Havana Best Friends

by Jose Latour

  Had Pablo Miranda been an underachiever? A kid spoiled by a powerful father who felt abandoned after his well-connected daddy lost all his privileges? Manuel Miranda. Trujillo tried to recall who the man had been. Certainly one of the few who once held all the cards and wrote all the rules, considering where he was serving time. A former politburo member or general or minister, for sure. A VIP, even in jail. In the morning he would have to find out whose duty it was to call the General Directorate of Prisons, report the murder of an inmate’s son, and ask to notify the father. They would probably let him come to the funeral, with two escorts, no handcuffs, maybe wearing civilian clothes.

  Suddenly, Trujillo sat up in bed. His wife stirred by his side. A politically motivated crime? Someone who had been screwed by the father and killed the son for revenge? Slowly, Trujillo lay back. Too far-fetched. No precedent as far as he knew. No, it couldn’t be. He yawned. It was the kind of case that wins kudos, back-slapping, and an instantaneous promotion for the officer who solves it. And to a lesser extent, the ill will of his equals. He decided that he would take a stab at it. But there was a lot of spadework to do.

  As Captain Trujillo drifted off to sleep, Pablo’s killer was boarding a plane bound for Cancún, Mexico.

  “If they’re all dirty movies, you’ve hit a fucking mine,” Major Pena said when he learned, at 7:15 the next morning, that Trujillo had put forty-three suspected pornographic videos in the storeroom. Trujillo explained his findings and what he had inferred before outlining his theories. The major was fifty-six, grey-haired, overweight, and most of the time had the frigid, uninterested gaze of those who pride themselves on their realism and who no longer believe in inherent human kindness. But he was respected and secretly admired by superiors and subordinates alike.

  “Tell me the receipt number.” Major Pena beckoned Trujillo over with his right hand and left his uncomfortable wooden chair. “I want to start seeing them right now.”

  “You dirty old man,” Trujillo said as he dipped two fingers into the back pocket of his pants and drew out his wallet. He produced a pink slip and read out the number, 977.

  “Got it. See you later.”

  “Hold your horses. The victim’s name is Pablo Miranda, and his father, Manuel Miranda, is serving a prison sent –”

  “The father’s Manuel Miranda?” the major cut in, eyes rounded in surprise, bushy eyebrows lifted.

  Trujillo had never seen Pena flabbergasted before. The major even bragged that nothing surprised him any more. But now he did a second extraordinary thing. He plopped on to his chair, stared vacantly at a wall, and said, “Oh my God.”

  The captain arched an eyebrow and kept his smile in check. Before communist Europe went up in smoke, for Party members – state security and senior police officers in particular – religious terminology just didn’t exist. Then, all of a sudden, pro-government believers were invited to join a political organization that denied the existence of God; cynics had a field day. Trujillo and Pena, like many Cubans, were not religious, but now they used expressions like “Praised be the Lord” to mock the leadership’s sudden turnabout.

  “So you know the guy. C’mon, out with it. C’mon. I have to be at the IML at eight.”

  Pena snapped out of his reverie and lit a cigarette. “The stories I’ve heard about this guy … It’s like a Hollywood movie. Only it’s no movie. The guy’s fucking crazy. I mean, no man in his right mind would do the things this guy is presumed to have done.”

  “Done where?”

  “Everywhere. You name a place where Cubans went into battle from – let me see … ’58 to what, ’81? – he was there. A brigadier general calling the enemy names from the front-line trenches, letting them have it with all he’d got. Short guy, not an ounce over a hundred and thirty pounds. Can you believe it? At the last count he had been wounded six or seven times, I don’t know exactly. The man is a born fighter.”

  “So, why is he at Tinguaro?”

  Pena told the story in a sad tone. As it unfolded, the captain felt a certain amount of sympathy for the ex-general. For two years Trujillo had suspected that his own wife was cheating on him. There were too many blanks in her explanations for why she was late, an ever-increasing sexual indifference, frequent disagreements. It was a problem he had postponed for too long; he would have to tackle it soon. Would he do what Miranda had done? No way. No cheating woman was worth a day in prison.

