Fifty Grand

6 ALONG THE MALECÓN

Gone to the dream island.

A city in free fall.

A country in free fall.

Every one of us on deathwatch, waiting out the Beard and his brother’s final days.

Tick-fucking-tock.

Hector says (in whispers), After Fidel and Raúl, le deluge. The successors will end up like Mussolini-upside down on a meat hook in the Plaza de la Revolución, if there’s any justice. Which there isn’t.

Calle Gervasio to San Rafael. Walking. Everyone walks in Cuba. You need to be in the Party or have at least a thousand in greenback kiss money to get a car. Early. So early it’s late. High on brown-tar heroin, the whores don’t care that I’m a woman or that I look like a cop. They raise their skirts to show pussy lovingly injected with antibiotics or mercury sublimate by our world-beating physicians.

“Qué bola,asere?” they ask.

“Nada.”

“Qué bola, asere?”

“Nada.”

“We swing with you, white chick. We’ll show you tricks to impress your boyfriend.”

I’m in no mood. Finger and thumb together, “No mas, bitches. No mas.”

In this part of town the hookers are all black and mulatto teenagers, the kind patronized by German and Canadian sex tourists whose fat white asses are also here in abundance. Go to bed, Hans, some pimp will knife you for that watch of yours. That watch will get him to Miami.

San Rafael all the way to Espada.

People thinning out. No plump anglos. Kids sleeping in doorways. An old man on a bicycle.

Past the Beard’s hospital. Party members, diplomats, and tourists only. “The best hospital in Latin America.” Yeah, right. Half the night staff probably outside soliciting blow jobs.

Espada to San Lázaro.

The police station.

A few lights on. Shutters closed. Couple of Mexican Beetles and a midnight blue ’57 Chevy parked outside.

Sergeant Menendez urinating into a storm drain.

Sees me. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

Play it cool. Buddy-buddy.

“I heard that in Regla a guy pissing in the bay had his dick bitten off by an alligator,” I say.

He laughs. “I heard that too.”

He grins and strokes his mustache.

I smile back, flirty with the DGI pig. “I heard you got a lot to lose, Menendez.”

Blushes. “Word gets around,” he replies.

“It’s just what I heard.”

Again flirty, not that I ever would in a million years. No one would unless they had a thing for cadaverous bastards with pockmarked skin, greasy hair, and a vibe that would creep out an exorcist.

He leers but it’s not really for me. I’m way too old for him. Hector says he goes for schoolgirls. Hector says the PNR had a file on him for child rape, but it was mysteriously pulled. Hector says a lot of stuff, but this I believe.

“No, really, what are you pissing in the street for?” I ask.

“Plumbing’s out.”

“Again?”

“Again.”

“Not in the ladies’ room, too?”

Another laugh. There is no ladies’ room. The whores piss in a bucket in the communal cell and the secretaries go next door to the Planning Ministry. Since Helena González retired, I’ve been the only female police officer in the place.

“What are you doing here so early?” he wonders again.

Persistent little fuck.

Careful now. Tightrope walk. Menendez is the DGI chivato for the Interior Ministry, an informer, but almost certainly a low-ranking DGI officer himself. Thinks he’s smart, but I know and Hector knows and so do half a dozen others-everyone who lets him win at poker.

I smile. “Oh, you know me, anything to get ahead, catching up on some currency fraud cases,” I tell him.

He nods and spits out the stub of his cigarette. His eyes check me out. I’m wearing a white blouse with the top button undone. Blouse, black pants, black Czech shoes. No jewelry, short crop. Cop from a mile away. He looks down the shirt and back up at my eyes.

“Trying to get ahead. I heard you put in for a leave of absence. That won’t help your career,” he says.

Christ. How did he hear that already?

Flirty, young, bubbly: “You’ll see, Menendez. I’m studying criminology. I’m hoping to do an M.A. at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,” I say with a hint of pretend pride.

“Never heard of it,” he says sourly.

“It’s the oldest university in the western hemisphere. One of the biggest, too. And when I get the M.A. they’ll make me a sergeant for sure. You better watch out when I’m in charge of you.”

And for icing I add a little laugh, a little girlish laugh. Oh, Menendez, cabrón, am I not so cute to have such big dreams? Oh, Sergeant Menendez, aren’t you moved by my naïveté. Doesn’t it make you laugh to see how little I know about how things work in the Policía Nacional de la Revolución.

He grunts. “They’re going to let you go to Mexico?”

“Well, they haven’t given permission yet for the whole year. I haven’t even applied formally yet, but I have an interview at the university next week. I think they’ll let me go for that at least.”

“Maybe,” he says coyly. “But on the whole college is a waste of time. Good solid police work you learn on the job. And a year away: big mistake if you ask me, Officer Mercado.”

“Well, we’ll see what they say.”

“If you want to get ahead you should join the Party,” he adds.

“I’d like to, but I can’t. Because of my father.”

His forehead wrinkles, as if he’s bringing up the mental files he has on the whole police department: cops, secretaries, cleaners, other chivatos.

“Ah, yes, your father. A terrorist. Defected in ’93.”

“He wasn’t a terrorist.”

“He hijacked the bay ferry to the Keys.”

