Havana Best Friends. Jose Latour

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СКАЧАТЬ heard Lorffe sigh. ‘The card I’ve got has the prints of Pablo Carlos Miranda Garcés. There are more corresponding simple ridge characteristics than I’ve got hairs on my head. Now, if someone at the Identity Card office in Playa fucked up and misfiled this guy’s original impressions; if you left the IML card on your desk and somebody changed it; if someone…’

      ‘I hope nothing like that happened,’ Trujillo cut in. ‘Thanks a lot, comrade.’

      Back in the dormitory, the DTI captain grabbed his briefcase, pocketed the key ring found on the corpse, had supper in the mess hall, then asked for a Lada from the car pool, got a Ural Russian motorcycle with sidecar, and rode to Miramar. First he questioned the man in charge of surveillance in the CDR.^* José Kuan lived around the block from Pablo Miranda, on 26th between Third and Third A.

      Kuan was the son of Chinese immigrants and appeared to be in his late thirties, so Trujillo estimated he was probably in his early fifties. He had moved to the neighbourhood in 1992, to a third-floor apartment with his wife and two boys, both under ten, and was assistant manager at a state-owned enterprise that marketed handcrafts. Kuan’s children were watching TV in the living room, so he walked Trujillo to the couple’s bedroom. His wife brought the captain a cup of espresso which he accepted gratefully. Then she retired to the kitchen to do the dishes.

      Yes, a man named Pablo Carlos Miranda Garcés lived around the block, Kuan admitted; he knew the guy: he was short, bald, worked at a joint venture two blocks away. Trujillo wrote down the name and address of the firm in his diary. No, he hadn’t seen him in the last few days. No, he wasn’t married, far as he could tell; lived with his sister. No, she wasn’t married either. Nobody else lived there.

      Trujillo asked to see the Register of Addresses. Kuan opened a closet and produced an 81/2 x 13” file, with a page for each household in the area covered by the CDR. The one corresponding to the dead man’s apartment also had the name Elena Miranda Garcés inscribed, and gave the woman’s date of birth as 19 September 1962. The name Gladys Garcés Benítez, born in 1938, had been crossed off in red ink in 1987 just after she moved to Zulueta, Villa Clara. Her surname was identical to the siblings’ second surname. If she was still alive, Trujillo calculated, their mother would be sixty-two now.

      ‘What can you tell me about this Pablo Miranda?’ Trujillo asked once he’d finished jotting down names and ages.

      The man fidgeted with the pages of the Register, his eyes evading the cop’s, pulling down the corners of his mouth. After eleven years in the force, Trujillo had seen this body language time and time again. Men and women who don’t want to rat on neighbours, stumped for a reply. Then why do they accept the position? he used to ask himself when he was a rookie. Now he knew the answer: it was for fear that declining might be considered a disinclination to fulfil revolutionary duties, something with adverse implications.

      ‘Well, actually I don’t know him very well, you know. He doesn’t mix much with the neighbourhood crowd. I guess he works a lot.’

      ‘You know the kind of company he keeps? People he goes out with?’

      ‘No. I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.’

      ‘Does he have a car?’

      ‘Not that I know of.’

      ‘Goes out a lot?’

      ‘I wouldn’t know.’

      ‘What about his sister?’

      Relief spread across the man’s face. ‘She’s a very nice person.’

      ‘Different from her brother?’

      ‘No, no, that’s not what I meant.’ He looked flustered.

      ‘But she is sweet. Always polite, gentle, and beautiful, too.’

      Trujillo nodded and repressed a smile. Was the man attracted to the sister? Well, he had a very pretty mulata all for himself. What more could a man hope for? Then he remembered that human aspirations are unlimited.

      ‘Well, Comrade Kuan, there’s something I should tell you. Pablo Miranda was found dead this morning in Guanabo.’

      The news left the man speechless.

      ‘I have to notify his sister now and conduct a search of his apartment. As you know, witnesses from the CDR must be present. I need you to come with me, please. The president too, if possible.’

      The President of the CDR, Zoila Pérez – a.k.a. ‘Day-and-Night’, after a TV series sponsored by the Ministry of Interior – was a fifty-eight-year-old bookstore saleswoman who had moved to the dead man’s building in 1988; she lived on the second-floor, front apartment. Zoila had earned her sobriquet and the position of CDR president in 1990, when she began trying to persuade neighbours that an American invasion was imminent. She never missed her citizen’s watch and was always willing to stand in for sick (or allegedly sick, or sick and tired) cederistas.

      To Zoila, every stranger was a suspect, especially at night, and she would report enemy activity at the drop of a hat. In her wild imagination, couples necking in the Parque de la Quinta were transformed into pairs of camouflaged soldiers from the expeditionary force’s van-guard, so no less than two or three nights a week she picked up her phone and called the nearest police precinct. Desk sergeants familiar with her paranoia thanked her politely, hung up, then chuckled before bellowing to other cops in the squad room: ‘Hey, guys, that was Day-and-Night. Chick giving her boyfriend a handjob in the park is a marine getting ready to open mortar fire on her apartment building.’

      But now, having learned what happened to Pablo, she was wringing her hands in desperation when Trujillo pressed the buzzer of Elena Miranda’s apartment. It was the kind of news Zoila hated, made her freak out. A full-scale imaginary invasion she could live with; the real murder of a neighbour was too unnerving. She wanted to walk away but knew she couldn’t.

      Nearly a minute later, Elena opened the door in a robe and thongs. Wow, Trujillo thought. She processed the visual information instantly: a pained expression on Zoila’s face, an embarrassed Kuan, a poker-faced police officer. Bad news, she discerned. Skipping all the formalities, she asked, ‘What happened?’

      ‘Elena, this is Captain Trujillo, from the Department of Technical Investigations of the police,’ Zoila said.

      ‘What’s the problem, Captain?’

      ‘Can we come in, Comrade Elena?’ Trujillo, trying to sound casual, flashed his ID.

      ‘Sure, excuse me, come right in. Have a seat.’

      Elena eased herself on to the edge of a club chair, Trujillo sat across from her, Kuan and Zoila on the Chesterfield.

      ‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you, Comrade Elena,’ Trujillo began. ‘Your brother, Pablo, was found dead this morning.’

      Elena felt a shiver down her spine, a numbness, a sense of loss. Shock, for the third time in my life. Locking eyes with the police officer, she nodded reflectively, pursed her lips, interlaced her fingers on her lap, swallowed hard. ‘An accident?’ she wanted to know.

      ‘We’re not sure yet. He died from a broken neck and a head injury. He may have taken a fall, or he may have been murdered.’

      ‘You’re СКАЧАТЬ