Fifty Grand (14 page)

While he did that I chopped an onion, mashed the garlic, diced a jalapeño, and fried them in olive oil. I threw in some cooked chicken and chicken stock and when they had all gotten to know one another for a while I slid in chopped tomato and minced cilantro and let them cook. When the chicken was brown I added a can of black beans and a can of red beans and let it reduce while the rice finished. Finally, I took a couple of tortillas and placed them in the oven.

“Man, this is good. What do you call this?” Paco asked.

“Havana chicken stew.”

“Havana?”

“Oh, I mean, just a regular chicken stew, that’s all it is.”

“Well, it’s good.”

It was good. The ingredients were fresh and plentiful and we were famished. It made me
feel
good. This was how life was supposed to be. Not scrimping and saving and fighting over scraps.

We ate by the window and looked out at the street. No cars, no snow, just trees and vague distant lights on the highway. We talked. He told me about Nicaragua. He’d been orphaned early, begged in Managua, ran off to the jungle to be a soldier, drifted to Guatemala and then Mexico.

I made up lies about Yucatán, bringing in things from Santiago and Havana. Paco nodded and was so kid sincere it made me feel terrible.

For dessert we had more beer and I ate the orange, the kiwifruit, the banana, and an apple. I couldn’t figure out the kiwi and Paco had to show me how to prepare it. He took the skin off with slender cuts and sliced the inside into five pieces. It was delicious. All the fruit was delicious and it made me hate the Party bureaucrats who deprived us of fruit so that it could be exported for foreign currency or turned into juice or made available only in the off-limits beach hotels.

One more beer and we staggered to our room and before I even hit the pillow I was gone, gone, gone.

CHAPTER 6
ALONG THE MALEC
N

G
one to the dream island.

A city in free fall.

A country in free fall.

Every one of us on deathwatch, waiting out the Beard and his brother’s final days.

Tick-fucking-tock.

Hector says (in whispers),
After Fidel and Raúl, le deluge
. The successors will end up like Mussolini—upside down on a meat hook in the Plaza de la Revolución, if there’s any justice. Which there isn’t.

Calle Gervasio to San Rafael. Walking. Everyone walks in Cuba. You need to be in the Party or have at least a thousand in greenback kiss money to get a car. Early. So early it’s late. High on brown-tar heroin, the whores don’t care that I’m a woman or that I look like a cop. They raise their skirts to show pussy lovingly injected with antibiotics or mercury sublimate by our world-beating physicians.

“Qué bola
,
asere
?
”
they ask.

“Nada.”

“
Qué bola
,
asere
?”

“
Nada
.”

“We swing with you, white chick. We’ll show you tricks to impress your boyfriend.”

I’m in no mood. Finger and thumb together, “
No mas
, bitches.
No mas
.”

In this part of town the hookers are all black and mulatto teenagers, the kind patronized by German and Canadian sex tourists whose fat white asses are also here in abundance. Go to bed, Hans, some pimp will knife you for that watch of yours. That watch will get him to Miami.

San Rafael all the way to Espada.

People thinning out. No plump anglos. Kids sleeping in doorways. An old man on a bicycle.

Past the Beard’s hospital. Party members, diplomats, and tourists only. “The best hospital in Latin America.” Yeah, right. Half the night staff probably outside soliciting blow jobs.

Espada to San Lázaro.

The police station.

A few lights on. Shutters closed. Couple of Mexican Beetles and a midnight blue ’57 Chevy parked outside.

Sergeant Menendez urinating into a storm drain.

Sees me. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

Play it cool. Buddy-buddy.

“I heard that in Regla a guy pissing in the bay had his dick bitten off by an alligator,” I say.

He laughs. “I heard that too.”

He grins and strokes his mustache.

I smile back, flirty with the DGI pig. “I heard you got a lot to lose, Menendez.”

Blushes. “Word gets around,” he replies.

“It’s just what I heard.”

Again flirty, not that I ever would in a million years. No one would unless they had a thing for cadaverous bastards with pockmarked skin, greasy hair, and a vibe that would creep out an exorcist.

He leers but it’s not really for me. I’m way too old for him. Hector says he goes for schoolgirls. Hector says the PNR had a file on him for child rape, but it was mysteriously pulled. Hector says a lot of stuff, but this I believe.

“No, really, what are you pissing in the street for?” I ask.

“Plumbing’s out.”

“Again?”

“Again.”

“Not in the ladies’ room, too?”

Another laugh. There is no ladies’ room. The whores piss in a bucket in the communal cell and the secretaries go next door to the Planning Ministry. Since Helena González retired, I’ve been the only female police officer in the place.

“What are you doing here so early?” he wonders again.

Persistent little fuck.

Careful now. Tightrope walk. Menendez is the DGI
chivato
for the Interior Ministry, an informer, but almost certainly a low-ranking DGI officer himself. Thinks he’s smart, but I know and Hector knows and so do half a dozen others—everyone who lets him win at poker.

I smile. “Oh, you know me, anything to get ahead, catching up on some currency fraud cases,” I tell him.

He nods and spits out the stub of his cigarette. His eyes check me out. I’m wearing a white blouse with the top button undone. Blouse, black pants, black Czech shoes. No jewelry, short crop. Cop from a mile away. He looks down the shirt and back up at my eyes.

