Night swallowed up the rainy clouds and the morning arrived clear, with a sparkling transparency. From the bed, Conde looked at the shine of the trees in the yard, washed by the rain, and enjoyed the feeling of relaxation. A morning without calendars, without physical or existential anguish, and even without troughs? He had to enjoy it … He gave a half-turn over himself and contemplated Tamara’s relaxed face and the silver reflection of drool running from the edge of her mouth. He wanted to imbibe that liquid that nourished him so much, but he refrained. No one had the right to disturb someone else’s slumber, he told himself, he, a veritable warehouse of broken dreams.
Carefully, he stood up and went to the bathroom to empty his bladder. As he urinated, he smiled when he remembered his thunderous theatrical entrance from the night before and the pleasant dinner he had with Tamara and her sister, Aymara, who’d arrived unannounced from Italy with her nephew, Rafael, Tamara’s son whom she had taken in to her Lombardy home several years before. The first reason for the trip, the twins had explained when they were already settled, drinking a respectable Montalcino, nibbling at pieces of Parmesan, slices of prosciutto, and black olives from Crete, had been nostalgia, which was always lying in wait, the sticky sensation of belonging that could reveal itself even at the calmest and most satisfactory moments, a love-hate relationship with what is yours that distance allowed hibernate and maintain alive. The second and better reason was the announcement, postponed until it could be delivered in person, face-to-face, that Rafael Junior and his Italian wife, Cristina Belleza, were going to be parents and, as such, would make a grandmother out of Tamara, whose eyes welled up with happiness and who was simultaneously worried over the fact of entering grandparenthood, and with an Italian grandchild! The third, because this time there were reasons enough, was that of both being present for Conde’s upcoming sixtieth birthday party that Carlos and Dulcita were already organizing, an occasion that Aymara and Rafael Junior would not miss for anything in the world: sixty, sixty, they repeated the horrible cipher, and affirmed that sixty is not just any age. More than the bewilderment caused by being reminded of his birthday or the disquiet that in a few months he would be the lover of a woman who would become a grandmother, had been confirming that Tamara’s son, perhaps softened by imminent fatherhood and overcome by a now long-standing habit, seemed to have decided to suddenly change his attitude toward Conde and accept him as he had been for the last twenty-five years and still was and apparently would be: the love of his mother’s life. Even if his dick was a little short, the uncontainable Aymara had added, still amused by the theatrical entrance.
He decided to return the dinner prepared by his sister-in-law in kind by making a breakfast that was possible thanks to the powerful reinforcements arrived from the Italian great beyond. After drinking several doses of Kimbo coffee, his favorite among all those sold in the world, in a porcelain cup, and placing the plates and silverware on the table, he confirmed that it was already past eight in the morning and that those slumbering had no intentions of altering their state, exhausted by jet lag and the previous evening’s emotions.
He entered the study armed with another cup of coffee and closed the door. He dialed the number to Manolo’s office, and the major’s secretary asked him to hold on the line. Conde had time to savor his Kimbo with its Neapolitan flavor and to light a cigarette, from which he took two drags before hearing Manolo’s voice.
“Thank goodness you’re awake already … Outside Tamara’s house, Duque is waiting for you … Get yourself over here right now…”
Conde was alarmed by Manolo’s cautionary request.
“What the hell happened, Manolo?”
“Madness … But I’ll tell you when you get here … Oh, and do me the favor of not fighting with Duque on the way, huh, Conde?”
“I asked you to come here because now I’m really lost.”
“Are you going to drop the mystery and tell me what the hell happened?”
Manolo pointed at the chair in front of his desk and fell into his own soft-backed chair.
“First I need to remind you of something … If someone up there finds out that I’m allowing you any part in this, I’ll be the next guy to show up dead. Remember that…”
“But why would they find out? Aren’t you in charge of this whole operation now? Could your brightest star report you?
“No, Duque wouldn’t do that … But I have to be careful, you know … There’s always someone around here who wants to fuck over someone else … Or have you forgotten what happened to Rangel?”
“Of course I didn’t forget … But let’s stop all this bellyaching … Go ahead and talk already and stop beating around the bush, buddy…”
“The Catalan showed up,” Manolo let out.
