To wake up without any expectations can be a painful or satisfactory experience, depending on how you choose to look at it. And that morning, Conde opted for the latter. The night before, he’d made love, and maybe that’s why today, he didn’t feel any older, although in reality he’d had to take half of a sildenafil, without telling Tamara, of course. As soon as he opened his eyes, he decided that he would not hit the streets in search of private libraries for purchase, and he enjoyed the certainty that whatever he did or did not do, he would earn one hundred dollars that day, double what Tamara, a dental specialist, would earn in an entire month. For doing nothing. He wouldn’t even think about Rabbit’s travel plans, the pain of which lingered like a dagger in his side. And he would think even less of the Black Virgin and everything surrounding Her, he told himself, as if it were possible to fool himself and to block out his obsessive-compulsive thoughts. For the time being, he felt almost happy with his decision, since he was also convinced that he was well on his way to finding the young man who, thanks to Manolo, they knew was actually called Yúnior Colás Gómez, and who seemed like little more than a full-time con artist. Neither did he feel any rush to read the state newspaper (the news was always the same, and never very good), nor did he have even the slightest desire to sit in front of his old typewriter and contend with what increasingly revealed itself to be beyond his reach. How could he aim to write a squalid and moving story, like Salinger, after having seen life in the “settlements,” where there were thousands of people for whom squalor was not at all a Salingerian feeling of Buddhist spiritual lightness, but rather, something both physical and moral in nature that was oppressive and inescapable? No, he would do nothing. A whole lot of dolce far niente. In short, the freedom of choosing an awakening satisfied.
Tamara had gotten up early to go to the clinic, since she had to be in surgery that day. And on the wide and beautiful bed, in the well-ventilated room, surrounded by a welcoming and sustained silence that he never got to enjoy in his own neighborhood, Conde basked in its compact softness, and in the fresh scent of lavender, woman, and sex emanating from the sheets, and he had no problem delaying the moment he’d have to leave the bed in order to brew the day’s first cup of coffee. If not for the pressure in his bladder (or could it be that his prostate was already screwing with him?), he wouldn’t have moved from there for hours, years, centuries … Once he was in the kitchen, he looked out the window at the patio. Thanks to the money her sister Aymara sent from Italy, Tamara had managed to maintain the same level of care for the house that it had received from their father, ever the ambassador, both before and after 1959. The efficacy of such help became more pronounced when one compared the Valdemira house with another of a similar style and vintage just a few blocks away, on Calle Mayía Rodríguez: while the one belonging to the twins maintained its appearance, the latter, abandoned by owners who now lived in Dallas, Texas, had had the bad luck of being used by a low-level state agency and now appeared rotten with termites … Lost in his thoughts, Conde drank his coffee, lit a cigarette, and pondered moving himself full-time into this clean, well-lighted home, even as he knew he would never do so definitively: neither he nor his dog, Garbage II, would be able to adjust to the refined discipline that ruled here. Besides, he’d have to inherit the responsibility of clearing out the dry leaves from the house’s garden, something he chose to do voluntarily this morning, since in addition to feeling satisfied, Conde also felt responsible for saving the environment. Or rather, like a sucker.
When the telephone rang, he didn’t even consider answering. If someone was calling Tamara, it was best that they left a message on the answering machine, since he usually forgot to relay her messages. If it was for him, he would respond whenever his state of satisfaction ran out. It rang eight times before the answering machine clicked on: “You’ve reached…” Then came a human, vociferous voice, one very well-known to him: “Listen, Conde, dammit, I know you’re there, and…”
He leaped up and lifted the receiver from next to the refrigerator. “What the hell is wrong with you now, Manolo?”
“Were you still sleeping?”
“No … I forced myself not to think, I swept the yard, I listened to the birds singing, I decided I’m going to write again, and I was just drinking a freshly made coffee that was…”
Sighs and tongue clicking came from the other end of the line. “How lucky you are, you son of a bitch … I’ve barely slept and coffee here tastes like shit.”
“Here where?” Conde asked.
“From headquarters, viejo…”
“So why are you calling me from headquarters at this hour, my friend?”
“Because I believe that here, at headquarters, I have something that you would be interested in,” he said, emphasizing his intentions.
Conde noticed the reawakening of his latent, but vivid police instincts. “Something like what, Manolo? Come on, talk, buddy, you love being mysterious…”
Conde could hear the smile in Manolo’s voice: in reality, he liked that game of parceling out information, but since he’d reached the end of the line he came out with it.
“There’s a corpse at the morgue … And the fingerprints belong to one Yúnior Colás Gómez … who looks quite a bit like your friend Raydel. So much so that, well, I’d say it’s the same person.”
Even back when he was a policeman, he’d avoided visiting the morgue whenever he could, so despite the invitation from Major Manuel Palacios, he decided that he wasn’t going to start going now, and much less to see a body that had already begun to decompose. According to forensic estimates, when they found the body, he’d been dead for anywhere between 120 and 140 hours: five or six very hot days. A malodorous corpse with a bashed-in skull, as if he’d been beaten with a meat tenderizer, according to Manolo’s description. And, to make things more interesting, he had traces of many other blows to the rest of his body, all too similar to the lacerations sustained from being tortured or subjected to a fit of sadism.
