Hard Currency

the law, there is you.”

“He will kill again,” Odom said. “And again.”

“Until we catch you,” said Karpo. “I can talk to you no more. I have work to do, work that is more important than you. I need rest.”

“More impor-What is more important than what Tahpor has done?” Odom said in disbelief.

“You do not merit an answer. You are Case 341.”

Yevgeny Odom hung up the phone and fell back against the kiosk. His hands were trembling. His cheeks were cold and he was truly afraid.

THIRTEEN

“Did you believe Hector?” asked Javier, looking back at Porfiry Petrovich as George drove them through the dark night.

“I believe,” said Rostnikov.

“And?” asked Javier.

“I believe that he is telling the truth as he experienced it,” said Rostnikov, looking out of the window. He was still clutching the bottle of rum George had given him. “I believe that the truth may have been altered so that he could experience it according to someone’s plans.”

“Yes, I see,” said Javier, biting his lower lip. “You think maybe I killed Maria Fernandez or had someone do it for me and then got rid of the ladder when Hector came and then put it back after he left and …”

“It is unlikely,” Rostnikov admitted.

There was silence for a minute or two before Rostnikov said, “At night your apartment buildings look like those of Moscow. For a moment, I had the sense that I was dreaming.”

“The same people who built your apartments for Stalin came over here and built ours,” said Javier, glancing out the window at the massive gray high rises set back from the street down which they were bouncing over mounds of gravel and forgotten potholes.

“I did not kill her,” Javier said.

The car clattered dreamily into a neighborhood of narrow streets and old two-story houses. The houses were dark, though here and there groups of men and women could be seen watching as the car passed. The people here were almost all black.

Rostnikov felt himself dozing as they drove into a neighborhood of one-story homes. By the light of the moon he could see that all of the houses were badly in need of repair and paint.

The car suddenly pulled over a low curb with a jolt that shot Rostnikov forward. His leg hit the seat in front of him, and his dreams went flying. The car stopped and Javier stepped out.

“Here,” said George over his shoulder as he too stepped out of the car.

Rostnikov joined them and found himself in front of a one-story once-white house. The lawn was a stretch of gray dirt, and a light shone through the first window they approached. There were voices within the building, perhaps the hushed sound of music.

Holding the bottle of rum, Rostnikov followed Javier and George down a narrow stone path around the side of the house. In spite of the hour, two old women sat on tree stumps in the yard as the three men passed. They neither paused nor looked up from their conversation. To his right, through the open window of the first room, a young black man lay on a bed. He wore a pair of faded pants and no shirt. His body was lean and muscular and on his knees was a very small child in a dress trying to keep from laughing by pushing her tiny fist in her mouth.

The path curved around a thick-based, gnarled tree whose roots had long ago lifted the stones on which Rostnikov walked.

“Here,” said Javier. He opened a door and stood back so Rostnikov could enter.

The room he found himself in was not large, about the size of the living room-kitchen of his two-room apartment in Moscow. The floors were ancient red terrazzo and the walls faded white stucco. Low, unmatched wood benches ringed the room against the walls. A handsome, light-skinned woman, perhaps in her fifties, sat in a small wicker chair in a corner. She held a bowl on her lap in which she was mashing a mustard-colored paste with her fingers. She wore a colorful dress that reminded Rostnikov of Africa. She looked up at Rostnikov, smiled, and returned to her work. In the center of the room was a white, peeling wicker chair; on it sat the man Porfiry Petrovich recognized as the bass player at La Floridita.

The man had clearly not dressed to impress his visitor. He was wearing a pair of frayed blue denim pants and a sleeveless undershirt. From the corner of his mouth a seemingly lifeless cigarette drooped. The man, whose hair was cut short and was steely white, looked older than he had on the platform of the restaurant. He was barefoot.

Rostnikov stepped forward toward the seated man and handed him the bottle of rum, as he had been told to do by George. The babalau nodded almost imperceptibly as he watched Rostnikov’s eyes. Javier stepped forward and took the bottle. A young woman, a beautiful light-skinned woman in an African- style dress of yellow and brown, her head turbaned, entered through a maroon drape in the far corner of the room. The rum bottle was passed to her and she exited quickly and gracefully.

The babalau said, “Siéntese, por favor.” He held out his right hand, palm up, toward the bench nearest the door through which Rostnikov had entered. Rostnikov sat, his left leg extended, and George sat next to him.

Javier went through the maroon drapes and the babalau began to speak in Spanish.

“He says,” George translated, “you should consider moving to Cuba before the earth shakes and the men who have ruled for the blink of Chango’s left eye are gone. After they are gone, it will be difficult for a Russian to move here.”

“Why should I move to Cuba?” Rostnikov asked, and Manuel began to speak before George translated.

“He says your leg, your wife, and your children,” George translated.

“I have only one child,” Rostnikov said.

Manuel spoke again and George translated.

“You have two girls in your house.”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov.

Manuel spoke again.

“The babalau has many children. His wife has been fruitful.”

The beautiful girl in the yellow-and-brown dress came back through the maroon curtain carrying a metal tray with two glasses and the bottle of rum Rostnikov had brought. The glasses were common kitchen glasses much like the ones in his hotel room in the El Presidente Hotel. They were filled with rum. The girl with the tray bowed before the babalau, who took one glass; then she moved to Rostnikov, who took the other. Both men drank deeply. Although Rostnikov was not particularly fond of rum, this was good rum and the setting felt appropriate for its thick amber strength.

The curtain parted and people filed in. Rostnikov was aware of girls in African dresses and turbans, and shirtless young men with lean powerful bodies, including the young man Rostnikov had seen through the window playing with the baby. Two of the young women were carrying babies. A boy and a girl of five or six came in holding hands and sat together near the curtain. Javier entered and stood behind his father’s chair, his arms folded. He had changed his clothes and wore a loose-fitting red shirt. Finally, an ancient woman came through the curtain, her dress a mad rainbow of colors. The young people parted and the woman moved to a bench in the corner. The woman with the bowl had stopped mashing her mixture and was wiping her hands on a towel a girl had handed her.

The babalau spoke again, and George said, “These are his children and the wives and husbands of his married children and these are some of his grandchildren. Behind his wife is his mother, who has powers of the eye and mind.”

Rostnikov watched as the ancient woman scooped up a child who had waddled across the floor into her