Havana Noir by Achy Obejas

What for? I never pressured him about anything. It’s possible I may even have laughed a bit. The big shots in this country, in order to distinguish themselves even more from the average joe—so they confide when they’re in trusted company, or when they think they are—never give their kids extravagant names like Yoandrys, Plastidio, Inkajurel, or Amón Ra. No way! So the sinister suspect had to be named Fernando, Ernesto, Camilo, Rafael, or something like that. And just like he didn’t tell me his name, he didn’t ask for mine. He didn’t need it. He always called me “you,” just “you.” That’s not counting the expletives, of course.
    A little before his arrest, a photo of him ran in Granma and other newspapers. Well, not of him . The guy in the photo wasn’t him, it couldn’t have been him. The press release that went with it warned the citizens of Havana to remain vigilant, ready for combat. And to collaborate by providing any pertinent information that might help the biggest manhunt ever to catch the most dangerous criminal our country had known in these last few years of revolutionary struggle against crime and blah blah blah. Very grandiose, that little press release. So much so that I almost called them at one of those numbers they give to let them know they were after the wrong guy, and that if they persisted on that path, the biggest manhunt ever would be a miserable flop. In fact, I did call. One, two, three times. But I could never get through. The lines were always busy. Apparently, there were a lot of people wanting to call in with pertinent information. I recovered my senses after a while—thank God!—and I stopped calling.
    Soon word got out that the image wasn’t an actual photo but a police sketch created on a computer according to a description by a witness, his latest victim, who, by some miracle, had managed to escape into the thicket around the Prince’s Castle. Ah, well, that explained the mistake, I told myself. The poor girl had been, quite understandably, a nervous wreck, and had lost her sense of reality. That’s why she hadn’t described the real assailant but rather some demonic being sprung from her imagination or from popular mythology, like the Man With the Backpack, the Fat Guy, the Rascal on the Run, or whatever; nobody who actually exists. That explanation struck me even then as a little convoluted, a bit of a stretch, but it gave me a certain relief, I don’t know why.
    I was waiting for the guy to call me so I could hear his version of what had happened on the night of the unfortunate incident by the Prince’s Castle. Curiosity coursed through my veins. Although, I admit, I was also looking forward to the malevolent fun of mocking him. As far as I knew, until that incident, none of his “meatballs,” as the stupid pig called his victims, had gotten away before.
    “You’re losing your touch, baby,” I was going to whisper in a cold, cruel tone. “Ha! Ha! You’re on a slippery slope, going straight down. You’re practically finished. Why, you can’t even take the dog out for a walk on a leash! Don’t you see that at the end of the day, no matter what you do, the babes are going to beat you? Don’t you see, you fool, that we’re better than you? Oh, Ted Bundy, you have no idea how much I pity you. You know, if I were you, I’d retire. Don’t get mad, man, but with your utter lack of street smarts and that microscopic little dick, you’re not going anywhere. You know what I think? You should get yourself a husband, that’s what! A really brutish macho, with a real twelve-inch super dick who fucks you up the ass the way you deserve and makes you see stars and…”
    I was really quite inspired. I spent various nights waiting for his call, very excited, smoking cigarette after cigarette, with all my lights off and my gaze turned on the sky above Havana—one of the darkest in the world—as I went through my burlesque speech in my head, making it even more