“Trying to get ahead. I heard you put in for a leave of absence. That won’t help your career,” he says.

Christ. How did he hear that already?

Flirty, young, bubbly: “You’ll see, Menendez. I’m studying criminology. I’m hoping to do an M.A. at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,” I say with a hint of pretend pride.

“Never heard of it,” he says sourly.

“It’s the oldest university in the western hemisphere. One of the biggest, too. And when I get the M.A. they’ll make me a sergeant for sure. You better watch out when I’m in charge of you.”

And for icing I add a little laugh, a little girlish laugh. Oh, Menendez,
cabrón
, am I not so cute to have such big dreams? Oh, Sergeant Menendez, aren’t you moved by my naïveté. Doesn’t it make you laugh to see how little I know about how things work in the Policía Nacional de la Revolución.

He grunts. “They’re going to let you go to Mexico?”

“Well, they haven’t given permission yet for the whole year. I haven’t even applied formally yet, but I have an interview at the university next week. I think they’ll let me go for that at least.”

“Maybe,” he says coyly. “But on the whole college is a waste of time. Good solid police work you learn on the job. And a year away: big mistake if you ask me, Officer Mercado.”

“Well, we’ll see what they say.”

“If you want to get ahead you should join the Party,” he adds.

“I’d like to, but I can’t. Because of my father.”

His forehead wrinkles, as if he’s bringing up the mental files he has on the whole police department: cops, secretaries, cleaners, other
chivatos
.

“Ah, yes, your father. A terrorist. Defected in ’93.”

“He wasn’t a terrorist.”

“He hijacked the bay ferry to the Keys.”

“No. He was on the ferry at the time but he wasn’t one of the hijackers.”

“Did he attempt to come back?”

“No.”

Triumph and a snort. “Well, I won’t keep you, Officer Mercado.”

“Good day, Sergeant Menendez.”

I walk inside. One of the newer precinct buildings, but already paint peeling off the walls. Uneven black-and-white floor tiling. Frozen ceiling fan. Big painting of Jefe, Mao style. No one around. A snore. Sergeant Ortiz sleeping behind the front desk. I tiptoe past him up the steps and through a set of grungy glass doors that squeak open, almost waking Ortiz.

Through central processing.

Officer Posada asleep under
his
desk. The male hooker cage empty, the female hooker cage with one lonely occupant, a black girl, maybe fourteen, curled under a blanket.

The stairs to the second floor.

Crumbling concrete, cracks in the floor the size of plantains. A corridor-length mural depicting Cuban history from the time of Cortés to the glorious Pan American Games in 1990 when the socialist system triumphed again over the Yankees and their vassals.

Hector’s office.

Knock.

“Come in, Mercado.”

I open the door.

Books and papers everywhere. Two telephones. Another dead ceiling fan. A window looking down to the sea. Hector nursing a rum and coffee. He looks tired. He hasn’t shaved. Wearing the same shirt and jacket as yesterday.

“Sit.”

I sit.

“You wanted to see me,” he says. This early and this unguarded, his accent
has that provincial eastern lilt he’s been trying to eradicate his whole life. If he weren’t bald, fat, married, and very ugly I’d find it sexy.

“So what’s this about?” he asks sipping from the coffee flask.

“It’s about my leave of absence,” I say.

His eyes flick toward the door.

“You’re early; I like that. Who else is in the building right now? Who did you see?” he asks.

“Posada.”

“Awake or asleep? The truth.”

“Asleep.”

“Posada asleep,” he sighs. “Before your time, Mercado, a posada was a hotel room you rented by the hour. We’d be lucky if Officer Posada used his brain for one hour a day. One hour in a day, that’s all I ask.”

I nod.

Hector sips his coffee.

“What about Ortiz?”

“Oh yes, Ortiz.”

“You could have brought me something from the bakery. The bakeries are starting to open, yes?”

“I didn’t think to. Sorry, sir.”

“Hmm, so what’s this all about?” he asks.

“Uhm, sir, as you’re aware, I’ve put in for a one-week leave of absence.”

He rummages through the papers on his desk. “I saw that. And you’ve applied to the Foreign Ministry for a travel permit to Mexico.”

I nod.

“Speak up,” he says.

“Yes, I wish to travel to Mexico City. I have applied to study at the university. I am meeting with a Professor Carranza at UNAM about the possibility of taking an M.A. in criminology.”

Hector nods. “Yeah, I read the letter. And if the university takes you, I suppose that means you’ll be taking an even longer leave of absence from the PNR? We’ll be losing you for how long? A year?”

“A year. Yes.”

He shakes his head, starts writing something on the piece of paper. “Hmmm, I don’t know about this, Officer Mercado. Has the ministry given you permission for this first trip?”

“Well, I applied weeks ago and it’s getting close to the deadline, sir. I was hoping that you could—”

Hector puts his finger to his lips and points at the wall and then at his ear. The implication is that his office is being bugged by the DGSE or the DGI. A second of dead air before he jumps in: “Hoping that I could what, Officer Mercado? Put in a good word for you? Why would I do that? Why would I want to lose one of my best detectives for a week, never mind a whole year? Well?”

He grins at me and passes me the note that he’s been writing. It says: “I’ll gain expertise that I can use to train fellow PNR officers, saving the department a lot of money.”