Havana Red

by Leonardo Padura

  “No, not yet.”

  Manuel Palacios started up the car, without looking at his boss, and when they reached the church the Count decided to show his hand.

  “Look, Manolo, I’ve thought of something to wind up this case. That’s why I called you.”

  He waited in vain for a response from his colleague and continued: “Do you remember there was a bit of a Montecristo cigar among the things they found in the place where Alexis was killed?” And he waited. He didn’t wait long.

  “Fuck, you’re right, Conde! Do you think . . .? No, it can’t be. His father . . .?”

  “Let’s see if we can find the butt of the Montecristo I gave the Boss and if the lab can tell us if they’re similar. Even if they’re only distant relations, I think Faustino Arayán has hit the jackpot with a single ticket.”

  Manuel Palacios, conclusively persuaded by Conde’s reasoning, put his foot down and the car lurched off fearfully.

  “Easy does it, we’ve got time.”

  “No, the quicker this is sorted, the quicker I’m on the razzle . . . If you’d seen the girl I picked up yesterday . . .”

  While Manuel Palacios told him of the virtues of his newly promised – he sometimes called them that, though there was never a single promise, even in the realm of fantasy, and according to the lieutenant’s tally he was on number sixteen for the year – the Count tried to imagine what had happened in the Havana Woods the night of the day of the Transfiguration, but was thwarted by an inability to fable: what had happened? A father who kills his son? What about the two coins? he wondered as Sergeant Palacios turned into the Headquarters parking lot, as tranquil and sunny as everything else that August.

  Determined to take advantage of the peace and quiet of the Sabbath, the Count waited for the lift to arrive empty, to avoid for once the climb to the top floor. But when the metal doors slid open, he felt a thump in his chest: there were three men in the lift, dressed in combat gear, without stripes on their shoulders, staring at him hard. His mind, which had to decide what to do in the scant seconds the open door allowed, finally signalled that he should say good-day and get in the metal box, rather than run to the stairs, as he wanted to do. The men returned his greeting and the Count turned his back on them and looked at the panel which indicated floor levels. His skin smarted from the inspection he’d been subjected to: perhaps those same three were the ones who’d questioned Sergeant Manuel Palacios, revealing they knew chapter and verse about the life of Mario Conde. Perhaps these three were the ones who decreed his friend Fatman Contreras should be suspended and even took poor Maruchi out of Central Station. Perhaps they were the emissaries of a new Apocalypse: the Count imagined them in the long robes of Inquisitors, ready to burn pyres and use the rack. The anti-natural law of police who spy on other police had put there three of its undesirable but unavoidable executors, whom the Count regretted giving anything, even as basic as a good-day, when he felt the lift brake on the third floor and the men excused themselves and departed the cage, saying: See you, lieutenant, while he held out his hand and pressed number four, and denied them an answer, stood on his dignity.

  When he entered the deserted ante-room to Major Rangel’s office, the Count found his face was burning the way it does when somebody hits you and homicidal furies are unleashed and you become a blind bull only fit to attack. He decided to wait till the malign vapours dissolved in his blood, then walked towards the glass door and heard the voice of the Boss, on the phone, he concluded, when he didn’t get a reply, and knocked gently on the door.

  “Come in, Mario,” said the Boss. How the hell does the bastard always know when I’m around?

  The Count waved at him and waited for his boss to finish his call. The Boss said “yes” two or three times, and hung up the receiver as if afraid he’d break it. The Count observed that, though it was Sunday, the Major was wearing his uniform. Something bad was brewing.

  “There’s no peace, Conde, no peace,” he said and looked though the windows. “And what are you doing here? Did you get to see Eligio yesterday? Have you solved your case?”

  “I think I’m well on the way.”

  “How many days you’ve been on this wretched case?”

  “Four.”

  “Four days and you think you’re well on the way?”

  “I need something from you . . .” And he saw his boss’s lips smile sceptically. “Don’t worry, it’s very simple. Have you smoked the Montecristo I gave you the other day?”

