Havana Best Friends

‘Doesn’t look it to me,’ she said. ‘What will we do with him?’

‘Do with him?’

‘You said we should expect trouble from him.’

‘Sure. But is there something we can do?’

Marina considered it. ‘Forget it.’

‘Fine.’

Sean seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. Then he raised his eyes to the hotel’s top floors. ‘I’ll rest my arm on your shoulders now, you circle my waist. Let’s go and have a nightcap.’

They sauntered back to the portals and plopped down on a sofa. A waiter learned that Sean felt like Black Label on the rocks; Marina remained faithful to the local taste by ordering a mojito. Forty or fifty people relaxed on couches and armchairs, laughed at jokes, seemed to be enjoying themselves. Once their drinks arrived and they had taken a sip, a tall overweight man sitting alone to their left pulled himself up and marched to the restroom.

‘Excuse me, honey, I’ve got to take a leak,’ Sean said and rose.

Marina wanted to say ‘Me too’ but decided to wait until her escort returned.

Sean unzipped his fly facing the urinal next to the one in which the tall overweight man was relieving himself. He was sure the attendant standing by the door was out of earshot. ‘The short, bald guy lives there. He speaks a little English and is a money-grabbing bastard on coke,’ he said.

Without so much as a nod, the tall overweight man shook his penis, buttoned up, and washed his hands in a sink. The attendant handed him paper towels. Before leaving the restroom the man dropped a quarter into the inescapable dish for tips by the doorway. In a slightly expansive mood, Sean left a dollar.

The following morning, at a quarter to nine, just as Marina and Sean hopped on a DC-10 bound for Toronto from Havana Airport’s Terminal 3, the tall overweight man left the church of Santa Rita de Casia through the side entrance that faces 26th. He crossed the street and, holding his hands behind his back, head tilted backwards, stared at the ficus trees in the Parque de la Quinta. He appeared to be in his forties and had the powerful forearms and wrists of a dock worker. His brown eyes were lively, his thick moustache coffee-coloured, his lips full. After a few minutes circling the trees in awestruck contemplation, the hulking man slid behind the wheel of a black Hyundai and sped away.

The gardener and the sweeper who tended the park became intrigued when the fat man repeated the same routine two days in a row. Their curiosity, however, was not stirred by his arriving before eight and going into the church the minute it opened its doors. Several Cuban Catholics did the same and, occasionally, curious visitors explored the interior of the small modern church. Some diplomats and executives of foreign companies – accompanied by their wives and children – also attended Mass on Sundays. What was strange about the tall overweight man was his fixation with the ficus. The park attendants were accustomed to seeing tourists stop by, but few returned, and those that did usually came back to show the mammoth trees to some other traveller. They wondered whether this guy was a botanist or an ecology freak.

The labourers would have been even more puzzled had they seen the tall overweight man in the church. He invariably sat in the same pew, one from where he could keep an eye on 26th, paid no attention to the act of worship, didn’t kneel or pretend to pray. His behaviour had drawn the attention of an overly anti-communist layman who reported to the parish priest that a State Security official was using his church to stake someone out.

On the morning of Tuesday, 30 May, as he rounded the trunk of the ficus nearest to the bust of General Prado, the tall overweight man spotted a bald short guy in a white guayabera leaving the light-grey apartment building that faced on to the park and darting down Third A toward 26th. Strolling leisurely, his eyes on the tree, the stalker returned to the sidewalk, and waited until his prey was within a couple of yards.

‘You speak English?’ he asked with a pleasant smile.

‘Sure,’ Pablo responded, trying to look intelligent and knowledgeable. He had always envied huge men and this bull-necked guy was at least six foot five, weighing over 250 pounds.

‘Thank heaven. You know the name of these trees?’ the man asked, with a sweep of the hand that included all the ficus in the park.

‘Ficus.’

‘What?’

‘Ficus.’

‘Can you spell it out for me?’

Pablo said ‘F’ and paused. One of his frequent, inexplicable confusions in English was to pronounce the ‘i’ as an ‘e’ and vice versa. He produced a small notebook and a ballpoint from a pocket of his guayabera, wrote down the name, then tore out the page.

‘Well, thanks,’ the tall overweight man said as he took it. Then, staring at the five letters, he added: ‘Most amazing trees I’ve seen in this country.’

