“Don’t bug me, Red, he wasn’t going to kill anybody… Why did he give me the cans of milk and not fight me?”
“Poor Afon, I don’t know how he was so strong, with the hunger that black suffered. Is the coffee good?”
“To die for,” the Count pronounced.
“Fact is I’m not too good at fixing coffee. Either it’s weak, or sweet, or too strong, or stewed…”
“This was really good,” the Count ratified, and reckoned he was a good judge of coffee. He lit a cigarette and passed his packet to Red Candito. The mulatto took one and leaned back in his armchair. At that effervescent evening hour, the hall in that building lived its maximum bustle of the day: the voices of children playing, a woman asking Macusa for salt, a radio blaring out Tejedor’s voice and another giving news of a train derailed in Matanzas, with dead and injured, as well as a gravel voice which shat on the mother of the owner of the lousy dog which had shat in front of the door to his room.
“Sometimes it makes you feel like going to the moon, Conde… You know I was born here, when we didn’t have a barbecue or toilet and this room was half what it is now and my parents, grandad, brother and I lived here, and we had to queue up to wash and shit in the communal bathrooms. But it’s not true you adapt to everything… It’s a lie, Conde. I can’t stand any more of this, and I sometimes start to wonder when I’ll be able to live properly, have a house, be quiet when I want and listen to music when I want and not the whole damned day… I’m up to here” – and he touched one of his red hairs. “You know, when I walk down the street, I’m obsessed with looking into other people’s houses and thinking which I’d like to have, and I try to work out why some people live in nice houses and the rest of us are born into places that stink of the plague, where we’ll live out the rest of our lives… When there’s a house I like a lot, I even imagine how I’d live there if it were mine… Can you understand that? And you know the guy who lives in the second room along, Serafina’s son? He’s a chemical engineer, Conde, and the cunt’s a real know-all, but he’s still stuck here… That’s why I have to accept my lot in this room, you know, and even thank God, because some people don’t even have this.”
“And that’s why you’re always in and out of church?”
“Well, at least people don’t shout there.”
“And what do you ask God for?”
Red took a last drag on his cigarette before crushing it on the clay ashtray and looked at his friend.
“You having me on, Conde?”
“No, I’m serious.”
“I ask him to give me good health, peace, patience, to protect me, and I ask him to look after my friends, like you and Carlos…”
The Count knew Candito was telling the truth and felt that those prayers, where he also figured, when prayed by his old friend Red, had an accumulated value that moved him. Because Red had not only stopped Afon from doing him over in the training camp, but had been loyal to him ever since, something the Count hadn’t always returned with the same sincerity: as a friend who’d never had any time to devote to Candito, and as a policeman who’d put the squeeze on him more than once, mercilessly taking advantage of the knowledge Red had of all the goings-on in the Havana underworld. In a real sense, the Count thought, I’m a selfish cynic.
“If God exists, I hope he’s listening to you…”
“What a self-interested bugger you are… And what are you into now, Conde?”
“I’m after whoever killed a transvestite… But it’s not easy, I can tell you. It seems the transvestite was a mystic, read the Bible and then right when they killed him he was dressed up like a character from a play. But the best of the story is that they stuck two peso coins up his arse.”
Candito looked at the ground, while he searched his memory.
“It’s a fucker,” agreed Candito. “That’s something new on the scene. It means something, Conde. I expect they were paying him back. .. So, you want me to help you, I guess?”
“No, not now. I just came to tell you you’ve got to shut up shop,” he said, and lit another cigarette.
“Why, is there some bother?”
“So it seems, but don’t ask me, because I really don’t know what the problem is and I can’t tell you anything anyway. Just do what I say and shut up shop.”
Candito ran his hand over his head, as if he had to remove something stuck in his bright red hair.
“It’s OK, Conde, you know the whys and wherefores… It’s a shame though, you know. I’m just trying to save a bit of money…”
“And what about the mulatto the other day? The one the fight was over?”
Now Candito smiled, but looked fed up and sad.
“He said he’d come to speak to me so I’d let him in for a piss.. .”
“I told you. You’re all mad.”
“No, Conde, we’re not mad. You know your business and I know mine
… That guy’s a debt-collector.”
“What do you mean a debt-collector?”
“What I said. People hire him to collect their debts: he collects money owed or any kind of debt: settling accounts, spying on wives, people wanting to get their own back on someone. And the guy’s a pro.”
The Count shook his head, refusing to believe all that, though he knew it must be true coming from Candito.
“But was it true the guy wanted a leak?”
“Nobody gets in here just to piss. Everybody knows that, it was just bullshit. And if it was true he wanted a piss, then the poor guy was fucked, but I wasn’t going to get fucked, nor were you. Nor Carlos.”
The Count shook his head, denying something words couldn’t deny.
“Sure he wasn’t after me?”
“He said not, but who knows…”
“I’m the one who’s never in the know, Red. You know I’m beginning to feel as if I was no longer a player? It’s strange, but I understand less by the day. Either everything’s changing very quickly, or I’m losing it. I really don’t know, but my head feels like a football.. . How about another coffee, go on,” he asked, and lit another cigarette. “Let me tell you one thing, Red. After you shut up shop, make yourself scarce, try going to the beach for a week, or the moon, as you put it… But if anyone comes after you, the first thing you do is find me wherever I’ve gone to ground. Because if they put the heat on you, they’ll have to burn me too… Anyway, go to church tomorrow, and ask God, on my behalf as well, to lend a hand, if he can.”
“What a character you’ve turned into, Conde!”
“Hey, while we’re at it. As you’re shutting up the office, how about another beer to help the windingdown process?”
The Count contemplated himself in the mirror: head on, in the eyes, observing the shifty rake of his profile, and when he’d finished the self-scrutiny he had to agree: it’s true, I’ve got a policeman’s face. And whatever will I do with this policeman’s face if they kick me out of the force? To start with, I won’t shave today, he told himself, and it was then he decided to call Alberto Marques and accept his invitation. Nine o’clock? That’s fine. On Prado and Malecon… Careful you don’t get knocked off your feet, my prince…