Conde received the news like a beating and took a moment to process.
“Did Karla say where he was?”
“No, he literally showed up. As if he had returned from the dead, because he nearly did … They found him yesterday night at the provincial hospital in Matanzas, and from there, they sent him here, to headquarters…”
“What the hell are you saying to me, Manolo?”
“What you just heard … Duque was working Karla when they called me from the Matanzas police to tell me they found the foreigner you are looking for. Jordi Puigventós Batet. They had admitted him several hours before, but he was unconscious and didn’t have any ID on him. And since whatever word he said was in Catalan, the hospital police reported him as a Frenchman, not a Spaniard…”
Conde scratched his arms. Now he was the one who was lost. “Unconscious? What happened to him?”
“He says he was jumped in Matanzas. Close to the Catalan Hermitage … That they took everything from him … But that he thought they wanted to kill him, like Raydel and Ramiro. He’s shitting his pants. And I took advantage of that to make him sing…”
“What the hell was he doing in Matanzas?”
“Looking for the Virgin, Conde! That blasted Virgin!”
Conde scratched more furiously.
“Let’s see, Manolo, rewind and explain to me so that I can understand … He was looking for the Virgin in the Catalan Hermitage?”
“If you could just let me speak, buddy! Let’s see, let’s start from the top, huh?” Conde agreed and the other man sighed before speaking. “Puigventós told me that, as we thought, the day he arrived in Cuba, after having dinner with René Águila, he went to Karla’s house. They had, have, a relationship, and she, as part of the game I didn’t want to find out more about, would disguise herself for him … That is why she showed up like that at the hotel. Well, you know how that is…”
“No, I don’t know. But I can and want to imagine it. Karla disguised as a nudist, for example. The cataclysm…”
“What disguise … Stop bullshitting, buddy…”
“What shit to be sixty years old! Can you imagine that I didn’t even try to flirt with that woman?” Conde lamented. “Come on, go on…”
“Well, he went to her house and was there for two days until they called him the day before yesterday on his cell phone to tell him they could do the deal with the Virgin.”
“They called him? Who called him? He confessed that he came in search of the Virgin?”
“He found out through René Águila that the Virgin had been stolen. And he asked René, Elizardo, and Karla to try to find out who could have Her because he wanted to buy Her, at whatever price … And the three of them told him that the best thing for him to do was to come here and search for Her as well … But, as he finished up some business in Spain, things got complicated here. Raydel showed up dead and they killed Ramiro.”
“So he didn’t know Raydel?”
“He says he might have seen him once, but he had no relationship with him … If he’s not telling the truth and Puigventós encouraged him to steal the Virgin, what’s sure is that he’s not the one who killed him. Or Ramiro … Because he was still in Spain.”
“So who called him to go to Matanzas?”
“Someone who identified himself as Roger Flor … That name must be made-up.”
“Yes, although it sounds familiar. I’ve heard it somewhere…”
“Well, that Roger Flor told him he knew that Puigventós was interested in buying the Black Virgin from Bobby and that Bobby hadn’t wanted to sell Her … But that they could talk about the matter. And the Catalan thought that was his opportunity to take the loot for even less money than he had previously thought.”
“Aha. Go on, keep going, let me see if I understand. This is kind of crazy … Roger Flor? Yeah, that name sounds familiar, so familiar … But, who could that character be who knew Puigventós had wanted to buy the Virgin from Bobby? Bobby didn’t display his Virgin, She wasn’t for sale … I myself didn’t know they had ever talked about the subject.”
“Puigventós found out that Bobby had the Virgin just a few months ago. He found out through Karla, who found out from Elizardo Soler. It was before Bobby traveled to Miami, when he spoke with him about his interest in buying Her.”
Conde focused. Something was beginning to make sense. Or too much sense.
“So what happened after Roger Flor’s phone call?”
“They agreed to meet in Matanzas. At the Catalan Hermitage. He was supposed to go alone, not say anything to Karla, not mention the business to anyone, or there would be no deal. The Virgin was red-hot, he says they told him. So he went to the bus terminal and grabbed one of those vans that go to Matanzas. With all the money he must have and he didn’t hire a taxi! In Matanzas, he got another van until he was close to the chapel. When he was walking along the street that goes up to Montserrat Hill, he got hit on the head and wasn’t aware of anything else until he woke up at the hospital and found out he’d been jumped and that some kids had picked him up on the street.”
