Havana Bay

'I'm with Walls because he can help me, I admit. If I were a real whore, though, I'd learn Italian. Russian is no use at all.'

'Maybe you're a little hard on yourself.'

'If I were hard on myself, I'd cut my throat.'

'Don't do that.'

'Why not?'

'I've noticed that few people are good at cutting their own throat.'

'Interesting. A Cuban man would have said, 'Oh, but it's such a pretty throat.' Everything with them leads to sex, even suicide. That's why I like Russians, because with them suicide is suicide.'

'Our talent.'

Isabel looked thoughtfully aside. She had the emaciated allure of a Picasso, he thought. Blue Period. Wonderful, the two most depressed people in the house had connected like magnets. He caught Walls's anxious glances in their direction. At the same time he noticed that Luna remained by the door.

'How long are you going to be in Havana?' Isabel asked.

'A week, then back to Moscow.'

'Is it snowing there now?' She rubbed her arms as if imagining them cool.

'I'm sure it is. Your Russian is extraordinarily good.'

'Yes? Well, in my family Moscow was like Rome to Catholics, and, before the Special Period, to speak Russian was useful. Are you a spy like Sergei?'

'It seems to have been a great secret. No.'

'Claro, he isn't a very good spy. He says if they needed a good agent in Havana they never would have sent him. He was going to help me get to Moscow and from there, of course, I could go anywhere. Maybe you can help me.' She scribbled an address on a piece of paper and gave it to him.» We will talk tomorrow morning. Can you come just at that time?'

Before Arkady could beg off, Walls joined them.» You're missing everything,' he told Isabel.

'I wish I could,' she said.» We were talking about Sergei.'

'Were you?' he asked Arkady.» Where is the good comrade?'

'A good question.'

Shouts erupted in the living room, and a moment later Hedy rushed past them through the hall. The santero and the Canadian followed.

'Oh, no,' Walls said.» I didn't mean this real.'

'What do you mean?' Arkady asked.

'She's possessed.'

Isabel was unfazed.» It happens all the time. This whole island is possessed.'

The backyard was dark, but Hedy had kicked over the soup cauldron and spun on the coals as sparks nested in her hair. She swung out of the fire, her spandex dulled by ashes, golden hair pulled into tufts, while the santero ran after, trying to pull something invisible from her body. The Canadian looked ready to retreat to someplace tame and far away. As Luna burst into the yard the santero spread his arms helplessly and put Hedy between himself and Luna.

Erasmo squeezed his chair through and told Arkady, 'Luna says he is going to kill the santero if he doesn't get the spirit out of Hedy. The santero says he can't.'

'Maybe he should try again.' Arkady saw the ice pick in Luna's hand.

As Luna yanked Hedy aside, her halter strap broke and one breast spilled out like a loose eye. Luna seized the santero by the neck and bent him belly-up between the trees. The Canadian bolted through the crowd as it poured into the yard and pushed Arkady forward. No one else moved except Abuelita, who shoveled her hands into the fire, rose to her toes and poured a bright stream of live coals over Luna's back. As Luna wheeled on her Arkady caught the sergeant's wrist, which was like grabbing the iron wheel of a locomotive, bent it back and up in the 'come along' grip as taught to the Moscow militia and ran Luna headfirst into the wall. Luna bounced off, leaving a pink imprint on the cement. Blood ruby-spotted his white shoes.

Arkady decided he had not swung the sergeant hard enough.

'Now you're fucked de verdad.' Luna wasn't even breathing hard, he'd barely started.

'Parate.' A small woman with a needle-sharp voice stepped in between. Since she was in a skimpy top and shorts and not a PNR uniform, it took Arkady a moment to recognize his new colleague, Detective Oso-rio. Where she had come from and how long she had been taking in the scene with her grim little gaze he didn't know. A straw bag hung from one hand and in the other was a Makarov 9-mm. He recognized the gun right away. She didn't raise it or aim it, but it was there. Luna recognized the gun, too. He lifted his hands to signify not surrender or shyness but an awareness of growing complications, his own duties as an officer, and that he was done only for the time being.

'Truly fucked,' Luna told Arkady on his way out.

'You okay?' Walls asked Arkady.» I'm sorry about this. Typical Cuban party. Too many spirits in one place. Now you'll have to excuse me, my investor has a head start.'

Abuelita dusted ashes from her palms. In the middle of the yard Hedy looked down at her torn halter and the dirt on her shiny shorts and burst into tears. Arkady went into the house to look for Mongo and the drummers, but they had all left. Osorio followed him with an expression that said fools were multiplying.

Chapter Ten

While he and Osorio put Erasmo to bed Arkady looked around at what the mechanic afforded himself for living quarters: a small space enlarged by the fact that his cot, counter, table and chairs were all cut to half height. On a pillow of gold African cloth was a collection of military medals and campaign ribbons. The photographs on the wall reflected more glory than Erasmo had let on. A hospital-bed scene of Erasmo being visited by two men in military fatigues-a tall, swarthy man in aviator glasses who would have passed as Armenian in Russia, the other older with a full gray beard and wiry brows, unique and unmistakable, the Comandante himself. Neither man wore officer's insignia on his cap or shoulders; this was, after all, an egalitarian army. Castro was as puffed with pride as a father. The second visitor seemed to focus more ruefully on Erasmo's shortness of limb.

'The Cuban general in Angola,' Osorio said.

Another picture showed the same distinguished friends on the deck of a fishing boat, this time with Erasmo strapped into the fighting chair. Family pictures displayed friendly, affluent men and women at swimming pools, bridge tables, dancing. Or children on baseball fields, bicycles, ponies. And the entire family in formal suits and ballroom gowns at champagne receptions and Christmas parties. In one wide photomontage they and hundreds more like them spread up and down the grand double stairway of a white mansion.

'He'll sleep a long time,' Osorio said.

' 'Unconscious' is the word.'

Just as Luna had been the last man Arkady wanted to encounter, the last place he'd expected to see again was Pribluda's apartment, but at Osorio's insistence he climbed the steps with her. Although he thought he had tidied up fairly well, as soon as he turned on the light the detective noticed a difference.

'Dried blood on the carpet. What happened here?'

'You don't know? You work with Luna and Arcos.'

'Only for this case because Russians are involved.'

'You weren't surprised to see the sergeant come after me with an ice pick?'

'All I saw was you throwing him into a wall.'

'It's a tense relationship. After all, he did beat me with a baseball bat. I think it was a baseball bat, he said it was.'

'He hit you?'

'You know nothing about that?'

'This is a serious charge.'

'Other places, not here. Here, my experience is, not much is investigated.'

'As a matter of fact,' Osorio said, 'I did ask your friend, Erasmo, before he passed out, what happened to you.