Havana Bay (28 page)

"So now you work two places," Ofelia said.» Days
you're at the Casa de Amor, nights you're at the boats.
Is that the kind of life you want to lead?"

Teresa's eyes shone through her hair.» It's better than
school."

"Better than the hospital? Did you check this German friend of yours?"

"He was clean."

"Oh, you have a laboratory?"

It was like arguing with children. They would never
be infected, they took vitamins, anise, vinegar. The men
refused to wear condoms because they hadn't come
around the world to smoke half a cigar.

"Hija,
listen. Unless you give me the name of police
who take money from you I will enter your name in the register of prostitutes. Whenever there is a sweep of
prostitutes you will be dragged away. And if you are
ever caught again you will be sent to a reeducation farm
for two years minimum. That's a nice place to grow
up."

Teresa pulled up her knees and glowered. Her pout
was exactly like Muriel's. She was three years older.

Herr Lohmann had been waiting in an interrogation
room. He folded his arms and tilted back in his chair as
Ofelia examined his visa. He spoke lederhose Spanish.»
So I have one room at the Hotel Capri and another at
the Casa de Amor? I paid for both. Twice the money
for Cuba."

"How did you even know about the Casa de Amor?"

"The girl told me. She's not exactly a virgin, you
know."

"To be clear," Ofelia said.» You are forty-nine. You
are having sex with a fourteen-year-old girl, a student. You did this regardless of the laws of Cuba for the
protection of children. Are you aware that you could be spending six years in a Cuban jail?"

"I doubt that very much."

"So you are not afraid."

"No."

She opened his passport and flipped through
stamped pages.» You travel quite a lot."

"I have business to attend to."

"In Thailand, the Philippines?"

"I'm a salesman."

"Based?"

"In Hamburg."

His passport photo was a head and shoulders of a
respectable burgher in dark suit and tie.

"Married?"

"Yes."

"Children?"

No answer.

"Here for?"

"Business."

"Not for pleasure?"

"No. Although I enjoy other cultures." He had teeth
like a horse.» I was at the bar at the Hotel Riviera and
this girl asked if I could buy her a cola."

"To enter the lobby of the Riviera she had to be with
a man. Who was it?"

"I don't know. In Havana I am approached by a lot
of men who want to know do I need a car, a cigar,
whatever?"

"Were there any police in the lobby?"

"I don't know."

"You are aware that it is against Cuban law for
Cuban citizens to visit a hotel room."

"Is that so? Sometimes I stay at hotels in the country
side run by the Cuban army. When I bring a girl I just pay double. You're the first one to make a fuss."

"You left the Riviera and went to the Casa de Amor,
you and Teresa. According to the guest register at the
Casa de Amor you signed in as her husband, Sr.
Guiteras."

"Teresa took care of that. I never went in the office."

 
 
Ofelia looked at notes she had taken of a phone call.»
According to the Riviera, you arrived there at the
beginning of your visit with a friend, an Italian."

"A male friend."

"Named Mossa. He took the room next to you?"

"So?"

"Wasn't he also in the room next to you at the Casa
de Amor?"

"So?"

"The two of you met Teresa and her friend together?"

"Wrong. I found Teresa and he connected on his
own."

"You found her?"

"Or she found me. It makes no fucking difference.
Girls develop faster here." He smoothed his hair back.»
Look, I have always been a supporter of the Cuban
Revolution. You can't arrest me for being attracted to
Cuban girls. They're very attractive."

"Did you use a condom?"

"I think so."

"We looked in the wastebaskets."

"Okay, no."

"I think for your own sake we will have you exam
ined by doctors and send a medical report to your
embassy."

His smile sealed. As he pressed against the table his
shirt opened to a gold chain, body heat, the smell of
stale cologne. He whispered, "You know, you're even
better looking than Teresa."

At that moment Ofelia suffered the fantasy that
Renko was with her and that he picked up the German
the way he had picked up Luna and rammed the
German into the wall.

"The doctor will make a thorough examination,"
Ofelia said and left the room.

The detective room wasn't as empty when she went
back. The Sharon Stone poster was back on the wall,
and Teresa looked sideways at the plainclothes detec
tives, Soto and Tey, sharply dressed men who bent over
the paperwork on their desks and exchanged smirks. If
Ofelia had any other place to question the girl she
would have used it.

Teresa announced,
"Singa tu madre.
I'm not saying anything against my friends."

"Good girl," Soto said.» With the right friends you
don't have to say nothing."

"Osorio has confused sex and crime," said Tey.» She's
against both."

"It's been so long, right?" said Soto.

"I'd be happy to help her remember," offered Tey.

"You can't touch me," Teresa told Ofelia.» I don't
have to tell you nothing."

"Don't listen to them." Ofelia felt her neck get hot.

"Don't listen to
them?
They're not on my ass, you
are. You're the bitch, not them. I make ten times what
you make. Why would I listen to you?"

