Fifty Grand

by Adrian McKinty

  “That’s what he wants you to think,” Hector says.

  “He’s a lazy good-for-nothing with bribes up the ass.”

  “Saints preserve us, Mercado, he’s got you right in the palm of his hand. The good ones always want you to underestimate them. Don’t make me think I made you a detective too early.”

  “No, sir, you did not,” I reply immediately.

  Hector chuckles. “How would you like to be back in that lovely blue uniform?”

  I shudder. The blue uniform with the awful peaked cap was almost South American in its hideousness.

  “What about my arrest? That impressed you,” I point out.

  “What arrest?”

  “The waiter.”

  “Oh, him? We would have got him one way or another,” Hector sniffs.

  “That’s not what you said to Díaz,” I mention in my defense.

  “No, it’s not. I wanted Díaz to think that you’re invaluable. But anyway, it’s irrelevant, that episode ended badly.”

  “Badly? I hadn’t heard. I know you didn’t find the body but surely the confession . . . ?”

  Hector stops talking and looks carefully at the occupants of a slow-moving Volkswagen Rabbit. He waits until it’s gone past before continuing. “The confession was fine but we had to let him go. His girlfriend is a secretary at the Venezuelan Embassy, well liked over there. The Venezuelans asked us to release her, and she wouldn’t go without him.”

  “Hijo de puta.”

  “Yeah, fucking Venezuelans. They say it’s cold and we say, Warm your dick in our asses.”

  “You let both of them go?” I ask.

  Hector shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it, it’s too depressing.”

  A black girl yells up to us from the beach. She’s been sifting garbage and beachcombing. She’s about seventeen, very pretty in a gorgeous ripped yellow dress that someone who loved her once had given her.

  “Blow job, five U.S.,” she shouts at Hector.

  “No,” he says firmly.

  “Five Canadian,” the woman persists.

  “We’re Cubans, and we’re police, you idiot,” Hector replies.

  “Police. That’s why you’re so fat,” the woman mutters.

  He could arrest her for that but Hector just shrugs. She has a point. These days most people in Havana have trouble finding food. Cops, tourist agents, and good whores are the exception. And as if inspired to burn off more kilos, Hector increases his speed. I’m limping a little now.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asks.

  “I tripped on the steps at my mother’s place.”

  “When was this?”

  “Couple of days ago. Ricky and I went to see her. Her building’s a mess. She lives in one of those dumps near Ferrocarril.”

  Hector looks confused. “I thought she lived in Santiago,” he says.

  “No, Havana.”

  “There’s something about Santiago de Cuba in your file.”

  “My father was from Santiago; my uncle still lives out there.”

  Hector grins. “Yes, that was it. Lovely city. I had a grandmother from there. Used to visit her in the seventies. Once we rode bicycles to Caimanera to look at the Americans. Did you ever do that?”

  I shake my head. Even before it had gotten a bad reputation, I’d never had a desire to gape at the Yankees in Guantánamo. The Interior Ministry had mined the bay and surrounded the camp with hundreds of soldiers. A few people had tried to defect there but all had been caught. It was easier by far to try for the Keys. And even if I had gone to Caimanera I wouldn’t admit it to Hector. The last thing I wanted to do was exhibit any kind of wistful longing for America.

  He slows his pace. Easier now. My limp vanishes.

  Hector is smiling to himself, probably thinking of his adventures with girls on that long, awful train from Santiago to Havana.

  “You fell down some steps, Detective Mercado?”

  “Yes, sir. Thieves have stolen all the streetlights on that—”

  “When I was a child I fell down a well. Did you know that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “An early sign of idiocy or an early sign of brilliance, what do you think?”

  “Don’t know, sir.”

  “The philosopher Thales fell in a well while contemplating the heavens. Heard of him, detective?”

  “No.”

  “What did you study in college?” Hector asks.

  “Dual major, sir.”

  “Dual major in what?”

  “English and Russian.”

  “Hedging your bets, eh? I like that.”

