to travel the road of truth. After shouting that none of it was true, Gomez de la Pena had begun to crumble before the Count’s evidence: “If it’s genuine, perhaps there’ll be no problem. But we must be sure, so we’ll take the picture to the National Museum, where two specialists are expecting us. But if they say it’s a fake, I think you did have a good motive for killing Miguel Forcade, don’t you?”
Gomez de la Pena looked at his toes and didn’t reply. The Count was delighted by the vacillations of the petulant ex-minister and gave him an option: “Will you accompany me now to Headquarters or wait for me to come back with an arrest warrant when they submit that the Matisse is a fake?”
Gerardo Gomez de la Pena preferred to accompany the lieutenant, who led him to his third-floor office, where all the heat of that pre-hurricane evening seemed to have gathered. They could now see a grey, grey sky through the window, palpably threatening rain, although the tops of the trees kept perfectly still, as if warning of the evil latent in that excessive calm, before a most destructive storm.
“Hurricane, hurricane, I feel you coming/and on your hot breath/I await gleefully/the lord of the winds,” the Count recited to himself, thinking of the physical and spiritual cyclone that filled the island’s first great poet with despair, almost one hundred and sixty years earlier, when nothing was known of hectopascals or predictable paths, though they knew everything about the harsh lessons of the vertiginous horrors that lay behind the word hurricane. And Heredia, in his poet’s voice, called on the cyclone to come, his cyclone, the one he wanted and awaited with baited breath. Why do we need the same things, poet? wondered the Count as he grew more on edge because Manolo was taking too long to appear with the definitive response on the other whirlwind, imagined in oils on canvas. So he turned round, sat down in the chair behind his desk and looked Gerardo Gomez de la Pena in the eye.
“And did you really believe all that time that the painting was genuine?”
The man breathed sonorously, expelling all the hot air accumulated in his lungs.
“What do you think? That I was going to say I had a real Matisse when I knew it was fake?”
“The will of men, like the hurricane’s, is unfathomable… Who can say…? Because one would like to know whether you have a Swiss bank account, engorged by a real Matisse…”
“But don’t you understand that son of a bitch deceived me like an idiot? I can’t believe it even now…”
“Nor can I. Because even now I still believe the real Matisse existed or exists, and the painting was the reason why Miguel Forcade dared to return to Cuba. And I also think they could have killed and castrated him for that real Matisse, which is worth five million and not the three and a half you estimated, or am I wrong?”
“I don’t know what you are getting at.”
“That perhaps you both hid the real work twenty-eight years ago…”
“Don’t be naive…”
The Count smiled but pointed an index finger at his man: “If there’s anyone naive here, it’s you. And that may be your sole salvation: that you could have been such a fucking fool you thought you’d bought a Matisse worth a million for little more than five hundred pesos and the assignment of a house in Vedado, though at the end of day, the house wasn’t yours either, was it, and could be given to Miguel or to Jacinto, if Jacinto could repay in kind… But if you’re not naive and an idiot whom Miguel Forcade fooled over all these years, you may be a criminal on various charges, including perhaps homicide. Which label do you prefer, naive or idiot…? I highly recommend one or the other, because all other paths now point to prison.”
Gomez de la Pena shook his head, still in denial. It was still incredible apparently – Friguens had said so – the disastrous fakery of a painting he used to unfurl as his victory standard over the way he’d been punished for his failed economic management, when the door finally opened and, as the Count had been hoping, Manolo’s fingers signalled a V for victory.
“Faker than a nurse’s virginity…”
Gerardo Gomez de la Pena heard the sentence and slumped further into his chair, before saying: “I’m glad they killed him. For being such a bastard.”
“Well, now tell me something new about Miguel Forcade,” requested the Count, eager to digest more novel or revealing information.
Colonel Alberto Molina remained tight-lipped as he listened to the whole story as recounted by Lieutenant Mario Conde: the long haul after a fake
“And I suppose these Garcia Abreus took the picture out of Cuba?”
“Apparently. But when Forcade found out this one was a fake, he realized he had a good deal on his hands and thought on his feet.”
“He was a real devil,” he added finally, returning to his seat. “I’m not surprised by the way he was killed.”
“There are various kinds of demons,” commented the lieutenant and thought of Major Rangel: “The country’s mad,” the Boss would have said as if there were still something that could shock him.
“And do you think Gomez is the murderer?”
The Count yet again weighed up the possibilities in the light of his prejudices and decided not to take any risks.
“We can’t be sure, though I would be delighted if he were, because I don’t like his sort. But he says he never knew it was a fake and he doesn’t seem to be lying. And that leaves him without any apparent motive. At any rate I’ll let him spend another night sleeping inside, in the same cell as the rapists, the black guy and the little white one. That usually helps, I can tell you…”
The Colonel stood up again. He was clearly fazed by the riddles cast in his direction by a story of serial lies and deception, sustained over almost thirty years.
“I don’t know what to say… this is all new to me. What is undeniable is that you’ve upturned a cartload of shit… But if it wasn’t Gomez, who the fuck did it?”
“You know, I’ve got Fermin Bodes in reserve, Miguel’s brother-in-law. I am convinced he knew why the dead man came to Cuba, and if he knows why he may also know why they killed him. And quite likely may even have killed him himself. But I’ve got no way to bring him in. He’s another livewire and he’s got guts.”
“And Miguel’s wife?”
“She’s really tasty… And she also knows things she’s not letting on and lets on about things she’s not been asked. She’s the one I really can’t get my head round… Besides, I don’t believe she’s a natural blonde… But what I’m more and more certain of is that Forcade’s murderer knew what he had come here for, and that was why he killed him. Though the castration business is a spanner in the works. What do you reckon?”
The Colonel put his cigarette out and looked at his subordinate.
“I don’t know why I let myself get dragged into this madness, when I was so quiet and peaceful in my office…”
“Now you can see how difficult this is to solve in three days. But I’ll promise you something… What’s the time now?”
“Ten past five, why?”
“Because tomorrow at this exact same time I will answer your question: I’ll tell you who murdered Miguel Forcade… I hope you’ll have my release papers ready by then. All right?”
“All right… to the good health of us both,” and he half turned, not even remembering to give his military salute.
Mario Conde would only sing boleros in two precise states of mind: when he foresaw he might fall in love or when he was already madly and desperately in love – which was the only way he ever fell in love. Although his fortune in love had not been particularly favourable for nurturing his gift with boleros, several of those lyrics, made from words that could sing equally of love or disappointment, of hatred or the purest of passions, had lodged in his mind during vehement spates of amorous frenzy, during which he’d sung them, even outside the shower. And he preferred one in particular to any other bolero on the face of this earth and on his tongue:
