Havana Fever Page 27

  “Don’t give me that shit, man, it’s not as if the sight of an ugly old woman is anything out of the ordinary . . . You know what? I agree with you. The person who killed Dionisio didn’t do it to steal. This isn’t very charitable of me, but I think Amalia knows something, I’d swear to it.”

  The Count smiled, when they turned into Factoría.

  “No need to swear . . . I’m going to ask a favour of you now: let me do the talking. Whatever bright thoughts you might have, keep your nose out of it, right?”

  “You like being the boss?”

  “Yeah, sometimes, man,” replied the Count, when they peered into the yard and found that the place seemed to have recovered its usual rhythm. At the back, the two women from the day before were washing huge piles of clothes, and the Count assumed it was how they earned their living. The music people had chosen blared from doorways, in counterpoint, in open warfare, competing to burst unaccustomed eardrums. One doorstep was home to three men worshipping a bottle of rum on the dirty floor, while a young boy under the stairs was busy washing a pig with water stored in a petrol tank. A black woman, all dressed in parchment white, necklaces dangling from her neck, was smoking a big cigar on the balcony of the upstairs flat, behind a washing line of patched sheets and almost see-through towels. Next to her, a young mulatta, her curly hair fanning out like a peacock’s tail, rubbed her eyes swollen by sleep and scratched under her breasts with mangy pleasure. All the gazes, including the pig’s, followed the steps of these strangers, who, without a word of greeting for anyone, trooped to the back of the lot.

  Carmen Argüelles sat in the same chair, in the same position as the previous day, but that morning she had company and Conde presumed this must be the niece who lived with her, as the elderly woman had mentioned. She was fat, coarse, with ballooning breasts and fifty tough years behind her, and was now busily arranging small packets in a bag on the bed.

  Conde greeted them and apologized for interrupting; he then introduced his companion and asked Carmen if they could continue their chat.

  “I said all I had to say yesterday.”

  “But there are other things—”

  “What are you after?” blurted out the fat woman.

  “This is my niece Matilde,” Carmen confirmed, turning to speak to her. “Don’t worry, you go, or you’ll be late . . .” and she looked at her visitors. “She sells peanut nougat and this is the best time . . .”

  Conde stayed silent, waiting for Matilde to reply, and glanced at Yoyi to tell him to keep quiet.

  “All right then,” Matilde finally said, putting the last packets in the bag and hanging it over her shoulder: “I’ll be back soon.”

  When she left, Conde and Yoyi walked into the middle of the room and saw the smile on Carmen’s face.

  “I didn’t say anything to Matilde about the money you gave me yesterday. If I tell her, it’ll disappear like that. You know, there’s never . . .”

  “That money was for you,” replied the Count, giving approval of Carmen’s precaution and raising her hopes of another little sum at the end of today’s conversation.

  “What else do you want to know?” the elderly woman asked and Conde congratulated himself on the way he’d played it. “I told you all there is to know yesterday . . .”

  “There are two or three things . . . Did you know the children of Nemesia, Alcides’s secretary?”

  “She had two, boy and girl, but I never saw them. They lived in Alcides’s house and, obviously I never got an invite there.”

  “What was Alcides and Nemesia’s relationship like?”

  “I told you . . . She saw to his paperwork and the house, particularly after he was widowed. She was a highly intelligent woman, very cultured, but rather harsh on everybody, except Alcides, naturally . . .”

  “And that’s all?” the Count persisted.

  “What else do you know then?” Carmen responded, somewhat taken aback.

  “Nothing really,” Conde admitted. “I don’t know anything . . .”

  The elderly woman hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment.

  “Lina told me that Alcides was the father of Nemesia’s son. They were very young when it happened. The family decided the best thing was to marry Nemesia Moré off to Alcides’s chauffeur, so he’d have his surname. Then the daughter was born, but Alcides swore she wasn’t his, although Lina didn’t believe him. According to her, she was his spitting image. They paid the chauffeur a hundred pesos a month on top of his wage to keep his mouth shut. The strange thing is that the chauffeur disappeared one fine day, as if the earth had swallowed him up, and nothing was heard of him again . . .”

