Voodoo Eyes (45 page)

‘You listen to the news?’ he asked her.

‘The news?’

‘Yeah, lady, the news. Your national news. On the radio.’ He hummed the intro to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.

She looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

‘Why don’t you start again? Slowly, step by step. From the beginning. Tell me about these four dead men.’

‘Come on! Stop fucken’ me around!’ Max snarled. ‘You want a
confession?
Is that it? Well, you’re not going to get it because I didn’t do it. Ballistics will show that those four men shot each other.’

‘Ah …
those
four men?’

‘Yeah,
those
four men – two uniformed cops and two other guys.’

She stayed calm. ‘The men in uniform were not police. They were all Abakuá.’

That didn’t surprise him. ‘So you do know about it?’

‘Yes, of course. But how do you know about it? Were you
there?’

He slammed his free fist on the table. ‘For
fuck’s sake
lady. Of course I was fucken’
there.
That’s me they’re talking about on the
national
…
fucken’ … news!’

She sat back puzzled, shaking her head.

‘That song you just sang – sing it again. Please.’

‘What?’

‘Please.’

He tried, but he was too pissed off to get anything out. He took a few deep breaths, let his anger simmer down, and then hummed the song again, all croaky and out of tune. She joined in towards the end. She didn’t have a bad voice.

‘Milagros en la cocina,’
she said, when they’d finished. ‘Miracles in the kitchen. That is from a popular cooking show.’

He was silent.

‘I listen to it when I’m home. It’s on five times a day. It started during the Special Period, when we had food shortages. It gave us recipes, new ways of using our rations.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘A
cooking
show?’

‘You thought it was the news?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who told you that?’

Max nodded at the wall, to his right.

She laughed.
‘He
told you that? And you
believed
him?’

‘My Spanish isn’t too good. In fact, I can’t understand a fucken’ word out here.’

‘So what do you think has been happening? What did he tell you?’

Max was too stunned to talk. His head had gone light and he felt nauseous, like he was going to faint.

‘Those four dead guys in the road …’ he started, but couldn’t continue.

‘Take your time,’ she said gently. ‘When you’re ready. Tell me what happened?’

Max glared at the wall, as if he could penetrate it somehow and see Benny. A faded bloody handprint loomed out of the lumpy cream gloss, waving at him.

He cleared his throat and told her what Benny had been saying on the road, how he’d ‘translated’ the ‘radio news’.

Rosa Cruz started laughing. A chuckle here, a chuckle there. Then a short burst of laughter. Followed by a torrent. Laughter crashed out of her, in loud and deep and thunderous bellyaching guffaws, sounding like logs rolling down a long steep hill. Max shot her an angry look to quiet her, but her eyes were closed. When they opened and she saw his expression, she just laughed louder and harder, making farmyard sounds – neighing and snorting and grunting.

He felt like a fucken’ idiot. Why hadn’t he even
suspected
? It wasn’t like he didn’t know Benny was a lying, manipulative sack of shit. Why had he done it? Probably to scare Max into leaving Cuba as fast as possible. What other reason was there?

Cruz eventually laughed herself out. She gasped for air and composed herself before talking again.

‘We know those men shot each other and that one car got away. There were tyre marks,’ she said, her eyes still hotwired with mirth. ‘We removed the bodies and cleaned up the scene. You see, when local crimes are committed, we don’t announce it on the news. We find the guilty and deal with them. The general public is none the wiser.’

‘What about Gwenver? That was on TV.’

‘Earl Gwenver? He was found floating in Havana Bay. Shot in the mouth seven times – an Abakuá execution. The television news only reported it because some American tourists were videotaping the body in the sea – otherwise we wouldn’t have mentioned it. Americans like to put their lives on the internet. We said he drowned. Did your friend tell you the police were after you for his murder, as well?’

Max nodded. She didn’t laugh this time.

‘What about the other body that was found in Havana, around the same time as Gwenver – on one of the roads off the Malecón?’ he asked.

‘The old woman? The one hit by her drunk son’s car?’

‘
That fucker.’

Max told Rosa practically everything that had happened after he met Benny, although he omitted all mention of Nacho Savon and Trinidad.

