Havana Black (26 page)

 

 

“So what's the story on the bat?”

Sergeant Manuel Palacios nodded and the Count felt a shiver run down his spine: the adrenalin hoping that that bat might tell the whole story, ending up in the hands of Adrian Riverón, a batter of forbidden balls, was similar to the adrenalin hoping the other guy would be guilty and not that useful suitor. Once again
his policeman's craft confronted him with the sordid evidence of human intrigue that transcended the limits of what was permissible and wrecked people's lives for ever: and he started to function again as the choreographer of that performance, giving it a final structure, finding a sadly satisfactory end before the definitive fall of the curtain.

“That was the bat,” said Manolo, flopping into the armchair where Miriam had been sitting.

The sergeant, who was always alert, now seemed tired, bored or disappointed.

“What's the matter, Manolo?”

“You've found Miguel Forcade's killer. Now you'll leave the force. Hey, is that really what you want to do?”

“Uh-huh,” mumbled Mario Conde after a moment, and he tried to redirect the conversation. “What did they find in the laboratory?”

“First of all, the fingerprints are all Riverón's, so he was the only one to touch the bat. Secondly, the blood: although the blade of the bat was wiped with a cloth soaked in spirit, there were blood cells on the wood fibres. The blood group was O, the same as Forcade's. Finally, other traces of blood were found on the bathroom floor that the water hadn't washed away and they are also O, and it's almost certain they belonged to the dead man.”

The Count left his armchair to look out of the window: gusts of wind were beginning to comb the tops of the trees, as a precursor of worse evils to come. In the churchyard, on the other side of the street, skirts and coifs blowing in the wind, nuns were nailing planks on the doors to the holy precinct, to prevent the tentacles of the Evil One entering the Lord's house in the form of rain and wind. This was an autumn landscape different from the one imagined by Matisse, in rational,
measured Europe: the tropical sign of autumn had nothing in common with leaves that fell at a precise change in the seasons or light filtered through high clouds. The trees the Count could see never let go of their leaves if a force superior to gravity didn't snatch them away, and the light in the country had only two real dimensions: either the intense blue of a clear sky, able to flatten objects and perspectives, or the deep grey of the storm, which mired the atmosphere and brought on nightfall. But the hurricane now pushing against the island's southern coast, wanting to take it with her, was the most tragic climax to autumn in that part of the world where nature was dispensed in exaggerated measures: rain, wind, heat, thunder and waves, and where evergreen leaves only fell under the weight of those catastrophic arguments. It was a nature that periodically decided to demonstrate to man his inability to control her and warn of her infinite scope for revenge.

“I don't really understand why the asshole never got rid of the damned bat . . . Well, Adrian is well and truly fucked now,” was the verdict delivered by the Count, and he asked him to bring in the man who'd been Miriam's first boyfriend, her great love for more than fifteen years, to ask him to tell the truth. A truth perhaps beyond fake pictures and authentic statues, and able to drive ambition and deceit: because Adrian had perhaps only killed for love. In the end the truth was pathetic.

 

 

A pale and sweaty Adrian Riverón coughed as he always coughed, and asked the Count: “What do you want to know?”

“You really don't want a cigarette?”

“I told you I never smoke . . .”

“Just as well.”

“Go on, tell me . . .”

“No, you tell me: how and why did you kill him?”

The man still found the energy to smile, and lifted up the packet, asking the lieutenant's permission to take a cigarette. The Count nodded, with the knowledge that he was finally nearing the truth, and also raised a cigarette to his lips.

“The fact is Miriam doesn't like me smoking. It's not good for me, you know. I had to give up rowing because of tobacco.” He paused, adding: “I killed him because he tried to hit Miriam.”

“Don't try to justify yourself, Adrian. I only require the truth, please.”

“That is the truth: Miguel and Fermín were coming to my place at nine. Fermín spoke to me about possibly leaving the country on a motor launch, taking something out that would earn me in the region of a hundred thousand dollars in Miami. I agreed right away. And I told him I had two reasons: because if I went I could be near Miriam, and because, ever since Miguel Forcade threw me out of Planning, I'd never been able to lift my head in this country. It didn't matter if afterwards Miguel defected to Spain or Gómez de la Peña was defenestrated: my file says I'm not to be trusted and no boss of any important enterprise will take a risk with me, do you understand? Well, you know what my line of business is . . . That was why I wasn't bothered if I had to deal with Miguel Forcade and see his cynical face again, if it was a means to get what I wanted.

