Tropic of Darkness (5 page)

CHAPTER

SEVEN

As dawn's light touched the suburbs, Doctor Julio Alfonsine let himself quietly out of his apartment, went down to the garage, and then headed off in the direction of work, a hospital near the center of town.

He was freezing cold and shaking, even worse than he had been the last couple of days. And his eyes kept blurring over so that he could barely focus on the road. Thank heavens, at this early hour, there was practically no one about and the streets were clear of traffic.

Good. That was good. He didn't want to risk injuring anybody that he didn't have to. But he had to put a stop to this. And if his life could not be saved, then maybe his immortal soul?

He'd already been to confession, but knew that that was not enough. This was not only to do with spiritual things. It was actually physical, a matter of the blood.

He'd checked himself a hundred times and found the same result. His blood was growing cooler by the hour.

He reached an intersection with its lights red and began to slow. When suddenly, his sight failed him completely.

He stamped hard on the brake, his hands digging into the steering wheel. And once the car had stopped, he clapped his hands to his face, pawing at his eyelids.

Nothing changed. A perfectly seamless darkness kept on staring back at him until the man whimpered with fright.

Then two points of brightness punctured the black, and began moving up to him. Two small dots of emerald green, like teardrops lying on their sides.

Eyes, he could make out as they drew closer.

Alfonsine let out a wail and shoved himself back in his seat, trying to escape them. But it did him not the slightest good, since they appeared to be inside his head.

He moaned and struggled as they drifted up and studied him. Then they faded back. Dim outlines of the street returned, swimming gradually into focus.

Alfonsine shuddered and mopped the sweat off his face. He stepped on the gas and sped across the intersection.

Damn it!

If he hadn't felt so lonely, that night.

If he hadn't been so helpless under the searchlight of a lovely woman's smile.

And if he hadn't gone looking for such pleasures at the Karibe club.

*   *   *

The hospital, when Alfonsine arrived, was drenched in that profound hush which precedes the start of yet another busy day. The night staff were leadenly drowsy, the patients all asleep.

His footsteps echoed as he made his way along a corridor, Occasionally a cough or a moan would slow his progress, but he was not challenged by a single person.

He let himself in through the door of the blood bank. Went to the refrigerator that contained his own group and opened it. And found that there was not enough stored here for his purpose. Not for a complete replacement.

There was no point phoning round the other hospitals and getting some transferred. First of all, he would have to explain why he needed it. And second, there'd be too many people around by the time the stuff arrived.

He propped one of his hands against a wall. Breathed deeply, trying to steady himself. He could not give up now.

And he already had a fallback plan.

The fellow's name was Hector Lamazar, a construction worker, thirty-five years old and quite the picture of good health. But three weeks earlier, he'd fallen from high scaffolding. Been brought here in a coma, and was still held in its grasp.

The man was alone in a room just down the corridor from here. And would never do anything again but lie there like a block of wood. Alfonsine had heard several of his colleagues discussing it. Lamazar had suffered brain damage too serious to reverse.

And by fortunate coincidence, their blood types were the same.

Perhaps Alfonsine was even doing the man a favor. He kept telling himself that as he wheeled the fellow's bed along the passageway. It was a thought he clung onto for all that he was worth. Almost twenty years practicing medicine, saving lives. And today he was going to kill a man.

He shoved the bed in through the swing doors of operating theatre D. Once inside, he wedged a chair against the door handles, jamming them shut. Nobody was due for several hours yet, but there was no sense taking chances.

He drew Lamazar parallel with the operating table, merely a short gap separating them. Then he brought the transfusion apparatus over, with the necessary needles. Swabbed a spot on Lamazar's right arm. Rolled his own sleeve up and repeated the process on his left.

Alfonsine climbed up onto the table, pushed the needles in, and settled back. He watched the jars above him. Spurts of redness began gushing down their sides.

This was his only hope. And as for Lamazar, the man was quite incapable of suffering. It was like passing on his sickness to a piece of stone.

Five minutes went by. Then ten. Alfonsine remained as cold as ice, and was starting to become concerned.

Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Maybe he had been completely wrong, and it wasn't the blood after all.

His eyes began to slide closed with despair.

But then . . .

He felt the part of his arm around the needle start to warm up just a little. His eyelids snapped wide open and he held himself as still as he could.

A delicious new hotness began creeping down toward his fingers. Alfonsine stared over at his comatose bedfellow.

The man's face had taken on a deathly pallor. Every trace of color had been drawn out from his cheeks, deep gray shadows springing up beneath his eyes. He was taking on the illness like a sponge soaking up fluid.

“Thank you, my friend,” the doctor breathed. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The chill was subsiding throughout Alfonsine's body. Even his head was beginning to clear. The process was more than halfway finished. Triumph started welling up in him. He had faced death and terror in their purest forms, and found a way to conquer them.

At that very moment, though, an icy prickle started up in the fingertips of his left hand.

At first, it was not much different to picking up a chilled glass. Then it struck at him far more violently.

His fingers spasmed.

With an abject sense of horror, Alfonsine felt the newborn chill envelop his whole left arm. Felt it swamp his shoulder blades, his neck. And plant itself like a stiletto at the center of his breastbone.

Seconds, that was all he'd earned. A brief respite and nothing in the least bit more.

This was hopeless, and he understood that fully now. This was utterly futile. There was only one thing left to do.

Alfonsine steadied himself and then, raising himself on his elbows, pulled out one of the needles, letting the tubing drop away. He reached over to the man beside him. Got hold of the tube that was transferring blood and yanked it clear. No point pumping any more of the stuff into the poor guy.

He lowered himself back onto the table, let his eyelids flutter shut. And lay there, breathing shallowly.

His blood continued pumping through the other tube. Except that, by this time, it was splashing on the floor.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

The receptionist on the Toronto end of the line said, “I can put you through to Tom Burlington again, if you'd like?”

“No, thank you,” Manuel Cruz replied.

It was nine-thirty in the morning and promising to be an exceptionally hot day. And since his air conditioner was on the fritz again, he was sitting in his rolled-up shirtsleeves at his desk, a handkerchief clutched to his brow.

“I've already talked to him,” Manuel said. “Is there someone who knew Francis better? Perhaps, an actual friend?”

“We-ell, there's Colin Petrie, I suppose,” the receptionist replied. “He and Mr. Jackson started here at about the same time.”

“He'll have to do, then.”

There were eight rings on the extension before someone picked up.

“Uh-huh?” asked a laid-back-sounding voice.

When Manuel put down the handset a few minutes later, the day's heat was forgotten. The atmosphere actually seemed a little cooler, if anything.

An instinct you have, yes?
Carlos had said to him yesterday evening.

Manuel paused a short while, trying to think straight. Then he picked up the phone again and dialed the precinct house where his brother-in-law was stationed.

“Captain Esposito, if you please?”

“I'm sorry. He is out on call.”

“Do you know when he'll be back?”

“There's no telling, I'm afraid.”

He left a message instead. There was nothing Manuel could do but wait.

*   *   *

Carlos Esposito stood between the broken open doors of operating theatre D, his hands thrust in his pockets.

Hadn't little Manuel been telling him, just last night, about someone who had bled himself to death? He couldn't recall the details—to tell the truth, he'd been rather drunk.

But here was another curious suicide. And yet more blood.

The last time he'd seen this much, he had been in the army. Just a kid, back then. 1961,
La Batalla de Girón,
the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. The bodies of counterrevolutionaries had been washing up along the shoreline. And despite the sense of victory, it had been extremely ugly to behold.

At least then, there'd been a reason for it. Carlos could think of no sensible explanation for the scene in front of him.

The entire floor was smothered with a gluey reddish-brown. Bizarre. Why should anybody choose to end his life in such a way
and
take someone with him?

He had already questioned some of Doctor Julio Alfonsine's colleagues and got the same kind of replies from each. The man had been a good doctor, sound of judgment, with no obvious problems. A long-term bachelor, but comfortable enough with that. Nothing much wrong there, then.

