Murder in Havana (32 page)

He didn’t waste any time getting to Celia’s apartment.

Pauling took a taxi from his hotel to the
solar
and made his way down the alley. It had started to rain in the past twenty minutes, not hard, more a mist, but enough to have sent the alley dwellers indoors. He opened the ground-floor door and looked up the stairs. Celia’s door was closed, but a small shaft of light squeezed beneath it and spilled onto the landing.

He climbed the steps, paused, and knocked. By now, he knew she always left the door unlocked, but was reluctant to simply walk in. She said there would be someone with her—or had she? She originally said she was preparing to receive a visitor, someone she claimed could help him. But when she’d called him at the hotel, she hadn’t mentioned anyone.

He knocked again. Still no response. He raised his hand for another try but dropped it to the doorknob and turned it. As expected, the door was unlocked and opened easily.

“Celia?” he called through the opening. “It’s Max.”

He pushed the door open a little farther, stopped, and cocked his head. There was no sound coming from inside the apartment. He opened the door to its fullest extension and surveyed what he could see of the main room from where he stood on the landing. He saw that lights were
on in the kitchen and bathroom, although he couldn’t see into the rooms themselves.

He called her name one more time before stepping through the doorway. He looked at the white curtains; they were tied back. He approached the partly opened door to the bathroom and felt a solid presence behind it. Whoever was in there had chosen not to respond.

He placed his fingertips against the door, and pushed it fully open. What he saw hit him with the force of a physical blow to his stomach. The toilet lid was down. Slumped on it was Price McCullough. His white dress shirt was mostly unbuttoned. A tie hung over the chain-pull toilet tank. He wore trousers but his shoes were lined up just outside the shower. His feet were bare. His wide-open eyes testified to the incredulity of the last thing they’d seen, someone with a weapon who had sent a single bullet into his chest. The front of his shirt was stained red, and blood had pooled on his lap.

Pauling stood frozen. He made a tentative move to close the gap between his position and the body but restrained himself. Instead, he backed into the living room and turned in a slow, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle, looking for an answer, a reason for what he’d seen in the bathroom, and maybe its author. He went to the clothes closet. It was empty. So were the dresser drawers. The counter in the kitchen was clear of objects; only the cordial glass remained in the sink.

He returned to the living room and saw that the pile of papers on the small table just inside the door was gone. Everything was gone. It was as though no one had lived there.

The ringing phone startled him. He went to the small desk and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Celia? Is Celia there?”

Pauling recognized the voice. “Nico?”

“Yes.”

“It’s me, your pilot.”

“Oh, hello, Max.”

“Celia isn’t here,” Max said.

“When will she be back?”

“Ah—not for a while. She told me to be here for your call. Are we all set?”

“Yes. Tomorrow night. I have the documents you need.”

“Good. Where will we meet up?”

“Cojímar. It is a fishing village sixteen kilometers from Havana. There is a small motel by the sea, Casa de Mar y Sol.”

“What time?”

“Midnight.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You will have the money for me?”

“Of course.”

“And we will leave together.”

“That’s the deal.”

“Celia will be with you?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I’m sure she will.”

“Good. Until tomorrow.”

“Right. Until tomorrow.”

He hung up and took another look at McCullough, who now listed sideways, his head resting on the wall immediately next to the toilet. Pauling considered wiping his prints but they’d be everywhere—no time. He left the apartment, closing the door behind him, went down the stairs to the alley, and headed in the direction of the larger street at its open end. He was within six feet of it when he heard the police sirens, then saw two marked PNR cruisers come around the corner at breakneck speed. Pauling pressed himself into a doorway. The vehicles slid to a stop across the entrance to the alley and
uniformed and plainclothes cops spilled through the doors and ran down the alley, guns drawn, orders shouted.

Everyone from the cars had headed down the alley, leaving no one to observe Pauling as he stepped from the shadowy cover of the doorway and went to the street. He took one final look back to see them pouring through the downstairs door leading to the apartment where McCullough’s body waited for them. The reality was blatantly obvious. Someone had tipped them to the murder of a former senator. That someone had to be …

That unpleasant certainty flipped Pauling’s stomach as he walked away. But what really brought bile to his throat and mouth was the additional reality that she’d called the police to coincide with his arrival at the apartment.

She’d set him up.

Francisco Muñoz sat in his office at the precinct. A subordinate who’d been with the initial contingent at the apartment, and who had recognized the murder victim as the United States senator, had summoned the senior detective. Once there, Muñoz took over the investigation, including a thorough search of the apartment. McCullough’s wallet, which seemed to be intact, confirmed his identity, prompting Muñoz to call a superior at the Ministry of Interior, who put into motion the necessary notifications to other government officials, including Fidel Castro. Bobby Jo Brown, chief of section at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, had been awakened at his apartment. He contacted his supervisor at Langley, Virginia, who phoned President Walden’s national security advisor, who informed the president.