Conde closed his eyes for a few moments. “Do you believe him? That he, of all people, was mugged? On his way to the place where he had been told to meet someone?”
“It’s all very strange … With the number of tourists running around Varadero and Matanzas, that they would mug Puigventós just when he was going to do the deal with the Virgin?”
“If it wasn’t a mugging, Manolo … Then what did they want? No one can think that Puigventós was going around with I-don’t-know-how-much money on him to buy that Virgin in the middle of the street, right? But they didn’t want to kill him, either, like the other two, because whoever hit him, if he had wanted to take him out of the game, could have knocked him off and there would end any trail of Puigventós and what he knew about the Virgin and Bobby, Soler, Karla, René … Anyone else?”
“Yes, the story is strange. We thought that he was lost because he was the loose end…”
“But he is the loose end, Manolo! Because whoever is behind all of this was not thinking that Puigventós would arrive in Cuba after he’d already had to kill two people for the Virgin. What that person had planned was a deal without any greater complications … With Puigventós or without him, although better with him … Things went sideways in the worst way. Because of that, if the person, or people, who called him to Matanzas wanted to silence him but the Catalan remains alive … Then, he really was mugged! The muggers got there first and saved him, Manolo!”
“You think?” Major Palacios did not seem convinced of Conde’s hypothesis.
“But that doesn’t matter now, or it matters less … The fact is that the man showed up, alive.”
“Incidentally, that Catalan may look a lot like that actor you say is very good-looking and whom all the women like, but his pits stink badly enough to make you dizzy … I don’t know how a woman like Karla…”
Conde shook his head and continued. “So now we know he came to Cuba in search of the Virgin, and it seems that Karla is not involved in any dark part of the story and that she likes to dress up to spice things up … Can you imagine Karla…? Damn, Manolo, now this thread leads to Bobby and his friend Elizardo. Or am I going crazy?”
Through the two-way mirror, Conde watched as Bobby and Elizardo entered the interrogation room at headquarters. Each one did so in his own way: Bobby, shitting himself him in fear, and Elizardo with confidence and arrogance. Behavior so resounding that it made him consider for a moment that his assumptions, premonitions, and theories could be wrong. But he was convinced of something: those two characters were the only possible path to the truth and the Black Virgin. A few minutes later, he saw Manolo and Duque enter: one with a notebook, the other with a laptop.
Conde felt his temples beating, pure adrenaline. He’d been forced to accept Manolo’s condition: his presence in the enclosure could invalidate the procedure, so he would watch the conversation (as the police insisted on calling it) behind the mirror and, if necessary, he would note anything to Major Palacios through the wireless earpiece the policeman wore. While he was waiting for the interrogation to be prepared, Conde, who felt a buzz in his ear, called Rabbit and asked him if the name Roger Flor sounded familiar.
“Of course, viejo … That guy was a character. Roger de Flor, Ro-yer, without an accent over the o … He was the captain of the largest ship there was in the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century: the Falcon of the Temple. And then he became a pirate or a corsair, with some criminals who called themselves the Catalan Company. I think they killed him in an ambush … Oh, and it was suspected that he robbed a part of the Templars’ treasure … Those same Templars who worshipped Our Lady when Black Virgins were in vogue, as Father Rinaldi told us yesterday…”
“Thanks, Rabbit … You see, what the hell am I gonna do when you’re not here?”
“You’ll be fucked. Or you’ll look it up on the internet. It’s easier…”
“Is everything really on the internet?”
“And then some…”
“Well, that’s good … Thanks, buddy.”
