Read Online Havana Noir by Achy Obejas - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Achy Obejas
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groggy.
She quickly pushed him off, got up as fast as she could, and, in spite of her own dizziness, the nausea, and that piercing pain she felt in her lower abdomen, she took off running toward the avenue. She ran faster than she thought humanly possible, all the while screaming for help…Groggy and everything, the bastard ran after her. But there’s ample evidence that it’s difficult to get anywhere when your pants are down by your knees. So the lunatic from Macagua 8 was only able to take a step or two, then he let loose a horrific howl, got tangled up…and fell flat on the ground.
That turned out to be his Waterloo. The nurse went straight back to Calixto and avoided doing what any inexperienced girl would have done. She did not take off all her clothes and throw them into an incinerator, nor did she swallow a paracetamol or piroxicam or any other powerful analgesic, nor did she set herself under a long shower—thereby destroying all material evidence of a crime which could in the future serve to indict the delinquent, praying to all the saints that she not be pregnant, that she not have contracted AIDS or any venereal disease. Those are the kinds of things that free all sorts of bastards. But not this time. To the asshole’s dismay, this nurse had some street sense. Without any drama, she went directly to the emergency room and explained everything to the doctor.
After that, everything flowed according to the law. First, there was a call to the police. Then there was a medical exam to confirm that in fact there had been a rape and to collect, among other evidence, semen, for future DNA comparison. By dawn, they had created the police sketch and had faxed it to the newsrooms at Granma and the other papers. This last tactic of going to the press is not a typical part of the process in cases such as this. The official media here—in other words, the media—usually just focus on letting us know that we live in the best and most democratic of all possible countries, that the imperialist enemy jealously tries to make us look like cowards because we were almost champions in the World Baseball Classic, that there will be sunshine and heat this afternoon with some scattered rains and lightning storms, while we will continue to do heroic battle against the mosquitoes which perpetuate the dengue epidemic, and that it’s those treacherous Jews who are the real bad guys in the Middle East. It’s always the same, exactly the same. And there’s no crime report, of course. Whoever said there was any crime in Cuba the Beautiful? Had to be an imperialist, no question about it. Oh, I don’t think there’s ever been more boring media!
This, however, was an exceptional case. The rumors on the street about the malevolent psychopath and his perverse activities had far exceeded the limit of what could be an acceptable urban legend. Horribly mutilated corpses kept showing up at the morgue at a dizzying rate, while the police just ran in circles, disoriented, without a single lead, without any ideas of any kind, without anything to go on in order to even begin a manhunt. The assassin had them cornered and was making them look like fools. It had gotten rather shameless, insolent, and disrespectful. It was simply intolerable in our Socialist nation! So much that, finally, for once, they crawled for help to the media.
And the gambit paid off. A retired old man who knew by sight a certain ne’er-do-well nicknamed the Beast, and who, to top it off, had just seen him acting rather suspiciously, hiding behind a flamboyan tree in John Lennon Park no less (how shameless could he get?), rushed to offer the location of the suspect’s usual hangout. And so various squad cars, with sirens going full blast, ran full speed to arrest him. It turned out that this Beast guy, so lacking in inhibitions, was not lacking a police record. He was trapped. He had already been arrested in the past for disorderly conduct when he threw glasses and
She quickly pushed him off, got up as fast as she could, and, in spite of her own dizziness, the nausea, and that piercing pain she felt in her lower abdomen, she took off running toward the avenue. She ran faster than she thought humanly possible, all the while screaming for help…Groggy and everything, the bastard ran after her. But there’s ample evidence that it’s difficult to get anywhere when your pants are down by your knees. So the lunatic from Macagua 8 was only able to take a step or two, then he let loose a horrific howl, got tangled up…and fell flat on the ground.
That turned out to be his Waterloo. The nurse went straight back to Calixto and avoided doing what any inexperienced girl would have done. She did not take off all her clothes and throw them into an incinerator, nor did she swallow a paracetamol or piroxicam or any other powerful analgesic, nor did she set herself under a long shower—thereby destroying all material evidence of a crime which could in the future serve to indict the delinquent, praying to all the saints that she not be pregnant, that she not have contracted AIDS or any venereal disease. Those are the kinds of things that free all sorts of bastards. But not this time. To the asshole’s dismay, this nurse had some street sense. Without any drama, she went directly to the emergency room and explained everything to the doctor.
After that, everything flowed according to the law. First, there was a call to the police. Then there was a medical exam to confirm that in fact there had been a rape and to collect, among other evidence, semen, for future DNA comparison. By dawn, they had created the police sketch and had faxed it to the newsrooms at Granma and the other papers. This last tactic of going to the press is not a typical part of the process in cases such as this. The official media here—in other words, the media—usually just focus on letting us know that we live in the best and most democratic of all possible countries, that the imperialist enemy jealously tries to make us look like cowards because we were almost champions in the World Baseball Classic, that there will be sunshine and heat this afternoon with some scattered rains and lightning storms, while we will continue to do heroic battle against the mosquitoes which perpetuate the dengue epidemic, and that it’s those treacherous Jews who are the real bad guys in the Middle East. It’s always the same, exactly the same. And there’s no crime report, of course. Whoever said there was any crime in Cuba the Beautiful? Had to be an imperialist, no question about it. Oh, I don’t think there’s ever been more boring media!
This, however, was an exceptional case. The rumors on the street about the malevolent psychopath and his perverse activities had far exceeded the limit of what could be an acceptable urban legend. Horribly mutilated corpses kept showing up at the morgue at a dizzying rate, while the police just ran in circles, disoriented, without a single lead, without any ideas of any kind, without anything to go on in order to even begin a manhunt. The assassin had them cornered and was making them look like fools. It had gotten rather shameless, insolent, and disrespectful. It was simply intolerable in our Socialist nation! So much that, finally, for once, they crawled for help to the media.
And the gambit paid off. A retired old man who knew by sight a certain ne’er-do-well nicknamed the Beast, and who, to top it off, had just seen him acting rather suspiciously, hiding behind a flamboyan tree in John Lennon Park no less (how shameless could he get?), rushed to offer the location of the suspect’s usual hangout. And so various squad cars, with sirens going full blast, ran full speed to arrest him. It turned out that this Beast guy, so lacking in inhibitions, was not lacking a police record. He was trapped. He had already been arrested in the past for disorderly conduct when he threw glasses and
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