"This is funny. I lost my German. I lost my money. You put me on a list of whores. I can't go back to Ciego de Avila because my family is depending on me to stay here and send them money, otherwise I would be in a fucking school, like you say. And now that you have fucked with my life you're a jinetera, too? That's funny."
"You're not on the list."
"I'm not on the list?"
"Not on the list. I only said that to scare you."
"Because we're competition."
"You're a smart girl."
"Fuck off." Teresa's nose ran, making a wet smear of her upper lip.
"Teresa –"
"Leave me alone. Go the fuck away."
Ofelia couldn't go away. Luna had gone insane at the sight of Arkady at the Centro Russo-Cubano, but the sergeant had only stuffed her in the car trunk when cutting her throat would have been as easy. Why?
"Sit down."
"Fuck away."
"Sit down." Ofelia pressed Teresa down onto the chair and moved behind her. "Stay there."
Teresa's eyes rolled back to follow. "What are you doing?"
"Be still." Ofelia reached into her bag for her new brush and comb and pulled back the black excelsior of Teresa's hair. "Just sit."
Waves, curls and spit curls close to the scalp and tight as springs would have daunted Ofelia if Muriel's hair weren't almost as thick. One pull wouldn't do, she had to firmly feather the hair out, work it loose, put some shape back into it.
"You have to take care of yourself, chica."
To begin with, Teresa submitted with silent grimness, but after a minute her neck started to roll with the strokes. Hair like this warmed up with brushing, especially on a hot day, polished up like silver with a little attention. As Ofelia lifted the hair from the nape of the neck she could feel Teresa soften to the touch. Fourteen years old? Alone for two days? Frightened for her life? Even a stray cat needed to be petted.
"I wish I had hair like this. I wouldn't need a pillow."
"Everyone says that," Teresa murmured.
"That's looking better."
As Teresa relaxed, though, her shoulders began to shake. She turned to Ofelia and revealed her whole face wet with tears.
"Now my face is a mess."
"I'll cheer you up." Ofelia put the brush into her bag. "Let me show you what else I have."
"The stupid swimsuit?"
"Better than a swimsuit."
"A condom?"
"No, better than that." Ofelia brought out the Makarov 9-mm pistol and let Teresa hold it.
"Heavy."
"Yes." Ofelia took the Makarov back. "I think all women should be issued guns. No men, just women."
"I bet Hedy wished she had something like this. You know my friend Hedy?"
"I'm the one who found her."
"Cono," Teresa said more in awe.
When Ofelia put the gun away, she stayed kneeling and lowered her voice as if they didn't have the whole skyline of Havana to themselves. "I know you're afraid the same thing is going to happen to you, but I can stop them. You have an idea who did it or you wouldn't be hiding, no? The question is, who are you hiding from?"
"You really are police?"
"Yes. And I don't want to find you like I found Hedy." Ofelia let the girl contemplate that for a moment. "What happened to her protection?"
"I don't know."
"The man who protects you and Hedy, what's his name?"
"I can't say."
"You can't because he's in Minint and you think this will get back to him. If I get to him first, then you'd be able to leave this roof."
Teresa folded her arms and shivered in spite of the heat. "I didn't really think some turista was going to come here and marry me. Why would he want to take home some ignorant black girl? Everyone would make fun of him. 'Hey, Herman, you didn't have to marry your whore.' I'm not stupid."
"I know."
"Hedy was really nice."
"You know, I think I can still help you. You don't have to say his name. I'll say his name."
"I don't know."
"Luna. Sergeant Facundo Luna."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't, I did."
Teresa looked away, as far as the angels that balanced on the theater. A breeze lifted her hair the same as it seemed to do to the angels'.
"He gets so mad."
"He has a temper, I know. But maybe I can tell you something that can help. Did you sleep with him?" When Teresa hesitated Ofelia said, "Look me in the eyes."
"Okay, once. But Hedy was his girl."
"When you slept with him –"
"No details."
"One detail. Did he keep his drawers on?"
