“Take it very easy, Manolo, for once in your life,” he begged his subordinate when he got in the car and wiped a layer of Chinese pomade over his forehead. “Tell me what happened.”
“You tell me what happened: did you get run over by a train or was it an attack of malaria?”
“Much worse: I went dancing.”
Sergeant Manuel Palacios understood his boss’s sorry state and didn’t go above eighty kilometres an hour as he recounted: “Well, the man turned up around 10 p.m. I was just about to go and leave Greco and Crespo on the corner of his block, when he drove up. He was on his bike and we went after him in the parking lot. We asked him who the bike belonged to and he tried to spin us a yarn. Then I decided to put him in to soak. I think he’s probably softened up by now, don’t you? Oh, and Captain Cicerón says you should call in on him. Also, although the marijuana in Lissette’s house was waterlogged, it’s stronger than normal and the laboratory doesn’t think it’s Cuban: they say more likely Nicaraguan or Mexican – a month ago they caught two fellows selling joints in Luyanó and apparently it’s the same kind.”
“And where did they get it?”
“There’s the rub. They bought it from a guy in Vedado but although they told us a lot about the guy we can’t track him down. They’re probably giving cover to someone.”
“So it’s not Cuban…”
The Count adjusted his dark glasses and lit a cigarette. They should erect a monument to the inventor of analgesics. FROM THE DRUNKS OF THE WORLD… should be at the start of the inscription. He’d take flowers. He’d be human again.
“Full name?”
“Pedro Ordóñez Martell.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Place of work”
“I don’t have one.”
“So what do you live on?”
“I’m a motorbike mechanic.”
“Right, bikes… Go on then, tell the lieutenant the story about your Kawasaki…”
The Count moved away from the door and came and sat down opposite Pupy, inside the red-hot arc from the powerful spotlight. Manolo looked at his boss and then at the young man.
“What’s the matter? Forgotten your story?” asked Manolo, leaning over and looking him in the eye.
“I bought it from a merchant sailor. He gave me a document that I gave you last night. The sailor stayed in Spain.”
“Pedro, you’re lying.”
“Hey, sergeant, don’t keep calling me a liar. It’s really insulting.”
“Oh really? So it wasn’t insulting to assume the lieutenant and I are a couple of idiots?”
“I’ve not insulted you.”
“All right, we’ll accept what you say for the moment. What do you reckon if we accuse you of illegal sales? I’ve been told you sell things from the diplomatic shop and make loads of money?”
“You’ve got to prove it. I’ve not stolen or dealt in anything, or…”
“And what if we do a thorough search of your place?”
“Because of the bike business?”
“And if some little green bills turn up, and such like, what are you going to say then, that they grew on trees?”
Pupy looked at the Count as if to say “get this fellow off my back”, and Conde thought he should give a helping hand. The young man was a late, transplanted version of a Hell’s Angeclass="underline" long hair, parted down the middle, cascading over the shoulders of a black leather jacket that was an insult to the climate. He even wore high boots with double zips, and biking jeans with reinforced buttock pads. Those eyes had seen too many films.
“If you’ll allow me, sergeant, can I ask Pedro a question?”
“Of course, lieutenant,” replied Manolo leaning on the back of the chair. The Count switched off the lamp but remained standing behind his desk. He waited for Puppy to stop rubbing his eyes.
“You like bikes a lot, don’t you?”
“Yes, lieutenant, and the truth is I know the beasts like the back of my hand.”
“Talking of things you know about… What do you know about Lissette Núñez Delgado?”
Pupy opened his eyes and looked frightened to death. The balanced geography of the accomplished charmer’s face fragmented as if hit by an earthquake. His mouth initiated a protest that didn’t materialize, and shook uncontrollably. Was he about to cry?
“Well, Pedro, what have you got to say for yourself?”
“What are you after? I swear, lieutenant, that’s nothing to do with me. I know nothing about all that. I’ll swear by whatever I don’t…”
“Hold it, no need to swear just yet. When was the last time you saw her?”
“I’m not sure, Monday or Tuesday. I went to pick her up at Pre-Uni because she told me she wanted to buy some of those thick-soled trainers I had, that were a hundred per cent legal, and we went to my place and she tried them on and they fitted, and then we went to her place to get the money and then I left.”
“How much did you charge her for the trainers?”
“Nothing at all.”
“But weren’t you selling them?”
Pupy looked enviously at the cigarette the Count had just lit.
“Do you want one?”
“I’d really appreciate that.”
The Count handed him the packet and matchbox and waited for him to light up.
“Go on, tell us about the trainers.”
“It’s nothing really, lieutenant. She and I went out for a bit, as you know, and it’s hard to sell something to an old girlfriend.”
“So you gave them to her as a present, I suppose? You didn’t do a swap?”
“A swap?”
“Did you have sex with her on that day?”
Pupy hesitated, thought about refusing to answer, a private matter and all that, but decided against.
“Yes.”
“Was that why she took you home with her?”
Pupy sucked his cigarette avidly and the Count heard a very faint crackle of burnt grass. He swayed his head, denying an act he couldn’t deny, and started smoking again before he said: “Look, lieutenant, I don’t want to pay for something I didn’t do. I don’t know who killed Lissette, or what mess she’d got into, and although it’s not a very nice thing to say, I’m going to say this because I don’t intend to be the idiot picking up this particular tab: Lissette was a hot number, that’s right, a hot number and I went with her, for a good time, nothing serious, because I knew she’d leave me high and dry any moment – like she did when she got to know a Mexican who looked like a leaking pie, Mauricio by name, I think. But she was wild in bed. Really wild, and I liked bedding her, to be frank, and she was a cunning bitch and knew it and did me out of the trainers that way.”
“And you say that was on Monday or Tuesday?”
“I think it was Monday when she finished early. You can check that.”
“Lissette was killed on Tuesday. You didn’t see her again?”
“I swear by my mother that I didn’t, lieutenant.”
“Where did Lissette fish her Mexican boyfriend out from? Mauricio, you said?”
“I’m not too sure, lieutenant. I think she met him in Coppelia or somewhere nearly. The guy was a tourist and she picked him up. But that happened some time ago.”
“So who was her current boyfriend?”
“Lieutenant, that’s anyone’s guess. I hardly saw her, I’ve got another girl, a little cracker…”
“But she was going out with a forty-year-old, wasn’t she?”