Contreras as if under orders. About what? Anything. He just had to see him.
“What’s up? Did they tell you it was forbidden to speak to him?”
“No, Conde, don’t fuck about, you know it’s not that, the fact is
… Remember what I told you yesterday.”
“Don’t fuck about yourself, Manolo. Are you frightened?”
The sergeant sighed and turned right.
“Okay then,” he agreed, shaking his head to underline his disagreement. “Yes, I am frightened. I told you yesterday… And why are you doing this? Just to show you’re a tough guy and aren’t frightened or because you really are?”
Contreras’s house was on the corner, a block before the Calzada de Luyano. It was one of those typical old buildings in the area, with a door directly on to the pavement and very high windows with grilles, covered in pernicious soot from nearby factories. A long, long time ago, when the Count hadn’t even dreamt that one day he’d be a policeman and know Captain Jesus Contreras, he’d already decided he didn’t like those squat houses or that dingy district which was too grey, too monotonous, without gardens or porches, and for a long time now with very few healthy panes of glass.
“You stay in the car,” he told Manolo. He got out and knocked with the wrought-iron knocker.
Fatman Contreras opened the door and beamed a smile the Count feared like death.
“Well, well, well,” said the captain, “Look who we have here. Come in.”
And he held out his hand. But on that occasion the Count told himself it was time to fight for the lowly and dispossessed on earth: Fatman’s greatest pleasure was squeezing hands, whether friendly or hostile, with those five-fingered mechanical diggers, capable of lifting one ton of weight, and making the knees of the ingenuous creature greeted thus buckle from the devastating pressure on their carpals, metacarpals, phalanges, mini- phalanges…
“Squeeze your own mother’s hand, you fat pansy.”
And he exploded. Fatman’s second greatest pleasure was laughing, those sonorous guffaws, like a human earthquake, that set dancing the fat neck, tits and ever sweaty, enormous belly of Captain Jesus Contreras, head of the Foreign Exchange Dealing Department at Headquarters.
“You’re a sonovabitch, Conde, that’s why I like you. And now I see you really like me. Are you after something?” And he laughed again, as if it were inevitable. “You are the first sonovabitch policeman to come and see me…”
And he burst out laughing for a whole minute more, convulsing, obscenely, sweatily, as the Count looked up, expecting to see the first fragments of ceiling crash down.
“It’s hard, Conde, hard, real hard, I swear by my mother. You know I’d even put my pyjamas on if that was an option: if they put me on the pyjama game, well I’ll obey and put my pyjamas on, but what I’m certainly not going to do is to go begging to anyone. Not to the Major, the investigation team, anyone, because I’m cleaner than the Virgin Mary. And if I smell of shit, it’s because I work in shit, wash in shit, like any self-respecting policeman, and I’m not going to let anyone daub me with shit that’s not mine. It’s not mine, Conde. No, wait a minute. This is rich: they’re accusing me of fuck all, but as there are problems in currency black markets they want to implicate me because they say I must be in the know… Know what? Know what some police were doing who were fine yesterday and are now into God knows what? My speciality was being on the street, making life difficult for those milking foreigners for their dollars, and I was good at that and you know it. Not a dollar moved in the street I didn’t know about, and if I had informers, I gave them protection, if not, who the hell would ever inform? Now if there were accounts in banks in Panama, and people upstairs in dollar deals, and into credit cards and all that jazz, I couldn’t touch them, there’s no black guy in Old Havana or white wheelerdealer in Vedado or whore from La Lisa who could take me there. That kind of thing isn’t my patch and I don’t touch it… but don’t worry, Condesito, there’s no way they can pin things on me. Everything in this house is mine, mine and earned with the sweat of my brow or because someone gave it me as a present, and it’s not my fault if that individual’s now fallen out of favour, is it? And you know how anyone told to take something took it, right? And now they’re talking about my standard of living, about undue privileges, you know. But what do they want, Tibetan monks dressed in a strip of donkey hide? I know I never stole a cent, not a single one. You know me, Conde, don’t you? But the hardest thing is seeing how the people who only two days ago practically went on bended knees for me to help them, and did anything to be my friend, and brought coffee beans to my office and said Serpico was shit useless compared to me, they don’t want to hear my name because I might harm them, might infect them… The only person who has called is Major Rangel, to ask me if I needed anything, and do you know what I told him? That my balls were aching and he shouldn’t call me again unless it was to say they wanted to apologize. That’s all I can accept now, Conde: apologies, medals and honours.. . No, I’m not shutting the door, but one has one’s pride, because if not, what the hell does one have, hey, you tell me? And as I’m clean, my morale is higher than Mount Turquino in the Sierra Maestra, higher than the Himalayas, fucking hell… But it’s terrible, Conde. I’ve only been suspended for a day and I’m worse than a tail cut off its dog. I’m up in the air and don’t know where to come down. I’ve been police for twenty years, and the worst bloody thing is that it’s all I can do and I even like being a policeman. What the hell am I going to do with my life, Conde, you tell me? Now I’ve got the plague, I’ll tell you one thing: for your own sake, don’t come to see me again. I’m the one who doesn’t want you back here, because you’re my friend, you’ve shown that today, and I don’t want to put you in the shit, Conde. You look after yourself, because this is no joke and when they throw shit at the fan, anyone can get it… Even a guy like you, a real man and a friend, as they say on the street… Shake my hand, Conde, don’t be a pansy. Shake my hand, I swear by my mother I won’t squeeze you… That’s right… I caught you, you motherfucker. .. Ha, ha, ha… That’ll teach you never to trust a policeman, ha, ha, ha.”
“Get a move on. We’re off again. Off anywhere but Headquarters,” said the Count as he got in the car and dropped his cigarette end on the pavement.
“They just called me.”
“But I don’t feel like going, and I won’t, Manolo,” the Count interrupted, stamping on the car floor somewhat hysterically. “What they’re doing to Fatman is a real bastard… How can they accuse a policeman like him? I’m not going to Headquarters, Manolo.”
“Will you let me get a word in, Conde?… They called because Alberto Marques was after you for something urgent. That’s all.”
The Count felt the angry glare of the August sun come through the windscreen and hit his chest and stomach. He adjusted his sunglasses.
“Come on, let’s go and talk to him.”
Sergeant Palacios started the car up and looked at the Count. He knew his colleague too well to try to reason with him. He preferred to drive in silence till he stopped in front of number 7 on Milagros, between Delicias and Buenaventura.
“You don’t want me to come with you, do you now?” he said, and the Count sensed the sourness in that final twist.
“No, I prefer to speak to him alone. I think it’s better that way.”
The sergeant looked in front: heat haze steamed from the pavement, like phantoms dancing in search of their promised heaven.
“Well, see to the case by yourself, and while you’re at it you can have the queer. And much good may it do you. Let’s see if rolling over more than a dog with worms you manage to solve it… Hey, Conde, you know how I appreciate you and always wanted to work with you, but lately you’ve changed.”
“But what’s your problem, Manolo?”
“Everything, Conde. You’re chucking all the cases down the pan, you seem ashamed to be a policeman, you do as you please… and you just might be getting it wrong.”
The Count lit his cigarette before he spoke.
“Don’t be a shit-head, Manolo, you’re way off… It’s just that I…” and he stopped before completing a self- justification that would ring untrue. Perhaps the sergeant was right and he was relegating him, even excluding him from certain areas of the case, but there was no going back: the dialogue was between the Marquess and himself, and the sergeant’s presence might sever his delicate exchanges with the dramatist. It’s like a chamber piece for two actors, he thought, and said: “You’re right in everything you say and I do apologize, but stick right here.”
