place. He lit up, displayed deep pleasure, dragging and exhaling smoke, and said: “No, don’t worry, Adrian, nothing’s wrong,” adding, as if regretting his lack of forethought, “Sorry, I didn’t offer you one,” and taking the packet out again.
“No, thanks all the same, I don’t smoke,” said the other, with a hollow cough.
“Well, I’d like to talk to you. Can we do so in your office?”
“Of course.”
As a result of his post as the municipal director of Offi-Record, Adrian Riveron enjoyed the privilege of a small private corner in that place that once must have been a shop, bar or liquor store. It was just one of so many businesses shut down by the Revolutionary Offensive in the Sixties and then transformed into houses, offices or warehouses. Consequently, even with the fluorescent light switched on, the spot exuded a sense of claustrophobia and misery. Adrian offered him a seat opposite his desk and the Count contemplated on the wall the map of the municipality, divided into commercial districts, with little stickers registering the number of the region and quantity of consumers.
“I suppose you’re very busy?”
“We always have work: every day someone dies or is born or is divorced or has their seventh or sixty-fifth birthday and that all means we have to introduce changes on the register and add or subtract names. As you can see, very creative work.”
The Count nodded understandingly, and put out his cigarette in an earthenware ashtray.
“Adrian, I came to see you on two counts. Miriam told me you were her boyfriend thousands of years ago, as she puts it,” and he noticed how, in spite of his skin’s reddish hue, Adrian turned even more blood red. “And, from what I’ve seen, you are still good friends.”
“Yes, we are friends. Have been for thousands of years…” and he coughed.
“Then perhaps you can help me, because I expect you are only too aware that Miriam and her brother, Fermin Bodes, are two difficult characters. I at least am sure they know things that can shed light on Miguel’s death and for some reason they’re keeping quiet. Get my drift?”
Adrian Riveron had recovered his usual colour and, filling his lungs with air, leaned back on his swivel- chair.
“I’m not sure what exactly I can tell you, but you’re right in one thing: Miriam and Fermin are two very complicated people. Miriam’s marriage to Miguel would make a good subject for a bad novel… She was practically forced to marry him and I was removed from circulation. Miriam’s father is one of those people who make you want to throw up. He must have twelve or thirteen children, with seven or eight wives and whenever he divorces he leaves his house to his previous wife, because he knows they’ll give him another house for the next in line. He is one of those men they like to call a historic leader, and he really is that because he’s been leading whatever for thirty years, always badly, but never gets the chop.”
“I’m acquainted with such men of history.”
“Well, this fellow, who’d never done a thing for Miriam, turned up one day in that house with Miguel Forcade and apparently Miguel fancied the girl: she was seventeen and if everybody’s mad about her now, imagine her then.”
“Yes, I am,” and the Count really was imagining her.
“And old Panchin Bodes, as his friends call him, decided there and then it would be a good marriage and practically forced his daughter to marry Miguel.”
“Family agreements.”
“More like disagreements,” Adrian corrected him, coughing. “But they married Miriam off to the old man and got a good position for Fermin, who had miraculously managed to finish his degree in architecture. You know what happened after that.”
“More or less. How did you get to know them?”
“Through Fermin. He’s two years older than me, but we were in the same scholarship year and we rowed in the same team. One day I went home with him and I met Miriam there.”
“So you were a rower?”
“And still am, though I don’t compete anymore. I love being in the water.”
“So I see from the colour of your skin.”
“That’s right.”
“There’s another important aspect to Miguel’s death… he was castrated. What do you make of something like that?”
Adrian Riveron coughed again, a more prolonged salvo this time. The blood red hue of his skin deepened again and a smile came to his lips.
“What do I know about such things, Lieutenant? I reckon they have to do with
“No, I don’t think so, that’s not their way, because
The municipal director of Offi-Record smiled even more expansively.
“Lieutenant, rather than investigating Miriam, who’s been a plaything of others, and Fermin, who’s a wretched son of his father, I think you should get to know Miguel Forcade a bit better. Because if he did come back for something, not even his mother would be in on the secret. You can’t imagine what kind of person Miguel Forcade was.”
“I do have some kind of an idea…”
“A rather distant one. As the youth of today say: that guy was a tricky shit. Miguel Forcade was never straight with anyone… He always deceived half of humanity and I can tell you there’s a lot of rubbish you still have to dig up about his past.”
“From what I see, you didn’t like him very much, true?”
Adrian Riveron’s cheeks turned bright red again, while his right hand, definitively at a loss, landed on the earthenware ashtray, which it placed in the middle of the table.
“No, I didn’t like him at all, but that’s not saying much, lots of people had accounts to settle with him. Lieutenant…”
“Mario Conde.”
“Of course, Mario Conde. Miguel Forcade was one of the biggest bastards on the planet and, though I don’t like to say it, the way he was killed he got his just desserts.”
Sergeant Manuel Palacios was collecting up the last grains of rice from his tray when Mario Conde entered the canteen at Headquarters. As ever, the lieutenant was astonished by his subordinate’s appetite and skill at salvaging scattered morsels of food: he squashed them with the back of his fork and lifted them to his mouth, and chewed them conscientiously.
“I told them to keep food for you,” Manolo announced when he saw him walking in.
“What’s on the menu?”
“Rice, peas and sweet potato.”
“How low we’ve sunk, comrade! You eat that sort of thing, so eat mine if you want…”
“Really, Conde?”
“Really, I make a present to you of today’s grub. And how come you got here so quickly?”
Manolo smiled, pleased by the fruits of his labour and by the thought of another trayful. “Because I found what I was looking for.”
“You’re kidding!” exclaimed the Count, even more astonished than by the four rums he’d got for the price of three.”
“No, siree. I found the deeds for the Garcia Abreu household on Twenty-Second Street, number fifty-eight, between Fifth and Seventh.”
“And everything else?”
“That was much easier once I’d got the address in my mitt. The Garcia Abreus left Cuba in March 1961 and the
