The transparency of time.., p.27
The Transparency of Time--A Novel, page 27
Now, as with each possible opportunity, Conde pushed the wheelchair in which the old man vegetated and took him out to the porch of his house. From there, one could see the garden that Rangel had taken care of from his premature retirement until his sudden physical decline, the pleasant street of the Bahía neighborhood with a smattering of passersby, and a sky (that on that September afternoon was cloud-free) of an immaculate blue. It was a nearly idyllic world, diametrically opposed (so completely diametrically opposed) to the “settlement” where that very morning Mario Conde and Death had been.
After Rangel swallowed the painkillers that his wife, María Luisa, offered him and drank her recently brewed coffee, Conde lit the cigar he’d bought on the way and bathed his former boss in smoke.
“This cheap cigar is a piece of shit, but it tastes good,” he proclaimed. “It’s not one of those Montecristos or Cohibas or Rey del Mundos that you liked, but it’s not bad, I swear it’s not,” he commented and took another puff on the thick cigar, then exhaled more perfumed smoke. “Would you like some?”
From his wheelchair, Rangel was watching his former and most unruly disciple, and greedily breathed in the cigar’s smoke, moving his eyelids, accepting, enjoying … What a disaster, Conde thought. What a shitty life, he knew Antonio Rangel must be thinking. And, almost certainly, appreciating his former subordinate’s incombustible loyalty, while simultaneously lamenting that his friend could not help him with what he really needed most: ending everything.
“The problem is that my hunch feels real, viejo,” he said after telling Rangel about the mess in which he was involved and showing him the protuberance on the back of his head and describing the murder scene of Ramiro the Cloak and even his stop at police headquarters to have his fingerprints taken and for the inspections of his and Yoyi’s fingernails. “The investigators say that someone was walking around that vacant field. The man left footprints, but they don’t know if he found anything … But if he knew where what he was looking for was, then he nearly certainly took it and flew the coop, so Manolo says it doesn’t make much sense to keep looking, and I’m of the same opinion … And that somebody who took it is almost probably the murderer, of course, because if he isn’t, then who the hell is it going to be? This seems to leave aside the possibility of a settling of accounts and focuses everything on the robbery … Now the hope is that the shitty cell phone they stole from me helps them track down the guy … Although I don’t think he would be stupid enough to start using it. Do you know how you find a cell phone if no calls are made? Because I don’t have the foggiest idea, and I imagine that you don’t, either. My friend Yoyi says that in the American movies it’s so easy … And if they find this character, I don’t think that the son of a bitch Manolo will call me to tell me. That lazy bastard is raging at me. Those madmen asked for my passport. My passport! Look, Manolo acted just like you used to when I did some outrageous thing, remember?”
For ten years, Antonio Rangel had held the responsibility of being Conde’s supervisor in the Criminal Investigation Unit. Before that, he had been the one who’d discovered the potential as an investigator of a young, unorthodox, and irreverent policeman who was allergic to weapons and violence, who read too much, aspired to write, and said he was fueled by his gut feelings, prejudgments, and premonitions: a compendium of what a policeman could not be. And, in essence, Rangel had not been mistaken. Throughout those years, always tense when it came to work, both men had learned that there existed between them deeper affinities, and they became friends. But the friendship born and nurtured did not represent any authoritative weakness on the part of the major, who had been on the verge of putting Conde on leave several times, and even, on one occasion, had cut back his responsibilities and returned him to the records pit from which he had previously extracted him once he’d noticed his powers of deduction. Ten years after their initial encounter, when Rangel was found guilty of ignoring certain acts of corruption by his subordinates, the least drastic solution was to make him take an early retirement and send him home. In the face of what he considered an injustice, Conde’s response in solidarity had been to leave the police as well, something he had been planning to do for some time already.
Following that disaster, Rangel had chewed on his frustration, without allowing himself the additional humiliation of lowering himself to protest the arbitrariness to which he’d been subjected. He punished himself so diligently that in the end, he managed the rebellion of a vein within his skull. It had been a difficult time, in which the former major always looked more like a bird who’d fallen from the nest, since his demotion coincided with the unleashing of the Crisis, throughout which, as on more than one occasion the old man’s wife had confessed to Conde, they had survived (in truth, they still did) thanks to the financial help provided by their two daughters, who lived outside Cuba: because the official police pension would not have been enough to get through even half the month. Less still when the man’s physical decline occurred and he needed special attention to keep him alive.
