Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

“It was a very long time ago. And I didn’t mean to suggest that you don’t know your job, Captain. I’m sure that you have your own way of handling an investigation. But Mr. Lansky here asked me what I thought, and I told him.”

Captain Sánchez sucked the little cigarillo and then dropped it on the floor of the crime scene. He said, “You said Major Ventura was in the casino last night. Does that mean you were here also?”

“Yes. I played backgammon in the casino last night until around ten forty-five, when I came up here to join Señor Reles and his guests for a drink. Mr. Lansky and his brother were among those other guests. And the gentleman in the living room. Mr. Dalitz. Waxey, too. I stayed until about eleven-thirty, when we all left, so that Reles could prepare for his phone call with the president. I’d arranged for my backgammon opponent-Señor García, who owns the Shanghai Theater-to return to the casino and continue our game. Well, I waited, but he didn’t come back. Meanwhile I had a drink with Señor Núñez, the casino manager. Then I went home.”

“At what time was that?”

“Just after twelve-thirty. I remember the time because I’m sure the fireworks ended a few minutes before I got in my car.”

“I see.” The captain lit another cigarillo and allowed some of the smoke to escape from between his extremely white teeth. “So it could have been you who killed Señor Reles, could it not?”

“It could have been, yes. It could have been me who led the attack on the Moncada Barracks, too. But it wasn’t. Max Reles had just given me an extremely well paid job. A job I no longer have. So my motive for killing him looks less than convincing.”

“That’s quite correct, Captain,” said Meyer Lansky. “Max had made Señor Hausner here his general manager.”

Captain Sánchez nodded, as if accepting Lansky’s corroboration of my story; but he wasn’t quite finished with me, and now I was cursing myself for being rash enough to have answered Lansky’s earlier question to me concerning the murder of Max Reles.

“How long did you know the deceased?” asked the captain.

“We first met in Berlin, about twenty years ago. Until a couple of nights ago, I hadn’t seen him since then.”

“And straightaway he offers you a job? He must have thought very highly of you, Señor Hausner.”

“He had his reasons, I suppose.”

“Perhaps you were holding something over his head. Something from the past.”

“You mean like blackmail, Captain?”

“I most certainly do mean that, yes.”

“That might have been true twenty years ago. As a matter of fact, we both had something on each other. But it certainly wasn’t enough to give me any power over the man. Not anymore.”

“And him. Did he hold any power over you?”

“Sure. You could put it that way, why not? He offered me money to work for him. That’s about the most powerful thing there is on this island that I know of.”

The captain pushed his peaked cap onto the back of his head and scratched his forehead. “But I’m still puzzled. Why? Why did he offer you this job?”

“Like I said, he had his reasons. But if you want me to speculate, Captain, I suppose he liked it that I kept my mouth shut for twenty years. That I kept my word to him. That I wasn’t afraid to tell him to go and fuck himself.”

“And maybe you were not afraid to kill him, either.”

I smiled and shook my head.

“No, hear me out,” said the captain. “Max Reles has lived in Havana for many years. He is a law-abiding, taxpaying, upstanding citizen. He’s a friend of the president. Then one day he meets you, someone he hasn’t seen for twenty years. Two or three days later, he’s murdered. That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“When you put it like that, I wonder why the hell you don’t arrest me. It would certainly save you the time and trouble of conducting a proper murder investigation with forensic evidence and witnesses who saw me do the shooting. The usual stuff. Run me down to the station, why don’t you? Maybe you can strong-arm a confession out of me before you finish your shift. I can’t imagine it would be the first time you’ve done something like that.”

“You mustn’t believe everything you read in Bohemia , señor .”

“No?”

“Do you really think we torture suspects?”

“Mostly I don’t give the matter any thought at all, Captain. But maybe I’ll go and visit some prisoners on the Isle of Pines and see what they have to say about it and then get back to you. It’ll make a change from picking my feet at home.”

But Sánchez wasn’t listening. He was looking at the revolver one of his men was presenting to him on a towel, like a crown of laurel or wild olive. I heard the man say that the gun had been found in a laundry basket on the eighth floor. There was a red star on the handle. And it certainly looked like the murder weapon. For one thing, it was wearing a silencer.

“It looks like Señor Hausner was right, wouldn’t you say, Captain?” said Meyer Lansky.

Sánchez and the cop turned and went into the living room.

“And not a moment too soon,” I told Lansky. “That stupid cop liked me for it.”

“Didn’t he just? Me, I liked you for the way you spoke to him. It reminded me of me. I suppose that was the murder weapon.”

“I’d bet the hard way on it. That’s a seven-shot Nagant. My guess is they’ll dig seven out of Max’s body and the walls.”

“A Nagant? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Designed by a Belgian. But the red star on the handle means that one’s Russian made,” I said.

“Russian, huh? Are you telling me Max was killed by communists?”

“No, Mr. Lansky, I was telling you about the gun. Soviet murder squads used that type of gun to murder Polish officers in 1940. They shot them in the back of the head and then buried the bodies in the Katyn? Forest and later blamed the Germans for it. There were plenty of guns like that in Europe at the end of the war. But oddly, not that many on this side of the Atlantic. Especially not with a Bramit silencer. That alone makes this killing look professional. You see, sir, even with a silencer, all pistols will still make a noise. Maybe enough noise to alert Waxey. But a Nagant’s the only kind of pistol you can silence completely. You see, there’s no gap between the cylinder and the barrel. It’s what they call a ‘closed firing system,’ which means you can suppress whatever noise comes out of the barrel one hundred percent-provided, that is, you have a Bramit silencer. Frankly, it’s the perfect weapon for a clandestine killing. The Nagant would also account for the higher velocity of the thirty-eight-caliber bullet, too. Enough to knock out an eyeball that got in the way. So what I’m saying is this. Whoever shot Max Reles didn’t need to do it during last night’s fireworks. They could have shot him at any time between midnight and when Waxey found the body this morning, and nobody would have heard a damn thing. Oh, and by the way, this isn’t exactly the kind of gun you can buy in your local gun store. Least of all with a silencer. These days the Ivans prefer the much lighter Tokarev TT. That’s an automatic, in case you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know,” agreed Lansky. “But as it happens I’m not as ignorant about the Russians as you might think, Gunther. My family was from Grodno, on the Russian-Polish border. Me and my brother, Jake, we left when we were kids. To get away from the Russians. Jake here knew one of those Polish officers who got themselves killed. People today talk about German anti-Semitism, but for my family, the Russians were just as bad. Maybe worse.”

Jake Lansky nodded. “I think so,” he said. “And so did Pop.”