‘Is that so?’ Pablo was taking in the stranger, his mental wheels turning fast. The big bastard wore a navy-blue polo shirt, khaki shorts, white cotton socks, and sneakers.

‘I hadn’t been able to learn their name. Not many people here speak English.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And what’s the name of this park?’

‘Parque de la Quinta.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Well…’ Pablo scratched his bald head, looked around, then shrugged his shoulders as if picking his brain for the right translation. ‘Quinta in Spanish is…like a country house, know what I’m saying? Like a villa.’

‘So, it’s the Park of the Country House.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, thanks for the information,’ the big man said. ‘Wait a minute,’ he added, fishing for his wallet and producing a twenty-dollar bill. ‘Here you are. Thanks.’

Pablo pounced on the bill thinking it was a fiver. When he saw the Jackson portrait he was dumbfounded. Twenty bucks for the name of a tree and a park? What would this huge asshole fork out for being taken around town?

‘Well, sir, this is very…’ Pablo groped for ‘generous’ unsuccessfully as he thrust the bill into a pants pocket ‘…very good of you. If I can help…in any other way…?’

His eyes on Pablo, head cocked, a budding grin on his lips, the tourist seemed to ponder the offer.

‘Maybe you could. This is my first trip here, I don’t know my way around, and I was hoping for a good time, catch my drift?’

Pablo grinned. ‘You mean fun, girls?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

‘I think…no, I thought so. But now, it’s morning. In the mornings, beautiful girls sleep. In the evenings they have fun. We meet in the evening, I take you to the most beautiful girls in Havana.’

A bunch of lies, the big guy figured. ‘Tell you what. You take me to the most beautiful girls in Havana, I’ll pay you a hundred bucks. You take me to the most beautiful girl in Havana, I’ll pay you two hundred. How’s that?’

‘That’s excellent, Mr…?’

‘Splittoesser.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Just call me John.’

‘Okay, John. So, where do we meet?’

‘Let’s see…’ John pretended to reflect. ‘There’s this bar-restaurant where I had dinner last night, La Zaragua…something.’

‘Spanish food? In Old Havana?’

‘That’s it.’

‘La Zaragozana.’

‘You’ve been there?’

‘John, I’ve been to all the right places in Havana.’

The tall overweight man considered this for a moment. ‘Swell. At eight then?’ he said.

‘Eight’s fine with me.’

‘Can I drop you somewhere?’ John asked.

‘No, thanks. My office is right across the street.’

‘See you then,’ John said and extended his right hand. Pablo’s hand got lost in the man’s paw. The Cuban marched along, occasionally craning his neck, watching the tourist unlock his car. John waved him good-bye; Pablo did the same before crossing Fifth Avenue. Is this a lucky break or is this a lucky break? he was thinking.

John Splittoesser spent the afternoon completing the reconnaissance he had initiated three evenings earlier, driving around Santa Maria del Mar and Guanabo, two adjoining beach resorts fifteen miles to the east of Havana.

After dinner at La Zaragozana, Pablo suggested a leisurely stroll into Old Havana. Leaving the rental in the custody of the restaurant’s parking valet, they took Obispo, a street turned pedestrian mall. Passers-by stared at the strange pair: some recalled Twins, the movie starring Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The temperature had dropped considerably as a consequence of a late-afternoon heavy shower. Lighting from the shop windows of well-stocked, dollars-only stores reflected on the wet asphalt. Insubstantial dialogue from a Brazilian soap opera and various pop songs blared out from radios, CD players, and television sets, producing an ear-splitting cacophony.

There were policemen on every corner, most of them alert young men fresh from the countryside, still in awe of city slickers: the pickpockets, whores, pimps, drag queens, sodomites, shoplifters, drug pushers, and black marketeers that trained eyes can detect along the Havana tourist trail.

A handful of veteran cops in their thirties could also be spotted. With bored expressions and cynical grins they whispered advice to the rookies. Guys who have stayed in the force and the neighbourhood long enough to know who they can let get away with petty crime because he or she won’t mug a tourist, deal coke, or hold up a truck delivering products from the warehouse. Cops who survive by recognizing the limit of permissible corruption: yes to a three-dollar sandwich, no to a one-dollar bill; yes to a hooker’s free ride, no to a pair of jeans presented by her pimp; yes to a packet of cigarettes, no to a box of fake Cohibas.