A half hour before they brought in Bobby and Elizardo, Miguel Duque had returned from the art vendor’s mansion with the frustrating news that, following the authorized and carried out search, nothing had shown up that would allow them to connect the house’s owner with the Black Virgin or the crimes committed surrounding Her, although among the thousands of things found were much-sought-after pieces such as several funerary sculptures stolen from the cemetery, some pornographic movies made in Cuba, and other merchandise that was even as compromising as several pieces of frozen beef, worthy in and of themselves of earning him a long prison stay for the crime of receiving stolen goods, since according to the country’s laws, you could earn a longer sentence for stealing and dismembering a cow than for killing a human being. To everyone’s bewilderment, no great amount of money or jewelry or valuable paintings showed up, either. Their only possible chance, as such, continued to be carrying out an interrogation from which, manipulating the interests and characters of those interviewed, some spark could emerge and ignite a whole fire of clarity.
As they had agreed, Manolo allowed Duque to begin the attack. The most promising subjects were Bobby and Elizardo’s relationship with Jordi Puigventós given the light shed by the Catalan’s statement and the attack he’d suffered in Matanzas, which seemed to have saved him from a worse fate.
Conde had to admit that Duque was good at his job. He moved like a predator on the prowl, sniffing out his victims’ weaknesses and distractions, before taking them to the edge from which he could throw them. He asked them for information and simultaneously gave them details, to prove how much he knew about them. But he didn’t manage to make way. When he asked Bobby, he said what they already knew. When he addressed Elizardo Soler, the man repeated the story that had already been revealed. Neither admitted to having seen Jordi Puigventós in the last two days. Regarding Karla Choy and René Águila, on whose respective ambitions, ills, and lack of scruples both dwelled, they had only seen them to find out if they had any news about the Virgin stolen by Raydel and to alert them about Her possible entry to the market. Nonetheless, Lieutenant Duque repeated questions, demanded details, tried to confront them, in search of a crack to enter and move forward.
From his forced position of spectator, Conde followed the dialogue, watched in turn by Sergeant Calixto, who was stuck to him like a flea. A growing unease invaded him as the interrogation went on without any notable advances. He thought that perhaps neither Bobby nor Elizardo Soler knew more than they had already admitted, but his conviction that the two were unrepentant tricksters would not leave him and much less, his premonition that both, or at least one of them, knew or had done much more than he was confessing. At one point in the conversation, Conde had hope that something would come to light: Manolo, gathering strength from the exhaustion of two nights spent almost completely awake, entered the round with his usual rage. No one was leaving there, he warned, until the truth was known. There was a face-off between everyone implied, including the Catalan Puigventós, Karla Choy, and René Águila. He would order new search warrants for each one’s houses and properties. He would search everything down to their cavity fillings … Did any of them know Roger Flor? But he didn’t manage to nudge the interrogated: Bobby sobbed and Elizardo denied, they didn’t know anything about anything, less still about Roger Flor.
Conde had the certainty that they were not on the best path to reach solid ground and, through his microphone, he whispered to Manolo to stop the offense and take a break. Perhaps, he proposed, he should interrogate them separately, with different strategies. In the room, Manolo nodded and looked at his guests.
“I know that you, both of you or one of the two of you, is up to your neck in shit,” Manolo began, “and we’re going to find out … If one of you is not guilty of anything, then reconsider now and think that the other one wanted to fuck him over … We’re going to take a coffee break and will be back in a bit. I regret not being able to invite you, but our budget has been cut. You know how things are…”
“How long are you going to have us here?” Eli asked, without losing his confidence and composure.
“Until I decide … And I’m slow at making decisions, you know? The law gives me seventy-two hours … And it doesn’t matter who you’re the son of or who your friends are or if you are or aren’t the Cuban James Bond. So get comfortable…”
Bobby was shaking his head, on the verge of bursting into tears. Elizardo, meanwhile, smiled sarcastically, nearly in satisfaction. Manolo tapped Duque’s forearm and they both stood up and headed for the exit.
“Can I smoke?” Elizardo asked, and Manolo turned around with a dour expression, as he raised his arm, ready to say no, to go off on a rant, but he immediately had to take it to his ear as he received Conde yelling:
“Let him smoke! I have a hunch!”
