertips detected comminuted fractures of the temporal bone. There were low-velocity stains of blood on the sidewalk, underneath the left corner of the mouth, probably coming from split lips and teeth loosened when he hit the cement.

  “Let’s turn him over,” Dr. Valverde said.

  Rigor mortis was almost complete. She held the head in her hands while her assistants turned the body. Bills folded in half fell from a pants pocket. One of the assistants whistled. The pathologist reopened the scene case and reached for a pair of tweezers, which she used to pick up the bills and drop them into a transparent plastic evidence bag.

  Dr. Valverde frowned when she noticed the bite marks on the neck. She studied them for a while under a magnifying glass.

  “Osvaldo, get on the radio and ask Graciela to call the odontologist and tell him to come to the institute. There are indentations to cast here.”

  The tallest assistant marched to the van. The other was measuring temperature and humidity.

  She inspected the lacerated temple under the magnifying glass before swabbing nostrils, mouth, and ears, and depositing each swab into separate evidence bags, which she labelled with a marker. She swabbed the blood on the sidewalk as well, then palpated the top of the head, the rib cage, thighs, legs, and ankles before closing the scene case and rising to her feet.

  “What have we got here, Dr. Valverde?” Captain Trujillo asked. He stood a few feet from her, legs spread apart, right elbow resting on his holster, a lighted cigarette cupped in his left hand. The pathologist suspected he had catnapped in his uniform: his light-grey long-sleeved shirt and blue pants showed dozens of creases and wrinkles. She admitted to herself that he was attractive in an unprepossessing but rather virile way. He tried to establish a non-professional rapport every time they worked together, but Félix was too young for her – and married. She lifted the case and, followed by the captain, took it back to the van, then yanked her gloves off.

  “What we’ve got here is a broken neck, a severe blow to the right temple, lacerated lips and chin, loose teeth, bite marks on the neck.”

  “Time estimate?”

  “Preliminary. Between four and eight hours.”

  “You planning on doing the autopsy immediately?”

  “Yeah. I’m on the six-to-two shift.”

  “Then I’ll drop by, or send someone later on, to collect his things and take them to the LCC. If the identity card is missing, will you have a ten-print card ready for me?”

  “Lift him up, comrades,” Dr. Valverde told her assistants. The two men slid a stretcher out from the van. She followed them with her eyes.

  “Doctor?” said Trujillo, realizing that she hadn’t been listening.

  “Sorry, Félix.”

  “Will you have a ten-print card ready for me if the stiff wasn’t carrying his identity card?”

  “Sure.” After a pause she added, “Dollar bills fell from his pocket.”

  “So I noticed.”

  “The one on top looked like a fifty.”

  “Is that so?”

  “But when I palpated him I didn’t feel a wallet. And his left wrist has a pale band, like a watch strap, but there’s no watch.”

  Captain Trujillo had a crush on Dr. Valverde because she had a perfect body and her face was out of this world. She was competent and bright too, and he liked that. “So, your reasoning is whoever kills for a watch, a wallet, and a pair of shoes searches all the pockets.”

  “Right.”

  The captain took a puff on his cigarette and mulled this over as the stretcher was slid into the van. The driver turned the ignition, the attendants stripped off their gloves.

  “I’m thinking sex, sodomy maybe,” the pathologist added. “That might explain the bites. I’ll check for evidence of intercourse. But if he didn’t have sex in the last twelve hours, you’ll have a tough nut to crack: a killer who bites without sexual motivation and steals valuables but leaves cash behind. Pretty weird, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. See you in a while, Doc.”

  “Not before noon, Félix. Not before noon.”

  The Institute of Legal Medicine, on Boyeros between Calzada del Cerro and 26th Street, is a two-storey prefab building hidden from view by a psychiatric clinic and big laurel trees. Before its experts located, exhumed, and identified the remains of Ché Guevara and his men in Bolivia, it claimed the dubious distinction of being the least known of Havana’s public institutions.

  Back at the institute, Dr. Valverde had a buttered bun and a glass of orange juice for breakfast, followed by a cup of espresso. Next she smoked a cigarette in the hallway, standing by one of several ugly aluminium ashtrays. She dropped the butt in it before marching to the locker room to step into a gown, don sleeve protectors, shoe covers, a surgical cap, a face shield, and three pairs of latex gloves.

  The autopsy suite had four tables, an efficient air-conditioning and ventilation system, and the standar
d paraphernalia of Stryker saws, a source lamp with a fibre-optic attachment, multiband ultraviolet lamps, surgical and magnifying lamps, pans, clamps, forceps, scalpels, sinks, hoses, and buckets. On the tiled walls, cabinets and cupboards of all sizes, plus light boxes for X-rays.

  The body was on a gurney to the right of table number three, where Dr. Valverde’s two assistants sat, legs dangling, face shields lifted to avoid fogging them up while chatting about last night’s baseball game at the Latin American Stadium. On table number one, another team was examining a twenty-five-year-old woman who had died at home, possibly from a heart attack. Osvaldo handed Dr. Valverde a mike that she clipped to her gown. René pressed the Record button.

  The assistants lifted the body on to the autopsy table, then broke the rigor mortis in the arms and legs. Dr. Valverde first collected hair and substances from under the fingernails. The cadaver was then undressed and the pockets searched. Four cocaine fixes, a key ring with five keys, a half-full packet of cigarettes, a lighter, a handkerchief, and nine coins were found and put into evidence bags. After dipping the dead man’s hands in a pan of warm water for a few minutes, Osvaldo dried them, then inked each finger, rolled them onto a ten-print card. All the evidence that had to be sent to the Central Laboratory of Criminology was ready.

  The body was measured and weighed, its temperature taken. René photographed the neck, temple, and bite marks – with Osvaldo holding a ruler as a scale – as Dr. Valverde inspected the injuries again, this time under a fluorescent magnifying lamp. The odontologist, a short, bearded man, arrived. He joked for a couple of minutes before taking the bite impressions.

  When he was done, the pathologist carefully checked and swabbed the cadaver’s knees, elbows, the underside of the arms, penis, and scrotum. She had it turned over and examined the back, buttocks, and anus, then swabbed the rectum for seminal fluid. Next, she put on tinted glasses, ordered the lights turned off, and used the fibre-optic attachment of the source lamp to look for the fluorescence, which semen, blood, saliva, and urine display under its high-intensity beam.