  “Well, you think you could call Prisons and explain things to them?”

  “Right away.”

  “I’m going to meet Miranda’s daughter at the IML. Once she IDs her brother, we should let Prisons know where the wake is taking place so Miranda can attend.”

  “No problem. Even counter-revolutionaries are permitted to attend the wake of a close relative.”

  “Counters too? That a fact?”

  “You bet.”

  “That’s decent. See you in a while.”

  “Wait. You said the victim had shit on him?”

  “Four fixes.”

  “No chance the guy OD’d before he was killed?”

  “Bárbara didn’t mention that.”

  “Oh, it’s Bárbara now,” quipped the beaming major.

  “Quit busting my balls, Chief.”

  “Okay. Take it easy.” Pena held up his hands, successfully fighting off a laugh. “Everybody knows you have a weakness for the Chocolate Queen.”

  “I’m getting outta here.”

  “When the LCC sends its report, let me know if it’s good or bad.”

  “Good or bad what?”

  “The shit, man, the shit. Go see her, go, go.”

  The captain strolled leisurely along Boyeros. The twelve-lane avenue was congested with heavy traffic in both directions, a fact that never ceased to amaze him. In a country where most people made less than twenty-five dollars a month and the cheapest gas cost three dollars a gallon, thousands of ancient, privately owned American gas-guzzlers congest the streets, the majority financed by unmentionable sources. The cloudy, strangely cool morning indicated it had rained heavily to the south of the city the night before.

  Once at the IML, Trujillo sat on a granite bench in the foyer and lit his second cigarette of the day. The captain felt clean and fresh in the uniform laundered and impeccably ironed by his mother. He had shaved carefully too. Just in case he bumped into Bárbara (who had been curious enough to check up on him and find out he was married), and to lessen the impression of untidiness that Elena Miranda must have formed of him the night before, if she had registered anything after being told of her brother’s murder.

  Elena arrived at 8:19 looking sad, exhausted, and frustrated by a ride in a jam-packed bus. Her face was sunken, and there were dark crescents under her eyes. The aftershock, Trujillo realized, then registered approvingly her beige blouse, black mid-calf skirt, black pumps, black purse.

  “Good morning,” said Trujillo, getting to his feet, extending his hand, and dropping the “comrade.”

  “Good morning.”

  “This way, please.”

  At the desk they learned that Dr. Valverde was off duty. An assistant led them to the cold room and Elena identified Pablo, then retched repeatedly and vomited nothing. Trujillo steered her back to the main entrance, his arm protectively around her shoulders, then made her sit on a bench. He lit up, inhaled, and blew out smoke.

  “We are notifying the General Directorate of Prisons, they will inform your father.”

  Elena nodded as she dabbed at her lips with a handkerchief.

  “If he wants to attend the wake, they’ll probably give him a pass. A guard might accompany him.”

  “A guard?”

  “It’s standard procedure.”

  “I see.”

  “The body will be sent to the funeral home on 70th at 29B before noon. They’ll make all the funeral arrangements. Did you call your mother?”

  Elena sobbed, then stifled her tears. “Yes, I did. Early this morning. She’s coming as soon a
s she can.”

  Trujillo paused to ponder whether he should or shouldn’t. He decided he should.

  “Elena, there’s something I didn’t tell you last night,” he said. “I didn’t want to embarrass you further in the presence of your neighbours, but you should know that four doses of cocaine were found on your brother.”

  “Cocaine?” She couldn’t take it in. In her mind’s eye she was seeing her brother’s sewn-up body, the skewed head, the chalk-white face. Again, she felt queasy.

