Havana Bay

The sergeant looked toward the carrel.

'What were you looking for?'

'Nothing.'

'Maybe something I can help you with?'

'No.'

The sergeant didn't move. He made her press by his arm as if it were a line that would define just where she stood.

Chapter Seventeen

Arkady's route to Chinatown passed by the aquarium stillness of deserted department stores, a perfumeria window with nothing to display but a can of mosquito repellent, the staff of a jewelry store with elbows glued to empty cases, but around the corner of Calle Rayo, life: red lanterns, a roasted whole pig, fried plantain and fried batter, mounds of oranges, lemons, coral peppers, black tubers cut to white flesh, green tomatoes in papery cowls, avocados and tropical fruit for which Arkady had no name, although he understood by the dollar signs that this market in the very center of Central Havana was for private vendors. Flies spun dizzily in sweet smells of ripening pineapple and banana. Salsa from a hanging radio vied with tapes of wistful Cantonese five-tone scale and customers with obscured but still-discernible Chinese features drilled vendors with Cuban Spanish. At a corner stall a butcher chopped a cow skull open, and a cotton-candy vendor with her hair festooned in blue, sugary wisps that rose from a tub read Arkady's note and pointed to a walk-up with the sign

KARATE CUBANO.

Arkady had come in a rush. He had gone from the Chinese Cemetery to Pribluda's flat and from there to Chinatown because his mind was finally functioning.

Abuelita, the eyes of the CDR, had said that on Thursday afternoons Pribluda left the Malecon with his ugly plastic Cuban briefcase. The girl Carmen had claimed that Thursdays were when Uncle Sergei practiced karate. According to his own spreadsheet, Thursday was the day of Pribluda's unexplained hundred-dollar expenditure. Didn't it all fit together? Wasn't it possible that every Thursday, carrying in a common Cuban briefcase not a black belt but an envelope stuffed with money, the spy Sergei Pribluda had met his 'Chinese contact' at a karate dojo in Havana's Chinatown? Most likely the colonel kept a sweatsuit or karate gear in a dojo locker, reason enough for him to stop in the changing room, where, as Arkady imagined it, not a word to the contact had to be said, not if he had a similar briefcase. The two briefcases could be switched in a moment, and the anonymous contact would be headed down the stairs before Pribluda untied his shoes to practice those deadly kicks he showed to Carmen. The entire business would be swift, silent and professional. Arkady had the briefcase and this was Thursday.

The only problem was that when Arkady ran gasping up the stairs the door where the dojo was supposed to be now read evita-el salon nuevo de belleza. Inside, two women wearing masks of blue mud reposed in barber chairs even as workmen bolted a third chair to the floor. Arkady retreated to the market and went through the process with the same piece of paper and received the same misinformation.

At a Chinese restaurant where no one was Chinese and egg rolls came with a dab of ketchup Arkady found a waiter who spoke enough English to say that there were no more dojos in Chinatown, although there were maybe twenty in the city. Four more days. He should call Pribluda's son in case the boy wanted to meet the plane, assuming the boy could leave his pizza ovens for a few hours. Then Arkady had no plans. He had run out. He had the clear eye of a man who had no plans at all.

Well, there was the picture of Pribluda he was supposed to be finding, but for a moment Arkady had thought he'd caught sight of Pribluda's ghost slipping between bright mounds of exotic fruit. The walls of the restaurant were bordello red and had the usual picture of Che Guevara looking so much like Christ in a beret it was unearthly. Arkady had noticed simply while walking through the streets and passing open windows that people hung more portraits of Che than of Fidel, although Che's very martyrdom seemed to validate Fidel. But martyrs had the advantage of staying romantically young, whereas Fidel, the survivor, came framed in two ages: the passionate revolutionary with index finger stabbing each oratorical point and the graybeard lost in haunted reflection.

Arkady felt haunted by stupidity. It had been exciting for a moment to believe in his revived powers of deduction, like finding an old steam engine in a derelict factory and thinking that a match held under the boiler would bring the pistons back to life. No churning pistons here, he thought. Thank God, Detective Osorio hadn't been around to witness the fiasco.

On his way from the restaurant he pushed through the market and skirted a group of boys pummeling one another outside a theater. It was a shabby corner cinema painted Chinese red with pagoda-style eaves and a poster that showed a karate master in midair. The title of the film was in Chinese and Spanish, and in parentheses at the bottom of the poster in English, 'Fists of Fear!'. Arkady remembered the ticket stub in Pribluda's pants. That was what Carmen had been trying to ask him, not 'Did you see? Fists of fear!' but 'Did you see Fists of Fear!?' He joined the line at the box office, paid four pesos for a ticket and climbed the red steps into the dark.

The interior was aromatic of cigarettes, joss sticks, beer. The seats were bald and taped. Arkady sat in the last row, the better to see the rest of the audience, rows of heads that bobbed and howled appreciatively for a film that had already started and seemed to involve a studious young monk defending his sister from Hong Kong gangsters. The dialogue was Chinese with subtitles in another form of Chinese, not even Spanish; the laughing of the actors was hideous, and every kick sounded like a melon being split. Arkady had barely stood the briefcase on his lap before he was joined in the next seat by a small, sharp-nosed man with glasses and a similar briefcase.

A whisper in Russian.» Are you from Sergei?'

'Yes.'

'Where have you been? Where has he been? I was here all day last week and I've seen this film once already today.'

'How long has this film been playing here?'

'A month.'

'Sorry.'

'I would think so. I'm the one who's taking all the chances. And this film is for cretins. It's bad enough I'm doing this, but to treat me this way.'

'It's not right.'

'It's debasing. You can pass that on to Sergei.'

'Whose idea was it?'

'To meet here? It was my idea, but I didn't intend to pass whole days here. They must think I'm a pervert.' On the screen the gangster chief pulled on a glove equipped with a power drill and demonstrated it on a luckless henchman.» Actually, in the old days this was the best porno theater in Havana.'

'What happened when they switched to karate films?'

'We brought our girlfriends and screwed. The Chinese never paid attention to what we did.'

It was dark, and Arkady didn't want to examine his companion too obviously, but what he could see sideways was a bureaucrat in his sixties with a gray mustache, eyes bright as a bird's.

'So you have spent a lot of time here.'

'I suffer from a certain personal history. Surprised to see Chinese in Cuba?'

'Yes.'

'Brought in when the slave trade closed. There's no smoking,' the man said to explain why he was cupping his cigarette. He switched briefcases and, using the cigarette as a little lamp, dipped his head into the one he'd taken from Arkady to count the money, the same hundred-dollar expenditure Pribluda had paid every week.» You understand, I am under extraordinary pressure. If I had known what buying a car would entail, I never would have agreed to any of this.'

'You can buy a car?'

'Used, of course. '55 Chevrolet. Original leather.' On the screen, gangsters marched into a studio where the girl had just finished sculpting a dove in white marble. As they broke off the statue's wings her brother flew