Havana Best Friends

by Jose Latour

  “I most certainly will.”

  “You have our numbers.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, I guess that’s all for now,” said Pena, slapping his thighs and rising to his feet.

  “Just a minute, Major. I’m curious about something.”

  Here it was. “Yes?”

  “All these questions about the women in Pablo’s life … Is there a sex angle to his murder? You suspect he was killed by some jealous husband?”

  “It’s a possibility, comrade. You know, single guy, still young, money in his pockets. At this stage, we can’t dismiss any possibility.”

  “I see. Well, I wish you luck, comrades. I want the killer found and sentenced.”

  “Thank you, comrade,” Trujillo said. “But luck is a small factor in criminal investigations.”

  It was probably then that Lady Luck decided to show Captain Trujillo she doesn’t like to be underestimated, for that evening he got a call at the DTI.

  “Captain Trujillo, at your service.”

  “Fonseca and Pablo were like nail and flesh,” a man whispered.

  “Who is this?”

  “They used to lock themselves in Fonseca’s office. Spent hours there in the evenings.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “Check out where Fonseca’s son and daughter are.”

  “His son and daughter?”

  “Right.”

  “They live with him?”

  “You check it out. He recently moved to Casino Deportivo.”

  The caller hung up and Trujillo frowned at the receiver before returning it to its cradle.

  “The tricky part was locating his new address,” Trujillo moaned.

  “Spare me the details, Sherlock,” Pena countered.

  The captain was reporting to his boss two days later. They were in the major’s office, sipping lousy espresso. In the last few months the espresso had been getting weaker each passing day and the two men suspected the cook of shaving off the stock of ground coffee to sell on the black market.

  “No, I mean it. Of course, I couldn’t ask him, couldn’t go to ACOREC, couldn’t call the –”

  “You want a fucking medal for finding an address?”

  “Hey, what’s the matter, Chief? You have a wet dream about Anita Owen?”

  “Wish I had.”

  Trujillo snickered. Pena finished his espresso and lit a cigarette.

  “Well, I finally managed to find out that he lives on Avenue of the Ocujes,” Trujillo said.

  “Since when?”

  “He moved there four months ago.”

  “And this place …”

  “Out of this world.”

  “Give me more.”

  “One storey, built by some upper-middle-class dude in the late 1950s. Three air conditioners, a two-car garage, huge wooden windows covered with iron grilles, several bedrooms, fully renovated and freshly painted in cream and white from the brick wall alongside the sidewalk to the cyclone fence around the back patio.”

  “Precisely what you need,” Pena said with a grin, thinking of his subordinate’s tilting house.

  “Too right,” Trujillo agreed.

  The two men knew that, as the buying and selling of real estate is illegal in Cuba, and that to move you have to get permission from the Housing Institute, those who have the money approach people in need who have what they want and pay in cash for a swap.

  Cigarette smoke drifted into Pena’s eyes. He took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyelids with the heel of his hand. “Where did he used to live?” he asked.

  “A three-bedroom apartment on Hidalgo Street, five blocks from here,” Trujillo said. “Almost all the people living there are active or retired army officers and their relatives.”

  The muscles at the base of Pena’s jaw bulged. “He swapped it, right?”

  “He did.”

  “And you figure he paid … how much?”

  The captain shrugged. “Fifteen thousand dollars, twenty thousand, twenty-five, who knows? It’s anybody’s guess.”

  “The other day my old lady mentioned a guy who paid five thousand dollars for a two-bedroom apartment in the seedier end of Centro Habana. The family of nine who’d been living there moved to a one-bedroom apartment in Santos Suárez.”

  Trujillo made no comment. Pena gave a final drag to his cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray. “Am I supposed to ask?”

  “Ask what?” said Trujillo, pretending to be lost.

  “Oh, fuck. Give me a break.”

  “What did I say?”

  “It’s big. You’re holding out on me, it’s really big.”

