Havana Best Friends

by Jose Latour

  “Comrade Elena?”

  Trujillo stepped inside, Pena right behind him. Zoila and Kuan remained in the entranceway with Arenas, who lit a cigarette.

  “Hello? Comrade Elena?”

  The cops reached the hallway. Trujillo flicked the light switch.

  Pena turned to the door. “Witnesses, come on in. It’s what you’re here for,” he barked, waving them in. “And don’t touch anything,” he added. Lousy public relations, Trujillo thought.

  “Go on, go on,” urged Nivaldo, prodding Zoila and Kuan.

  It took the cops and their witnesses three minutes – moving gingerly, inspecting closets, checking for a forced entry – to reach the servant’s bedroom at the end of the hall. Trujillo turned on the light, then recoiled violently, hitting Pena on the nose with the back of his head.

  “Hey! What’s the matter with you?”

  “Take a look.”

  Massaging the bridge of his nose, Pena peered into the room. He forgot his pain and turned to the witnesses. Both seemed extremely alarmed.

  “Okay, comrades, thank you very much. You may return to your homes.”

  “Is anything the matter?” Zoila asked.

  “Yes, there is. I got a broken nose. Oh, one final favour, comrade. I need to use your phone.”

  “Sure. Is … is Elena … in there?”

  “No, she isn’t. Some other people are, though. C’mon, let’s go.”

  “But … what happened?”

  “You don’t want to know, comrade, you don’t want to know.”

  Trujillo and Nivaldo stood guard at the entrance as Kuan returned home and Pena climbed the stairs behind Zoila. At ten past four the major phoned Colonel Adrián Bueno at National Headquarters. Zoila, at his side, was dying to hear what he had to say.

  “Comrade Colonel, this is Major Pena from the DTI.”

  “Yes, Major?”

  “Well, sir, after I talked to you an hour ago …”

  Pena filled the colonel in on the latest developments, saving his moment of triumph for the end. But Adrián Bueno was not rising to the bait. The colonel was an experienced cop too and suspected that this damn major whom he had never met wanted him to blow his top over their entering a private home without a search warrant, then prove how right he had been in breaking the rule with some gruesome finding. He’d wait and see, Bueno decided as he scribbled on his notepad.

  “… and in the last bedroom … we found two corpses, both white males.”

  Zoila jumped on hearing this.

  There it is, Bueno thought, smiling. “Good work, Major. Initiative is what we need. So, I suppose you are now going to call in the LCC and the IML.”

  “Yes, comrade,” Pena agreed, vexed that the colonel had not thrown a tantrum. Initiative indeed.

  “And now you want me to ask Immigration to detain these three Canadians you mentioned for questioning.”

  “Yes, comrade.”

  “Okay, tell me their names.”

  At 4:45, a sober-looking Eusebio beckoned Marina and Elena. They stood up and crossed to the counter. Both had been staring fixedly in that direction for half an hour, ever since the first passengers had arrived, most of them clutching white fake-leather bags emblazoned with a red “Temptation Tours” logo. After three strides, Elena realized that she was not limping, then overdid it. Behind the counter, a woman in a light-blue jacket and a white scarf stared at them. Early thirties, not a shade over five-foot-three, brunette. Her name tag identified her as Alicia. Marina preferred dealing with men, but she had no choice.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” Alicia said in Spanish, then put on a professional smile.

  “Good morning. Pleased to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is all mine. My colleague has explained your problem to me.”

  “Thank you, Eusebio.”

  The attendant nodded.

  “I can sell you two tickets,” Alicia went on, “but you can’t sit together.”

  “Alicia, we would fly in the baggage compartment if you let us.”

  Alicia nodded. “May I see your passports, please?”

  Two minutes later, Marina and Elena were even more jittery. Alicia kept leafing through the documents, returning to the first she had inspected, then to the second, back to the first, again to the second. On two occasions she lifted her eyes to Elena’s face to compare her features to the photograph, then peered closely at Marina three times. At last, the attendant seemed satisfied.