“But it seems my fate is marked by this man. If not, you tell me, how is it possible he gets to my place an hour early, on the very first day Miriam and I got together after so many years? All I can imagine is that
he was coming to suggest a way to betray Fermín, because that was his style. The fact is Miriam knew we had the meeting with Miguel at nine, and as Fermín had arranged to be at my house at eight thirty to talk to me first, she thought if things got messy and her husband saw her there, she could always say she'd come with her brother. Consequently, when Miguel left to see Gómez, she came over here to my place and we went to bed after all these years . . . Because she was on a high now she'd finally found out what Miguel wanted to take out of Cuba.”

“So she knew?”

“No, she found out that day. For some time she'd been on at Miguel to get him to say what it was, and that afternoon, before going to see Gómez de la Peña, he finally told her they were going to take out a Matisse painting Gómez de la Peña had kept for him.”

The Count couldn't stop himself: he smiled.

“The Matisse painting?”

“Yes, one that Miguel had left that bastard . . .”

“I'm more convinced by the day: Miguel Forcade was a man of many talents.”

“He was just one big son of a bitch, Lieutenant.”

“I already knew that. Carry on with your story, Adrian.”

“That night Miriam swore that if I went to the United States she would leave Miguel, because she couldn't stand any more of his depressions, his envy and even his impotence, and she proposed a real act of madness: that we should steal the painting after Miguel and Gómez had done their business. We were talking about that when Miguel knocked on the door . . . You know, when I saw it was him through the window, I felt my whole world collapse. It didn't make any sense for him to find out Miriam was there, so I told
her to hide in the bathroom until I thought of a way to get her out of the house, perhaps with Fermín's help. But when I opened the door the first thing Miguel did was to ask me where the treacherous whore Miriam was; he pushed past me and went into the room. I don't know if he'd been spying through the windows, or had heard her talking, I don't know, but he knew she was with me, and he walked in shouting her name. And then something happened that made me see red, drove me mad, because the mere thought that Miguel might touch Miriam drove me crazy and I grabbed the bat in my room and shouted to him not to take another step. Then he tried to grab me and I hit him on the head. It was horrific: the guy fell to the ground and started to convulse, foaming at the mouth and pissing himself, but hardly losing any blood, until he started to go stiff and then still. Miriam had come out of the bathroom and saw the grand finale. We both stood there speechless for a time and she said the best thing would be to hide the body and act as if Miguel had never arrived. The first thing we decided was to hide him and she helped me take him to the outhouse and then she went off in Fermín's car, which Miguel was using, and parked it in Old Havana.

“I stayed at home waiting for Fermín, who arrived at nine fifteen, and I talked to him as if nothing had happened. What he wanted to tell me before his brother-in-law got there was simple: if what we were about to take out of Cuba was really worth several million, there was no reason to share them with Miguel Forcade, because after all he must have stolen it when he worked for Expropriated Property. Of course, I said yes to everything, without letting on I knew about the painting, and then at ten Fermín began to ring to find out why Miguel hadn't come,
and when he didn't show he decided to leave at about ten thirty.

“My problem was how to get a corpse out of my house. The only way I could think of was Fermín's car and I called Miriam. She told me where she'd left it and that she'd thrown the keys in a rubbish container on the corner. I waited till midnight and went to Old Havana and when I saw the street was empty I shifted the things in the container and got the keys, drove the car to my house and removed the body from the outhouse and wrapped sacks around it. You know what most upset me? The way the son of a bitch smelled of shit and the way the stench stuck to my hands. You know, I think I can still smell it . . .”

The Count, who had been imagining the stages in the tragedy Adrian Riverón was now relating, quickly put the rest together: a corpse swathed in sacks, dragged to the garage, placed in the car boot . . . What about the castration?

“And why did you mutilate him before throwing him into the sea?”