  “Not really, sir, we didn’t have much choice, we were told what to—”

  “When was the last time you walked along here?” Hector interrupts.

  “Yesterday. As a matter of fact, every morning. I—”

  “Not me, must be a year since I walked here. I have a car, you know. A brand-new Volkswagen from Mexico,” he says with pride.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “No. You wouldn’t.” He sighs. “It’s changed since the last time I was here. Worse. In Cuba things always change for the worse.”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply and inwardly groan. From past experience I know that Hector is going to hit me with an expansion of this theory.

  “Yes, things got worse for the indigenous Cubans when the Spanish came, then they got worse under the Yankees, then worse still under the little dictators, then worse under Sergeant Batista, then worse under Fidel. And you’ll see, it’ll continue to get worse under Raúl and the Venezuelans.”

  “And after Raúl?” I venture.

  “Ah, you mean when the Miamistas come?” He looks at me with a glint in his eye. “We’ll talk about that in a minute,” he says mysteriously.

  We walk along the seawall toward the curve of the Castillo. In the distance is the fort of San Carlos and the chimneys of the oil refineries on the bay.

  The wind is blowing the smoke offshore, decanting it north to Florida, 150 sweet sea kilometers from here.

  He lights a little cigar, offers me one. I decline. Two summers working in the plantations for the Young Pioneers cured me of any desire to smoke Cuban cigars. He hoists himself up and sits on the seawall.

  “Sit next to me,” he says.

  I sit.

  He smokes his stubby cigar and, feeling the need for more nicotine, reaches into the pocket of his beat-up leather jacket to remove a packet of Dominican cigarettes. He offers me one and this time I do accept. He lights it and I inhale. It’s American. A Camel. He’s hiding American cigarettes in a Dominican packet.

  “Do you know the concept of duende, Mercado?”

  “Something to do with flamenco?”

  He sighs. “My father was at the lecture Lorca gave here in Habana on duende, in 1930. Duende is the dark creative energy, the opposite of the creative spirit of the muses. You must avoid that energy, that energy gets you in trouble, Mercado, killed, like Lorca himself a few years later.”

  I stare at him and say nothing. He’s overhearing his own thoughts, trying to bring himself to the point.

  He shakes his head. “Please at least tell me you’re familiar with Lorca, Detective Mercado.”

  “Of course. Murdered by the fascists.”

  “Yes. Murdered by the fascists,” he says slowly, making every word count.

  Waves.

  Gulls.

  A chain grinding against a buoy.

  “I’ve got property here,” he says at last, pointing at the rows of derelict and bricked-up buildings on the Malecón.

  “Really?” I say with surprise.

  “Yes. Land money. Best kind. Seafront. Worth shit now. I got it for nothing. But in five years when the Yankees are back . . .”

  “You think the Yankees will be here in five years, sir?” I ask.

  “Give or take, and call me Hector, Mercado. Call me Hector.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Beneath us more kids are combin
g the concrete-and-iron coastal defenses for flotsam or garbage, and farther down the shore in the cool light of day a desperate character is making a raft out of driftwood and polystyrene packing. I point him out.

  “You want to fill in a lot of forms today? You didn’t see him,” Hector says.

  “No, sir.”

  We sit for a minute and listen to the waves. A pale sun is rising over a paler sea. Traffic is starting to pick up on the road.

  Hector clears his throat. “I’m not going to argue with you, Mercado. I know you. I know that you’re stubborn and I know that you’re clever and I know that your brother has already taken considerable risks, but I will say this, if you think you’ve pulled the wool over my eyes, you’re mistaken. And if you can’t fool me, then you’re not going to fool anyone in the ministry either.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How long have you worked for me?”

  “Since college. Five years.”

  “I made you a detective. I promoted you. Me.”

  “I know that, sir, and I’m grateful, and I’ll do everything I can to bring credit to the—”

  He shakes his head slightly, narrows his eyes.

  “Never had a daughter. Two boys,” he says sadly.

