Voodoo Eyes (29 page)

They eyeballed each other. The man looked fit and very strong. And he was angry – so angry his big hands were shaking.

The barman turned the music up another notch.

The woman was gone. She’d dropped her purse – black leather with a gold clasp. As Max looked at it, the man kicked it over to him, saying something inaudible, his lips curling. Max guessed he’d insulted his manhood. He didn’t care.

The man reached into a pocket and produced a straight razor. He opened out the blade, the longest Max had ever seen, fit for shaving a horse. Max tensed and took a couple of steps away from the counter, his heart pumping.

The man spoke again, his mouth moving as the chorus of ‘Skin Trade’ played, making him look comical, standing there, cut-throat razor in hand, seemingly lip-synching to a song by three Brits in heavy make-up.

The song faded to a finish and started again. The man shrugged and walked out of the bar, stopping outside the doorway to look up and down the street. Then he headed left, fast.

Max didn’t even think about what to do next.

He went after the man.

In the street, the group was still standing by the car, talking as if nothing had happened. No sign of the man or woman.

Max ran up the road.

It was deserted. There were narrow alleys, branching off left and right. He checked each one.

He heard nothing.

He carried on.

The road got a little steeper.

More alleys.

Suddenly a piercing cry came from behind, to his right.

Then another, almost immediately: shrill, anguished and pained.

He span around and headed towards the screams.

Another cry – worse – louder, closer.

And continuous.

A man’s voice, shouting.

The sound of running feet.

Then he saw her, coming towards him. She had blood down the front of her dress. Blood on her legs and hands, blood all over her face.

Right behind her, chasing her, came the man in denim. He had blood on him too – on his hands and shirt, on the razor.

‘Venido aquí!
’ he yelled.

As the woman reached Max, she rushed behind him, cowering.

Now he was facing her assailant.

‘
Qué te den por culo!
’ snapped the man, out of breath, sweat-sheened.
‘Comprende, cabrón?’
He clicked his fingers, signalling to Max to move.

The woman was whimpering.

‘Por favor … El quiere matarme,’
she pleaded.
‘Por favor, señor.’

Max eyefucked the man.

The man eyefucked him back.

Max’s body language said:
I’m not moving.

The man’s expression said:
Like hell you’re not.

The Cuban struck out. A deep, arcing swipe at Max’s neck, the blade slicing the air with a thin whistle. Max leaned back abruptly, knocking the woman over. The blade missed his face by a whisker.

The man was off balance. Max reacted fast. He threw a wild right hook at the Cuban’s jaw. He connected. Bone cracked and teeth splintered.

The man went down with a thud.

Max kicked the blade away and checked him. He wasn’t quite out. He was halfway in, but not deep enough to sink into unconsciousness. That would usually have been OK, the guy he’d slugged waking up to a world of harsh but not irreversible pain. But this scumbag hadn’t just beaten on a woman, he’d cut her up, disfigured her. He deserved more damage.

Max turned back to the woman. She was on her feet, pushing past him. She started kicking at her prone assailant.

Max grabbed her, pulled her away, her long thin legs flailing at air, shoes flying off.

She got loose and turned to him, but couldn’t see him because her hair was covering her face. She reached up, moved her hands around the middle of her scalp, worrying her fingers deep into her hair. Then she gripped it and pulled it all off, dropping her arms to her sides, the long locks hanging down like a nest of tarred snakes.

Underneath, her head was close-cropped, short back and sides and a strip of hair on top, military-style. And there was something completely wrong with her features, he noticed – not just the extended bloody grimace the razor had opened up from her lip to the end of her cheek, but the whole way she looked now that he was seeing her up close, in the light.

‘She’ was a man.

Max couldn’t help himself.

‘The …
fuck
…?’

‘What you mean “the fock”?’ the transvestite snapped. ‘You disappoint? Yes?’

‘No. No! Just … just … surprised,’ he said.

‘You think you big
heroe Americano?
You save the damsel in distress, yes? But you see me, you think,
What
the
fock
I do? Yes? That what you think now, yes?’ The transvestite’s voice had spiralled down octaves.

‘No. It’s not like that. I mean, I … I’ve got nothing against you … you people.’

