Havana Bay

Saturdays, he shopped at the Diplomercado, because he always found a little something for me. Chocolates or gin. A kind man. Sundays, he went fishing with Mongo off the seawall or tied inner tubes to the car to drive somewhere else.'

'You're very observant.'

'Is my duty. I am the CDR.'

'Thursday was his busy day?'

'Oh, yes.' Her eyes and her smile widened.

He was aware of missing an insinuation but he pressed on.

'Besides his extra trip, did anything else make his Thursdays different?'

'Well, he took the other briefcase.'

''Other'?'

'The nasty green plastic one. Cuban.'

'Just that day?'

'Yes.'

'When was the last time you saw him?'

'I'd have to think. Hijo, let me think.'

Arkady may have been confused but he was not stupid.» What is the money in the crown for?'

'Offerings from people who want spiritual advice, to cast the shells or read cards.'

'I need advice about Pribluda.' He added five dollars to the crown.» It doesn't have to be spiritual.'

Abuelita concentrated.» Now that I think about it, maybe two Fridays ago was the last time? Yes. He left a little later than usual and came back a little earlier, around four.'

'Four in the afternoon?'

'In the afternoon. Then he left again around six. I remember because he changed into shorts. He always wore shorts when he went out with Mongo on the bay. But Mongo wasn't with him.'

Osorio was unable to contain herself.» See, everything points to Pribluda being the body.'

'So far.'

Arkady was pleased, too, because everybody had something. He had a version of Pribluda's final day. Osorio had her moment of triumph. Abuelita had five dollars.

Outside the day approached more as distinguishable shadow than as light. As Arkady and Osorio walked up the Malecon a huddled mass proved to be four PNRs stealing smokes. They approached Arkady out of curiosity until they registered Osorio's uniform and the detective gave them a heavy-lidded look that sent them stumbling in retreat. In her uniform and cap, heavy belt and holster, she constituted a small armored column, Arkady thought. Or a little tank with laser eyes.

In the entire harbor the only craft in motion was the Casablanca ferry approaching its Havana landing. The windows of the ferry burst into flame, and then, as the sun slid off, faces of morning commuters squinted through the glass. Churning through backwash the boat rubbed against a pier fendered in tires, and the instant a gangway was laid passengers emerged, some equipped with briefcases for a day at the office, others pushing bikes laden with sacks of coconuts and bananas, by a sign that asked distinguished users not to bring firearms on board and into the warming, yellowing day.

A countersurge of new riders pushed onto the boat, carrying Arkady and Osorio with them. The interior was set at pre-swelter, seats along the sides, bike riders to the rear, bars to hang from crisscrossing the ceiling. Arkady's coat drew stares. He didn't care.

'Do you love boats as much as I do?'

'No,' Osorio said.

'Sailboats, fishing boats, rowboats?'

'No.'

'Maybe it's a male characteristic. I think the appeal is the apparent irresponsibility of boats, the sense of floating anywhere, while the opposite is true. You have to work like a dog to keep from sinking.' Osorio gave him no response.» What is it? What's bothering you?'

'It is contrary to revolutionary law for a tourist to rent rooms. Abuelita should have reported him. He was hiding among the people because he was a spy.'

'If it's any comfort, I doubt that Pribluda ever passed as a Cuban. He wanted a view of the water. I can understand that.'

The more Arkady saw of the harbor the more impressed he was by both its size and inactivity, a panorama of torpor: Havana's docks and cargo offices on one side and on the other Casablanca's verdant bluff with a pink weather station and a white statue of Christ. On the inner bay Arkady saw a few isolated freighters, a motionless herd of cargo cranes and the raw torch and smoke of refineries. Heading to sea was a black Cuban torpedo boat of humpback Russian design with automatic cannon on the rear deck. He noticed Osorio studying his head.

'How do I look?'

'Ripe. Your embassy should lock you up.'

'I'm safe with you.'

'The only reason I'm with you is because you want to go to Casablanca and you don't speak a word of Spanish. Viejo, I have other things to do.'

'Well, I'm certainly enjoying myself.'

The village of Casablanca looked as if it had started at the top of its hill at Christ's feet and then rolled down to the water's edge, piling shanties of cinder block and sheet steel on top of more dignified colonial houses. Scarlet bougainvillea tumbled over walls and the air warmed with the sticky smell of jasmine. From the ferry landing, Arkady and Osorio climbed up to a depot for trolleys equipped with cow catchers for rural duty. They walked a main street with shutters closed against the morning heat, including the closed door and boarded-up windows of a tiny PNR station, and down the remains of a circular stairway to a park of weeds, a cement curb, a panorama of the bay and the tar-black water and pilings, refuse and cans where the neumatico had been found three days before.

The scene was different in the daytime, without klieg lights, a crowd, music and Captain Arcos shouting urgent misdirections. The sun picked out the details of a waterfront row of elegant houses so gutted they looked like Greek temples gone to ruin, and defined just how flimsy was the dock that reached over the water to a half-dozen fishing boats. The craft all had long poles raised like antennae and 'Casablanca' bravely painted on the stern in case they set out for the larger world.

'This is where he ended up, not where he started. There's nothing to find,' Osorio said.

The dock disappeared behind a barricade to a shack Arkady hadn't noticed at all on his first visit. He went around to a back gate that opened to a yard that could have been on Devil's Island. An indiscriminate variety of wrecks and boats with patchwork hulls sat hauled up amid sleeping cats. A dog barked from a deck. Two men stripped to the waist straightened a propeller shaft while at their feet hens scratched for corn. Here was self- reliance, a boatyard that could run .up a stout little vessel out of flotsam and supply eggs, besides. The two men kept their faces turned away, but maybe that was the effect of Osorio's cast-iron glare, Arkady thought. The Noah of this yard emerged from the dark of the shack. His name was Andres; he wore a captain's cap tipped confidently forward, and he produced what sounded like florid explanations before they were trimmed by Osorio.

The boat being repaired, he said, was built in Spain, used as an auxiliary of a freighter, declared technologically obsolete and sold to Cuba for scrap. That was twenty years ago. Arkady suspected that suggestions of smuggling and storms at sea were lost in the translation. Osorio was different from other Cubans, who registered every emotion with a sweeping emotional needle. Oso-rio's needle never budged.

'Has Andres heard about the body found here?'

'He says that's all they talk about. He wonders why we came back.'

'Did they find anything else in the water where the neumatico was found?'

'He says no.'

'Does he have a chart of the bay?' Arkady picked his way to the dock around mounds of cans and bottles salvaged from the water and stinking of slime.

'I told you before, the body just floated here. We don't have anything like a scene of the crime.'

'Actually, what I think we have is a very large scene of the crime.'

Andres returned with a chart that revealed as a channel that flowed between Havana the city and Morro