Fifty Grand

by Adrian McKinty

  “Man, this is good. What do you call this?” Paco asked.

  “Havana chicken stew.”

  “Havana?”

  “Oh, I mean, just a regular chicken stew, that’s all it is.”

  “Well, it’s good.”

  It was good. The ingredients were fresh and plentiful and we were famished. It made me feel good. This was how life was supposed to be. Not scrimping and saving and fighting over scraps.

  We ate by the window and looked out at the street. No cars, no snow, just trees and vague distant lights on the highway. We talked. He told me about Nicaragua. He’d been orphaned early, begged in Managua, ran off to the jungle to be a soldier, drifted to Guatemala and then Mexico.

  I made up lies about Yucatán, bringing in things from Santiago and Havana. Paco nodded and was so kid sincere it made me feel terrible.

  For dessert we had more beer and I ate the orange, the kiwifruit, the banana, and an apple. I couldn’t figure out the kiwi and Paco had to show me how to prepare it. He took the skin off with slender cuts and sliced the inside into five pieces. It was delicious. All the fruit was delicious and it made me hate the Party bureaucrats who deprived us of fruit so that it could be exported for foreign currency or turned into juice or made available only in the off-limits beach hotels.

  One more beer and we staggered to our room and before I even hit the pillow I was gone, gone, gone.

  CHAPTER 6

  ALONG THE MALECN

  G

  one to the dream island.

  A city in free fall.

  A country in free fall.

  Every one of us on deathwatch, waiting out the Beard and his brother’s final days.

  Tick-fucking-tock.

  Hector says (in whispers), After Fidel and Raúl, le deluge. The successors will end up like Mussolini—upside down on a meat hook in the Plaza de la Revolución, if there’s any justice. Which there isn’t.

  Calle Gervasio to San Rafael. Walking. Everyone walks in Cuba. You need to be in the Party or have at least a thousand in greenback kiss money to get a car. Early. So early it’s late. High on brown-tar heroin, the whores don’t care that I’m a woman or that I look like a cop. They raise their skirts to show pussy lovingly injected with antibiotics or mercury sublimate by our world-beating physicians.

  “Qué bola,asere?” they ask.

  “Nada.”

  “Qué bola, asere?”

  “Nada.”

  “We swing with you, white chick. We’ll show you tricks to impress your boyfriend.”

  I’m in no mood. Finger and thumb together, “No mas, bitches. No mas.”

  In this part of town the hookers are all black and mulatto teenagers, the kind patronized by German and Canadian sex tourists whose fat white asses are also here in abundance. Go to bed, Hans, some pimp will knife you for that watch of yours. That watch will get him to Miami.

  San Rafael all the way to Espada.

  People thinning out. No plump anglos. Kids sleeping in doorways. An old man on a bicycle.

  Past the Beard’s hospital. Party members, diplomats, and tourists only. “The best hospital in Latin America.” Yeah, right. Half the night staff probably outside soliciting blow jobs.

  Espada to San Lázaro.

  The police station.

  A few lights on. Shutters closed. Couple of Mexican Beetles and a midnight blue ’57 Chevy parked outside.

  Sergeant Menendez urinating into a storm drain.

  Sees me. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

  Play it cool. Buddy-buddy.

  “I heard that in Regla a guy pissing in the bay had his dick bitten off by an alligator,” I say.

  He laughs. “I heard that too.”

  He grins and strokes his mustache.

  I smile back, flirty with the DGI pig. “I heard you got a lot to lose, Menendez.”

  Blushes. “Word gets around,” he replies.

  “It’s just what I heard.”

  Again flirty, not that I ever would in a million years. No one would unless they had a thing for cadaverous bastards with pockmarked skin, greasy hair, and a vibe that would creep out an exorcist.

  He leers but it’s not really for me. I’m way too old for him. Hector says he goes for schoolgirls. Hector says the PNR had a file on him for child rape, but it was mysteriously pulled. Hector says a lot of stuff, but this I believe.

