Havana Bay

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ofelia had gone out earlier, and he didn't recognize her at first when she returned in skintight white jeans, white tube top and white-rimmed dark glasses, and carrying bags of coffee, sugar, oranges. She had a blinding new aura, he thought, like a nuclear reactor when control rods were withdrawn, and she had for him a shirt with the embroidered design of a polo player, short-brimmed straw hat, fashionable hip pack, sunglasses.

"Where did you find these?"

"There are hotels in the Playa del Este with dollar boutiques. It's your friend Pribluda's money, but I think he would approve, no?"

He picked up the shirt.» I don't think it's me."

"You have no choice. Luna has a picture of you. In case he circulates it, we have to make you look different."

"I'm never going to look Cuban."

"Not Cuban, no. If people can mistake a tourist for you, maybe they'll mistake you for a tourist."

The truth she admitted only to herself: that she had experienced a shameful thrill walking into boutiques with so much money. She had also added a new comb and brush to her floppy straw bag. Necessities for a certain role. And to dress a man was a pleasure she felt in the marrow of her bones.

She folded his coat over a chair.

"We paid for two nights, we can leave your coat here for now."

The Playa del Este offered the overwhelming nothingness of sand and sea and houses wearing a sun-bleached memory of color rather than color itself. A billboard announced the imminent construction of a French hotel by a "Socialist-Leninist Brigade of Workers," and down the beach rose ranks of new hotels already built. Ofelia drove, and Arkady discovered that to ride in Ofelia's DeSoto, a vintage monster with wedge-shaped fins, was to be invisible. A white tourist with an attractive Cuban woman was instantly categorized and dismissed. For the first time, he fit in because there were examples of him and Ofelia everywhere, a tall Dutchman and a nearly miniature black girl sitting at a table under a single Cinzano parasol that constituted a sidewalk cafe, a Mexican with a blonde jinetera taking the air in a bicycle cab, a beefy Englishman with a girl tottering on new platform shoes. Ofelia identified their nationality at a glance. What Arkady noticed was that each couple held hands but had no conversation.

"They each have a fantasy," Ofelia said.» He that he can leave his ordinary life and live like a rich man on an island like this. She that he will fall in love with her and take her away to what she thinks is the real world. It's better they can't communicate."

But Ofelia, too, felt a welcome invisibility in her dark glasses and jeans, in the attitude of her chin, and when they passed the plate glass of a gift shop she saw the reflection of a perfectly acceptable jinetera and tourist, perhaps slightly more handsome than usual.

At the approach of a Cuban girl the guard at the gate of the Marina Hemingway started from his box, only to step back in when he saw Arkady escort her around the barrier. He led Ofelia by the marina shop and across the grass to the dock where George Washington Walls had left him off after his visit to the Havana Yacht Club. The same loud volleyball game seemed to be in progress. Other Americans trafficked back and forth with bags of laundry. A boy in cutoffs hand-trucked cases of beer to a blue-water yacht the size of an iceberg, yet Ofelia treated the sight of three canals filled with million-dollar power yachts as offhandedly as Cleopatra reviewing her barges. Perhaps she was unimpressed, he thought, because of the Cuban girl suspended in a hammock from a sailboat boom.

"What's so dangerous here?" Ofelia asked.

"I don't know. You've been here before?"

"Once or twice. You go ahead. I'm looking for someone."

Among the sameness of fiberglass boats the Gavilan had a dark, distinctive silhouette, and Arkady picked it out at the slip Walls had been heading for when he was waved off by a harbor master yelling "Peligroso!" at snorkelers. There were no swimmers in the water now, and Arkady couldn't see any problem. The seaplane tender nudged peacefully against the tire fenders of the dock while lines fed electricity from a shoreside outlet box over the boat's brass rail. No swimmers, no shouts, only the deep throbbing of a motor yacht taxiing down the canal.

He continued along the canal, seeing no obstructions in the water, no flotsam by the dock. A galvanized pipe led water to each slip; a foreign crew was washing down a three-story megayacht, spraying one another, drinking the water, so it was even potable. American boats in Cuba made for an interesting community, grandiose white palaces mixed in with raffish fishing boats mus-tached with stains, all bending the law by even being where they were. Arkady had no experience on yachts himself, but having spent some time in Vladivostok around factory ships and trawlers, he knew a little about bringing power on board, and what caught his eye about the waist-high electrical distribution boxes spaced along the dock of the Marina Hemingway was how few had ordinary outlets to plug into. Instead, a power line led from the box while another led from the boat, and where they met the lines were spliced and taped together, the connection protected from water by a clear plastic shopping bag taped at the ends. He worked his way to an empty outdoor bar at the far end of the dock. Fully half the hookups he saw on the way went through spliced and bagged electrical lines sitting in water between the hull of the boat and cement wall of the dock.

