“She was a real character. Nobody mentioned her much at home though, because she was a whore and danced naked at the Shanghai…”
“The girl must be older than an Egyptian mummy, right?” Veneno asked.
“Must be eighty, I reckon, if she’s…”
“I really haven’t a clue. If you’re in the barrio a few days, I’ll find out.”
“Great. I’d like to pay her a visit…” said the Count, pointing a hand and three erect fingers at the waiter.
That night, while he scrubbed himself in the shower, trying to wash off the filth, infamy and sordidity in which he’d spent one of the strangest days of his life, Mario Conde again wondered how a perverted universe like that could possibly exist in the heart of Havana: a place where people lived who’d been born at the same time, in the same city, as he, but who seemed alien, almost unreal in their level of degeneracy. The experiences he’d suffered in a few hours surpassed his wildest predictions and he now wondered if he’d have it in him to continue his nauseating quest.
After eating and drinking several beers at Veneno’s, the African demanded a second advance of 300 pesos that, so he said, were indispensable if the search was to go on. Trapped in a net of his own making, the Count separated out a couple of twenty notes and handed his material and spiritual guide the three hundred pesos he had left.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, looking him in the eye, and flourishing the money in one hand. “I’m no longer police, but I’ve got lots of friends in the force. So I don’t think it would be a good idea to try to trick me. I can still fry you alive, right?”
“Hell, Conde, I wouldn’t ever…”
“So make sure you don’t ever,” he warned, handing over the notes. “Remember I’ll always track you down.”
Cheered up by the beers drunk and the sum received, Juan asked him to wait on a street corner and went into an even gloomier tenement than the one with Michael Jordan’s clandestine bar. He emerged five minutes later, smiling cheerfully, and suggested the Count accompany him to the roof terrace, so he could show him a panoramic view of the barrio.
Between two uncovered water tanks and sad clotheslines full of patched up clothes, Conde peered out over the eaves to get a prime view of the twilight hustle and bustle in the barrio. He calculated the sea was in front, behind various dark concrete blocks, past the blackened towers of the power station, so near, yet so alien to that place. Lost in geographical and philosophical musings, he snapped back to reality summoned by the sweetish smell of burning grass, and turned round to find Juan the African, leaning back on one of the tanks inhaling from a spindly joint.
“Now I’ll see if you really are police. Go one, have a drag,” Juan threatened, holding out a roll of paper.
“I don’t care a fuck what you think. I’m not going to smoke.”
“And if I get in a mess, are you going to put the police on to me?”
“They already are, and have been from the day you were born. I’m the one they’ll piss on if they see me with you…”
“You never smoked?” the African asked, looking happy, waving the joint, and broadening his smile when he saw the Count shake his head. “I’ve smoked from the age of thirteen. And whenever I can I smoke here, by myself, so I really enjoy my drag… Look, this is my little hidey hole. I’ve hid things here ever since I was a kid,” he said, showing the Count how he put two other joints in a little nylon bag, that he lowered down an air vent protruding by the side of one of the water tanks.
“Who you hiding them from?” enquired the Count, flopping down against the other tank.
The African took a heavy drag.
“I owe five thousand pesos. I’m a loser, right? I always get bad luck. I got involved in a spot of business, took out an advance and gave it my best…”
“A five thou advance?” the Count thought aloud. “That was drugs or a contract killing… Right?”
“Don’t get too nosy,” and the African started smoking again, almost burning his fingers.
“Was the business with Veneno?”
Juan smiled and shook his head.
“No, Veneno was the middleman. The business was with other guys. Not from the barrio. Real hard guys who don’t get their hands dirty for four pesos. They handle quantities of loot that would make you shit your pants.”
“Did you meet them?”
“Negative. You can’t get to see them just like that. They’re people who’ve got it here,” and he tapped his temple, indicating intelligence. “They’re whites who are OK, well set up and only doing the big stuff.”
“Sounds like mafia?”
“Well, what do you think?” Juan took a last drag and ditched his tiny fag end.
“Were you told to kill someone, Juan?” the Count asked again, afraid he’d say yes.
“I told you not to ask so many questions. End of interrogation… Now let me enjoy the moment, man.”
Conde got up and looked for the best angle from which to survey calle Esperanza. On a neighbouring terrace he spotted a hut probably built for pigeon-rearing, behind which some fifteen-year olds were noisily taking turns with binoculars, masturbating all the time, watching a scene the Count also wanted an eyeful of.
When night started to fall, the African, now very high and uninhibited, suggested going for a walk, to see what was on, and the Count, not imagining what he was letting himself in for, accepted his invitation. They went up Esperanza, towards the edge of the barrio, and along one of the alleys that cut across, its name hidden under tons of historic grime, where his companion suggested they wait a minute, ostensibly, to test the temperature. Several people greeted the African, two stopped to have a chat, and walked off seemingly convinced the Count was an expert cattle slaughterer, a cousin of the African’s ex from the countryside and a friend even of Veneno and Michael Jordan. Just after eight, the African bought a pack of cigarettes from a street-seller and offered the Count one.
“You’ll smoke one of these, won’t you? Now you see how I share my money around,” he said, smiling, and added: “and I’ll now invite you to lay some whores.”
Taken aback, Conde was at a loss for what to reply. In an existence entirely spent between the island’s four walls, he’d joined in the most diverse moral and physical adventures, some in, others out of the police, some drunk and others horribly sober. He’d never before been invited to have sex you paid for and he was shocked to feel doubt impishly coursing through his veins and wondered whether he might not like to try that for once.
“If you really want to be part of this scene, and nobody to suspect you, then you’ve got to go on, right to the bottom,” said Juan, as he took the first step.
“No, forget it,” he protested feebly.
“Hey,” the African threatened him, “I can see you’re a bit delicate. You won’t smoke pot and don’t want to shaft a little lady… You’re not queer by any chance, my friend?”
The knocking-shop, as his ex-confidant described it, was half way along the block. An old married couple, owners of a threebedroom house, rented them out by the hour to couples with nowhere to make love and to local whores and their customers. The best strategy to get a lay, according to the African, was to linger in the vicinity of the knocking shop and wait to be picked up by an available woman on the job. Suffering an attack of butterflies, the Count leaned expectantly on the wall, a virgin in terms of such experience. He lit a cigarette on his previous butt and looked at both sides of the street, where several people were wandering. Two women appeared ten minutes later. One was a mulatta, dyed blonde, and the other white, very thin, with bright red hair; the Count reckoned, with some difficulty, that they must be in their twenties, although they shifted from seeming older to being almost adolescent. The African immediately chose the white woman, and, with a yellow smile, casually asked how much she charged for the works.