  “Yes, why?” asked Rangel startled, finally turning to look at the Count.

  “Where’s the butt?”

  “Now what’s got into you, Mario?”

  “I need that butt. I’ve got an idea . . .”

  “You’ve got an idea. How strange . . . Look, it must be in the basket, they didn’t empty the rubbish yesterday,” said the Major, picking the wastepaper basket from the floor and exclaiming, “Here it is. Its thickness gave it away . . . Why do you need this, Conde?”

  The lieutenant took the piece of cigar, which had been consumed as far as the Major took things. He observed how the end was chewed, half broken, and concluded that the Boss had enjoyed it, though while he was smoking he must have been anxious or upset to bite it like that.

  “Give me half an hour, Major,” he pledged, and left the office, imitating Rangel holding a cigar.

  “Don’t play games with me, Mario,” he heard as he left.

  “Well, Conde, this is not definitive, but you could say the two cigars have the same origin. Steady on, that only means they’re made from a similar leaf, though it’s obvious they weren’t twisted by the same person. The one from the Woods is bigger, has a slightly tighter twist to it and appears to have been lit only once, because it’s accumulated less tar and nicotine round the mouth end, apart from being only half smoked, and that’s probably why it’s still got its band. No other clues. A little earth, that’s all. But remember, cigars made by more than one person may go into the same box, because they pack them as they come. But what I am sure of is that they’re a similar quality tobacco, the same harvest, I mean, though that means nothing.”

  “Then I can’t say the two bastard cigars are brothers?”

  The laboratory man looked at the Count and smiled: “But why make them relatives like that? They originated from the same place, period. But don’t ask me to say they’re brothers from the same leaf or plant.”

  “And if I were to bring you more cigars from the same box, do you think you could be any surer?”

  The laboratory man looked at the remains of the two cigars, their guts opened up as if for an autopsy.

  “That could be really helpful.”

  “Well, I’ll get some. When will you work till today?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be here till four, but if necessary, I can wait. Or what are friends for?”

  The Count went into the corridor and walked down a flight of stairs to his cubbyhole. His prejudices kept digging at him and he wanted to make them reality as soon as possible. He entered his small office and found Manuel Palacios brandishing a piece of paper.

  “Look at this, Conde: we’ve tracked down Salvador K.”

  “I’d forgotten all about that insect. Where might he be?”

  “He turned up in El Cerro. Living a new romance.”

  “With a woman?”

  “Almost, but not quite a woman. El Greco says he went and talked to him after they’d tracked him down; the rooster told him that since everybody knew about his thing with Alexis, he wasn’t going to hide any more and would live life as it should be lived. He says the guy seemed as happy as anything now he’d come out a swashbuckling queer. What do you reckon?”

  “I think he’s the only one to have got something out of this mess, don’t you?”

  “What shall we do? Bring him in?”

  “Let him enjoy himself for the moment . . . Then we’ll see if we need to speak to him. But they should keep an eye on him.”

  “That’s what
I thought,” said Manolo, and he put the paper and the address away in a folder on the table on which was written in red, irregular letters: Alexis Arayán/Homicide/Open.

  “Now let’s play our last card. Give me the telephone.”

  The sergeant pushed the receiver over to the corner of the desk where the Count was and watched him dial, as he lit a cigarette.

  “María Antonia? . . . Yes, Lieutenant Mario Conde here. How are you? Look, María Antonia, we need you to do us a favour . . . No, it’s very simple . . . We want to talk to you . . . No, no. I said talk, talk over a few things to do with Alexis, because we know you and he were very fond of each other and that you saw much more of him than Faustino or Matilde, right? . . . Yes, I’d also prefer it to be here . . . OK? I’ll send a car . . . Where? Uhuh, on the corner of Thirty-Second, of course . . . And, oh, María Antonia, I’d like to ask you another favour. Could you bring me a cigar from the box of Montecristos on the coffee table?”

