Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

The bullet entered at shoulder level, barely splintering his collarbone. The only time Mario Conde shot someone, it all ended with a minor operation and a court case where he testified against his aggressor, who’d long since been cured and repented his alcohol-induced violence. But the Count endured several months of doubt as to whether he’d aimed at his attacker’s shoulder or chest, and swore he’d never again resort to his pistol outside the shooting range, even if it meant engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a man with a knife. Nonetheless, he’d have reneged on that most solemn pledge if it ever came to René Maciques. I swear by my mother he would.

“Don Alfonso, let’s be going to headquarters,” he said and wound up the car window. The driver looked at him and knew he shouldn’t ask any questions.

China Patricia and her team were sailing on a sea of salaries, contracts, service orders, purchases, travel, sales, memoranda, pledges, countersigned cheques and reports of agreements and disagreements all affirming that everything is fine and dandy, astonishingly correct; Zaida was on a different sea, of tears; it was true: the relationship between her and Rafael was really more than that of a boss and his secretary, went beyond the walls of the enterprise, but it was no crime, surely, because Rafael never suggested anything of the sort, never said anything along those lines, never ever, and she swore Rafael drove her home on the thirtieth and she’d not heard from him since. Manolo applied pressure and she cried, my son little Alfredo loved him so much and he got out of his car and went to wish him a Happy New Year; Maciques, of course, there were things he didn’t know, he was only in charge of the office, they should question the deputy financial director, he’d be back from Canada on the tenth, and again he didn’t think so; and the Boss, looking at the ash on his Davidoff, because he’d have to speak to his son-in-law because he couldn’t stand any more from him, he took the boy off and turned up pasted at eleven thirty pm, his blood pressure had shot up with all this bother, but he wanted the case solved now, today, Mario, in three days Japanese buyers are coming who’d begun to negotiate a big deal with Rafael Morín for the purchase of sugar derivatives, a deal worth millions of dollars, Morín had worked several times with them and the minister wanted a reply, and he asked, Mario, do you need help?, two days had gone by and he still hadn’t come up with anything.

The Count looked up and saw the cold glare of Monday 5 January and thought how tonight the temperature would be ideal for waiting till midnight to put out three bunches of grass and three bowls of honeyed water, in a corner of his house, for the camels, and a letter addressed to Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar, but the telephone rang and he reluctantly jettisoned the idea of a letter to the Three Kings.

“Hello?” he said as he half sat down on his desk and stared at the tops of the laurel trees.

“Mario? It’s me, Tamara.”

“Oh, it’s you, and how are you?”

“Last night I stayed up waiting for you to call.”

“I know, but things got very difficult and I didn’t leave here till late.”

“And I called you this morning at around nine thirty.”

“Nobody told me.”

“I didn’t leave a message. Why did they call you yesterday?”

“Just routine. Zoila is a friend of René Maciques and doesn’t even know Rafael personally. We’re making progress.”

“And still no news of Rafael?” And all he really wanted to know was the intention behind that question. He almost preferred to believe Tamara was desperate for news of her husband and also thought how technically she was still suspect number one, as she added: “Uncertainty will be the death of me.”

“Mine as well. I’m tired of all this.”

“Of all what?”

And he hesitated for a moment, because he didn’t want to get it wrong.

“Of being Rafael’s private policeman.”

“Have you been to the enterprise?”

“I was there just a minute ago. I left the Fraud Squad experts there.”

“Fraud Squad? Mario, do you really think Rafael’s involved in something like that?”

“What do you think, Tamara? Do you really believe he could buy everything he bought you with what he saved from his daily allowances?”

A protracted pregnant silence followed at the end of the line and finally she said:

“I don’t know, Mario, I really don’t. But I can’t see Rafael mixed up in anything of that sort. He,” she hesitated, “isn’t a bad person.”

“So they keep telling me,” he muttered and wiped unexpected sweat from his forehead.

“What did you say?”

“That that’s what I think as well.”

And silence descended again.

“Mario,” she said, “I’m not worried by what happened yesterday, that…”

“But I am, Tamara…”

“Oh, you just don’t understand,” she protested, feeling she needed to confess and he was making it more difficult for her. “Why do you think I’m calling you? Mario, I want to see you again, really.”

“It doesn’t make sense, Tamara. We’ll see each other, and then what will happen?”

“I don’t know. Must you think everything through a thousand times?”

“Yes, I must,” he admitted, feeling his headache was on the way back.

“Won’t you come?”

Mario Conde shut his eyes and saw her in bed, naked and nervous, open and expectant.

“I think I will. When I’ve found out what’s happened to Rafael,” he said as he hung up and felt the pain gather behind his eyes. It was like an oil slick spreading over his forehead and expanding, but the pain brought an idea, when I find out what’s happened to Rafael, and Lieutenant Mario Conde reproached himself, you idiot, why didn’t you start there?

“You come to die in my arms?” quipped Captain Contreras, and his contented, no-regrets fatso smile reverberated off the walls. He left his chair that gave a sigh of relief at an unlikely rate of knots for such an elephantine mass of humanity and walked over to shake the lieutenant’s hand. “My friend the Count. Life’s like that, my boy, brickbats today and thanks tomorrow, though some people are disgusted by what we do, you know? Naturally, nobody likes playing with shit, but someone has to and in the end they come knocking on my door, you didn’t, because you’re a friend, although you’ve never wanted to work with me, but life is full of surprises.” And he started laughing again. His paunch, tits, triple chin and cheeks danced for joy. He laughed so easily, so very easily, that the Count always thought Fatman Contreras laughed too easily. “Let me have a look, then.”

The lieutenant handed him the photo. Captain Jesús Contreras scrutinized it for a few minutes, and the Count tried to imagine the constipated archive of his brain at work. What passed once through Fatman Contreras’s eyes was forever engraved on his memory together with the most recondite distinguishing features. It was the pride of his life, and he knew he was always useful, if not indispensable, because Fatman was directly responsible for investigating foreign currency fraud and nobody could ever say he was short of work. The aim of his team – the Contreras Tubbies, as they were known – was to be the daily thorn in the side of Havana’s speculators and dollar-sellers, and over recent months it had chalked up an enviable record for nailing speculators.

“He’s not in the trade,” he concluded, still looking at the photo. “What does your computer say on the matter?”

“That he’s as clean as a baby’s bottom straight out of the bath.”

“I knew it. So what do you want from me?

“That you should get your informers and undercover agents to check him out in case he ever sold dollars. He handled a lot of Cuban money, and I think that’s how he got it. I also want you to investigate another guy whose photo I’ll send you shortly.”