Except that, for the past few days, the doctor had struck them as uneasy and vague-minded. He'd looked rather tired as well. Coming down with the flu, perhaps. They had even commented on it to him, but gotten no clear reply.

Yesterday had been his day off, so no one knew how the doctor had spent his last twenty-four hours.

Carlos kept on staring glumly at the bloodless corpse.

He'd a full enough case load as it was, and normally would not have bothered with a suicide. But his curiosity was engaged. He kept remembering his brother-in-law's comments.

One of his lieutenants was behind him in the corridor. Carlos told the man where he was going and put him in charge.

Dry, fiery heat washed over Carlos as he strode out through the parking lot. A load of people moaned about this kind of weather; never him. Far better than huddling indoors from the cold the way the Yanquis in New York and Washington did. He would not have changed this weather for the world.

He went across to his car, wound the windows down, and set off for the tunnel underneath the bay.

*   *   *

The old coastal fortifications seemed to waver as Carlos emerged near them on the eastern shore. The rocks that they were built upon glistened brilliantly in the sun. The sea beyond them threw up so much glare that it was difficult to look at for too long.

Distant palm trees looked ephemeral in the heat. Snatch at them and they might swirl apart.

Off beyond the ramparts was the old DeFlores residence. And Carlos—as was many people's custom when they passed this way—crossed himself quickly at the sight of the place. He wasn't much of a religious man, but his upbringing still guided him in certain matters. And he didn't think it foolish, since he did it without thinking very much at all.

He tried to avoid looking directly at the house. The legends said that it was haunted and he did, deep down, have some belief in ghosts.

The road carried him away from it and into the eastern part of town. In a few more minutes, he was pulling up outside the block where Doctor Alfonsine had lived. He found the building superintendent and received the spare keys to the apartment.

It was not the mess that Carlos remembered from his own bachelor days. According to his colleagues, Alfonsine had lived alone for decades and, as was often the case with such men, the apartment was rather too tidy if anything, the furniture neatly arranged, gleaming pots and pans hanging in order of size in the kitchen.

An ornament on top of the TV captured his attention straight away. It was a plastic model of a leaping sailfish and the legend on the base, when he stepped closer, turned out to read
SOUVENIR OF MIAMI
.

People like Doctor Alfonsine were hardly ever granted permits to leave Cuba, even for a short trip. So . . . a visiting relative, perhaps?

Other things began to point to that, before much longer. In a nearby cabinet was a brand-new Sony Walkman. And in the apartment's spare room he found two American coins in a drawer.

In the bedroom, there was one touch of untidiness. The bed was unmade, and its sheets heavily stained with dried sweat.

Carlos searched the nightstand, found a bulky manila envelope. And he tipped its contents out.

Photographs, newly developed by their smell. They were of the doctor and another, quite similar-looking fellow. A brother, or a cousin? They'd been taken mostly at nightspots. Carlos recognized El Galeon.

He again recalled what Manuel had told him last night. The two gringos who'd committed suicide had both been taken to such places. But so what? It was merely a coincidence, surely?

As well as the photos, there were tickets, menus, even serviettes. Visiting these places was a luxury that, by his own devices, Doctor Alfonsine could never have afforded. Hence the keepsakes. The man's relative must have paid for each of these excursions.

Carlos flicked through the paper scraps. There were quite a few, he noted, from the Karibe club.

And here was another photo, of the pair at that location. Carlos's brow furrowed as he studied it.

Alfonsine's relative was posed naturally enough, smiling at the camera. But the doctor himself . . .

He was looking at the chair to his left. The
empty
chair to his left. Like something had just caught his attention.

His face was deathly pale in the glare of the flashbulb, his expression transfixed.

A mistake, perhaps. Alfonsine simply hadn't noticed that the photo was being taken at that moment.

Carlos thumbed quickly through the rest, trying to find any more like it.

There were several. So he took one of them and put it in his pocket.