The body had been found the previous night by a volunteer border guard, near Boca de Jaruco. The vigilante, a former low-ranking soldier, as part of his battle against imperialism and the defense of the homeland, went out almost every night to cover some part of the rocky coast, to the east of Havana, fulfilling the self-assigned mission of surveilling possible supplies of drugs dragged in by the Gulf current or of preventing clandestine exits by those compatriots who desired to land on any of the Florida Keys. It was not yet midnight when he’d arrived at an outcrop of the coast where the strong smell of putrefaction came to him from a small cluster of sea-grape plants growing between the sharp rocks, known by fishermen, with good reason, as “dog’s teeth.” As soon as he saw the corpse, the guard sounded the alarm and local police, upon seeing the state of the body, immediately called in the criminal division: for there was not the least bit of doubt that it was a homicide, and a rather bloody one at first glance.
Ever since he’d left the police force twenty-five years prior, Conde had not reentered the office that oversaw criminal investigations. There, he’d fielded hundreds of meetings of all kinds—from the most pleasant to the most acrimonious—along with his former boss, Major Antonio Rangel, and there, he had handed in his resignation to Colonel Alberto Molina, when he managed to leave the corps, two weeks after old Rangel’s defenestration. And now, the person in charge of that place (for several years now) was his former subordinate turned Chief of Investigators of Greater Common Crimes.
“It appears that they beat him with a rock,” Manolo said as Conde examined the office, even taking in the scene that was visible through the window that ran along one of the walls. Manolo was sitting in his high-backed chair behind his desk, and Conde settled into one of the two wrought iron and vinyl armchairs opposite him. “But quite a few times … More than necessary. With gusto.”
“So have they found the rock?”
“Not yet … And I don’t think they will. If it was thrown in the sea…”
“Any other clues?”
“The other injuries could have come from a fight, but it doesn’t seem like it. There are many … some could be from kicks. The specialists are examining everything they picked up at the crime scene now: a couple of soft-drink cans, some papers, a cigar butt…”
Conde was dealing with a wave of nostalgia. It was a half-smoked cigar that had helped them resolve one of the last cases that he and Manolo had worked on together, such a long time ago, perhaps in another life.
“So that’s why this kid wasn’t showing up anywhere,” Conde muttered.
“That’s why I called you. I need you to tell me everything you found out about him.”
“Ah, I thought it was to help me with my lost Virgin case…”
“Man, never mind the damn Virgin, or anything else! Now a guy is dead!” Manolo protested. “I called you so you could help me with my case. But I have to warn you, Mario Conde, it’s a case you can’t get involved with, not even to dip your toes in! Now, that whole business with the Virgin is just one more detail. Perhaps an important one, perhaps not, but it’s part of a serious homicide case. And, as you can imagine based on what you told me the other day, the first suspect I have is your friend from high school … What was his name?”
Conde shook his head. “Bobby? No, Manolo … Not Bobby…”
“Yes, Conde … Yúnior Colás left him, robbed him, humiliated him … He himself told you he was crazy in love with the kid … What more do you need to suspect him? Look at how he was killed, with what passion…”
“No one who’s in that deep makes waves, Manolo … Let’s see, what do you guys think happened on the beach?”
Manolo leaned back in his chair.
“That whole area between Havana and Matanzas is where clandestine escapes frequently happen. Maybe the kid and the murderer went there to leave the island … Or else, someone took Yúnior there under the pretext of getting him out, but with the objective of snuffing him out or getting information from him about what he’d stolen and hadn’t yet sold, right? If that robbery hadn’t happened at your friend’s house, we might be looking at other leads. But with that story right in front of us…”
“I really don’t believe that Bobby … Roberto Roque Rosell … No, I don’t believe that he’s capable of that. Not the Bobby I know. You know he’s my friend.”
“I don’t care about that: we have to fully investigate this and have a serious talk with him … Give me his address…”
Conde scratched his arms: it was a physical reaction to the situation in which he now found himself. Barely comforted by the conviction that he wasn’t revealing anything too sensitive, he dictated Bobby’s address to Manolo. The Major lifted one of the three phones at his disposal in one corner of the desk and dialed some numbers. When he got through, he repeated Bobby’s name and address, hung up, and renewed his focus on Conde.
“Now tell me what you’ve found out.”
Conde understood that he didn’t have a choice. Besides, the rest of the information in his possession in some way exculpated his former classmate. What sense did it make for Bobby, if he really was Yúnior’s murderer, to come and ask him for help on the very next day following the kid’s murder (according to the established chronology)? What good would it do to shake things up like that? But what if Bobby had sought him out with the intention of creating a smoke screen after having committed a crime? Conde tried to cast this possibility aside: it was too contrived and dangerous, not to mention dramatic, since it implied staging a whole series of interactions that required Bobby having very cold blood and a very twisted mind.
“Okay … but I have a condition…”
“There are no conditions, Conde!” Manolo stood up and his chair rolled backward. “We’re investigating a homicide, and you know very well that—”
“Let me talk, dammit! Don’t be such a cop, viejo! I want only two things: first, that you keep in mind that Bobby is my friend … And second, if you find any evidence related to the Virgin of Regla or any of the other things that Yúnior stole, you let me know…”
Manolo puzzled at Conde’s misplaced intensity. “Fine … But, why are you so hung up on that damn Virgin?”
“Because in this story, everything that appears to be one thing ends up being something else. And this version of Her does not appear to be what people say or think She is…”
Manolo crossed his eyes and attacked. “Okay. I don’t know what in the hell you just said about what appears and doesn’t appear, but talk.”