At one point, sometime after his onerous exit from the police, Rangel had confided his frustrations to Conde:
“Sometimes I think I really should have let myself be bought. Now I might have something to get by on and I wouldn’t be dependent on what my daughters send me … Living on charity, even when it’s from your own family, is humiliating. At least, for me, it’s humiliating. And I don’t want to ask anyone any favors to get me a job as an assistant manager or head of supplies for the hotel for foreigners or any of that crap soldiers and old policemen do to try to make some extra cash and feel like they can keep ordering others around … They fucked up my life; I am an untouchable. The only son of a bitch who comes to this house is you, Mario Conde … What a disaster … And you know what? I haven’t hung myself from one of those trees in the yard because I know that I would also kill María Luisa and make my daughters suffer … That’s why I’m still alive, but enraged each day, from morning to night … That rage and humiliation are going to be the death of me, Conde…”
Those words, said by a man who had always seemed to be made of stainless steel, returned to Conde’s mind on each visit he made from Rangel’s initial decline until his nearly vegetative state. And he knew that the greatest desire of the best head of police he’d ever known was to be able to die as soon as possible. But nature punished him by keeping him in his shitty life.
“What worries me, viejo, is that because of the Virgin or whatever it is that is worth so much or that someone believes is worth so much, they’ve already killed two people. Because that’s how things are these days: they’ll kill anyone over anything … Or nothing. To give you an idea of what it’s like out there, listen to the story … Manolo told me a few days ago that three guys had killed a kid just to look tough. You heard right. They challenged each other to see who would knife him, and the poor kid who was just walking by, not bothering anyone, they knifed him so repeatedly that they killed him: they perforated his liver and his lungs … twenty-two times. Just to play, to show off, because every one of those characters had a knife on him and they were drunk and bored. That’s what we’ve come to, viejo. So be happy you are no longer a policeman, as I am happy, because now, it’s a jungle out there. And it’s getting worse and worse … You cannot imagine the state of things. This same neighborhood of Easterners where they gave me this knock to the head, you’ve never seen anything like it, how those people live, amid shit and violence, subsisting on whatever they come up with. Yes, viejo, that’s what we’ve come to … And it’s happening right in Havana and all over the country; don’t think this is geographic determinism. No, no … Dammit, my cigar went out!”
He lit the cigar again, which he had forgotten as he was relating his sorrows of a former policeman. When he saw that it was properly lit, he looked out toward the street.
“I wish you could say something to me, viejo. At least to tell me if I’m wrong. Like you used to do…”
Conde registered movement with his peripheral vision. What had it been? He looked at Rangel, because the fluttering seemed to have come from him, and then he saw that the old man was lightly lifting his pointer finger. Conde looked at his hand, then at the sick man’s eyes.
“Did you move your finger because you wanted to move it?”
Conde waited. Rangel moved his finger.
“Well…” He hesitated, thinking. “Look, viejo, if the answer is that you moved your finger because you wanted to move it, lift it twice, okay?”
He waited again, concentrating on Rangel’s pointer finger which finally rose once. And, a second later, he repeated the motion.
“Well, damn, this is great,” Conde rejoiced and thought he saw a flash of intelligence cross his former boss’s face. “How long have you been able to do that?”
Conde waited for a response that didn’t come.
“Well, that doesn’t matter … Now tell me something, do you think I’m a hopeless imbecile?”
Rangel lifted his finger, and moved again.
“So that’s what you think of me … Well, you always thought it … But, tell me, do you also think that among what they stole from Bobby’s house, there’s really something worth a lot?”
Conde remained expectant. One, two movements of the finger.
“And what’s worth a lot is the jewelry, right?”
More waiting: Rangel’s hand remained at rest.
“So then, viejo, it’s really the Virgin?”
Conde leaned a little closer toward the old man. And he saw him move his finger twice.
“The Virgin! Because She has something inside, diamonds, I don’t know what?”
The old man’s hand remained static, as if dead.
“Because of the Virgin Herself?”
Twice, the finger confirmed, perhaps with more precise strength.
“Because She has powers, or someone believes that She does?”
Rangel lifted his finger three times.
Conde was about to scratch his head, but stopped himself. Two times was yes. Three times?
“Yes and no?” he hazarded a guess.
Two motions of the finger.
“Aha … So then … Because She is an antique?”
Rangel confirmed again.
“And because She is an antique and the internet says She’s worth a lot of money, as the Cloak told me?”
Another confirmation.
“So, they’re killing people for an antique Virgin who is worth a lot of money. And because She has powers?”
Rangel controlled his fingers.
“Because someone believes in those powers, like Bobby?”
The former major moved his finger twice more. Conde knew it, Rangel was still the best boss the Criminal Investigation Unit had ever or would ever have. And at that moment, he discovered that his deathly quality cigar had gone out again. Since he had money on him, how in the hell had it not occurred to him to buy a Montecristo so he could gift its aroma to old Antonio Rangel?
“Is this cigar a national disgrace?”
Two movements of the finger. Said and confirmed: a disgrace.
* * *
Since the headache had diminished but not disappeared, Conde decided to take refuge in a safe place. But, before going to Tamara’s house, he stopped by his own and devoted some time to making dinner for Garbage II: a sort of risotto loaded with fairly bad chicken picadillo to which he added some strips of Cuban pork shoulder to improve the taste. And a pinch of salt, just like Garbage II, who loathed flavorless food, liked it. Watching his dog eat, Conde thought about the possibility of taking him with him during his stays at Tamara’s house; it caused him pain and shame to leave him alone, now that that whirlwind Garbage II had become old and dependent. Old age and neglect surround me, he thought. What if I take him to Carlos’s house?
