He stopped by a pharmacy and bought a bottle of aspirin, then drove back to the apartment. It was one o’clock. Still a while until he could hit La Habana, and he needed a rest. All of them needed a rest if they were going to manage tomorrow and for the next few days. That’s when they must be alert. So he decided to get some shut-eye, just like the others.
The boys were napping, but they’d be up in a couple of hours. He pinned a note to El Güero’s door telling him he had the next shift and it started at five. Then at eleven the Antelope should take his place. He wasn’t sure who he wanted watching Sócrates and who he wanted watching the woman.
The woman. She wasn’t much, and yet there he was, thinking about her again. He supposed it was because he couldn’t have a normal life and therefore almost any woman would catch his interest. Not that he’d ever had much of a normal life, first living with that older American lady and then with that weird cult.
He was in bed, on top of the covers, smoking a cigarette with the lights off and trying to lull himself to sleep. He knew he shouldn’t do this, that chain-smoking was already bad, but doing it in bed was a recipe for waking up with third-degree burns, but he did it anyway when he felt acutely empty.
Cristina, Cristina. Dimples and long brown hair flowing down her back. He remembered her naked, laid out on a narrow bed, humming a song. He liked to remember her like that, naked, next to him.
The woman didn’t look anything like Cristina, who had been exactly his type. Petite, pale, with a pretty, kissable mouth. That’s the way he liked them. But he was still smoking in the dark, wondering whether, under different circumstances, it wouldn’t be possible for him to bump into Maite in the street and meet her that way.
Hundreds of people met every day, after all. It was the easiest thing to chat up a girl on the bus or in line for the movies. And he wasn’t interested in her in a perverted way; it was all very innocent. He was simply curious.
He kept wondering what her voice sounded like. He’d seen her from afar, stared at her photo, read the information El Mago had provided, but he couldn’t imagine her voice. It probably wasn’t anything special, but he wanted to have a full picture of the woman. He wanted to ask her how many records she owned and whether she listened to “Blue Velvet” late at night and swayed to the music, all alone, while the city slept.
He couldn’t imagine her with others, certainly not with that hippie with the bushy eyebrows. She existed in isolation, standing in front of a stark, white background.
Some people are made to be lonely.
He put out his cigarette and slept.
When he woke up it was late in the evening. His body still ached. He winced as he put on a jacket and headed to La Habana.
At that time of the day it was packed, with old men shuffling their dominoes and the literary types crowded around the tables. He saw Justo sitting near the back. He had his pack of Faritos on the table and his coffee, and was immersed in a book or doing a good job at pretending that was the case. His baby face was neatly shaved, and he gave every appearance of being a young, eager student taking a break.
You’d think him newly baptized, that’s how innocent he looked.
Elvis took a seat in front of him. Justo turned the page. Waiters in black trousers and black vests walked around carrying orders of molletes on round trays. The scent of coffee beans and cigars mingled together. People spoke with accents in this place. Spanish, Cuban, some Chilean.
“Back so soon. Keeping busy?” Justo asked, but he didn’t look up.
“Sure, I guess,” Elvis said, not knowing how to begin. Now that he was here, he was thinking his idea was pretty dumb. After all, why would this guy want to lend him a hand? And even if he did, how was he going to pay him? Elvis had his stash of money in the cigar box, but he didn’t want to spend it like this.
The young man bent the corner of the page he was reading and set his book down. “I might as well tell you right away: your friend’s dead.”
Elvis heard what he said, but at first he didn’t understand. He was still thinking about the stakeout he needed to conduct, and the words flew by. But Justo kept staring at him from behind his horn-rimmed glasses, looking serious, and then Elvis got it.
El Gazpacho.
He meant El Gazpacho.
“He can’t be dead.”
“I did some quick checking around and found him, saw him with my own eyes. He’s definitely dead.”
Elvis shook his head. “You’ve got it wrong.”
But Justo was now looking at Elvis with bemused pity, and Elvis knew he didn’t have it wrong. He thought of El Gazpacho, drenched in blood, and the sounds he made as Elvis drove the car to the doctor. Maybe he’d been too slow or too clumsy transporting him. Maybe it was his fault. His mouth was dry.
“Where’d you find him?”
“They picked him up in a ditch near Ciudad Satélite. He was strangled,” Justo said, and he took out a matchbox and lit his cigarette. He offered Elvis one, but Elvis did not move.
Elvis stared at him, watching as Justo tossed the match into a cup.
“Strangled,” he repeated. “No, he had a bullet wound, and I dropped him off at the doctor’s place.”
Justo chuckled and took a drag, sliding the box with cigarettes closer to the center of the table, inviting Elvis to pick one with a gesture of his wrist. “Your boss doesn’t like bullets.”
Elvis almost laughed at that. What a prick. To say that. To even think it.
“It wasn’t El Mago.”
“Who, then? El Coco?”
“Fuck—” Elvis said, and he pressed his hands hard against the table with such force that Justo had to steady the damn thing so it wouldn’t flip over.
“Sit down, you imbecile,” Justo muttered, and in that moment, his face contorted with anger, he didn’t look as young as before. There were tiny creases on the sides of his eyes, and his mouth was stern. “I liked El Gazpacho. He was an okay dude. That’s why I bothered looking for him and then bothered to tell you. I could have just taken your money. El Mago is no saint, you should know that by now.”
“Why would he kill him, huh? He was a Hawk.”
“How the hell should I know? He wouldn’t be the only dead Hawk this week.”
“Makes no sense.”
A man had won a game of dominoes. He laughed, and the murmur of a radio in the corner drifted across the café. Violeta Parra was singing about being seventeen and innocent again. Elvis stared at his hands. He wanted to grab a cigarette, but he was afraid his fingers would shake, so he sat there, stiff and afraid and trembling inside instead while men laughed.