‘You people?’
The transvestite was indignant, and stepped in to glare down at Max. He was a tall man, even without the heels. ‘Is no’ my lucky night, yes? I get rescue by a focking American bigot.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that. I … I … Look, it … it came out wrong. I’m sorry, all right.’

The transvestite kissed his teeth, then winced and gasped as the display of contempt made his wound smart.

‘That shit? He live?’ He pointed to the man on the ground.

‘Yeah,’ said Max.

The transvestite stepped over to kick his head.

‘Hey!’ Max grabbed him by the arm.

‘He try kill me! You see what he do to my face?’

‘Calm down, OK? Cool it.
Tranquilo, si?
You … you’ve got to get to a hospital.’

‘Hospital? I can no’ go.’

‘Your face is bleeding bad.’

‘You have car?’

‘No. Why don’t you get a cab? A taxi.’

‘Taxi? Taxi see me, they no’ take. You with me, they take me.’

Max wanted to walk away, go back to his hotel, forget it. He’d done his good deed. He’d saved the guy’s life. Wasn’t that enough? Why the fuck had he gone into that damn bar in the first place? Why hadn’t he just pissed in the street? He really didn’t want to do this. He really didn’t want to be here at all. But he couldn’t just leave the guy here, bleeding.

He looked down the road, where cars were criss-crossing the Malecón.

‘OK, yeah,’ he said.

‘
Vamos.’

35

In the hospital ward, Max watched as a female doctor sewed up the transvestite’s face.

The man’s real name was Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez – ‘Benny’, for short. In the taxi, he’d insisted he was called Salma, as in Salma Hayek, the Mexican actress.

Benny yelled and cried as the doctor, wearing thick blue kitchen gloves, slowly repaired the rip in his cheek, piercing, threading, piercing again and then pulling the sundered flesh tightly together. No anaesthetic, no painkillers; just iodine tincture for disinfectant, overproof rum through a straw to take the edge off, a flame to sterilise the needle and a bowl of hot water for the clean-up. Frontier medicine at its finest. The doctor tried soothing Benny with comforting words and a bedside tone, but you can’t talk down that kind of pain, so she resorted to yelling at him to be still when his protests threatened to undo her work. Max felt for him a little. He knew the agony Benny was going through. He’d been there, many years before.

The hospital, like the ward, was in an abominable state. Max half-knew what to expect when they pulled up outside. The building was modern but three-quarters finished, the walls unpainted, some of the windows lacking glass, laundry hanging from every floor. The entrance had been partially blocked by a big dump-truck scoop piled high with bags of fetid trash and surrounded, like a moat, by a wide stagnant puddle. As they went inside, they’d fallen in behind a woman pushing a wheelbarrow with a man stuffed inside it, his arm drooping over the side, his fingertips brushing the ground. The woman told the nurse at reception that he was her father; he’d broken both legs in a fall and the ambulance hadn’t turned up. The nurse explained the ambulances were either busy or busted.

They’d all taken the elevator. Only one of four was working. Its doors were meant to be glass-fronted, but the panes had either been broken or never put in, so plywood covered the gaps to stop people falling out.

Despite this overture, the conditions in the ward still shocked him.

Every remaining bed was taken, the mattresses and pillows bare and filthy. Old men and women lay naked and alone, hooked up to drying IV sacs and withered blood bags that had the appearance of large rotting grapes. There were roaches crawling all over the baseboards, piss and shit and vomit on the tiled floor, squadrons of flies convening on the walls, which had possibly once been white, but were indeterminate shades of grey and yellow. The ubiquitous Che Guevara portrait hung on one of the walls; his slightly upturned, averted gaze and faintly thunderous expression taking on a whole new meaning, as if looking away in anger at what had become of his ideals, the people he’d fought to free dying squalid, undignified deaths in the bowels of a system that had promised them better lives.