“I don't know. I think I thought I could put you lot off the scent if the corpse appeared . . . It came out of the blue, but it was if I'd had the idea in the back of my mind for years, because I enjoyed doing it,” he said, and squashed the ash of his cigarette, which had been burning his fingers. “Then I drove the car back to Old Havana, gave it a thorough clean and left it where you found it. And I went home and went to bed . . . May I have another cigarette?”

“Help yourself,” said the Count, who could hear the powerful whistle of the wind through the window.

It seemed the hurricane had arrived. And he looked up at the sky, over the church tower, afraid he might see a nun fly by.

“Adrian, everything you did was very intelligent . . . What I don't understand is why you kept the bat . . .”

The man coughed, as he took another cigarette and lifted it to his lips. When he went to light up, he hesitated, as if ashamed by what he was doing.

“I'd owned that bat for twenty years . . . Miriam gave it to me as a present when we got engaged and it was in the bedroom because I'd just showed it to her . . . I couldn't throw it out, could I?”

“I think I understand. But I'm not sure if Miriam would . . . Look, keep those cigarettes and smoke if you want,” whispered the Count as he left his cubicle.

 

 

He switched off his recorder just as Adrian Riverón was declaring “I couldn't throw it out” and he contemplated Miriam's eyes and saw they were still beautiful, with that diffuse, changing colour, dominated by poisonous lashes that had been the ruination of two men. But her eyes were too dry.

“The bit I saw was as Adrian described it. I don't know about the rest,” she affirmed, and the Count was not surprised she was still the strong, confident woman he'd been struggling with for three days. That was why he looked at Manolo to deal the final blow.

“Are you sure you two didn't plan to kill your husband in order to make off with the painting?” began the sergeant, bending over in his chair so his face almost struck Miriam's.

“No, because I was going to separate from him . . . as soon as I had the painting.”

“Which turned out to be fake.”

“Yes, he deceived me over the painting as well.”

“And why did you try to make us suspicious of your brother Fermín?”

“Because he was innocent. You wouldn't be able to implicate him, and that would give me time to leave and then it would difficult for you to think of Adrian.”

“But you already knew about the gold Buddha?”

“How many times do I have to tell you I didn't. Miguel deceived me because he trusted no one. Or haven't you realized he didn't have a single friend?”

“The poor man,” whispered the Count, and fell back into the requisite silence.

“And what did you and Riverón expect to live on in the United States?”

“On the money he'd get from what we were going to take out of Cuba . . . from the painting. But in the end I wasn't particularly worried. I was going to leave Miguel even if it meant sleeping under a bridge. Nobody can imagine what it's like to live with a man like that . . . It's a pity it's all turned out like this.”

“Who's it a pity for?” the Count interjected, unable to restrain himself.

“For Adrian . . . and for me.”

And the policeman saw the armour of a thousand skirmishes fall from Miriam's shoulders, the woman with the perverse eyes. She was now going to cry, from her own eyes and with real reason. And it would be better if she did cry a lot, and bellowed if she wanted to, at the loss of her last chance to be happy.

“Let her be, Manolo,” said the lieutenant, bored. “Let her cry. It's the best thing she can do.”

 

 

He had to run and lock himself in the bathroom. He turned on the tap in the washbasin and watched the water flow crystalline and pure, before putting his hands in the jet and wetting his face, again and again, in an attempt to wipe away the oppressive filth and
angst: the knowledge that he'd just witnessed the definitive collapse of several lives had provided him with the most glaring evidence of why he hadn't been able to write that squalid and moving story he'd been dreaming of for years: his real experiences instinctively headed elsewhere, far from beauty, and he realized he should first rid himself of his frustrations and hatred if he was ever to be – or had been – able to engender something beautiful. It was only then that he grasped the realm of fear that prevented him from letting rip on paper, from making real, alive, independent, and perhaps everlasting, the dark flow of lava that had swept away his life and his friends', and transformed them into what they were: less than nothing, nothing at all, nothingness itself. Candito was right: cynicism had become the antibody that allowed him to carry on, and Andrés had also discovered his double-think: irony, alcohol, sadness and a few doses of scepticism provided a carapace, while the rationale he had fabricated for his inability to write what he wanted served as a soothing, enduring wall of self-deception.