The Count turned round in front of the Colonel’s office door, smiling at her as beatifically as he knew how.
“What pistol?”
“Yours,” and she pointed to the abandoned weapon.
“You know, I keep leaving it all over the place,” commented the Count and yawned before he picked his gun up and slotted it back into the waistband of his trousers.
And now he walked unsmiling towards his boss’s door and whispered, “Thank you,” as he sidled past the petty officer, who was undoubtedly thinking of starting on the report she’d file on his negligent attitude towards his regulation firearm.
“Come in, Lieutenant,” said the Colonel, sitting behind his desk, a cigarette between his fingers.
“Good day, Colonel. I’ve come because I need to hear you repeat what you said two days ago.”
“What did I say then?”
“That you gave me carte blanche in this case.”
“But I also told you to be careful and cautious, and not to go too far. Remember we have to avoid a scandal in the international media…”
“That’s all very well, but tell me what I asked you…”
Colonel Molina stood up and walked round his desk till he was face to face with Mario Conde.
“What is it you want, Lieutenant?”
“To solve the case.”
“But what are you going to do that means you need to hear my authorization again?”
“I just want to rough up some people who are lying to me…”
The Colonel raised his eyebrows, as if not believing what he’d heard, and turned round a moment to stub out his cigarette.
“Lieutenant, what do you old-school police mean by ‘roughing up’?”
The Count steadied himself. He’d alarmed this novice, too, and without having to set up the spectacle of an abandoned pistol.
“I don’t know, it depends on…” and he halted on the edge of the precipice.
He was perhaps risking too much if he joked, even his retirement letter, and preferred not to: though he was sorry. He would like to have seen Molina’s face as he listed medieval instruments of torture used as synonyms for roughing up.
“What does it depend on, Lieutenant?”
“On whatever one wants to find out, Colonel. And in this case I want to find two things out: first, what Miguel Forcade came to Cuba for, something he couldn’t take out ten years ago, something that could make him rich in two days… and then to know who killed him, and if it was to grab whatever could make a man rich.”
“And who do you want to rough up?”
“A blonde who’s probably not blonde, a North American citizen who has a Cuban passport, a hitter who can slam hard and a man who stole the shoes from my dreams… Will you just repeat the bit about my having carte blanche?”
The Colonel seemed to hesitate. He looked at the Count, studied his hands, thought about what he should do as the lieutenant added: “Colonel, you can’t always be orthodox and patient in order to reach the truth: sometimes you have to strike back and dig out the truth from wherever it is hidden. And this blonde, despite all my efforts to keep her here, will return to the States in two days. And if she goes, the fucking truth goes with her. Do you understand? Besides, I only have nine hours left to present you this case giftwrapped. Now I want to hear you repeat yourself, please.”
Molina smiled briefly and lit another cigarette, after offering the Count one.
“Lieutenant, either you are mad or I’m the one who’s mad for telling you this: go for it, you’ve got carte blanche… And may God look favourably upon me.”
If time had been on his side, the Count would have preferred a different scenario: for example, to keep Miriam in his hot cubicle for a couple of hours, as if he’d forgotten all about her and under the apparent supervision of two uniformed men who wouldn’t respond if she asked a question. That would have made things easier, he thought, as he watched Miriam smile calmly, after she’d asked: “So, you’re going to put me inside?”
Sergeant Manuel Palacios, who had brought her into Headquarters, looked over the woman to the Count and waved a hand, warning him to prepare himself: he’d certainly already taken more than his fair share when he’d asked Forcade’s widow to accompany him there.
“Nobody is going to put you inside,” the Count said finally, “unless you’ve done something that merits your being there, of course.”
“And what might I have done?” She returned to the attack, with that sour persistence the Count had met before.
The woman had guts, he told himself, and almost rejoiced he hadn’t been pronged on the bars of her eyelashes. Or was that ripe fruit from Paradise still worth tasting? He had time perhaps, he consoled himself, ever a greedy sod.
“The fact is I don’t know, Miriam, but I am sure of one thing: you know much more than you’ve let on.”
“And what do you reckon I know?”
“I told you: what your husband was looking for in Cuba…”
“And I’ve told you more than once: he came to see his father. Or did they make a mistake when they allowed him in?”
The Count again regretted he didn’t have time to soften her up, although he also thought such gentle techniques wouldn’t have produced the goods with this hard-bitten woman. Worst thing of all was that if Miriam blocked all routes in, he’d have no paths along which to progress the case: Fermín still hadn’t said anything to incriminate himself and Gómez de la Peña had been sent home blubbering at dawn, after he’d sworn a hundred times he didn’t know his extraordinary Matisse was a fake and didn’t know where Miguel Forcade went on that fatal night after he’d visited him. To cap it all, the ultra-efficient Candito had called him that morning to confirm what the Count suspected: the Havana underworld was not involved in the death and castration. “So why did they cut his tail off, Red?”
“You find out, Count, that’s why you’re the policeman on this job, isn’t it?”
As a false trail, to hint at revenge, jealousy, or was it another queer affair? Who can tell…? Now what did he have left? Perhaps he should try his luck with a loose cannon, like Adrian Riverón, suspected of the heinous crime of being a closet smoker, Miriam’s friend and ex-fiancé and now perhaps her confidant; or go back to talk to the dead man’s mother, who didn’t seem to have the slightest idea of what world she was living in. And old Forcade? he wondered, as his consciousness felt certain all paths had been blocked. After all, everybody insisted Miguel had returned to Cuba to see his father and that apparent lie might be the one and only truth.
“So he came to see his father?”
“I’ve told you so at least ten times. Why won’t you believe me?”
“No, I believe you, Miriam, but tell me just one thing, what’s your father-in-law’s mental state?”
She seemed surprised by the question that dragged her from the circle of denials and rejections behind which she had fenced herself.
“He’s been slightly mad ever since I’ve known him. And now he’s eighty-six I think he’s gone even crazier…”
“But he’s not ga-ga, is he?” he asked tightening the rope, and the rope twanged.
“He is as far as I’m concerned. The poor guy doesn’t know which planet he’s on…” she replied, after hesitating briefly, and the Count knew he’d hit the bull’s-eye. Smiling, the policeman seized his moment.
“You must forgive me, Miriam, but I have to ask you to stay here at Headquarters. Only for an hour or so. I’ll soon be back and we can continue our conversation. OK?”
“Do I have any choice in the matter?”
The Count’s smile broadened a little: he tried to appear charming, even relaxed and cheerful, as he told her: “I don’t think so,” and went out into the corridor before she could batter him with appeals to civil, consular and democratic rights that she’d no doubt take to the UN Security Council. Manolo, who’d followed him at a speed accelerated by his fear of being left alone with Miriam, asked him on tenterhooks. “But what are you going to do, Conde?”