Teresa giggled, the first light moment since Ofelia had found her. "Yes."
"Did he say why?"
"He said he just did."
"All the way through?"
"The whole time."
"Never took them off?"
"Not around me."
"Did you ask Hedy about it."
"Well." Teresa bobbed her head from side to side. "Yes. We were really good friends. He never did with her either."
"You know, chica, it wouldn't be a bad idea to stay here for another day, but actually I think you're probably pretty safe."
"What about Hedy?"
"I'm going to have to rethink that." As Ofelia gathered her bag and stood she kissed Teresa on the cheek. "You helped."
"It was nice to talk."
"It was." Ofelia started down the ladder and paused midway. "By the way, did you know Rufo Pinero?"
"A friend of Facundo's? I met him once. I didn't like him."
"Why not?"
"He had one of those mobile phones. Mr. Big-Time Jinetero, always on it. No time for me. So you really think I'll be okay?"
"I think so."
Because the question for Ofelia ever since Sergeant Facundo Luna hadn't killed her right off at the Russian Center was whether he was Abakua. It was hard to say about a member of a secret society. The PNR had tried to infiltrate the Abakua and the result was the opposite: the Abakua had penetrated the police, recruiting the most macho officers, white as well as black. Identifying them had become an art. An Abakua might hijack a truck from a ministry yard, but he would not steal even a peso from a friend. Never allowed an insult to go unanswered. Might murder but never informed. Wore nothing feminine, no earrings, tight belts or long hair. There was one conclusive identification: an Abakua never showed his bare behind to anyone. He never pulled his drawers down even for making love. Ofelia thought of it as a kind of Achilles' ass.
One more thing an Abakua never did.
He never hurt a woman.
Chapter Twenty-Six
* * *
Arkady returned to Mongo's room in the back of what had been Erasmo's boyhood house. An empty house today, enervated by heat. After a courtesy knock on the door Arkady reached to the upper lip of the frame and found the key.
Not much had changed in the bedroom since Arkady's first visit. Shutters opened wide enough to take in the curve of the sea, fishing boats trolling against the current, neumáticos wallowing in their wake. Not a cloud in the sky or a wave in the water. Dead still. The coconuts, plastic saints and photographs of Mongo's favorite fighters were just as Arkady had seen before, and whether a sheet was tucked in the same manner he couldn't tell, but a different disc topped the CD stack, and the swim flippers that had hung from a hook on the wall and the truck inner tube that had been suspended above the bed were both gone. Arkady returned to the window to see three different groups of neumáticos listlessly paddling, each group at least five hundred yards apart from the other.
Arkady went down to the street and walked a block west to a café of cement tables set in the shade of a wall with the sign SIEMPRE –. Siempre something because bougainvillea had taken root and smeared the rest of the slogan with magenta. Arkady was not surprised that Mongo would venture out on the water. Mongo was a fisherman. He had probably been warned away from Eras
mo's repair shop while a Russian investigator occupied the apartment above. Where better to hide than on the water? If he was out on his tube, sooner or later he would have to come in, somewhere along Miramar's First Avenue or the Malecón, too much ground for Arkady to watch. But it seemed to him that he could lower the odds by remembering that what a man with an inner tube needed most of all was air. From his table he had a view of a gas station with two pumps under a canopy styled with a modernistic fin, blue once, now the off-white found on the lip of a clamshell. It was a station on his Texaco map. By the office was a faucet and an air hose.
Cars came and went all afternoon, some struggling like lungfish up to the pump and then crawling away. Neumáticos had to deal with a garage dog that accepted some and chased away others. Arkady sipped his way through three Tropicolas and three cafe cubanos, his heart tapping its fingers while he sat, invisible in the shadow of his coat. Finally a skinny asphalt-black man approached the station office with an inner tube that was going limp in his arms. He threw the dog a fish, went into the office and came out a minute later with a patch he applied to the tube. When he felt the adhesive had set, he added air to check the repair. His clothes were a green cap, loose running shoes and the sort of rags a sensible man would choose for floating in the bay. Balancing the tube with its net and sticks and reels on his head, he lay his flippers over one shoulder and a string of rainbow-sided fish over the other. When he saw Arkady cross the intersection, the neumático's red, salt-stung eyes looked for an avenue of escape, and but for his inner tube and the day's catch, he no doubt could have easily outrun someone in an overcoat.
