Leonardo Padura - Havana Gold

The Count looked at his clock on the night table and wondered who it could be at that hour.

“Yes,” he said into the receiver.

“Conde, it’s me, Cicerón. This business is getting murkier.”

“What’s happened, pal?”

“Lando the Russian. He turned up in Boca de Jaruco, by the riverbank. He was about to bid us all farewell from a motor launch when they caught him… How does the news strike you?”

The Count sighed. He felt the horizon was starting to lighten with a faint but unmistakable ray of sunlight.

“I’m delighted. When will you hand him over?” The silence at the other end of the line annoyed the detective lieutenant. “When? Cicerón?” he repeated.

“Is tomorrow morning OK?”

“Huh-huh, but don’t hand him over in too drowsy a state,” and he hung up.

When he got back to his living room he found a dressed and smiling Karina, her saxophone in its case, like a suitcase ready to depart.

“I’m off, Mr Policeman,” she said and the Count felt a desire to tie her down. She’s off, she’s off. I’ll always be searching for her.

“There he is then, Conde.”

Captain Cicerón seemed more sleepy than happy when he pointed out the man scratching his chin on the other side of the translucent glass. An apt nickname: he really looked Russian. His fair, almost white, hair cascaded gently over his perfectly round head and ruddy vodka-drinker’s face. In a high-collared jacket you might have mistaken him for Alyosha Karamazov, thought the Count, who’d had to move Manolo away from the glass to get a definitive view of his best lead. He noted the man’s tired, bloodshot eyes and tried to find a path into that sombre look, to travel to necessary revelations, until he felt myopic exhaustion hit the bridge of his nose.

“And what did you get out of him?”

“He told me all about the clandestine escape they’d planned, but I’ve yet to extract anything about drugs. I’m still waiting on the laboratory analyses, the scrape from his fingers and, most spectacularly, the remains of a joint we found in the yard of the beach house where Lando and his cronies were staying.”

“How many were there?”

“Four in the motor launch: Lando and his girlfriend and two other friends, Osvaldo Díaz and Roberto Navarro. They gave a kind of goodbye party on Saturday with lots of people. They invited everyone, down to the family cat. Incredible, don’t you think?”

“What about the woman and the guys?”

“We’ve working on them too. They interest you?”

The Count shifted Manolo away from the glass again. Lando was now chewing his nails and spitting the bits out, with the weary mannerisms of your typical addict of marijuana and other evanescent flavours. Lissette and Lando? he wondered, at a loss for words. When he turned round he found Fabricio smirking next to Cicerón.

“See how we caught him, Conde?” he asked, and the Count couldn’t decide whether the question was euphoric or heavily sarcastic.

“He couldn’t ever escape from you,” he replied opting to deflect back any sarcasm.

“No, he was never going to get away from me,” Fabricio agreed.

“Well then,” interjected Cicerón, “what’s your next step, Conde?”

“Let me start hereabouts. I have a hunch…”

“A hunch?” asked Manolo smiling. The Count looked into his eyes and the sergeant glanced back at the detainee.

“But first I need the results from the laboratory. You wait there, Lando,” he said, gesturing towards the glass. For his part, Lando had stopped biting his nails and was leaning his head on the edge of the table. You’re ripe for the picking, thought the Count and went into the passageway, brushing his shoulder against the arm of Lieutenant Fabricio who didn’t move aside to make way for him. This guy is asking for it, the Count muttered.

Lando looked up when he heard the door. It was a slow, rusty sound like the look in his brown eyes. The Count glanced at him and walked over to the back wall, as Manolo dropped a folder full of papers on the table. The lieutenant lit a cigarette and observed his colleague’s idiosyncratic habits. Manolo had seated himself on one corner of the table, perching one lean buttock on the wood, and swinging the foot that didn’t reach the floor. He opened the folder and started to read as if enthralled. He occasionally looked up at Lando, as if his face might serve as an illustration of what he was reading. For his part, the Russian shifted his gaze from the folder to the sergeant’s eyes.

Although the laboratory had confirmed the similar origins of the marijuana belonging to Lando and Lissette, a large measure of Conde’s hunch was discounted by the analysts’ verdict: Orlando San Juan’s blood was B negative and his fingerprints didn’t match any found in Lissette’s flat. For a moment he’d thought Lando’s clandestine flight might be from a murder rap. The Count now clung to the remote possibility of a relationship between that character and the deceased chemistry teacher. And Casino Deportivo? Caridad Delgado? The headmaster? he wondered, keen to put those questions. The case’s immediate fate depended on this interrogation and the two policemen knew the value of the card they were playing.

Manolo finally shut the file and put it down almost within reach of the detainee. He stood up and went to sit in the armchair, the other side of the table, away from the torrid lamps of the interrogation cubicle.

“Well, Major,” he said keeping his eyes trained on Lando, “this is Orlando San Juan Grenet. He was arrested last night trying to desert the country in a stolen motor launch and he’s additionally held on drugs and murder charges.”

Lando’s eyes suddenly woke up.

“What was that? Who’ve I murdered? You mad or what?”

Manolo smiled pleasantly.

“Don’t ever speak again unless spoken to. And don’t ever call me mad again, get that?”

“But the fact is…”

“But the fact is you can shut up!” shouted Manolo, standing up, and even Conde looked startled in his corner. He’d never been able to understand where his colleague found his brute, heavyweight strength. “As I was saying, Major, we found the remains of a marijuana joint in the house the detainee rented in Guanabo, marijuana from Central America, and two people arrested for possession of that drug have identified Orlando San Juan as their supplier. This is most serious, as you appreciate. But that isn’t all, the very same drug was found in the flat of a young woman who was murdered a week ago and we’ll try the detainee for that crime as well.”

Lando started to gesture as if in protest, but said nothing. He shook his head, as if he couldn’t credit his ears. The Count leaned forward off the wall and crushed his cigarette on the floor. He took a step towards the table and looked at Lando.

“Orlando, you’re in a dicey situation, you know?”

“But I know nothing about any dead woman.”

“Didn’t you know Lissette Núñez Delgado?”

“Lissette? No, I know a Lissette who left sometime ago. She landed an Italian and found herself a better life. She lives in Milan now.”

“But a joint made from the marijuana you’ve been peddling was found in the house of the Lissette I’m referring to.”

“Look, general, I’m sorry but I don’t know that woman and haven’t been peddling anything, I swear… Do you want me to swear an oath?”

“No, that won’t be necessary, Orlando, it’s easy to prove. An identity parade with the two dealers we’ve pulled in can do the trick. They’ll identify you because they’re dying to get a few years knocked off their sentence. Tell me something, did you sell marijuana to anyone involved in La Víbora Pre-Uni?”

“At Pre-Uni? No, I’ve never been involved with that place…”