“No. He was on the ferry at the time but he wasn’t one of the hijackers.”

“Did he attempt to come back?”

“No.”

Triumph and a snort. “Well, I won’t keep you, Officer Mercado.”

“Good day, Sergeant Menendez.”

I walk inside. One of the newer precinct buildings, but already paint peeling off the walls. Uneven black-and-white floor tiling. Frozen ceiling fan. Big painting of Jefe, Mao style. No one around. A snore. Sergeant Ortiz sleeping behind the front desk. I tiptoe past him up the steps and through a set of grungy glass doors that squeak open, almost waking Ortiz.

Through central processing.

Officer Posada asleep under his desk. The male hooker cage empty, the female hooker cage with one lonely occupant, a black girl, maybe fourteen, curled under a blanket.

The stairs to the second floor.

Crumbling concrete, cracks in the floor the size of plantains. A corridor-length mural depicting Cuban history from the time of Cortés to the glorious Pan American Games in 1990 when the socialist system triumphed again over the Yankees and their vassals.

Hector’s office.

Knock.

“Come in, Mercado.”

I open the door.

Books and papers everywhere. Two telephones. Another dead ceiling fan. A window looking down to the sea. Hector nursing a rum and coffee. He looks tired. He hasn’t shaved. Wearing the same shirt and jacket as yesterday.

“Sit.”

I sit.

“You wanted to see me,” he says. This early and this unguarded, his accent has that provincial eastern lilt he’s been trying to eradicate his whole life. If he weren’t bald, fat, married, and very ugly I’d find it sexy.

“So what’s this about?” he asks sipping from the coffee flask.

“It’s about my leave of absence,” I say.

His eyes flick toward the door.

“You’re early; I like that. Who else is in the building right now? Who did you see?” he asks.

“Posada.”

“Awake or asleep? The truth.”

“Asleep.”

“Posada asleep,” he sighs. “Before your time, Mercado, a posada was a hotel room you rented by the hour. We’d be lucky if Officer Posada used his brain for one hour a day. One hour in a day, that’s all I ask.”

I nod.

Hector sips his coffee.

“What about Ortiz?”

“Oh yes, Ortiz.”

“You could have brought me something from the bakery. The bakeries are starting to open, yes?”

“I didn’t think to. Sorry, sir.”

“Hmm, so what’s this all about?” he asks.

“Uhm, sir, as you’re aware, I’ve put in for a one-week leave of absence.”

He rummages through the papers on his desk. “I saw that. And you’ve applied to the Foreign Ministry for a travel permit to Mexico.”

I nod.

“Speak up,” he says.

“Yes, I wish to travel to Mexico City. I have applied to study at the university. I am meeting with a Professor Carranza at UNAM about the possibility of taking an M.A. in criminology.”

Hector nods. “Yeah, I read the letter. And if the university takes you, I suppose that means you’ll be taking an even longer leave of absence from the PNR? We’ll be losing you for how long? A year?”

“A year. Yes.”

He shakes his head, starts writing something on the piece of paper. “Hmmm, I don’t know about this, Officer Mercado. Has the ministry given you permission for this first trip?”

“Well, I applied weeks ago and it’s getting close to the deadline, sir. I was hoping that you could-”

Hector puts his finger to his lips and points at the wall and then at his ear. The implication is that his office is being bugged by the DGSE or the DGI. A second of dead air before he jumps in: “Hoping that I could what, Officer Mercado? Put in a good word for you? Why would I do that? Why would I want to lose one of my best detectives for a week, never mind a whole year? Well?”

He grins at me and passes me the note that he’s been writing. It says: “I’ll gain expertise that I can use to train fellow PNR officers, saving the department a lot of money.”

I clear my throat. “Because, sir, when I come back I’ll be a better detective and I will have studied all the latest techniques and I can bring my expertise to bear on our current caseload and of course I can then train fellow officers in the new techniques.”

Hector nods, satisfied. “We’ll all be like the gringos on CSI Miami, no?”

“I haven’t seen that show, sir, but I suppose so, yes,” I say.

“No, you wouldn’t have seen it. It’s good. Well, I must say I’m intrigued by your idea. This first trip would only be to meet the professor and visit the university? One week, you say?”

“One week.”

“Hmmm. I have very little clout with the ministry but I will see what I can do.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Another grin. He lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair.

“There are some things I must ask you first, Officer Mercado, some formalities, some important formalities.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Your father was a defector to the United States.”

“He was on a boat that was hijacked to the United States; he did not return.”

“He was a defector!” Hector says, his voice assuming an angry tone for the listeners in the wall.

“Yes, sir,” I reply meekly.

“That makes things much more difficult, you see that, don’t you?” he says, rubbing his bulbous rummy nose.

“Of course, sir.”

“Travel permits are given only to those with exemplary records, and you’re not even in the Party.”

“Because of my father I am not permitted to join the Party, sir.”

“Yet your brother, Ricardo, is in the Party,” Hector says.

“Yes, he joined the Party two years ago. He was granted a special dispensation.”

“How did that happen?” Hector asks, again for the listeners, or more important, for the people reading the transcript.

“Ricardo has proven his loyalty to Cuba. He was president of the National Students Union and is an executive member of the National Union of Journalists.”

“And he has been given travel permits?”

