Enrique pulled back the curtain and looked out. Then he stepped back toward Burke. “I love her,” he said. “When she is free, we’re going to move to Santo Domingo, away from the don, away from this island. I’ve been saving money to help her. See?” He offered Burke one of the tins in the crate. A crowned cow stared out from its label, which touted the contents as superior butter. “I sell this, for my living, for her. I was waiting for her last Tuesday. We were going to have an hour. But then she didn’t show. I worried. I thought the don had found out. Then I saw the notices the don put in the paper, and I thought maybe she had run.”
Burke’s mind began to leap with what Enrique had told him. “You were waiting for her on Tuesday?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” Enrique said.
“Where, exactly?”
“At the corner of O’Reilly and Compostela.”
“And you kept a hard watch for her?”
“I always do.”
Burke rose, relief breaking through him like morning sun. She wasn’t a runaway — she had truly disappeared. “Thank you,” he said. Then, without another word, he went to the door.
“Is that all?” Enrique asked, still standing by the window and staring after Burke.
“It is enough.”
BURKE WALKED DIRECTLY to the Calle O’Reilly. There, halfway between the Habana and Compostela intersections, he planted himself in the center of the street. He looked eastward, toward the intersection where Miércoles and Domingo had waited, O’Reilly and Habana. Then he pivoted and looked westward, toward the intersection where Enrique had kept a sharp lookout, O’Reilly and Compostela. Between these two lookouts, one at either entrance to the block, Marcita had vanished.
On the left side of the street were the oyster shop, the bookseller’s, and the tobacco shop he’d seen before, and farther on a linen shop and a silversmith’s. On the right stood a tea shop, a music shop, a large shop selling glassware, and a perfumery. There was nothing strange about the block. The shops were all elegant, glass-fronted establishments that catered to the city’s gentry. They had preposterous names like The Empress Eugénie (the perfumery) and The Bower of Arachne (the linen shop) written in gold letters above their doors. Burke walked up and down before them, observing everything around him, looking again and again into the same shopwindows and at the crowds moving past, the gentlemen, the vendors, the slaves. He even knelt and examined the street itself, paved in smoothed cobblestones. But after two hours’ investigation, Burke had found nothing. Returned to the Calle del Sol, he sat at his desk to think, and when Fernandita brought in his supper he refused the plate of French sausages and rice with a distracted wave of his hand.
“You must ease yourself about hunting that girl,” Fernandita said. “Somebody’s going to catch her and it might as well be you. We have debts to pay.”
“It’s not that,” Burke said, looking up at her. “I’m quite over that.”
The usual stoniness returned to Fernandita’s face and she left the room, but in a moment she had returned. “I almost forgot,” she said. “A boy brought this.” She handed Burke a message. It was from Galván, and he’d written only three words: Body not found.
LATER THAT NIGHT, once full darkness had fallen, Burke dressed in trousers and a shirt made of old sailcloth and left his rooms to walk through the city. It was all he could think to do. He hoped that, passing among slaves, visiting their night haunts, he might hear rumors — of Marcita, of the murdered slave, of the others the don mentioned had gone missing. He went to the abandoned lots and shadowy groves where slaves were known to gather for their dances and their guinea magic, but each one he found deserted. The only slave he saw that night he stumbled on by chance — a fresh bozal standing outside a tavern, far from any of the slaves’ usual places. He seemed agitated; he was staring in through the tavern’s window at white men eating and drinking, gnashing his lips.
Burke approached him. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
The slave turned to him. Tribal scars ridged his forehead and shoulders. His front teeth were filed into points, and his breath stank of aguardiente. “I lost my little Anto,” he said.
Just then the tavern-keeper came out and waved a stained rag at the two of them. “Bah!” he said. “Go on! Get moving!” He snapped the rag at the slave and then at Burke, who, as he leapt back, bumped into a creole passing by. Without breaking stride, the man struck him with his gold-tipped cane, then continued on down the street, paying him no more attention. Burke recognized the fellow — Maroto? Sánchez? — had even shaken his hand at a salon where he’d been invited to play cards and share stories about his cases. He wanted to shout, but by the time he’d overcome his shock at being struck the creole was gone, disappeared into the night. He turned to find the slave with the pointed teeth, but he was gone, too.
After an hour of more wandering, Burke returned to his rooms, lit a lamp, and sat at his desk. The slaves were frightened of something — he could see that in their emptied gathering places and in the eyes of the bozal. But what was the connection to Marcita’s disappearance? He thought of the head found outside the city, and of the street where Marcita disappeared. He could sense a tie between them, but his brain failed to take hold of it. Outside, the sereno called the second hour of morning. Burke took a cigarette from the canister on his desk. Fernandita had just restocked them with the don’s money. He struck a match, brought the light to the cigarette tip, then stopped. The labels in Marcita’s room — the shop in the Calle O’Reilly with the too-high prices — the cigarette factory next to the field where the slave was found. As each piece clicked into the next the match burned down and singed his fingers.
“Fernandita!” he shouted. “Fernandita!”
After the fourth shout she emerged from her closet, cursing and blinking.
“Go to the captain-general’s palace. He’ll be up, playing cards. Give him this message.” As Burke spoke, he quickly scrawled a letter telling the captain-general he was acting in the affairs of Don Hernán and asking him to send troops to the Pedroso y Compañia factory without delay.
“Why? What’s happening?” Fernandita looked about the room, as if someone else might be there.
“I’m not sure yet,” Burke said, the unlit cigarette still in his mouth. He shoved the letter in Fernandita’s hands. “But I’m going to find out.”
At that he left his rooms and ran through the dark streets until he found an idle volanta waiting near the cathedral. Dropping a handful of reales into the postilion’s palm, Burke yelled for him to drive to the Calle de la Soledad, outside the city. “Race the devil!” he shouted. Then he threw himself into the volanta’s seat and the man took off.
THEY WENT PAST THE FIELD where the head had been found, then came to an empty lane just off the paseo — the Calle de la Soledad. The volanta pulled to a stop, and Burke got out, telling the driver to wait. The white macadam glowed in the light of the moon, and the air carried the scent of meat cooked over a fire. A night bird called from a far line of trees, but otherwise everything was still. Just up the lane stood the three factories Burke had seen earlier that day when he’d come to inquire about the murder. The snuff mill lay dormant and Burke stepped quickly, carefully past its low, silent hulk. Just beyond it was the yard of the cigarette factory. He halted. The factory’s yard was untended, overgrown with weeds and littered here and there with bottles. But light shone through the cracks in its shuttered windows, and, once he stilled his own breathing, Burke could hear the murmur of men talking.