Nurses and doctors tended to the patients as best they could. Their bleached and starched white coats and uniforms were practically luminous. They may have been working in a huge, overspilling petri dish, but they looked good doing it. The lighting was temperamental, bulbs going on and off at random or suddenly burning too brightly and fading close to total blackout. Every electrical socket he could see was potentially fatal, missing covers, dangling wires, spitting sparks. The air was thick and hot and practically visible. None of the several big fans on the ceiling were working. In fact, there was no air conditioning whatsoever, just a few wobbling floor fans, all positioned around a single bed in the corner, close to an open window. The bed was ringed by four wire shopping carts, a block of ice in each, dripping into buckets beneath. The fans were blowing chilled air on a dead body.

When the doctor cut the thread at the thirty-first and final stitch, a long black suture ran from the edge of Benny’s right cheek to his lips, making it look like he had all but the last leg of a tarantula in his mouth. Benny inspected himself in a small mirror the doctor handed him. He started sobbing. The doctor sat with her arm around him, patting him on the shoulder, saying nothing. When he’d quietened she told him they’d run out of gauze bandages, so he had to keep the wound dry and clean, and not to scratch or pick at it. She gathered up her things and left. Max followed her.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Can you help me with something?’

‘It depends,’ said the doctor. She was slender going on thin, with age-scored olive skin, shadows under tired blue eyes. Her straight brown hair was tied in a bun and streaked with bands of grey.

‘Can you tell me what Zofran is? What it’s for.’

‘Zofran? I’ve never heard of it.’

‘It’s made by GlaxoSmithKline.’

‘Then we won’t have it here because of the embargo.’

‘I just need to know what it is.’

‘I can look it up. But I have to see to some patients, and I’ll be some time,’ she said. ‘Can you wait here?’

Max looked around the ward, at the busy roaches and the shit on the floor, the cooling corpse in the corner, the filthy walls.

‘I’ll be outside,’ he said.

In the hospital forecourt, he checked his cellphone. He’d missed three calls from Rosa Cruz. It was now after midnight. He wanted to call her, if only to leave a record that he’d checked in, but there was no signal.

Benny stood holding his shoes and wig, pulling sequins off the front of his blood-soaked dress and flicking them on the ground.

‘I thought Cuba prided itself on its health care?’ said Max. ‘That place’ll kill you soon as cure you.’

‘There is nice hospital here. But is for show. For journalist and tourist. This place is for Cuban.’

After an hour the doctor came out.

‘Have you had chemotherapy?’ she asked Max.

‘No.’ He patted his shaved head. ‘This is just vanity. Why?’

‘Zofran is an anti-emetic, commonly prescribed for nausea and vomiting after chemotherapy. It’s also prescribed for morning sickness.’

‘How can I get hold of some?’

‘Here? You can’t. I can give you the name of our equivalent.’

‘It has to be Zofran.’

‘Then I’m sorry.’

Max lowered his voice. ‘Can I get it on the black market?’

‘What black market?’ She smiled. ‘There’s no black market in Cuba.’

‘My mistake,’ he said. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘De nada.’
The doctor turned and went back inside.

Max looked over at Benny.

‘You gonna be OK?’

‘No,’ growled the transvestite in his natural voice, which was deep and raw. ‘With my face?’

‘You take care of yourself.’ Max started walking away.

‘Where you go?’

‘Back to my hotel.’

‘Where you stay?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘You hotel is far and is no taxi. My home is close. Five minute. You can stay to the morning.’

‘I’ll be OK,’ said Max.

‘You know where you are?’

‘I’ll find my way back.’

‘Is dangerous, this place.’

Max looked around. There wasn’t a single light on beyond the hospital perimeter. He didn’t have the first clue where he was. Trying to get back to the Malecón from here at this time of night with his passport and money on him wasn’t the best idea.

‘You no’ have to worry,’ said Ramirez. ‘I no’ interest in you. You too old. No offend.’

‘None taken – trust me.’

‘I live with two girl.’

‘Real ones?’

‘You make the fun with me? The girl in my house, they dancer from the Tropicana. You know Tropicana?’

‘No. What is that? A stripclub?’

Benny looked at him indignantly.

‘No, Mister
gringo ignorante.
Tropicana is most famous nightclub in Cuba. It exist long time. Before Castro.’

‘So it’s a respectable place?’

‘
The
most respectable place in Cuba. You know Meyer Lansky, Sam Giancana – the gringo gangster? They always go Tropicana.’