Pablo and John turned left on to Havana Street and after three blocks took a right on to the seedier Emped-rado Street. Watching them walk side by side, two candidates for the priesthood returning to the San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary were reminded of the David and Goliath story. A dark-skinned black youngster and a white teenager, both insufficiently versed in the Old Testament, approached the strange pair.

‘Mister, mister, cigars, guitars, girls…’ they accosted John in English.

‘I’m with him,’ Pablo said in Spanish, glaring at them.

They weren’t impressed by the news and ignored the short man with the stumpy ponytail. ‘Girls, beautiful. Cohibas, forty dollars. Fine guitars, eighty dollars.’

‘No,’ said John.

‘Coke? Marijuana?’

‘No.’

‘I’m taking him to Angelito’s,’ said Pablo, again in Spanish, trying to act nonchalant.

That stopped the hustlers cold. Apparently miffed, they turned their backs and disappeared into a doorway. John stared at the narrowest sidewalk he had seen in his life; not more than twenty inches wide.

‘Now, look up, at the…balcón? You say balcón in English?’

John frowned in incomprehension.

‘The balcón of the house on the next corner,’ Pablo said, extending his arm and pointing.

Four young women leaned on the wooden railing of a wrought-iron balcony projecting from the top floor of a two-storey house built in the 1850s. Light from a nearby streetlamp made it possible to see that two of the whores sported shorts, a third had a miniskirt on, the fourth a French-cut bikini bottom. All wore halter-neck tops and from their necks hung chains and medals. Gazing down at the street below, they were sharing a laugh prompted by an amusing comment made by the one in the miniskirt.

‘Interested?’ Pablo asked.

‘Let’s take a closer look.’

They climbed a marble stairway with handrails in the same material. On the way up Pablo said this place was La Casa de Angelito, Angelito’s house, according to his translation. Greeted warmly on the landing by a white, effeminate bodybuilder in green Lycra shorts and a pink tank top, they were showed into a dim living room with four loveseats, a CD player, a minibar, and side tables for drinks and ashtrays. Three French windows opened on to the balcony where the women remained, unaware that potential clients had arrived. The body-sculpting fanatic clapped his hands and ordered, ‘Girls, saloon.’

One of the hookers upstaged the others completely, John realized. She belonged to the precious few women from all walks of life who try to de-emphasize their devastating sex appeal and fail miserably. The blessing or curse of her breed – depending on the final outcome – is as indefinable as inexorable; impossible to disguise or accentuate with clothing, jewellery or perfumes. A gorgeous American actress worth maybe a hundred million who had the seductiveness of a refrigerator sprang to mind. And here in Havana, in a tumbledown whorehouse, he was facing a two-bit hooker capable of driving tycoons and presidents and kings nuts, and him too, truth be told.

No older than twenty, she had a lovely face framed by long chestnut-coloured hair. Something of a child’s sweetness and innocence survived in her dark pupils and gentle smile. Her naked body had to be a sight for sore eyes, he was sure, and he felt tempted to ask her to undress and pace up and down the living room until he remembered that he had an assignment to carry out.

‘Is this the best you can do?’ he asked Pablo, apparently unimpressed.

The Cuban was taken aback. ‘You don’t like?’

‘Can we shop around some more?’

Pablo marched John to Marinita, three blocks east, where they had a beer; then to Tongolele, five blocks south. Everywhere the short bald Cuban was greeted with affection. John noticed his guide was somewhat hyped up when they left Tongolele. The next stop was La Reina del Ganado, in San Isidro, translated by Pablo as ‘The Queen of Cattle’. The tourist learned that the name was derived from a Brazilian soap opera, El rey del ganado – ‘The King of Cattle’ – whose main character owned hundreds of thousands of cattle. The brothel proprietress’s herd, comprising some twenty women, were displayed posing naked in a snapshot album. She only showed it to foreigners who were not attracted to any of those immediately available at her house. John peered at each photograph, carefully considered three promising candidates, finished a Cuba Libre, then turned to Pablo.