“Yes. He has been to Mexico several times, Haiti, Russia, China. When my father died in the United States, Ricky even went there to clear up some of my father’s personal effects. He had the body cremated.”

“Ricardo went to the United States?” Hector asks, though of course he knows that only too well.

“He has been to the United States twice. Once when my father died and only last week to attend a UN discussion on Cuba in New York City.”

“And yet he did not defect?” Hector says.

“No, sir, he is loyal to Cuba and the Revolution, as am I.”

Hector nods to himself and lets the silence play out. His hand makes the turning “give me more of this” sign.

“And of course my mother is old and dependent upon state subsidy. I would not do anything to jeopardize her well-being,” I add.

Hector smiles, pleased. “Well, Officer Mercado, I am sure that all of this will stand you in good stead, and for what it’s worth, I’ll try to put in a good word with the ministry. Mind you, there is a lot of bureaucracy involved and these things are quite strict. If you do get a travel permit it will only be for Mexico City. You won’t be able to go to Acapulco or anywhere like that.”

“No, sir.”

“A week seems a little excessive for an interview and a look around the university.”

“Uhm, I will also wish to purchase some books and to search out cheap accommodation.”

“Yes, of course. Well, I have a lot to attend to today, Officer Mercado. Like I say, I’ll see what I can do. Allow me to walk you out.”

Walk you out.

Away from the bugs and the performance. The dialogue for the MININT goons.

We walk.

Along the corridor, down the stairs, through the flaking orange paint, past the sleeping Posada, past Ortiz, who has miraculously awoken.

“Good morning, sir,” Ortiz says.

“Good morning,” Hector replies curtly, and with that we’re out into the street.

“You must have seen Sergeant Menendez as well today, did you not?” Hector says.

“Not inside the building,” I reply.

“You were wise not to mention his name. Never mention his name in my office. He believes that he keeps a low profile.”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” I reply.

“Good. Come with me to the Malecón,” Hector says.

The Malecón: the corniche that runs along the seafront of Havana. Now that they’ve fixed up Alexandria’s promenade and Shanghai’s Bund this is the paradigm case of faded grandeur. Think Rome in the Dark Ages, Constantinople in the last years before the Turk. In any other city in the world this would be prime real estate: the main drag of the city between the headland and the entrance to Havana Bay. There’s no beach, but beyond the seawall bathers and fishermen gather all along the gentle curve of the croisette. On most days there’s a spectacular view east to the castle and beyond to the blue waters of the Florida Strait. The Malecón could be beautiful, but in our Havana this particular piece of real estate is just a shabby row of boarded-up three-story buildings and empty lots. In the fifties these were bars, cafés, hotels, private casinos, ice cream parlors, Cadillac dealerships, and so on. In the sixties they all got turned into workers’ apartments. And now they aren’t anything. When the hurricanes come the seawall doesn’t protect them and the buildings flood and the windows break and the wood rots and no one has the money for repairs. The bright paint has long since gone and the buildings that are still standing look like a collection of toothless old men waiting for their own personal apocalypse.

The trick to the Malecón is to look left as you’re walking east and right as you’re walking west. Keep your eyes fixed on the sea and it doesn’t seem so sad.

Gentleman that he is, Hector lets me walk on the seawall side.

“What’s the matter with you, can’t you keep up?” he asks.

Despite having no sleep and existing purely on rum, pork fat, and cheap cigars, he’s setting a blistering pace.

“What’s the hurry?” I ask.

“I want to put some distance between us and that son of a bitch.”

“He’s not even here. I saw him pissing outside and I think he went home after that.”

“That’s what he wants you to think,” Hector says.

“He’s a lazy good-for-nothing with bribes up the ass.”

“Saints preserve us, Mercado, he’s got you right in the palm of his hand. The good ones always want you to underestimate them. Don’t make me think I made you a detective too early.”

“No, sir, you did not,” I reply immediately.

Hector chuckles. “How would you like to be back in that lovely blue uniform?”

I shudder. The blue uniform with the awful peaked cap was almost South American in its hideousness.

“What about my arrest? That impressed you,” I point out.

“What arrest?”

“The waiter.”

“Oh, him? We would have got him one way or another,” Hector sniffs.

“That’s not what you said to Díaz,” I mention in my defense.

“No, it’s not. I wanted Díaz to think that you’re invaluable. But anyway, it’s irrelevant, that episode ended badly.”

“Badly? I hadn’t heard. I know you didn’t find the body but surely the confession…?”

Hector stops talking and looks carefully at the occupants of a slow-moving Volkswagen Rabbit. He waits until it’s gone past before continuing. “The confession was fine but we had to let him go. His girlfriend is a secretary at the Venezuelan Embassy, well liked over there. The Venezuelans asked us to release her, and she wouldn’t go without him.”

“Hijo de puta.”

“Yeah, fucking Venezuelans. They say it’s cold and we say, Warm your dick in our asses.”

“You let both of them go?” I ask.

Hector shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it, it’s too depressing.”

A black girl yells up to us from the beach. She’s been sifting garbage and beachcombing. She’s about seventeen, very pretty in a gorgeous ripped yellow dress that someone who loved her once had given her.

“Blow job, five U.S.,” she shouts at Hector.