Manolo sat down again and, with his feet, pulled his chair closer to the desk. In a notebook, he began to jot down the details of Conde’s investigation. That the robbery of Bobby’s house had been planned by Yúnior and carried out with the help of Yuniesky the Bat and Ramiro the Cloak; that part of the loot had been sold almost immediately to someone whom Conde had not yet been able to identify but could find, if necessary; that, following the robbery, Yúnior had retreated to the “settlement,” seeking the protection of his cousin Ramiro, who in turn confirmed that he’d not heard from his accomplice in several days, despite having asked relatives who still lived on the eastern part of the island if they had seen him around there; that Yúnior had changed his name because he was on the run from someone he’d conned back in Santiago who’d threatened him, a fact that could not be ignored since it could have something to do with the way the kid had met his end. Finally, he noted the possibility that, along with the Virgin of Regla and some engravings and decorations that by the looks of it—only by the looks of it—were not too valuable, Yúnior had also kept some jewelry, the value of which Conde did not know (an engagement ring with semiprecious stones appeared to be worth the most) but that the kid might’ve thought was valuable. Perhaps Yúnior, believing that the jewels were his meal ticket, had been seeking a potential customer, most likely someone outside the circle of buyers and sellers that Bobby himself ran in, where René Águila had stood out, due to his unscrupulous reputation. But Conde kept to himself the speculations that he, along with his friends and Father Mendoza, entertained regarding the Virgin and Her potential value, due either to Her supernatural powers or to Her being a historical or cultural artifact, if that were the case. As a matter of fact, what worried him was that Bobby had been positioning himself as an old friend, and had the ability to soften Conde’s heart by invoking that relationship, but was in reality a stranger to him, capable of shape-shifting time and time again, both successfully and unsuccessfully, to hide who he really was. Bobby, who had reappeared out of the distant past and who, despite the passionate, anguished pleas for Conde’s help at their first meeting, had intended on conning him, offering him less money than what he had previously agreed upon with Yoyi the Pigeon. Could Conde really trust someone like that? he asked himself, alarmed, afraid that Bobby, who had claimed friendship, was actually manipulating Conde on the basis of Bobby’s own past and current ethical-ideological prejudices against the police as a homosexual man in Cuba.
As he told Manolo what he thought was pertinent while simultaneously organizing the information he had gathered through the perspective of a criminal investigator, Conde felt he was entering a precarious terrain that he took no pleasure in traversing. Often, during his career as a policeman, he’d resorted to inflicting various kinds of duress in order to obtain useful information to aid in his investigations. Only now, it was he who was offering the details that could implicate other people, or even betray their guilt, among them Yuniesky and Ramiro’s in connection with the robbery, men whom he had approached as Bobby’s representative, and not as an agent of the law. And, even though his conscience was telling him that, ultimately, he wasn’t hurting anyone who had not already hurt someone else, and even though he knew that violent crime turns all logic and responsibility upside down, something inside of him rebelled against this sort of collaboration, or to put it simply, ratting them out. However, while he was doing everything he could to distance Bobby from the events, by portraying him as a victim and as a person incapable of committing the bloody act of smashing another human being’s skull to bits, Conde was nevertheless subjecting his friend to Manolo’s scrutiny as he pursued the guilty party, or at minimum, uncovered some clue capable of identifying the guilty party. And in that process, Bobby’s personal and professional life would inevitably come under deep investigation from which all kinds of shit could come to the surface.
“Is that all?” Manolo asked him when he had finished relaying the information he’d accumulated.
“Yes,” Conde said.
“Are you sure?”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Manolo?”
“What’s wrong is that I know you very well. If that Bobby is a friend of yours … I know you, Conde,” he insisted.
Conde smiled.
“You’re also my friend, Manolo … And, like you, I want you to find out who crushed that kid like a bug … like a cockroach.”
“The violence was extreme,” the policeman agreed. “Whoever killed him is capable of even more dangerous acts. This was not just a fight, but a very cruel act, potentially with torture involved.”
“Did you guys already know that Yúnior had conned some guy out there in Santiago? That could be why—”
“Yes, we already have Yúnior Colás’s file … But the guy he was on the run from, one Braudilio Castillo, couldn’t have killed him: he’s dying of cancer in a hospital in Manzanillo.”
“But couldn’t he have sent someone?” Conde tried to lend power to the possibility.
“Anything is possible, but I don’t think so … Why would he do that now, just as he is dying and Yúnior was trying even harder to hide because he’d screwed over someone else?”
“Yeah, it’s messed up, it’s messed up … Tell me something, are you going to be in charge of the case yourself?”
“No, no,” Manolo sighed, tired. “I have a thousand things going on … I gave it to a kid who’s the new rising star here. He’s very smart and knows how to get the most out of computers and all that electronic shit we have now … And he’s a real bulldog. When he latches on to something, he won’t let go.”
“So, who’s this prodigious beast?” Conde asked, somewhat stricken with envy. Long ago, he had been the hero. The star of the department. And what the hell was he now?
“His name is Miguel Duque and … damn, they call him el Duque!” Manolo exclaimed, only just at that moment realizing the semantic operation of relating the last names, via nobility, of his former mentor and his current disciple.
“I hope he really is good…” Conde admitted ill-humoredly and added, “because there have only been two Duques in Cuba: the old one, who died, and the young one, who went on to a better life…”
“No kidding, Duque Hernández, the baseball player, died?”
