Read Online Havana Gold by Leonardo Padura - Free Book Online

Milagros, in Santos Suárez, and still lived there thirty-eight years later. Things had improved in the tenement in recent times; the death of the next-door neighbour had freed up a room they’d gained without major legal complications – “because of my ballsy father” Candito had commented – to the only room in the family’s original dwelling, and thanks to the high ceilings of that old fin-de-siècle building, devalued and turned into a rooming-house in the fifties, his father had built a wooden mezzanine reached by a ladder so it now began to seem like home: two bedrooms in the part closest to heaven, and the final fulfilment of the ancestral dream of owning their own bathroom, a kitchen and a dining room on the ground floor. Red Candito’s parents were now dead, his elder brother was into the sixth year of his eight-year sentence for violent robbery and Red’s wife had divorced him and taken their two children with her. Candito now enjoyed his extensive home with a placid, twenty-something mulatto who helped him in his work: the production of home-made women’s shoes which were permanently in demand.

    The Count and Red Candito had met when the Count started at La Víbora Pre-Uni and Candito was making his third attempt to pass an eleventh grade he’d never pass. Out of the blue, one day when they’d both had the door shut in their face because they’d arrived ten minutes late, the Count handed a cigarette to that coppery raisin-coloured youth and thus sparked off a friendship that had lasted sixteen years and which Conde had always made best use of: from the night when Candito’s protection prevented people stealing his food during a school camp to the sporadic rendezvous of recent times when the Count needed advice or information.
    When he saw him come in, Red Candito looked surprised. It was months since he’d had a visit and, although the Count was his friend, a visit from the policeman was never just a friendly occurrence for Candito – at least until the Count showed this one was any different.
    â€œWell, fuck me, if it isn’t the Count,” he said after looking down the passageway and checking nobody was around, “what’s brought you to this neck of the woods?”
    The lieutenant shook his hand and smiled.
    â€œHey, pal, how come you always look so young?”
    Candito stepped back and pointed out to him one of the wrought-iron armchairs.
    â€œAlcohol preserves me on the inside and my head, that handy gift from God, on the outside: it’s as hard as
nails,” and he shouted inside. “Put the coffee on, our pal the Count’s here.”
    Candito raised his hands as if asking an umpire for more time, and went over to a small wooden cabinet and extracted his personal medicine for internal conservation: he showed the Count an almost full bottle of vintage rum that stirred up the thirst provoked by Caridad Delgado’s impregnable bar. He put two glasses on the table and poured out the rum. Cuqui pulled to one side the curtain separating the living-room from the kitchen and smiled in at them.
    â€œHow’s things, Conde?”
    â€œHere I am, waiting on my coffee. Although it’s not so urgent now,” he replied, as he took the glass Candito was offering him. The girl smiled and silently popped her head back behind the curtain.
    â€œHey, that girl’s a handful for you, isn’t she?”
    â€œThat’s why I get up to my tricks to bring in a few pesos,” nodded Candito tapping his pocket.
    â€œUntil the day you get caught.”
    â€œHey, guy, this is all legal. But if I get stuck in a corner I can send for you, can’t I?”
    The Count smiled and thought that, of course, he could. Ever since he’d started working as a professional detective, Red Candito had helped him to solve various problems and both knew the Count’s helping hand in times of need was the other side