“No,” he says firmly.

“Five Canadian,” the woman persists.

“We’re Cubans, and we’re police, you idiot,” Hector replies.

“Police. That’s why you’re so fat,” the woman mutters.

He could arrest her for that but Hector just shrugs. She has a point. These days most people in Havana have trouble finding food. Cops, tourist agents, and good whores are the exception. And as if inspired to burn off more kilos, Hector increases his speed. I’m limping a little now.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asks.

“I tripped on the steps at my mother’s place.”

“When was this?”

“Couple of days ago. Ricky and I went to see her. Her building’s a mess. She lives in one of those dumps near Ferrocarril.”

Hector looks confused. “I thought she lived in Santiago,” he says.

“No, Havana.”

“There’s something about Santiago de Cuba in your file.”

“My father was from Santiago; my uncle still lives out there.”

Hector grins. “Yes, that was it. Lovely city. I had a grandmother from there. Used to visit her in the seventies. Once we rode bicycles to Caimanera to look at the Americans. Did you ever do that?”

I shake my head. Even before it had gotten a bad reputation, I’d never had a desire to gape at the Yankees in Guantánamo. The Interior Ministry had mined the bay and surrounded the camp with hundreds of soldiers. A few people had tried to defect there but all had been caught. It was easier by far to try for the Keys. And even if I had gone to Caimanera I wouldn’t admit it to Hector. The last thing I wanted to do was exhibit any kind of wistful longing for America.

He slows his pace. Easier now. My limp vanishes.

Hector is smiling to himself, probably thinking of his adventures with girls on that long, awful train from Santiago to Havana.

“You fell down some steps, Detective Mercado?”

“Yes, sir. Thieves have stolen all the streetlights on that-”

“When I was a child I fell down a well. Did you know that?”

“No, sir.”

“An early sign of idiocy or an early sign of brilliance, what do you think?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“The philosopher Thales fell in a well while contemplating the heavens. Heard of him, detective?”

“No.”

“What did you study in college?” Hector asks.

“Dual major, sir.”

“Dual major in what?”

“English and Russian.”

“Hedging your bets, eh? I like that.”

“Not really, sir, we didn’t have much choice, we were told what to-”

“When was the last time you walked along here?” Hector interrupts.

“Yesterday. As a matter of fact, every morning. I-”

“Not me, must be a year since I walked here. I have a car, you know. A brand-new Volkswagen from Mexico,” he says with pride.

“I didn’t know that.”

“No. You wouldn’t.” He sighs. “It’s changed since the last time I was here. Worse. In Cuba things always change for the worse.”

“Yes, sir,” I reply and inwardly groan. From past experience I know that Hector is going to hit me with an expansion of this theory.

“Yes, things got worse for the indigenous Cubans when the Spanish came, then they got worse under the Yankees, then worse still under the little dictators, then worse under Sergeant Batista, then worse under Fidel. And you’ll see, it’ll continue to get worse under Raúl and the Venezuelans.”

“And after Raúl?” I venture.

“Ah, you mean when the Miamistas come?” He looks at me with a glint in his eye. “We’ll talk about that in a minute,” he says mysteriously.

We walk along the seawall toward the curve of the Castillo. In the distance is the fort of San Carlos and the chimneys of the oil refineries on the bay.

The wind is blowing the smoke offshore, decanting it north to Florida, 150 sweet sea kilometers from here.

He lights a little cigar, offers me one. I decline. Two summers working in the plantations for the Young Pioneers cured me of any desire to smoke Cuban cigars. He hoists himself up and sits on the seawall.

“Sit next to me,” he says.

I sit.

He smokes his stubby cigar and, feeling the need for more nicotine, reaches into the pocket of his beat-up leather jacket to remove a packet of Dominican cigarettes. He offers me one and this time I do accept. He lights it and I inhale. It’s American. A Camel. He’s hiding American cigarettes in a Dominican packet.

“Do you know the concept of duende, Mercado?”

“Something to do with flamenco?”

He sighs. “My father was at the lecture Lorca gave here in Habana on duende, in 1930. Duende is the dark creative energy, the opposite of the creative spirit of the muses. You must avoid that energy, that energy gets you in trouble, Mercado, killed, like Lorca himself a few years later.”

I stare at him and say nothing. He’s overhearing his own thoughts, trying to bring himself to the point.

He shakes his head. “Please at least tell me you’re familiar with Lorca, Detective Mercado.”

“Of course. Murdered by the fascists.”

“Yes. Murdered by the fascists,” he says slowly, making every word count.

Waves.

Gulls.

A chain grinding against a buoy.

“I’ve got property here,” he says at last, pointing at the rows of derelict and bricked-up buildings on the Malecón.

“Really?” I say with surprise.

“Yes. Land money. Best kind. Seafront. Worth shit now. I got it for nothing. But in five years when the Yankees are back…”

“You think the Yankees will be here in five years, sir?” I ask.

“Give or take, and call me Hector, Mercado. Call me Hector.”

“Yes, sir.”

Beneath us more kids are combing the concrete-and-iron coastal defenses for flotsam or garbage, and farther down the shore in the cool light of day a desperate character is making a raft out of driftwood and polystyrene packing. I point him out.