  “I know, sir.”

  “One works for the Ministry of Fruit Cultivation, the other one doesn’t work.”

  I know that, too, but I don’t reply.

  “For a while there, Mercado, I thought we had a connection. Something special. The other day in the Vieja . . .” His voice trails off into a cough.

  He doesn’t continue when he clears his throat.

  “Yes, sir?” I prompt him.

  “Call me Hector. I prefer that.”

  “Yes, uh, Hector.”

  “I like the way you say that. Now, why don’t I lay my cards on the table, and then you can do the same and you can try me with the truth. How does that sound?”

  “Ok.”

  Hector smiles. He doesn’t seem angry but he’s bristling, and I can tell that I am irritating him. “Mercado, it’s like this: your brother came back from America last week. He had to get permission from the DGI and the Foreign Ministry and then a license from the U.S. Department of State. The waiver he got was to attend some preposterous conference on Cuba in New York. The license did not permit him to travel outside New York City.”

  “I believe I told you that already, it’s no secret. I—” I begin but he cuts me off savagely.

  “Listen to me! I know, ok?”

  “Know what, sir?”

  “Your brother went to Colorado. Your father was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run accident in Colorado. He was living in Colorado under a Mexican passport. He was drunk, the car did not stop.”

  “My brother did indeed go out to Colorado but I think you’ve gotten things mixed up, sir. That was almost six months ago, that was a completely different trip. For that trip he was granted a special visa from the Foreign Ministry—”

  “Two trips to the USA, both of them benign. End of story, right?” he mutters.

  “Right.”

  “Wrong. I think Ricky went out there again last week, at your instigation, to do some digging into the accident. When he came back you two talked, he confirmed your suspicions, and that’s why you want to go to America. It’s nothing to do with the university. You’ve been planning this thing for months.”

  “You’re mistaken,” I say quickly in an attempt to conceal my panic. Old bastard had me cold. “My father is a traitor to the Revolution. He abandoned his family. I have had no contact with him since he left Cuba. I want to go to Mexico to attend UNAM. I am not going to the United States.”

  Hector flicks ash, nods. If it were me, I’d press the attack, but he doesn’t, he merely sighs and throws his cigarette end off the seawall. It’s been a while since Hector braced a currency dealer or a pimp; he’s lost his touch.

  Finally, after a minute of dead air, when I’ve collected myself, he does speak: “Police captains in the Policía Nacional de la Revolución have some influence, Mercado. We are allowed to use the Internet. We are allowed to look in certain files of the DGI and the DGSE. And most of us have to be of reasonable intelligence.”

  “I’m not doubting your intelligence, sir, I just don’t know quite how you’ve got it all so wrong in this particular situation.”

  He rubs his chin, smiles. “Well, maybe I have. Come then, let’s continue our little walk,” he says casually. We sidle off the wall and as the sun begins to break over the castle he fishes in his pocket and produces a pair of ancient sunglasses.

  He looks a little ridiculous in the sunglasses, heavy wool jacket, baggy blue trousers, scuffed brown shoes. He doesn’t look a person of consequence, though perhaps that’s part of his charm.

  “How many whores would you say there are in Havana?” Hector asks.

  “I don’t know. Two, two and a half thousand.”

  “More, say three thousand. Conservatively they each make about a hundred dollars a night hard currency. That’s about two million dollars a week. A hundred million a year. That’s what’s keeping this city afloat. Whore money.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Whore money and Venezuelan oil will keep us going until the future comes racing across the Florida Strait. Stick with me. Let’s cross the street at this break in the traffic.”

  We dodge a camel bus and an overloaded Nissan truck and make it across in one piece. He leads me to a building at the corner of Maceo and Crespo—a decrepit four-story apartment complex that probably hasn’t had any tenants since Hurricane Ivan.

  “This is my pride and joy,” he says. “This is the future.”

  Hard to credit it. Windows covered with plywood boards, holes in the brickwork, and you can smell the mold and rot from the sidewalk.

