Jose Latour

Havana Best Friends


Скачать книгу

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 out his wallet. He produced a pink slip and read out the number, 977.

      ‘Got it. See you later.’

      ‘Hold your horses,’ Trujillo cautioned as he returned the wallet to its pocket. ‘The victim’s name is Pablo Miranda, and his father, Manuel Miranda, is serving a prison sent—’

      ‘The father’s Manuel Miranda?’ the major cut in, eyes rounded in surprise, bushy eyebrows lifted.

      Trujillo had never before seen Pena flabbergasted. In fact, the major bragged that nothing surprised him any more. Pena did a second extraordinary thing. He plopped on to his chair and stared vacantly at a wall. To top it all he said, ‘Oh my God.’

      The captain arched an eyebrow and kept his smile in check. Before communist Europe went up in smoke, for Party members – state security and senior police officers in particular – religious terminology just didn’t exist. Then, all of a sudden pro-government believers were invited to join a political organization which denied the existence of God; cynics had a field day. Trujillo and Pena, in common with many Cubans, were not religious. But now they used expressions like ‘Praised be the Lord’ to mock the leadership’s sudden turnabout.

      ‘So you know the guy. C’mon, out with it. C’mon, Chief, c’mon. I have to be at the IML at eight.’

      Pena snapped out of his reverie and lit a cigarette. ‘The stories I’ve heard about this guy…it’s like one of those incredible Hollywood movies. Only it’s no movie. The guy’s fucking crazy. I mean, no man in his right mind would do the things this guy is presumed to have done.’

      ‘Done where?’

      ‘Everywhere. You name a place where Cubans went into battle from – let me see…’58 to…what, ‘81? –he was there. A brigadier general calling names to the enemy from front-line trenches, letting them have it with all he’d got. Short guy, not an ounce over 130 pounds. Can you believe it? At the last count he had been wounded six or seven times, I don’t know exactly. The man is a born fighter.’

      ‘So, why is he at Tinguaro?’

      Pena told the story in a sad tone. As it unfolded, the captain felt a certain amount of sympathy for the ex-general. In the last two years Trujillo had seen his suspicions that his own wife was cheating on him grow. There had been too many blanks in her explanations about why she was late, an ever increasing sexual indifference, frequent disagreements. Would he do what Miranda had done? No way. No woman was worth a day in prison. It was a problem he had postponed for too long; he would have to tackle it soon.

      ‘Well, you think you could call Prisons and explain things to them?’

      ‘Right away.’

      ‘I’m going to meet Miranda’s daughter at the IML in a little while. Once she IDs her brother we should let Prisons know where the wake is taking place so Miranda can attend.’

      ‘No problem. Even counter-revolutionaries are permitted to attend the wake of a close relative.’

      ‘Counters too? That a fact?’

      ‘You bet.’

      ‘That’s decent. See you in a while.’

      ‘Wait. You said the victim had shit on him?’

      ‘Four fixes.’

      ‘No chance the guy OD’d before he was killed?’

      ‘Barbara