“You want to fill in a lot of forms today? You didn’t see him,” Hector says.

“No, sir.”

We sit for a minute and listen to the waves. A pale sun is rising over a paler sea. Traffic is starting to pick up on the road.

Hector clears his throat. “I’m not going to argue with you, Mercado. I know you. I know that you’re stubborn and I know that you’re clever and I know that your brother has already taken considerable risks, but I will say this, if you think you’ve pulled the wool over my eyes, you’re mistaken. And if you can’t fool me, then you’re not going to fool anyone in the ministry either.”

“What are you talking about?”

“How long have you worked for me?”

“Since college. Five years.”

“I made you a detective. I promoted you. Me.”

“I know that, sir, and I’m grateful, and I’ll do everything I can to bring credit to the-”

He shakes his head slightly, narrows his eyes.

“Never had a daughter. Two boys,” he says sadly.

“I know, sir.”

“One works for the Ministry of Fruit Cultivation, the other one doesn’t work.”

I know that, too, but I don’t reply.

“For a while there, Mercado, I thought we had a connection. Something special. The other day in the Vieja…” His voice trails off into a cough.

He doesn’t continue when he clears his throat.

“Yes, sir?” I prompt him.

“Call me Hector. I prefer that.”

“Yes, uh, Hector.”

“I like the way you say that. Now, why don’t I lay my cards on the table, and then you can do the same and you can try me with the truth. How does that sound?”

“Ok.”

Hector smiles. He doesn’t seem angry but he’s bristling, and I can tell that I am irritating him. “Mercado, it’s like this: your brother came back from America last week. He had to get permission from the DGI and the Foreign Ministry and then a license from the U.S. Department of State. The waiver he got was to attend some preposterous conference on Cuba in New York. The license did not permit him to travel outside New York City.”

“I believe I told you that already, it’s no secret. I-” I begin but he cuts me off savagely.

“Listen to me! I know, ok?”

“Know what, sir?”

“Your brother went to Colorado. Your father was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run accident in Colorado. He was living in Colorado under a Mexican passport. He was drunk, the car did not stop.”

“My brother did indeed go out to Colorado but I think you’ve gotten things mixed up, sir. That was almost six months ago, that was a completely different trip. For that trip he was granted a special visa from the Foreign Ministry-”

“Two trips to the USA, both of them benign. End of story, right?” he mutters.

“Right.”

“Wrong. I think Ricky went out there again last week, at your instigation, to do some digging into the accident. When he came back you two talked, he confirmed your suspicions, and that’s why you want to go to America. It’s nothing to do with the university. You’ve been planning this thing for months.”

“You’re mistaken,” I say quickly in an attempt to conceal my panic. Old bastard had me cold. “My father is a traitor to the Revolution. He abandoned his family. I have had no contact with him since he left Cuba. I want to go to Mexico to attend UNAM. I am not going to the United States.”

Hector flicks ash, nods. If it were me, I’d press the attack, but he doesn’t, he merely sighs and throws his cigarette end off the seawall. It’s been a while since Hector braced a currency dealer or a pimp; he’s lost his touch.

Finally, after a minute of dead air, when I’ve collected myself, he does speak: “Police captains in the Policía Nacional de la Revolución have some influence, Mercado. We are allowed to use the Internet. We are allowed to look in certain files of the DGI and the DGSE. And most of us have to be of reasonable intelligence.”

“I’m not doubting your intelligence, sir, I just don’t know quite how you’ve got it all so wrong in this particular situation.”

He rubs his chin, smiles. “Well, maybe I have. Come then, let’s continue our little walk,” he says casually. We sidle off the wall and as the sun begins to break over the castle he fishes in his pocket and produces a pair of ancient sunglasses.

He looks a little ridiculous in the sunglasses, heavy wool jacket, baggy blue trousers, scuffed brown shoes. He doesn’t look a person of consequence, though perhaps that’s part of his charm.

“How many whores would you say there are in Havana?” Hector asks.

“I don’t know. Two, two and a half thousand.”

“More, say three thousand. Conservatively they each make about a hundred dollars a night hard currency. That’s about two million dollars a week. A hundred million a year. That’s what’s keeping this city afloat. Whore money.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whore money and Venezuelan oil will keep us going until the future comes racing across the Florida Strait. Stick with me. Let’s cross the street at this break in the traffic.”

We dodge a camel bus and an overloaded Nissan truck and make it across in one piece. He leads me to a building at the corner of Maceo and Crespo-a decrepit four-story apartment complex that probably hasn’t had any tenants since Hurricane Ivan.

“This is my pride and joy,” he says. “This is the future.”

Hard to credit it. Windows covered with plywood boards, holes in the brickwork, and you can smell the mold and rot from the sidewalk.

“Let’s go inside,” he says, producing a key and undoing a padlock on the rusting iron front door.

He fumbles for a switch and by some supernatural power lights come on to reveal a gutted, stinking shitbox filled with garbage, guano, pigeons, parrots, and rats.

“What is this?” I ask him.

“This is the building I’ve bought with all my savings. It’s mine now and I can trace legal title back to before 1959, which will be important when the Miamistas come with their Yankee lawyers,” Hector says.

“Why are you showing this to me?”

