That why you came here, Pop? A landscape that is in every way the opposite of Havana? Or was there another reason?
I make it to the outskirts of Fairview, take out my map, and find Ashleigh Street. I go along about a kilometer before I find a burned-out liquor store. Sure enough, the stop sign on Rochdale Road has recently been replaced. I walk back a few meters and examine the trees. One of them looks bruised, bent, like it may have been hit fairly recently by a vehicle. I look close and change my angle to get the sunlight. Tiny fragments of gray paint on the trunk. I dab my finger on my tongue and raise one of them from the tree. I hold it in the palm of my hand.
The garage report said she drove a cream Mercedes-Benz.
Six months later cream and white probably weather to just about the same shade of gray.
I sit down on a nearby tree trunk.
The sky changes color as the sun sinks behind the Front Range.
Get up. Start back.
The road begins a long, slow incline toward town, and I find myself thinking about what Esteban told me. Not too long ago this road and the Malecón in Havana were both Spain.
Spain. Hard to believe it. Of course, they have long since parted and they don’t remember that they were kin. Here, unlike the Malecón, no one walks. Cars slow, people stare. Who is that person on foot? What can they be about? No good, I’ll be-
“María! María, is that you?”
I look up. A Toyota pickup with half a dozen Mexicans crammed in the back.
“How do you know-”
“It’s me,” Paco says from under a disguise of grime.
He helps me into the truck.
Handshakes. Hellos.
The boys pass me a Corona. I drink it. They tell me they’ve come from a garbage dump on the far side of the mountain, where they threw out perfectly good refrigerators, radiators, air-conditioning units, and other obsolescences that they’ve taken from the building they’re remodeling on Pearl Street. The boys are mostly from Mexico City or Chiapas. None of them is over twenty-five. Paco seems happy to be with them. Sitting there with the others, drinking beer, telling jokes. He’s a different person among these guys, more himself, funnier, younger. I’m a weight. A drag. “We shouldn’t be sharing a room anymore, Paco, you should be with your friends,” I tell him.
“No, no, I like staying with you,” he insists.
“I’m a cramp on your style,” I say.
“Never.”
He grins, finishes another Corona, shakes his head. Someone passes me a bottle of tequila but I decline and the bottle moves on.
“Did you have a good day?” Paco asks.
A good day? Yes. A productive day. Unless she’s got an Oscar stashed away, Mrs. Cooper was not the person who hit my father and left him to die in a ditch. Only one name left on Ricky’s garage list. The perfect suspect. Arrogant, rich, careless. He clearly takes meth, pot, alcohol. Gotta be him.
In fact, he’s almost too perfect, and if I were in Havana and investigating this case for Hector I’d at least look at a DGI angle-the prime suspect being set up as cover for a Party man. But this isn’t Cuba. This is a simpler country.
And Esteban and his deer? A deeper look to take care of that. Maybe also see about that Scientology golf cart. Just to be on the safe side.
We bump along the road. Paco, utterly wiped, lies against me. His eyes are dark and weary. He’s definitely not used to manual labor, no matter what he said before.
“Lie on my lap, little Francisco,” I tell him.
“I’m dirty,” he says.
“Lie down, close your eyes,” I tell him.
He smiles and lies down. Some of the other men give him an obscene roar but he tells them to fuck off. I stroke his hair and his smile widens.
“Keep a look out for the motel,” he says. “When you see it, tell Hernando to bang on the roof. They won’t stop. Angelo’s crew are all going to Denver.”
More bumps. More beer. “Plenty of food, plenty of beer, plenty of fun, that’s America,” he mutters. America. Yes. In Cuba it’s different. In Cuba you think only with your belly. And at the end of the month when the ration book is running thin, your belly tells you what to do.
“What are you thinking about?” Paco asks dreamily.
“My belly,” I tell him, and he laughs and laughs.
“You don’t even have one,” he says finally.
I do, Paco. I have a cop gut and it tells me that Mrs. Cooper is innocent and time is running out and the real killer’s days to walk this Earth are few.
11 PRAYER IS BETTER THAN SLEEP
Black orchid sky. Black moon. Black dreams. Back on bruised-mouth island. The beat in Vedado. Doctors. Informers. Tourists. Whores. Secret policemen. Secret asylums. Secret prisons. Calling me home. But not yet, I’ll come, but not yet.
I dream the song of waking and lie under the sheet, awake.
I pull back the curtain, look through the window.
It’s well before dawn. The night is full of dying stars and hidden mass.
A noise on the outside steps. A person.
Who is that over there?
My eyes adapt to the light.
It’s Paco. Kneeling. Fingering his rosary.
Does he do this every morning?
Poor kid. Must be scared shitless to be here.
I watch him, fascinated.
He finishes, lifts his head. I let the curtain fall back, lie down again.
A key in the lock. The door creaks open. He comes in.
He looks in my direction, squints, tries to see if I’m awake. Deciding that I’m not, he tiptoes to his bed and takes off his shoes. He removes a white bag of powder from his pocket and puts it carefully in the drawer next to his bed. He lifts the duvet, slithers under it, and rolls onto his side.
He drapes an arm over his eyes and tries to sleep. After a couple of minutes the arm falls to his side. His face assumes a different, more feminine posture. His eyebrows are thick and his features fine, his hair wiry but containable. It’s the eyes that give up his wildness, his begging years, his time running with gangs in Managua, or his time-probably exaggerated-as a camp follower of the Sandinistas, a wannabe boy soldier.
Sleeping, he has the face of someone deeper than the front he projects to the world. It’s a shame, Paco, that you love America so. You shouldn’t fall so hard on the first date.
Not me. In matters of love I take my time. Too choosy, everyone says. The Havana girl whose exception proves the rule.
But you, Francisco, everything’s coming to you too easily and too fast. Didn’t you listen to Esteban? There’s another side to this land, there’s a-
His eyes flip open and he catches me staring at him.
“I could feel your look,” he says.
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I was awake.”
“What time is it?” he asks, sitting up.
“Six… Wait a minute, are you just getting in?”
“Yeah.”
“Where were you?”
“Denver,” he says after a pause.
“Denver? What were you doing there?”
“Manuelito came by at midnight, you were asleep. He was looking for someone to go with him.”
“Who’s Manuel?”
“You don’t know him?”
“No. What were you doing in Denver?” I ask, surprised.
“Clubbing, man,” he says in English with a huge grin. He pulls back the sheets and sits on the edge of his bed.
“Clubbing,” I repeat.
“You should go.”
“I don’t think it’s my sort of scene,” I tell him.
“What is your sort of scene?” he says with a bit of an edge to his voice.
“Not clubbing in Denver,” I reply.
He reaches into his boxers and scratches his balls. “You know what your problem is, María?” he says.
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“I am going to tell you. Your problem is that you act like you’re fifty, like you’re past it. Christ, man, you’re twenty-seven years old. You’re in a new country, full of opportunities and people and things, and you’re over there hunched with the fucking weight of the world on your shoulders, like you’re some old nurse in a cancer ward or something.”