He stood up, returned to the window and meditated gloomily. It was three hours to dusk, and the sky had turned overcast, a warning perhaps that rain and cold were on their way back. He’d always preferred cold for work, but the premature darkness depressed him and took away any inclination to work that he might still harbour. He’d never before so wanted to be finished with a case, the pressures from above the Boss passed on to him made him feel desperate, and the image of Tamara’s butt shifting beneath her yellow dress was both torture and a warning: be careful. Everybody seemed to see danger. Worst of all, however, was the feeling of disorientation that was stifling him: he was as lost as Rafael and didn’t like working like that. The major had approved his first steps, authorized him to speak to the Spanish businessman and investigate the enterprise – yes, something might turn up there, he’d said – to interview people and check papers with specialists in economics and accounting from headquarters; only he’d have to wait till Monday, and the major didn’t want this to last till Monday. But as he smoked that silken-flavoured cigar he convinced himself that Rafael Morín’s disappearance owed nothing to chance and that he’d have to revisit all paths that might lead logically to the beginning of the end of the story; the party and the enterprise, the enterprise and the party seemed like tracks that ran into each other.
“Tamara rang and told me about something that may be a lead,” he finally told Manolo as he informed him about the telephone book. The sergeant read the names, numbers and addresses of the two women and then asked: “Do you really think this might lead somewhere?”
“I’m interested in Zaida the secretary and in finding out who Zoila might be. Hey, how many names starting with Zed you got in your telephone book?”
Manolo shrugged his shoulders and smiled. No, he didn’t know.
“Zed barely has eight or ten pages in dictionaries, and almost nobody has a name that begins with Zed,” said the Count, opening his own telephone book. “I’ve only got Zenaida. Do you remember Zenaida?”
“Hey, Conde, drop it, that girl’s for other occasions.”
The lieutenant closed his telephone book and returned it to his desk drawer.
“Women are always there for other occasions. Yes, get a move on, we’d better go see the Zeds. Get the car out.”
Saturday night wouldn’t turn out to be at all spectacular. A cold drizzle that would continue into the early hours had begun to fall, and the cold could still be felt in the closed car, and the Count longed for the powerful sun that had accompanied his waking up that morning. The rain had emptied the streets, and a grey pall of apathy shrouded a city that lived for the heat and retreated into itself at the slightest cold or drop of water. The languid tropical winter came and went, even in the space of a single day, and it was difficult to work out the time of year: a shit winter, he muttered as he contemplated the boulevard, darkened by clumps of trees, swept by a wind from the sea gusting along paper and dead leaves. Nobody dared sit on the benches on the path down the centre of the avenue the Count thought the most beautiful in Havana and that was now the exclusive preserve of a gritty individual zipped into his windbreaker and engaged in his evening jogging. What strength of will. On such an evening he would have taken a book to bed and been asleep by the third page. On such an evening, he recognized, the cold and the rain irritated people who were condemned to stay indoors: the most easygoing wives could transform a husband’s slightest macho thrust into an issue of feminine honour and bring down a flowerpot on his forehead, between steaks, quite remorselessly. Luckily tonight the baseball series would resume after the end-of-year break, but he thought how rain might perhaps lead to the game being called off. His team, the Industriales, which kept him awake worrying at night, were playing in the Latinoamericano Stadium against the Vegueros to decide who would go through to the final championship playoff, because Havana had already qualified. He would have liked the chance to go to the stadium: he needed the group therapy that seemed so much like freedom, where you could say anything, calling the referee’s mother a whore or even your team’s manager a fucking idiot and then depart sad in defeat or euphoric in victory but relaxed, hoarse and raring to go. Recently the Count was scepticism incarnate: he even tried not to go to baseball games because the Industriales played worse and worse, and luck seemed to have forsaken them, and apart from Vargas and Javier Méndez, the rest seemed second-raters, too weak in the leg to really get them into the final, let alone win it. He had forgotten Zaida and Zoila by the time they drove out on the Malecón. There a briny drizzle met a heavenly shower, and Manolo cursed his fucking luck, thinking he’d damned well have to wash the car before putting it away for the night.
“You not been to the stadium for a long time, Manolo?”
“Why fuck on about the stadium, Conde? What’s the point? Look how filthy the car’s got, I’m an idiot, I should have gone down Línea,” he lamented, turning down G in the direction of Fifth Avenue. They stopped in front of a block of flats and got out of the car.
“The stadium would cure you of such tantrums.”
Zaida Lima Ramos lived on the sixth floor, in flat 6D, Lieutenant Mario Conde checked the details and, from the hallway, saw Manolo getting drenched as he took down the radio aerial and smiled:
“Crime prevention, Lieutenant. Last month one was lifted right in front of my house,” said Manolo, and they walked towards the lift only to be greeted by a notice that said: BROKEN.
“That’s a good start,” scowled the Count, heading to the stairs barely lit by a few light bulbs in the exits to some of the floors. As he climbed he breathed through his mouth, panted, and felt his heartbeat quicken from lack of air and his leg muscles go numb with the effort. He thought for a moment how the long-distance runner on the Paseo had got it right, and on the fifth floor he leaned back on the stair-rail, looked at Manolo, at the two remaining flights to the entrance to the sixth floor and waved pathetically, wait, wait, he must catch his breath, nobody would respect a police detective who knocks on their door, tongue hanging out, tears welling up, begging for a glass of water. He wanted to sit down and mechanically retrieved a cigarette from his jacket-pocket but finally decided to let reason triumph. He perched it on his dry, dry lips, didn’t light up, and tackled the last flights on that endless staircase.
They came out into a passage that was also in semidarkness, and found 6D at the far end. Before knocking, the Count decided to light up.
“How are we going to play this?” enquired Manolo before they started their questioning.
“I really want to know what the man’s like at work, let’s start there. And take it gently, as if it’s no big deal, uh-huh? But if necessary, get a bit sharp and to the point.”
“Shall we record her?”
He thought for a moment, pressed the bell and said: “Not yet.”
The woman looked startled to see them. She was clearly expecting someone else: those two strangers on that rainy cold Saturday evening weren’t part of her agenda. Good evening, said the police who introduced themselves, and she said yes, her voice trembling slightly, she was Zaida Lima Ramos. She let them in, even more at a loss, as she tried to smooth down her ruffled hair, perhaps she’d been in bed, she looked sleepy, and they explained the reason for their visit: comrade Rafael Morín, her boss, had disappeared.
“So I heard,” she replied, settling into the armchair. She sat down, clasping her legs tight together, and tried to pull down a skirt that barely reached her knees.
The Count noted her thighs were downy, little eddies going upwards, and he tried to rein in the other eddy rising in his imagination. The woman was between twenty-five and thirty, with large dark eyes, a comely mulatta’s ample mouth, and the Count decided that even without make-up and with tousled hair she was really beautiful. Her living room was small but was clean and tidy and everything sparkled. The Count registered the multipurpose shelves on the wall opposite the balcony with Sony colour television, Beta videoplayer, stereo recorder and picturesque souvenirs from several parts of the world: a mosaic from Toledo, a little Mexican statue, a miniature Big Ben and Leaning Tower of Pisa, while Zaida explained how Maciques had called on the afternoon of the first, that people were looking for Rafael, she hadn’t the slightest idea where he might be and she’d called him several times since, the last time being that afternoon, she was worried, wasn’t there any news of Rafael?”