I glanced across at the army car and saw that López had recovered a little and was staring straight back at me. Probably wondering what kind of a lousy deal I had made to save his lousy skin. Or maybe it was Quevedo he was looking at. Possibly López was hoping he might get a chance to pull a trigger on the lieutenant himself. Just as soon as he had grown some new fingernails. He had more right to do it than I did, too. My hatred of the young lieutenant was only getting started. López had a good head start on me in that respect.

López closed his eyes again and laid his head on the seat. The two soldiers were pulling a box out of a hole in the ground. It was time to leave. If we were allowed. Quevedo was just the type to break a deal just because he could. And there would be nothing that I could do about it, either. I had always known that was a possibility, and had figured it was worth the risk. After all, it wasn’t my weapons cache. But I hadn’t figured on Quevedo turning me into his pet informer. Already I hated myself. More than I already hated myself.

I bit my lip for a moment, and then said, “All right. I kept my end of the deal. This deal. The arms cache for López. So how about it? Are you going to let him go, like you agreed? I’ll be your dirty little spy, Quevedo, but only if you keep your end of this. D’you hear? You keep your word or you can send me back to Vienna and be damned.”

“That was a brave speech,” he said. “I admire you for it. No, really I do. One day in the future when you’re feeling a little less emotional about this, you can tell me all about being a policeman in Hitler’s Germany. I’m sure I’d be fascinated to find out more and understand what it must have been like. I’ve always been interested in history. Who knows? Maybe we’ll discover that we have something in common.”

He raised a forefinger as if he’d only just thought of something.

“One thing I really don’t understand: why you ever wanted to stick your neck out for a man like Alfredo López.”

“Believe me, I’m asking myself the same question.”

Quevedo smiled a smile of disbelief. “I don’t buy that. Not for a moment. When we were driving over here from Marianao just now, I asked him about you. And he told me that before today he’d only met you three times in his life. Twice at the home of Ernest Hemingway. And once at his office. And he said it was you who did him a good turn, not the other way around. Before today, that is. That you got him out of a tight spot once before. He didn’t say what that was. And frankly, I’ve already asked him so many questions I didn’t feel like pursuing the matter. Besides, he has no more fingernails to lose.” He shook his head. “So. Why? Why help him again?”

“Not that it’s any of your damn business, but López gave me a reason to believe in myself again.”

“What reason?”

“Nothing you would understand. I hardly understand it myself. But it was enough to make me want to carry on in the hope that my life might mean something.”

“I must have misjudged him. I took him for a deluded fool. But you make him sound like some kind of saint.”

“Every man finds his redemption where and when he can. One day, perhaps, when you’re where I am now, you’ll remember that.”

23

I DROVE ALFREDO LÓPEZ BACK TO FINCA VIGÍA. He was in bad shape, but I didn’t know where the nearest hospital was, and neither did he.

“I owe you my life, Gunther,” he said. “And a great deal of thanks.”

“Forget it. You don’t owe me anything. But please don’t ask me why. I’m through explaining myself for one day. That bastard Quevedo has an annoying habit of asking questions you’d rather not answer.”

López smiled. “Don’t I know it?”

“Of course. I’m sorry. It was nothing compared to what you must have been through.”

“I could use a cigarette.”

I kept a pack of Luckies in the glove box. At the junction of the road north into San Francisco de Paula I pulled up and put one in his mouth.

“Here,” I said, finding a match and lighting it.

He puffed for a moment and nodded his thanks.

“Let me do that for you.” I fetched the cigarette from his lips. “Just don’t expect me to come into the bathroom with you.”

I put the cigarette back in his mouth and drove on.

We reached the house. There had been a strong wind the previous night, and some of the ceiba tree’s leaves and branches were strewn across the steps in front of the house. A tall Negro was picking them up and putting them in a wheelbarrow, but he might just as easily have been putting them on the ground, as if someone had ordered the man to honor López’s return with a carpet of palms. Either way, he was making slow work of it. Like he’d just got two numbers on the bolita.

“Who’s that?” asked López.

“The gardener,” I said. I pulled up next to the Pontiac and switched off the engine.

“Yes, of course. For a moment-” He grunted. “The previous gardener committed suicide, you know. Drowned himself in the well.”

“I guess that explains why no one here seems to drink water very much.”

“Noreen thinks there’s a ghost.”

“No, that would be me.” I looked at him and frowned. “Can you make it up the steps?”

“I might need a bit of help.”

“You should be in a hospital.”

“That’s what I kept on telling Quevedo. But by then he’d stopped listening to me. That was after he gave me the free manicure.”

I got out of the car and slammed the door. Around there, that was like ringing the doorbell. I went around to the passenger’s side and opened the door for him. He was going to need a lot of that in the coming days, and I was already imagining myself driving away again, leaving her to it. I’d done enough. If he wanted to scratch the back of his head, Noreen could do it.

She came out of the front door as López stepped out of the car and swayed like a drunk who still had room for more. Gingerly he held on to the window pillar for a moment with the inside of his wrists and then put his spine into a smile for Noreen as she hurried down the steps. His lips parted, and the cigarette he was still smoking fell onto his shirt-front. I grabbed the cigarette, like the shirt actually mattered. It was a sure thing he wouldn’t be wearing it to the office again. Lots of blood on sweat-stained white cotton was hardly fashionable that year.

“Fredo,” she said, anxiously. “Are you all right? My God, what has happened to your hands?”

“The cops were expecting Horowitz at their annual fund-raiser,” I said.

López smiled, but Noreen wasn’t amused.

“I don’t see what there is to joke about, Bernie,” she said. “Really I don’t.”

“You had to be there, I guess. Look, when you’ve finished getting stiff with me, your legal friend here deserves to be in a hospital. I’d have driven him to one myself, but Fredo insisted we drive here first and convince you that he’s all right. I guess he rates you a higher priority than playing the piano again. That’s quite understandable, of course. I feel much the same way.”

Noreen wasn’t listening to most of that. She retuned her wavelength the moment I said “hospital.” She said, “There’s one in Cotorro. I’ll take him there myself.”

“Hop in and I’ll drive you.”

“No, you’ve done enough. Was it very difficult? Getting him out of police custody.”

“A little more difficult than putting a request in the suggestion box. And it was the army that had him, not the police.”

“Look, why don’t you wait in the house? Make yourself at home. Fix yourself a drink. Ask Ramón to make you something to eat if you want. I won’t be long.”

“I really ought to be running along. After the events of this morning, I feel a pressing need to renew all my insurance policies.”

“Bernie, please. I want to thank you properly. And speak to you about something.”