Manolo stopped his movements and gave a half turn. Before leaving, he said:
“Yes, smoke. And think…”
Through the glass, Conde saw Manolo and Duque exit, and noticed that Elizardo was smiling very discreetly, since he knew he was being watched. Without looking at Bobby, who was sobbing again, he removed the lighter and the pack of cigarettes he carried in his pocket. Elizardo’s left hand covered the pack of cigarettes from which, with his right, he extracted a filtered cigarette that he took to his mouth. When he flicked on the lighter and drew it toward the cigarette, Conde discovered a slight shaking in his hand, which could be normal for someone in his situation. At that moment, Manolo reached his side.
“Why in the hell do we have to let him smoke?”
“Because no one is perfect, Manolo … Wait, be quiet…”
Conde watched Elizardo Soler smoke and focused on mining the recesses of his brain with a dizzying speed, looking for something to rest on, until he thought he found it when he remembered the results of the house’s search.
“Manolo, go in there again and tell me if Elizardo’s cigarettes smell a lot like American cigarettes…”
Manolo looked at his former boss and a light shone in his eyes.
“And if it’s a blond American cigarette, ask him what he did with the Portocarrero he had in his office … Go on…”
Conde got closer to the glass to watch Manolo’s return to the interrogation room. At ease, as if he had no rush, the officer pulled his chair out and sat down.
“The coffee was good … Just brewed … Would you give me a cigarette?” he asked Elizardo, and the man, as if it were of no importance, moved the box toward Manolo with his left hand. When the major took it, he made a gesture of disgust. “Chesterfield … No thank you, I can’t stand blond American tobacco. It tastes sweet … And stinks.”
Elizardo shrugged his shoulders and took back the box Manolo was returning to him. Outside, Conde sweat.
“Elizardo … So, what happened to the big Portocarrero painting that was in your office?”
A very slight movement in the man confirmed to Conde that his premonition had not been mistaken.
“I sold it a few days ago…”
“To whom?” Conde whispered, and Manolo, like a replicant, asked Elizardo the question.
“An American who was in Cuba. Jerry Carlson’s the name.”
“For how much?” Conde asked. Manolo continued in his role.
Elizardo thought for a moment. He looked at Bobby, who had stopped sobbing and was following the dialogue with interest.
“Forty thousand…” Elizardo said at last.
“Cheap, no?” Conde and Manolo said.
“That depends…”
“Yes, on how rushed one is to sell a painting like that … Which is surely worth more. So, what about the money, where’s the money? In your house, we didn’t find…” Conde continued, dragging along Manolo who seemed like a ventriloquist’s doll.
Elizardo thought again, just for a few moments. Enough for Conde to know that he was forging a lie.
“The American hasn’t paid me yet … He couldn’t come to Cuba with that money in hand. The U.S. embargo, you know…”
“Yes, the embargo … That’s very trusting of you,” Conde said, Manolo repeated after him, and the former policeman, changing his tone of voice, whispered to Major Palacios. “Tell them you’re going to confirm that Jerry Carlson was in Cuba and two or three other things and let them go. Let them go!”
Without worrying about what was happening in the interrogation room, Conde approached Lieutenant Duque.
“Don’t waste time in fighting with me or resenting me … Put a tail on both of them, but especially Elizardo Soler … If I’m not mistaken, tonight, we’ll recover the Virgin … Make sure the surveillance on Elizardo is very discreet; he knows we’re going to follow him … That guy tells people that he’s from State Security and sometimes they really believe he’s an agent! Do it now!” he yelled as he saw Manolo taking leave of his guests. Without paying attention to what he was doing, Conde wiped the palms of his hands on his pant legs. They were sweating and his heart was beating quickly. It was obvious that he could still think and act like the cop he had once been. Elizardo Soler had been right in his preliminary diagnostic. And Conde would soon know that he had been as well: a psychopath marks everything with his irrationality.
With the rest of the convertible pesos he still had, Conde invited Manolo to eat at a private restaurant close to headquarters. The place was neither elegant nor expensive, but it was efficient and served good portions. He had to nourish himself, and then Manolo could rest, until the moment came for him to act. Now, all they could do was spend their time waiting, like hunters lying in wait.
