Tropic of Darkness

by Tony Richards

  An instinct you have, yes? Carlos had said to him yesterday evening.

  Manuel paused a short while, trying to think straight. Then he picked up the phone again and dialed the precinct house where his brother-in-law was stationed.

  “Captain Esposito, if you please?”

  “I’m sorry. He is out on call.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “There’s no telling, I’m afraid.”

  He left a message instead. There was nothing Manuel could do but wait.

  * * *

  Carlos Esposito stood between the broken open doors of operating theatre D, his hands thrust in his pockets.

  Hadn’t little Manuel been telling him, just last night, about someone who had bled himself to death? He couldn’t recall the details—to tell the truth, he’d been rather drunk.

  But here was another curious suicide. And yet more blood.

  The last time he’d seen this much, he had been in the army. Just a kid, back then. 1961, La Batalla de Girón, the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. The bodies of counterrevolutionaries had been washing up along the shoreline. And despite the sense of victory, it had been extremely ugly to behold.

  At least then, there’d been a reason for it. Carlos could think of no sensible explanation for the scene in front of him.

  The entire floor was smothered with a gluey reddish-brown. Bizarre. Why should anybody choose to end his life in such a way and take someone with him?

  He had already questioned some of Doctor Julio Alfonsine’s colleagues and got the same kind of replies from each. The man had been a good doctor, sound of judgment, with no obvious problems. A long-term bachelor, but comfortable enough with that. Nothing much wrong there, then.

  Except that, for the past few days, the doctor had struck them as uneasy and vague-minded. He’d looked rather tired as well. Coming down with the flu, perhaps. They had even commented on it to him, but gotten no clear reply.

  Yesterday had been his day off, so no one knew how the doctor had spent his last twenty-four hours.

  Carlos kept on staring glumly at the bloodless corpse.

  He’d a full enough case load as it was, and normally would not have bothered with a suicide. But his curiosity was engaged. He kept remembering his brother-in-law’s comments.

  One of his lieutenants was behind him in the corridor. Carlos told the man where he was going and put him in charge.

  Dry, fiery heat washed over Carlos as he strode out through the parking lot. A load of people moaned about this kind of weather; never him. Far better than huddling indoors from the cold the way the Yanquis in New York and Washington did. He would not have changed this weather for the world.

  He went across to his car, wound the windows down, and set off for the tunnel underneath the bay.

  * * *

  The old coastal fortifications seemed to waver as Carlos emerged near them on the eastern shore. The rocks that they were built upon glistened brilliantly in the sun. The sea beyond them threw up so much glare that it was difficult to look at for too long.

  Distant palm trees looked ephemeral in the heat. Snatch at them and they might swirl apart.

  Off beyond the ramparts was the old DeFlores residence. And Carlos—as was many people’s custom when they passed this way—crossed himself quickly at the sight of the place. He wasn’t much of a religious man, but his upbringing still guided him in certain matters. And he didn’t think it foolish, since he did it without thinking very much at all.

  He tried to avoid looking directly at the house. The legends said that it was haunted and he did, deep down, have some belief in ghosts.

  The road carried him away from it and into the eastern part of town. In a few more minutes, he was pulling up outside the block where Doctor Alfonsine had lived. He found the building superintendent and received the spare keys to the apartment.

  It was not the mess that Carlos remembered from his own bachelor days. According to his colleagues, Alfonsine had lived alone for decades and, as was often the case with such men, the apartment was rather too tidy if anything, the furniture neatly arranged, gleaming pots and pans hanging in order of size in the kitchen.

  An ornament on top of the TV captured his attention straight away. It was a plastic model of a leaping sailfish and the legend on the base, when he stepped closer, turned out to read SOUVENIR OF MIAMI.

  People like Doctor Alfonsine were hardly ever granted permits to leave Cuba, even for a short trip. So . . . a visiting relative, perhaps?

  Other things began to point to that, before much longer. In a nearby cabinet was a brand-new Sony Walkman. And in the apartment’s spare room he found two American coins in a drawer.

  In the bedroom, there was one touch of untidiness. The bed was unmade, and its sheets heavily stained with dried sweat.

  Carlos searched the nightstand, found a bulky manila envelope. And he tipped its contents out.

  Photographs, newly developed by their smell. They were of the doctor and another, quite similar-looking fellow. A brother, or a cousin? They’d been taken mostly at nightspots. Carlos recognized El Galeon.

  He again recalled what Manuel had told him last night. The two gringos who’d committed suicide had both been taken to such places. But so what? It was merely a coincidence, surely?

  As well as the photos, there were tickets, menus, even serviettes. Visiting these places was a luxury that, by his own devices, Doctor Alfonsine could never have afforded. Hence the keepsakes. The man’s relative must have paid for each of these excursions.

  Carlos flicked through the paper scraps. There were quite a few, he noted, from the Karibe club.

  And here was another photo, of the pair at that location. Carlos’s brow furrowed as he studied it.