  Trujillo grinned. “You are not going to believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “His son is taking a course in Paris. His daughter is doing the same thing in Madrid.”

  Pena sat up straight and gave the captain a look. “There has to be more. You know my son took a postgraduate course in Spain. Out with it.”

  “His kids have never set foot in a Cuban university.”

  Pena blinked, considered the new information for a moment. “Okay. They were sent to Europe by their employers.”

  “They don’t hold jobs anywhere.”

  “Then it’s a scholarship granted to Cuban students by the Spanish and French governments.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Trujillo. Who the fuck pays for it?”

  “Their father pays for it.”

  The major propped his double chin on interlaced fingers and stared at Trujillo for nearly half a minute as his brain checked out all the angles. Impossible. It was too obvious a mistake. Fonseca had to know better. Ostentation was a cardinal sin.

  “Let me get this straight. Are you telling me that Carmelo Fonseca sent his son and daughter to study in Europe and paid for it with his own money?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  “Okay, Captain, I want a full report right now. Who told you that, with whom did you verify the information, the whole shebang.”

  Trujillo had done everything by the book. His source was a retired lieutenant colonel who lived in the Fonsecas’ old apartment building. The man claimed to be appalled at his former neighbour’s corruption. Once Immigration had confirmed that the two youngsters had left Cuba six and five months earlier, Trujillo visited the Ministries of Education and Higher Education to make sure the teenagers were not on state-sponsored scholarships or some other government-run educational program. Labour records didn’t register either one as employed, self-employed, or unemployed.

  A long silence followed. Pena rotated his chair and stared out the window at a lamppost on Tulipán Street, its light scattered by the leaves of a nearby tree fluttering in the soft breeze. Trujillo must have overlooked something vital, he mused. It was absurd. The Cuban manager of a joint venture openly spending thousands of dollars on a lavish residence and on his children’s education abroad? There was no way a government official could get away with something like that. A hundred snitches would crawl out of the woodwork to report him. The only way he could get away with it would be if he were under the wing of some extremely powerful protector. In which case the best thing was to keep clear of this loose cannon named Carmelo Fonseca.

  “It’s not our concern,” he said finally.

  “What?”

  “We are investigating the murder of Pablo Miranda, okay? What the hell does this have to do with our case?” And without a pause he went on, “What courses are they taking?”

  “He’s taking public relations. The girl mentioned she would be studying interior design.”

  “Sonofabitch! Well, it’s not our problem. This has nothing to do with the case. There’s not a shred of evidence suggesting Fonseca had anything to do with the murder. So, I’m ordering you to zero in on the murder.”

  Trujillo cracked his knuckles
and tilted his head to one side. “And he gets away with it?”

  “With what?”

  “Corruption.”

  Pena brushed aside the term. “You in the Anti-Corruption Detail? Do we have an Anti-Corruption Detail?”

  Trujillo gave a wry smile and looked away.

  “I asked you a question, Captain. Do we have an Anti-Corruption Detail?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “So, you zero in on the murder case. Give it your best shot. You find that this sonofabitch has something to do with it, we go after him with everything we’ve got.”

  “And if he has nothing to do with it?”

  “I’ll report your findings to the colonel and he’ll know what to do. It’s not our concern, Trujillo. It’s not our concern.”

  The captain pulled himself up and rearranged his webbed belt and gun. “Okay, I’ll pay a visit to this paladar tomorrow.”

  “What for?” Pena asked. “Pablo went there three or four days before he was killed. And the tourists left Cuba the following morning. They had nothing to do with it.”

  “It’s a lead I haven’t followed. Maybe the people there will remember something Pablo said or did. I also want to check whether they are on the level. If not, I might scare them into filing an application for a licence.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’ll meet with Garcia. See if he has identified someone or somewhere in those videos, watch some myself. I suspect the videos and the money are connected to the killing. I don’t know how, but they are connected.”

  “Probably.”

