Fifty Grand (16 page)

I stare at him and say nothing. He’s overhearing his own thoughts, trying to bring himself to the point.

He shakes his head. “Please at least tell me you’re familiar with Lorca, Detective Mercado.”

“Of course. Murdered by the fascists.”

“Yes. Murdered by the fascists,” he says slowly, making every word count.

Waves.

Gulls.

A chain grinding against a buoy.

“I’ve got property here,” he says at last, pointing at the rows of derelict and bricked-up buildings on the Malecón.

“Really?” I say with surprise.

“Yes. Land money. Best kind. Seafront. Worth shit now. I got it for nothing. But in five years when the Yankees are back . . .”

“You think the Yankees will be here in five years, sir?” I ask.

“Give or take, and call me Hector, Mercado. Call me Hector.”

“Yes, sir.”

Beneath us more kids are combing the concrete-and-iron coastal defenses for flotsam or garbage, and farther down the shore in the cool light of day a desperate character is making a raft out of driftwood and polystyrene packing. I point him out.

“You want to fill in a lot of forms today? You didn’t see him,” Hector says.

“No, sir.”

We sit for a minute and listen to the waves. A pale sun is rising over a paler sea. Traffic is starting to pick up on the road.

Hector clears his throat. “I’m not going to argue with you, Mercado. I
know you. I know that you’re stubborn and I know that you’re clever and I know that your brother has already taken considerable risks, but I will say this, if you think you’ve pulled the wool over my eyes, you’re mistaken. And if you can’t fool me, then you’re not going to fool anyone in the ministry either.”

“What are you talking about?”

“How long have you worked for me?”

“Since college. Five years.”

“
I
made you a detective.
I
promoted you. Me.”

“I know that, sir, and I’m grateful, and I’ll do everything I can to bring credit to the—”

He shakes his head slightly, narrows his eyes.

“Never had a daughter. Two boys,” he says sadly.

“I know, sir.”

“One works for the Ministry of Fruit Cultivation, the other one doesn’t work.”

I know that, too, but I don’t reply.

“For a while there, Mercado, I thought we had a connection. Something special. The other day in the Vieja . . .” His voice trails off into a cough.

He doesn’t continue when he clears his throat.

“Yes, sir?” I prompt him.

“Call me Hector. I prefer that.”

“Yes, uh, Hector.”

“I like the way you say that. Now, why don’t I lay my cards on the table, and then you can do the same and you can try me with the truth. How does that sound?”

“Ok.”

Hector smiles. He doesn’t seem angry but he’s bristling, and I can tell that I am irritating him. “Mercado, it’s like this: your brother came back from America last week. He had to get permission from the DGI and the Foreign Ministry and then a license from the U.S. Department of State. The waiver he got was to attend some preposterous conference on Cuba in New York. The license did not permit him to travel outside New York City.”

“I believe I told you that already, it’s no secret. I—” I begin but he cuts me off savagely.

“Listen to me! I know, ok?”

“Know what, sir?”

“Your brother went to Colorado. Your father was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run accident in Colorado. He was living in Colorado under a Mexican passport. He was drunk, the car did not stop.”

“My brother did indeed go out to Colorado but I think you’ve gotten things mixed up, sir. That was almost six months ago, that was a completely different trip. For that trip he was granted a special visa from the Foreign Ministry—”

“Two trips to the USA, both of them benign. End of story, right?” he mutters.

“Right.”

“Wrong. I think Ricky went out there again last week, at your instigation, to do some digging into the accident. When he came back you two talked, he confirmed your suspicions, and that’s why you want to go to America. It’s nothing to do with the university. You’ve been planning this thing for months.”

“You’re mistaken,” I say quickly in an attempt to conceal my panic. Old bastard had me cold. “My father is a traitor to the Revolution. He abandoned his family. I have had no contact with him since he left Cuba. I want to go to Mexico to attend UNAM. I am not going to the United States.”

Hector flicks ash, nods. If it were me, I’d press the attack, but he doesn’t, he merely sighs and throws his cigarette end off the seawall. It’s been a while since Hector braced a currency dealer or a pimp; he’s lost his touch.

Finally, after a minute of dead air, when I’ve collected myself, he does speak: “Police captains in the Policía Nacional de la Revolución have some influence, Mercado. We are allowed to use the Internet. We are allowed to look in certain files of the DGI and the DGSE. And most of us have to be of reasonable intelligence.”

“I’m not doubting your intelligence, sir, I just don’t know quite how you’ve got it all so wrong in this particular situation.”

He rubs his chin, smiles. “Well, maybe I have. Come then, let’s continue our little walk,” he says casually. We sidle off the wall and as the sun begins to break over the castle he fishes in his pocket and produces a pair of ancient sunglasses.

He looks a little ridiculous in the sunglasses, heavy wool jacket, baggy blue trousers, scuffed brown shoes. He doesn’t look a person of consequence, though perhaps that’s part of his charm.

“How many whores would you say there are in Havana?” Hector asks.

“I don’t know. Two, two and a half thousand.”

“More, say three thousand. Conservatively they each make about a hundred dollars a night hard currency. That’s about two million dollars a week. A hundred million a year. That’s what’s keeping this city afloat. Whore money.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whore money and Venezuelan oil will keep us going until the future comes racing across the Florida Strait. Stick with me. Let’s cross the street at this break in the traffic.”

We dodge a camel bus and an overloaded Nissan truck and make it across in one piece. He leads me to a building at the corner of Maceo and Crespo—a decrepit four-story apartment complex that probably hasn’t had any tenants since Hurricane Ivan.

