his day’s charge of emotions already seemed on the high side.
“I’m just upset, Conde.”
“How come?”
“I’m upset because you’re leaving the police.”
“Well, I’ve got a cure for that: jerk yourself off twice, stand on your head and take a diazepam with a lime infusion and you’ll see how relaxed you get.”
“Fuck off, you always come out with the same shit,” his colleague protested, as he drove round the corner and parked the car in front of Major Antonio Rangel’s house.
While Manolo disconnected the aerial, the Count contemplated that idyllic image: in the foreground a bonfire was burning, dry leaves that had certainly been cut because of the imminent tempest, and, further back, up a ladder, a man nailing down wooden panels over the windows at the front of the house. And the Count wondered: if he’d still been the chief, who the fuck would have done this? because the Major would have been at Headquarters, giving orders, supervising, listening to cases and tying up all the loose ends so the final knot fell right into his hands.
“Can I be of help?”
“Quiet, Mario, look where the hell I am,” said Rangel, from his ladder, not turning round to look at his visitors and abandoning his domestic chore, almost pleased with what he’d done. “Let’s go inside. I’ll finish this later.”
“Ana Luisa will kill you,” the Count warned, and at last the Major smiled.
It was perhaps the first time his teeth had been visible out of sheer glee. Maybe in his mere five days out of the police, awesome Major Rangel had recovered a capacity that had seemed lost for ever.
“Well, you know, I’m really happy with everything I’ve done at home today. And as the store advanced us oil because of the hurricane, we’re having fried yucca for lunch… Come on, let’s go in,” he said, as he let them through into the library. “Sit down.”
The Count and Manolo sat in the armchairs and the Boss opened up his small humidor, which was packed to bursting with cigars.
“Go on, pick one. Careful, they’re Davidoff Cinco Mil Gran Corona.”
“Now you really have gone mad,” declared the Count, who in ten years had only ever extracted one Davidoff from the Boss: his meanness as a cigar-smoker climbed its most selfish peak with Davidoff Cinco Mils.
“But there’s more,” Rangel assured him, as he opened up a desk drawer and brought out the unthinkable: the shine on the black label of that Johnny Walker went way beyond the Count’s expectations and all of Major Rangel’s traditions. The Boss set three glasses on the table, put ice in each, and poured out three generous helpings of amber liquid. He gave a glass to each guest, raised his own, and said: “Congratulations, Mario Conde.”
The Count looked at him and told himself yet again how lucky he had been to work with a man like that.
“Thanks, Boss,” and they chinked glasses, drank, and lit their cigars, so the library ceiling was soon covered with that blue perfumed cloud that only a trio of Davidoff Cinco Mil could form when enjoyed in the company of a vintage whisky.
The Count’s second gulp emptied his glass and he asked for more fuel.
“But that’s the last you’ll get from me today. You know, my daughter sent me this bottle from Vienna and I’m not going to polish it off in this session with you… Well, how did the letter strike you?” Rangel asked incisively, allowing himself another smile that surpassed all his usual limits. Alhough this time it wasn’t possible to see his teeth.
“You almost made me weep.”
“Molina seems a good fellow. It was his idea.”
“But you put the words to it. Why did you write that when you’d never said anything like it to me?”
“So you didn’t get too big-headed… any more than you were already. Because I can tell you one thing, Mario Conde, before you get drunk and start saying ridiculous things. I suffered a lot in my life as a policeman and putting up with you was one of my worst trials. You can’t imagine how much I wanted to kill you whenever you did something stupid or turned up at Headquarters looking like you do today or disappeared for a couple of days because you were drunk… I could have kicked you out a hundred times, and I think I could have even had you shot because you were so irresponsible, undisciplined and badly behaved. But I decided it was best to tolerate you as you are, because you also showed me something you don’t find every day: that you are a man and a friend, and you know what that means, whatever the place or situation. And I liked having that kind of friend.”
The Count thought this declaration of love way over the top. He never imagined that imposing man, excessively conscientious in his work, and monogamous to boot, might distinguish him only for those qualities he thought he saw in him… Could it be true he was like that? he wondered and gulped down more whisky, to try to become a little more credulous.
“And I’ll tell you something else…” The Boss returned to his theme, but the Count gestured to him to stop.
“Don’t go on, or I’ll have to kiss you.”
“You see…? I was on the same wavelength… What I meant was I’m pleased you’re leaving the force. If you want, I’ll talk to a friend of mine and get you work in a circus.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I’d already thought of it: the police clown. I’ve always thought that sounded good, you know. Or do you prefer the clowning policeman…?”
“Don’t fuck around, Conde. What I was about to say was quite simple: it’s better you leave the police before it’s too late. Before you end up a cynic, insensitive, or a fellow who reacts the same to the sight of a dead body as a cold drink. If you really want to write, get on with it, but don’t ever say again you don’t have time. Do it now, right away, and forget everything else.”
“Well, we’re well and truly fucked there, Boss. I can only forget everything when I’m pickled in alcohol.”
“Don’t forget anything then, but get on with your life. You’ve still got time.”
“Do you think so?”
“I do, but the rest is down to you. So, what do you make of this tobacco then?”
“The best in the world.”
“Almost, almost, because now the Davidoffs are Dominican, made with tobacco from Cibao. My friend Freddy Ginebra sent me these… And the whisky?”
“The best I’ve drunk all day.”
“That’s certainly true.”
“And is it also true you’re not going to pour me another drop?”
“Most definitely.”
“Why do you need so much? You’ve got more than half a bottle left.”
“Yes, but it’s mine. How else do you think I can wait for the hurricane?”
It was only when the Boss congratulated him that the Count again grasped the chilling certainty that his age had changed. The precise time of the mutation, one forty-five in the afternoon, had gone by in the middle of his hurried investigations, and the hours passed without his feeling anything special, not even physically. Nevertheless, the evidence that his liberation was nigh seemed more visible after he’d had that hunch that led him to the truth. Poor Adrian Riveron, he thought yet again, trying desperately to forget the story of a murderous bat romantically preserved, as he opened the door to his wardrobe, by now bathed, shaved and perfumed, and realized he had nothing new to wear on his birthday. Even in the harshest of times, when the ration book for industrial products barely allotted each Cuban male one pair of trousers, two shirts and a pair of shoes a year, his mother had always sorted things so he had some new item of clothing to wear on the momentous occasion of his birthday. But recently the Count had denied that tradition and the paucity of options offered by his wardrobe was the most striking evidence of the long period of neglect his clothing had suffered at his hands. There on the floor, curled up like an old dog feeling the cold, were the jeans he preferred to all his other trousers, and the Count lamented yet again that the dark mud where the Buddha slept had stained them so dramatically that they were desperate to visit the public laundry before embarking on new battles.
As it really was a notable occasion, the Count decided to wear that night the trousers to the only suit he had possessed in his adult life, the one he’d bought for that ever more distant occurrence, his marriage to Maritza, seven years ago. Even though they stank because of the long rest to which they had been subjected, he preferred to believe it wasn’t too bad, and he thwacked them several times, hoping to improve their odiferous state. He never
