“If you get caught, you’ll be in dire straits. God won’t spare you one hell of a fine… And if they catch me here, I’ll be in the doghouse for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t get like that, Conde, I tell you there’ll be no dire straits.”
“You still go to church, I suppose?”
“Yes, sometimes. You’ve got to keep on good terms with some people
… Like the police, for example.”
“Stop talking shit, Candito.”
“Leave off, gents,” interrupted Skinny. “These beers are dead and gone. Tell them to pour me another, Red.”
Candito lifted his arm and said: “Three more.”
The fair-haired guy served them again. The melodious drunken voice of Vicentico Valdes was now playing on the cassette recorder – confessing he was sure he knew where to find the moon’s missing earrings – and, as he downed his third beer, the Count felt he was relaxing. The fact that he’d been in the police for more than ten years had created tensions which pursued him. Only in a few places, like Skinny’s, could he get rid of certain obsessions and enjoy the gut pleasures of old times, the times they were talking about now, when they were students at La Vibora high school and dreams of the future were possible and frequent, because Skinny was skinny then, walked on both legs and hadn’t been injured in the war in Angola, Andres wanted to be a great pitcher, Rabbit insisted on rewriting history, Candito showed off his effervescent, saffron Afro hair and the Count devoted himself to beating out his first tales as an aborted writer on an Underwood.
“Do you remember, Conde?” Candito asked, and Mario said of course he remembered that story, a story he hadn’t even listened to just now.
Blondie brought a fourth round of beers, and Cuqui a second plate of titbits, which Skinny Carlos threw himself at. The Count was bending over to get a piece of ham, when Candito stood up, making his chair fall over.
“Bastard!” somebody shouted.
With no time to get up, the Count turned his head and saw a mulatto put his hands to his face and totter backwards, as if in flight from the big blond bruiser standing in front of him holding a bottle. Then the prehistoric black came up behind the guy, shouting bastard, bastard, stood firm on his simian fighting legs and delivered a quick flurry of hooks to the guy’s kidneys that brought him to his knees. Big Blondie, meanwhile, had turned his back on his companion to look at the rest of the tables, hands on hips, threatening: The first to try it… But nobody else did.
The Count, now on his feet, saw Candito walk past him, reach the penitent mulatto and grab his shirt collar. Blood spurted from one of his eyebrows, as the small black, on the other side, gripped his hair and whacked him round the ears with a wash-brush.
“Let him be,” shouted Candito, but the black kept on with the brush. “Let him be, for fuck’s sake,” he shouted and let go of the mulatto’s shirt to grab the hand of the black, who only then loosened his grip. The Count observed with almost scientific interest the collapse of the macerated mulatto: he fell to his right and his head resounded on the cement like a dry coconut. No, he wouldn’t have stood much more.
Blondie walked over to the cassette recorder and changed the music: Daniel Santos was the latest guest for the night. Then, in no great hurry, he went after the mulatto, held him up under the armpits, while the little black took his ankles. They went out though a door at the back of the yard which the Count hadn’t noticed.
Candito looked at his other customers. For a moment only Daniel Santos’s voice could be heard.
“Nothing happened, get it…?” he said finally. “If anyone wants another beer, then ask me, right?” and he lifted up the chair knocked over by his speed of take-off.
The Count had already sat down and Skinny was wiping away the sweat that had started to bathe every inch of his fat body.
“What happened, Red?” Skinny took a long, long swig.
“Don’t worry. As they say: aggro that goes with the trade.”
“The guy was after me, right?”
Now Candito gulped down his beer and took a piece of cheese without looking up.
“I don’t know, Conde, but he was after somebody,” he breathed loudly, still chewing.
“And how the fuck do you know, Red, if the guy didn’t say a word?” Skinny couldn’t get over his shock.
“You don’t give them time to speak, Carlos, but he was after somebody.”
“Fuck, they almost killed him.”
Red smiled and wiped his forehead: “The real bitch is that’s how it’s got to be, my friend. Here it’s the law of the jungle: respect is respect. Now neither that guy or any of the people here or anybody who hears the story of what happened will dare try it on.”
