Havana Blue (16 page)

“What happened to the previous boss?” Manolo continued. “The one Rafael Morín replaced.”

“He was removed for more or less that kind of reason, mishandling expenses and internal fraud, but I really can't believe Rafael is involved in that. At least it's what I'd prefer to think, because I'd never be able to forgive myself. Do you think that may be why he's gone missing?”

 

 

“We got him, fuck if we didn't get him!” Manolo almost shouted as he transmuted joy into speed. They were driving along Fifth Avenue, and the Count rested his hands on the car's glove compartment.

“Take it easy, Manolo,” he told the sergeant and waited for the speedometer to creep down to forty-five. “I think we'll soon find out why Rafael Morín has scarpered.”

“Hey, and did you notice? Fernández's a spitting image of Al Pacino.”

The Count smiled and looked at the leafy promenade down the centre of the avenue.

“Shit, you're right. As soon as we got there, I thought I knew him from somewhere: he
is
just like Al Pacino. Did you see the film where he played a Grand Prix driver?”

“I can't recall any particular film at the moment, Conde. Tell me where we're headed.”

“Well, right now we're going to have lunch and then we'll try to see the enterprise's accountant. Let's see whether La China, our Chinese Patricia, can go with us, and she can speak to him. The good side to all this is the fact it's turning out so bad.”

Lunch was the reward and big plus for working on Sundays. As they cooked for some twenty people, Sunday lunch used to bring unexpected surprises that bordered on the refinements of a good restaurant. That Sunday they'd prepared chicken rice with the heavy juicy consistency of yellowish perfumed paella. As well as fried ripe plantain and a lettuce and radish salad to accompany an offering that climaxed in a dessert of rice pudding soused in cinnamon. Even the yoghurt was flavoured, and there was a choice: strawberry or pineapple.

The Count, who'd had a second helping of chicken rice and was smoking his second after-lunch cigarette, looked out of his cubicle window but saw nothing. Rafael was speaking from the podium at school, and he was listening to him, alone in the playground, when Manolo came in, swearing in every direction.

“Don't get too excited, Conde, there's no accountant around at the moment. He left yesterday for the Soviet Union on a training trip.”

“This is linked to Rafael Morín, I bet you. But not to worry, it can wait till tomorrow. Besides, I don't expect the accountant would tell us very much. Come on, let's go.”

“Let's go? If the accountant . . .”

He tried to protest but the Count was already on his way out of his cubicle and heading silently to the parking lot.

“Go up G in the direction of Boyeros,” the Count ordered as he sat in his seat.

“And will you tell me where we're headed?” asked Manolo, unable to fathom the lieutenant's attitude, though he did recall that first comment he heard about him: “The guy's mad, but . . .”

“We're heading to see García, from the union, but
don't worry, we'll finish early today. I particularly want you to hear what I imagine García will tell us about the great Morín . . . Then you can go home.”

They turned down Rancho Boyeros and stopped at the traffic light by the bus terminal.

“And what do we do if Zoilita appears?”

“You'll break the sound barrier and come for me like a shot. I'll go to see Tamara, I need to talk to her, and then I'll drop in on a school friend who wants to see me, who lives two blocks from Skinny, and I'll stay there. You'll find me at one of these places. What you really must do is speak to China and tell her we have to go to the enterprise early in the morning.”

“Straight on, right?

“No, turn into the Plaza de la Revolución. García lives in Cruz del Padre, right by the stadium,” said the Count, and he remembered how the previous night the Industriales had lost the first game in the series with Vegueros, and if they lost again that evening, his conversation tonight with Skinny wouldn't be a very constructive experience, at least lexically speaking. The sustained rumble issuing from the sports ground was a promise of emotions the Count would have liked to enjoy. But someone has to work on Sunday.

