you an answer. They were quite safe and sound in a strongbox in Rafael Morin’s house. What do these documents mean, Maciques?” Manolo repeated, placing himself between the man and the desk.
Rene Maciques looked up at his interrogator. He was now a perplexed, gloomy old librarian. Sergeant Manuel Palacios took his time. He knew he’d reached a decisive point in the interrogation, when the man under arrest must decide to tell the truth or put his hope in deception. But Maciques didn’t have options.
“It’s one of Rafael’s ruses,” he said nevertheless. “I know nothing about these papers. I’ve never set my eyes on them. You said he did things using my name. Well, here’s another example.”
“So Rafael Morin wanted to put you in a spot of bother?”
“So it seems.”
“Maciques, what might we find in
“In my house… Nothing. The usual. One travels abroad and makes purchases.”
“With what money? Entertainment expenses?”
“I already explained how one can save from the daily allowances.”
“And when you wrap up a big deal, don’t you get a bonus in kind? A car, for example?”
“But I never wrapped up any big deals.”
“Maciques, do you have it in you to kill a man?”
The office manager looked up again, the glint gone from his eyes.
“What are you inferring?”
“Do you or don’t you?”
“Of course I don’t.”
And he kept shaking his head: no, no.
“Why did you go to the enterprise on the thirty-first? And don’t say to switch off the air conditioning.”
“What would you like me to say?”
Then the Count walked back to his desk and stopped next to Maciques.
“Look, Maciques, I’m not as patient as the sergeant. I’m going to tell you straight what I think of you, and I know that one way or the other you’ll end up confessing today, tomorrow or the day after… You’re a piece of shit, as much a thief as your boss, more careful though less powerful. Right now the validity of these papers is being checked in Spain, and perhaps the bank will give us some information, but the car’s a clue that’s much simpler than you think. For some reason I’ve still to fathom, Rafael kept these papers under lock and key, perhaps to protect himself from you, because he knew you were quite capable of putting on his file the allowances he didn’t spend and the expenses he doubled. And Rafael will turn up, I don’t know whether dead or alive, in Spain or Greenland, but he will turn up, and you’ll talk, but even if you don’t, you’re covered in shit, Maciques. Don’t forget it. And to help you think more clearly, you’re going to spend some time on your own. From today you will start a new life at police headquarters… Sergeant, get the papers ready and ask the public prosecutor for an order for the temporary arrest of citizen Rene. One that can be extended. Be seeing you, Maciques.”
Mario Conde looked at the other laurel trees, the ones very close to the sea that heralded the Paseo del Prado, and repeated his question. A bitter wind blew in from the mouth of the bay forcing him to keep his hands in his pockets, but he needed to think and walk, lose himself in the crowd and hide his Pyrrhic glee and the frustrations of a policeman pleased to strip bare the evil wrought by others. What had led Rafael Morin to do something like that? Why did he want more, still more and more besides? The Count contemplated the Palace of Matrimony and the shiny black ’57 Chrysler decked out in balloons and flowers waiting for the nuptial descent of the over-forties who still had it in them and still smiled for the inevitable photo at the top of the steps. He observed the ones with staying power defying the cold in the queue at the pizzeria on Prado and saw the notices, stapled to the trunk of a laurel tree, of those who needed to move. They made honest and dishonest proposals but just needed a few square feet of ceiling where they could live. He watched two dead-set, unconnected homosexuals walk by shivering with cold; their well-intentioned, ingenuous eyes looked him up and down. He spotted a peaceful mulatto, leaning against a streetlamp, looking like a lethargic Rastafarian, his perfect dreadlocks tucked under his black beret, perhaps waiting for the first foreigner to step up so he could suggest five pesos for one dollar, Mister, seven for one, bro’, and I’ve got grass, anything to get through the doors to the forbidden world of abundance armed with a passport. He switched to the lamppost on the pavement opposite: a blonde in incredibly lascivious make-up was dying of cold, though she promised to be hot, even if it snowed, with a mouth made for a blowjob; the blonde for whom a nationally produced mortal like Mario Conde was worth less than a drunk’s spittle and who wanted dollars like her friend the Rasta mulatto and would suggest thirty for one: her youthful sex, perfumed, well-trained and guaranteed against rabies and other sickness, in exchange for the dollars she yearned after; the blowjob came extra, natch. He watched a kid skating jump onto a wooden box and skate off into the dark. He reached the Parque Central and almost decided to get entangled in the eternal arguments over baseball that raged there daily, whatever the temperature, to find a reason for yet another defeat for those bastard Industriales; balls, balls is what they’re lacking, he’d have shouted in honour of Skinny, who was neither skinny nor nimble enough to be shouting on his own behalf. He contemplated the lights in the Hotel Inglaterra, the shadows surrounding the Teatro Garcia Lorca, the queue in front of the Payret cinema, the dismal drab entrance to the Asturian Centre and the aggressive dilapidated ugliness of the Gomez edifice. He felt the irrepressible beat of a city that he tried to make a better place and thought of Tamara: she was expecting him and he was on his way, perhaps to ask her the same question, and nothing else.