“And what will they do with him now?” Curiosity gnawed at Skinny, who was sipping his drink nervously.
“They’ll put him out to rest till he cools off. And after he pays for what he’s drunk, we’ll send him home because he needs to get some early shut-eye today, don’t you reckon?”
Skinny shook his head, as if he’d understood nothing, and looked at the Count who was still silent, apparently absorbed in the bolero Daniel Santos was singing.
“Did you see that, you rascal?”
“You bet I did, you animal.”
“And do you get it?”
“No. I swear by my mother every day I understand less… Hey, come on, Red, let’s have another beer.”
The worst thing was this sense of the void. As the alarm clock rang, it drilled into the Count’s brain a quarter to seven, a quarter to seven, and his eyelids struggled against lethargy and the recent burden of beer, a quarter to seven, the void started to reclaim its space like an oil slick suddenly released and spreading over the sea of consciousness; but it was a colourless slick, because it was void and nothingness, the end which recommenced, day after day, with an unstinted capacity for self-renewal against which he lacked any defences or valid argument: a quarter to seven was all that was tangible in the depths of that void.
Recently he’d started to imagine death might be somewhat similar: waking to an absence of atmosphere, onerous yet painless, stripped of expectation and surprises because it was only this: a bottomless, empty void, a dark, padded cloud cushioning him definitively. He also tried to recall the time there hadn’t been a sense of void or premonitions of death, when dawn rose like a curtain on a new performance, no matter whether imagined or improvised, at least it seemed right and appealed: a spontaneous desire to live another day. But it was like feeling sick and trying to think what it was like to be well, and he couldn’t, since the ubiquitous quease prevented him from reviving other pleasant sensations.
When he went out into the street, on such mornings that came hot with the dawn, a solitary taste of coffee lingering on his lips and no woman waving him farewell, no magnet drawing him into the future, the Count wondered what could be the latest incentive impelling him punctually to set his watch and alarm, given that time was the most objective manifestation of his void. And as he could find none – a sense of duty? responsibility? need to earn a living? movement by inertia? – he wondered yet again what the hell he was doing there, heading for a bus queue more crowded and violent by the day, smoking a cigarette that rotted his guts, seeing people who were less and less familiar, suffering a heat that got hotter by the minute, and he told himself it was his fast lane to hell. Then he touched his belt and realized, once again, that he’d left his pistol at home. He asked who was the last in the queue and lit his third cigarette of the day. If I’m going to die anyway…
“Major Rangel wants to see you.”
And, with that declaration from the duty officer, the Count resurrected at least one lost expectation: yes, perhaps he might now down a good cup of coffee, purge the sweet, stewed taste of the brown liquid sloshing with unidentifiable particles he’d drunk in the shabby cafe where he’d stopped before reaching Headquarters. He took one look at the queue by the lift and made for the stairs. He couldn’t imagine w
hy the Boss wanted to see him, but his nasal memory was already enjoying the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, served in the shiny white cups his chief was so fond of. Three months ago, after his public punch-up with Lieutenant Fabricio, the Count had been tried by the Disciplinary Tribunal and sentenced to six months of card-filling and telex-sending in the Information Bureau, until his case was reviewed and a decision taken that he could return to his detective work. He’d avoided meeting up with the Boss ever since: the Count’s sentence was, as far the Major was concerned, a judgement against himself. Despite his eccentricities and increasingly apparent lack of rigour, the lieutenant had always been his best officer, and the Boss trusted him and more than once had shown him affection and respect, both publicly and privately. Consequently, to a degree, the Count felt he’d let him down. And, as the last straw, the Internal Inspection team now grilling the entire Headquarters kept Major Rangel in such a foul temper it was advisable to see him from a distance, he thought, when, that is, you had no option but to see him.