Hector grins. “This building is worth nothing now. Nothing. But in a few years, after Jefe and Little Jefe… A hotel. A boutique hotel right on the Malecón. A minute from the sea, a short walk to the Prado. This place will be worth millions of dollars.”

I nod my head. “If the Revolution falters after Fidel and Raúl.”

“It’s a gamble, Mercado. Like everything in life. I’m not like the rest of these fucking Cubanos with their long faces and their gloomy lives. I see a future right here, in Havana. Not in La Yuma. Here,” he says.

“Yes.”

He lights another cigarette and leans against a crumbling wall. Pulverized plaster and tobacco smoke obscure his face.

A minute goes by.

Two.

“Uh, sir, I should probably be getting back. Those currency cases aren’t going to solve themselves.”

He sighs, disappointed. “Nietzsche said that knowledge kills action. Action requires the veils of illusion. That’s the doctrine of Hamlet. When you go there and you meet them, what then, Mercado? What then?”

“Sir, I really appreciate the fact that you’ve trusted me with this-”

“I had hoped that here in my secret place you were going to tell me your secret. I naively thought that you trusted me sufficiently to give me your truth.”

“I have given you the truth.”

“Thing is, Mercado, you probably think you’ve got nothing to lose. But I have a lot to lose. I see a little glimmer of hope. I’ve got an investment. A dream.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“Of course you won’t, but you’re still going to fuck me over. If you go to the United States and stay there, I’ll lose my job, they’ll take my property, they’ll probably throw me in jail. My wife and kids will be destroyed. You want to see my wife blowing fat Swedes to feed our kids?”

He throws the cigarette. It bounces off my cheek, sparks flying.

“Is that what you fucking want?” he yells. His face is pink. He’s really angry now.

“What are you talking about? The United States? I wanna go to Mexico, I have an interview at the-”

Hector reaches into the pocket of his roomy slacks and pulls out a Russian automatic. He flicks off the safety and, fast for a fat man, presses it against my throat.

“No more fucking lies, Mercado. I could kill you here in this derelict building. The ocean booming against the seawall, the traffic, no fucking witnesses, nobody would even find the body for months, if ever.”

“Hector, I-”

“You want the DGI to destroy me? You want them to throw me in jail with all the people I’ve put away over the years? Is that what you want after all I’ve done for you? Made you a fucking detective, groomed you, made every other goddamn cop in the station treat you with respect. Answer me, Mercadito!”

The gun.

The dust.

His red eyes.

“I don’t want to do anything to hurt you, boss,” I say.

“Why do you think he was in Colorado posing as a fucking Mexican? Did you ever think about that? He didn’t want to be found. He ran from the Cuba that raised him and he ran from the Florida Cubans who took him in. He ran and disappeared. He didn’t want your help. Or anybody’s help. He was a selfish motherfucker, Mercado. A drunk. A fuckup. He was the fucking town ratcatcher. Forget him.”

He pushes the revolver hard against my windpipe, holds it there for a full ten seconds, but then, suddenly, he wilts. He lets the gun fall to his side, then takes a step back and sits on an old table.

The performance-if it was a performance-has exhausted him.

He looks in his pocket for his flask of rum but he’s left it in the office.

“Just tell me the truth, Mercado. Ricky’s a reporter. And despite the fireworks, a good one too. There was something he didn’t like.”

“I don’t know wh-”

“The autopsy. He had the Mexican consulate conduct an autopsy.”

“That’s no secret either.”

“No, but the results are or were. I found them, and if I can find them the DGI can find them too. They’ll put two and two together like me.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“The point is revenge. The pathologist discovered that your father was not killed in the initial accident. A lung was punctured and he fell down an embankment into the forest. He tried to climb back up to the road but he couldn’t make it. Gradually, over a period of hours, I believe, in very cold temperatures, your father drowned in his own blood. That hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Hurts bad. Both of you. You and Ricky. Ricky went and it’s your turn now. You’re going to go to Mexico City and you’re going to find a coyote who can take you across the border into the United States. There you are going to make your way to Colorado and investigate your father’s death and try to find the person who killed him.”

I look at Hector. Off the street ten years, slow and old and fat and smart as a fucking whip.

“How did you piece it together?”

“Ricky.”

“What about him?”

“Two trips to the United States in a year are bound to raise suspicions. Even though he’s a Party member, Ricky was followed by the DGI. He did indeed cover a conference at the UN and a Friends of Cuba rally in New York City, but then the DGI lost him for four days. They think he was in Manhattan doing the tourist scene and probably fucking like crazy, but I suspect that during that time he borrowed some Cuban American friend’s ID, flew to Denver, drove to Fairview, checked into a ski lodge or a hotel, and spent three days asking questions about his father’s death. Then he came back to New York, crammed a week’s worth of interviews into a single afternoon, and flew back to you with his results.”

“This is your guess, not that of the Interior Ministry?”

“Yes.”

“Am I under surveillance?”

“Neither of you is under surveillance. The DGI isn’t interested in you. Not yet. But you’ve been clumsy, Mercado, you and your brother. And clumsy doesn’t get ignored forever. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I understand.”

“So let it go. Just let it go.”

“How can I?”