  “No, really, what are you pissing in the street for?” I ask.

  “Plumbing’s out.”

  “Again?”

  “Again.”

  “Not in the ladies’ room, too?”

  Another laugh. There is no ladies’ room. The whores piss in a bucket in the communal cell and the secretaries go next door to the Planning Ministry. Since Helena González retired, I’ve been the only female police officer in the place.

  “What are you doing here so early?” he wonders again.

  Persistent little fuck.

  Careful now. Tightrope walk. Menendez is the DGI chivato for the Interior Ministry, an informer, but almost certainly a low-ranking DGI officer himself. Thinks he’s smart, but I know and Hector knows and so do half a dozen others—everyone who lets him win at poker.

  I smile. “Oh, you know me, anything to get ahead, catching up on some currency fraud cases,” I tell him.

  He nods and spits out the stub of his cigarette. His eyes check me out. I’m wearing a white blouse with the top button undone. Blouse, black pants, black Czech shoes. No jewelry, short crop. Cop from a mile away. He looks down the shirt and back up at my eyes.

  “Trying to get ahead. I heard you put in for a leave of absence. That won’t help your career,” he says.

  Christ. How did he hear that already?

  Flirty, young, bubbly: “You’ll see, Menendez. I’m studying criminology. I’m hoping to do an M.A. at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,” I say with a hint of pretend pride.

  “Never heard of it,” he says sourly.

  “It’s the oldest university in the western hemisphere. One of the biggest, too. And when I get the M.A. they’ll make me a sergeant for sure. You better watch out when I’m in charge of you.”

  And for icing I add a little laugh, a little girlish laugh. Oh, Menendez, cabrón, am I not so cute to have such big dreams? Oh, Sergeant Menendez, aren’t you moved by my naïveté. Doesn’t it make you laugh to see how little I know about how things work in the Policía Nacional de la Revolución.

  He grunts. “They’re going to let you go to Mexico?”

  “Well, they haven’t given permission yet for the whole year. I haven’t even applied formally yet, but I have an interview at the university next week. I think they’ll let me go for that at least.”

  “Maybe,” he says coyly. “But on the whole college is a waste of time. Good solid police work you learn on the job. And a year away: big mistake if you ask me, Officer Mercado.”

  “Well, we’ll see what they say.”

  “If you want to get ahead you should join the Party,” he adds.

  “I’d like to, but I can’t. Because of my father.”

  His forehead wrinkles, as if he’s bringing up the mental files he has on the whole police department: cops, secretaries, cleaners, other chivatos.

  “Ah, yes, your father. A terrorist. Defected in ’93.”

  “He wasn’t a terrorist.”

  “He hijacked the bay ferry to the Keys.”

  “No. He was on the ferry at the time but he wasn’t one of the hijackers.”

  “Did he attempt to come back?”

  “No.”

  Triumph and a snort. “Well, I won’t keep you, Officer Mercado.”

  “Good day, Sergeant Menendez.”

  I walk inside. One of the newer precinct buildings, but already paint peeling off the walls. Uneven black-and-white floor tiling. Frozen ceiling fan. Big painting of Jefe, Mao style. No one around. A snore. Sergeant Ortiz sleeping behind the front desk. I tiptoe past him up the steps and through a set of grungy glas
s doors that squeak open, almost waking Ortiz.

  Through central processing.

  Officer Posada asleep under his desk. The male hooker cage empty, the female hooker cage with one lonely occupant, a black girl, maybe fourteen, curled under a blanket.

  The stairs to the second floor.

  Crumbling concrete, cracks in the floor the size of plantains. A corridor-length mural depicting Cuban history from the time of Cortés to the glorious Pan American Games in 1990 when the socialist system triumphed again over the Yankees and their vassals.

  Hector’s office.

  Knock.

  “Come in, Mercado.”

  I open the door.