She listened without comment. The humour gradually left her face and the severity crept back in, like a teacher sneaking back into a riotous classroom and making it fall back into line without uttering a word.

‘Did he tell you about the cow?’ she said, when he was done.

‘The
cow?’

‘The cow. Benny Ramirez killed one near Santa Clara. That’s a serious crime here. The penalty is ten years in prison.’

‘Is Castro a closet Hindu?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘There is a shortage in Cuba. Has been since the Special Period. It’s illegal to kill a cow without permission. Our constitution guarantees children under the age of sixteen a glass of milk a day. Children are our future,’ she explained. ‘Benny killed a farmer’s only cow. He sold the carcass to a hotel in Havana. Only tourists eat beef. The farmer’s son tracked him down to a bar in the capital. He was going to cut Benny up, just like Benny cut up his father’s cow. Luckily for them both, you intervened.’

‘I wish I hadn’t.’

They fell quiet. Outside, someone was running a stick back and forth along the cell bars. Inside, it remained still, the air stifling, Max’s anger turning over. Benny wanted to leave the country not for any ideological reason, or because he wanted a better life, but because he was facing jail … for killing a cow. Max – with his American passport and his money – had been the best way out. He’d almost made it too. In all fairness, Max didn’t blame him. What would he have done in Benny’s position? The same damn thing. What did it matter anyway? Only his pride was hurt. That would pass – and quickly.

‘So let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘I’m not wanted for any serious crime here?’

‘Outside of theft, breaking into and entering a restricted government building?’

‘Not that shit
still
?’ Max groaned. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Tomorrow, we go to the island together,’ she said. ‘I know someone in the coastguard. He owes me a favour. He can get us there.’

‘That simple?’

‘Yes. But what happens once we’re there is out of my hands.’

‘You’ll have back-up, right?’

‘I’m going with you.’

‘I said
back-up.’

‘It’s just us.’

‘How come?’

‘As I keep telling you, it’s complicated.’

‘It’s also fucken’ dangerous. You don’t know how many people are on that island. I’m guessing the owner might have himself a little army.’

‘He doesn’t need one,’ she said. ‘He has us.’

‘Are you sure?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m just guessing.’

‘Right …’ Max looked at the handprint on the wall. The fourth finger was missing.

‘Where were you heading to, when I arrested you?’ she asked.

‘Cajobabo.’

‘Were you going to put Benny Ramirez on the Wetback Express?’

‘You know about that too?’

She smiled.

‘The person who’ll take us to the island is in a town called Imías. It’s near Cajobabo,’ she said. ‘We’ll drop Ramirez off on our way.’

‘You’re gonna let him
go?’

‘I don’t want the likes of him here. He’s a blight on our society. He belongs in Miami – with the rest of them. As for you, you’re spending the night here, in a cell. It’s for appearance’s sake.’

‘Whose appearance?’

She didn’t answer.

52

‘You hate me now, yes, Max?’ said Benny from the back of the car, his face close to the wire divider.

It was early afternoon and they’d been in Rosa Cruz’s Suzuki a good hour, speeding along the road linking the provinces of Santiago and Guantánamo. The scenery was blipping past, and Max was trying to catch some of it, but he was having trouble keeping his eyes open.

He hadn’t slept at all. It had been impossible. After she’d finished with him in the interrogation room, he’d been marched up to the next floor and shoved into a single cell. No bed, a bright light permanently on, mosquitoes and moths for company, the floor and walls slick with damp and fungus, a hole in the ground for a toilet. He couldn’t lie or sit down, so he stood still or paced about. They’d taken his watch away – along with his belt and shoes and everything else they found on him – so he couldn’t tell if it was day or night. It had been so quiet there, he’d thought he was alone. Then one of Castro’s speeches had been piped into the block at full volume, an endless harangue delivered in a cadence ranging from angry to explosive. Max couldn’t believe people willingly stood through those epic diatribes in the blazing heat, let alone the enthusiastic applause and full-chested chants that followed their conclusion. The silence that filled the corridor afterwards was almost blissful. But just as he’d gotten used to it, another speech came on, louder and longer than the first one. He’d stuffed his fingers in his ears, but it was no use. It went on all night, a cycle of ever-decreasing moments of stillness broken by El Jefe’s ever-lengthening discourses played at ever-increasing volumes. Cruz was wearing earplugs when she finally came to get him out that morning.

