Havana Bay (30 page)

 
 
"The radio was on. People who take these rooms, as you told me, tend to make noise, and who knows how
much alcohol they consumed? His carotid and peroneal
arteries were both cut—however, he was alive enough
to try to cover up while he was hacked by the machete.
He was alive enough to make it to the door, probably
after his assailant left. But he never called out. Why? It wasn't because of the radio." With the tip of a pencil he
probed a dark spot under the dead man's Adam's apple and slid the pencil halfway in.» A hole in the trachea.
With a hole in your windpipe you cannot say a word. There is no such wound on the neck of the female, she
had her throat cut pure and simple. But the first blow
to the male, I am sure, was this puncture."

"Not made by a machete."

"No, the wound is perfectly round. Still, this sort of
mess is typical of the 'crime of passion.' You did well to
keep the hotel calm, and you were lucky to find the
documents the way you did."

Which was Bias's sly way of saying he knew she had
been ill in the toilet. The doctor was at ease with death
in a way she, it was becoming clear, never would be. A
body that had been cut up was a flower in bloom,
releasing a smell that lodged like beads of blood in the sinuses and a taste that coated the tongue. All the same,
she had made a sketch and notes to hand over to
whomever the Ministry of the Interior sent over; this
was no longer a case of prostitution, and the ministry
didn't generally leave violent crimes involving foreign
visitors to mere detectives of the PNR.

Bias said, "I'll examine the sexual aspect, too. She
was a prostitute."

Ofelia looked at the bed. For a girl with her head half sliced off Hedy looked remarkably serene, neatly edged
in blood, sheets hardly rumpled.» The killer didn't have
sex with her."

"You kill a girl in bed, that's sexual to me."

A little insight
there,
Ofelia thought.

"I saw the female last night at a Santeria ceremony."

"What is the matter with you? You have so much
potential, why do you indulge in such mumbo jumbo?"

"The girl was possessed."

"Ridiculous."

"You've never been possessed?"

Bias wiped his pencil.» Of course not."

"It happened to me once. They had to tell me later."
The entire night had remained a blank to her.

"Was this Italian at the ceremony?"

"No."

"Fine. Then she came somewhere else later and
picked him up here. If I were you I wouldn't get into
Santeria unless there is a very good reason. We are at a
hotel that, wrongly or rightly, specializes in tourists.
Should we tell everyone there are religious fanatics
going from room to room killing people?"

"What do you think the Russian will say?"

"Renko? Why should he say anything?"

"He was at the ceremony last night. He saw the girl."

"He'll still say nothing because we won't tell him. Do
you think the Russians would inform us of every mur
der?" Bias ran the waxy fingers of his gloved hand down
the back of the Italian's legs, hamstrung so that the dead man had to drag them as he crawled.» Renko is not our
colleague. We don't know really what he is. The fact
that an investigator would come to Havana is a sign of
something else going on. A better photograph of Pri
bluda is all I want from him."

The photograph of Renko at the airport resided in
her pocket. With all the confusion in the room there
was still time to rediscover it.

She asked, "Did Sergeant Luna ever show you a
picture of Renko?"

"No." Bias ran his hand up the dead man's arms.»
Right-handed by the musculature. Lovely fingernails."

A chevron of deep cuts down the dead man's back
indicated that the attacker had stood over him and
hacked right and left. Ofelia considered mentioning the
two round bruises she'd found on Renko's arm, but it
seemed somehow a breach of trust.

"Perhaps we should reexamine the dead Russian. Is
it possible he was struck by lightning? It did rain that
week."

"Only there was no lightning on the bay. I'm ahead
of you. I checked the meteorological record for light
ning and the body for burns. Don't worry about
Renko." Bias pinched the arm for stiffness.» I have dealt
with Russians. Every one, including women with whom
I was intimate, was a spy. Each was the exact opposite
of what he or she claimed to be." He tucked a smile
into his beard, and at that moment looked to Ofelia like
a man too fond of his memories.» What does Renko
claim to be?"

"A fool."

"His case may be an exception."

Bias turned the body onto its back. Loss of blood
ended in stupefaction, and although his hair twisted in
matted strips, the expression on the Italian's face was of
someone yielding to sleep. Ofelia brushed hair from an
oblong scab at the hairline.

"It looks like he bumped his head a few days ago,"
Bias said.» The least of his problems now."

"Who does he remind you of?"

"No one."

"How would you describe him?"

Bias cocked his head like a carpenter delivering an estimate.» European, forty to fifty, medium height, hair
black, eyes brown, high forehead, incipient widow's
peak."

"Renko?"

"Now that you mention it."

They had to shift the body from the door as an
investigating team from the ministry arrived, led by
Captain Arcos and Sergeant Luna. Arcos gawked at the
body on the floor. Luna went to the foot of the bed and
stared down at Hedy. His skin went gray, and as his lips spread he breathed through his teeth while Ofelia deliv
ered her statement. She wanted to ask, Where is your
ice pick? Instead she slipped away while Bias took over.

The Casa de Amor had emptied. At the sight of PNR
Ladas and an IML forensics van with scales of justice
painted on the door the Casa's guests returned just long
enough to grab their overnight bags and run. At the
bottom of the stairs Ofelia found a hose and washed
first the soles of her shoes and then her face and hands.