‘Tell you what. This guy at the hotel gave me an address in Guanabo, claims there are fine chicks there. Let’s go get the car and drive over. If I don’t find a broad I really like, we’ll come back to the first place you took me to and I’ll settle for the brunette.’

Pablo didn’t like the idea, but he had decided to humour John all the way. He found it strange that after exiting the tunnel under Havana Bay, John didn’t ask for directions. Well, maybe he had been to the beach on his own, the Cuban figured. The tourist remained silent, eyes on the road, observing the 100-kilometre speed limit, air conditioner on, windows closed.

The Cuban didn’t feel like making small talk either. He had been very upbeat all day at the office, overjoyed at the prospect of making in one night what many Cubans don’t earn in a year of hard work. He had even sniffed a line at Tongolele’s and bought four more fixes in premature celebration. But now he was feeling uptight. Pablo admitted to himself that the motherfucker was hard to please; he could kiss one of the two Cs good-bye.

What if the bastard found a woman to his taste in Guanabo? Then he wouldn’t make a penny, since it wouldn’t be as a result of his procuring. But should the asshole return to Angelito’s for the brunette he had eyed so hungrily, Pablo would make a hundred for guiding the sleazeball to the girl he finally picked. He had to concoct a story the sucker might swallow. Maybe if he said that AIDS had struck down hundreds of people in Guanabo? He lit a cigarette and mulled over alternatives for most of the twenty-minute ride.

It was quarter past twelve when John took a left at the crossing of Via Blanca and 462nd, coasted down to the town’s main thoroughfare, then glided along until he confidently turned off the boulevard and, heading inland, followed a street for three blocks before taking a left, killing the lights, and pulling over.

‘This is it?’ Pablo asked in a tone brimming with curiosity, struck by the strangeness of his surroundings. To their left, behind a barbed-wire fence, the back of a huge, one-storey warehouse stretched all the way along the block. On the other side of the street several modest private houses had the wooden slats of their front windows wide open. It could be assumed the residents were most likely in bed, electric fans turning at top speed to keep mosquitoes away and fight the heat, lights off. Somewhere close a dog barked unenthusiastically. Streetlight was provided by a low-wattage bulb on an electricity pole fifty yards away.

‘Yeah, let’s go.’

Doors were opened and shut. As John was locking the car, Pablo reached the sidewalk and stood by his side.

‘Listen, John, I don’t want to worry you,’ Pablo began, sounding concerned. ‘But last year, many people here in Guanabo have…’

Pablo didn’t know what happened to him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a swift, unexpected movement and started turning his head, but an instant after John’s fist brutally hit his temple all his systems collapsed and he keeled over.

The tall overweight man looked around as if he had all the time in the world. The dog kept barking. Lifting the limp body by the armpits, John manoeuvred Pablo into a sitting position and, crouching behind him, grasped the bald man’s chin with his right hand and the back of his head with his left, then in one swift motion he yanked up and around with all his might. Cervical vertebrae snapped.

Next, kneeling by the body, John savagely bit twice into the left side of his victim’s neck. He spat in disgust several times before producing a plain envelope containing four fifty-dollar bills folded in half. With the edge of his fingernails he removed the money and tucked it into a pocket of the dead man’s pants. Finally, he freed Pablo of his cheap watch, his wallet, and his shoes.

Panting, with beads of sweat on his forehead, he stood up, dusted his knees, and scrutinized both ends of the block. The dog kept barking, insistently now, goaded by death. John unlocked the driver’s door, slid behind the wheel, dropped Pablo’s personal possessions on the passenger seat and turned the ignition. The car crept away for two blocks, its lights off, before he took a left and returned to the town’s main street. He felt the repugnance of one who has just squashed a big bug under the sole of a shoe.

Once he’d dumped the Cuban’s belongings into a sewer in Old Havana, John considered whether he could go back to Angelito’s and screw the sexy whore. But after close to a minute grabbing the wheel with both hands and pursing his lips, he shook his head, sighed resignedly, and drove to the Hotel Nacional.

2

As is often the case, the crime scene had been contaminated by the time the Guanabo police, at the crack of dawn, answered a phone call made nine minutes earlier. Nobody had touched the corpse, but the truck driver who found it on his way to work, and the relatives and neighbours to whom he excitedly announced his discovery, had got near enough to raise doubts on any footprint, fibre, or hair that could be cast or retrieved. Tyre prints on the grit alongside the kerb had also been trampled.