“I said he went on to a better life … He left for the States, won four World Series, and now he’s loaded … He plays golf and everything.”
“You’re always talking shit and thinking about shit, Conde!”
“What about you, what are you thinking about, Manolo? Seriously.”
The major looked his former colleague in the eye. His pupils started to look as though they were seeking refuge behind his septum.
“Stop getting all cross-eyed and just tell me. I already told you what’s on my mind…”
Manolo refocused and his eyes regained their balance.
“I think that there are many loose ends to this story. For starters, I have a compulsive con man who could have screwed over many people, and I can’t help but consider a settling of accounts for something about which we have no idea … On the other hand, I have your friend Bobby with a broken heart, who, on top of that, was upset about being robbed, and no matter what you say, a person like that is capable of many things … But then, I’ve also got a trio of criminals who do a job and then one keeps most of the haul and screws over the others … And he’s the one who shows up dead … There’s also the fact that the whereabouts of the stolen goods are unknown, the value of which is hypothetical, because we don’t know if Yúnior tried to do business with anyone, nor do we know with any certainty how much money we could be talking about if the jewelry the deceased stole was truly valuable … I also have what was potentially an attempted clandestine exit from the country, with objects in tow that could be valuable or could not be, which someone decided to take without sharing the profit … But, above all, I have a violent criminal and a story that, no matter how you look at it, is rotten, not unlike Yúnior Colás Gómez’s body … In other words, Conde, I have too many bad things and nothing pleasant. But it’s cases like this that you used to like, remember?”
Conde nodded, feeling like a stranger to himself. “Yeah, I remember … Well, the truth is that I’m happy I’m not the one who has to solve it now. Luckily, you have the brilliant Duque!”
Certain that he was about to ruin every good memory he had of the place, Conde crossed the threshold of the rusty gates, more evocative of a prison than anything else, that guarded the shadowy, dilapidated ferry building on which the sun still beat down. The only relief the shed offered was the promise of freedom that one always gets from the sea. At the door, a sign enumerated the instruments of war that were not allowed inside, which seemed to say all but the Dantesque warning: ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE. Cannons, rifles, machetes, saws, and hammers—all were forbidden. The most dangerous of the prohibited weapons: a bottle of rum. Standing under such warnings (ending in an ET CETERA that amplified what was inadmissible into infinity), the gatekeepers ensured that these demands were met. The guardians, an ill-shaven man and a woman equally in dire need of a shave, were dressed in olive-green uniforms, custom-made for people other than themselves. They scrutinized him with critical, well-trained eyes, and both seemed to conclude that he was just a harmless old man, letting him pass without subjecting him to the customary pat down. Other people who arrived before and after him were made to show the contents of their bags, and one or another was subject to a body search, as if they were about to board a space shuttle to a galactic destination, instead of the slow, sputtering ferry that went in circles every day, from sunup to sundown, year after year, between the corner of Havana’s main port, known since colonial times as the Emboque de Luz, and the other side of the bay, where there was the small town of Regla, named after the seafaring Andalucían Virgin that had been deposited there when the village was first founded four centuries ago. Because the route never varied, the two or three ferries that completed the trajectory had become a national institution, and had acquired a single, proper name: the Little Boat to Regla. And because the island’s inhabitants felt periodically or permanently anxious to escape, the little boats had been considered a strategic means of transportation for the last two decades.
Conde recalled having boarded one of these ferries for the first time in the company of his grandfather Rufino, some fifty-five years earlier, during one of his tours of Havana’s cockfighting pens, before their revolutionary abolition was decreed. Back then, the Little Boat to Regla had always been operated by an engine plagued by whooping cough, and usually had its wooden sides painted a vivid orange with benches lining the port side and starboard. Its principal mission was that of taking and bringing inhabitants of the “overseas” town, as people in Havana insisted on calling Regla, from one side to the other of the inlet’s coast, as well as transporting believers and pilgrims who’d left the city in search of Regla’s venerable chapel, and distracted passengers who’d boarded the vessels merely for fun and relaxation.
On that first occasion, enjoying the thrill of the venture, the breeze as it caressed him, and the sea that, at that point in time, still smelled like the sea, young Conde had observed, free as the wind and with all of his childish wonder, how the ferry cast off, the process of leaving behind one shore in order to approach another, the game of perspective and how distances can alter sizes and proportions: as Havana became more remote, fitting neatly in sight, more magisterial and permanent in its profusion of towers, belfries, cupolas, eaves, and masts, Regla became larger, proudly displaying its perpetually proletarian modesty. The growing vista of the small town offered, first and foremost, the yellowish plaster walls of the small chapel in which the Black Virgin was worshipped. This was the Virgin of Regla, the direct descendant of a statue from Chipiona, which, according to legend, was itself fruit of a mystical revelation and stroke of artistic inspiration received by Saint Augustine the African, Bishop of Hippo, who must have carved Her with his own hands.
Following that initial voyage, Conde had used the Little Boat’s services on many occasions. The last time he’d made this journey, so typical of life in Havana, he had done so to seek the wisdom of an old practitioner of the Bantu rite of Palo Monte with the hope that the ancient Black man would help him understand why someone might steal the bones of a Chinese or Jewish person from a cemetery. He’d learned then that in the Palo religion, an evildoer could have no more effective possession than the bones of a Chinese or Jewish person, placed in a powerful receptacle known as the nganga. A belief from the heart of Africa, seasoned by Cubans with the human remains of Jews and Asians! What monstrosities arose from the nation’s lack of limits, which were so beneficial and dangerous at once! That time, the emblematic orange of the ferries had appeared to him as nothing more than a stain, and the smell of the sea had been replaced by the sickly, fetid odor of acid and fuels that clouded over the ocean’s surface. The yellow walls of the chapel, meanwhile, were peeling, dissolved by sun, salt, and national apathy.