“Aren’t you Cuban? Where did you grow up? Have you learned nothing? Don’t you know the game is rigged from the start?”

“What are you going to do with these guesses of yours?” I ask.

He spits on the floor. “I’m no chivato, I’m not going to let them know about Ricky or the manner of your father’s death or your plans, but I am going to stop them giving you that visa. If you go to America and get arrested or stopped at the border it’s over for me. I’m not going to let you destroy me, Mercado.”

“You can’t do that.”

“It’s too late. It’s done. I opposed your application. I sent them a letter yesterday telling them that you’re too valuable an asset and that it would be a mistake to let you go to Mexico. They’ll take the hint.”

“What about what you said in the office?”

“Oh, that was just to give them an angle. They always want an angle. The boss who lies to his subordinates.”

Now I’m angry. “You can’t do this to me, Hector.”

“I’ve been patient with you. Now, do me a favor, get the fuck out of my building, Mercado. Take the rest of the day off, and I never want to hear about this again.”

“Fuck you and your fucking shitbox. I hope you choke in it, you old bastard!”

I storm out, cursing.

On the way up Morro a kid blows me the fucky-fucky. I flash my ID. Hassle him. Power: makes everyone a tyrant, and in a country where one in every twenty-five people is either a cop or an informant, that’s a lot of tyranny to go around. Pat the kid. Fake ID, not interested, but sixty bucks Canadian is a good get. Pretty boy. A jockey. I take the cash, tell him to fuck off.

An old man sees the dough, hisses me from an alley.

“What?”

From under his coat he removes a packet of American Tampax.

“How much?” I ask without even thinking about it, for the Cuban generic is, of course, a complete disaster.

“Twenty U.S.”

“I’ll give you ten Canadian and I won’t bust you,” I say, hovering the ID.

“Ten it is,” the old man grumbles.

Tampax and hard currency. Small comforts.

Walk to O’Reilly, climb the four flights to my apartment. Look at the coffeepot, the bottle of white rum. Ignore both. Slide back into bed. I don’t sleep. I just lie there scoping the dump a detective in the PNR gets to call her own. Bed, dresser, color TV, half a shelf of poetry books, windows uncleaned since the last hurricane, hole in the floor, ant problem, Van Gogh prints tacked over the cracks in the plaster-Night Café, Sunflowers-washbasin leaking brown water because the bad plumber won’t fix it, the good plumber only takes dollars.

Lie there.

Lie there all day.

Sun slanting over the Parque Central.

Fly buzzing against the window.

The phone down the hall.

Knock at the door.

The new maid at the Sevilla, a short plump girl from Cárdenas. Syphilitic nose, cross eyes. How did you get a permit to move to Havana? Who do you know?

“Phone call for you,” she says.

Wipe her sweat off the mouthpiece.

“Your visa came,” Ricky says breathlessly.

“What?”

“It came. Of course they sent it to Mom’s. I’m here now. Hand-delivered. Good thing I was here.”

“Jesus, it came?”

“It came. Seven days. Mexico City only.”

“What’s the date? Hector said he spiked it yesterday.”

“He did? I thought he liked you? Well, I guess his influence isn’t as strong as he thinks,” Ricky says with a knowing lilt in his voice.

“You did something, didn’t you? You talked to people. In the circle.”

“I didn’t. I really didn’t.”

“You’re at Mom’s? Aren’t you the dutiful son? Wait there, I’ll be right over.”

Out of bed, wash off the makeup I put on for Hector, look at the woman in the glass. Pale, pretty, a little too thin, narrow eyebrows, uncomplicated green eyes, dark hair. Something about her, though, something a little intimidating. If she had glasses you might say she was severe, a librarian, perhaps, or a staff nurse, or a fucking cop.

Back down the stairs.

Out.

My mother’s place is on Suárez next to the station. Filthy little building in a street of filthy little buildings. Black neighborhood. Negros de pasas. Negros de pelo. Most of the men are voodoo priests or initiates and all the women are Iyawó, brides of the orishas, the deities of the Lucumí religion.

A scary place after dark. Scary place anytime.

Barefoot children roaming the streets. “Give us some money, nice lady,” they chant at the corner. Once I did give them money and they followed me all the way back to O’Reilly.

Mom’s building. Broken front door, garbage and filth over the tiled stairs. Dog shit everywhere.

Usual soundtrack. Fights, the TV, American music, kids yelling, babies crying, Haitian music. Four flights. On four a woman my age says hello. I’ve seen her before, an Iyawó fortune-teller, negro azul, wearing bright West African clothes. Long black hair and even longer nails, cruel smile, creepy as hell.

“No husband yet,” she says.

“No.”

“I’ll help you catch one.”

“That’s ok.”

“Don’t think you’ll get one where you’re going,” she says.

“Oh. And where am I going?”

“You know,” she says with an ugly laugh and with I-don’t-give-a-shit slowness she closes her door.

Walk the landing. Mom’s. Knock, knock.

Ricky opens it. Looks good. Blue cotton shirt and American chino pants and slip-on shoes.

“Hi, darling,” he says, kisses me.

“Handsomer than ever,” I tell him.

“I could say the same,” he replies.

“But you won’t.”

“Of course I will, you look great.”

“How is she?” I ask, my voice descending into a whisper.