  “Thanks, María Antonia,” said the Count when the black woman opened her bag and gave him the cigar. He looked at it lingeringly, as if spellbound by the pale, polished beauty of an excellent cigar grown in Vueltabajo, and smiled as he handed it to Manuel Palacios. “Come in, please,” and he opened the door to his cubicle. María Antonia’s feet didn’t seem as light as usual; she had rather the wary tread of a hunted animal, and the Count imagined the doubts raining down on the woman’s consciousness, as she turned round to see if the door was closed. He felt pity for her again as he pointed her to a chair, talked to her about the heat in the street, the tranquil view he enjoyed from his cubicle window and how that was why he preferred it to the big offices that faced the other wing of the building, and finally asked her if she was married.

  “No, single,” she replied; wearing a flowery Sunday dress, her bag on her knees, her hair gathered beneath an imitation silk scarf and lips painted blood-red, she seemed like an escapee from a scene in The Color Purple, thought the Count.

  “And how long have you known the Arayán family?”

  “From ’56, when I started to work for them. Matilde and Faustino had just married and at the time lived in Santos Suárez with Matilde’s mother, who was widowed. After the Revolution I decided to leave the house, I wanted to make a life for myself, quite away from them, and intended looking for another job, but the child was born and I developed an affection for him and kept postponing and postponing my departure, until four days ago, when this happened . . . Now I think I will leave, though I don’t know where I’ll go. As I’ve always lived with them, I don’t have a home, or a right to a pension . . . I’d have to go and live with my brother and that’s a real hell, with his wife, three children and who knows how many grandchildren.”

  “Did you get on well with the Arayáns?”

  “Yes, Fabiola, Matilde’s mum, behaved very well towards me, and I loved the kid as if he were my own. For many years we three lived alone in the house, especially here in Miramar, when they began to give Faustino work outside Cuba. The boy spent more time with me and his grandmother than with his parents, and we went out a lot, to the cinema, the theatre, museums, because Fabiola had been a university teacher and was very cultured. Faustino says it’s our fault the way he turned out, well, you know how, but I swear I brought him up like my own child. The fact he was such a loving, helpless child, and that Faustino put so much pressure on him, threatened him a lot, even hit him more than once, I think it was Alexis’s way of taking his revenge on him. They had a very difficult relationship, for a father and son. They didn’t speak to each other for several years . . .”

  “What do you think of Faustino?”

  María Antonia looked for a pocket handkerchief in her bag and wiped the sweat from her top lip. The air in the cubicle was perfumed by a wave of that handkerchief, which made the Count feel even sorrier for her: the woman had assumed a perfectly aristocratic manner that seemed out of kilter with her submissive attitude in the Arayán household. How many of her real aspirations and aptitudes had she hidden for years, as she deferred her own life to be close to the child of another she’d adopted as her own?

  “I don’t think it’s my place . . .” was her response, finally.

  “Tell me something,” the lieutenant continued. “Nothing will go beyond these walls.”

  “Well, what is there to tell? He’s somebody in high favour with the government, you know, that’s why he travels so much, has been an ambassador and the like. He’s always behaved well towards me, although never like Fabiola or Matilde, you understand. And I never forgave him for the way he acted towards his son. The poor boy got to be afraid of his father. That’s why he left home. I was very, very happy, and we decided if he ever got his own house, I’d go and live with him.”

  As he saw the tears running down María Antonia’s black cheeks, the Count thought the end of this soap would more than consume his Sunday quota of pity. He reproached himself for mistaking, in a flash judgement, the face of love for the mask of submission and tried to imagine the woman’s stellar solitude, her life lived at the wrong time and place, whose only reason to live was the strangled transvestite she’d reared and cared for like her own son. The Count stood up and let her cry: he supposed her pain to be as deep as her boundless solitude. Then he heard her asking him to forgive her, just as he looked at his watch and calculated that Manuel Palacios must be about to arrive, and he wanted to see a victory “V” on the sergeant’s hand more than ever. For the sake of María Antonia, hapless Alexis, even the Marquess and himself and his blessed prejudices. He wanted it so badly that his cubicle door swung to let in the skeletal form of Manuel Palacios, right hand signalling a “V”.