As they ate, Conde examined Manolo’s cell phone two or three times to make sure the device was working. They were supposed to call them on that electronic contraption if there was any movement. To keep the line free, he went out onto the street for a few minutes and made several phone calls from a pay phone: to Tamara, to tell her not to wait for him and to have the best time possible with her sister and her son; to Carlos, to chew him out for organizing a party behind his back for a birthday he didn’t want to celebrate and to tell him that he was missing in action because things with Bobby’s Virgin had gotten complicated, but he missed him, he loved him, and he couldn’t live without him, despite still, still not being homosexual; and last to Yoyi, to ask what he thought about the possibility of getting paid what was agreed upon for the Black Virgin’s recovery if, as he thought, She showed up but the police temporarily or definitively kept Her, and he received the expected response from his business partner: “You make sure She shows up and I’ll make sure you get paid … Let’s see if I give you that money on the day of your birthday party, it’s going to be great.” Conde told him to go to hell and hung up with a pleasant feeling: when so many things were turning to shit, he had the privilege of counting on friends who loved him and whom he loved.
Relieved of responsibilities, he returned to the restaurant, ordered his coffee, paid for what they had consumed, and tried to organize the rest of the afternoon. He knew that Manolo would have preferred to have him far away at this stage of the process, but he could not miss the final act of the show he had been following since Bobby called him and raised the curtain.
They returned to headquarters and took refuge in Manolo’s office after the major ordered his secretary to bother him only if Lieutenant Duque or Sergeant Calixto called, or, of course, if a cataclysm occurred. Within the compound, with the air-conditioning on full force, Manolo recognized that Conde was an unrepentant opportunist and immediately admitted to his exhaustion and settled in on a sofa placed against the wall. Conde, meanwhile, took the visitor’s armchair, from which a notable extension of the seemingly calm city could be seen. It was not long before Manolo was snoring.
At nine at night, when they no longer expected to receive the alarm-bell call, Manolo’s cell phone rang and Miguel Duque’s name appeared on the screen: the eagle had left the nest. Elizardo Soler had left driving a car that was not his, seemingly alone, and heading east, possibly toward the Malecón and the tunnel under the bay.
“He’s leaving the country,” Conde said when he finished listening to the lieutenant.
“That’s what he thinks,” Manolo retorted, and they left the office in search of the waiting car in the headquarters’ parking lot.
The communication between Duque and Manolo was reestablished through their car radios. Duque informed them that they had crossed the tunnel and continued on east, toward the beaches, the northern coast, the city of Matanzas as the last foreseeable destination: fifty miles of coastline from which clandestine exits from the island frequently occurred. Meanwhile, Sergeant Calixto, tasked with following Bobby’s surveillance, confirmed that his objective was still inside his house.
When the car Manolo was driving took the highway east, Conde refused to think of his déjà vu. Life was this: circles, turns, roundabouts from which a powerful line escapes one day and changes everything in a few minutes or, even, you go to Hell. Or to nothing.
“Conde, we’re running around in circles here … Where could the Virgin be?” Manolo asked, and the other man understood that in their excitement, neither of them had asked the award-winning question. “After the search we did at his house, I don’t think it was there … And if Elizardo is leaving because of everything that happened with the Virgin … Is he going to leave without Her? That’s a guaranteed three million…”
Conde lit a cigarette. He did not have any halfway decent response to give Manolo. “Or he has Her very well hidden and can leave Her in Cuba until someone takes Her out, or goes to get Her before going to the point of departure,” he speculated without the least idea of how close he could be to the target. “But he knows that we’re closing in on him and his greatest problem right now is to escape…”
“So did he have his exit prepared already or did he take care of it just today after we spoke with him?” Manolo continued, with his implacable police logic.
“As far as I’m concerned, he had prepared for it ever since the story got more tangled with the missing Catalan…” Conde surmised. “That’s why they didn’t find much at his house. Besides, it’s not easy to prepare an exit from one minute to another…”
“It depends on what you’re willing to pay, Conde … A speedboat can get here in mere hours…”
“Yes, and Elizardo can pay … I still don’t believe that a guy like him, with everything he had, would have complicated himself with that Virgin…”
“Money, Conde, money…” Manolo declared.
“Or power, Manolo … Which is worth more than money and is addictive. You know that … Many people here know that, right?”
“You said it, I didn’t.” Manolo smiled.