  “Let’s go inside,” he says, producing a key and undoing a padlock on the rusting iron front door.

  He fumbles for a switch and by some supernatural power lights come on to reveal a gutted, stinking shitbox filled with garbage, guano, pigeons, parrots, and rats.

  “What is this?” I ask him.

  “This is the building I’ve bought with all my savings. It’s mine now and I can trace legal title back to before 1959, which will be important when the Miamistas come with their Yankee lawyers,” Hector says.

  “Why are you showing this to me?”

  Hector grins. “This building is worth nothing now. Nothing. But in a few years, after Jefe and Little Jefe . . . A hotel. A boutique hotel right on the Malecón. A minute from the sea, a short walk to the Prado. This place will be worth millions of dollars.”

  I nod my head. “If the Revolution falters after Fidel and Raúl.”

  “It’s a gamble, Mercado. Like everything in life. I’m not like the rest of these fucking Cubanos with their long faces and their gloomy lives. I see a future right here, in Havana. Not in La Yuma. Here,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  He lights another cigarette and leans against a crumbling wall. Pulverized plaster and tobacco smoke obscure his face.

  A minute goes by.

  Two.

  “Uh, sir, I should probably be getting back. Those currency cases aren’t going to solve themselves.”

  He sighs, disappointed. “Nietzsche said that knowledge kills action. Action requires the veils of illusion. That’s the doctrine of Hamlet. When you go there and you meet them, what then, Mercado? What then?”

  “Sir, I really appreciate the fact that you’ve trusted me with this—”

  “I had hoped that here in my secret place you were going to tell me your secret. I naively thought that you trusted me sufficiently to give me your truth.”

  “I have given you the truth.”

  “Thing is, Mercado, you probably think you’ve got nothing to lose. But I have a lot to lose. I see a little glimmer of hope. I’ve got an investment. A dream.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Of course you won’t, b
ut you’re still going to fuck me over. If you go to the United States and stay there, I’ll lose my job, they’ll take my property, they’ll probably throw me in jail. My wife and kids will be destroyed. You want to see my wife blowing fat Swedes to feed our kids?”

  He throws the cigarette. It bounces off my cheek, sparks flying.

  “Is that what you fucking want?” he yells. His face is pink. He’s really angry now.

  “What are you talking about? The United States? I wanna go to Mexico, I have an interview at the—”

  Hector reaches into the pocket of his roomy slacks and pulls out a Russian automatic. He flicks off the safety and, fast for a fat man, presses it against my throat.

  “No more fucking lies, Mercado. I could kill you here in this derelict building. The ocean booming against the seawall, the traffic, no fucking witnesses, nobody would even find the body for months, if ever.”

  “Hector, I—”

  “You want the DGI to destroy me? You want them to throw me in jail with all the people I’ve put away over the years? Is that what you want after all I’ve done for you? Made you a fucking detective, groomed you, made every other goddamn cop in the station treat you with respect. Answer me, Mercadito!”

  The gun.

  The dust.

  His red eyes.

  “I don’t want to do anything to hurt you, boss,” I say.

  “Why do you think he was in Colorado posing as a fucking Mexican? Did you ever think about that? He didn’t want to be found. He ran from the Cuba that raised him and he ran from the Florida Cubans who took him in. He ran and disappeared. He didn’t want your help. Or anybody’s help. He was a selfish motherfucker, Mercado. A drunk. A fuckup. He was the fucking town ratcatcher. Forget him.”

  He pushes the revolver hard against my windpipe, holds it there for a full ten seconds, but then, suddenly, he wilts. He lets the gun fall to his side, then takes a step back and sits on an old table.

  The performance—if it was a performance—has exhausted him.

  He looks in his pocket for his flask of rum but he’s left it in the office.

  “Just tell me the truth, Mercado. Ricky’s a reporter. And despite the fireworks, a good one too. There was something he didn’t like.”

  “I don’t know wh—”

  “The autopsy. He had the Mexican consulate conduct an autopsy.”