  “Yes, cocaine. Plus the videos. We are checking them now. It seems they are pornographic. So, it’s possible that Pablo was somehow involved with people who engage in unlawful activities. Now, I know you told me that you two didn’t get along, lived separate lives, but I must ask you to make a special effort, try to recall things which might be significant, who his friends were, who we could question to learn what …”

  Trujillo stopped because Elena was shaking her head emphatically. She was brushing aside his request and the dreadful memory simultaneously. “I thought I had made myself clear, Captain,” she said. “I don’t know the first thing about my brother’s private life. We were complete strangers. When people came to visit him I was not introduced, they ignored me, and of course I locked myself in my bedroom. I didn’t listen in on their conversations. My brother and I never talked about our problems. We never went out together. Well …”

  Trujillo let a moment of silence slip by. “Well, what?”

  “Well, we hadn’t gone out together in twenty years, at least. Then, a few days ago …”

  Elena told the story of the joggers. Trujillo sensed a glimmer of hope. She told him that she never learned the couple’s last name; she also gave him the paladar’s address. Elena didn’t remember if they’d mentioned the hotel where they were staying. The captain took notes.

  “Like I said, it was the only time my brother and I went out together in … I don’t know, maybe twenty, twenty-one years, since we were kids. And we met these people by accident. They had nothing to do with Pablo or me.”

  “Okay, Elena. But I need to ask your parents a couple of questions.”

  “Oh, no, please. They don’t know anything. I mean, how could they?”

  “I have to ask anyway, Elena. Your brother may have written to your mother, or visited your father, and you wouldn’t know it. Right?”

  Elena nodded.

  “He may have asked for their advice on something related to what caused his death.”

  “You don’t know … you didn’t know my brother.”

  It was Trujillo’s turn to nod. He ripped off a corner of a page from his daybook and jotted down his phone number. “You remember anything, learn anything, need anything, give me a call. If I’m not there, leave a message and I’ll call you back. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, slipping the piece of paper into her purse.

  “You don’t have a phone?”

  Elena shook her head. She parted her lips, as if about to add something, then closed them again. They’d had a phone for as long as she could remember; but in 1990, Pablo hadn’t paid the bill during the four months she spent training special-education teachers in the province of Holguín. When she returned to Havana she found that the phone company had removed their ancient Kellogg. Her protests were ignored; the phone was not reinstalled. She stood up.

  “Are you leaving now?” Trujillo asked.

  “I am, yes.”

  “I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”

  Twenty-five minutes later the captain, on his way back to the DTI, ran through what he had to do: check on the videos, give Major Pena the funeral home’s address, find out about the joggers. He hadn’t asked Elena a question he knew he should have asked. Where were you the night before last between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.? Instinct told him it wasn’t necessary.

  Pena was waiting for him. There had been a violent robbery at a dollars-only store and it had been assigned to Trujillo. Money for black-market gas, Trujillo assumed, then asked Pena to call Prisons and the Ministry of Tourism as he scribbled down the details. At close to ten he left for Luyanó accompanied by two rookie lieutenants from the LCC, a police dog, and its handler.

  When Trujillo got back to the DTI at ten past three, Pena said he had already examined thirty-two of the forty-three videos. They were all porn, master copies that must have undergone the whole post-production process in Cuba. The bedrooms were nicely furnished and decorated, the photography and lighting very professional, the women young and attractive, the men with oversized dicks. All kinds of sex had been filmed, except child porn. The Ministry of Tourism had not yet called, so Trujillo went home, had a late lunch, then took a long nap.

  His wife was still not back when he woke at half past six. He showered, donned his uniform, and headed back to his unit. Before going home himself, Pena had left the Ministry of Tourism’s fax on Trujillo’s desk. Only one couple with the names Sean and Marina had stayed at a Cuban hotel in the last two weeks. They were Sean Abercorn and his wife, Marina Leucci, Canadians who had spent six nights at the Hotel Nacional. Passport numbers and the room number were included, as was a copy of their bill. They had checked out early in the morning on May 27, three days before Pablo Miranda was murdered.

  Trujillo spent the next half-hour on the phone, talking to Immigration officials at Havana’s International Airport. Yes, those two people had boarded a flight bound for Toronto on the same day they left the Nacional. Trujillo sighed. A dead end.

