Havana Bay

Chapter Ten

While he and Osorio put Erasmo to bed Arkady looked around at what the mechanic afforded himself for living quarters: a small space enlarged by the fact that his cot, counter, table and chairs were all cut to half height. On a pillow of gold African cloth was a collection of military medals and campaign ribbons. The photographs on the wall reflected more glory than Erasmo had let on. A hospital-bed scene of Erasmo being visited by two men in military fatigues-a tall, swarthy man in aviator glasses who would have passed as Armenian in Russia, the other older with a full gray beard and wiry brows, unique and unmistakable, the Comandante himself. Neither man wore officer's insignia on his cap or shoulders; this was, after all, an egalitarian army. Castro was as puffed with pride as a father. The second visitor seemed to focus more ruefully on Erasmo's shortness of limb.

"The Cuban general in Angola," Osorio said.

Another picture showed the same distinguished friends on the deck of a fishing boat, this time with Erasmo strapped into the fighting chair. Family pictures displayed friendly, affluent men and women at swimming pools, bridge tables, dancing. Or children on baseball fields, bicycles, ponies. And the entire family in formal suits and ballroom gowns at champagne receptions and Christmas parties. In one wide photomontage they and hundreds more like them spread up and down the grand double stairway of a white mansion.

"He'll sleep a long time," Osorio said.

" 'Unconscious' is the word."

Just as Luna had been the last man Arkady wanted to encounter, the last place he'd expected to see again was Pribluda's apartment, but at Osorio's insistence he climbed the steps with her. Although he thought he had tidied up fairly well, as soon as he turned on the light the detective noticed a difference.

"Dried blood on the carpet. What happened here?"

"You don't know? You work with Luna and Arcos."

"Only for this case because Russians are involved."

"You weren't surprised to see the sergeant come after me with an ice pick?"

"All I saw was you throwing him into a wall."

"It's a tense relationship. After all, he did beat me with a baseball bat. I think it was a baseball bat, he said it was."

"He hit you?"

"You know nothing about that?"

"This is a serious charge."

"Other places, not here. Here, my experience is, not much is investigated."

"As a matter of fact," Osorio said, "I did ask your friend, Erasmo, before he passed out, what happened to you. He said you told him you fell down the stairs." See, Arkady thought, that was the penalty of ever telling less than the truth. Osorio's eye fell on the empty corner chair.» What did you do with Change?"

"What did I do with Change?" Arkady asked.» The doll? Only in Cuba would this question come up. I don't know. Either Luna took him or Chango left on his own. How did you find me?"

"I was looking for you. You weren't here, so I followed the drums."

"Naturally." Arkady touched the cut on his hairline to feel if it had split open.

Osorio set her bag on the parlor table.» Let me see your head. You cleaned up all the other evidence of this so-called attack."

"Detective, I've been here three days and I've seen the PNR excuse itself from two violent deaths. I don't think you're going to investigate mere assault."

She pulled his head down, brusquely turned it one way and then the other and ran her fingers over his scalp.» What do you claim Luna said?"

"The sergeant mentioned that he'd prefer I stayed off the street."

"Well, you didn't."

He winced as she parted the hair around a cut.» I didn't get far."

"What else?"

"Nothing." Arkady wasn't about to strip and show her the bruises on his back and legs and he wasn't going to hand over the Yacht Club picture so it could be delivered straight to the sergeant. That he still had it was the luck of tossing his passport with the picture inside a shoe.

Osorio released his head.» You should see a doctor."

"Thanks, that's helpful."

"Don't be insulting. Listen, I'm only saying that since there's no evidence here that you haven't compromised and your story has changed already once and since officers of the Ministry of the Interior do not beat visitors from other countries, even from Russia, another explanation is more likely. Considering the blows you took to your head, you may not be responsible for what you say."

He wondered why Osorio had insisted on coming to the apartment. He also wondered why she was dressed like a vamp with platform shoes and carrying a big straw bag.» Detective, what are you here for?"

"Because I want you to go home alive."

While he tried to come up with an answer to that the lights in the room faded and went dark. He stepped out to the balcony and saw that the problem wasn't only in the apartment; an entire arc of buildings along the Malecon had gone black.

