Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

“What reason?”

“Nothing you would understand. I hardly understand it myself. But it was enough to make me want to carry on in the hope that my life might mean something.”

“I must have misjudged him. I took him for a deluded fool. But you make him sound like some kind of saint.”

“Every man finds his redemption where and when he can. One day, perhaps, when you’re where I am now, you’ll remember that.”

IDROVE ALFREDO LÓPEZ BACK TO FINCA VIGÍA. He was in bad shape, but I didn’t know where the nearest hospital was, and neither did he.

“I owe you my life, Gunther,” he said. “And a great deal of thanks.”

“Forget it. You don’t owe me anything. But please don’t ask me why. I’m through explaining myself for one day. That bastard Quevedo has an annoying habit of asking questions you’d rather not answer.”

López smiled. “Don’t I know it?”

“Of course. I’m sorry. It was nothing compared to what you must have been through.”

“I could use a cigarette.”

I kept a pack of Luckies in the glove box. At the junction of the road north into San Francisco de Paula I pulled up and put one in his mouth.

“Here,” I said, finding a match and lighting it.

He puffed for a moment and nodded his thanks.

“Let me do that for you.” I fetched the cigarette from his lips. “Just don’t expect me to come into the bathroom with you.”

I put the cigarette back in his mouth and drove on.

We reached the house. There had been a strong wind the previous night, and some of the ceiba tree’s leaves and branches were strewn across the steps in front of the house. A tall Negro was picking them up and putting them in a wheelbarrow, but he might just as easily have been putting them on the ground, as if someone had ordered the man to honor López’s return with a carpet of palms. Either way, he was making slow work of it. Like he’d just got two numbers on the bolita .

“Who’s that?” asked López.

“The gardener,” I said. I pulled up next to the Pontiac and switched off the engine.

“Yes, of course. For a moment-” He grunted. “The previous gardener committed suicide, you know. Drowned himself in the well.”

“I guess that explains why no one here seems to drink water very much.”

“Noreen thinks there’s a ghost.”

“No, that would be me.” I looked at him and frowned. “Can you make it up the steps?”

“I might need a bit of help.”

“You should be in a hospital.”

“That’s what I kept on telling Quevedo. But by then he’d stopped listening to me. That was after he gave me the free manicure.”

I got out of the car and slammed the door. Around there, that was like ringing the doorbell. I went around to the passenger’s side and opened the door for him. He was going to need a lot of that in the coming days, and I was already imagining myself driving away again, leaving her to it. I’d done enough. If he wanted to scratch the back of his head, Noreen could do it.

She came out of the front door as López stepped out of the car and swayed like a drunk who still had room for more. Gingerly he held on to the window pillar for a moment with the inside of his wrists and then put his spine into a smile for Noreen as she hurried down the steps. His lips parted, and the cigarette he was still smoking fell onto his shirt-front. I grabbed the cigarette, like the shirt actually mattered. It was a sure thing he wouldn’t be wearing it to the office again. Lots of blood on sweat-stained white cotton was hardly fashionable that year.

“Fredo,” she said, anxiously. “Are you all right? My God, what has happened to your hands?”

“The cops were expecting Horowitz at their annual fund-raiser,” I said.

López smiled, but Noreen wasn’t amused.

“I don’t see what there is to joke about, Bernie,” she said. “Really I don’t.”

“You had to be there, I guess. Look, when you’ve finished getting stiff with me, your legal friend here deserves to be in a hospital. I’d have driven him to one myself, but Fredo insisted we drive here first and convince you that he’s all right. I guess he rates you a higher priority than playing the piano again. That’s quite understandable, of course. I feel much the same way.”

Noreen wasn’t listening to most of that. She retuned her wavelength the moment I said “hospital.” She said, “There’s one in Cotorro. I’ll take him there myself.”

“Hop in and I’ll drive you.”

“No, you’ve done enough. Was it very difficult? Getting him out of police custody.”

“A little more difficult than putting a request in the suggestion box. And it was the army that had him, not the police.”

“Look, why don’t you wait in the house? Make yourself at home. Fix yourself a drink. Ask Ramón to make you something to eat if you want. I won’t be long.”

“I really ought to be running along. After the events of this morning, I feel a pressing need to renew all my insurance policies.”

“Bernie, please. I want to thank you properly. And speak to you about something.”

“All right. I can put up with that.”

I watched her drive him away and then went inside and flirted with the drinks trolley, but I was in no mood to play hard-to-get with Hemingway’s bourbon, and swallowed a glass of Old Forester in less time than it took to pour. With another large one waiting in my hand, I took a tour of the house and tried to ignore the obvious comparison between my own situation and that of a trophy on Hemingway’s wall. I’d been bagged by Lieutenant Quevedo just as surely as if I’d been shot with an express rifle. And Germany now looked about as far away to me as the snows of Kilimanjaro or the green hills of Africa.

One of the rooms was full of packing cases and suitcases, and for one stomach-churning moment I thought she might be leaving Cuba until I realized that Noreen was probably getting ready to move into her new house in Marianao.

After a while, and another drink, I walked outside and climbed the four-story tower. It wasn’t difficult. A half-covered staircase on the outside went right up to the top. There was a bath on the first floor and some cats playing cards on the second. The third floor was where all the rifles were kept, in locked glass cabinets, and the way I was feeling it was probably just as well I hadn’t brought any keys. The uppermost story was furnished with a small desk and a large library full of military books. I stayed there for a long while. I didn’t much care for Hemingway’s taste in literature, but there was no arguing with the view. Max Reles would have liked it a lot. From each of the windows the view was all you could see. For miles around. Right up until the moment that the light began to fade. And then some.

When just a ribbon of orange was left over the trees, I heard a car and saw the Pontiac’s headlights and the little chieftain’s head coming back up the drive. When Noreen got out of the car she was alone. By the time I had descended the tower, she was in the house and fixing herself a drink with a bottle of Cinzano vermouth and some tonic water. Hearing my footsteps, she said, “Freshen your glass?”

“I’ll help myself,” I said, coming over to the little table. She turned away as I came alongside her. I heard a little peal of ice cubes as she upended the tall glass and swallowed the frozen contents.

“They’re keeping him in for observation,” she said.

“Good idea.”

“Those fucking bastards pulled out all his fingernails.”

Without López around to see the funny side of that, I was through making jokes about it. I hardly wanted Noreen getting sharp with me again. I’d had enough of that for one day. I just wanted to sit down in an armchair and have her stroke my head, if only to remind me that it was still on my shoulders and not hanging on anyone’s wall.