“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” I reply.
“Good. Come with me to the Malecón,” Hector says.
The Malecón: the corniche that runs along the seafront of Havana. Now that they’ve fixed up Alexandria’s promenade and Shanghai’s Bund this is the paradigm case of faded grandeur. Think Rome in the Dark Ages, Constantinople in the last years before the Turk. In any other city in the world this would be prime real estate: the main drag of the city between the headland and the entrance to Havana Bay. There’s no beach, but beyond the seawall bathers and fishermen gather all along the gentle curve of the croisette. On most days there’s a spectacular view east to the castle and beyond to the blue waters of the Florida Strait. The Malecón could be beautiful, but in our Havana this particular piece of real estate is just a shabby row of boarded-up three-story buildings and empty lots. In the fifties these were bars, cafés, hotels, private casinos, ice cream parlors, Cadillac dealerships, and so on. In the sixties they all got turned into workers’ apartments. And now they aren’t anything. When the hurricanes come the seawall doesn’t protect them and the buildings flood and the windows break and the wood rots and no one has the money for repairs. The bright paint has long since gone and the buildings that are still standing look like a collection of toothless old men waiting for their own personal apocalypse.
The trick to the Malecón is to look left as you’re walking east and right as you’re walking west. Keep your eyes fixed on the sea and it doesn’t seem so sad.
Gentleman that he is, Hector lets me walk on the seawall side.
“What’s the matter with you, can’t you keep up?” he asks.
Despite having no sleep and existing purely on rum, pork fat, and cheap cigars, he’s setting a blistering pace.
“What’s the hurry?” I ask.
“I want to put some distance between us and that son of a bitch.”
“He’s not even here. I saw him pissing outside and I think he went home after that.”
“That’s what he wants you to think,” Hector says.
“He’s a lazy good-for-nothing with bribes up the ass.”
“Saints preserve us, Mercado, he’s got you right in the palm of his hand. The good ones always want you to underestimate them. Don’t make me think I made you a detective too early.”
“No, sir, you did not,” I reply immediately.
Hector chuckles. “How would you like to be back in that lovely blue uniform?”
I shudder. The blue uniform with the awful peaked cap was almost South American in its hideousness.
“What about my arrest? That impressed you,” I point out.
“What arrest?”
“The waiter.”
“Oh, him? We would have got him one way or another,” Hector sniffs.
“That’s not what you said to Díaz,” I mention in my defense.
“No, it’s not. I wanted Díaz to think that you’re invaluable. But anyway, it’s irrelevant, that episode ended badly.”
“Badly? I hadn’t heard. I know you didn’t find the body but surely the confession…?”
Hector stops talking and looks carefully at the occupants of a slow-moving Volkswagen Rabbit. He waits until it’s gone past before continuing. “The confession was fine but we had to let him go. His girlfriend is a secretary at the Venezuelan Embassy, well liked over there. The Venezuelans asked us to release her, and she wouldn’t go without him.”
“Hijo de puta.”
“Yeah, fucking Venezuelans. They say it’s cold and we say, Warm your dick in our asses.”
“You let both of them go?” I ask.
Hector shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it, it’s too depressing.”
A black girl yells up to us from the beach. She’s been sifting garbage and beachcombing. She’s about seventeen, very pretty in a gorgeous ripped yellow dress that someone who loved her once had given her.
“Blow job, five U.S.,” she shouts at Hector.
“No,” he says firmly.
“Five Canadian,” the woman persists.
“We’re Cubans, and we’re police, you idiot,” Hector replies.
“Police. That’s why you’re so fat,” the woman mutters.
He could arrest her for that but Hector just shrugs. She has a point. These days most people in Havana have trouble finding food. Cops, tourist agents, and good whores are the exception. And as if inspired to burn off more kilos, Hector increases his speed. I’m limping a little now.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asks.
“I tripped on the steps at my mother’s place.”
“When was this?”
“Couple of days ago. Ricky and I went to see her. Her building’s a mess. She lives in one of those dumps near Ferrocarril.”
Hector looks confused. “I thought she lived in Santiago,” he says.
“No, Havana.”
“There’s something about Santiago de Cuba in your file.”
“My father was from Santiago; my uncle still lives out there.”
Hector grins. “Yes, that was it. Lovely city. I had a grandmother from there. Used to visit her in the seventies. Once we rode bicycles to Caimanera to look at the Americans. Did you ever do that?”
I shake my head. Even before it had gotten a bad reputation, I’d never had a desire to gape at the Yankees in Guantánamo. The Interior Ministry had mined the bay and surrounded the camp with hundreds of soldiers. A few people had tried to defect there but all had been caught. It was easier by far to try for the Keys. And even if I had gone to Caimanera I wouldn’t admit it to Hector. The last thing I wanted to do was exhibit any kind of wistful longing for America.
He slows his pace. Easier now. My limp vanishes.
Hector is smiling to himself, probably thinking of his adventures with girls on that long, awful train from Santiago to Havana.
“You fell down some steps, Detective Mercado?”
“Yes, sir. Thieves have stolen all the streetlights on that-”
“When I was a child I fell down a well. Did you know that?”
“No, sir.”
“An early sign of idiocy or an early sign of brilliance, what do you think?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
“The philosopher Thales fell in a well while contemplating the heavens. Heard of him, detective?”
“No.”
“What did you study in college?” Hector asks.
“Dual major, sir.”
“Dual major in what?”
“English and Russian.”
“Hedging your bets, eh? I like that.”
“Not really, sir, we didn’t have much choice, we were told what to-”
“When was the last time you walked along here?” Hector interrupts.
“Yesterday. As a matter of fact, every morning. I-”
“Not me, must be a year since I walked here. I have a car, you know. A brand-new Volkswagen from Mexico,” he says with pride.
“I didn’t know that.”
“No. You wouldn’t.” He sighs. “It’s changed since the last time I was here. Worse. In Cuba things always change for the worse.”
“Yes, sir,” I reply and inwardly groan. From past experience I know that Hector is going to hit me with an expansion of this theory.
“Yes, things got worse for the indigenous Cubans when the Spanish came, then they got worse under the Yankees, then worse still under the little dictators, then worse under Sergeant Batista, then worse under Fidel. And you’ll see, it’ll continue to get worse under Raúl and the Venezuelans.”
“And after Raúl?” I venture.
“Ah, you mean when the Miamistas come?” He looks at me with a glint in his eye. “We’ll talk about that in a minute,” he says mysteriously.
We walk along the seawall toward the curve of the Castillo. In the distance is the fort of San Carlos and the chimneys of the oil refineries on the bay.
The wind is blowing the smoke offshore, decanting it north to Florida, 150 sweet sea kilometers from here.
He lights a little cigar, offers me one. I decline. Two summers working in the plantations for the Young Pioneers cured me of any desire to smoke Cuban cigars. He hoists himself up and sits on the seawall.