  Books and papers everywhere. Two telephones. Another dead ceiling fan. A window looking down to the sea. Hector nursing a rum and coffee. He looks tired. He hasn’t shaved. Wearing the same shirt and jacket as yesterday.

  “Sit.”

  I sit.

  “You wanted to see me,” he says. This early and this unguarded, his accent has that provincial eastern lilt he’s been trying to eradicate his whole life. If he weren’t bald, fat, married, and very ugly I’d find it sexy.

  “So what’s this about?” he asks sipping from the coffee flask.

  “It’s about my leave of absence,” I say.

  His eyes flick toward the door.

  “You’re early; I like that. Who else is in the building right now? Who did you see?” he asks.

  “Posada.”

  “Awake or asleep? The truth.”

  “Asleep.”

  “Posada asleep,” he sighs. “Before your time, Mercado, a posada was a hotel room you rented by the hour. We’d be lucky if Officer Posada used his brain for one hour a day. One hour in a day, that’s all I ask.”

  I nod.

  Hector sips his coffee.

  “What about Ortiz?”

  “Oh yes, Ortiz.”

  “You could have brought me something from the bakery. The bakeries are starting to open, yes?”

  “I didn’t think to. Sorry, sir.”

  “Hmm, so what’s this all about?” he asks.

  “Uhm, sir, as you’re aware, I’ve put in for a one-week leave of absence.”

  He rummages through the papers on his desk. “I saw that. And you’ve applied to the Foreign Ministry for a travel permit to Mexico.”

  I nod.

  “Speak up,” he says.

  “Yes, I wish to travel to Mexico City. I have applied to study at the university. I am meeting with a Professor Carranza at UNAM about the possibility of taking an M.A. in criminology.”

  Hector nods. “Yeah, I read the letter. And if the university takes you, I suppose that means you’ll be taking an even longer leave of absence from the PNR? We’ll be losing you for how long? A year?”

  “A year. Yes.”

  He shakes his head, starts writing something on the piece of paper. “Hmmm, I don’t know about this, Officer Mercado. Has the ministry given you permission for this first trip?”

  “Well, I applied weeks ago and it’s getting close to the deadline, sir. I was hoping that you could—”

  Hector puts his finger to his lips and points at the wall and then at his ear. The implication is that his office is being bugged by the DGSE or the DGI. A second of dead air before he jumps in: “Hoping that I could what, Officer Mercado? Put in a good word for you? Why would I do that? Why would I want to lose one of my best detectives for a week, never mind a whole year? Well?”

  He grins at me and passes me the note that he’s been writing. It says: “I’ll gain expertise that I can use to train fellow PNR officers, saving the department a lot of money.”

  I clear my throat. “Because, sir, when I come back I’ll be a better detective and I will have studied all the latest techniques and I can bring my expertise to bear on our current caseload and of course I can then train fellow officers in the new techniques.”

  Hector nods, satisfied. “We’ll all be like the gringos on CSI Miami, no?”

  “I haven’t seen that show, sir, but I suppose so, yes,” I say.

  “No, you wouldn’t have seen it. It’s good. Well, I must say I’m intrigued by your idea. This first trip would only be to meet the professor and visit the university? One week, you say?”

  “One week.”

  “Hmmm. I have very little clout with the ministry but I will see what I can do.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Another grin. He lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair.

  “There are some things I must ask you first, Officer Mercado, some formalities, some important formalities.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Your father was a defector to the United States.”

  “He was on a boat that was hijacked to the United States; he did not return.”

  “He was a defector!” Hector says, his voice assuming an angry tone for the listeners in the wall.

  “Yes, sir,” I reply meekly.

  “That makes things much more difficult, you see that, don’t you?” he says, rubbing his bulbous rummy nose.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Travel permits are given only to those with exemplary records, and you’re not even in the Party.”

  “Because of my father I am not permitted to join the Party, sir.”

  “Yet your brother, Ricardo, is in the Party,” Hector says.

  “Yes, he joined the Party two years ago. He was granted a special dispensation.”