Several months later, when the Rafael Morin case had been truly laid to rest, and Rene Maciques was rotting in jail and Tamara was as beautiful as ever and looked at him with eyes that were always glistening, he’d still ask the same question and imagine a sad Rafael Morin, a petty potentate in Miami with his five-hundred-thousand-dollar fortune that was a mere lottery prize that would never buy him the things he acquired with his power as a trustworthy brilliant cadre, always on the up. But that night he just stopped next to a group of fans and lit a cigarette. They all thought and shouted out loud in an act of group therapy: the team manager was an idiot, the star pitcher a dud and the guys from way back really good, if only Chavez and Urbano, La Guagua and Lazo would come back, they fantasized, and then he stuck the shoulder of his imagination between two enormous frightening blacks who eyed him suspiciously, where does this asshole come from, and shouted into the centre of the group: “They don’t have balls,” and he’d leave the professional gripers to their gripes, as he crossed the street and entered the haze of fumes, dry piss and pre-Colombian vomit in the doorway to the Asturian Centre, where a couple were trying to consummate their ardour behind a pillar, and finally ran into the barred doors to the Floridita, SHUT FOR REPAIRS, and abandoned there all hope of a double shot of neat vintage rum, sitting in the corner that was Hemingway’s exclusive property, leaning on the bar where Papa and Ava Gardner kissed scandalously and where he’d set his store, many years ago, on writing a novel about squalor and where he’d have asked himself the same question and supplied the only answer that allowed him to live in peace: because he always was a bastard. What else?
“Can I put some music on?”
“No, not now,” she said as she leaned her head on the back of the plush sofa, looked up at the ceiling and felt freezing again and folded her arms after she’d pulled down her jersey sleeves. He lit a cigarette and dropped the match in the Murano ashtray.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, also sinking back on the sofa. “A ceiling is a ceiling.”
“About what’s happening, everything you’ve told me, what else do you expect?”
“You really had no idea? None whatsoever?”
“What can I say, Mario?”
“But you might have seen or suspected something.”
“What was there to suspect? The fact he bought that hi-fi system or brought us whisky or a bicycle for our son? Is a dress worth a hundred and fifty dollars cause for suspicion?”
He thought: it’s all so normal. All that has always been normal for her: she was born in this house and lived that normality that makes you see life differently; and he wondered whether it wasn’t Tamara’s world that had driven Rafael mad. But knew it wasn’t so.
“What will happen now, Mario?” she now asked the question, had had enough of ceilings and silence and leaned her shoulder on the back of the sofa, tucked a foot under a thigh and chased her imperturbable wavy lock away. She wanted to gaze at him.
“Two things still need to happen. First, Rafael has to show up, dead or alive, in Cuba, or wherever. And second, Maciques must tell us what he knows. Perhaps that might help us find Rafael’s whereabouts.”
