passage, the coolest and biggest on the whole floor, and he decided to make a necessary stop. He tapped on the glass, opened the door and saw the hunched shoulders of Captain Jorrin, who was also looking through his window at the street, resting his forearm on the window frame. Headquarters’ old bloodhound barely turned round to say, Come in, Conde, come in; he stayed still.
“Hey, Count! Do you really think I should take early retirement?” the man asked, and the lieutenant realized he’d picked a bad moment. I’m a good one to be offering advice, he thought.
Jorrin was the most veteran detective at headquarters, a kind of institution or oracle to which the Count and many of his colleagues had recourse hoping for advice, predictions and omens of a tried and tested usefulness. Talking to Jorrin was a kind of necessary rite in every tricky investigation, but Jorrin was ageing and his question was painfully symptomatic.
“What’s the matter, Maestro?”
“I’m gradually coming to the conclusion I should retire, but I’d like to know what someone like you thinks.”
Captain Jorrin swung round but stayed by the window. He seemed tired, sad or even exhausted by something that was torturing him.
“No, I’ve no problems with Rangel, nothing of that sort. We’ve even been friends of late. I’m the problem, Lieutenant. The fact is this work will be the death of me. I’ve been struggling on for almost thirty years and don’t think I can stand any more, any more at all,” he repeated and looked at the floor. “You know what I’m investigating right now? The murder of a thirteen-year-old boy, Lieutenant. A brilliant kid, you know? He was training to compete in the Latin American Mathematics Olympiad. Can you imagine? He was killed yesterday morning on the corner of his street, and his bike was stolen. Beaten to death by more than one person. He was dead before reaching the hospital; they’d fractured his skull, arms, several ribs and lots more besides. As if he’d been run over by a train, but it wasn’t a train, it was people after a bicycle. What’s gone wrong, Conde? How is so much violence possible? I should have got used to such things, shouldn’t I? But I never have, you know? And every time it hurts more, upsets me more. Ours is a fucking awful job, you know?”
“You’re right,” the Count replied, getting to his feet. He walked over and stood by his friend. “But what the hell can we do, Captain? These things happen…”
“But there are people walking around who can’t even imagine that they do, Lieutenant,” he interrupted the advice the Count was offering and looked back out of the window. “I went to the boy’s funeral this morning, and I realized I’m too old to be still doing this. Fuck, you know, they’re killing kids to steal their bicycles… It’s beyond me.”
“Can I give you some advice, Maestro?”
Jorrin acquiesced. The Count knew that the day old Jorrin took his uniform off, he’d embark on an irreversible decline that would end in death, but he also knew he was right and imagined himself, twenty years on, looking for the murderers of a young kid and told himself it was all too much.
“I can think of only one thing to say, and I think it’s what you’d have said to me if I were in your situation. First find the boy’s killers and then consider whether you want to retire,” he pronounced before he walked towards the door, tugged at the door handle and added, “Whoever forced us to be policemen?” and headed down the corridor to the lift, infected by the maestro’s anguish. He looked at his watch and was alarmed to see it was already two-thirty. He felt he’d journeyed through the longest of mornings when minutes were languid and hours slow and difficult to defeat; his eyes saw a watch by Dali. He went into the Boss’s office and asked Maruchi if he could see him when the intercom alarm went off. The young woman said: “wait”, waved her hand and pressed the red button. A rusty tin voice, turned into a stutter by the intercom, asked whether Lieutenant Mario the Count was around or where’d he got to as he’d not yet put in an appearance. Maruchi looked at him, changed her tone and said: “I’ve got him right here” and changed key again.
“Well, tell him he’s got a call, from Tamara Valdemira. Should I transfer it?”
“Tell her yes, otherwise she’ll bite my head off,” said the Count, walking over to the grey phone.
“Transfer the call, Anita,” Maruchi requested and cut off, adding, “I think the Count has an interest in the case.”
The lieutenant put his hand on the receiver, and it rang. He was looking at the Boss’s chief secretary when the telephone rang loudly for a second time, and he didn’t lift up the receiver.
“I’m a bag of nerves,” he confessed to the young woman, who shrugged her shoulders, what do you expect me to do? And he waited for the third ring to finish. Then picked it up: “Yes, it’s me,” and Maruchi just stared at him.
“Mario, that you? It’s Tamara.”
“Yes, tell me, what’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure, something silly, but it might be of interest.”
“I thought Rafael had turned up… Go on.”
“No, I was just looking in the library and saw Rafael’s telephone book, it was there by the extension and, I don’t know, maybe I’m being really silly.”
“Get to the point, woman,” he begged and looked back at Maruchi: you’re all the same, his sigh suggested.
“Nothing really, kid, the book was open at the letter Z.”
“Hey, you’re not going to tell me that Rafael is Zorro and that’s why he’s disappeared?”
She stayed silent for a moment.
“You can’t hold back, can you?”
He smiled and replied: “Sometimes I can… Come on then, what’s Z got to offer?”
“Just that there are two names: Zaida and Zoila, each with a number.”
“And who might they be?” he asked, clearly interested.
“Zaida is Rafael’s secretary. I don’t know about the other one.”
“Are you jealous?”
“What do you think? I reckon I’m a little on the old side for reactions of that kind.”
“You’re never too old… Did he usually leave that book there?”
“No, that’s why I called. He always had it in his case, and his case is in its usual place, by the bookcase at the back.”
“Go on, give me the two numbers,” he said, and his eyes requested Maruchi note them down. “Zaida, 327304, that’s El Vedado. And Zoila 223171, that’s Playa. Uh-huh,” he said, reading Maruchi’s jottings. “So you’ve no idea who this Zoila might be?”
“No, I really don’t.”
“How’s the list going?”
“Going. That’s why I was in the library… You know, Mario, I’m more worried now.”
“OK, Tamara, let me investigate these numbers, and I’ll call by. All right?”
“All right, Mario, I’ll be expecting you.”
“Uh-huh. See you.”
He took the sheet of paper the secretary pointed his way and studied it for a moment. Zaida and Zoila sounded like a melancholy Mexican duo of
“Anything for you,” replied the young woman, bowing to the inevitable.
“I so love willing women. When I get paid I’ll buy you… And the chief?”
“Go in, he’s waiting for you, as he usually is…” she told him and pressed the black intercom button.
He tapped the door with his knuckles before going in. Major Antonio Rangel sat behind his desk, officiating at a cigar-lighting ceremony. He was subtly angling the flame from his lighter, turning the cigar, and each movement of his fingers created a tranquil puff of blue smoke that floated before his eyes, embracing him in a compact scented cloud. Smoking was a transcendent part of his life, and people familiar with his fetish for a good Havana never interrupted him in the act of lighting a cigar. Whenever possible, they would give him well known brands as presents on the requisite day: a birthday or wedding anniversary, Father’s Day or New Year’s Day, the birth of a grandson or graduation of a son; and Major Rangel was gathering together a proud collector’s cache from which he could select different brands for particular times of day, buttresses to shore up his state of mind and sizes according