  “How did that happen?” Hector asks, again for the listeners, or more important, for the people reading the transcript.

  “Ricardo has proven his loyalty to Cuba. He was president of the National Students Union and is an executive member of the National Union of Journalists.”

  “And he has been given travel permits?”

  “Yes. He has been to Mexico several times, Haiti, Russia, China. When my father died in the United States, Ricky even went there to clear up some of my father’s personal effects. He had the body cremated.”

  “Ricardo went to the United States?” Hector asks, though of course he knows that only too well.

  “He has been to the United States twice. Once when my father died and only last week to attend a UN discussion on Cuba in New York City.”

  “And yet he did not defect?” Hector says.

  “No, sir, he is loyal to Cuba and the Revolution, as am I.”

  Hector nods to himself and lets the silence play out. His hand makes the turning “give me more of this” sign.

  “And of course my mother is old and dependent upon state subsidy. I would not do anything to jeopardize her well-being,” I add.

  Hector smiles, pleased. “Well, Officer Mercado, I am sure that all of this will stand you in good stead, and for what it’s worth, I’ll try to put in a good word with the ministry. Mind you, there is a lot of bureaucracy involved and these things are quite strict. If you do get a travel permit it will only be for Mexico City. You won’t be able to go to Acapulco or anywhere like that.”

  “No, sir.”

  “A week seems a little excessive for an interview and a look around the university.”

  “Uhm, I will also wish to purchase some books and to search out cheap accommodation.”

  “Yes, of course. Well, I have a lot to attend to today, Officer Mercado. Like I say, I’ll see what I can do. Allow me to walk you out.”

  Walk you out.

  Away from the bugs and the performance. The dialogue for the MININT goons.

  We walk.

  Along the corridor, down the stairs, through the flaking orange paint, past the sleeping Posada, past Ortiz, who has miraculously awoken.

  “Good morning, sir,” Ortiz says.

  “Good morning,” Hector replies curtly, and with that we’re out into the street.

  “You must have seen Sergeant Menendez as well today, did you not?” Hector says.

  “Not inside the building,” I reply.

  “You were wise not to mention
his name. Never mention his name in my office. He believes that he keeps a low profile.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, sir,” I reply.

  “Good. Come with me to the Malecón,” Hector says.

  The Malecón: the corniche that runs along the seafront of Havana. Now that they’ve fixed up Alexandria’s promenade and Shanghai’s Bund this is the paradigm case of faded grandeur. Think Rome in the Dark Ages, Constantinople in the last years before the Turk. In any other city in the world this would be prime real estate: the main drag of the city between the headland and the entrance to Havana Bay. There’s no beach, but beyond the seawall bathers and fishermen gather all along the gentle curve of the croisette. On most days there’s a spectacular view east to the castle and beyond to the blue waters of the Florida Strait. The Malecón could be beautiful, but in our Havana this particular piece of real estate is just a shabby row of boarded-up three-story buildings and empty lots. In the fifties these were bars, cafés, hotels, private casinos, ice cream parlors, Cadillac dealerships, and so on. In the sixties they all got turned into workers’ apartments. And now they aren’t anything. When the hurricanes come the seawall doesn’t protect them and the buildings flood and the windows break and the wood rots and no one has the money for repairs. The bright paint has long since gone and the buildings that are still standing look like a collection of toothless old men waiting for their own personal apocalypse.

  The trick to the Malecón is to look left as you’re walking east and right as you’re walking west. Keep your eyes fixed on the sea and it doesn’t seem so sad.

  Gentleman that he is, Hector lets me walk on the seawall side.

  “What’s the matter with you, can’t you keep up?” he asks.

  Despite having no sleep and existing purely on rum, pork fat, and cheap cigars, he’s setting a blistering pace.

  “What’s the hurry?” I ask.

  “I want to put some distance between us and that son of a bitch.”

  “He’s not even here. I saw him pissing outside and I think he went home after that.”