Havana Bay

that when man-sized dolls started walking around it was time for him to go, too, and camp at the embassy whether he was welcome or not. Or the airport. Moscow's airports, for instance, were full of people going absolutely nowhere.

Arkady put on his precious coat with the phone list and picture in one pocket and keys and knife in the other, and cleared the chair and bag of cans from the door. He still had Pribluda's car key. Who knew, he might be able to drive. As he tottered down, the stairs pulsated underfoot.

From the street door he saw the girls and the two PNRs bantering and posturing. Behind them the Cuban sky was gold edged in blue, more mixed day and night than a simple sunset. As a car limped by, my God, a two-seater Zaporozhets belching black smoke, Arkady slipped out into the long shadow of the arcade.

Chapter Eight

Wearing a cherry-red halter and denim shorts with a Minnie Mouse patch on a back pocket, Ofelia sat in an aquamarine '55 DeSoto outside the Casa de Amor and asked herself: Was it cigar fumes? Something in the rum? The two spoonfuls of sugar in cafe cubano that made men crazy? If she saw one more young Cuban girl on the arm of one more fat, balding, lisping Spanish tourist, Ofelia would kill.

She'd pulled enough of them in. Some were family men who had never before been unfaithful but suddenly found it unnatural to spend a week in Havana without a chica. More were the sort of human slugs who came for Cuban girls, as before they had traveled to Bangkok or Manila. It wasn't white slavery anymore, it was sex tourism. More efficient. And it wasn't white, anyway. What tourists in Cuba wanted were mulatas or negritas. The more northern the European, the more guaranteed that he was after the experience of a black girl.

The Casa de Amor was originally a motel, ten units with patios and sliding aluminum doors around a swimming pool. A heavyset woman in a housedress read a paperback in a metal chair on a lawn that had been paved over and painted green. In the office was a register and selections of condoms, beer, rum, Tropicola. The tip-off that something wrong was going on was that the pool water was clean. That was for tourists.

Traffic went in and out. At this point Ofelia was expert at telling a German (pink) from an Englishman (sallow) from a Frenchman (safari shorts), but what she was waiting for was a Cuban uniform. The law was useless. Cuban law excused a man for making sexual advances, assuming it was a masculine given, and put the burden of proof on Ofelia to prove that the girl initiated the approach. Now, any Cuban female over the age of ten knew how to incite a male into making the first overt proposal. A Cuban girl could make Saint Jerome make the first advance.

The police were worse than useless, they preyed on the girls, demanding money for letting them into hotel lobbies, for wandering around the marina, for allowing them to take tourists to places like the Casa de Amor, which was supposed to be for conjugal activities between Cuban couples who couldn't find sufficient privacy at home. Well, jineteras had the same problem and could pay more.

Traffic went in and out the office, the girls steering in their clients like little tugboats. Ofelia let them go. Someone in authority had arranged matters at the Casa de Amor, and what Ofelia wanted more than anything else was for some sleazy PNR commander to check his operation, see her in the car and invite her to join his string. A badge and gun rested in her straw bag. The look on his face when she brought them out? Vaya.

Sometimes Ofelia felt it was her against the world.

This one feeble little campaign of hers against an industry that was nearly official. The Ministry of Tourism discouraged any real crackdown on jineteras as a threat to Cuba's economic future. If they deplored prostitution, why did they always add that Cuba's were the most beautiful, healthiest prostitutes in the world?

The week before, she had picked up a twelve-year-old jinetera in the Plaza de Armas. One year older than Muriel. That was the future?

She hadn't given Renko a lot of thought until she gave up surveillance at the end of the day and visited the IML to check whether the dead Russian was tagged for transport and, when she found the body wasn't, looked for Bias. She found the director working at a laboratory counter.

'I'm looking into something,' Bias said.» I am not investigating, but you made such a point about the syringe I think you especially will be interested.'

His instrument was a camcorder modified to fit onto a microscope. The microscope eyepiece had been removed so that the camera could focus directly on a grayish paste spread on a specimen slide. A cable led from the camcorder to a video monitor. On its screen was a magnified version of the paste with gradations in color that ran from tarry black to chalk white. In front of the monitor was an embalming syringe.

'Rufo's needle?' Ofelia asked.

'Yes, the syringe stolen from here, from my own laboratory, and found in the hand of Rufo Pinero. Embarrassing but also informative because the tissue packed into a needle shaft, you know, is a core sample as good as a biopsy.'

'You squeezed it out?'

'For curiosity's sake. Because we are scientists,' Bias said as he moved the slide in minute increments under the camera.» Working backward: brain tissue, blood corresponding to Rufo's blood type, bone, cocheal material from the inner ear, skin and more blood and skin. What's interesting is the last blood, which actually would have been the first blood in the needle shaft. Tell me what you see.'

The screen was a stew of cells, larger ones solid red, the smaller cells with white centers.

'Blood cells.'

'Look again.'

With Bias you always learned, she thought. On the second look, many of the red cells seemed crushed or exploded like overripe pomegranates.» There is something wrong with them. A disease?'

'No. What you see,' he told her, 'is a battlefront, a battlefront of whole blood cells, fragments of blood cells and clumps of antibodies. This blood is hemolyzed, it is at war.'

'With itself?'

'No, this is a war that only occurs when two different blood types come into contact. Pinero's and...?'

'Renko's?'

'Most likely. I'd love to have a sample from the Russian.'

'He says he wasn't touched.'

'I say otherwise.' He was definite, and she knew that when Bias was definite he was almost always right.

'Will you test for drugs?' she asked.

'No need. You weren't at the autopsy, but I can tell you that on Rufo's arm are the tracks of old injections. Do you know how much a new syringe is worth to a user? This proves Rufo had two weapons.'

'But Renko is alive and Rufo is dead.'

'I admit that is the baffling part.'

Ofelia thought of the cut in Renko's coat. That was from the knife. Why wouldn't the Russian mention a wound from the needle?

Bias had registered the fact that she was still in her shorts and halter, black curls shining, a glow on her brown skin.» You know, there is a meeting next month in Madrid I have to attend. I could use someone to help with the projector and charts. Have you ever been to Spain?'

The doctor was popular with the women on his staff. In fact, an invitation to accompany him to an international conference on pathology was one of the prizes of the institute. He was admired, sometimes awe- inspiring, connected to the highest government elite, and all Ofelia could really say against him was that his lower lip, nested in his trim beard, was always wet. Somehow that was enough.

'It sounds nice but I have to help take care of my mother.'

'Detective Osorio, I've asked you to two conferences now. Both important, both in fascinating places. You always say you have to take care of your mother.'

'She's so frail.'

'Well, I hope she gets well.'

'Thank you.'