Free Havana Best Friends by Jose Latour Page B

seen before or again talked them into it. He told them to wait for a blue van with tinted windows at an intersection. Once inside the vehicle, they were blindfolded and driven around for half an hour before being let out in the garage of a house. The cameraman, light tech, and sound tech had all worn masks and spoken to each other in whispers. Once the shooting was over, they had been returned blindfolded to the pickup point. No, they had no idea where the house was. No, they didn’t see the van’s plates. And the pay? A hundred dollars.
    Describe the contact man, Pena had asked. The first hustler said he had brown eyes, the second swore they were green, the third hadn’t noticed. According to the two men he was clean-shaven; one of the women said he had a moustache. Three of them described him as being in his forties, the other two said he was in his fifties. They couldn’t even agree on the man’s height and weight. Knowing that they were being spun a line, Major Pena andhis subordinates wheedled and threatened, all to no avail. Finally the offenders were indicted, tried, and sentenced; the women to one year in prison, the men to three. And the investigation stalled. Pena and his special unit could do nothing but wait for a fresh lead. They would be overjoyed at Trujillo’s breakthrough.
    He climbed into bed beside his wife and set the alarm clock for 6:00 a.m. With hands clasped in his lap, Trujillo’s mind moved to Elena Miranda.
    The murdered man and his sister had not liked each other at all. One more case of relatives regarding each other with such suspicion it bordered on outright hostility. She seemed decent enough, clean-cut, self-effacing, sensible, still a very attractive woman. In her twenties she must have been stunning. Pablo’s antithesis? It seemed so.
    The lock on her brother’s bedroom proved what she’d said: “He lived his life, I lived mine.” His room was a mess; the rest of the house was neat. Well, the walls needed a lick of paint and the furniture new upholstery, but what Cuban’s home didn’t? Separate cooking, wanting to swap the large apartment for two, it all indicated conflicting personalities. He had seen it many times among divorced couples and in-laws forced to keep living under the same roof because of the housing shortage. Under forced cohabitation tempers get frayed, the police are called in to deal with everything from assault to homicide.
    Had Pablo Miranda been an underachiever? A kid spoiled by a powerful father who felt abandoned after his well-connected daddy lost all his privileges? Manuel Miranda. Trujillo tried to recall who the man had been. Certainly one of the few who once held all the cards and wrote all the rules, considering where he was serving time. A former politburo member or general or minister,for sure. A VIP, even in jail. In the morning he would have to find out whose duty it was to call the General Directorate of Prisons, report the murder of an inmate’s son, and ask to notify the father. They would probably let him come to the funeral, with two escorts, no handcuffs, maybe wearing civilian clothes.
    Suddenly, Trujillo sat up in bed. His wife stirred by his side. A politically motivated crime? Someone who had been screwed by the father and killed the son for revenge? Slowly, Trujillo lay back. Too far-fetched. No precedent as far as he knew. No, it couldn’t be. He yawned. It was the kind of case that wins kudos, back-slapping, and an instantaneous promotion for the officer who solves it. And to a lesser extent, the ill will of his equals. He decided that he would take a stab at it. But there was a lot of spadework to do.
    As Captain Trujillo drifted off to sleep, Pablo’s killer was boarding a plane bound for Cancún, Mexico.

    “If they’re all dirty movies, you’ve hit a fucking mine,” Major Pena said when he learned, at 7:15 the next morning, that Trujillo had put forty-three suspected pornographic videos in the storeroom. Trujillo