It was shortly after that last trip of Conde’s that the ferry’s circular route was forcibly altered by hijackers who turned its dormant compasses toward a new and unforeseen destination: north. Or rather, the North, as Cubans tended to call their neighboring country in their fanatic way of nicknaming all things. The messy and brutal North. It was at that time that the Crisis devastating the island had grown and swelled to the point of homegrown pirates beginning to hijack the shuttles in order to take them beyond their usual, predictable horizons. The hijacking attempts followed one after another, insistent on improving and prolonging the journey. However, it turned out that the fuel in the Little Boat’s deposits was barely enough to make it a few miles inland, so a solution was proposed to increase the capacity of its tank and, therefore, the distance it could cover. The ferry that went the farthest was also, as it turned out, the most festive. On Havana’s docks, it was boarded by some cumbancheros, weighed down with whistles, maracas, and guitars, allegedly en route to celebrate the wedding of a Santería high priest from Guanabacoa and a Santería priestess from Regla. They boarded with their crates of beer, their bottles of rum, and even some very large cakes … The celebration was to be carried out much farther away, as the bottles of beer and rum turned out to be carrying not jovial alcohol, but fuel, and beneath the flowery meringue of the pastries were even more canisters of gas … At knifepoint and with guns extracted from their guitar cases, they took control of the steering wheel to embark on the journey of their choice … After that hijacking incident, the Little Boat of Regla became a militarized shuttle, with police on board and guards on the dock in order to avoid new and creative attacks by pirates and modern-day, homegrown corsairs.
Now as he settled in on the ferry, Conde was still unclear as to his purpose in carrying out another pilgrimage to the overseas town. Yúnior-Raydel’s death had shaken him from his satisfactory stupor and charged his investigation with macabre resonance. The drama had gone off the rails, it was out of Conde’s hands, and the proof that greater and worse interests were at play was now tangible.
As he crossed the bay, to whose origin the city owed its existence, glory, and prosperity, the former policeman felt the extent of his disorientation and was certain that if he wanted to know where Bobby’s Black Virgin had ended up, as well as the possible motive for the murder of his ungrateful lover, he had to review all the details again from the beginning, with due and necessary diligence, and fill in all the gaping holes.
After they docked, he walked to the nearby chapel, a work of brick and tile masonry, with a bell tower and a very modest cupola. Already more than two hundred years old and pleasantly humble, the church had been erected on the very site where the original precarious chapel was erected in 1696, one after another to house the Virgin, most likely brought to Cuba from Cádiz, who was the patron saint of sailors, travelers, and migrants. The first chapel, with wooden walls and a guano roof, had been leveled just three years later by a hurricane with the name of an archangel, Saint Raphael, as if to bind the Virgin’s fate to that of an island always at the mercy of the sea—the cursed condition of being surrounded by water on all sides—and of hurricanes—Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh—to which the poets sang.
It was just a few steps from the dock to the church, and Conde traversed them as if pulled by a magnet, or else by his policeman’s instinct, which had never completely evaporated. Without stopping, he crossed the threshold into the sanctuary and saw, at the back, the modest main altar and the small, black-skinned Madonna that presided over it, with Her white child in Her arms. Dozens of generations of Cubans, sailors and otherwise, Catholics and Santeros, Blacks and whites, rich and poor, had requested the favor of Her divine intervention, and a few swore that She had produced true miracles. On each side of the altar rose various effigies that kept watch over the Holy Mother, and thanks to his catechism classes, Conde managed to identify: Saint Teresa and Saint John Bosco; Jesus of Nazareth and His putative father Saint Joseph; Saint Anthony of Padua and his namesake Saint Anthony the Abbot (accompanied by a long-snouted pig); Saint Francis of Assisi (with his doves); Saint Lazarus (with his dogs); the two mothers known respectively as the Virgin of Mercy (also known as the powerful Obatalá, according to Afro-Cuban tradition) and the Virgin of Charity, the spiritual mother of all those born on the island, syncretized as Ochún—the most beautiful, the most fertile.
At the foot of the altar today was an enormous pile of flower bouquets, already going musty and emanating a rather invasive scent, which hovered between perfume and rot. In the church’s pews, he saw several people, perhaps a dozen, the majority of them senior citizens, although a couple of young people, dressed in the obligatory pure white clothing signifying their recent initiation into Santería, caught his attention.
Conde sat in a front-row pew in the center section, which was closest to the Virgin. From there, he observed the small wooden statue; She was covered save for Her face and hands, both very black, indicating Her African provenance. The rest was foil that had been layered and colored—from blue to yellow, passing for silver and gold—and giving Her the pyramid shape with which She was associated. This figure was the basis of thousands of plaster replicas, destined for domestic worship, an image that any of the island’s native sons would recognize. The face, Conde said to himself, was inscrutable, nearly expressionless, more stoic than other incarnations of the Virgin that tended to be magisterial or maternal. Meanwhile, the juxtaposition of the white child held in Her black hands was accentuated by the sense that She was projecting Him forward, as if She were offering Him to someone in front of Her, or else, to the entire world. It was as if She were presenting the Redeemer.