"Ramón 'Mongo' Bartelemy?" Arkady asked. He thought he was starting to get a grip on Spanish.
"No."
"I think so." Arkady showed Mongo the picture of himself proudly displaying a fish to Luna, Erasmo and Pribluda. "I also know you speak Russian."It was worth a stab.
"A little."
"You're not an easy man to find. Join me for a coffee?"
The elusive Mongo had a beer. Crystal beads of sweat covered his face and chest. His mesh sack of fish lay on the bench beside him.
"I saw a tape of you fighting," Arkady said.
"Did I win?"
"You made it look easy."
"I could move, you know? I could move with anyone, I just didn't like to get hit," Mongo said, although his nose was splayed enough to suggest he had been caught a few times.
"Then when they dropped me from the team I was eligible for the army. Oye, suddenly I was in Africa with Russians. Russians don't know the difference between an African and a Cuban. You learn Russian fast." Mongo grinned. "You learn 'Don't shoot, you assholes!'"
"Angola?"
"Ethiopia."
"Demolition?"
"No, I drove an armored personnel carrier. That's how I became a mechanic, keeping that puta APC alive."
"Is that where you met Erasmo?"
"In the army."
"Luna?"
Mongo regarded his large capable hands, callused from drumming and scarred from barbs. "Facundo I know from way back when he first came from Baracoa to join the boxing team. He could have been a fighter or he could have been a baseball player, but he had no discipline with women or drinking, so he wasn't on any team for long."
"Baracoa?"
"In the Oriente. He could hit."
"He and Rufo Pinero were friends?"
"Claro. But what they did I didn't know." Mongo shook his head so emphatically his sweat sprayed. "I didn't want to know."
"And you were Sergei Pribluda's friend?"
"Yes."
"You went fishing together?"
"Verdad."
"You taught him how to fish with a kite?"
"I tried."
"And how to be a neumático?"
"Yes."
"And what is the most important rule a neumático has to follow? Never go out alone at night. I don't think Pribluda went out alone on that Friday two weeks ago. I think he went out on the water with his good friend Mongo."
Mongo rested his chin on his chest. Sweat poured off the man as if he were a fountain, not the sweat of fear like Bugai's but sweat that came from the heavy work of guilt. It was late in the day. Arkady got more beers so Mongo could sweat some more.
"He said it was like ice fishing for sharks," Mongo said. "He used to tell me all about ice fishing. He said I should come to Russia and he would take me ice fishing. I said 'No, thanks, comrade.'"
"What time did you go into the water?"
"Maybe seven. After dark, because he knew how that would draw attention if people saw a Russian in a tube. Voices travel on water, so even when we were out there he would whisper."
"What was the weather like?"
"Raining. He still kept his voice low."
"Is that a good time to fish, when it's raining?"
"If the fish are biting."
Arkady considered that fisherman's truth and asked, "Where did you go in?"
"West of Miramar."
"Near the Marina Hemingway?"
"Yes."
"Whose idea was that?"
"I always said where we were going to go, except that time. Sergei said he was tired of Miramar and the Malecón. Sergei wanted to try somewhere new."
"Once you were in the water you stayed there. Or did you go west? North? East?"
"Drifted like."
"East because that's the way the current runs, by Miramar and the Malecón and towards ."
"Yes."
"And, on the way, the marina? Whose idea was it to go in there?"
Mongo slumped against the wall. "So, you already know."
"I think I do."