  “Okay, let me fill out the tickets for you,” she said.

  Elena took a deep breath and all of a sudden realized her bladder was about to burst. Marina felt like whooping and clapping but contented herself with a grin. It seemed as if selling tickets at the counter was unusual, for Alicia didn’t use the computer. Instead, she copied their names from the passports, returned them to Marina, then completed the rest of the form in capital letters.

  “That will be $436.80,” Alicia said finally. “Cash or credit?”

  “Cash.”

  Marina handed over five hundred dollars. Eusebio weighed, labelled, and transferred the luggage to the conveyor loop. Alicia stapled the baggage receipts to the plane tickets, then placed them on the counter top with the boarding passes and the change.

  “Thanks,” Marina said. She gave Elena her papers but didn’t touch the cash.

  “That’s for you, Eusebio,” she said, indicating the money with her chin. “And this is for you, Alicia,” she added, extending a one-hundred-dollar bill to the woman.

  “No, thanks,” an unsmiling Alicia said. “I have an eight-year-old girl. I don’t like to profit from human suffering. Keep your money.”

  Marina was too surprised to do anything other than stare at the woman and mumble, “But it would be my pleasure to …”

  Elena wanted to grab Marina’s arm, shake her head at her, then blow a kiss to Alicia. But as an English-speaking deaf-mute she couldn’t lip-read in Spanish. Though he looked a little embarrassed, Eusebio seemed ready to pounce on his share.

  “Well, take pleasure in some other thing. This is my job,” Alicia said with finality.

  “I won’t forget you.”

  “Have a nice flight.”

  Elena steered Marina to the ladies room. Nothing was said; three other women were using the toilets and sinks. After shelling out forty dollars for the airport tax, they went to the Immigration booths. Having seen the airline attendant inspect their passports so carefully, Marina expected a ten-minute interrogation. A woman in a light-green shirt and an olive-green skirt, the rank of lieutenant on her epaulets, examined her passport, ticket, and boarding pass, glimpsed at her face fleetingly, stamped the passport, waved her in. Less than twenty seconds in all.

  “My friend? The next lady?” Marina said to the woman. “She’s deaf and dumb. Just in case you want to ask her something, can I stay here to interpret for you?”

  The lieutenant frowned, then nodded. Marina signalled for Elena to come in. The teacher entered the booth. The Immigration official eyed the deaf-mute curiously and wondered why she was so pale. Her gaze moved to Marina for an instant. What had these two come to the beach for? To watch TV in their room? Well, it didn’t matter to her. She examined the passport. It was identical to the thousands of Canadian passports she checked every winter, with the same Cuban stamps. While it was unusual for people who’d landed in Havana to depart from Varadero, it happened. Next she looked at the woman’s face. Not bad-looking, most likely married. Her mind moved to the uncommunicative bastard she was divorcing. He would consider a beautiful deaf-mute the ideal wife, keeps her mouth shut all the time, can’t yell when he tries to rape her in the middle of the night. Then she wondered how a deaf-mute woman would deal with that kind of man. She stamped the passport. Twenty-five seconds.

  “Okay, you can go in.”

  In a bigger and wider lounge they faced two X-ray machines manned by Customs officials wearing ugly, mustard-coloured uniforms. Marina approached the closest contraption confidently, p
laced her bag on the conveyor belt, then went through the metal detector at its side. A Customs woman watched the screen with infinite boredom. Three years doing the same job and she had never caught someone trying to sneak in a weapon or an explosive. She turned her head and distractedly eyed the next passenger: a limping woman who laid her handbag on the belt and then tried to lay down her cane as well.

  “No, no hace falta,” the operator said.

  In a reflex response Elena lifted her eyes to her, then realized she shouldn’t have. For a tenth of a second she wondered what to do. She was supposed to be deaf, so she deposited the cane on the belt and turned to go through the metal detector. Perceiving movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned. The attendant jumped from her stool, seized the cane before it disappeared completely into the machine, and extended it to Elena, who raised her eyebrows and shook her head as if she didn’t comprehend what was going on.