Arkady fed Pribluda's turtle by the illumination of Rufo's lighter and then lit a cigarette and inhaled wonderful, pain-soothing fumes. Osorio sat in the dark at the table.

"A power outage," Osorio said.

"I know the feeling."

"You should stop smoking."

"That's my biggest problem?" He found candles above the sink, lit the fattest one and joined the detective.

"Besides Sergeant Luna and your friend downstairs, who else did you know at the santero's?"

"No one," Arkady said.» I'd heard of Walls."

"Everyone in Cuba knows George Washington Walls."

"Luna arranged the show for him. I think Luna's going to arrange a show for me. You may not be safe here." Arkady had not intended to stay in the flat himself. She reached into her bag and laid out a Makarov 9-mm, the same police issue as in Moscow.» Would you have used that on Luna?"

"He knows I have the bullets. The patrolmen you see on the street, they have guns but they don't have bullets."

"There's a comfort." He saw her lay a toiletry kit by the gun.» What is that for?"

"I'm staying the night."

"I appreciate the gesture, Detective, but you must have some place to be. A home, a family, a beloved pet."

"Are you offended to have a woman protect you? Is that it? Do Russians suffer from machismo?"

"Not me. But why do it if you don't believe me about Luna?"

"Luna is not the one I worry about. Dr. Bias examined the syringe that you say Rufo attacked you with. The doctor wasn't supposed to, but he did, to look for signs of drugs."

"Were there?"

"No, only blood and brain tissue of Rufo's and traces of a different blood type altogether."

"Maybe he stabbed someone else."

"Did he? Where did Rufo get the syringe?"

"Dr. Bias said he stole it at the institute."

"Yes, that's what the doctor said. I have a different answer. Wasn't that Rufo's lighter you used?"

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"Light it."

He did as she asked and the flame became a resonating circle between them. Osorio reached into the light and pushed his coat and shirt sleeve up his forearm to show two dark bruises on the artery.

"That's why I came back."

Arkady regarded the marks with the expression of a man surprised to find himself tattooed.

"Rufo must have scratched me when we were struggling."

She ran her finger lightly along the vein.» These are punctures, not scratches. Why did you come to Havana?"

"I was asked, remember?"

He blew out the flame, but he felt her eyes still intent on him. He no longer knew why he had answered a summons he could have easily ignored, but exhuming the reason was more than he cared to do for the Policia Nacional de la Revolution. All the same, control of the situation had clearly passed to the hands of the detective.

Because of the heat they camped on the balcony in metal chairs. Streetlamps were still lit, and the balcony was a vantage point to see Luna if he returned on the ocean side of the Malecon. Osorio seemed to have a different concern, following Arkady's every move, as if he might suddenly execute a dive to the pavement. Perhaps candy-colored top and shorts were jinetera fashion-she'd given him a brief account of the surveillance-but as they only accentuated how fine-boned she was, with hair in rows of black curls and her eyes set under extravagant lashes, it was like being tended by a child. Why he was with her rather than pounding at the door of the Russian embassy for asylum he didn't know.

A wave collapsed along the wall, and he wondered whether the fishing lights farther out rode ebb or flow. He couldn't see the village of Casablanca across the bay, but the lighthouse cast and retrieved its beam. Osorio nudged him and he saw sitting on the seawall the girl who had been possessed at the santero's. Hedy appeared freshly cleaned and shined and had engaged the attention of a late-night stroller wearing the elegantly blousy shirt of a European male on vacation.

"Italian is the official language of jineteras." Ofelia had dropped her voice.

"So I've heard. It's Hedy, the girl from the santero's. At least she's on her feet again."

"Not for long." Osorio laid down the words like a bet.

There were times when Arkady thought Osorio spoke with the satisfaction of a hangman.» So, just what happened to her? She was possessed but the santero couldn't help her?"

"The drummers were Abakua."

"So?"

"Abakua is from the Congo and she was possessed by a Congo spirit. Santeros don't deal with Congo spirits."

"Is that so? That sounds awfully … departmental."

