Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

“Why?” she asked keeping still, and her voice was equally beautiful, clear and resonant.

The Count signalled to Manolo to start.

“Where were you on the thirty-first?”

“Do I have to answer that?”

“I’d like you to, but it’s not compulsory. Where were you, Zoila?”

“Round and about, with a friend. This is a free sovereign country, they tell me?”

“Where?”

“Oh, in Cienfuegos, a house belonging to a friend of his.”

“And the name of those friends?”

“What’s this all about, for heaven’s sake?”

“Please, Zoila, name names. The quicker we get this over with, the quicker you leave.”

“Norberto Codina and Ambrosio Fornés, I think, all right? Can I go now?”

“That’s fine, but there’s still… Wasn’t there another friend by the name of Rafael, Rafael Morín?”

“I’ve already been asked that, and I said I don’t know who he is. Why should I?”

“Isn’t he a friend of yours?”

“I don’t know him.”

“Where does your Cienfuegos friend live?”

“Around the corner from the theatre, I don’t know the name of the street.”

“Are you sure you don’t remember Rafael Morín?”

“Hey, what is all this about? Look, I’ll clam up if you like and that will be the end of that.”

“All right, just as you like. You clam up, but we can keep you shut up here, awaiting investigation, on suspicion of kidnapping and murder and…”

“What is all this about?”

“It’s an investigation, Zoila, you know? What’s the name of the friend who went to Cienfuegos with you?”

“Norberto Codina, I told you.”

“Where does he live?”

“On Línea and N.”

“Does he have a phone?”

“Yes.”

“What number?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Ring to find out if it’s true you were with him.”

“Hey, the guy’s married.”

“Give me his number, we’re the souls of discretion.”

“Please, comrades. It’s 325307.”

“Give him a call, Lieutenant.”

The Count went over to the phone on the filing cabinet and asked for a line.

“Look at this photo, Zoila,” Manolo continued and handed her a copy of the Rafael Morín photo they were circulating.

“Yes, well, what has happened…?” she asked, trying to catch the Count’s whispered exchanges with Manolo.

“Don’t you recognize him?”

“Yes, I went out with him a few times. Some three months ago.”

“And you don’t know his name?”

“René.”

“René?”

“René Maciques, why?”

The Count hung up and walked over to his desk.

“Zoila, are you sure that’s his name?” the lieutenant asked, and the girl looked at him with the slightest hint of a smile.

“Yes, I am entirely sure.”

“She was with Norberto Codina,” stated the Count before returning to the door.

“You see. I told you so.”

“Where did you meet René?”

Zoila Amarán Izquierdo signalled her total incomprehension. It was clear she understood nothing but was scared of something, and now she really did smile.

“In the street, he picked me up.”

“And why did he call you on the thirty-first, if not the first?”

“Who? René?”

“René Maciques?”

“I don’t know, I’d not seen him for ages.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure, October time?”

“What did you know about him?”

“Well, very little, that he was married, that he travelled abroad and when we stayed in hotels he always booked the rooms.”

“Which hotels?”

“You can imagine. The Riviera, the Mar Azul, that kind of hotel.”

“What did he say his line of work is?”

“Was it foreign affairs? Or foreign trade, something like that?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

“Well, I think it’s foreign affairs.”

“Did he have lots of money?”

“How else do you think you pay at the Riviera?”

“Watch what you’re saying, Zoila. Give me an answer.”

“Of course he had lots. But as I told you we only went out a few times.”

“Didn’t you meet up again?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he went abroad. A whole year in Canada, I think.”

“When was that?”

“Around October, I told you.”

“Did he give you presents?”

“Little things.”

“What kind of little thing?”

“Perfume, bracelets, a dress, that sort of thing.”

“From abroad?”

“Yes, from abroad.”

“So he had dollars?”

“I never saw any.”

“How did you get to see each other?”

“Simple, he always had lots of work on, and when he had a chance he’d call me at home. If I wasn’t busy, he’d come for me. In his car. Naturally.”

“What kind of car?”

“He had two. Almost always the newer one, a private Lada, and sometimes in another Lada, state-owned I think, with tinted glass.”

“Zoila, now I want you to think carefully what you say: for your own good and for the good of your friend René Maciques. Where might he get so much money from?”

Zoila Amarán Izquierdo leaned her head to one side to look at the lieutenant, and her eyes tried to say how the hell should I know? Then she looked at Manolo and replied:

“You know, comrade, you don’t ask that kind of question on the street. I’m not a whore because I don’t go to bed for money, but if someone shows up with money and invites you to a meal at L’Aiglon and to a beer by the pool and then wants to hang out at a night club and go up to a room overlooking the Malecón, you don’t dig any further. You enjoy yourself, comrade. Things are very bad these days, and you’re only young once, right?”

Of course you’re only young once, he thought, so much was obvious. A warm lazy voice and cloudless sky-blue eyes were the only visible reminder of the attributes of the mythical Baby-Face Miki, the lad who set the record for the number of girlfriends in one year at high school in La Víbora: twenty-eight all told, snogged to a woman and some explored more thoroughly. Now he didn’t have enough hair to attempt Afro curly waves but plenty enough to declare his bankruptcy and assume his baldpated fate. His beard was an explosion of reddish grey stubble, like the last Viking in a comic. His previously handsome face now had the consistency of a poorly kneaded biscuit: uneven, cracked, with mountains and valleys of poorly distributed, prematurely aged flab. He laughed and displayed the jaundiced sadness of his teeth, and if he laughed a lot, his smoker’s lungs regaled him with a two-minute coughing fit. Miki was a warning, the Count told himself: his appearance was evidence that they would soon hit forty, were no longer spring chickens able to greet every morning afresh, and had good reason to be exhausted and nostalgic.

“This is a disaster area, Conde. Mariíta left me a month ago, and look at this pigsty.” And his spreadeagled arms tried to embrace the endless mess in his living room. He picked up two glasses soiled by several generations of dirt and put them back in almost the same spot. Cursed the absent woman five times and went over to the record player. Without thinking, he took the LP on the top of the pile and put it on the turntable. “Listen to this and die: The Best of the Mamas and the Papas … It’s not fair, the bastards sing so sweetly, right? With Mariíta I’m on my fifth divorce and third kid, and I get more miserable by the day. They share out my pay, and I can’t even afford a smoke. Talking of which, give me a cigarette. Do you think anyone in this state can write? No shit, you don’t feel like writing, let alone living, but it’s important not to give up, though sometimes you get tired and do give up a bit. It’s not easy, Conde, not easy at all. Listen to that… ‘California Dreams’, that’s from when we were at secondary school. Oh, to be that young again. I listen to this song and I swear I even feel like getting married again. And have you finally got down to writing something?”