how deep the water was. An arcade of columns ran the length of the block, and he didn't emerge into faint, gassy light until he reached the lamp at the corner. He continued along the boulevard because its long curve against the sea simplified the problem of orientation.
Although he listened for the stir of a car or a footfall, all he heard was his own echo and the surge of the ocean on the other side of empty traffic lanes. On the way he passed a mural of Castro painted up the side of a three-story building. The figure appeared to be a giant walking through his city, his head obscured in the dark above streetlamp level, wearing his characteristic military fatigues, legs in mid-stride, right hand tossing a salute toward an unseen someone vowing
Six blocks on was a dark hotel front and a taxi, the driver's head cradled on the steering wheel. Arkady shook the man and, when one eye squinted open, held up Rufo's address and a five-dollar bill.
Arkady sat up front as the taxi flew like a bat through the blackout, the driver yawning the entire way as if nothing short of a collision was worth waking up for, slowing only when mounds of urban rubble loomed in the headlights. Rufo's address was stenciled on the front of a low, windowless house on a narrow street. The cab fumbled away while, with Rufo's lighter, Arkady found the right key; when he had taken the house key off the dead man before calling the PNR Arkady noticed how like his own house key Rufo's was, a Russian design with a star stamped on the grip, no doubt a souvenir of socialist commerce. It did occur to him that if Detective Osorio had tried to enter with the keys he had left on Rufo she was frustrated and annoyed.
The door opened to a room narrow enough to make claustrophobia creep up his back. He walked the lighter flame between an unmade daybed and a low table with a ceramic ashtray-and-nude and a stack of TV and stereo, tape deck and VCR. A minibar looked ripped out of a hotel suite. A pedestal sink was lined with minoxidil, vitamins and aspirin. An armoire held, besides clothes, boxes of Nike and New Balance running shoes, cigar boxes, a library of videotapes and copies of Windows '95, a regular emporium. He opened a door to glimpse a filthy toilet, ducked back into the room and moved more slowly. Tacked to the walls were newspaper articles headlined gran exito de equipo cubano and, over a photo of a young world-beating Rufo raising his boxing gloves, pinero triunfa en ussr! Framed pictures showed groups of men in team jackets in Red Square, at Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower. Arkady turned the photos and copied names he found on the back. Names and numbers were also scribbled on the wall by the bed.
Daysi 32-2007
Susy 30-4031
Vi. Aflt. 2300
Kid Choc. 5/1
Vi. HYC 2200 Angola
The only sense Arkady could make of the list was that he had been the visitor arriving on Aeroflot at 2300 hours, eleven at night, and that there seemed to be another visitor from Angola due at almost the same late hour. Anyway, the list was a lot of phone numbers for a room with no phone or phone jack. Arkady remembered that Rufo had had a cell phone when they met at the airport, although when Arkady had searched Rufo's body later, the phone was gone.
On a hook hung an elegant, ivory-colored straw hat with 'Made in Panama' and the initials RPP stamped on the sweatband. He searched the bureau, felt under the pillow and mattress, flipped through videos that all seemed to be boxing films or porn for more personal labels. The minibar held airline nuts and healthful bottles of Evian. There was no sign of any visit by Luna or Osorio, no fingerprint dust of burned palm fronds,
Most important, he found no reason for Rufo to try to kill him. Rufo had put some planning into the attack. The running suit made sense for the same reason painters wore coveralls, and he felt that the same thought had registered with Osorio. But why bother killing someone who would be gone from the scene in a matter of hours? Was Rufo after something or was it simply open season on Russians in Havana?
As he stepped outside, the light of dawn showed next to the apartment a scarred wall in bullfight red that said gimnasio atares. At the curb in a PNR sedan was Detective Osorio. She fixed her eyes on Arkady long enough to make him squirm before she put out her hand.» The key.'
'Sorry.' Arkady fished in his pocket and gave her the key to his apartment in Moscow. He could always break into his own home if need be.
'Get in the car,' Osorio said.» I would like to lock you into a cell but Dr. Bias wants to talk to you.'
With his trimmed beard and whiff of carbolic soap, Dr. Bias was the Pluto of a personal, genial underworld, welcoming Arkady back to the Institute de Medicina Legal and praising Osorio.
'Our Ofelia is very intelligent. If Hamlet had an Ofelia half as smart he would have solved the murder of his father the king in short order. Of course, they wouldn't have had much of a play.' Two young women in snug IML T-shirts walked by in the corridor; the doctor's eyes approved.» We were trained by the FBI in Washington and Quantico until the Revolution, then by the Russians and Germans. But I like to think we have our own style. Your problem, Renko, is that you have no confidence in us. I noticed that the first time you were here.'
'Is that it?' Arkady asked.
He thought his problem was that Rufo had tried to kill him, but the director seemed to have a bigger picture. They walked by a glass case with two head shots of men with slack mouths and closed eyes.
'Missing persons and unidentified dead. For the public to see.' Bias picked up his thread.» When you think of Cuba you think of a Caribbean island, a place like Haiti, a country like Nicaragua. When we say, for example, we have identified a body as a Russian, you wonder how good is that identification, how qualified are these people who are telling me to accept this body and take it home? When you see a body retrieved from the water the way dogs play with bones, you question how careful the police work is. That is why you stole Rufo's key and went to his room on your own. I go to international conferences all the time and I meet people who don't know Cuba and have the same misgivings. So, let me tell you something about myself. I have a medical degree from the University of Havana with a specialty in pathology. I have studied at the Superior School of Investigation in Volgograd, in Leipzig and Berlin. Last year I lectured at Interpol conferences in Toronto and Mexico City. So, you have not been dropped off the end of the earth. Some enemies of Cuba want to isolate us, but we are not isolated. The international aspect of crime does not allow us to be isolated. I will not allow it.'
They passed a handcuffed man in a chair. He lifted a face of old scars and fresh bruises.
'Waiting for his psychological evaluation,' Bias explained.» We have other experts in forensic biology, dentistry, toxicology, immunology. A Russian might find this hard to believe. You used to be the teacher and we used to be the students. Now we are the teachers in Africa, Central America, Asia. Our Ofelia'-Bias nodded to Osorio, who had been gliding along modestly- 'has taught in Vietnam. There is no ignorance here. I will not allow it. As a result, I am pleased to say that Havana has the lowest rate of unsolved homicides of any capital city in the world. So when I say who a body is, that's who he is. But Detective Osorio tells me that you are again hesitant about the identification of Colonel Pribluda.'
'He is reacting to the attack on himself,' she said.
'My reaction has probably been colored by that,' Arkady conceded.» Or finding Pribluda dead. Or jet lag.' '
Bias said, 'You have a week more here. You will adjust. It was very enterprising of you to go to Rufo's. Ofelia said you might. She's intuitive, I think.'
'I think so, too,' Arkady said.
'If what you say is true, Rufo inadvertently killed himself by his own hand during a brief, violent struggle?'
'Accidental suicide.'
'Very much so. But that does not answer the question of
'Between us, I'm troubled too.'
Bias stopped at the head of a stairway from which rose a sour coolness like the odor of spoiled milk.» The nature of the attack with a knife
'I went to the rest room once. He could have taken it then.'
'Yes, you're right. Well, it was probably that syringe, although I don't understand why a murderer would