  “She’s a deaf-mute,” Marina explained from the other side, a hysterical edge to her voice.

  “Oh,” said the operator, slightly surprised at the news. “Well, tell her to keep the cane. She could fall and injure herself.”

  Marina performed her unique, incomprehensible sign language and mouthed something that Elena watched attentively. Then she nodded, gave a glorious smile to the Customs woman, and passed through the metal detector. It rang noisily; Elena pretended not to hear. The man in charge had witnessed the exchange and waved Elena in with a grin. She couldn’t believe she had to pee again. The operator of the X-ray machine realized she hadn’t watched the screen as the handbag passed through, but it didn’t matter. Likely there was nothing suspicious there, not in the handbag of a handicapped person. That cane was really heavy, though. She forgot the whole thing when a new passenger approached her machine.

  In his office, the Immigration supervisor on duty, Major Oscar Torriente, consulted his watch: 5:02. Fifty-eight minutes and Major Pedro would relieve him. He was so sleepy. He needed a cup of steaming hot strong espresso. Adjusting his cap, he left the room. Two and a half minutes after he closed the door, his fax machine began churning out an urgent order to all ports and airports to keep on the lookout for three Canadian citizens: Sean Abercorn, Christine Abernathy, and Marina Leucci. They should be detained and handed over to police officers, who would receive orders from police headquarters.

  At Gate 2, the last two passengers waiting in line to board a Boeing 777 bound for Nassau were still holding their passports, in the names of Christine Abernathy and Marina Leucci.

  In Havana, three white Mercedes-Benz vans, one from the LCC, two from the IML, were parked on Third A’s only block. A second Lada station wagon from National Headquarters had joined the one from the DTI car pool that Pena was driving. A Peugeot sedan from Immigration was the last to arrive. The two young cops standing guard by the residence of the Belgian ambassador were reasonably sure that something big had happened, but they felt let down. No flashers were on, the engines and lights had been killed, no SWAT team in black was getting ready to crash into the apartment building; the scene lacked the drama of the American action movies they loved.

  Hundreds of birds accustomed to spending a quiet night perched on the branches of the Parque de la Quinta’s ficus waited nervously for sunrise to fly away. Their concern was caused by five vultures that had arrived late that afternoon, attracted by the budding stench of death still undetectable to all other species, and now sat dozing on the highest branches. On the ground, some crickets, indifferent to vultures, birds, and humans alike, chirped away.

  In the foyer to the apartment buildings, Pena and Trujillo were filling in the people from National Headquarters, the IML, and Immigration on what little they knew. In Apartment 1, experts from the LCC were gathering evidence. Not before they were through was anyone allowed to go in, and the place was a treasure trove of fingerprints and blood samples.

  Sergeant Nivaldo Arenas, feeling out of place among so many captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, and one colonel, smoked alone on the sidewalk. He didn’t like corpses; they reminded him of his parents, whom he had dressed before taking them to the mortuary. Both had died of natural causes at advanced ages, but still each death had been a shock, and seeing other dead people unnerved him. Perhaps he wasn’t needed any more. He was considering asking permission to get the hell out of there.

  Once the scant information available had been shared, the nine officials formed three groups. The IML assistants stood together, the police officers and the Immigration guy chatted amiably, while Trujillo and Dr. Bárbara Valverde, the pathologist who had performed Pablo Miranda’s autopsy, stood on the cemented footpath between the foyer and the sidewalk. Valverde, on the graveyard shift that week, had been summoned for the removal of the bodies. They were glad to see each other and showed it.

  “You’re looking great, Bárbara.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Félix. It’s too early.”

  Trujillo cleared his throat. “Wonderful. Pre-dawn is the perfect moment to confess how attracted to you I am, that I’d like to get to know you on a personal basis, away from this gory business we’re in. What’s wrong with that? I know I’m no hunk, but am I so repugnant?”

  “No.”

  “White guys don’t turn you on?”

  “Oh, c’mon. Race is not an issue here.”

  “So?”