  “See you tomorrow, Chief.”

  Trujillo stopped at the door and turned back to the major. “I wonder what Pablo and Fonseca did in the evenings at the office.”

  “The murder, Captain. Focus on the murder. You unravel this case, you win the star of major for your epaulette.”

  Señora Roselia peered through the peephole and recoiled in horror. A cop standing at her front door? Who had turned her in? The frigging CDR, for sure. The doorbell rang again. Señora Roselia patted her hair, slipped fingers under her blouse, and yanked both bra straps. She put a smile in place, then unlatched the door.

  “Good morning, officer,” she greeted him, sounding overjoyed.

  “Good morning, comrade.”

  “Are you looking for the CDR? It’s on the next block.”

  “I know the CDR is on the next block, thank you. Are you Comrade Roselia?”

  “I am Roselia, yes.” It made her mad to be called comrade.

  “I would like a word with you.”

  “Sure, come on in.”

  Since taking this case, Captain Trujillo had become even more aware of the ruinous condition of his home. Elena’s apartment, although rundown, was a mansion compared to his own; Turintrade was the poshest office he had ever been in; from the outside, Fonseca’s place looked like a palace. And now, as he took in Roselia’s living room, he felt the sting of envy. This house reminded him of the sets in Hollywood musicals. And it smelled so good, fresh and … natural? For the first time in his life Trujillo was sniffing a recently sprayed pine air freshener.

  “Please, take a seat.”

  “Thank you.”

  The captain chose the sofa and flashed his ID. Roselia sat across from him, on the edge of an armchair.

  “I’m Captain Félix Trujillo, from the DTI.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Hundred-proof hypocrisy, they both knew.

  “The pleasure is all mine. Do you know Pablo Miranda?”

  Señora Roselia furrowed her brow, as though trying to remember. She knew the dwarf would get her into trouble someday. He was too fucking irresponsible, careless. She lifted her head with a jerk, pretending that all of a sudden she had recalled who the person was. “Pablito, you mean? A short, bald man?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I didn’t know his surname. He’s Pablito to me.”

  “He a friend of yours?”

  Roselia pursed her lips and considered the question. “I … wouldn’t call him a friend, not a friend, no. More like an acquaintance.”

  “I see. When was the last time you saw him?”

  Roselia tugged the hem of her skirt and again evaded the cop’s eyes. She didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. Captain, indeed! From films and TV movies she had learned that in capitalist countries captains were top brass at police precincts, wore golden epaulettes, rode in shiny sedans. The way it was in Cuba, before the revolution. Now, almost all cops over thirty – riding buses in their frayed uniforms – were captains. Hundreds of police captains in Havana; probably thousands all over the country. Anywhere else they would be sergeants. But this could be something serious and it was better to play along with him and keep as close as possible to the truth.

  “A week ago, maybe more.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  “He came to visit you?”

  “Well … yes, in a way. He called, he had these friends, tourists, and he wanted to take them out to dinner. Said he couldn’t afford a restaurant and since I … well, perhaps I’m being immodest, but people say I’m a great cook, so he asked if I could prepare a nice dinner for four. I refused. I said to him, ‘Pablito, you expect me to spend the few dollars my son in Miami sends me buying what’s needed for a nice five-course meal?’ And he said, ‘I’ll refund you down to the last penny. You spend ten dollars, fifteen dollars, I’ll refund you. No more than fifteen dollars, that’s all I got. I can’t take these people to a paladar. It would cost me a fortune. Please, Roselia, help me out with this.’ I’m a sucker for helping people out, so I said, ‘Okay, Pablito, I’ll do this for you, but just once, don’t make a habit of it.’ So, I made him a nice meal for four people, he came with his guests and his sister, paid me the fourteen dollars I had spent on the ingredients, and that was the last time I saw him.”

  “How generous of you, Comrade Roselia,” Trujillo said. “If you do that for an acquaintance, I can’t imagine what you’d do for a friend. Now I realize why some people say you are operating a paladar from your home.”

