Havana Gold (12 page)

“You like bikes a lot, don't you?”

“Yes, lieutenant, and the truth is I know the beasts like the back of my hand.”

“Talking of things you know about . . . What do you know about Lissette Núñez Delgado?”

Pupy opened his eyes and looked frightened to death. The balanced geography of the accomplished charmer's face fragmented as if hit by an earthquake. His mouth initiated a protest that didn't materialize, and shook uncontrollably. Was he about to cry?

“Well, Pedro, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“What are you after? I swear, lieutenant, that's nothing to do with me. I know nothing about all that. I'll swear by whatever I don't . . .”

“Hold it, no need to swear just yet. When was the last time you saw her?”

“I'm not sure, Monday or Tuesday. I went to pick her up at Pre-Uni because she told me she wanted to buy some of those thick-soled trainers I had, that were a hundred per cent legal, and we went to my place and she tried them on and they fitted, and then we went to her place to get the money and then I left.”

“How much did you charge her for the trainers?”

“Nothing at all.”

“But weren't you selling them?”

Pupy looked enviously at the cigarette the Count had just lit.

“Do you want one?”

“I'd really appreciate that.”

The Count handed him the packet and matchbox and waited for him to light up.

“Go on, tell us about the trainers.”

“It's nothing really, lieutenant. She and I went out for a bit, as you know, and it's hard to sell something to an old girlfriend.”

“So you gave them to her as a present, I suppose? You didn't do a swap?”

“A swap?”

“Did you have sex with her on that day?”

Pupy hesitated, thought about refusing to answer, a private matter and all that, but decided against.

“Yes.”

“Was that why she took you home with her?”

Pupy sucked his cigarette avidly and the Count heard a very faint crackle of burnt grass. He swayed his head, denying an act he couldn't deny, and started smoking again before he said: “Look, lieutenant, I don't want to pay for something I didn't do. I don't know who killed Lissette, or what mess she'd got into, and although it's not a very nice thing to say, I'm going to say this because I don't intend to be the idiot picking up this particular tab: Lissette was a hot number, that's right, a hot number and I went with her, for a good time, nothing serious, because I knew she'd leave me high and dry any moment – like she did when
she got to know a Mexican who looked like a leaking pie, Mauricio by name, I think. But she was wild in bed. Really wild, and I liked bedding her, to be frank, and she was a cunning bitch and knew it and did me out of the trainers that way.”

“And you say that was on Monday or Tuesday?”

“I think it was Monday when she finished early. You can check that.”

“Lissette was killed on Tuesday. You didn't see her again?”

“I swear by my mother that I didn't, lieutenant.”

“Where did Lissette fish her Mexican boyfriend out from? Mauricio, you said?”

“I'm not too sure, lieutenant. I think she met him in Coppelia or somewhere nearly. The guy was a tourist and she picked him up. But that happened some time ago.”

“So who was her current boyfriend?”

“Lieutenant, that's anyone's guess. I hardly saw her, I've got another girl, a little cracker . . .”

“But she was going out with a forty-year-old, wasn't she?”

“Yeah, but that wasn't her boyfriend,” and Pupy smiled at last. “He was just one of her regulars. I told you, she was a whore.”

“Who was he, Pedro? Did you know him?”

“Of course I do, lieutenant, he was the headmaster at Pre-Uni. Didn't you know?”

“I've come for a coffee,” declared the Count, and Fatman Contreras smiled from an armchair tried and tested by heavyweights.

“The Count, the Count, my friend the Count, so it's a coffee, is it?” he asked, and against all the odds he brought his enormous landlocked whale of an anatomy to its feet, while cheerfully holding out a hand maliciously intent on dislocating the Count's fingers. Was it his only ponderous trick? The lieutenant made the most of his masochism and let himself be tortured by Captain Jesús Contreras, head of the Department for Foreign Currency Investigation.

“Hell, Fatman, let go, will you?”

“Not seen you for some time, my friend.”

“No, but I missed you a lot. I even wrote you a couple of letters. Didn't you get them? People are right when they say the post is shit.”

“Pack it in, Conde, what are you after?”

“I told you, Fatman, a coffee. Apart from that I've brought you a little present wrapped in cellophane. So you know you're not the only bearer of presents around here.”

Then Fatman laughed. It was a unique show on earth: his general flab, paunch, the obese tits of a transgressor of the three-hundred pound threshold, began to dance
to his guffaws, as if flesh and pap were only loosely attached to a distant bone structure, and it might be possible to witness a full striptease that would uncover the hidden identity of a skeleton concealed under three hundred and twenty pounds of flesh and fat. Watching him laugh, the Count always thought about the strange, predestined relationship between the Fatman's surname and his figure: he was simply Contreras, a round, chubby, voluminous and dense contrarian.

“Hey, Conde, nobody has given me a present since I was seven. Shit, seven at the very most.”

“But do you or don't you have any coffee?”

Contreras was going to set off his laughter again but restrained himself.

“I always have some for my friends. And it's still hot.”

He rolled, rather than walked, towards his desk drawer and extracted a half-full glass of coffee.

“But don't drink it all, remember I've used up my ration.”

The Count took a more than generous sip and an alarming look of despair spread over Fatman's critical face. It was the best coffee you could drink at headquarters, specially sent to Captain Contreras from Major Rangel's strategic reserves. Before returning the glass, the Count had another swallow.

“Hey, you, that's it. Look at that . . . Well then, what can I do for you?”