“This is my pride and joy,” he says. “
This
is the future.”

Hard to credit it. Windows covered with plywood boards, holes in the brickwork, and you can smell the mold and rot from the sidewalk.

“Let’s go inside,” he says, producing a key and undoing a padlock on the rusting iron front door.

He fumbles for a switch and by some supernatural power lights come on to reveal a gutted, stinking shitbox filled with garbage, guano, pigeons, parrots, and rats.

“What is this?” I ask him.

“This is the building I’ve bought with all my savings. It’s mine now and I can trace legal title back to before 1959, which will be important when the Miamistas come with their Yankee lawyers,” Hector says.

“Why are you showing this to me?”

Hector grins. “This building is worth nothing now. Nothing. But in a few years, after Jefe and Little Jefe . . . A hotel. A boutique hotel right on the Malecón. A minute from the sea, a short walk to the Prado. This place will be worth millions of dollars.”

I nod my head. “
If
the Revolution falters after Fidel and Raúl.”

“It’s a gamble, Mercado. Like everything in life. I’m not like the rest of these fucking Cubanos with their long faces and their gloomy lives. I see a future right here, in Havana. Not in La Yuma. Here,” he says.

“Yes.”

He lights another cigarette and leans against a crumbling wall. Pulverized plaster and tobacco smoke obscure his face.

A minute goes by.

Two.

“Uh, sir, I should probably be getting back. Those currency cases aren’t going to solve themselves.”

He sighs, disappointed. “Nietzsche said that knowledge kills action. Action requires the veils of illusion. That’s the doctrine of Hamlet. When you go there and you meet them, what then, Mercado? What then?”

“Sir, I really appreciate the fact that you’ve trusted me with this—”

“I had hoped that here in
my
secret place you were going to tell me
your
secret. I naively thought that you trusted me sufficiently to give me your truth.”

“I have given you the truth.”

“Thing is, Mercado, you probably think you’ve got nothing to lose. But I have a lot to lose. I see a little glimmer of hope. I’ve got an investment. A dream.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“Of course you won’t, but you’re still going to fuck me over. If you go to the United States and stay there, I’ll lose my job, they’ll take my property, they’ll probably throw me in jail. My wife and kids will be destroyed. You want to see my wife blowing fat Swedes to feed our kids?”

He throws the cigarette. It bounces off my cheek, sparks flying.

“Is that what you fucking want?” he yells. His face is pink. He’s really angry now.

“What are you talking about? The United States? I wanna go to Mexico, I have an interview at the—”

Hector reaches into the pocket of his roomy slacks and pulls out a Russian automatic. He flicks off the safety and, fast for a fat man, presses it against my throat.

“No more fucking lies, Mercado. I could kill you here in this derelict building. The ocean booming against the seawall, the traffic, no fucking witnesses, nobody would even find the body for months, if ever.”

“Hector, I—”

“You want the DGI to destroy me? You want them to throw me in jail with all the people I’ve put away over the years? Is that what you want after all I’ve done for you? Made you a fucking detective, groomed you, made every other goddamn cop in the station treat you with respect. Answer me, Mercadito!”

The gun.

The dust.

His red eyes.

“I don’t want to do anything to hurt you, boss,” I say.

“Why do you think he was in Colorado posing as a fucking Mexican? Did you ever think about that? He didn’t want to be found. He ran from the Cuba that raised him and he ran from the Florida Cubans who took him in. He ran and disappeared. He didn’t want your help. Or anybody’s help. He was a selfish motherfucker, Mercado. A drunk. A fuckup. He was the fucking town ratcatcher. Forget him.”

He pushes the revolver hard against my windpipe, holds it there for a full ten seconds, but then, suddenly, he wilts. He lets the gun fall to his side, then takes a step back and sits on an old table.

The performance—if it was a performance—has exhausted him.

He looks in his pocket for his flask of rum but he’s left it in the office.

“Just tell me the truth, Mercado. Ricky’s a reporter. And despite the fireworks, a good one too. There was something he didn’t like.”

“I don’t know wh—”

“The autopsy. He had the Mexican consulate conduct an autopsy.”

“That’s no secret either.”

“No, but the results are or were. I found them, and if
I
can find them the DGI can find them too. They’ll put two and two together like me.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“The point is revenge. The pathologist discovered that your father was not killed in the initial accident. A lung was punctured and he fell down an embankment into the forest. He tried to climb back up to the road but he couldn’t make it. Gradually, over a period of hours, I believe, in very cold temperatures, your father drowned in his own blood. That hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Hurts bad. Both of you. You and Ricky. Ricky went and it’s your turn now. You’re going to go to Mexico City and you’re going to find a coyote who can take you across the border into the United States. There you are going to make your way to Colorado and investigate your father’s death and try to find the person who killed him.”

I look at Hector. Off the street ten years, slow and old and fat and smart as a fucking whip.

“How did you piece it together?”

“Ricky.”

“What about him?”

“Two trips to the United States in a year are bound to raise suspicions. Even though he’s a Party member, Ricky was followed by the DGI. He did indeed cover a conference at the UN and a Friends of Cuba rally in New York City, but then the DGI lost him for four days. They think he was in Manhattan doing the tourist scene and probably fucking like crazy, but I suspect that during that time he borrowed some Cuban American friend’s ID, flew to Denver, drove to Fairview, checked into a ski lodge or a hotel, and spent three days asking questions about his father’s death. Then he came back to New York, crammed a week’s worth of interviews into a single afternoon, and flew back to you with his results.”

“This is your guess, not that of the Interior Ministry?”