Muñoz looked down at items on his desk taken from the apartment. An officer had found a business card beneath a chair:
MAXWELL PAULING, PILOT, CALI FORWARDING, CALI, COLOMBIA
. The only other potential piece of seized evidence was the cordial glass found in the kitchen sink. It had been dusted for prints, as had numerous surfaces in the apartment—the phone, doorknobs, kitchen counter surfaces, the bathroom mirror, and the metal toothbrush holder. Muñoz leaned closer to the glass to better see the brown whorls indicating where fingers had
touched it. PNR’s budget had been drastically cut after the Special Period began. Expensive imported fingerprint powder had been replaced with the less sensitive brown powder produced locally from charred palm fronds.

“Pauling,” he muttered. How convenient that he’d left his calling card at the scene.

He opened a file folder bearing Pauling’s name. It had been started when he’d landed at the airport and unloaded the medical supplies from Colombia. The dispatcher there, after handling Pauling’s paperwork and calling a taxi for him, had made the call expected of him to the official at Minint responsible for collecting information on airport arrivals other than passengers on scheduled airlines.

An officer had been assigned to keep tabs on Pauling’s movements while the American was in Havana, although it was not a priority. The man’s credentials were in order, his reason for being there an acceptable one. There had been few notes in the file until the death of the German, Grünewald, and the questioning of Pauling regarding that death. There had been no reason to hold Pauling. Muñoz could have detained him, or even ordered him out of the country, but he’d declined to take either action. There were others in his position who took every opportunity, grabbed every excuse to harass foreigners, drill them with Cuban Communist doctrine, and embarrass them by booting them out of the country. Muñoz knew those colleagues acted out of frustration at the situation in which Cuba had found itself under the Special Period. He also knew that many of them were not happy with Castro’s Communist government. Nor was he. But you did what you had to do to keep your job and avoid censure. Surviving in Communist Cuba was the ultimate test of pragmatism.

“Pauling.”

Muñoz would have forgotten about him if the bound and gagged German, Weinert, hadn’t been delivered like an unwanted baby at his front door, and confirmed that it was Pauling who’d made the delivery. That was sufficient reason to put out an all-points on him. He wanted to question him about the accusation that the German was the one who’d killed Kurt Grünewald. Weinert wasn’t unknown to Muñoz. Minint had tracked him since his arrival from Heidelberg and had taken note of his behavior while in Havana. He’d been fingered as a prime suspect in the Grünewald killing because of his professional relationship to the victim and his general demeanor. Pauling was probably right, Muñoz thought.

But now this—a highly visible American visitor, a former United States senator, close friend and confidant of the American president, and leading businessman found murdered in cold blood—with Pauling implicated again.

Another detective poked his head into Muñoz’s office. “The apartment, Francisco, it is owned by an
escoria
, scum,” he said, using Castro’s favorite term to describe Cubans who had defected to Miami.

“It has been empty?”

“We are questioning everyone in the area now. There are three CDRs who live in the alley. Hopefully, we will learn who has been using the apartment.”

“The picture of Pauling. Where is it?”

“I have it.” He handed his boss the mug shots taken when Pauling was brought in for questioning in the Grünewald murder.

“See that every officer has this by morning.”

“The call,” Muñoz said. “It came from a woman?”

“Yes. She did not identify herself. She said a man had been murdered at the address.”

“She did not say who the victim was?”

“No, sir.”

The other detective left when Muñoz’s phone rang. He picked it up and heard the voice of the second-ranking official with the Ministry of Interior. There was no preliminary conversation. The minister said, “We are preparing a statement to give to the Americans regarding the senator’s death. You are, I assume, making good progress in your investigation.”

“Well, sir, it is very soon after the death and—”

“El Presidente wants the statement to indicate we are close to apprehending the killer. That is true, is it not?”

Muñoz held the phone away from his mouth as he sighed, then said, “Yes, sir, we are close to identifying the killer.”

“Who was it? A Cuban?”

“No, sir. It was an American.”

“American? What American?”

“His name is Pauling. Maxwell Pauling. We found evidence linking him to the crime, and have issued an all points bulletin.”

“What is his business in Cuba?”

“He is a pilot. He flew here from Colombia to deliver medical supplies. He was a suspect in the murder of the German, Grünewald.”

“I want a full report on my desk within the hour. Do you have a picture of this Pauling?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Include it in the report. CNN wants a statement. That the assailant was American like the victim is indeed fortunate. Within the hour.”

“Yes, sir.”