Havana Best Friends. Jose Latour

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СКАЧАТЬ his family were evacuated to the fire station on Calzada del Cerro.

      When gas mains arrived in the neighbourhood in the 1920s, a meter and the incoming pipe were fixed to its front without any consideration for aesthetics, a sure sign that even then its owner was not a man of means. A two-foot-high grate embedded in bricks and cement separated the yard-wide portal from the sidewalk. What appeared to be three huge front doors were in fact one front door and two openings into the main room, glorified windows almost. The place where Trujillo, his parents, wife, son, and daughter lived, in addition to the main room, had a dining room, three small bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Refurbishing it inside and out would most likely have cost twenty times its original cost, an investment way beyond what a police captain could afford. In fact, Trujillo couldn’t even afford the coats of paint and the new roof and floor tiles that were urgently needed.

      Trujillo slipped his key into the lock and went in at ten to twelve. Everybody was in bed, the kitchen light left on for him. There were rice, black beans, and a hard-boiled egg in a covered frying pan; a pot full of water for his bath – the perfect mother. He lit the range and as the water warmed the captain smoked a cigarette. In the bathroom he poured the hot water into an almost full bucket of water, then tiptoed into his bedroom where he found clean underwear and a fast asleep wife. Following his bath he felt hungry. He seldom had dinner twice, but ignoring what the following day had in store for him, he warmed and ate the food, made some espresso, then smoked a second cigarette.

      As he was doing the dishes and placing them on the wire drainer, Trujillo resumed the line of reasoning he had started on his way home. If the whole batch of videos were porno, Pablo Miranda must have been one of three things: best client, salesman, or native producer. The money found in his bedroom might also be related to the videos, and his being able to meet and/or associate with foreigners at his workplace pointed in the same direction. A considerable percentage of Italian and Spanish tourists were single men who notoriously came to Cuba looking for cheap sex.

      All this and the cocaine inclined the captain to believe that Pablo had engaged in something reprehensible, illegal, and sex-related. His murder had all the trappings of a typical settlement of accounts, very professionally carried out. The murderer might just have been following orders from someone who decreed Pablo Miranda’s execution. After finding the videos, it seemed crystal-clear to Trujillo that the contradictory indications – the bite-marks, the stolen wallet and watch, the two hundred dollars left in a pocket – were an attempt to send the police on a wild-goose chase after a sex maniac or a dumb thief. Had the short bald guy hatched a scheme to blackmail somebody? Had he demanded a bigger share of the profits? And what was his role in the scam? Cameraman? Editor? Talent scout?

      Police knew that the production of Cuban porno films had become a new business venture in the last few years. Customs confiscated copies at the airport, officers raiding whorehouses and flophouses found some more, but so far no producer had been caught. At national police headquarters a special unit had been put together under a full colonel. Trujillo had listened to the complaints of his boss, Major Pena, one of the officers working on it in the Cuban capital. From among the ‘actors’ and ‘actresses’, three hookers and two male prostitutes had been identified, busted, and questioned. Each of them had repeated the same story.

      A man they had never seen before or again talked them into it. He told them to wait for a blue van with tinted windows at an intersection. Once inside the vehicle they were blindfolded and driven around for half an hour before reaching the garage of a house. The cameraman, light tech, and sound tech had worn masks and spoken to each other in whispers. Once the shooting was over, they had been returned blindfolded to the pick-up point. No, they had no idea where the house was. No, they didn’t see the van’s plates. And the pay? A hundred dollars.

      Describe the contact man, Pena had asked. The first hustler said he had brown eyes, the second swore they were green, the third didn’t notice. According to the two men he was clean shaven; one of the women said he had a moustache. Three of them described him as being in his forties, the other two said he was in his fifties. Not even on the man’s height and weight could the models reach agreement. Knowing that they were being spun a line, Major Pena and his subordinates wheedled and threatened, all to no avail. Finally the offenders were indicted, tried and sentenced; the women to one year in prison, the men to three. And the investigation stalled. Pena and his special unit could do nothing but wait for a fresh lead. They would be overjoyed at Trujillo’s break-through.

      Returning to the bathroom, he washed his hands, then went to bed. He set the alarm clock on his bedside table for six a.m. With hands clasped in his lap, his mind moved to Elena Miranda.

      It seemed as though the murdered man and his sister did not like each other at all. One more case of relatives who regard each other with suspicion bordering on out-right hostility. She seemed decent enough, clean-cut, self-effacing, sensible, still a very attractive woman. In her twenties she must have been stunning, Trujillo speculated. Pablo’s antithesis? It seemed so.

      The lock on her brother’s bedroom proved what she had said: ‘He lived his life; I lived mine.’ His room was a mess; the rest of the house was neat. Well, the walls needed a lick of paint and the furniture new upholstery, but what Cuban home didn’t? Separate cooking, wanting to swap the nice apartment for two, it all indicated conflicting personalities. He had seen it many times among divorced couples and in-laws forced to keep living under the same roof because of the housing shortage; less frequently among parents and their offspring. Under this kind of forced cohabitation tempers get rather frayed, providing a recurring reason for police intervention;

      situations included anything from aggravated battery to homicide.

      Had Pablo Miranda been an underachiever? A kid spoiled by a powerful father who felt relegated after his well-connected daddy lost all his privileges? The tiny bell pealed again. Manuel Miranda. Trujillo tried to recall who the man had been. Certainly one of the few who years earlier held all the cards and wrote all the rules, considering where he was serving time. A former polit-buro member or general or minister, for sure. A sacred cow, even in jail. Early the following morning he would have to find out whose duty it was to call the General Directorate of Prisons, report the murder of an inmate’s son, and ask to notify the father. They would probably let him come to the wake, a few hours before burial time, with two escorts, no handcuffs, maybe wearing civilian clothes.

      Suddenly, Trujillo sat up in bed. His wife stirred by his side. A politically motivated crime? Someone who had been screwed by the father and killed the son for revenge? Slowly, Trujillo lay back. Too far-fetched. No precedent as far as he knew. No, it couldn’t be. He yawned. It was the kind of case that wins kudos, back-slapping, and an instantaneous promotion for the officer who solves it. And to a lesser extent, the ill will of his equals. He decided that he would take a stab at it. But there was a lot of spadework to do.

      As Captain Trujillo drifted off to sleep, Pablo’s killer was boarding a plane bound for Cancún, México.

      

      ‘If they’re all dirty movies, you’ve hit a fucking mine,’ was Major Pena’s exclamation when he learned, at 7.15 the next morning, that Captain Trujillo had deposited forty-three suspected pornographic videos in the storeroom. Trujillo explained his findings and what he had inferred before outlining his theories. The major was fifty-six, grey-haired, overweight, and most of the time had the frigid, uninterested gaze shared by those who pride themselves on their realism and who no longer believe in the theory of inherent human kindness. But he was respected and secretly admired by superiors and subordinates alike.

      ‘Tell me the receipt number.’ Major Pena beckoned Trujillo over with his right hand and left his uncomfortable wooden chair. ‘I want to start seeing them right now.’

      ‘You dirty old man,’ Captain Trujillo said as he dipped two fingers into the back pocket of his pants and drew СКАЧАТЬ