  “María Antonia,” he said, and returned to his seat opposite the woman, now putting her small handkerchief back in her small bag. “For some days I’ve been under the impression you wanted to tell us something which perhaps had to do with Alexis’s death. Or did I get it wrong?”

  The woman looked him in the eye.

  “I don’t know why you imagine that.”

  “Rather than imagine it, I’m sure, particularly after yesterday when you phoned Alberto Marqués and told him you’d found the medallion in Alexis’s trinket-box. I don’t know why, but I’m also convinced you knew it was Alexis’s and that you called the Marquess so he’d call us. Or have I got it all wrong?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure . . .”

  “Let me help you, for you’re the only one who can help us now, if you know something, which I think you . . . Listen carefully: next to Alexis’s corpse they found a piece of Montecristo cigar which, according to the laboratory, belongs very probably to the box Faustino Arayán has in his lounge . . . That and Alexis’s medallion placed in his trinket-box don’t prove anything, but they might mean a lot. Do you understand?”

  At each of the Count’s words the woman’s head sank a little lower, as if the world had deposited the burden of truth on her neck and all she wanted to contemplate, as she suffered her punishment, was the bag her two gnarled hands were fingering nervously. The Count waited, feeling his hopes fading, defeated by fear, until he saw the burden disappear and María Antonia’s face look up, and meet his beseeching gaze. The woman’s eyes now gleamed, though she didn’t look about to cry.

  “There were two threads of red silk on the trousers he wore that night. He put them in the washing machine, but I took them out because it was a blue dye that might have stained other clothes. I was surprised because the turn-ups were muddied and that’s why I inspected them closely . . . Let him fucking rot,” she said, and the Count was surprised by the power in her voice, the evil glint in her eye and the way her hands twitched murderously, oh, María Antonia, so fleet of foot. “The son of a whore,” she said, pronouncing every syllable, and she burst into an aristocratic, disconsolate flood of tears.

  “I’ve brought you a present, but it’s not to smoke,” the Count warned, placing on Major Rangel’s desk the tray with three transparent envelopes where the massacred cig
ars were visible.

  “What the fuck’s that?”

  “It’s the second piece of evidence in the case against Faustino Arayán for murdering his son, Alexis Arayán.”

  Major Rangel slapped the palm of his hand down on his desk.

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Don’t play deaf . . . The great Faustino killed his son in the Havana Woods. Get it now?”

  But before Major Rangel really got it, the Count had to relate the results of his conversations with María Antonia Galarraga, the fact that Faustino was AB blood group, the story about the medallion with a line etched under the arm and the two threads of red silk on mud-stained trousers which belonged to that same Faustino Arayán.

  “But what I still don’t understand is why he killed him,” the ever sceptical Major Rangel insisted.

  “The only people who know are Alexis himself, who can talk no more, and God, who gets less of a look in now but was involved in this affair . . . For what it’s worth, Major, I suppose Alexis did, said, demanded or reminded his father of something so terrible that Faustino decided to kill him. It seems the boy was beside himself and suicidal, and blamed Faustino for all his personal tragedy. Look what he wrote in this page from his Bible . . . Then he dressed as a woman, went to meet him, they had a row and Faustino killed him. That simple.”

  “Has this country gone mad?” the Major asked, and the Count thought that was his moment.

  “It seems to be the case. Must be the heat. Look what they did to Maruchi and Fatman Contreras . . .”

  The Old Man stood up.

  “Don’t start, Conde, don’t start,” and now his voice floated in the air, exhausted and bitter. “What they did to Fatman? Do you know why I’m here now? Well, because of Captain Contreras . . . because Captain Contreras shat outside the pan, Mario Conde, and they caught it all sides.”

  The Count tried to smile. The Boss was bad at jokes, that’s why he never told any. But this just had to be a joke.