“Either way, it’s still hard for me to believe that this Elizardo is the one who killed the two kids. Too much violence for his type. Too much risk for a man who moves the kind of money he does and lives like he lives. The guy was even preparing himself for what could happen in the future. He didn’t want to be left out of the game that’s going to be played…”
“But you know, Conde…”
“Yes, I know … The unfathomable human soul and … A twisted mind. If I try to impose order on what happened, with two dead guys, a statue of the Virgin whom they say performs miracles, some characters who always live to the max, someone who plays at something they believe is a sure thing, all added up, it has a whiff of madness. Damn, that would be good…!” Conde stopped his reasoning when the car radio required Manolo’s attention. It was Sergeant Calixto.
“Yes, Calixto, proceed…”
“The objective has visitors … Karla Choy and the Catalan just arrived…”
Conde and Manolo looked at each other. What the hell was going on?
“Keep the surveillance. Wait and see if something happens … Ask for reinforcements to follow Karla and Puigventós when they leave. And search them if they’re carrying a package,” Manolo improvised at this unexpected juncture, and cut off. “What could those two be looking for with your friend Bobby, Conde?”
“They’re going around in search of the Virgin, Manolo. What else could it be? The damned Virgin…”
“You see, Conde … If you stayed behind like I told you to, now I could be sending you to Bobby’s house and … But if Bobby had the Virgin, why is Elizardo the one who wants to leave Cuba?”
“I don’t know, but don’t worry too much about it, either, Manolo. There is time for Bobby and the others. But with Elizardo, if he’s going to do what we think, then we have only one swing … And if we don’t hit the ball, we’re done … And if he’s just on a stroll through Havana, then we wave to him if we pass by him … Oh, and I was going to tell you that it would be good—”
The car radio crackled again. Now it was Lieutenant Duque speaking, with an alarmed voice.
“Yes, speak, what’s happening?”
“Elizardo left the highway! He took the old road to Guanabacoa … He’s not leaving the country…”
“Follow him, we’re already practically behind you,” Manolo said to him.
“But the thing is, I lost him! The guy got away from me!” Duque exclaimed, practically weeping.
Manolo sped up the car and Conde closed his eyes. He made a mental map of the city. The highway, the old road to Guanabacoa, the south and the east of Havana, and then he yelled.
“San Miguel del Padrón … He’s going to the ‘settlement,’ Manolo. I knew it, man, I knew it! The Virgin is still there!”
“But what…?”
“Go on, speed up, put on your lights … Let’s take the Vía Blanca and see if we get there before him. Tell Duque … I knew it, dammit, I knew it! The Virgin remains there … And what I wanted to say was that it would be good to know if Elizardo was ever really an undercover agent or if he was ever admitted to Havana’s psychiatric hospital … Watch it or you’ll kill us, dammit!”
Night in the “settlement” made the landscape of poverty even more dismal. The previous day’s rains had turned the irregular interior paths to mud and, on more than one occasion, Conde and Manolo nearly fell to the ground. A few lights, coming from some of the improvised houses, slightly illuminated some of the paths that couldn’t even dream of benefiting from asphalt or public utilities. In contrast, ever since they began their advance, the sound of one or of different reggaeton songs (he would never be capable of distinguishing between the unity or diversity of the works, to apply some name to that noise) would accompany them with its monotonous, percussive beat, like the anthem of a Maasai warrior.
Manolo had parked the car on a side street close to the “settlement,” which was dark like the whole neighborhood. Before entering the area, he was able to confirm with Duque that Elizardo Soler’s car, which he had been able to track down again, seemed to be headed there after taking the main highway. From that moment on, they would communicate via cell phone, which Manolo put on vibrate. They were betting everything on one card.