The transom of the Alabama Baron was smeared with fish guts and scales, although the jinetera in the sailboat's hammock didn't look like a fisherman to Ofelia. The girl had the Julia Roberts look from the film Pretty Woman, very popular in Cuba, tons of hair, myopic eyes, pouty lips, and she was watching a bracelet being sold on a portable television connected to a small satellite dish bolted to the dock. Ofelia recognized the Home Shopping Network, also very popular in Cuba among those with access to dishes. The woman on the television laid the bracelet across her wrist to let the light play on the stones. The sound was off, but the price flashed in the corner of the screen.

"That's beautiful," Ofelia said.

"Isn't it? Good price, too."

"Diamond?"

"Same as. Last week, they had a chain for the ankle with the same stones. You think that's a good price, but wait." The woman on the television spread the bracelet on a bed of velvet and added a pair of earrings.» See, I knew. You order too soon and you don't get the earrings. You have to know to wait and then pick up your phone and give them your credit-card number and the bracelet's yours in two days." Julia Roberts glanced over.» You're new here."

"I'm looking for Teresa."

The television woman brushed back a mantle of hair to model the earrings, left, right, frontal. Another girl in a top and thong came out of the cabin. Her hair was almost as short as Ofelia's but peroxided blonde.» You know Teresa?"

"Yes. Luna told me she would be here."

"You know Facundo?" The girl in the hammock sat up.

"I met him."

"Teresa's real upset," the blonde knelt by the rail and whispered.» She was next door when Hedy got her throat slit. They were close."

"She got run in, too," Julia Roberts said.» Some police bitch gave her a tough time. For helping feed her family, you know."

"I know," said Ofelia.

"Teresa's scared," the blonde said.» She went home to the country. I don't think she's going to be here for a while."

"Is she afraid of the sergeant?" Ofelia asked.

"You met the sergeant, what do you think?" Julia Roberts said.» With all due respect, what do you think? I just know him, but Teresa and Hedy were his private girls, understand?"

The blonde checked out Ofelia's vital points.» Aren't you a little old to be doing this? What are you, twenty-four, twenty-five?"

"Twenty-nine."

"Not bad."

"I-am-trying-to-sleep," a deep voice in American came from the bowels of the sailboat, and a form struggled up the galley steps. It had to be the Alabama baron himself, Ofelia thought. He wore a Houston Astros cap, shorts and a Hawaiian shirt that couldn't cover a sunburned belly that he salved by rolling a can of beer over its expanse. He loomed over the two Cuban girls on his boat.» Talk-talk-talk-talk-talk-Jesus-Kayrist-you-women-talk. Whoa," he said as he caught sight of Ofelia, "the talent contest may still be open."

"She's with me," Arkady said. He had worked his way back along the dock to the tender and the sailboat, berthed one behind the other.» We were just admiring the boats."

The baron glanced around at the beer cans on his deck until he noticed that Arkady meant the Gavilan.

"Yeah, sure, that's a fucking classic. A genuine rumrunner, everything but the bullet holes."

Rumrunner? Arkady liked that. That smacked of Capone.

"Fast?"

"I'd say so. You're talking a V-12, four hundred horses, sixty knots, faster than a torpedo boat. 'Cept with a woodie you spend all day at the dock sanding, varnishing, polishing."

"That's a drawback," Arkady agreed.

"No time to fish. Of course, they do all the upkeep for him here. He gets special treatment. Where you from?"

"Chicago."

"Really?" The baron digested that.» You fish?"

"I wish I could. I don't have enough time."

"Locals keeping you otherwise occupied?" The baron's eye returned to Ofelia, who kept her face blank of comprehension.

"Busy."

"Well, it's a fish or fuck world, it really is. I'll tell you what, the last thing in the world I want is lift the embargo. Cuba is cheap, beautiful, grateful. Take away the embargo and it'll be 'nother Florida in a year. Hell, I'm a man on a pension, I'd hardly be able to afford Susy here." He pointed with his free hand to the girl in the hammock, whose eyes had returned to the shopping network and a new item, a clock in a crystal elephant. Arkady remembered Rufo's list of names and phone numbers. Susy and Daysi. Did the other girl peroxide her hair for a daisylike effect? Arkady could tell that Ofelia had caught the name too.