"Congratulations, I am putting you on the official
list of whores. You will be examined by a doctor and sent out of Havana."

"You can't."

 
 
"It's done."

But when she went into the hall with Dora, all Ofelia
could think of were her own daughters and she didn't
have the heart to order Teresa's name onto the register.

"Tell her I did, though," she said.» And have the
doctor look at her. And have the doctor examine our
tourist all over and draw some blood and make it
painful."

"So what is the point of what we're doing if we let
her go?" Dora was sick of sweeping streets.

"I'm not after girls, I am after corrupt police."

"Then you're after men, and in the PNR there are a
couple of us and thousands of them. From the top
down, everybody winks. They think you're a fanatic and
you know what the real problem is? You're not."

Ofelia returned to the Casa de Amor because although
she might have lost Teresa it was just possible that
Lohmann's Italian friend and his girl hadn't yet left the
motel. This time, she decided, she would question them
right in the room, not even go close to the station
house. If that was against procedure, well, procedure
guaranteed humiliation and failure. She didn't need
Dora along, she didn't need anyone. This was on her
own.

When Ofelia was angry she took steps two at a time.
The rooms were set back between dividers for privacy's
sake and hanging on the doorknob of the unit next to
Lohmann's was a plastic tag that said
do not disturb.

The two boys were playing their endless table tennis,
but otherwise no one was around. Maybe she was in
luck. Maybe she was stupid. She certainly wasn't going
to be appreciated, not if the girl was anything like
Teresa. What poor Cuban girl wouldn't think she was
in heaven at a motel like this? Then shopping at a
boutique for a swimsuit that would show off her cute
bottom? Or trying on cat-eyed Ray-Bans or a Gucci
scarf?

She knocked on the door.» Housekeeping."

The radio still played. The pool was a blue lens. The
boys played, the sound popping off their paddles. A
breeze tugged on the lazy fronds. Ofelia took a deep
breath and caught the faint smells of barnyard and
butcher. There was no answer to her knock.

"Police," she said.

The door was unlocked but blocked and she had to use all her strength to enter, and since someone had turned the air-conditioner off and the temperature was
in the eighties, it was like gaining admission to an oven
of ripe smells of blood and body waste. In opening the
door she had rolled a body to the side, and she tried to
pick her way across a floor covered with a fallen chair,
emptied bureau drawers, clothes and sheets to the
drapes on the other side. She drew them open and all
the light in the world flooded in.

The body she had stepped over was a naked male, a
dark-haired European with arms, back, flanks and scalp
slashed. Ofelia had once seen the body of a man who
had fallen into the blades of a combine, been chewed and spat out, which was what this man looked like,
except that the wounds' individual lengths and curves
were the unmistakable work of a machete. Lying on the
bed was a naked female, arms and legs splayed, her head
twisted like a dummy's and half sliced off. Bed and
carpet were dark red as if someone had poured blood
by the pail. A corona of blood spattered the wall above
the headboard. But there was no broken furniture, no
bloody smears of struggle on the walls.

To be first at an undisturbed homicide, Dr. Bias
always lectured, was a gift. If you were not a willing
investigator, if you could not take advantage of the
unique opportunity of being first on the scene, if you
were not able to engage sensorially and intelligently, if your eyes or your mind closed even a little to the fading,
ineffable shadow of a murderer, then you should not
open the door. You should raise children, drive a bus,
roll tobacco leaves, anything but steal that gift from
men and women with the discipline and stomach for
the job.

Both bodies were hard with rigor mortis, thirty-six
hours dead at least in Havana heat. The man's wounds
looked defensive, administered while he crawled across
the floor. If he was conscious enough to do that, why
hadn't he cried out? Who had died first? Blood outlined
the girl's legs. The hair of her head and pubis were the
same honey color, and although her face was angled
into the pillow, Ofelia recognized her as a smudged
version of Hedy, the beautiful girl who had been pos
sessed and danced through coals.

 
Having done as much as she could without rubber gloves, Ofelia went to the bathroom, stepping around
blood scuffs on the floor, and threw up in the toilet
bowl. When she flushed the water swirled and backed
up, a rising gorge of vomit on pink water. Before it
overflowed she thrust her hand into the toilet throat as
far as she could reach and freed a blood-soaked ball of toilet paper from the trap. Between dry heaves she laid
what she found on a towel: a wadded Italian passport
for a Franco Leo Mossa, 43, of Milan, and Cuban papers
for a Hedy Dolores Infante, 25, of Havana. Also half of a photograph torn badly. The picture must have been taken on impulse at an airport curb amid a blur of taxis
and suitcases and harried Russian faces. The subject was
Renko, wearing a rueful smile and his black coat. Ofelia
didn't know why, but her instinct was to put the
photograph in her pocket before she staggered out to
the bedroom, to the fresh air of the oceanside balcony
and a view of
neumaticos
plying the sea.