  “You’re a married man, Félix. I don’t date marr –”

  “I am not.”

  “Now, don’t bullshit me. I know you are.”

  “My divorce became final two weeks ago.”

  “Oh.”

  The pathologist looked over to the Parque de la Quinta, processing this new information. Great. She had been attracted to the guy from day one. “I’m sorry,” she lied. “What happened?”

  “Don’t be and nothing happened.” The captain sneezed; luckily he had a clean handkerchief on him. “Don’t be, because it removes the obstacle to our getting to know each other better …” He wiped his nose, thinking how unromantic that was. “And I said ‘nothing happened’ because that was exactly what happened – nothing. We rarely saw each other. Most nights when I got home she was asleep; most mornings when she got up I was asleep or had already left. She argued that my profession and married life were at odds.”

  Bárbara couldn’t help smiling. She had perfect teeth. “My ex complained about the same problem.”

  “With reason?”

  “Of course. People like you and me … I mean, look at us right now. You think normal people can endure this shitty life?”

  “No, they can’t. Your ex, what was he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Professionally, I mean.”

  “Bureaucrat. Finance. What about your ex-wife?”

  “Secretary. See what I mean? Nine-to-fivers both. They couldn’t understand what we do, couldn’t adapt.”

  He was wrong, Bárbara thought, but kept it to herself. What he was trying to say was that as a couple they would share the lunacy of being on call three hundred and sixty-five days a year, find it easy to endure the cynicism and frustration that sooner or later cops, doctors, nurses, and – rarest of breeds – trustworthy politicians suffer. Why was she attracted to astonishingly immature and romantic men who believed they could balance a demanding profession with love, marriage, kids, and distractions?

  A few birds started warbling; the crickets began a slow retreat.

  She had spent two years in Bolivia searching for the remains of Ché and the guerrilleros who died with him. Her husband promised he would wait for her; yet she knew before boarding the plane that he wouldn’t. She went anyway because of the admiration she felt for the Argentinian revolutionary and because the mission would advance her career. It was also a matter of choice: profession versus family life. She would never marry again. Never.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Take me to the movies one of these days.”

  “Okay. When?”

  They
looked at each other in total bewilderment for a second, then burst out laughing. The others turned their heads. Pena smiled.

  “See what I mean?” Bárbara said, wiping tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes. “We can’t even agree on a day and time when we can do something as simple as that. I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Trujillo jotted his home number on her packet of Populares.

  Elena handed her boarding pass to Eusebio, now at the gate. He smiled, tore the stub, gave it to her. She smiled back (a flicker of a smile, Eusebio thought) and hurried after Marina, a few steps ahead. She was bursting! She just had to go. They boarded the plane. The senior flight attendant flashed a smile and said good morning, then glanced at her stub and added, pointing, “Right aisle.”

  “She’s a deaf-mute,” Marina said to the flight attendant.

  “Oh.”

  “Baño,” Elena mouthed to Marina.

  Marina nodded. “She needs to use the toilet first.”

  “Sure. Over there.”

  Marina waited for her in the aisle. The turbines whined. A minute went by. The plane’s door was secured. Another sixty seconds elapsed. Other flight attendants closed overhead compartments and checked seat belts. The plane started to move.

  “We can’t take off with your friend in there,” said the senior flight attendant, obviously worried. “Is she going to be long?”

  The folding door opened and a blushing Elena came out.

  “El bastón” Marina mouthed with bulging eyes and fluttering hands.

  Elena turned hastily and grabbed the cane. She apologized with a smile (a flicker of a smile, the senior flight attendant thought), and followed Marina along the aisle.

  Major Oscar Torriente returned to the Immigration office at 5:19. He read the fax, approached the photocopier, and made eleven copies. As he was leaving the office the phone rang. Booth one was having trouble with a Spaniard who claimed he had lost his passport. He heaved a sigh of resignation and sauntered to booth one.

  Elena Miranda sat in a window seat, peering at the runway lights. The plane lurched forward, faster, faster. It was 5:41.