“No, I've got something for you. A three-and-a-half litre Kawasaki that came from who knows where, purchases from the diplo shop and an almost definite currency swindle. He's a real joy. I've got him in my office and he's so ripe he's about to fall from the tree. I'll make him a present to you on condition that you hold on to him for a while because I've not done with him yet. Like the idea?”

“I like it,” replied Fatman Contreras, who could contain himself no longer: he let his laughter rip and the Count thought one day he'd bring the walls down.

 

“Go on, push, come in,” thundered the voice when the Count put his hand on the door handle. The bastard can smell me, thought the lieutenant as he pushed on the door's frosted glass. Major Antonio Rangel swayed apathetically in his revolving chair and looked pleased, against all expectations. The Count sniffed: a delicate scent of fine, young but well-cured tobacco floated on the air. The Count glanced down: a long, olive-coloured cheroot was languishing on the ashtray.

“And what is that?”

“A Davidoff 5000, what did you think?”

“I'm happy for your sake.”

“I am for yours.” The major stopped swaying and picked up the cigar. He sucked on it as if it were ambrosia. “You see, I'm in a good . . . Where the hell did you get to? Or have you gone freelance? You do know I serve a purpose here?”

The Count sat down opposite the major and tried to smile.

Rangel demanded to know each step taken in each investigation by each subordinate, particularly if the subordinate happened to be Mario Conde. Although he had more confidence in the lieutenant's abilities than in his own, the major was afraid of him. He knew the Count's devious ways and tried to keep him on the shortest possible leash. The Count thought of a couple of jokes right away and decided he might as well try one out: “Major, I've come to ask for early retirement.”

The Boss looked at him for a moment and, without flinching, returned his cigar to the ashtray.

“Ah, so that was it,” he replied quietly with a yawn. “Go down to personnel and tell them to get the papers ready and I'll sign them. It will do my blood pressure good. I'll finally be able to work without the stress . . .”

The Count smiled, deflated.

“Fuck, Boss, can't even joke with you now.”

“You never could!” the Boss bellowed. “I don't know how you dare. Hey, Count, I really would like to know why the hell you joined the force?”

“I only answer that kind of question in the presence of my lawyer.”

“To hell with you, Roman law and the Society of Lawyers. How's the case going? It's Saturday already.”

The Count lit his cigarette and looked at the clear sky through the office window. Would you never see clouds through that window?

“Slowly. We've just interrogated one of the suspects, Pupy, a wheeler-dealer who was the girl's boyfriend. For the moment I don't think he was involved in her death, he's got an alibi with too many witnesses, but he confirmed two things that give this rumba a new tune: the teacher was a hot number, as he put it, quicker at getting a Colt out than Billy the Kid, and she was having an affair with the head teacher at Pre-Uni, who's now the second suspect. But there's something odd in all this. The forensic says the girl's last sexual contact, just before she was killed, was with a young twenty-something, who belongs to the blood group O. And Pupy has this kind of blood . . . The head is in his forties and might be the person who had it off with her five or six hours earlier. But if it's true, as it seems likely, that Pupy didn't see her on Tuesday night because he was out with a motorbike gang in the Havana Club in Santa María, and wasn't the last to have it off with her, who was? And if Pupy didn't kill her, who did? The head's number is in this raffle, but one thing doesn't fit: the party that night, the drinking and the pot smoking. I'm not a fan of the headmaster but he doesn't seem one to be in the thick of that. Though they could have killed her after the party . . . What do you reckon, Boss?”

The major got out of his chair and set his Davidoff to work. That rich tobacco was a bowl of incense spreading its fragrance each time the Boss exhaled.

“Bring me the tape with Pupy, I want to listen to him. Why do you think it wasn't him? Have you checked his story?”

“I told Crespo and Greco to check it out, but I'm pretty sure. He gave me too many names to have made it up. Besides, I have this hunch it wasn't him . . .”

“Listen, I bristle with fear whenever you have a hunch. And why did you take against the head?”

“I don't know, perhaps because he's a head teacher. He acts as if he was born to be one; that's why.”

“So that's what you don't like . . . And you say the girl was a bit crazy? The report . . .”

“It was an official report, Boss. You never hear it said that anything goes on paper? You can't imagine everything there might be behind that document: opportunism, hypocrisy, a desire to get up the greasy pole and much more besides. But that paper says she was an example for the youth . . .”

“Forget it, don't teach your granddaddy to suck eggs. I was doing this before you knew how to clean the snot . . . You know, Mario, I reckon you're slowing down. What's up?”

The Count stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray before replying: “I don't know, Boss, there's something
I don't get in all this, you know, the marijuana factor – not knowing where it came from makes me like I can't concentrate.”

The major's gesture was theatrical and perfect: he raised his hands to his head and looked towards the ceiling, as if looking for heaven's mercy.

“Now that is the straw that broke the camel's back. I'll let you retire right now. So it's all down to a problem of concentration, is it?”

“But I feel fine, Boss.”

“With that shitty look on your face? . . . Mario, Mario, remember what I told you: keep it above board, whatever your impulses. Don't put one foot out of line, or I'll amputate it myself.”

“But, Boss, what's it all about? What's the real story?”

“I told you I don't know, but I can smell something's brewing. There's an investigation around that comes from the very top. I don't know what's up or what they're looking for, but it's a big deal and heads will roll . . . And don't ask me any more questions . . . Hey, did you know I got a little parcel and letter from my daughter yesterday? Apparently it's all going well with her Austrian ecologist. They're living in Vienna, I did tell you that, didn't I?”