Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

“Yes, it’s in Rafael’s telephone book as just another number.”

“Can you open it now, comrade?” the sergeant repeated, and she looked at the Count.

“Please, Tamara,” he asked as he stood up.

“What’s this all about, Mario?” she asked, although she was really wondering herself as she led them into the library.

She kneeled in front of the fake fireplace, removed the safety grille, and the Count remembered how it was the eve of the day of the Three Kings who always preferred to bring their presents down the chimney. Perhaps his had arrived, amazingly early. Tamara read out the six numbers and started to turn the handle to the safe, and the Count tried to glance over the shoulder of Manolo, who was in the front row. She moved the wheel a sixth time to the left and finally pulled open the metal door and stood up.

“I hope you’re mistaken, Mario.”

“Hope on,” came the reply, and when she moved away, he went over to the fireplace, kneeled down and extracted a white envelope from the cold iron belly. He stood up and looked at her. He couldn’t stop himself: he felt palpably sorry for that woman who’d stripped him to the bone and frustrated him and whom, he now realized more than ever, he’d preferred not to have seen again. But he opened the envelope, took out a few sheets of paper and read while Manolo rocked impatiently on his heels. “Better than we’d imagined,” he said, stuffing the papers back in the envelope. Tamara was still rubbing her hands, and Manolo couldn’t keep still. “Maciques has got an account in the Hispano-American Bank and owns a car in Spain. The photocopies are here.”

Major Rangel contemplated the sweet-scented death agony of his Rey del Mundo as if he were watching the death of a dog that had been his best friend. Momentarily, as he placed the butt in the ashtray, he regretted he’d not treated it more lovingly. He’d had an awful smoke listening to Lieutenant Mario Conde’s explanation.

“Seeing is believing,” he pronounced and tried to avoid seeing his cigar go out, perhaps so he didn’t need to believe it. “And how was he able to perpetrate so many dreadful things?”

“Dreadful things are all the rage, Boss… Wasn’t he a totally trustworthy cadre? Wasn’t he a man eternally on the up? Wasn’t he purer and saintlier than holy water?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, because that won’t explain anything…”

“Boss, I don’t know why you’re shocked at the lack of controls in an enterprise. Whenever and wherever they do a really surprise audit, they find dreadful things that beggar belief, that nobody can explain, but which are for real. You’ve already forgotten the millionaire manager of the Ward ice-cream parlour and Cheep Cheep fried chicken chain, and in…”

“OK, OK, Mario, but let me feel shocked, if you don’t mind? One always prefers to think people aren’t that corrupt, and, as you say, Rafael Morín was a completely trustworthy cadre, and look what he got up to… But let’s leave that for later, now I want to know where that fellow is holed up. I want to know so I can hand the case to the industry minister neatly sorted.”

The Count scrutinized his dry listless cigarette, the ink from the Popular brand that had run, the tobacco flaking out at both ends and the packet that was falling apart, but it was his last one, and when he lit up he enjoyed the strength hidden in that smoke.

“Do you need more people?”

“No, just let me finish what I’m saying. Look, everything points to the fact that Rafael Morín was going to show his true colours on a trip to Barcelona in January. He intended vanishing there with all the money of which part was already safely invested, and as he knew for the moment nobody would be checking the paperwork, he may have overstretched himself and started cooking his allowances and marketing expenses, to have money on account, you know? One of Fatman Contreras’s informants, I mean Captain Contreras, Yayo el Yuma, says his photo reminds him of someone, but he’d have to see him personally to be sure. So it’s also possible he changed dollars into Cuban pesos he could spend here, for, according to Zoilita, he did like to throw it around.”

“And still no news from the coastguards?”

“Nothing as yet, and I don’t think there will be, although it’s beginning to make more sense that his problems were here and he has been sent to a better place… But I’m sure Maciques is behind whatever has happened… Because if not, why on earth would Rafael keep those papers belonging to Maciques at home? In any case it all went awry when Rafael found out a delegation from Mitachi was coming to Cuba earlier than expected. Look, here’s the telex. It arrived the morning of the thirtieth. It seems they were very interested in doing a deal, and when there’s a good deal to be done, the Chinese don’t worry about Christmas trees and New Year. And Rafael knew that the deputy minister, perhaps the minister and other people from other enterprises, would join in the bargaining. As I was saying, he realized he was caught and went into hiding or was put out of harm’s way. So it’s more than likely he left the country illegally, but he hasn’t, otherwise the shout would have gone up over there. Just imagine, Boss, he was a big wheel in the Cuban economy. And if I’m sure of one thing, it’s that Rafael wouldn’t risk his skin trying to make his escape on a raft made from two truck inner tubes. He’d find the safest route and then get to Miami… Rafael Morín is in Cuba.”

“And what if he avoided creating a fuss so his account in Spain wasn’t frozen?” Major Rangel rubbed his eyes, and the Count noted he was reacting anxiously, which wasn’t his style.

“I reckon that even if he didn’t want a fuss, the people in Miami would have made one. What’s more, time was on his side. And he was a trustworthy cadre, was he not?”

“So you keep telling me.”

“Well, he knew nobody would ever imagine anything of this sort, and he’d only have to go into the first Miami bank he found to have money on tap. He reckoned nobody would suspect a thing for a few days and that nobody would ever imagine a guy who made a regular eight or ten trips abroad every year skiving off in a motorboat.”

“Yes, you’re probably right… But he didn’t take the paperwork to do with travel allowances. China found them.”

“That’s where two and two don’t make four. I thought Maciques had put them there at midday on the thirty-first, but by midday on the thirty-first Rafael already had his hands on those papers.”

“So, what an earth is Maciques’s role in all this?”

“This is what I’d like to find out; I’m sure he’s up to his neck in shit. He knows the whole story, or at least the main plot, because on the third, when Manolo questioned him, he was very on edge and kept going back and forth, as if trying to wriggle out of the conversation. And today he was quite different. He was very self-confident, as if there was no mess, and he was quite convinced he wouldn’t have any problems even if Rafael’s fiddle over allowances, marketing expenses and the like were rumbled, which he knew we would do eventually: if not today, tomorrow or the day after… The time that has passed since his boss disappeared apparently gave him peace of mind, because he never imagined Rafael was keeping those documents in that safe.”

“So he was in partnership with Rafael Morín?”

“No, he was just an accomplice. He had some four thousand dollars in the bank and Rafael had hundreds of thousands. There’s something not quite right there. But Manolo and I will question him again to see if we can extract something new.”

The major stood up and walked over to his office’s picture window. It was barely six pm and already getting dark in Havana. From up there you could see the laurel trees from a perspective that was of no interest to the Count. He preferred the view from his small window and stayed seated.