From his shirt pocket, he extracted the photo Bobby had provided and compared the two statues: apart from their color and solemnity, there were no other notable similarities. In truth, it was as he’d already known. It was not the case that Bobby’s Virgin was a liberal copy of the statue Conde saw before him. No, without a doubt, Bobby’s Virgin was something entirely different. It could be that some whim on the part of the sculptor accounted for the difference in Bobby’s Virgin, but the carving on it suggested great skill with the gouge, and a trained artistic sense. So, why was the Virgin in the photo sitting majestically, while the one in the chapel stood? What about the bonnet? And why had the sculptor changed the position of the Son of God, so that His arms were in His lap, close to the breast of the Virgin, when the Virgin of Regla’s baby had His arms extended out? Why was one baby white, while the other Black, like His mother? Did the difference in the color of Their skin connote specific meaning?
Conde’s hazy premonitions, his questions, suspicions, and gathered evidence, grew into a caustic mass of anxiety that increasingly alarmed him: so, the Virgin that had been stolen from Bobby had never been a copy of the patron saint of Regla, nor of the original Virgin who came from Chipiona. And if anyone knew this, it would have to be Bobby. Conde had now confirmed that he was dealing with a completely different variation of the Blessed Mary, and he had the increasing certainty that this difference held the real reason for Bobby’s obsession, as well as the motive for the statue’s theft. Not to mention, an explanation of its value.
With this conviction, Conde approached a woman—who was as Black as the Virgin—as she came out of the sanctuary and walked toward the altar with baskets in her hands into which she began to deposit the bouquets of wilting flowers.
“Good morning, ma’am, please…” He addressed her from the railing that protected the altar.
“How can I help you, sir?” The woman’s voice was as sweet as the expression on her face.
“Why are there so many flowers?”
The woman smiled. “Don’t you know that the day before yesterday was September seventh, the Virgin’s feast day?”
“True, true,” he murmured. “And was there a pilgrimage?”
“Procession,” the woman corrected him. “Yes, we now have permission to hold one outside the church. For years, we had to do it right here inside, or else in the atrium.”
“I didn’t know that … Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” the woman said, smiling again and returning to her task of gathering the dead flowers. Only then did Conde remember why he had approached her.
“Ma’am, would it be possible to see Father Gonzalo Rinaldi?”
The woman abandoned her task again and approached him, her smile never wavering.
“I’m sorry … Father is giving classes at the seminary … But, let’s see, maybe I can help you with something? Would you like to be baptized, confess, or get married?”
“No, no thank you, I’ve already been through all that … Don’t worry, I’ll come back another day,” he said, and, before turning around, he looked again at the Virgin of Regla, this time from even closer. And he had the impression that the statue met his gaze.
“Ay, Conde! Ay, Conde! For God’s sake, and for the sake of the Virgin…”
Bobby’s face, which on previous occasions had alternated between cheekiness and dramatic sorrow, now held an expression of fear. And his pleading only accentuated the picture.
Urged by his conviction, Conde had traveled straight from Regla to the house of his former classmate. He hadn’t even taken the precaution of eating something along the way, and the hours of awaiting Bobby’s return from the precinct had become such torture to his gastric system that he was about to abort his mission, which was to get to the man while he was still hot from being raked over the coals by Conde’s former colleagues.
When he saw Bobby and heard his pleading, Conde knew he’d been right. This was his chance and he jumped at the opportunity.
“Did they put the pressure on much?” he asked when Bobby, still invoking divinities, had collapsed into one of the wrought iron chairs on the porch.
“Much? They practically had me on the rack and sicced the dog on me … Those guys are savages … Were you like that when you were a cop?”
Conde smiled. “It depended…”
“On what?”
“On whether I knew if the person I was interrogating was telling me the truth, or was a lying piece-of-shit-son-of-a-bitch-motherfucking manipulator … Like you, you cocksucker!”
Bobby jumped from his seat when he heard Conde howling the string of invectives in his face. Conde confirmed that his reaction had achieved the desired effect, then he reloaded.
“You’re in shit up to your neck. They let you go, but they didn’t really let you go. Don’t believe that. They have their eye on you, since there’s a ninety-nine-percent chance you’re somehow involved in the murder of Raydel, or whatever the hell that kid’s name was … Or maybe you did it yourself! They were only getting started with you today. When the games begin for real, you’re gonna shit your pants.”
Bobby brought his hands to his chest and began to cry. Conde let him unburden himself, just enough so that he could speak again.
“So?”
“I didn’t kill him, Conde.”
“I know, that’s why I’m here.”
“So, help me, viejo. Help me, for the years we’ve known each other, for our friendship…”
“Are you afraid, Bobby?”
Bobby looked at his former classmate and more tears fell from his eyes, but of a different kind.
“Afraid? No, man, I’m terrified. There’s a difference. I’ve been afraid my whole life. I’ve always lived with fear. In this shitty country, fear is a permanent condition and guys like me are its poster child … But this is something else, something else.”
Conde nodded. But now was not the time for him to get soft and allow himself to be led astray by emotion. He pulled out the photos of the stolen Virgin and threw them at Bobby.
“What’s with this fairy tale about your grandmother’s little Virgin of Regla?”
Bobby started as if Conde had just thrown acid on him. His tears disappeared.
“What are you talking about?”
“Bobby, cut the shit. I’m serious. If you don’t tell me the truth, I can’t help you.”
