Field Grey
Philip Kerr
CHAPTER ONE: CUBA, 1954
'That Englishman with Ernestina,' she said, looking down at the luxuriously appointed public room. 'He reminds me of you, Senor Hausner.'
Dona Marina knew me as well as anyone in Cuba, possibly better, since our acquaintance was founded on something stronger than mere friendship: Dona Marina owned the best and largest brothel in Havana.
The Englishman was tall and round-shouldered with pale blue eyes and a lugubrious expression. He wore a blue linen short-sleeved shirt, grey cotton trousers, and well-polished black shoes. I had an idea I'd seen him before, in the Floridita Bar or perhaps the lobby of the National Hotel, but I was hardly looking at him. I was paying more attention to the new and near-naked chica who was sitting on the Englishman's lap and helping herself to puffs from the cigarette in his mouth while he amused himself by weighing her enormous breasts in his hands, like someone judging the ripeness of two grapefruit.
'In what way?' I asked and quickly glanced at myself in the big mirror that hung on the wall, wondering if there really was some point of similarity between us other than our appreciation of Ernestina's breasts and the huge dark nipples that adorned them like mountainous limpets.
The face that stared back at me was heavier than the Englishman's with a little more hair on top, but similarly fiftyish and cross-hatched with living. Perhaps Dona Marina thought it was more than just living that was dry-etched on our two faces – the chiaroscuro of conscience and complicity perhaps, as if neither of us had done what ought to have been done or, worse, as if each of us lived with some guilty secret.
'You have the same eyes,' said Dona Marina.
'Oh, you mean they're blue,' I said, knowing that this probably wasn't what she meant at all.
'No, it's not that. It's just that you and Senor Greene look at people in a certain way. As if you're trying to look inside them. Like a spiritualist. Or perhaps like a policeman. You both have very searching eyes that seem to look straight through a person. It's really most intimidating.'
It was hard to imagine Dona Marina being intimidated by anything or anyone. She was always as relaxed as an iguana on a sun-warmed rock.
'Senor Greene, eh?' I wasn't in the least bit surprised that Dona Marina had used his name. The Casa Marina was not the kind of place where you felt obliged to use a false one. You needed a reference just to get through the front door. 'Perhaps he is a policeman. With feet as big as his I wouldn't be at all surprised.'
'He's a writer.'
'What kind of a writer?'
'Novels. Westerns, I think. He told me he writes under the name of Buck Dexter.'
'Never heard of him. Does he live in Cuba?'
'No, he lives in London. But he always visits us when he's in Havana.'
'A traveller, eh?'
'Yes. Apparently he's on his way to Haiti this time.' She smiled. 'You don't see the likeness, now?'
'No, not really,' I said firmly and was pleased when she seemed to change the subject.
'How was it with Omara today?'
I nodded. 'Good.'
'You like her, yes?'
'Very much.'
'She's from Santiago,' said Dona Marina as if this explained everything. 'All of my best girls come from Santiago. They're the most African-looking girls in Cuba. Men seem to like that.'
'I know I do.'
'I think it has something to do with the fact that unlike white women, black women have a pelvis that's almost as big as a man's. An anthropoid pelvis. And before you ask me how I know that it's because I used to be a nurse.'
I wasn't surprised to learn this. Dona Marina put a premium on sexual health and hygiene and the staff at her house on Malecon included two nurses who were trained to deal with everything from a dose of jelly to a massive heart-attack. I'd heard it said that you had a better chance of surviving cardiac arrest at Casa Marina than you did at the University of Havana Medical School.
'Santiago's a real melting-pot,' she continued. 'Jamaicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Bahamians – it's Cuba's most Caribbean city. And its most rebellious, of course. All of our revolutions start in Santiago. I think it's because all of the people who live there are related to each other, in one way or another.'
She twisted a cigarette into a little amber holder and lit it with a handsome silver Tallboy.
'For example, did you know that Omara is related to the man who looks after your boat in Santiago?'
I was beginning to see that there was some purpose behind Dona Marina's conversation, because it was not just Mister Greene who was going to Haiti, it was me, too, only my trip was supposed to be a secret.
'No, I didn't.' I glanced at my watch, but before I could make my excuses and leave Dona Marina had ushered me into her private drawing room and was offering me a drink. And thinking that perhaps it was best that I listen to what she had to say, in view of her mentioning my boat, I replied that I'd take an aniejo.
She fetched a bottle-aged rum and poured me a large one.
'Mister Greene is also very fond of our Havana rum,' she said.
'I think you'd better come to the point now,' I said. 'Don't you?'
And so she did.
Which is how it was that I came to have a girl in the passenger seat of my Chevy as, about a week later, I drove south-west along Cuba's central highway to Santiago, at the opposite end of the island. The irony of this experience did not escape me; in seeking to escape from being blackmailed by a secret policeman I had managed to put myself in a position where a brothel madam who was much too clever to threaten me openly, felt able to ask a favour that I hardly wanted to grant: to take a chica from another Havana casa with me on my 'fishing trip' to Haiti. It was almost certain that Dona Marina knew Lieutenant Quevedo and knew he would have held a very dim view of my taking any kind of a boat trip; but I rather doubted she knew he had threatened to have me deported back to Germany, where I was wanted for murder, unless I agreed to spy on Meyer Lansky, the underworld boss who was my employer. Either way I had little choice but to accede to her request, although I could have felt a lot happier about my passenger. Melba Marrero was being sought by the police in connection with the murder of a police captain from the Ninth Precinct, and there were friends of Dona Marina who wanted Melba off the island of Cuba as quickly as possible.
Melba Marrero was in her early twenties, although she hardly liked anyone to know that. I suppose she wanted people to take her seriously, and it's possible that this is why she had shot Captain Balart. But it's more likely that she had shot him because she was connected with Castro's communist rebels. She was coffee-coloured with a fine gamine face, a belligerent chin and a stormy-weather look in her dark eyes. Her hair was cut after the Italian fashion – short, layered locks with a few wispy curls combed forward across her face. She wore a plain white blouse, a pair of tight fawn trousers, a tan leather belt and matching gloves. She looked like she was going riding on a horse that was probably looking forward to it.
'Why didn't you buy a convertible?' she asked when we were still a way short of Santa Clara, which was to be our first stop. 'A convertible is better, in Cuba.'
'I don't like convertibles. People look at you more when you're driving a convertible. And I don't much like being looked at.'
'So, are you the shy type? Or are you just guilty about some thing?'
'Neither. Just private.'
'Got a smoke?'
'There's a packet in the glove box.'