  Conde weighed up Carmen’s words and glanced at Yoyi.

  “What do you reckon happened?”

  “I can’t imagine, you know, but it was strange, wasn’t it?”

  “People don’t vanish like that, particularly when they have a job that pays double the rate . . . unless Lansky?. . .” exclaimed the Count, in a flash of inspiration.

  “What about Lansky?”

  “When did Lansky and Alcides become friends?”

  “When Lansky started to come to Cuba in the early thirties. But they started doing business together later, during the war.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Alcides’s family was very influential and he knew everybody. Lansky had money he wanted to invest. That was what it was about. When the world war started, Alcides made a fortune importing lard from the United States. Lansky used his connections over there so that Alcides had a monopoly . . . Luciano helped them. At the time he controlled the port of New York. Alcides paid Lansky back by introducing him to the people in charge over here. The politicians and so on . . .”

  “And what was the line of business they were pursuing in 1958, when they met in Lina’s flat? If Alcides didn’t have the same clout under Batista and Lansky wasn’t exactly popular in the United States . . .”

  “I wouldn’t know about—”

  “Oh, yes, you would . . . It was fifty years ago, Carmen. They’re all dead and can’t get you now. I’m sure it was something important . . . They shattered a man’s hand because they thought he was trying to find out what they were up to.”

  “The journalist?”

  “That’s right. What was it?”

  “I don’t know, but they were hatching something.”

  “As well as hotels and gambling?”

  “Yes, as well.”

  “Drugs?”

  The elderly woman shook her head vigorously.

  “Carmen,” said the Count, playing his last card, “it’s probably why they killed your friend Violeta . . . They staged the suicide, but that fooled no one. Not even the police . . . Not even you . . . But Violeta was your friend and you kept your head down . . .”

  The elderly woman looked down at her withered arm. “Is it her arm or her conscience that’s giving her pain?” wondered Conde. When she looked up her expression had changed.

  “No, Alcides wouldn’t have let them. He was a son of a bitch, but he loved Violeta. Nobody killed her because of what she knew . . .”

  “You sure Alcides wasn’t involved in trafficking drugs?”

  “Alcides wouldn’t have got into that, and Lansky, who was boss of everything the mafia did here, got a percentage, but wasn’t personally involved. Drugs were Santo Trafficante’s preserve, the son; Lansky was intent on becoming a businessman, and wanted to live without the police on his back, like his friend Luciano, who had a taste of prison, was booted out of the United States and had to leave for Sicily, where his life was worth next to nothing. The Jew cultivated his image in Cuba as if it were sacred and avoided anything that might tarnish it. Besides, with all the plans he had for building hotels and casinos that were going to make millions and millions, all above board, he couldn’t take risks with anything dicey. But he let others get on with it and raked in his commission . . .”

  “So what were they both hatching that was so secret
? If all their business was above board . . .”

  “I can’t help you there, though it might have something to do with politics.”

  Conde glanced at Yoyi, as if looking for support. Such an idea fell outside all the scenarios they’d dreamt up so far: it lit up the void at the centre of that drama.

  “Yes, that’s possible . . . that’s why they were acting so furtively. But what exactly?”

  “They talked a lot about Batista, and never had a kind word for him. They thought he was going to fuck up. Alcides loathed him, and Lansky said he was a shark, a bottomless pit as far as money went, the country was slipping out of his hands and he was going to fuck up their big plans.”

  “Right, which is what he did,” the Count thought aloud, adrift in a sea of ideas and possibilities.

  “He was intent on winning the war and lost,” commented Yoyi, unable to maintain his enforced silence any longer. “Lansky and Alcides had to leave and lost a fortune . . . In the end Batista messed it all up for them.”