 

 

“You know, comrades, Comrade Morín may have had the odd problem with expenses and the things you've mentioned, you know more than I do about that and you may very well be right, but I, Manuel García García, won't believe it till I see it, and sorry if that sounds like I'm doubting you . . . And it's not because I'm pigheaded or anything of the sort. I've known Rafael, I mean Comrade Morín, for a long time and trust him wholeheartedly, and if I have to call myself to
account later on his behalf, then so be it, but what you say is very serious and you have to find some evidence, don't you? Look, there are people at the enterprise who probably don't think like me, some say he overcentralized things, that he was a control freak and he did come in for criticism at a mass meeting and he went along with it, because he certainly knew how to be self-critical and he referred to the issue of centralization several times, but the fact was in the long run everything started to pass through his hands again, and I sometimes think that lots of people were happy for him to take all the decisions and also that it was the only way he knew how to manage. But the same individuals who criticized him agreed things always turned out fine on the day and that helped his reputation, which is what I think really matters. We in the union never had problems with him, and I've been on the executive from before he joined the enterprise, so you know, I know this union backwards. Besides, in the party cell he once told me our attitude was on the passive side, and I said, but, Comrade Rafael, we're up-todate with our subs, we meet our quotas for volunteer work, we do all the activities on our programme and address people's concerns in regular meetings, what else can the union do? Don't you agree, comrades? There haven't been any problems at the enterprise since three specialists in the foreign currency department caused a stink because they never travelled abroad, that was before I got to be general secretary, you know, some two years ago if my memory serves me correctly. I could see it was about those guys' ambition to visit capitalist countries, but in a meeting with the party and the union, Comrade Rafael explained how administrative decisions were a matter for the administration and that the administration had its reasons to
reach that decision, and shortly after those comrades were transferred to one of the new corporations being set up. And one day Rafael, I mean Comrade Morín, said to me, and he didn't like fiddles: ‘You know, García, all they wanted to do was travel.' Yes, he got on wonderfully with every comrade, and it's true what Zaida told you, he showed concern for everyone: I'm a mere head of services and he gave me a refresher trip to Czechoslovakia, well, not exactly, but he put me forward and spoke a lot on my behalf at the mass meeting. And his influence carried, obviously... Well, we weren't personal friends, what I mean by a personal friend, you know, he came to my place a couple of times when my mum fell ill and then he mobilized the whole enterprise for the wake and the funeral. And, although I sometimes tell myself he was a bit strange, you never forget that kind of gesture and you have to be grateful, because there's nothing worse on this planet than being ungrateful. So you must forgive me, I won't believe it till I see it. Why was he a bit strange? Nothing really, things I thought silly, just manias he had, like making sure he had lots of vegetables to eat and when he was at the enterprise getting his office cleaned twice a day or telling his driver to put tinted glass in his car so nobody would see who's inside, you know? Really trivial things. Besides, you ask anyone, even the people always criticizing him, they're all very worried about what's happened and nobody can explain a thing . . . Comrades, is it true he was killed by people trying to rob him?”

 

 

“And aren't you fed up of hearing people praise Rafael? Do you think we might be wrong, that in fact he is a great leader and not into any kind of fraud and
it's all fine and dandy with his allowances and marketing expenses? Don't you think he's God the Father, all-caring, beyond reproach, Mr Nice, ruling the roost and bestowing favours, sympathy and trips abroad as if he were God Almighty? Or do you think he was a total bastard, a control freak who loved wielding power?”

“Conde, Conde, watch it, you'll have a . . .”

“Don't worry, my friend, getting steamed up is becoming my normal state of mind.”

“All right then, shall I drop you off at your friend's?”

The Count nodded, wondering what he'd to say to Tamara now and if it was really necessary to go back to see her. The idea of confronting that woman again irritated and riled him: he wanted to leave the universe of Rafael Morín behind, but Tamara acted like a magnet drawing him into the centre of his world, encouraging him to return to the scene, like the classic murderer.

“Hey, Manolo, it's still early. Let me buy you a drink. I need to cool down.”

“Isn't the game you're playing a bit dangerous, my friend?”

“Yeah, the lottery. And I won a wristwatch,” he said and then smiled.

