Havana Bay

'Fish tank. Nothing but dirty water and two catfish that never moved. Take a look at those clerks.'

At a counter with a register and scale were two women with whiskers who looked so much like those catfish that it was difficult for Ofelia to keep a straight face. There were four counters in the gloom of the bodega, each with a chalkboard that listed goods, prices, ration per person or family, and date available, the 'date available' clouded from many corrections.

'Tomatoes next week,' Ofelia said.» That's good news.'

Her mother exploded with a laugh.» My God, I've raised an idiot. There will be no tomatoes, no evaporated milk, no flour and maybe no beans or rice. This is a trap for morons. Hija, I know you are a brilliant detective, but thank God you have me to shop for you.'

A woman behind them hissed and warned, 'I will report this counterrevolutionary propaganda.'

'Piss off,' Ofelia's mother said.» I fought at Playa Giron. Where were you? Probably waving your tits at American bombers. I assume you had tits.'

Her mother was good at shutting people up. Playa Giron was what the rest of the world called the Bay of Pigs. Strangely enough, she actually had been in the army and shot an invader, although now she claimed she should have made him take her to Florida while she had a gun on him.

'I have a question,' Ofelia said.

'Please, I'm reading the board. Two cans of green peas per family for the month. They will be delicious, I'm sure. Sugar is available. You will know the end is near when no sugar is available.'

'About pickles.'

'I don't see pickles.'

'Where would I find them?' The Eastern Bloc had tried to unload bottled pickles in Cuba, but Ofelia hadn't seen them for years.

'Not here. In the free market you buy cucumbers and pickle them.'

'Different sizes?'

'A cucumber is a cucumber. Why would anyone want a small cucumber?' At the counter her mother made a show of having her book properly marked and announcing, 'You know, if you live on your rations you will enjoy a very balanced diet.'

'That's true,' one of the clerks was stupid enough to agree.

'Because you eat for two weeks and starve for two weeks.' Having delivered her torpedo, Ofelia's mother turned and sailed for the exit, leaving Ofelia to follow with the heavy sack and can of oil the length of the bodega while everyone stared.

When they reached the street her mother stumped toward home.

'You are impossible,' Ofelia said.

'I hope so. This island is driving me crazy.'

'This island is driving you crazy? You've never been off this island.'

'And it's driving me crazy. And having a daughter who's one of them.' Her mother had been stopped by the police for selling homemade cosmetics door to door. They'd let her go, of course, as soon as they learned Detective Osorio was her daughter.» Your uncle Manny wrote to say there is a rocking chair waiting on the porch for me in Miami.'

'With a drive-by shooting every night is what he wrote me.'

'In his new letter he says he could take Muriel and Marisol. He says they would love South Beach. We could all go and the girls could stay.'

'We are not going to talk about this.'

'They would knock Miami out. They're beautiful girls and they're light.'

That was always the insinuation her mother could twist like a knife, that Ofelia stood apart in the family by the deeper color of her skin, that Ofelia was different from her own daughters and, in reverse, a lifelong and

bitter disappointment to her mother. And Ofelia knew her mother could see the red heat in her cheek.

'They're staving with me. If you want to go to Miami, you can go.'

'I'm only saying, it's a new world. It probably doesn't involve a Russian.'

Arkady had Walls and O'Brien drop him off a couple of blocks short of the Malecon. Because he had the sense that Luna could leap over the seawall any second with an ice pick or machete once Arkady reached the boulevard, he stayed in the shadows of building columns until he reached an address with the tricolored banner of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, knocked at Abuelita's door and entered.

'Come in.'

Light squeezed through with him into the narrow confines of her room, to the statue of the shrouded, dark- skinned Virgin and her shimmering peacock feather. Scents of cigar and sandalwood tickled his nose. Abuelita sat before the Virgin and solemnly laid cards. Tarot? Arkady looked over the old woman's shoulder. Solitaire. Today she sported a pullover that said 'New York Stock Exchange.' Arkady noticed that the statue also wore something new, a yellow necklace like Osorio's.

'May I?'

'Go ahead.' When he touched the necklace beads Abuelita said, 'In Santeria this Virgin is also the spirit Oshun and her color is yellow, honey, gold. Oshun is a very sexy spirit.'

That hardly described Osorio, Arkady thought, but he didn't have time to delve into religious matters.

'I saw you leave this morning in that big white car, that chariot with wings,' Abuelita said.» The whole Malecon was looking at that.'

'Did you happen to notice any tall, black sergeant from Minint go in the building after I left?'

'No.'

'No one fitting that description carrying a machete or a baseball bat?' He added five dollars to the crown at the Virgin's feet.

Abuelita sighed and took the money out.» I know the man you mean. The one who arranged the Abakua. I was at my window like I always am, but the truth is, I fell asleep right there standing up. Sometimes my body gets old.'

Arkady put the money back.» Then I have another question. I still need a picture of Sergei Pribluda for the police and I'm looking for any close friends of his who might have one. No one here does, but the first time we met you mentioned that Sergei Pribluda was a man who shared his pickles. Yesterday I was at a market that sold vegetables, including cucumbers, but nothing like the homemade pickles in Pribluda's refrigerator. Because you're right, there's nothing like a Russian pickle. Did he have a special visitor?'

Abuelita spread her hand wide as a fan and hid her grin.» Now you're talking. There was one woman, a Russian, who came sometimes with a basket, sometimes not.'

'Could you describe her?'

'Oh, like a fat little dove. She came on Thursdays, sometimes alone, sometimes with a girl.'

Ofelia climbed a ladder to Hedy Infante's home, a platform built under the ceiling of a rococo foyer. The ten- by-ten loft held her cot, rack of dresses and stretch pants, electric bulb and candles, cosmetics and shoes, window with rope to a pail and view of the chandelier and, far below, a marble floor. The house had been built by a sugar magnate with a taste for froth, and the ceiling's swirls of white plasterwork evoked a sense of nesting in the clouds.

Hedy's interior decoration was just as fantastic, an interior of pictures she had clipped from magazines and taped to her walls, a handmade wallpaper of Los Van Van, Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan singing soulfully to a microphone, bathed in strobe lights, reaching out to fans. On one singer she had superimposed her own face, which reminded Ofelia of the real condition of Hedy's neck. The loft wasn't the sort of room a prostitute took a client, it was more her true, private place.

Private but violated by the little touches left by forensic technicians, police tape around the dresses, fingerprint powder on the mirror, the subtle disarray when men rather than women put things away. Hedy had collected hotel soaps, cutlery, coasters, made a seashell frame around a photograph of her quince, her fifteenth birthday party-the picture showed off the state-supplied frosted cake, beer and rum. In another photograph Hedy wore the blue ruffles and scarf of a devotee of Yemaya, the goddess of the seas, and, sure enough, on the wall was a statuette of Our Lady of Regla, spirit and saint being one and the same. A cigar box held snapshots of a variety of tourists with Hedy, toasting her with daiquiris or mojitos at