  Conde looked at Yoyi, remembering he was like a tiger out on the street but that he tended to forget he’d been to university and that something must have rubbed off on the way.

  “While we’re at it, Carmen,” said Conde, more gently. “Why did you change your name and disappear from the register of addresses?”

  The elderly woman looked at the Count and then at Yoyi. She smiled mischievously.

  “There are things best left forgotten . . . Did you realize I met your father?”

  Surprised by this change of subject from Carmen, Conde tried to stop her predictable drift.

  “My father’s not the subject of this conversation,” he tried to fob her off.

  “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to get so upset about . . . Your father was always going to hear Violeta sing and started to knock it back, until he fell off his chair. I twice saw him being dragged out of the club. He was a coward and never had the courage to approach Violeta. I talked to him two or three times, I felt sorry for him. The poor wretch was like a lovesick puppy . . . He kept hovering around Violeta until someone told him if he wanted to keep walking on two legs he’d better not show up again when she was singing. I never saw him again after that . . .”

  Conde felt each word score his skin, but decided it wasn’t the moment to let himself be bowled over by discoveries he couldn’t cope with.

  “I’m sorry for my father’s sake . . . But you’ve not told me why you changed your name . . .”

  The elderly woman looked back at her withered arm.

  ‘Louis Mallet never returned to Cuba. I decided not to leave in 1960, or in 1961 . . . and by the time I saw what was happening here, I was boxed in. My money was all gone and I had to go back to work, but was the wrong side of thirty-five and set up a brothel in Nuevitas, when that was still possible. It went pear-shaped in no time and I was put in a kind of school, to be reformed. They even taught me how to sew. I was still branded a whore though, so I made the best of my one chance to get rid of the label. I started to use my real name and lodged Carmen the seamstress here in Atarés, and let Elsa Contreras whore on a few more years, using her reputation as the Lotus Flower of old at the Shanghai in Havana. But being a whore at forty was shit. You had to fuck what came along, for next to nothing, because competition got really fierce: women were emancipated, just like men, and fucked for the fun of it, young girls started jumping into bed with anyone, anywhere, after all, we were all equal so had a right to equal pleasure, right? In the midst of this madness I met a man . . . a good man . . . and decided to bury Elsa Contreras for good and keep Lotus Flower in that drawer . . . By the way, the lad’s not seen the photo,” she went on, as if referring to someone else, who was dead and gone. “Go on, show it to him and leave today’s money under the box, so Matilde doesn’t see it when she comes back . . . That fat pile of shit scoffs the lot . . .”

  Conde smiled, went to get the photo and handed it to Yoyi. He took a few notes from his pocket, put them in the drawer, but suddenly had a change of heart.

  “What else?”

  The elderly woman didn’t seem to understand the question. Nor did Yoyi, who put the photo down.

  “What do you mean ‘what else’?” asked Elsa.

  “You’re still hiding a chunk of the truth. And it’s an important chunk. I told you, it’s from forty years back. And that’s a long time to be frightened . . .”

  Carmen watched Yoyi put the photo back in the box and hand it to the Count who put the possible reward back in his pocket before accepting it.

  “The last time I saw Alcides he was getting into his car in front of the Western Union offices,” said the old lady meekly, “he told me Violeta had broken his heart.”

  “I know,” recalled the Count. “What I don’t understand is why he said that. If Alcides wasn’t involved in Violeta’s death, he must have known better than anyone that she hadn’t committed suicide. He must have suspected she’d been murdered. Why did he desert the scene like that? He must have said something else . . .”