“No worse than usual. I brought her some flowers. Cheered her up,” he says.

“Again, you’re such a good son,” I tell him.

“Well, I want to be remembered in the will,” he says with a grin.

I take his hand and step in. Mom has all the blinds drawn and the lights are off. No light anywhere except for the candles in front of the Santería shrine. Layers of dust, dust on the dust. Mom sitting at the table we bought her, looking at tarot cards. She doesn’t even notice when I sidle next to her. She’s wearing a tattered dress that exposes one of her breasts. Her face is haggard. She’s lost weight since last week and the expression in her eyes is watery, remote, distant. “Hi, Mom,” I say and kiss her.

“Hello, my baby girl,” she replies, looking up for a moment and then going back to the cards.

I watch her for a while. I have no idea what she’s doing and I don’t want to know.

“She’s lost weight,” I tell Ricky.

“She trades her supply-book tokens for candles and spells from the priestesses.”

The room’s full of stuff like that. Lucumí gods and goddesses straight from West Africa. I recognize some, but most are utterly unfamiliar. And not just Lucumí-an eclectic mix from many pantheons: a brass Ganesh and his mother, Saraswati; a porcelain Virgin Mary; prayer flags from Tibet; a huge carved wooden Apollo.

Mom starts mumbling to herself over the tarot.

“She’s gotten worse.”

Ricky shakes his head. “No worse. She’s doing ok.”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“You don’t see her as much as I do,” Ricky says with a smile to show that he’s not criticizing.

“Those bitches really got their hooks into her with this shit. I’ll tell them to leave her fucking ration book alone,” I say angrily.

“I bring her food, she’s ok,” Ricky says.

“Quite the little saint,” I say with a grin but also an edge.

Silence. Seconds turning into minutes. Claustrophobia. Get up. Walk around. I note again that Dad’s ashes are gone from the mantel. I don’t even want to think what she did with them.

More time. More suffocating seconds. God, I hate this place.

“I’m sorry, I can’t stay here,” I say.

Ricky nods. “At least tell Mom you’re leaving the country.”

She’s dozing now. I kneel in front of her and take her hands and kiss them. She looks up, a little sparkle in those yellow eyes.

“My darling,” she says.

“Mom, I’m going now. I’m going away for a while.”

She nods and then, as if the veil has lifted for a moment, she says: “Be careful.”

“I will.”

Ricky walks me to the landing. “Don’t forget your letter,” he says, and hands me the forms from the Interior Ministry. Of course it requires a fee, but once paid, I’ll have that rarest of rare things-permission to leave Cuba. An exit visa. A key to the prison door.

I hold it to the light and then I kiss it.

“How did I get this? You pulled some strings, didn’t you?”

He shakes his head. “Even if I was fucking the minister’s private secretary I wouldn’t ask him for something like this. We’d all be headed for the plantations.”

“Then how?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It’s a mystery.”

“Yeah, it is.”

The Last Act.

The wee hours.

After all the tails have gone to bed.

Bang at my apartment door.

Who the fuck?

Open it.

“So you went above my head?” Hector says bitterly.

Rum breath. Bleary eyes.

“I swear I didn’t.”

“Ricky then?”

“I didn’t ask him to.”

“Own initiative, eh?”

“He says he didn’t do anything.”

He pushes past me, sits on my bed. “Can’t stay, told Anna I was getting some air. Have a drink,” he says and passes me the flask.

“No, thank you.”

“Fuck Ricky and fuck you, Mercado. If you don’t come back from the United States I’m finished. My family. Your family. All of us.”

“I’ll come back.”

He shakes his head like a wet dog. “I could still tell them, you know. I could still tell the DGI or the ministry that you’re going to La Yuma. I could tell them you’ve talked to me about defecting,” Hector snarls.

“You wouldn’t do that, Hector.”

“No?” he says.

“No,” I insist.

He balls his right fist angrily and thumps it on the bed. For a second I see him tossing the joint. Neighbors in the hall, phone calls, Hector pulling rank. But the fight’s been ground out of him. He sighs. “No, I won’t turn chivato, not now,” he says.

He takes another drink, gets heavily to his feet.

“Can’t stay,” he says.

In the doorway he grabs my wrist, tugs me close. “Forget about it, Mercado.”

I break free using first-week police aikido.

“Damn it,” he says and stares at me, mentally wounded.

“Listen to me, Hector, I’m not dumb, I’m going to go to you-know-where, but I promise I will be back,” I tell him. “Now, you should go home, Anna will be worried.”

He looks at the floor and doesn’t move.

“You’re a poet, Mercado,” he says.

“I don’t know how that rumor got started.”

“Ever read Pindar?”

“No.”

“Homer’s contemporary, except he really existed. He says, ‘The gods give us for every good thing two evil ones. Men who are children take this badly but the manly ones bear it, turning the brightness outward.’ ”

“I don’t see-”

“You can’t fix everything. You have to let things go. Don’t go to America. I’m begging you, Mercado, please don’t go.”

I don’t reply.

I don’t need to.

He nods, turns, and walks along the corridor. I hear him shuffle down the stairs, and from my window I check him for tails until O’Reilly becomes Misiones and he’s finally swallowed up by the boozy Havana night.