They went back to the Firedome for his possessions. He took the CDs, flow chart and the notes he’d made, and she put them in a rucksack, along with the two Magnums and spare ammo from the glove compartment.

Then she took him to breakfast. He paid.

‘Why you no’ want talk to me, Max?’ Benny slammed his open hand at the wire.

Rosa told Benny to shut up and sit back.

Max stared out the window.

They passed the perimeter of Guantánamo. The base was very clearly marked out, its name spelled in block white capitals, each individually mounted on a pedestal and set apart, like it was an exclusive tourist resort or golf club. A high barbed-wire fence stretched for miles around the area. Equally tall rectangular state billboards stood in front of the fences, denouncing imperialist aggression, imperialist greed, imperialist imperialism and the imperialists generally. Every one carried a different picture of Fidel Castro – the bushy-bearded young revolutionary in khakis and kepi, frozen in mid-oratory, wagging a declamatory index at a midpoint between sky and audience, a dove perched on one of his broad shoulders; the elder statesman, staring pensively at the camera, index to temple; the old tyrant, reigning over his broke and broken-down nation, his beard thinned and wiry, his octogenarian face raisin-textured. It was as if the state was using the billboards to trial a definitive image of its leader, something it could plaster everywhere and market to Western trendies and postcard-socialists like it had the Korda photograph of Che. Fidel Castro was gradually being transmogrified into myth.

Max turned on the radio. He punched through the channels, looking for music. He found some – the intro to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ – and quickly turned it off. Rosa Cruz suppressed a laugh.

They parked, as per Nacho Savon’s instructions, at the top of a hill, near the disused Russian watchtower overlooking Cajobabo Beach. The area was overgrown with waist-high grass and a wild explosion of thick plants bending gently in the breeze. A path had been cut through the vegetation and led to a rocky beach bordered with hillocks of dried seaweed.

They waited in silence, watching the sun slide towards the sea, a splattered lozenge staining the sky every shade, from auburn to crimson, as daylight bowed before a spread of emerging stars.

Right before nightfall, a container ship came into view a few miles out and stopped roughly in the middle of their line of vision. A few moments later they noticed a small boat cutting across the water, headed in their direction.

Max turned to Benny. ‘Your ride’s here.’

Two men were waiting for them down by the beach, one dark-haired, one bald, both armed with M-16s. They’d come in a rigid inflatable boat, which they’d pulled ashore.

‘Mingus? Ramirez?’ the dark-haired man called out.

Max told Benny to wait and went over to the vessel.

‘You’re taking him, not me,’ he said to the man.

‘Order’s for two.’

‘Change of plans,’ said Max, nodding to Benny. ‘It’s just him. Ramirez.’

The man gave his assent with an indifferent shrug.

Max rejoined Benny.

‘You’re all set,’ he said.

‘Thank you, for what you do for me.’

‘You know you don’t deserve it.’

‘Why you want we finish like this?’

‘Because you’re a piece of shit.’

‘You no’ mean that, in you heart.’

‘I mean it every place.’

The dark-haired man was looking their way, tapping at his watch.

‘I no’ so bad peoples,’ said Benny. ‘Is this country make peoples do this thing.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Max.

Benny tutted and sighed and took a couple of steps away from him, his back to the sea.

‘Is nothing I can say to you? Make you think good of me?’

‘No.’

‘OK. Is how you want, is how you want.’ He shrugged. ‘But I
no’
forget what you do for me.’

‘Don’t come looking for me in Miami.’
If I make it back,
he thought.

Benny held out a hand, fingers trembling. His mouth was downturned and his eyes had misted up. Whether it was sickness or remorse or plain acting, Max couldn’t tell. Benny certainly looked the part – vulnerable and full of regret, sincere enough to swing the benefit of doubt in his favour. And something almost moved in Max at that moment, but pride caught it and held it back. He didn’t take the hand. He tightened his jaw and looked past Benny at the men by their boat, at the ship in the distance, waiting to sail to Miami.