  He had supper at the unit, then asked for a Ural motorbike, got a Combi station wagon, and headed straight for Marianao. The funeral home had originally been a two-storey private residence. At some point after its owners left Cuba, it had been transformed into a mortuary. The place had been renovated and painted in a suitably depressing dark chocolate, but most of its rooms were too small for its present function and in the summer, lacking air conditioning, it was stifling.

  Elena and Gladys, the only mourners at Pablo’s wake, sat on rocking chairs in stunned silence in a second-floor room. They would be there all night, as is the Cuban tradition. Pablo would be buried the next day. In the time they had spent together, Elena had told her mother what she had learned, omitting nothing significant.

  The captain shook hands with Elena before she introduced him to her mother. The resemblance was obvious. It was a delight, Trujillo reflected, to find a sixty-two-year-old woman whose beauty lingered on, undefeated by the passage of time. Her eyes were puffy after so much crying, she didn’t dye her grey hair and wore a simple, old-fashioned, and well-worn dress, yet it was obvious that Gladys Garcés had once been a strikingly beautiful woman. After a decent interval and two cigarettes, Trujillo asked her two questions. No, she hadn’t heard from her son in the last two years. No, she had no idea why anyone would harm a hair on his head.

  Later he asked if they had had anything to eat. They had. Would they like some espresso? Yes, they would. In the cafeteria he sipped one himself and brought them two in glasses. For the following hour, and a half the cop and the two women sat in silence, occasionally lifting their eyes to people who crossed the hall in endless comings and goings, as they kept vigil for three other deceased. Every fifteen or twenty minutes Gladys sighed deeply, stood up, approached the casket, contemplated the body of her son, wept, blew her nose, then returned to her seat.

  It was close to eleven when Manuel Miranda arrived. He was short, but unlike his son, his baldness was limited to a widow’s peak and a shiny spot on the back of his head. He was of slight build and wore Cuban blue jeans, a light-blue long-sleeved shirt, and lace-up boots. He had been spared the humiliation of prison guards, and Trujillo concluded that the man was on the pass system. After serving twenty years, he had to be. Some prisoners were allowed monthly visits to their families after four or five years.

  Miranda approached the coffin and stared at Pablo for almost a minute. His face revealed no emotion; his gaze was unflinching. Then he turned and fastened his eyes on Elena. She rose to her
feet. Gladys watched in fascination as father and daughter embraced and Elena started to sob inconsolably. She was at least three inches taller than her father, four in her pumps, and he had to lift his cheek to hers. A few moments later she returned to the rocking chair, sniffling. Miranda bent forward and kissed his ex-wife’s cheek. Fresh tears streamed down her face and she blew her nose once again. For a moment, it seemed as if they were a family again. To allow the mourners some privacy, Trujillo moved to a rocking chair a few yards away.

  Miranda nodded at Trujillo before hitching up his pants and sitting by his daughter. The captain wondered why a sizable percentage of Cuban men over the age of fifty always hitch up their pants before sitting down. They have bigger balls or what? Well, in this particular case, certain that Major Pena wouldn’t overstate the bravery of another man, it wouldn’t surprise him if the guy had baseball-sized cojones.

  It took Elena about ten minutes to tell her father what had happened. He whispered a few questions, listened to his daughter’s replies, nodding from time to time. Once they were through, the ex-general lifted his gaze to the police captain and, grabbing the arms of the rocking chair, pulled himself up. He tilted his head, making it clear he wanted to talk to him. Both ambled over to the opposite wall, then eased themselves onto chairs.

  Up close, creases and brown spots showed Miranda’s age. The expression on his face, particularly in his eyes, was that of a man accustomed to giving orders. Trujillo wondered whether he was a prison trustee. Probably. There was also a measure of misgiving in the brown eyes, something the captain interpreted as: Will this dumb-looking, lanky bastard be capable of finding out who killed my son?