He pushed the glass-panelled door and entered the ante-room to the Boss’s office. Another woman now sat behind the desk that had been occupied for several years by Maruchi, the woman in charge of the Major’s office, someone in her fifties, uniformed, who wore a lieutenant’s stripes and vaporized the cup of coffee the Count had dreamt of lifting to his lips. Mario walked over, saluted, told her who he was, and informed her that the Major was expecting him. The secretary pressed a button on the intercom and sent the message to her boss’s office.
“Lieutenant Mario Conde.”
“Tell him to come in,” said the intercom, and the new secretary stood up to open the office door.
Major Antonio Rangel had got up behind his desk, and shook the Count by the hand. Such a gesture, unusual on the part of the Boss, was a warning to the lieutenant that things weren’t looking good.
“How’s it been downstairs, Mario?”
“So-so, Major.”
“Take a seat.”
The Count flopped down in one of the armchairs opposite the desk and could hold back no longer.
“What happened to Maruchi, Boss?”
The Major didn’t look at him. He was searching in one of his desk drawers, and finally extracted a cigar. It didn’t look good: too dark, veins too bulging, resistant to the flame from the lighter the Major brought to bear.
“It looks like a stick,” he pronounced finally, after exhaling two or three puffs of smoke, as he looked incredulously at the brand and the Count awaited his verdict. “I can’t believe it. Listen to this. ‘ Selectos ’, made in Holguin. Who the fuck’s ever heard of cigars made in Holguin? The country’s gone mad… They transferred Maruchi. I still don’t know where to, or why for. Anyway, don’t ask me, I can’t tell you anything, and if I could, I wouldn’t… You get my drift?”
“Impossible not to, Major,” the Count acquiesced, as he said goodbye to the coffee one could always extract from Maruchi. “And how come you’ve got no decent cigars?”
“I haven’t, and what business is it of yours? To the point,” said the Major as he slumped back in his chair. He seemed exhausted, as if he’d also fallen into the void, thought the Count, who’d always admired Major Rangel’s youthful brio, so distant from his real age of fifty-eight, nurtured and refreshed by lengths in the pool and hours of knocking balls around a tennis court. “I called you because you’re going out on a case.”
The Count smiled wrily, and decided to exploit his minimal advantage.
“Any chance of a coffee?”
The Major’s smile spread around the end of his cigar, slightly curled his upper lip.
“It’s the seventh, and we’re still waiting for this month’s coffee ration… You made life really difficult. Well, the problem is I don’t have enough detectives and I’ve got no option but to lift the sanction on you temporarily. I need you and Sergeant Manuel Palacios to get a hold on this case immediately: a trasvestite who’s been killed in the Havana Woods.”
“A transvestite.”
“That’s what the man said.”
“No, you said a ‘trass-vestite’. And it’s ‘trans-vestite’.”
The Major shook his head.
“Will you never change, my boy? You still reckon life is a game?”
His voice had changed: the Major’s voice could shift tone according to topic and agenda, or time and place, and currently it was sour and withering.
“Forgive me.”
“I can’t forgive you, Conde, no way can I forgive you. Can you imagine what my head’s like? You think it’s easy working with an army of Internal Inspectors here at Headquarters? You know how many questions I get asked every day? You know two detectives have been sacked for corruption and two more are about to get suspended for negligence? And do you realize all this stuff backfires on me? No, no way can I forgive you… And why are you in plainclothes? Didn’t I tell you to come in uniform while you were downstairs?”
The Count stood up and looked through the big office window. A few buildings, scattered trees and such a calm sea, in the distance, setting the boundary on so many dreams, destinies and deceits.
“Who’s got the low-down on the case?” he asked, and touched his belt again, where he sometimes wore his pistol.
“Nobody. He’s just been found. I think Manolo’s waiting for you in his cubicle. Now beat it.”
The Count turned round and walked towards the door. Grabbed the door handle, and stopped. He felt strange, didn’t know whether to feel flattered or manipulated, though he supposed the Boss must be feeling even stranger: as far as he knew, it was the first time the Boss had revoked a sentence imposed on a subordinate.