"What do you mean, 'special treatment'?" he asked the baron.

"The owner of that boat is George Washington Walls. Their hero. Hey, I was a fireman twenty years, I know about heroes. Heroes don't put a gun to no pilot's head."

"You're not just…?" Arkady raised his eyebrows delicately.

"Racist? Not me." The baron waved his arm toward the jineteras and Ofelia as proof.

"For example, then?"

"For example." The baron was hot now. He hung on to a guy wire for balance and pointed to the hookup servicing the tender.» Check out the power lead installed specially for him just yesterday. Now, look at mine." Where the Alabama Baron's lead dipped into the water was the typical splice in a bag that was filthier than the others.» I understand they're clever devils here and they got American boats and European boats with whole different electrical frequencies and they got to jury-rig a new line for every boat that hooks up, but I'm a fireman and I know hot lines and water. Get this lead in the water and spring a little leak and you will fry yourself some very surprised fish. All I'm saying is, how come Senor Walls has himself the only berth in the entire marina with a new power lead?"

"And if a swimmer was in the water?"

"Kill him."

"Heart attack?"

"Stop it cold."

"And there would be burn marks?"

"Only if he touched the line. I've seen bodies in tubs with a hair dryer, same thing. Look at her"-the baron gave Ofelia an approving nod-"like she understands every word."

The very statement that Teresa had gone back to the country made Ofelia believe that the jinetera was lying low in Havana in the rooms of her friends. Calling from the DeSoto, Ofelia tried the numbers Rufo had listed for Daysi and Susy, and when neither phone answered, Ofelia called Bias.

"It's not like a bolt of lightning but yes"-the doctor agreed with her-"if a live wire falls into water, there would obviously be a charge."

"How strong?"

"It depends. Submerged in water, power is diffused exponentially depending on the distance from the source. Then there is the size and physical condition of the victim, and the peculiarities of each individual heart."

"A fatal charge?"

"Depending. Alternating current, for example, is more dangerous than direct current. Salt water is a better conductor than fresh."

"Leaving marks?"

"It all depends. If there was contact, there would be a burn. Farther away, a person might only experience a tingle in his extremities. But the heart and the respiratory center of the brain are regulated by electrical impulses and an electrical shock can initiate fibrillations without necessarily causing trauma to tissue."

"Meaning," Ofelia said, "that somewhere between too near and too far to a live wire in water, a victim could suffer a heart attack and there would be no entry or exit mark, no burns, absolutely nothing?"

There was a silence at the doctor's end. Traffic rattled on the Malecon. Arkady seemed to be enjoying his cigarette enormously.

"You could put it that way," Bias finally said.

"Why didn't you say so before?"

"Everything in context. Where would a neumatico encounter an electrical wire in the middle of the sea?" There was a burst of static and Bias changed the subject.» Have you seen the Russian?"

"No." She met Arkady's eyes with hers.

"Well," Bias said, "I notice that he left a new photograph of Pribluda for me."

"Have you matched it to the body yet?"

"No. There are other murders, you know."

"But you will try? It's important to him. You know, as it turns out he's not a total idiot."

Since they'd skipped breakfast, they stopped at a park table for ice cream. Huge leathery trees overhung a playground and a shooting gallery. Ofelia was going after Teresa and Arkady wanted to see Mostovoi's apartment again, but at the moment the detective looked like a movie star on the Riviera, lips pink with strawberry.

"We can meet here later and have ice cream for dinner," Arkady said.» At six? And if we miss each other, then ten o'clock at the Yacht Club and we'll see what that has to do with Angola."

Ofelia was suspicious.» What will you do in the meantime?"

"A Russian named Mostovoi has a picture of a dead rhinoceros I want to take a look at."

"Why?"

"Because he didn't show it to me before."

"That's all?"

"A simple visit. And you?"

"You said last night when you followed Luna he was pushing a cart of what looked to you like black-market goods. Well, what goods? Maybe they're still there. Someone has to see."

"You're not going alone?"

"Do I look crazy? No, I'll take plenty of help, believe me," Ofelia said. She looked very composed for a moment and then pulled down her dark glasses in shock.

Arkady turned to face two girls in maroon school jumpers. They had green eyes and hair streaked with amber and held cones of ice cream close enough to drip on his shoulder. An energetic gray-haired woman in a housedress and sneakers followed with a vengeance.