In front of the houses, rooms, mud cabins, and sheds where immigrants from within the nation lived, Conde and Manolo saw children, young people, adults, and old people devoted to the art of allowing time to flow with the confidence, or without it, that something would change … Or not. The looks they received were hostile but contained: their trained senses in such situations warned those in the “settlement” that the two nocturnal visitors could not be anything but policemen and they avoided any possible confrontation, since they knew that against power, they, the pariahs of the earth, would be on the losing side. On a street corner, Conde had the confirmation that he and Manolo had been tagged: following a long whistle, which floated even over the reggaeton, at the next intersection, there was an immediate dispersion of shadows. For a moment, it worried him that some inhabitants of the “settlement” could warn Elizardo Soler of the presence of policemen in the area, but the unusual fact of the agents going ahead and the pursued man being behind them, gave him peace: no one would realize the equation and Elizardo would be taken for another policeman and the cautious silence would remain intact. At the end of the day, what was happening, until now, did not involve them and they would not mix themselves up in it, nor did they care, as the laws of the jungle stipulated.
When they took the rising path that led to the deceased Ramiro’s room, Conde slipped in the mud and fell. He cursed himself, the wet earth, Elizardo Soler’s mother, being an old fart who falls wherever, and warned Manolo that if he laughed, he would kick him in the ass. Without too much surprise, they observed how Ramiro’s room, cordoned off a few days before as the site of a crime, had been revolutionarily reclaimed by a family who, instead of listening to reggaeton, seemed to be watching some recorded television program, almost certainly one made in Miami, in which they were talking about an imminent liberating invasion of the island destroyed by a dictatorial regime for fifty-five years.
Conde led Manolo to the edge of the territory occupied by the “settlement,” beyond Ramiro’s room, and, using the police flashlight for the first time, they crossed the barbed-wire fence and looked for an appropriate surveillance point between some trees whose foliage was falling to the ground. From there, they would have visual access to the path, to Ramiro’s room, and to a good part of the wire fence that marked off the vacant land. Then, Manolo removed his vibrating cell phone, studied the screen, and, following the pronouncement of an almost inaudible “yes,” listened for a few seconds and repeated the affirmation in the same tone and volume. In the darkness, he nodded at his partner in the hunt.
A few minutes later, they saw the silhouette, barely lit by the clarity that escaped through one of the back windows of Ramiro’s room. The man crossed the fence just behind the room and remained still. He must have been observing the landscape, perhaps getting his bearings. A ray of concentrated light, coming from a small but powerful source, better marked the man’s position, who chose a possible path between the trees and the aggressive marabú bushes. This could be another voyage to the Inferno.
Guided by the firefly light that led to the recently arrived man, Conde and Manolo followed the path marked with rigorous precautions. More than once, they heard the pursued man’s muffled exclamations, the same ones they themselves could have let out with each pinch of the marabú’s knifelike needles. On two or three occasions, the man stopped, getting his bearings. Conde and Manolo barely breathed. They knew that without the Virgin in his hands, everything they had or could have against Elizardo Soler could be circumstantial and they needed to surprise him in possession of the divine object of desire.
A few feet ahead, Elizardo stopped. In the darkness, Conde could make out the large trunk of a tree, perhaps a ficus, from which two branches emerged in the strange shape of the cross. Surrounding the tree, the leaves on the bushes hid the upper part of Elizardo’s body and, for a few moments, the beam of light that must have been coming from his cell phone. Conde remembered at that moment that, according to Father Gonzalo Rinaldi, many of the Black Virgins brought along with them the legend of having appeared in caves, wells, and the trunks of trees! He didn’t think twice: with one swipe of the hand, he took Manolo’s flashlight and, without protecting himself from the marabú’s attack, ran toward Elizardo Soler’s shadow, and when he pushed aside the foliage hiding him, he turned on the flashlight at the very moment in which the man, raised on a piece of wood leaning against the rough trunk, was extracting from the hollow that reached the heart of the tree the brilliant statue of a majestic Black Virgin.
From that moment on, everything went into fast-forward: Conde saw how Elizardo Soler turned around and, without transition, from his left hand came a flash that blinded him. At the same time that he heard the detonation resounding on the arid, empty land, Conde felt that hit to his torso capable of pushing him against the vegetable claws of the raging marabú. His back hurt more than his chest, he managed to think before losing consciousness and regretting that everything would end before he turned the obscene sum of sixty years. Too young to die? Mario Conde asked himself when he heard a second and, immediately, a third detonation. And he suddenly felt himself plunged into pain as silence took over. Because, always, everything else is silence.