  “Ah, Captain, some of my neighbours are so unfair,” Roselia moaned, dismayed at human wickedness. “I love to cook, I flatter myself on my cooking. Of life’s pleasures, cooking and living in this nice house are the only ones I’m still capable of enjoying. And, yes, once in a while a few friends bring me what’s needed and I cook for them, free of charge, of course. I never make a profit. Recover the cost, yes; make money out of it, no. But these envious neighbours of mine, they see the cars, the people coming and going, and they conclude ‘Roselia is operating a paladar.’ ”

  “That’s not my problem, Comrade Roselia. I just want to know how you came to be acquainted with Pablo Miranda.”

  Roselia stared at the captain, again pretending to search her mind. “Probably it was … six months ago. He must have been invited by a friend of mine. Pablito praised my cooking highly, said it was the best meal of his life. It’s what made me remember him when he called.”

  “Who introduced him to you?”

  “Frankly, I don’t remember.”

  “Comrade Roselia, how many friends do you cook for?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Simple question. How many friends and acquaintances do you cook for?”

  “Well, I haven’t counted. Let me see …” Lifting her eyes to the ceiling, Roselia pretended to add up her patrons on her fingers. What she was trying to estimate was the fine for operating an illegal paladar. That a cop was questioning her seemed unusual too. She had heard that the municipal commerce inspectors were the ones who dealt with illegal businesses. Could this captain know about her other entrepreneurial endeavours? Was the bastard pretending to go after one thing when in fact he was after another? Maybe if she slipped him a twenty?

  “I reckon I have around ten friends I occasionally cook for.”

  “And you don’t remember which of them brought Pablo Mira
nda here?”

  “Imagine, Captain! Sometimes a friend brings eight or nine guests. Besides, my memory is not what it used to be. Old age, you know.”

  Trujillo hadn’t planned on asking her this, but why not? “Maybe it was Carmelo Fonseca,” he said.

  Roselia hesitated for an instant. Should she say yes? “Probably. Well, yes, I seem to recall it was Carmelo. Now that you mention it, I had the impression that Pablito worked for Carmelo.”

  “Yes, he does,” Trujillo said. “Okay, comrade, let’s go back to that evening. Did you hear Pablo Miranda say anything that sounded odd to you? Did you notice if he was worried or acted nervous?”

  “Nervous? Pablito? No, he was as happy as if it were Christmas. He always is.”

  “He always was.”

  “What do you mean, Captain?”

  “Pablo Miranda is dead, Señora Roselia. He was murdered.”

  “Blessed Virgin!” A shiver ran up and down Roselia’s spine. The dwarf? Murdered? And she had thought … “When? Why?” she asked.

  “Three days after he dined here. The ‘why’ is what I’m investigating, comrade. Can you help me?”

  Roselia shook her head emphatically. “No. How could I? I mean, I didn’t know him at all. He was just an acquaintance.”

  “Well, comrade,” Trujillo said, standing up. “Thanks for your time. And I recommend you either apply for a licence to operate a paladar or tell your friends you won’t cook for them any more. Around here everybody, and I mean everybody, believes this is a paladar and one of these days you might be fined several thousand pesos.”

  “Yes, Captain. You are right,” Roselia agreed as she stood up. “I’ll explain things to my friends when they call. Thanks for the warning. Can I offer you something? A soda? Some espresso?”

  “No thanks, comrade. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Captain. Drop by whenever you are in the neighbourhood.”

  “Sure. Bye.”

  Trujillo returned to the DTI, had lunch, checked his messages, then decided to view as many porn videos as he could in the afternoon. He wasn’t looking forward to it. He knew he would be sexually aroused and in the evening his wife would most likely claim she was too tired for lovemaking, which was how she frequently responded nowadays to his ever-decreasing overtures. But he had to search for clues if he wanted to solve the murder.