  Alfonsine’s relative was posed naturally enough, smiling at the camera. But the doctor himself . . .

  He was looking at the chair to his left. The empty chair to his left. Like something had just caught his attention.

  His face was deathly pale in the glare of the flashbulb, his expression transfixed.

  A mistake, perhaps. Alfonsine simply hadn’t noticed that the photo was being taken at that moment.

  Carlos thumbed quickly through the rest, trying to find any more like it.

  There were several. So he took one of them and put it in his pocket.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  By noon, Jack was up and about, blinking rather dazedly. He was a little hung over, not too badly, but there was more than that. He remembered the dream, and Pierre laughing at him. And felt neither anger nor resentment. Merely a strange emptiness that left him feeling thoughtful.

  The Frenchman’s words last night had caused it. And Mantegna’s passion—where had that name even come from?—for the woman in that incredibly vivid dream. It had all seemed so real, like he had actually visited the past in another man’s body. In the waking world, he had never wanted any woman quite that badly. And could what Pierre had said have been correct . . . might he have begun to yearn for someone special?

  Realistically, of course there was little chance of that, living the kind of life he did. So Jack decided to just get on with it, moving carefully about the room and getting ready to meet the band that Pierre had put him in touch with.

  He found them waiting in the downstairs bar, sprawled nonchalantly around a low glass table, showing no impatience, no apparent sense of time at all. He’d lived in these parts long enough to be entirely used to that.

  The eldest and their leader was at least four years his junior, but Jack got along with them well enough. For their part, they seemed politely fascinated by him. They had quite simply never played with a Yanqui before.

  “We cannot pay, you understand,” the leader explained apologetically. “You have no work permit and it is not allowed. We’ll cut you in, however, on
more than your fair share of the tips. Shall we say, thirty percent?”

  Jack agreed that that would be just fine. He wasn’t here for money. The experience was the thing.

  “You know where Club Felix is? Just across the square from here. First set is tomorrow evening, ten o’clock.”

  “How about rehearsals?” Jack asked.

  The man grinned and shrugged simultaneously, a typically Latin gesture.

  “We never rehearse, my friend. We go with the flow.”

  So there was that. A good first meeting though, everything considered. He was a little relieved, nonetheless, when they lined up to shake hands with him and left. He’d managed to hide it but, deep down, he still felt pretty shaky.

  Pierre’s sly, mocking words kept on repeating themselves in his head. “Is that it, Jack? Is that what you’re looking for, these days? A lady who understands your deepest self, your inner being?”

  He’d never really stopped to think about his life in terms like those before. Now he began to wonder. He was already in his thirties. Where to go, from this point on?

  It somehow all came back around to that strange dream he’d had. Except it hadn’t even been a particularly scary one. So why—he wondered once again—had he woken up with such a yell?

  He turned it over glumly for a while, and finally came to the conclusion that it had to be the local booze.

  A shadow moved across Jack’s table, bringing his head up. A slim young black man, casually but neatly dressed, was standing with his hands propped on the back of the chair opposite, smiling down at him. Jack saw that he was about to get hustled again—inside the hotel this time, for chrissakes.

  Then he noticed the book clutched in the fellow’s hand. Henry V. Shakespeare. It looked so out of place that his interest was immediately roused.

  “I don’t want to bother you, sir,” the boy asked, “but are you an American, by any chance?”

  Jack nodded and allowed him to go on.

  “My name is Luis. I’m a student at the university. English is my major, and I read it well enough. But I like to practice my speech.”

  “I’d hardly say you needed to.”

  Luis shrugged.

  “I was wondering, have you seen Old Havana yet? The cathedral? The museums?”

  Jack figured out, at last, where this was heading.

  “Um—no, thanks. I don’t need a guided tour.”

  “The Columbus Cemetery, then? It’s very interesting.”

  A broad smile split Jack’s features.

  “Uh-huh? And how much would you want to show me this extremely interesting cemetery?”

  “Twenty dollars?”

  “But I thought you needed to practice your English. You ought to be the one paying me, don’t you think?”

  That made the young guy stare down at the parquet flooring, resignation etched onto his brow.

  “Then I apologize for troubling you, Señor. Please excuse me. And enjoy your stay here.”

  He was turning around to leave when it occurred to Jack he did have a whole afternoon to kill. And what the hell, this kid seemed decent enough and was only trying to make an honest buck.

  “Ten dollars,” he offered.

  Luis stopped.

  “Fifteen?”

  And Jack laughed, standing up.

  “Well . . . first, let’s see how ‘very interesting’ this cemetery is, okay?”

  * * *

  It was worth twenty. Actually no, a good deal more than that.

  The Columbus Cemetery had the entire history of Cuba buried in its parched brown earth. There were governors and generals, priests and martyrs, actors, baseball players, poets, journalists. Even the great chess master Capablanca lay there, out-gambited by death at last.

  Everywhere Jack looked there were marble angels, whole celestial squadrons of them, wings spread out against the sky. And stone crosses in every style imaginable.

