Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

“Uh-huh. What I want to do is talk to deputy minister Alberto Fernández-Lorea. Today, if possible. I can’t get the party out of my head, and I need you to ring him.”

“You can ring him.”

“I’d prefer you to. Remember I’m only a sad policeman, as someone told me yesterday, and he’s a deputy minister.”

The major leaned back in his chair and began to rock. He puffed on his cigar and exhaled a blue curl of smoke. He was enjoying himself. Mario Conde, meanwhile, pulled one of the major’s telephones to his side of the desk and started to dial a number.

“Take this, the phone’s ringing in Fernández’s house,” he said and waved the phone. The major grunted and accepted the inevitable.

“I don’t think anybody’s there,” he retorted, and just as he was starting to put the phone down he stopped and said: “Yes, I can hear you, is that Comrade Fernández-Lorea’s house?” He got a positive response and then told him he was needed for questioning. “Yes, today if it’s no bother… Of course… In an hour’s time? That’s fine, see you then and many thanks. Lieutenant Mario Conde. Yes,” and hung up.

“Satisfied?”

“Pass my message on to your daughters,” said the Count, as he got up and straightened his pistol.

“Call me at home tonight and tell me what’s new,” the major demanded in a decidedly authoritarian tone. “Lots of luck,” he added and gazed once more at the wonderfully pure ash of his Davidoff.

The Count went down to his second-floor cubicle. Sergeant Manuel Palacios was waiting for him, seated in his chair behind his desk.

“No clues from the list of missing people, Conde. They’re all mad or geriatric, husband and wives who’ve done a bunk, youths hiding from their parents, children kidnapped by divorced parents and only one case in October of a woman forcibly abducted by an unrequited lover. And there’s only one case of disappearance that’s still open: a twenty-three-year-old who’s been missing from April of last year, although people suspect he employed primitive means to leave the island,” explained Manolo, and his voice and eyes looked bored. “I also spoke to the head of security at the enterprise, and luckily it was his wife who also works there who was on duty on the twelve to eight shift, and Rafael Morín didn’t pay a call, though René Maciques did.”

“Maciques, the friend… And Zoilita?”

“She’s another kettle of fish. From what Greco and Crespo found out, that girl is a tasty item and people like to get a lick. They still don’t know where she’s fucking holed up, for she gets around, is a real mover and is on file as a hooker, but no criminal record as yet. She’s just as likely to be on the arm of a Mexican as with a Bulgarian living in the block of flats for Soviet Bloc bureaucrats or spending a fortnight at the International in Varadero, but all her boyfriends have cars, money and good positions. You can imagine. And when she gets bored she makes china plates and other ornaments that aren’t at all bad. Nobody saw her the day she left, and nobody knows what she did for New Year’s Eve. She’s not checked in at any hotel, and her brother hasn’t the slightest idea where she might be.”

The Count listened to the tale of Zoilita’s goings on and thought he’d really like to talk to her. He stood up and walked over to the window.

“We must find her. I have a real hunch that nympho is up to something with Rafael Morín.”

“Should we put a search out for her?”

“Yes, dig her out from under the ground or the guy she’s with or wherever the fuck,” growled the Count, and he thought of Tamara again. Damn Tamara, he told himself and remembered that at some stage he should speak to Baby-Face Miki. He could see the pure blue sky from his window and finally told Manolo: “Go on, put a search out for her and see you downstairs. A deputy minister is expecting us to call.”

He lived on Seventh and Thirty-Eighth, in a threestorey building with a redbrick façade and big balconies that looked out on the boulevard. A path of flagstones embedded in the earth crossed the green sward of well-clipped lawn and led to an elegant building that was modern despite being thirty years old, and also somewhat humble in comparison to the surrounding mansions. The Count and Manolo silently climbed up the steps and rang the bell to the flat that occupied an entire second floor: the first high-pitched fanfare from Mendelssohn’s Wedding March rang out the other side of the door. Manolo laughed and shook his head.

“Do come in, please. I was expecting you,” said their host when he opened the door, and the Count thought: I know him. Alberto Fernández-Lorea was a man nearing fifty, but he still looked in good shape. I bet he doesn’t smoke and goes for runs in Martí Park, thought the Count who was trying to remember where he’d seen him before. The deputy minister’s athletic body, his lank abundant hair parted down the middle and the build of a man in his prime might have suggested Vargas Llosa’s Scribe on the crest of the wave, and that would have been spot on.

The deputy minister invited them to sit down and excused himself for a moment – “I’m sorry, if you don’t mind” – and walked over to the unpolished wood partition separating the living room from what was probably the kitchen-diner. It was a very large living room, perhaps disproportionately so, from what the Count could see of the flat, and he recalled how it was there Rafael Morín had danced and eaten, talked and laughed in what was probably his last public appearance. It was a splendid space, and through the balcony windows you could see the high branches of a leafless Royal Poinciana, and the Count thought how in summer the tree would be a joy to the eyes when orangey flowers bedecked every branch.

Fernández-Lorea came back, and the Count was quite sure his face was more than familiar, but where have I seen this guy before? He racked his brains: the extra information might be a bonus.

“Well, please feel free to start,” the deputy minister suggested, and his voice resounded several decibels above what was necessary for such a meeting. He’d settled down in an armchair with plastic piping and rocked gently to and fro. “We’re all very worried about the whereabouts of Comrade Rafael Morín.”

The Count contemplated the man’s languid eyes and felt he could say nothing: he was thinking about how he should address him. Comrade Deputy Minister sounded hollow, officious and too smarmy; Fernández by itself, simply impersonal; Alberto, beyond the pale, an expression of nonexistent intimacy, and he wanted that exchange which had started so tentatively to be over and done with.

“Comrade Deputy Minister Fernández,” he said finally, and the very sound of those words made it feel like an exercise in self-flagellation, “you know, this is a very unusual case, disappearances as such hardly exist in Cuba so we’ve been forced to spread our net as wide as possible. For the moment, we’ve discounted the idea of a kidnapping or any illegal departure from the country…”

“No, such things are out of the question as far as Rafael is concerned. I’m sure he’s had an accident or something else untoward has happened,” the deputy minister commented and apologized theatrically for his interjection. “Do please go on.”

“At this stage,” the Count continued and then looked at his colleague, “there are only two possibilities: one that so far seems very unlikely, which is that Rafael has gone into hiding because of something we’re unaware of. And the other is that he has been murdered, for something we’re also unaware of, but experience tells us it could be anything, the most banal motive. In any case the night before he disappeared he came here with his wife to say farewell to the Old Year and perhaps your party holds the clue that will take us to Rafael. That’s why we’re here.”