“We've been whipping ourselves far too long.”

“Turn down Lacret and park on the corner before you get to Mayía.”

Sergeant Manuel Palacios did as he was told and eased the car in between a lorry and a taxi. A space Mario Conde could never have entered even on a bicycle. They locked the doors. Manolo disconnected the aerial, and they walked towards Mayía Rodríguez, where there was a surprisingly clean, well-lit bar that was almost always empty around midday. Bottles lined the top of the freezer, bottles of Santa Cruz rum, their
labels boasting of a fake royal lineage, a few Havana Club creams and an absinthe no Creole drinker dared ask for even in times of direst shortages.

“Two doubles of Carta Blanca rum, my friend,” the Count placed his order with the barman and went over to the bench where his friend had already taken a seat. Just a few regulars were in the bar fighting off Sunday lunchtime lethargy by drinking rum from those little jam-jars which forced you to throw your head right back to get at the last drop, while the barman's cassette recorder played a selection of boleros for daytime drinkers: Vicentico Valdés, Vallejo, Tejedor and Luis, Contreras were recounting a long chronicle of heartbreaks and tragedies that went better with rum than with ginger ale or Coca-Cola. It was inevitable: the Count was always casing no-hopers in high-noon saloons and trying to imagine why each individual was there, what had gone wrong with their lives for them to invest time and money year after year listening to the same sorrowful songs that only aggravated their loneliness, their disenchantment, the neglect and betrayal they'd suffered, and pour me another, bro, downing gut-rot and firewater as their hands began to shake from the dosage. He exhausted his last efforts as a would-be psychologist and in the process psychoanalysed himself though without sticking the knife in, wondering what he was doing there and dodging his real answers: simply because I like dossing around, feeling damned and forgotten, asking for another drop, bro, listening to others chatter, talking to myself and feeling time go painlessly by. He'd sometimes ask for a drink in order to think a case through or forget it, or to celebrate or remember or just because he felt happier in that kind of place than in a bar with tall glasses and colourful cocktails, one of those
elegant bars he'd not seen the inside of in a million years.

“What would you like to do now, Manolo?” he asked his colleague, who was quite taken aback by such a question after just one shot.

“Don't know, have a few here and then head off to Vilma's and get a bit of quiet till the morning, I suppose,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

“And if you weren't off to Vilma's, I mean?”

Manolo scrutinized his glass like a connoisseur, and the pupil of his left eye progressed smoothly towards the bridge of his nose.

“I think I'd like to listen to music. I always like listening to music. I wish I had a good hi-fi system, with all those equalizers and fucking gadgets and a couple of those speakers, so I could stretch out on the floor with my head between them, my ears right up against them, listening to music for hours on end. Just imagine, man, my old dad couldn't even give me a hundred and forty pesos to buy myself a guitar! I'd have been the happiest soul on earth playing that guitar, but you land up the son of a bus driver with a wage that has to look after six people, and happiness has to come in at a sight less than a hundred and forty pesos.”

The Count thought how right you are, happiness could be a very expensive business and ordered another double. He looked out on the cold sunlit street, where few cars drove by, and felt completely at ease with his conscience. It was a good time to have a few drinks and sleep with a woman, as his colleague was about to, or catch a bus with Skinny and suffer for four hours in the stadium. It was a good time of day to be alive and happy, with or without a guitar, his throat reacting gratefully to each sip of rum – the familiar gentle heat of white rum – he thought how he'd often been happy
and would be again some day, that loneliness isn't an incurable disease and perhaps one day he'd rekindle old expectations and own a house in Cojímar, right on the coast, a house made of wood with a tile roof and a writing room and never again be in thrall to murderers and thieves, attacked and attackers, and Rafael Morín would vanish from his nostalgic reveries and only good memories would surface, the way they should, the ones time rescues and protects so the past isn't a nasty horrible burden and you don't have to walk to the bridge and throw your love in the river, as in the Vicentico Valdés song they were now listening to.