“It’s a pity you won’t forgive me and can’t offer me a coffee. But as I’m really fond of you, if it’s at all possible, I’ll get you some decent cigars,” he said, and left without waiting for a response or thanking the Major for giving him that assignment. He decided at the last moment it would have been in bad taste to thank him.
When the policeman lifted the canvas, the photographer took his chance to snap another picture, as if still needing to record that precise angle on the death of a carnivalesque creature who, according to his identity card, went by the name of Alexis Arayan Rodriguez. Now he was a red bundle, two pale protruding white legs, their muscles tensed, in violent contrast with the sun-scorched grass. A purple, puffy female face topped the body. A red silk sash of death was pulled tight round his neck.
The Count lowered his arm and the policeman, bored out of his mind, dropped the canvas. The Count took out a cigarette and Sergeant Manuel Palacios asked him for another. The Count gave him one reluctantly: Manuel Palacios said he didn’t smoke but, really, what he never did was buy his own. The Count looked towards the river.
In the morning, under the leafy canopy of the Havana Woods, one lived the illusion that the city’s luck was in and summer had lost its way. A pleasant breeze, carrying the dark odours of the river, rustled the branches of poplar trees and arrogant carobs, of almond trees that opened out like circus tents and of oleanders, laced with delicate lianas that criss-crossed to form hanging plaits. The Count remembered how, as a boy, he’d been to several birthday parties in the arbours in the woods that were hired out, on the other side of the bridge, and that once, aping a Tarzan hanging from the lianas in the oleanders, he’d scuffed on a stone new orthopaedic boots his mother had given him to wear to the party. The two accusing furrows on the black leather of his annual pair of new shoes earned him a week of punishment, no watching television, no listening to the episodes of the Guaytabo series, no playing baseball. The Count had never forgotten because it was precisely the week Guaytabo the Indian met old Apolinar Matias in Anatolio the Turk’s tyre-repair shop and initiated their indestructible friendship as strugglers on behalf of justice against evil. And he’d missed that memorable encounter.
The Count looked towards the river and reflected how fortunate it was that people were still thieving, murdering, assaulting, e
mbezzling in the city, ever more enthusiastically, for it was his personal salvation. Terrible, but true: that death by strangling the forensic doctor was now trying to explain to Detective Lieutenant Mario Conde and his aide, Sergeant Manuel Palacios, had enabled him to fight off the void and feel that his brain was working again, and that it had more to its existence than headaches from repeated hangovers.
“What do you reckon, Conde? Yes, it’s a man. Dressed and face-painted like a woman. Now we’ve got murdered transvestites, we’re almost part of the developed world. At this rate we’ll soon be making rockets and going to the moon…”
“Cut the crap and continue,” said the Count, throwing his cigarette butt in the direction of the river. Sometimes he liked to speak like that and this forensic, for a reason as elusive as it was inevitable, always made him react curtly. Perhaps it was just his easy familiarity with death.
“I’ll go on, but I’m not talking crap…” the forensic retorted and, as he listened, the Count tried to imagine the scene.
He saw Alexis Arayan, a woman without all the gifts of nature, tarted up in red, wearing a long, antiquated dress, her shoulders draped in a shawl that was also red, her waist emphasized by a silk sash, walking out with someone in the starry night of the Havana Woods. The Count reckoned a breeze was blowing, and the night must have been more appealing and welcoming than in the rest of the city. The footprints preserved from Alexis’s sandals signalled the journey from road to woods. The other footprints belonged to her companion, a corpulent man, who must have leered at Arayan’s face in eager anticipation: her finely drawn eyebrows, eyelids with pale purple highlights, mascara’d eyelashes and a mouth as gorgeously red as that strange dress which belonged to a vague, doubtless, distant past. Perhaps there were kisses, teasing gropes, caresses from Alexis Arayan Rodriguez’s delicate fingers and varnished nails. Then they stopped by the battered trunk of a hundred-year-old blossoming flamboyant tree, and a tragedy of equivocal love was unleashed.
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