The criminal laboratory of the Ministry of the Interior
was in the Antiguo Hotel Via Blanca, a nineteenth-
century brownstone palace erected in an erroneous
burst of Spain's imperial confidence just before the first
Cuban Revolution. A somber Iberian mood still resided
in the building's dark walls and narrow windows.

While Bias's Institute de Medicina Legal carried out autopsies the laboratories of Minint analyzed drugs and
arson, ballistics and explosives, fingerprints, documents and currency. The work was done for the PNR, but the uniform was military fatigues.

"Fidel loves uniforms," her mother always claimed.»
Put someone in uniform and you've created an idiot
who watches his neighbors and says, 'How did he get
that dollar? How did she get those chickens?'" Her mother would laugh so hard she'd have to waddle to
the water closet.»
'Socialismo o Muerte?'
Please inform
Fidel it's not 'either-or.'"

In the evidence room, weapons were labeled and kept
on shelving that on the underside still bore stencils of
the FBI. The rifles were farmers' shotguns; anything military was recirculated back to the army or militia.
Enough machetes to clear a cane field, axes and knives
and homemade curiosities: a mortar barrel made from
bamboo, sugarcane shaved into spears. On opposite
shelves lay incidental evidence: bagged clothes, en
velopes of rings and earrings, centavos in jars, shoes,
sandals, a freshly tagged black swimming flipper and an
inner tube.

Someone had rinsed the flipper, and when Ofelia
held it to the light she saw the faintest charring inside
the strap, which could have been her imagination or
Renko's influence. She replaced the flipper carefully, as
if putting off a question.

She went to the records room, where a haze of paper
dander hung under fluorescent lights. The two working computers at the table were being used, but in a carrel
behind stacks of volumes tied with faded ribbon she found a third, where she pulled up the file on her friend i
Maria.

Maria Luz Romero Holmes, age: 22, address: Vapor 224, Vedado, La Habana, charged with solicitation out
side that address. Jose Romero Gomez, 22, same
address, charged with assault. There was more: marital
and educational status, employment, and the statement
of the witness.

I was walking up Vapor to the university when this
woman (indicating Maria Romero) came out her
door and asked the time. Then she asked where I was
      
-i
going and placed her hand on my member. I said, to
the university. When she tried to arouse me I said
no, I wasn't interested, I didn't have the time. That's
        
'
when she began screaming and this man (indicating
 
Jos£ Romero) rushed out of the house, cursing and
swinging a lead pipe at me. I defended myself until
the police came along.

Signed,

Rufo Pinero Perez

It was Rufo Pinero's name that had prodded her
memory. A former boxer innocently headed to the
university. For a lecture on poetry? Ofelia wondered.
Nuclear science?

The police photograph of Maria showed her wet with
tears but defiant. In his photograph her husband's eyes
were dark slits, his nose split, his jaw swollen large as a gourd.

The statement of the witness is corroborated by this
arresting
  
officer,
  
who
  
was
  
also
  
threatened
  
and
assaulted by the Romero couple in the course of his
duty.

Signed,

Sergeant Facundo Luna, PNR

Ofelia remembered how Maria had said a plastic
sheet had been placed over the rear seat of the police
car because Luna knew he would be transporting people covered in blood, and how Rufo had taken cigars out of
the police car's glove compartment, cigars he had put
in beforehand so they wouldn't be damaged during the
scuffle. Luna and Rufo planned ahead.

She thought she knew what had happened at the
Casa de Amor. Bias had suggested a crime of passion, a
Cuban boyfriend who killed the Italian and the Cuban
girl in a fit of uncontrollable anger. But what Ofelia saw
in her mind was Franco Mossa and Hedy drinking in
the dark, dancing to the radio, laughing. It wasn't likely
Hedy spoke much Italian, but how much did she need?
She retired to the bathroom, emerged undressed, a
busty honey-colored girl. She slipped into bed, and as he took his turn in the bathroom she slipped right out again and opened the balcony door for a friend. The
Italian turned off the bathroom light and, half blind,
walked into the darkened bedroom. Hedy couldn't have
seen much. She'd have heard the sucking sound of the
ice pick as it was pulled from the Italian's neck, though.
What had Hedy thought they were up to? Extortion was
the usual game with tourists. She would have been silent
and surprised when the machete whistled out of the
dark and cut her head half off her shoulders. The killer
must have been as bloody as a slaughterhouse wall when
he was done. The question was, Why the photograph of
the Russian? Who had carried it, Hedy or her friend?
Was there a moment when he turned on the bathroom
light and saw to his own surprise that he had butchered an Italian named Franco, not a Russian named Renko?
Since she was on the machine already, she ran a
search for other connections between Rufo Pinero and Facundo Luna. Besides Maria's case, two files showed
up. Four years earlier a group of criminals had gathered
to distribute drugs under the pretense of organizing a
political opposition. When members of the community
became aware of this plan, they burst into the ring
leader's house and demanded he surrender the drugs.
In a scuffle provoked by the ringleader and his family, two patriots who had to defend themselves were Rufo Pinero and Facundo Luna. More recently a cell of so-
called democrats had staged a rally with the true intent
of releasing infectious diseases, only to be physically
barred by vigilant citizens, including the alert Luna and Pinero.