"We really fucked up, huh?" Mongo beat nervously on the bench, stilled his hands and let the rhythm drop. "I said, Sergei, why would we want to fish in the marina with the guardia to chase us and maybe a boat moving through? That's an active channel, and it's night and the boats won't see us, I said, it's crazy. But I couldn't stop him. The guardia was in their office out of the rain. If you come in close they can't see you anyway, not at night in a tube. I followed Sergei up the channel, that's all I could do. He seemed to know where he was going. They have lights there, but they don't reach down to the water so well. No one was fueling. The disco was shut down because of the rain. We could hear people at the bar, that's all, and then we were in a canal where boats were docked one after the other and Sergei headed for this one I couldn't even see at first, it was so low and dark. Very sleek, an old boat but fast, you could tell. There were lights in the cabin and Americans on board, we could hear them but we couldn't see who. Right away, I knew that this was some kind of business of Sergei's he was getting me into. I told him I was going, but he wanted to climb up and see who was in the boat, which is difficult because there is an overhang on the dock. I was leaving when the lights on the boat went out. My whole body vibrated. Sergei was about five meters away between the boat and the dock and he was shaking, shaking, shaking. They let those fucking power leads lie in the water. I couldn't get any closer. Then I saw flashlights come up on deck and I hid." Mongo nodded in doleful self-judgment. "I hid. They came up to see if it was just their boat or everyone and while they talked back and forth to the person in the cabin Sergei drifted out. He wasn't shaking anymore. They didn't see him and they didn't see me because I stayed in the dark.
"As soon as his tube's clear, I told myself, I'd pull Sergei over, but before I could get to Sergei another boat came up the canal. There's not a lot of room. The boat went by and then Sergei went by. Sometimes, you know, boats trail tackle in the water, they shouldn't but they do, and Sergei was hooked by the net of his tube. He went by faster than I could keep up. I knew he was dead by the way he sat. They went out the canal together, the boat and tube. I knew once they cleared the guardia dock and opened the throttle they would feel the line and find Sergei or the hook would cut the net.
"Or maybe they would find Sergei and just cut him loose, because who needs to get involved w
ith a dead neumático, no? That would be a story they could tell in a bar in Key West about a crazy Cuban they caught one time. I don't know, I just saw my friend being towed in the dark until I couldn't see him anymore. By the time I got past the guardia I couldn't even see the boat."
"Did you see its name?"
"No." Mongo drank the last of his beer and stared at the pail of fish. "I didn't even do that."
"Who did you tell about this?"
"No one until you showed up. Then I told Erasmo and Facundo because they're my compays, my good friends."
The water was flat and glassy enough for pelicans to skim their reflection. Despite the accumulated heat of the day Arkady felt oddly comfortable, balanced by beer and overcoat.
"The men who came on deck of the boat that lost its power, did you recognize them?"
"No, I was looking for Sergei or trying to hide."
"Did they have guns?"
"You know," Mongo said, "it doesn't matter. Sergei was dead by then and it was an accident. He killed himself, I'm sorry." Mongo looked at the fish. "I have to go keep these fresh. Thanks for the beer."
An accident? After all this? But it made sense, Arkady thought. Not only the heart attack but the general confusion. Murders had much better cover-ups. Then he had arrived from Moscow the same time the body was found in the bay. Small wonder why Rufo had rushed to be his interpreter, and why Luna had been so badly surprised by the photograph of the Havana Yacht Club. No one had known what happened to Pribluda.
As Mongo resettled his cap and inner tube on his head, and picked up his flippers and fish, Arkady thought of Pribluda's tow in his rubbery sleigh out of the marina to deeper water – the Gulf Stream, O'Brien had said – where he either tore loose or was cut free by a no doubt exasperated fisherman. "Cubans are biting tonight!" Would that have been the joke? Then the long journey in the rain, drifting past Miramar, along the Malecón to the mouth of the bay, a "bag bay," as Captain Andres of the good ship Pinguino had said. Under the beam of the lighthouse on Moro Castle and then a swing toward the village of Casablanca to gently snag among the nest of plastics, mattresses and worm-riddled piers, all sheeted by petroleum scum, where a body could comfortably rest in the rain for weeks.