Havana Gold

to lighten the weight in his head.

“Come on, before it gets too late.”

Ciceron opened the cubicle door and called the guards.

“You can take him now,” he said as he positioned himself next to Conde to watch Lando the Russian leave. The ruddiness had faded from a face now pale with fear. He knew the noose was tightening and the unexpected questions about Lazaro San Juan had helped undermine his story.

“He’s almost there, Ciceron,” said Conde lighting the cigarette he’d postponed until after the interrogation.

“Let him stew a bit longer. I’ll bring him back up in a minute. What are you going to do now?”

“I want to talk to the Boss. The fact Lazaro is Lando’s nephew may hit Pre-Uni like a bombshell and I want him to tell me again I’ve got carte blanche to take it wherever it takes me. Shit may rain over La Vibora. Are you coming with me?”

“Yeah, let’s see what this turns up. Hey, Conde, if Lando is covering up for someone it must be because it’s someone important.”

“So you think a mafia exists as well?”

“Who else does?”

“A friend of mine…”

Ciceron thought before he replied.

“If a mafia is a group of people organized to do the business, well, yes, I do.”

“A local Creole mafia of marijuana dealers and such like? You’re kidding, Ciceron. Can you imagine them and their molls eating spaghetti a la napolitaine here in Cuba, in 1989, with what a drop of tomato sauce costs you today?”

“No, I’m not kidding, because they’re into big money and that drug didn’t come from Escambray or wash up in some cove. This came straight into the hands of people who spread it around. There’s a big organization behind this, I bet you whatever you like.”

The corridors and staircases were a labyrinth that irritated a Count in a hurry. At every point you opened a door only to meet another. The last one led to the top, the highest in headquarters, where Maruchi was talking on the phone behind her desk.

“Cutie, I need to see top dog,” said Conde leaning his knuckles on her desk.

“He went out about an hour ago, Mario.”

Conde humphed and looked at Ciceron. The reply was too long in coming for the anxious lieutenant.

“But, my dear…” began Conde only to be interrupted.

“So you’ve not heard the news?” she asked and the Count stiffened. Alarm bells began to ring.

“What news?”

“It’s downstairs on the noticeboard… Captain Jorrin died. At around eleven this morning. He had a massive heart attack. Major Rangel’s gone over there.”

“I was playing in the yard. God knows why I wasn’t out with Granddad Rufino, or on the street corner playing basketball with other rascals or having a nap which is what my mother wanted. Look how skinny you are, she exclaimed, you’ve got worms, I bet. And I was at that very moment in the yard, in fact digging out earthworms to throw to the fighting cocks who pecked them up, when old Amerida ran right down the passage in her place that led into our yard shouting at the top of her voice: ‘They’ve killed Kennedy, they’ve killed that bastard’. I’ve had a notion of death ever since, and especially of its unbearable mystery. I think that’s why the priest in the barrio church didn’t protest when I abandoned religion for baseball because of my doubts about his mystical explanation of the frontiers of death: faith didn’t suffice for me to accept the existence of an eternal world with layers of the good in heaven, the not-so-bad in purgatory, the real baddies in hell and the innocent abroad in limbo forever – not as a theoretical account of what nobody had lived to tell, despite the fact I did make allowances when I was able to conjure the soul up as a transparent bag, full of reddish, murky gas, hanging off the ribs, next to the heart and ready to float away like a fugitive balloon at the moment of death. Only from that point was I convinced of the inevitability of death and, in particular, of its enduring presence and the real emptiness its arrival leaves: there is nothing, it is nothing, and that’s why so many folk throughout the world console themselves one way or another by attempting to imagine something beyond nothingness, because the mere idea that man’s time on earth is a brief interlude between two voids has been humanity’s greatest source of anguish since it became conscious of its existence. That’s why I can’t get accustomed to death and it always surprises and terrifies me: it’s a warning mine is closer, that the deaths of my dearest loved ones are nigh and that everything I’ve dreamed and lived, loved and hated, will also evaporate into nothingness. Who was he, what did he do, what did he think, that grandfather of my great-great-grandfather, of whom no name or trace remains? What will my potential great-great-grandson be, do, think at the end of the twenty-first century – if I ever get to procreate the one who should be his great-grandfather? It is horrific not to know the past and yet be able to impact on the future: that great-great-grandson will only exist if I start the chain, as I came into existence because that grandfather of my great-great-grandfather added to a chain tying him to the first monkey with a human face that put his feet into – onto – the earth. Hamlet and I with that same skull: no matter he’s called Yorik and was a jester, or Jorrin and was a police captain, or Lissette Nunez and was a happy hooker at the end of the twentieth century. No matter.”

“What are you doing, Conde? Come on, give me a cigarette.” Manolo took the cigarette while he looked at the park where a group of kids had assembled who’d just left school for the day. Their white shirts formed a low, hyperkinetic cloud, caught between the benches and trees. Boys just like them, remembered the Count, so near and so far to the solemnity of death.

“I’m going to wait for the Boss to come out so I can talk to him.”

An unmistakable odour that made Conde feel sick drifted over from the undertakers. He’d gone in for a second and seen the grey box containing Jorrin between flowers and family. Manolo had peered over the edge of the coffin to look at his face, but the Count kept his distance: it was disturbing enough to think that he’d remember Jorrin in his hospital bed, pallid and dozy without the eschatological extra of seeing him definitively dead. Too many dead. To hell with all this, Conde had told himself, refusing to offer his condolences to the family, as he sought out fresh air on the street and a vision of life. He’d like to have been far from there, beyond the grasp and memory of that absurd, melodramatic rite, but he decided to mount guard and wait for the Major.

“So how long do we have to put up with this bloody wind? I can’t stand it any more,” the Count protested, as an old man, carrying a pint of coffee, walked down the steps and over to the two policemen. He kept moving his mouth, as if chewing something light but indestructible, while his cheeks pumped air or saliva at a monotonous, regular rhythm, towards the engine that kept him on his feet. He wore a jacket that had seen too many autumns and black trousers stained by drops of piss he’d splashed around his fly.

“Give me a cigarette, amigo?” the old man asked quietly, and gestured as if to receive the smoke he’d requested.

The Count, who’d always preferred to pay for a shot of rum for a drunk than give a cigarette to a beggar, reflected for a moment and told himself he liked the dignified way the old man had made his request. The nails of the hand awaiting the cigarette were pink and clean.

“Here you are, granddad.”

“Thanks, son. So we’ve got wreathes today, have we?”

“Yes, quite a lot,” agreed the Count as the old guy lit up. “Do you come here often?”

The old man lifted up his can of coffee.

“I buy five reales worth of coffee and it keeps me going to night-time. Who died today? He must be a bigwig. There aren’t usually so many flowers,” he said, lowering his voice as if to confide a secret. “The fact is flowers are in short supply and that’s why wreathes are too and sometimes there’s such a dearth I’ve seen loads of wakes without flowers. Not that it bothers me, not likely. When I die, I’m not worried if I get flowers or cow shit. The guy who died today was a high up, wasn’t he?”

“Not really,” allowed the Count.

“Well, that’s beside the point as well, he’s fucked, the poor chap. Thanks for the smoke,” said the old man, back to his usual tone, as he continued his descent.