When Tamara saw him arrive with his new look, she put a hand over her mouth. With the gesture, Conde motioned at her to remain calm and went to the guest bathroom mirror and looked at himself for the first time since he’d received the knock to the head. What little hair he had left looked like a matted glop, and his face like a field after a battle. The shirt, two sizes larger than his own, made him look like a scarecrow.
“María Luisa, Rangel’s wife, lent me the shirt … Mine was covered in blood,” he said as if he had just returned from the dead. “I have to take a shower, come with me and I’ll explain.”
Tamara followed him to the master bathroom and watched him undress and enter the shower. Only when he’d allowed the water to run over his head and body and drain darkly did Conde begin to narrate his peripatetic day. She asked him some questions and went out to get him the other set of clean clothes that he strategically kept at her house. When she went out, she took the dirty clothing with her, holding it by the tips of her fingers, as if it were infectious material.
Naked, Conde sat on top of the toilet and Tamara delicately dried his head. Then, she examined his wound.
“It’s not big … But any scalp wound causes a lot of bleeding.”
“They almost killed me, Tamara … They hit me so hard. And I was bleeding and bleeding,” Conde exaggerated. “Dry my back, please, everything hurts.”
The woman agreed and with similar care went on drying the man’s skin until, standing in front of him again, she saw Conde’s physical response.
“Really?”
“You are my Viagra…”
“Well forget about doing the tango … There’s nothing for you today. You have to rest.”
“The warrior’s rest,” Conde admitted, watching himself quickly and inexorably go flaccid as Tamara approached him with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in her hands. While she treated him, he yelled as if being tortured.
They ate in the kitchen and Tamara offered him a long drink from the bottle of whiskey a patient had given her, that she had been saving for special occasions. When he felt more relaxed, he searched for the cordless phone and dialed Manolo Palacios’s number.
“It’s me, Manolo.”
“I know that already … Aren’t you dead?”
“I’m more alive than ever … Tell me, what happened with the cell phone?”
“Nothing, they removed the card and threw it out. They might have thrown out the device, too. They took it from you so you wouldn’t able to call anyone.”
“And did they end up finding the Bat?”
“Yes … And he couldn’t have been the one who killed Ramiro … He was at the League Against Blindness from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon … He started shaking when he found out about Ramiro.”
“So, what do you have, then?”
“Several footprints in the vacant field, but nothing that looks like anything was buried. We took the search dogs to cover the sites where Ramiro could have been and it looks like that son of a bitch went there to piss and shit. Too many tracks … The dogs were worthless. We also have traces that someone entered through Ramiro’s window, but this could have been anyone, even Ramiro himself when he went to the field…”
“So, almost nothing,” Conde concluded.
“Besides the two dead people…”
Conde nodded. “So did the coffee cups show up?”
“No. And the thermos didn’t have any prints. It was wiped clean.”
“So why did you tell Ramiro that you were with State Security?”
“What are you talking about, Conde?”
“About Ramiro telling me that someone from State Security was after him because of Yúnior…”
“Ramiro was talking shit.”
On his end, Conde nodded and closed his eyes. “You know what, Manolo? I was at Major Rangel’s house.”
There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone.
“How’s the viejo doing?”
“The same.”
A guilty silence.
“I need to go and see him. I’m a fake … But this job. I’m still stuck in this shitty office…”
“I spoke with him … Yes, I spoke with him … Not with words, but I spoke with him … And the viejo also thinks that the key to everything is the Virgin. Everyone thinks so…”
Manolo engaged in a much more prolonged silence on the other end of the line. He knew that Rangel’s police instincts had extraordinary abilities.
“And what do you think?”
“I think you can set aside any possibility that all of this has something to do with Yúnior’s old debts or even Ramiro’s … That’s why, early tomorrow—”
This time, Manolo immediately reacted. “Don’t even dare, Conde! Here at headquarters, I have your friend Bobby and the Bat, the guy who bought the stolen things from Yúnior and a certain Manduco the Albino, who was also a buddy of Yúnior and Ramiro’s … And we’re putting the screws to them to the max because one of them has to know something. Do you want me to bring you over here, too, huh? Tell me. This is a police case, Conde, there are two deaths, and, even if they were completely scum, I’m getting a lot of pressure from the higher-ups … There’s even talk of a serial killer! So don’t even get involved. Because I swear to you that I’ll also reserve a room for you at this hotel. I swear on my mother that I’ll do it, Conde, on my mother.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll stay still … But anything you find out, you’ll tell me, right? For old times’ sake, Manolo. So I can tell old Rangel later…”
Manolo sighed. Conde closed his eyes and raised his shoulders to protect himself from the explosion.
“Mario Conde, you are the most twisted, blackmailing son of a bitch on this island and all of its damned keys!” And he hung up.
Conde opened his eyes and smiled. He showed Tamara the empty glass and grimaced in pain. He needed more medication.
12.