The Guanabo police are not equipped to deal with a homicide and rarely see one, so they confined their participation to cordoning off the area, questioning people, stationing guards, then radioing the DTI,* the LCC** and the IML,+ all three of which have headquarters in the Cuban capital.

At 7.11 a.m., with dawn becoming early morning and the tide starting to turn, three LCC specialists and Captain Félix Trujillo from the DTI arrived in a Lada station wagon. They listened in silence to the lieutenant waiting for them. No neighbour had heard or seen anything unusual before or after going to bed, curious onlookers had ruined the corpse’s immediate surroundings, nobody there knew the dead man.

IML experts carry out the on-site inspection of the body, take it to the morgue, gather whatever evidence is on it, perform the autopsy, and assist in the identification process of unknown persons, so the LCC people just eyed the corpse from a distance before looking around for impressions, taking photographs, and measuring distances.

The white Mercedes Benz meat wagon reached its destination at 7.49. Three men and a woman in white smocks, olive-green trousers, and lace-up black boots got out, shook hands with the cops, exchanged a few words. Captain Trujillo seemed especially delighted to see Dr Bárbara Valverde, an attractive, thirty-three-year-old, dark-skinned black pathologist. She learned from him the few known facts, then pulled out an aluminium scene case from the back of the van, opened it, passed around latex gloves and plasticized paper booties to her assistants, slipped a pair of gloves on, donned a surgical mask and booties. She closed and lifted the scene case, approached the corpse, swatted away the flies, put the case down, and crouched by it. The body lay prone, face supported on the left cheek, both arms at the sides, legs slightly bent to the right. Down the street, senior citizens gaping behind the police line frowned and murmured in confusion. A woman examining a dead man? She a necrophiliac or what? Young and middle-aged voyeurs pooh-poohed them into silence.

The first thing the pathologist noticed was the lump at the base of the neck. She ran her index and middle fingers over it, feeling the dislocated vertebrae. Then she spotted the laceration on the right temple and her fingers detected comminuted fractures of the temporal bone. There were low-velocity stains of blood on the sidewalk, under the left corner of the mouth, probably coming from split lips and teeth loosened when the head hit the cement.

‘Let’s turn him over,’ Dr Valverde said.

Rigor mortis was almost complete. She held the head in her hands while her assistants turned the body. Bills folded in half fell from a pants pocket. One of the assistants whistled. The pathologist reopened the scene case and reached for a pair of tweezers, which she used to pick up the bills and drop them into a transparent plastic evidence bag.

Dr Valverde frowned when she noticed the curvilinear bite-marks on the neck. She studied them for a while under a magnifying glass.

‘Osvaldo, get on the radio and ask Graciela to call the odontologist and tell him to come to the Institute. There are indentations to cast here.’

The tallest assistant marched to the van. The other was measuring temperature and humidity.

She inspected the lacerated temple under the magnifying glass before swabbing nostrils, mouth, and ears, and depositing each swab into evidence bags which she labelled with a marker. She swabbed the blood on the sidewalk as well, then palpated the top of the head, the rib cage, thighs, legs, and ankles before closing the scene case and rising to her feet.

‘What have we got here, Dr Valverde?’ Captain Trujillo asked. He stood a few feet from her, legs spread apart, right elbow resting on his holster, a lighted cigarette held between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The pathologist suspected he had catnapped in his uniform: his light grey, long-sleeved shirt and blue pants showed dozens of creases and wrinkles. She admitted to herself that he was attractive in an unprepossessing, rather virile way. He tried to establish a non-professional rapport every time they worked together, but Félix was too young for her – and married, on top of everything. She lifted the case and, followed by the captain, took it back to the van, then yanked her gloves off.

‘What we’ve got here is a broken neck, a severe blow to the right temple, lacerated lips and chin, loose teeth, bite marks on the neck.’

‘Time estimate?’

‘Preliminary. Between four and eight hours.’

‘You planning on doing the autopsy immediately?’

‘Yeah. I’m on the six-to-two shift.’

‘Then I’ll drop by, or send someone later on, to collect his things and take them to the LCC. If the identity card is missing, will you have a ten-print card ready for me?’