"Mama," Ofelia asked, "why aren't the girls in school?"

"They should be in school but they should see their mother from time to time, too, don't you think?" Ofelia's mother took in Arkady.» Oh my God, it's true. Everyone's meeting a nice Spaniard, a little Englishman, you found a Russian. My God."

"I just asked her to bring some toiletries," Ofelia told Arkady.

"She looks unhappy," Arkady said.

"Don't offer her your chair."

But the deed was done and her mother was settling in where Arkady had been.

"My mother," Ofelia muttered as an introduction.

"My God," her mother said.

"My pleasure," Arkady said.

With a pride Ofelia couldn't suppress, "My daughters Muriel and Marisol. Arkady."

The girls rose on tiptoe for his kiss.

"Where do you even find a Russian?" her mother asked.» I thought they were gone like the dodos."

"He's a senior investigator from Moscow."

"Good. Did he bring food?"

"They look just like you," Arkady told Ofelia.

"You dressed so nice." Muriel looked Ofelia up and down.

"Those are new clothes." Ofelia's mother took a second look.

"No hablo espanol," Arkady said.

"Just as well," Ofelia assured him.

"He bought them?"

"We are working together."

"Then that's different, that's absolutely different. You're colleagues exchanging gifts of esteem. I see possibilities here."

"It's not what you think."

"Please, don't disabuse me when I have hopes. He's not so bad. A little lean. A week or two of rice and beans and he'll be fine."

"Do you like him?" Marisol asked Ofelia.

"He's a nice man."

"Pushkin was a Russian poet," her mother said.» He was part African."

"I'm sure he knows that."

"Pushkin?" Arkady thought he heard something to hang on to.

"Does he have a gun?" Muriel asked.

"He's not carrying a gun."

"But he can shoot?" Marisol asked.

"The best."

"The target gallery!" the girls shouted together.

"They see you so little," Ofelia's mother said.» You shouldn't begrudge them a little fun, and your Russian marksman can show off."

The shooting gallery was a gutted bus on blocks, the back end replaced by a counter of air rifles that faced an array of American jet planes and paratroopers cut from soda cans. Behind them, on a black dropcloth, an artist had added cutout stars and comets and a vista of the Malecon with drivers shooting from convertibles. Sound effects were supplied by a tape of machine-gun fire. The sisters pushed Arkady into an open space at the counter.

"He should feel right at home," her mother said.

"Pump it." Muriel pushed the rifle into his hands.

"You have to pump it," Ofelia said as she paid.

"First the planes, first the planes," Marisol said.

The rifle was a toy with a tiny bead at the tip of the barrel. He fired at a particularly mean-looking bomber, and the paratrooper next to it jumped.

"What are you aiming at?" Ofelia asked.

"I'm aiming at everything."

The wrong target was the best he did. Kids around him made planes hop, spin, dance, but for all the shiny, dangling invaders every other shot of his thudded igno-miniously into the backdrop.

"He must be high up in the police," her mother said.» I don't think he ever shot at anything."

The girls pushed a rifle into Ofelia's hands. She gave the lever two quick pumps and aimed at a big bomber from Tropicola.

"I think the bead's a little off," Arkady suggested.

The bomber pinged and spun.

"No, Mama," Marisol complained.» In the center."

Balancing her glasses on her forehead and tucking the stock more firmly against her cheek, Ofelia pumped and fired at a more steady pace. Silvery planes swung and paratroopers sang and danced. A comet, too, for good measure. The glasses dropped down over her eyes, it didn't matter, she had half the targets swaying at once. Arkady thought of the plane that had brought him less than a week ago, which now seemed an age. Here he was out in the open with Luna looking for him, but what better camouflage was there than a Cuban family? What could be more strange and more natural? Twelve hits with twelve shots earned Ofelia the prize of a can of lighter fluid that her mother tucked into a net bag. As she said, "Everything counts."

Appeased, the girls allowed themselves to be kissed by Ofelia and taken in hand by their grandmother, who dipped into her bag to give Ofelia a plastic toiletries bag and something wrapped in greasy newspaper.» Banana bread from Muriel's bananas. You remember the bananas?"

"I can't take this bread."

"Your daughters helped make it. They would feel much better if you did."

Muriel and Marisol made their eyes huge.

"Okay, okay. Thank you, girls." A farewell round of kisses.

"Feed it to him," her mother advised.» And take care of him."