Osorio narrowed her eyes on him.» We can believe in Santeria, Palo Monte, Abakua or Catholic. Or any combination. You think that's impossible?"

"No. It's amazing the things I believe in: evolution, gamma rays, vitamins, the poetry of Akhmatova, the speed of light. Most of which I take on faith."

"What did Pribluda believe in?"

Arkady thought for a moment because he liked the question.» He was hard as a barrel and did a hundred sit-ups every day, but he thought the key to health was garlic, black tea and Bulgarian tobacco. He distrusted redheads and people who were left-handed. He liked long train trips so he could wear pajamas day and night. He never picked a bad mushroom. He still called Lenin 'Ilyich.' He warned you never to say the devil's name because he might come. In the bathhouse he washed first, then steamed, which is more polite. He said vodka was water for the soul."

Hedy and her new friend walked out of view. Osorio stretched her feet out onto the balcony rail, ostensibly getting comfortable, though there was little comfort in deck chairs. Arkady noticed that the soles of her feet were a delicate pink.

Arkady said, "I know that Dr. Bias has determined that Pribluda had a heart attack and he has a point about the fishing gear seeming to be intact. But maybe there was more than fishing gear. If you told me Pribluda keeled over trying to run a marathon, I might believe it. Basking in the water, no. Let me ask, how well do you know Dr. Bias? Can you depend on his honesty?"

She took a moment to answer.» Bias is too vain to be wrong. If he says a heart attack, it was a heart attack. Have the body examined in Russia if you want, they'll tell you the same thing."

"There are other questions that can only be answered here."

"There will be no investigation," Osorio said.

"An investigation of Rufo?"

"No."

"Of Luna?"

"No."

"Of anything?"

"No." Her disdain would have flattened a man of any sensitivity.

A black swell moved under the beam of the lighthouse. There were times when he could almost feel the sea reach out to him like a wonderful, dreamless sleep. The balcony faced north toward familiar constellations. The truth was that he didn't believe in an expanding universe anymore; he believed in an imploding universe, a furious rushing together of everything down a celestial drain to a single point of absolute nothing. He sensed Osorio's eyes watching him.

"I have two daughters, Muriel and Marisol," she said.» Do you have children?"

"No."

"You're married?"

"No."

"Married to your work? Dedicated? Che was like that. He was married and had children, but he gave himself to the Revolution."

"More like divorced from my work. Not like Che, no."

"Because you have the same …"

"Same what?"

"Nothing." After a space, she asked, "You like Cuban music? Everyone likes Cuban music."

"It has a certain beat."

"It has a beat?"

"Primarily."

There was a longer pause.

"You play chess, then?" Osorio tried.

Arkady lit a cigarette.» No."

"Sports?"

"No."

"Cuba invented baseball."

"What?"

"Cuba invented baseball. The Indians who lived here, the ones Columbus found, they used to play a game here with a ball and a bat."

"Oh."

"You never read that?"

"No, what I read in Moscow was that Russia invented baseball. There is an old Russian game with a ball and bat. The article said that Russian emigrants to the United States took the game with them."

"I'm sure one of us is right."

"The only difference is that Sergeant Luna used a steel bat."

"Aluminum."

"I stand corrected."

Osorio recrossed her legs. Arkady leaned back to release a long plume of smoke.

"If there were an investigation," she finally said, "what would you do?"

"Start with a chronology. Pribluda was seen first at eight in the morning by a neighbor, a dancer. He was seen last by a co-worker at the embassy between four and six in the afternoon. She said he was talking on the street here to a neumdtico, a black man. If I could speak Spanish I'd go up and down the Malecon with this picture until I found everyone who saw him that day."

"I suppose we can talk to the block CDR."

"I know who that is."

"Okay, we'll do that."

"And take another look where the body was found." "But we found it across the bay in Casablanca. You were there."

"Not in the daylight."

"This is not an investigation."

"No, absolutely not."

"You're not afraid of being attacked again?"

"I'll be with you."

Her eyes seemed get even darker.» Que idiota."

That seemed to be her name for him.

Finally, he fell asleep in the chair, although he was aware of her perfume, a faint scent of vanilla that tinged the air like ink in water.