“Nothing really, today’s the sixth of January, and I’m waiting for my present… What’s new, then?”
“Oh, I thought you’d something to tell me. Nothing you could call new… What are we going to do with Maciques?”
“Start all over again. Till he’s exhausted. He’s the only one who’s allowed to get exhausted. Did you see Patricia?”
“No, but she left a message with the duty officer saying she was going straight to the enterprise. She left at eight last night, and I think she was back welcoming the dawn there.”
“Have you seen the reports?”
“No, not yet. I just got here and started to read all the stuff about AIDS in the newspaper. Fucking hell, comrade, soon you won’t even be able to get laid in this world.”
The Count smiled, was still smiling as he said:
“Uh-huh, take good note, then. I’m going to have a look at the reports so we can start on Maciques.”
“Thanks, Boss. May you always wake up smiling,” retorted the sergeant, weaving his way back to the desk.
He preferred to go down the stairs and, while he did so, he thought how he was in a mood to write. He’d write a very squalid tale about an amorous triangle, in which the characters would live, in different roles, situations they’d lived previously. It would be a nostalgic love story, with no violence or hatred, about ordinary people and ordinary experiences, as in the lives of the people he knew, because you must write about what you know, he told himself, remembering how Hemingway wrote about things he knew and Miki wrote about things he knew he ought to write about.
When he was in the hallway he walked round the corner towards the Information Department, which Captain Jorrin was just leaving, and he seemed tired and groggy, as if getting over an illness.
“Hello, Maestro. What’s the matter?” He shook his hand.
“We’ve caught one of the culprits, Conde.”
“That’s good.”
“Not so good. We questioned him last night, and he says he did it by himself. I wish you could see him, a stubborn hulking bastard who reacts as if he couldn’t care less about anything. And you know how old he is? Sixteen, Conde, sixteen. I’ve been a policeman for thirty, and I’m still surprised by such things. The fact is I’m past caring… You know, he admits he did it, that he pulverized the kid to steal his bike, and tells it as if he were talking about a baseball game and just as nonchalantly when he says it was all his own work.”
“But he’s no kid, Captain. How did you catch him?”
Jorrin smiled, shook his head and wiped a hand over his face, as if trying to iron out the wrinkles lining his face.
“From a statement given by a witness and because he was riding the bike belonging to the kid they killed, without a care in the world. Did you know people exist who do this kind of thing just to assert their egos?”
“So I’ve read.”
“But forget your books. If you want to check it out come and take a look at this boy. He’s a case… I don’t know, Conde, but I really think I’ve got to say goodbye to all this. It gets more and more painful…”
Jorrin barely managed a farewell and walked towards the lifts. The Count watched him leave and thought the old sea-wolf might be right. Thirty years are a lot of years in this profession, he muttered, and pushed open the door to the Information Department. He smiled, greeted all the young women and sat down in front of Sergeant Dalia Acosta’s desk: she was the departmental duty officer, and he always wondered how one woman’s head could gather so much hair.
“Anything from the coastguards?”
“Not much. Not many people try it when this north wind is blowing, but, look, this has just come in from East Havana. Take a look…”
The Count took the computer printout the sergeant was flourishing in his direction and read the first remarks after the heading:
Unidentified corpse. Evidence of murder. Signs of struggle. Case opened. Forensics’ preliminary report: 72 to 96 hours since death. Found in an empty residential house, Brisas del Mar. January 5/89, 11.00pm.
And he turned the sheet over on her desk.
“When did this come in, Dalita?”
“Ten minutes ago, Lieutenant.”
“And why didn’t you call me?”
“I called you as soon as it arrived and Manolo told me you were on your way.”
“Any more information?”
“This other sheet from Forensics.”
“Let me have it. I’ll return it later. Thanks.”
I was still in uniform, always carried a briefcase and spent hours in the archives with Felicia, that old computer that seemed a mysterious, over-efficient window on the world. My pistol was in my belt, but my cap had no such luck; I tried never to wear it after reading in a magazine that caps are the number one cause of baldness; it was almost nine pm and all I wanted to do was collapse on my bed, and I was thinking about bed as I walked to the bus-stop when I heard a klaxon hooting, I cursed as I always curse people who blow their klaxons like that, and looked up to see what kind of guy it was, he’d have two horns and perhaps a trident in his hand, and I saw an arm waving at me from above the car roof. At me? Yes, at you. I couldn’t see clearly because the windscreen was glinting and it was dark, and I went over hoping to hitch a lift. I hadn’t seen him for almost five years, but I’d have recognized him even if it hadn’t been for a hundred.
“Hell, buddy, my hand almost dropped off hooting at you,” he said, smiling his usual smile, and heaven knows why I was smiling as well.
“How’re things, Rafael?” I asked, putting my hand through the window. “It’s been ages. How’s Tamara?”
“You going home?”
“Yes, I just finished and was…”
“In you get, I’ll drive you to Vibora.” And I got into his Lada, that smelled brand new, of leather and liniment, and Rafael drove off, the last time we spoke.
“What you up to now?” I asked, as I always ask anyone I know.
“The same as usual, in the Ministry for Industry, waiting to see what turns up,” he informed me casually, talking in that affable persuasive tone he adopted with friends, very different to the hard, even more persuasive tone he’d employ from a platform.
“So they’ve given you your own car?”
“No, not yet, this one’s assigned to me and, you know, it’s as good as mine, because I’ve just come from a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce, and that’s how I spend my life. I work hard…”
“How’s Tamara?” I repeated, and he barely managed to say she was all right, that she’d done her social service here in Bejucal, and was now at a new clinic they’d opened in Lawton. No, we still don’t have children, but we’ll order one any day now,” he added.
“And how are you getting on?”
I tried to see what film they were showing at the Florida when we drove through Agua Dulce and I thought I’d tell him not so good, that I was just a bureaucrat processing information, that last month Skinny had been operated on again, that I didn’t know why I’d married Martiza, but I didn’t feel like it.
“Good, pal, good.”
“Hey, drop by one day and let’s have a drink,” he suggested as we reached October Tenth and Dolores, and I thought how it was the first time Rafael had ever said anything like that to me, or to Skinny or Rabbit or Andres or any of us, and when he pulled in at the traffic lights in Santa Catalina so I could get out, I responded in kind: “Yes, be seeing you. Give my regards to Tamara.”
And we shook hands again, and I watched him turn into Santa Catalina, his red indicator blinking; he gave two farewell toots and drove off in the car that smelled brand new. Then I thought: you bastard, you’re only interested in being my friend because I’m in the police. And I had to laugh, that last time I saw Rafael Morin.
His eyes no longer shone; his voice no longer boomed at the masses. His freshly-shaven, washed and