Bobby sobbed again as he looked out at his pristine garden. A rosebush of black princes held the place of honor, boasting its bloodred flowers in all their splendor. Conde suddenly recalled, like an arrow flashing across his memory, the black princes that had once adorned the small garden of his childhood home, as they were his mother’s favorites. How many years had it been since Conde himself had pruned that old rosebush? He’d maintained an intense love-hate relationship with it, due to the flowers’ beauty and the ugly aggressiveness of their thorny stems, which had attacked him so many times, drawing blood the same color as the petals. Bobby’s sigh as he recomposed himself brought Conde back to the torrid present.
“It’s a Virgin, Conde, and my grandmother considered Her to be the Virgin of Regla. But it’s true that She came from Spain, with the Catalan man whom my grandmother married, who was practically my grandfather. Josep Bonet, he was called, but everyone here called him José. But actually, neither of those was his real name. For some reason I never learned, he’d changed his name when he arrived in Cuba, or maybe before he got here, and I never knew his real one. Anyway, José brought the Virgin here from Spain.”
“Bobby, are you telling me another tall tale?”
“No, viejo, I swear I’m not … José came to Cuba during the Spanish Civil War, and he never wanted to show anyone the Virgin or talk much about where he’d gotten Her … He would just as easily say She was from Andalucía as from Catalonia … Maybe the Virgin had some dark history. Maybe not. I don’t know … What I am sure of is that José did have a dark past. But anyway, no one cared about any of that when they saw the Virgin, you know? She was a Madonna, She was Spanish, and She was Black. What else could a Black Virgin be in Cuba but the Virgin of Regla? What, do you need the Vatican’s permission to worship a Black Virgin as if She were Our Lady of Regla?”
“But you very well know that She’s not a Virgin of Regla. Maybe other people don’t, and maybe Raydel didn’t … but you have to know, Bobby. Maybe none of that usually matters, but with this Virgin, it does. And what matters most is that you didn’t tell me the truth from the beginning.”
Bobby stroked his chest with his open hand several times, as if that gesture were helping him lower the tension that had built up there and expel it.
“Yes, of course, I asked around. She is modeled after a Catalan or Basque or Southern French one … In that general area, there are several Virgins that look like mine, and are of the same style. Some are very old, medieval. And the one that José, my grandmother’s husband, brought over here was inspired by that Romanesque model. But She’s just a regular replica. She’s smaller than most of the original statues.”
“How do you know She’s a replica and not an authentic medieval Virgin?”
“Because José always said that he’d bought Her in some street fair in a town called Camprodon. He kept Her in his house … His own moreneta, as he would say.”
Conde sighed. “Bobby, how the hell do I know you’re not pulling one over on me?”
“Dammit, viejo, it’s the truth. The truth as I know it. I swear on my grandmother. On the Virgin, even!”
Conde looked at the rosebush again and thought about how deceptive its beauty was. Could he believe Bobby even when he was swearing by the Virgin? He had no choice, he told himself. But he would not let his guard down anymore.
“So why do you think he brought Her to Cuba?”
“Well, there was a war, so he came here … And he brought his Virgin with him. Isn’t that normal?”
“I don’t know … There’s nothing inside Her? Something more valuable than the statue itself?”
“Inside Her? What do you mean?” Bobby’s surprise seemed real.
“A cavity in the wood, maybe…”
Bobby paused for a minute before responding.
“No, not that I know of … She’s a wooden statue, Conde, bought at a street market! She’s valuable because of what She means to me personally, what She meant to my grandmother, what She meant to her husband … And do you know why? Well, because that Virgin has powers! José said so, my grandmother also! And I know it’s true, Conde. That’s why I want Her back. Who said She could have something inside Her?”
“It’s just an idea, Bobby, just an idea … An idea that could have occurred to Raydel or anyone else noticing your fixation on the Virgin. Maybe the person who bumped off Raydel, for example, in order to keep the Virgin.”
“And the jewelry…”
“Besides the engagement ring, what else did they steal from you that had real value?”
“Trinkets, family things … The engravings weren’t very valuable, either. But Raydel thought it was all treasure … The truth is that the ring isn’t worth much, either. It’s a memento … like the Virgin!”
Conde tried to think. He needed to think. He still didn’t know why, but he was convinced that there was a trap somewhere in this web, a void, a trick, and it needled him that he didn’t know what it is. Did it have to do with the Virgin’s “powers” of which Bobby spoke? Conde didn’t believe in those powers, but he knew that other people did—some had even felt their benefits. Were these mystical powers a greater factor in the disappearance of the Virgin than any material value the Virgin might have, and which Bobby denied anyway? Was She really not worth anything more than those powers, a connection with the divine embodied in a statue, as Bobby insisted? Conde knew that he was getting tangled up in a farce that probably had a simple explanation, and not one of the more complicated ones he was wont to cook up. But nothing about this case was what it seemed, and what seemed important ended up being nothing … Had someone killed Yúnior in order to make off with a powerful Virgin, or was it just a valuable object they were after? Was the motive faith or reason? And what if the crime had nothing to do with the Virgin, and Bobby’s insistence had merely clouded Conde’s judgment? Maybe these were good questions, the former policeman told himself, then decided that he needed to be in the most propitious physical and mental conditions to come up with the answers.
“Treat me to brunch,” he said to Bobby. “I’m so hungry I can hardly see straight, and I can’t even think anymore.”
