and his aide, Sergeant Manuel Palacios, had enabled him to fight off the void and feel that his brain was working again, and that it had more to its existence than headaches from repeated hangovers.
“What do you reckon, Conde? Yes, it’s a man. Dressed and face-painted like a woman. Now we’ve got murdered transvestites, we’re almost part of the developed world. At this rate we’ll soon be making rockets and going to the moon…”
“Cut the crap and continue,” said the Count, throwing his cigarette butt in the direction of the river. Sometimes he liked to speak like that and this forensic, for a reason as elusive as it was inevitable, always made him react curtly. Perhaps it was just his easy familiarity with death.
“I’ll go on, but I’m not talking crap…” the forensic retorted and, as he listened, the Count tried to imagine the scene.
He saw Alexis Arayan, a woman without all the gifts of nature, tarted up in red, wearing a long, antiquated dress, her shoulders draped in a shawl that was also red, her waist emphasized by a silk sash, walking out with someone in the starry night of the Havana Woods. The Count reckoned a breeze was blowing, and the night must have been more appealing and welcoming than in the rest of the city. The footprints preserved from Alexis’s sandals signalled the journey from road to woods. The other footprints belonged to her companion, a corpulent man, who must have leered at Arayan’s face in eager anticipation: her finely drawn eyebrows, eyelids with pale purple highlights, mascara’d eyelashes and a mouth as gorgeously red as that strange dress which belonged to a vague, doubtless, distant past. Perhaps there were kisses, teasing gropes, caresses from Alexis Arayan Rodriguez’s delicate fingers and varnished nails. Then they stopped by the battered trunk of a hundred-year-old blossoming flamboyant tree, and a tragedy of equivocal love was unleashed.
“You know something?” Conde interrupted the forensic’s narrative and looked over towards the covered corpse. “Yesterday was the sixth of August, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and so what?” the forensic now interjected.
“So you lot can see the benefits of going to catechism… August sixth is the Catholic celebration of the Transfiguration. According to the Bible, on that day Jesus was transformed before three of his disciples on Mount Tabor, and, from a cloud of light, God called on the apostles to listen to him for ever. Isn’t it too much of a coincidence that this transvestite was murdered on August sixth?”
Sergeant Palacios folded his arms over his undernourished pigeon chest (he was only palatial by name) and looked at the Count. The lieutenant enjoyed that glance where a timid, squint-eyed hesitancy lurked: he knew he’d surprised his skeletal subordinate, and his subordinate liked him surprising him like that.
“And how the fuck do you remember that, Conde? As far as I know you’ve not been inside a church for thirty years or more.”
“Less, Manolo, less. The truth is I always liked that story: in catechism classes I always imagined God in his cloud, illuminating everything, like a spotlight…”
“Hey there, Conde, and what if Alexis disguised himself day in day out?” asked the forensic, smiling triumphantly at his question and prompting the Count to think of other reasons for his aversion.
“Then end of mystery,” the Count admitted. “But it would be a pity, wouldn’t it? The transfiguration of Alexis Arayan… sounded good. Well, on with your story.”
He saw them halt under the flamboyant tree. A glimmering moonbeam sweetly pierced the foliage, lending a silvery hue to the big man and fake woman, a couple on whom the breeze rained down a shower of red petals. Perhaps they kissed, perchance they caressed, and Alexis kneeled, like a penitent, surely intending to satisfy his companion’s urgent need with his nearest available orifice: the grass patches on his knees betrayed such genuflection. Then he plunged into the finale of the tragedy: at some moment the red silk sash went from Alexis’s waist to his neck and the big man mercilessly terminated the breathing of the woman who wasn’t, until her heavily made-up eyes bulged out of their sockets and every sphincter opened its floodgates, dislocation by strangulation.
“And this is what I can’t square, Conde. The big guy killed him from in front, judging by the footprints, right? But it appears the transvestite didn’t struggle, didn’t scratch, didn’t try to wriggle. ..”
“So there was no fight?”