  The elderly woman glanced at her arm and went on, without looking up:

  “Alcides told me not to poke my nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Right then he couldn’t put his children’s future at risk and that’s why he was going, but he would come back as soon as he could, because he had a few things to settle. And his chauffeur, that black Ortelio, would look after some of his lines of business one of which meant making sure nobody stirred up Lina’s death or his secret meetings with Lansky. Everything should stay as dead and buried as Lina until he returned to dig things up. For my own good, he said, I should forget everything, and in particular shouldn’t mention that conversation to the police . . . He said it in a way that still scares me. So I shut up and didn’t poke around any more. He wasn’t a man who requested something for the fun of it and then forgot about it. He wasn’t ever like that . . .”

  4 March

  Dear love:

  The voices pursuing me have forced me to do what my conscience refused to do. They told me to persevere in my pursuit of the final truth, not to prove my innocence, which you will never accept, but to demonstrate the truth about you, which is now challenged by your own daughter, and to find peace in the knowledge you didn’t deal so foully with someone you said you loved. But the fact is I’m more and more frightened that finding that truth will be as terrible as living this life-sentence of oblivion and neglect, or possibly even far more painful than my present uncertainties.

  I’ve spent days trying to track down that whore who danced naked, hoping she might give me some helpful information. But my efforts have been in vain. The places someone in her trade might go have been closed down by the government as part of their campaign to liquidate the past. I didn’t find her in the flat your friend rented for her or at an address in Old Havana where she once said her younger sister lived.

  So I took my courage into both hands and looked out the lieutenant who investigated her death and this time I was the one who asked the questions. He agreed to see me in his office, for half an hour, because he said he was overwhelmed by work, what with the plots and sabotaging everywhere, as a predictable reaction to the revolutionary decrees. Even so he was pleasant enough and listened to why I wanted to know more about that woman’s fate. He also confided that he too had initially thought you were possibly behind her death. They knew all about you and your friendships with certain individuals he preferred merely to describe as dangerous. They also know that in your student days you belonged to the most violent gangs of pickets and showed yourself capable of anything. But, precisely because of your style, the way she died didn’t seem to fit your character, and when he saw how you reacted to what happened he was soon convinced you weren’t directly connected to the murder and that’s why he let you go. Who did he suspect then? I asked, and I got a categorical answer, if she hadn’t committed suicide, as people always assumed, her death must have been prepared and carried out by a woman, and he explained how the lack of viol
ence and the opportunity offered by the bottle of cough syrup were very feminine touches, and had led him to think along those lines. His first suspect was the dancer, because of her record, but he discounted her after a couple of conversations. He admitted that more than once he’d thought (like you? you see?) I might have been the guilty party, because I was the only one known to have access to the flat and because, when he found out about our relationship (how? I wonder), he thought I was the one with most reasons to want her dead. However, when he’d seen the consequences for me of what happened, he realized I too must have considered the outcome and he decided to discount me as a suspect, though he didn’t eliminate me entirely. What then? I asked: I was left empty-handed, he replied, and despite himself he had had to accept orders from his superiors to drop the case and rule that suicide was the probable cause of her death, although he was still convinced it was murder and that the murderer, or rather the murderess, was an individual driven by horrific motivation he was unaware of, to want and then dare to consummate her desire for revenge.

  As you can imagine, this conversation both soothed and upset me. To be almost sure that you are as innocent as am I brought a peace that soothed my tormented brain (the poor thing has continued hearing voices, even in the middle of the day) and showed me why you were so positive (like the policeman) that I was a possible guilty party. But if we discount the dancer, you and myself as the guilty ones: who does that leave? The idea now going round my mind is so horrific and my suspicion so great, that I prefer to shut my eyes, ears and mouth, if I put such a thought into words it would drive me crazy for good . . . besides, what proof do I have? None. A touch of hatred, a pinch of frustration, a slice of resentment can’t be sufficient ingredients to transform someone who is so sweet and gentle, almost docile I’d say, into a murderess, intent on reversing destiny and capable of sacrificing a person to whom she’d never spoken a single word. Don’t you agree? Tell me you don’t believe that either, that it’s impossible, that I’m mad or out of sorts to think something so brutal and unhinged, I beg you.