Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue

“And any traces of cars or anything like that?”

“Nothing of the sort. The fresh fingerprints belong to the dead man, and are on the broken door, in the kitchen, on an armchair in the living room and in the bathroom. It looks as if he was waiting for someone, almost definitely the murderer. And we combed the surrounding area round about but no sign of the dead man’s clothes or briefcase. But this case is a doddle, don’t you think?”

“And, Booz, how about if we ring you in two hours to confirm that the murderer goes by the name of René Maciques?” the Count asked as he stood up and straightened the pistol threatening to leap from his belt.

The Count thought about lighting a cigarette but stopped himself. He preferred to get out his pen and fiddle with its catch. The monotonous sound echoed aggressively in the silence of the cubicle.

“Well, then, Maciques?” Manolo finally asked, and Maciques looked up.

What a chameleon, thought the Count. He was no longer the lively conversationalist of their first encounter or the punctilious librarian they had recorded. A mere day without a shave had been enough to transform the head of office into a potential model tramp, and his shaking hands brought to mind a dire devastating winter.

“He was to blame,” said Maciques, trying to sit straight in his chair. “He was the one behind all this mess when he realized they were going to finger him. I don’t know how everything else happened.”

“I think you do, Maciques,” Manolo insisted.

“It was just a manner of words. I meant I can’t really explain it… He came to see me on the night of the thirtieth and told me the Mitachi people had brought forward their visit and this was going to put him really in it. I never found out what it was, although I can imagine, it must have been to do with money, and he told me he had to leave the country. I told him that was madness, it wasn’t so easy, and he told me it was really easy, that he had ten thousand Cuban pesos and a pile of dollars to pay for a motor launch and I should find him one. That was when he blackmailed me with the bank account and ownership of the car. I still don’t know how he managed to photocopy those papers, but the fact was he had them. Well, no, he’d already planned the car bit: he got it as a present and gave it to me, and naturally I sold it, it was red-hot and I sold it… Then I repeated it was madness and told him he wasn’t playing straight with me, and he replied by telling me to get a launch and forget everything else. And the truth is I didn’t even make a start, for I thought there must be a way to get those papers back.”

“By killing him, Maciques?”

The man shook his head. It was a mechanical reaction but as intense as the way his hands were shaking.

“No, Sergeant, some other way… But to gain time I told him I’d contracted a launch for daybreak on the first, after the party on the thirty-first, I told him, it’s the best time to leave, the skipper’s got permission to go fishing, and we should be in Guanabo at four, and I wish you could have seen him at the party. He was already imagining himself out of Cuba and was more petulant and arrogant than ever, the lousy shit, I tell you, be glad you never met him… I think I should have stopped it all at the start. But you know what fear is? Fear you might lose everything, probably go to prison, never be anybody again? That’s why I did what I did and picked him up at his place after we left the party and drove to Guanabo. Then I parked somewhere by the Veneciana, next to the river, and told him I was going to see the guy, and what I did was to walk to the beach and stay there a while. When I went back and told him it would have to be that night he went mad. I’d never seen him like it before; he called me an asshole and a number of other things, and said I should be grateful he was going, because if he wasn’t, he would put me in it, and a few more choice expressions. Then I drove him to the house. I knew it was always empty in winter, because a friend of mine rented it from the owners in September, and we went in and I told him to wait there till nightfall, that the skipper had told me they’d leave very early, and then I drove back to Havana.”

“And what were you thinking, Maciques?”

“I wasn’t thinking anything. About what I did that night. About going to see him and telling him that everything was ready. It was then I had the idea about taking the briefcase with all the papers and telling him to find his own launch. And do you know what the first thing was he said to me when I arrived? That he’d write to me from Miami and tell me where he’d hidden the photocopies; they were in a safe place and nobody would ever find them. Then I was the one who went crazy. I told him what I’d been thinking about him for quite some time, and he threw a punch at me, really a big slap, his hand open, like that, and hit me here just above my ear and that was when I pushed him and he fell against the side of the bath… And that was all,” said Maciques as his head sunk between his shoulders.

“And it was you who put his Panama allowances and the other things in with the papers at the enterprise?”

“I had to protect myself, didn’t I? Because I suspected he was going to do the dirty on me, and I had to protect myself. The fucking bastard,” he concluded, expending his last drop of vital energy.

“And did you really think you were going to wriggle out of this one, Maciques?” asked the Count as he stood up. For a moment he’d thought that aged defeated man was worthy of pity but only for a very fleeting moment. The spectacle of defeat couldn’t erase the feeling of repulsion the whole affair had prompted. “Well, you got it wrong, and you got it wrong because you are just like your defunct boss. The same shit from the same latrine. And don’t lose the fear you had, Maciques, hold on in there, for this story is only just beginning,” he said as he looked at Sergeant Manuel Palacios and walked out of the office. The headache had started behind the eyes, and evil intent was spreading across his forehead.

Where’s that sparrow? he thought. The previous day he’d seen it in its nest, and all that was left were feathers and dry plaited straw in the fork of the laurel tree. It can’t still be flying, if it fell it would have had no hope of escape, no escape from the kitchen cats, and he hoped the sparrow could fly.

“How many days does it take a baby sparrow to fly, Manolo?”

The sergeant put down the folder where he was filing the latest reports and the statements signed by Maciques and looked at the lieutenant.

“What’s got into you today, Conde? How the hell should I know? It’s not as if I were a sparrow.”

“Hey, kid.” He pointed his index finger at him. “Go easy. You also come up with some darned silly questions. Go on, get this ready for the Boss.”

“And speaking of Roman Emperors, do you reckon he’ll give us the leave he owes us?”

The Count sat down in the chair behind his desk and rubbed his eyes. The headache was now a distant memory, but he was sleepy and beginning to feel hungry. He wanted to get this Rafael Morín affair over and done with. He was annoyed he hadn’t laid bare the real depths of a character who went breathlessly from being a leader to a private entrepreneur, from saint to sinner, and died from a single blow, leaving unanswered so many questions he’d loved to have asked.

“We have to wait for Chinese Patricia to finish at the enterprise. She told me she’d have everything else ready tomorrow morning, and then we can both give the Boss the complete report, and I think he’ll give us a couple of days. I need them. And I think you do too. How’s it going with Vilma?”

“OK, she’s got over her tantrum.”