“If there was, it was a battle of words. The dead man’s nails don’t carry any traces of anything, although I’ll provide a conclusive report later… But now comes the second mystery: the murderer began dragging the corpse that way, look at the grass, do you see? As if to throw him in the river… But barely moved him two yards. Why didn’t he throw him in the river if that was what first came to mind?”
The Count observed the grass where the forensic was pointing and the canvas which now covered Alexis Arayan’s body and hid the patch of red cloth that had so alarmed the early morning jogger, who’d departed his daily route only to discover a corpse already crawling with ants which had rushed to the magnificent banquet.
“But the strangest of all is yet to come: after killing the transvestite, the big man pulled her knickers down and inspected her anus with his fingers… I know because he wiped himself clean on the gown afterwards. What do you make of that, lads? Well, that’s as far as I can take my little tale. When they do the autopsy and finish the other tests in the laboratory, perhaps we’ll have more to go on. Now I’ll be off, downtown, as there’s been another little murder in Old Havana…”
“Good luck to you, Flower of the Dead,” replied the Count, turning his back on him.
He looked at the dirty river in the waters of which he’d once swum. In other waters, in fact, he thought, like Heraclitus: not as dirty, at least not up by La Chorrera bridge, where he and his friends used to catch biajacas, if not Chinese carp, when someone decided those red, exotic fish could grow and multiply in the island’s rivers and reservoirs.
“All right, Manolo, try your hand at the questions Flower of the Dead left us. Why should anyone let himself be strangled and not fight back? Why didn’t the murderer throw him into the water? And why the hell did he decide to inspect his anus?”
Sergeant Manuel Palacios folded two very rickety arms over an emaciated chest. In every case he was assigned to with the Count it was always the same: he had to be the first to get it wrong.
“I don’t know, Conde,” he said finally.
The Count looked at him, surprised by his wariness.
“But how come you don’t know, you always know.”
“But I don’t today… Hey, Conde, what the hell’s got into you today? You’re evil, man…”
The Count returned his gaze, as he lit up. Manuel Palacios was right. What had got into him?
“No idea, Manolo, but it’s something bad. Can you imagine, I cheered up when they said I was on a homicide case and could leave Headquarters! I’m fucked, my friend, now I get high when people are murdered. And this forensic gets at me bad, and big time.”
Manuel Palacios nodded. He knew the Count too well to take those confessions of sinning seriously, and decided to be charitable for once.
“Well, how about a respectable married man with children, who suddenly picks up a woman, though he’s not a flirt, and she’s tall and beautiful, and he’s so delighted with his catch he brings her to the Woods, they kiss, caress, the woman kneels down to suck him off, as the forensic said, and it’s then the fellow discovers she’s not a woman but quite the contrary. Or how about the big ’un also being quite the contrary, I mean as fruity as the dead guy, and he’s taken revenge on Arayan because of some quarrel from queer street? Or how about if the big ’un’s a pervert who likes going with transvestites so he can kill them afterwards, because he hates transvestites, as he’s a transvestite himself, but frustrated by his size and girth? That’s my best take ever, don’t you reckon?”
The Count coughed, cigarette between his lips.
“You get more intelligent by the day, you really do… This is fishy, Manolo. Nobody lets himself be strangled without scratching back. And you tell me, what can you hide in your rectum? Drugs? A jewel? And how come the other fellow knew he had to search there of all places?… Well, because they obviously knew each other, right? But if the murderer decided against dumping him in the river it was because he was sure no one would connect him with this place or that transvestite. And what about the red dress, which must be from somewhere special? And why’s such an elegant transvestite carrying his identity card? Don’t you think it incongruous? I’ll tell you something for nothing, Manolo. I don’t like this case one little bit. It seems too mysterious, and in this country it’s too hot and there are too many fuck-ups for us to handle mysteries as well. Besides, I’ve never liked pansies, just so you know. I’m prejudiced in that department.. .”
“You don’t say,” acknowledged the Sergeant.
