Havana Bay

Dressed in a pullover and jeans, she ladled rice to Muriel and beans to Marisol and an obscure, deep-fried gristle that her mother refused to identify. From the refrigerator she took a plastic Miranda soda bottle filled with chilled water.

'On the cooking show today they showed how to fry a steak from grapefruit skin,' her mother said.» They turned a grapefruit skin into steak. Isn't that amazing? This is a revolution that is more amazing all the time.'

'I'm sure it was good,' Ofelia said.» Under the circumstances.'

'They ate it with gusto. With gusto.'

'This is also good.' Ofelia sawed into the gristle.» What did you say it was?'

'Mammalian. Did you meet any dangerous men today, someone who might kill you and leave your daughters without a mother?'

'One. A Russian.'

It was her mother's turn to be exasperated.» A Russian, worse than a grapefruit skin. Why did you join the police? I still don't understand.'

'To help the people.'

'The people here hate you. You don't see anyone from Havana who joins the police. Only outsiders. We were happy in Hershey.'

'It's a sugar-mill town.'

'In Cuba, what a surprise!'

'You can't move to Havana without a permit. I'm an expert in police work. They want me here and I want to be here and so do the girls.'

This was one issue where Ofelia could always count on her daughters' support.

'We want to be here.'

'Nobody wants to be in Hershey. That's a sugar-mill town.'

Her mother said, 'Havana is full of girls from sugar-mill towns without official permits, and they're all making dollars on their backs. The day is going to come when I'm looking for condoms for my granddaughters.'

'Grandmother!'

Her mother relented, and they all quietly sawed the meat on their plates until the old woman asked, 'So what does this Russian look like?'

It struck Ofelia.» Once in Hershey you pointed out a priest who was defrocked for falling in love with a woman.'

'I'm surprised you remember, you were so little. Yes, she was a beautiful woman, very religious, and it was a sad story all around.'

'He looks like that.'

Her mother mulled it over.» I can't believe you remembered that.'

Just when Ofelia thought that family tension had subsided enough for a pleasant evening meal, however late, the phone rang. Theirs was the only phone in the solar, and she suspected her mother of using it to run the neighborhood lottery. The illegal Cuban lottery was rigged to the legal Venezuelan lottery, and the bet takers with phones had a great advantage. Ofelia rose and moved slowly around the girls' chairs toward the phone on the wall to let her mother know she wasn't going to run for anyone's nefarious business. Her mother maintained an expression of innocence until Ofelia hung up.

'What was it?'

'It's about the Russian,' Ofelia said.» He killed someone.'

'Ah, you were meant for each other.'

When she arrived at the apartment, Captain Arcos was slamming down the phone and telling Renko, 'Your embassy cannot provide you protection. There will be expressions of anger from the Cuban people to those who have sold them out. To those who plant the Judas kiss on us for thirty pieces of silver. If it were up to me, I would not let a single Russian on the street. I could not guarantee the safety of a Russian, not even in the safest capital in the world, because Cuban anger is so deep. You crawl to the camp of the enemy and you warn Cubans we better do the same. That history has left us behind. No! Cuba is master of history. Cuba has more history to make and we do not need instruction from any former comrades. That's what I told your embassy.'

Arcos had worked himself into such a rage his face balled like a fist. His black sergeant Luna stood by, slouching, ominous and bored at the same time. Renko sat calmly wrapped in his coat. Rufo sprawled in his silvery running suit, his gaze aimed at a syringe clasped in his left hand. What amazed Ofelia was the lack of technicians. Where was the normal bustle of video and light operators, the forensics experts and detectives? Although she didn't question the authority of the two men from the ministry, she made a point of loudly snapping on surgical gloves.

'The captain speaks Russian, too,' Renko told Ofelia.» It's a night of surprises.'

Arcos was in his forties, Ofelia thought, exactly the generation who had wasted their youth in learning Russian, and been bitter ever since. Not an insight she'd share with Renko.

'He has a point, though,' Renko told her.» My embassy does not seem inclined to help me.'

'This is the unbelievable statement he gives us,' Arcos said.» That Rufo Pinero, a man with no criminal record, an honored Cuban sportsman, a driver and interpreter for Renko's own embassy, approached him with the intent to sell cigars, was told 'no' and, anyway, returned to this apartment here and, without warning or provocation, attacked Renko with two weapons, a knife and a syringe, and in a fight accidentally drove a needle through his own head.'

'Are there any witnesses?' asked Ofelia.

'Not yet,' Arcos said, as if he might dig one up still.

Ofelia had not worked with the captain before but she recognized the type, better at vigilance than competence and promoted well beyond his natural abilities. She couldn't expect any help from Luna; the sergeant seemed to regard everyone, including Arcos, with the same dark disregard.

She unzipped Rufo's running suit and found that under it he was still completely dressed in the shirt and pants he had been wearing at the ILM. In warm weather that made very little sense. In his shirt pocket was a plastic case and passport-sized ID that read: 'Rufo Perez Pinero; Fecha de nacimiento: 2/6/56; Profesion: traductor; Casado: no; Numero de habitation: 155 Esperanza, La Habana; Status Militar: reserva; Hemotipo: B.' Glued in a corner was a photo of a younger, leaner Rufo. In the same case was a ration card with columns for months and rows for rice, meat, beans. She emptied Rufo's pockets of dollars, pesos, house and car keys, handling everything by the edge. She thought she remembered his having a cigarette lighter, too. Cubans noticed that. For some reason she also had the conviction that the Russian had already gone through Rufo's pockets, that she wasn't going to find anything that he hadn't already.

'Has the investigation started now?' Renko asked.

'There will be an investigation,' Arcos promised, 'but of what is the question. Everything you do is suspicious: your attitude to Cuban authority, reluctance to identify the body of a Russian colleague, now this attack on Rufo Pinero.'

'My attack on Rufo?'

'Rufo's the one who is dead,' Arcos insisted.

'The captain thinks I came from Moscow to attack Rufo?' Renko asked Ofelia.» First Pribluda and now me. Murder and assault. If you don't investigate that, what exactly do you people investigate?'

Ofelia was unhappy because basic protocol was to work a crime scene as soon as possible and Luna had done nothing. She stepped back for a wider view and saw a knife lodged chest-high in the side panel of a wooden cabinet yet not a book in it disturbed, not even Fidel y Arte, which was a heavy presentation book with valuable plates. Neither a chair broken nor a bruise on Renko, as if the confrontation had been over in an instant.

'Your friend is a spy and you are a murderer,' Luna laid into Renko.» This is intolerable!'

Without dislodging it, Ofelia examined the knife in the cabinet. The weapon was of Brazilian manufacture, spring-loaded with an ivory handle and silver butt, the blade double-edged and sharp as a razor. Driven into the wood was a black thread.

Arcos said, 'I. told the embassy, Renko is like any other visitor, he enjoys no diplomatic protection. This apartment is like any Cuban apartment, it does not enjoy extraterritorial protection. This is a Cuban matter, completely up to us.'