  There were signs too, almost everywhere he looked, of practices other than Christianity.

  Laid by many of the graves were little figurines, bowls of spoiled fruit, and even cooked foodstuffs. Arrangements of shells and stones and cigar stubs, and candles in glass jars.

  He had a pretty good idea what this was about, but pretended not to notice it at first, fearful of offending Luis.

  “We’re now entering the oldest part,” the student was explaining.

  He had proved to be an excellent and thorough guide, with not only knowledge of his island’s history, but a sense of pride in it.

  “Over here—” he began saying.

  Then he seemed to finally notice the attention Jack was paying to the fetishes and symbols. They were more in evidence than ever in this section of the grounds.

  “Oh.” Luis peered at them himself, trying to seem nonchalant. “This stuff, this is nothing. Just a local custom.”

  “It’s Santería, isn’t it?” Jack countered.

  He had come across it many times before, although only ever in passing. He had brushed against its outer edges and no more than that, usually in the poorer barrios of some large city.

  Cuban voodoo, pretty much. Its gods each identified with a Catholic saint. It had spread right across Latin America, so he’d heard. But its practitioners were obsessively secretive, especially round Yanquis like himself.

  He cocked his head to one side, peering at the boy.

  “Hell, Luis, I thought this was supposed to be an atheistic sort of place. How widely is this stuff used here?”

  His guide was looking increasingly awkward, but was honest enough to give him the straight answer that he wanted.

  “Most people believe in it a little bit. The poor, of course, believe a lot.”

  “And what opinion does the government have of that?”

  “They don’t have too much problem with it. Even if they did, there’s not a whole load they could do about it.”

  Jack mulled this over carefully, and then rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

  “I’ll tell you something, my friend. Cuba is the strangest and most contradictory place I’ve ever been to.”

  Luis relaxed a little, humor coming back into his expression.

  “Maybe that’s why we’ve survived so long. No one can quite figure this place out, not even those who live here.”

  They continued past the tombs and headstones.

  * * *

  Jack and Luis had reached a row of short, dense trees. About a dozen of them, planted very closely, with their branches so entangled that Jack could not make out what lay beyond. Almost like they had been put there deliberately, as some kind of barrier.

  Nearing them, he thought he could detect a curious, and unpleasant, odor on the hot, still air.

  Jack wandered around their edge and found himself looking at the last three graves before the cemetery wall. Each was topped with a small, rounded marker, heavily pitted with age and lichen dappled. And the one nearest him, set slightly apart from the other two, had a few fetishes placed around it, nothing more than that.

  But the other pair . . .

  Jesus, it certainly explained the smell.

  Both plots were covered to opacity with the corpses of small animals in various stages of decay. Many were bare bones and skulls, stripped completely of their flesh. Others appeared to be more recent.

  Jack fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, held it to his nose, repelled and fascinated at the same time.

  Many of the sacrifices—and he was quite certain that was what he was looking at—were of birds. Cockerels and hens and doves. But there were turtles and opossums too, and even what looked like a cat. They’d either had their throats slit or had been decapitated.

  Most of the small cadavers writhed with the motion of insects in their remains. A black blanket of flies continually rose and sett
led.

  Jack turned his attention back to the other, more abandoned headstone, and thought he could make out a date. 1760 something or other.

  It made him queasy getting any closer, but he’d never seen the likes of this before. He reached gingerly across, saw that there was moss obscuring the inscription. So he scratched at it with his thumbnail.

  SANTIAGO DEFLORES, 1713–1766.

  There was no further lettering of any kind. Not a hint of who this man had been, or what he might have done. Jack was just about to reach out for the other markers, which were completely unreadable.

  Luis grabbed him sharply from behind, yelling “No!”

  And pulled him back.

  Jack looked around, startled. And saw to his bewilderment that the young man was petrified. There was a rigid expression on Luis’s features and his pale brown eyes were very wide.

  The student clutched his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” Luis wheezed. “I shouldn’t have let you get that close.”

  Jack took another glance in the direction of the graves.

  “What is this, anyway?”

  Luis followed his gaze sideways, rather than directly. The young man’s eyes were hooded, the frightened expression still in place. And this wasn’t any illiterate street urchin either. Rather, a bright young fellow who until this moment had shown nothing but good sense.

  “Would you prefer to go elsewhere?” Jack asked.

  “No, it’s good. Just don’t go touching anything else, okay?”

  “I promise. But you don’t strike me as the type to go getting all freaky over just a few dead birds.”

  “You’re right,” the boy breathed, nodding. “Even now, I’m trying to tell myself that I am being stupid. But some things . . . they are part of you and never quite let go.”

  And this was apparently one of them.

  Luis turned his gaze away, trying to gather his wits a little.

  “It’s like this, Jack. When I was small, some of the neighborhood kids used to come here for a dare.”

  “Uh-huh? And?”

  “They’d take turns jumping over those two graves. I was too little to join in, so I’d only sit and watch. And one day, a new kid decided to have a try.”