“It’s not brunch time, Conde.”
“So, crunch, then! Anything for me to chew on, buddy … And then tell me more about the people who deal in art and antiques. Let’s see if we can find out anything through them … And then I’m going to tell you how you need to behave with the police. I know all their methods for getting a confession.”
“Really, Conde?” His friend seemed moved, more than hopeful.
“Yes, but come on, let’s eat. I’m starving to death, dammit.”
Bobby had a refrigerator that was better stocked than any of Havana’s supermarkets, and Conde’s pernicious hunger was resoundingly defeated. His stomach full and his nerves relaxed, the former policeman outlined Bobby’s strategy for talking to the cops—saying only what was necessary to help determine the Black Virgin’s whereabouts, never accepting blame—and then the two friends forged a plan for Conde’s next move, in light of recent events. After a second pot of coffee, which they drank down to the grounds, the former policeman decided that he still had time to make a little headway in his investigation, and he started to take leave of his old friend.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Bobby whispered when they were already walking across the living room.
“What else, buddy?” Conde said harshly, immediately unnerved. He couldn’t take it anymore. When would the surprises end? Dealing with Bobby was like peeling an onion.
Bobby was serious. Dead serious. With a gesture, he pointed Conde toward one of the living room’s armchairs and turned on the ceiling fan to cool off the place. The host took his place on the sofa, barely sitting on the edge, as if he were ready to bolt. He rubbed his hands, looked at his friend and then at a blank wall where there once was a painting. Conde was certain that an important revelation was imminent, and decided not to push it.
“Look, I don’t really like to talk about this and I’ve barely mentioned it to anyone, but since I know you and those awful cops don’t believe me … Conde, that stuff about the Virgin’s powers is no fairy tale … Not my own and not my adopted grandfather’s. He told me that She has healing powers. He said the Virgin had resuscitated a boy from his village who had six fingers on each hand … He saw it with his own eyes, he said! I’m telling you, it’s true that She performs miracles. I can confirm it myself.”
Conde stifled a smile. He considered making a joke about the boy with the six fingers but refrained. Bobby seemed too serious, and Conde couldn’t bring himself to ruin his story.
“Well, when I made saint and received Yemayá,” Bobby continued, “and I carried out the appropriate rituals, it wasn’t just because I was confused about my life, like I originally told you … although that was also true.”
“Dammit, Bobby! What now?”
“Man, I did it because I was dying. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Don’t look at me like that, this doesn’t have anything to do with being gay…” Bobby unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his chest. Conde noticed that his nipples were perhaps thicker than those of other men, and below the small hill of his pectoral muscle were two curved scars, almost imperceptible, in the macabre shape of a smile. “You see it? Men, even manly men, can suffer from breast cancer, and it got me. It seemed to be super aggressive. Of course, I went to see a specialist, I underwent medical treatment, but since I’ve always been religious, I decided to take other actions … Israel’s Padrino was a Santería high priest, and he consulted Ifá for me and determined that I should receive the attributes of Yemayá, the Virgin of Regla. Do you think that’s a cosmic coincidence? Do you know how many different orishas there are? What are the odds that I should receive Yemayá and not any of the others? It was a sign, and I decided to follow it. I got ready to make saint, but like my grandmother recommended, I put my trust first and foremost in my own Black Virgin. I prayed to Her, I asked for Her help and strength, and I went through the whole initiation process in Her company. That was when I made a promise to the Virgin that in exchange for my health, I would crown Her with a golden tiara, and I swore to never leave Her and to worship Her like a mother.”
Conde needed a cigarette. Bobby’s story was moving, but also pitiful.
“So did the Virgin perform the miracle?”
“Yes, She did, though you might not believe it. During the ceremony where I was to receive Yemayá, I was in a room where you’re supposed to be alone for several days while meditating and purifying yourself, but I had my Virgin with me … And on the second morning, when I woke up, I saw that my Virgin was dripping wet, as if She’d just been taken out of the water … I looked up at the ceiling in case there was a leak, and I asked my Madrina if someone had wet Her, but no … The water kept dripping off of Her, almost as if it were coming from inside of Her, as if She were sweating from a fever. She also had a strange smell. I dared to run my finger along the Virgin and taste the water and … it tasted like salt, but it smelled like grease, like lard … It was seawater, greasy seawater! You don’t have to believe me, Conde, and don’t look at me like that, because now comes the really incredible part … A few days after receiving Yemayá, I went to the hospital … And to the surprise of my doctors, the cancer had receded at a medically impossible rate, given the stage of treatment I was in. It was something so extraordinary that even these oncologists said they had witnessed a miracle … of nature. I, of course, knew otherwise but didn’t say anything to them. The tumors had become so localized that they were able to operate. For two more years, the doctors observed me, in case it came back, but I didn’t have any cancer left in me, it was as if it had never been there at all. If you want, I can show you my file from the clinic; I have it saved here. An oncologist even wrote that the cause of the tumor’s remission was ‘inexplicable.’ How the hell do you explain something like that? Something that’s inexplicable even to a scientist, a specialist? Now do you understand why I believe in the powers of that Virgin, and then some? And why I feel like I failed Her by allowing Raydel to take Her? Why I’m scared shitless without Her by my side, so much so that I’m even telling you this story that you’re not going to believe? But I do believe it, because I’ve lived it. It’s because of a miracle that I’m alive, my friend. Or rather, it’s because of the Virgin.”