Tropic of Darkness Read Online Free PDF

thousands of people had decided that these surroundings were the ideal enhancement to their lifestyle, since it didn’t seem to bother them the least bit.
    They’d simply gotten used to it, he reckoned. Most of them had grown up with it. It was just the way things were.
    A sudden blast of music from around a corner drew him on. He stepped into the expanse of the Plaza de la Catedral, and saw immediately that it was one of those places where you just wanted to stop and rest awhile. The cathedral itself was so very badly weathered that it looked like it was made of pumice.
    But when you gazed around the place—the cool arches and pillars and the flowering vines—it was all pretty beautiful.
    A four-piece band was playing out on the terrace of a nearby cafe. That was what he’d heard.
    He found an empty table in the corner, ordered a rum Collins and then leaned back, watched and listened. It was merely a garden-variety four-piece combo, playing for tips the way that he’d once done. But they were marvelous.
    It was the main reason that he had come here in the first place. To play with musicians like these. This island produced some of the best in the world.
    The passage of time became fairly meaningless, the more he stayed there. When he finally glanced at his watch, it was five-thirty. He was due to meet Pierre back at the hotel in half an hour’s time. He downed the last of his drink and then set off back the way he’d come.
    The main streets, if anything, were even busier than before, offices and shops emptying out, their workers heading home. The sun retreated behind the uneven rooftops. Everything started to take on a smoky, semi-opaque quality.
    His first night in Havana was on its way. And he was already looking forward to it.
    He heard a high-pitched, brittle laugh from somewhere, when he was halfway back along the narrow, sloping alley. A woman’s laugh, so happy and delighted that it intrigued him.
    And he swiveled round to find its source.
    But couldn’t. There was no one even near him.

CHAPTER
    FOUR
    Across the bay from Old Havana lies Habana del Este, less cluttered and far greener than the part of town that Jack had strolled through, large rocks and old battlements along its shore. And had Jack made his way there while it was still light, he would have probably assumed that the mansion to the left of the big fortress was abandoned.
    Three stories high and twice as broad, it was in such an advanced state of decay that it made the cathedral he’d seen look pristine by comparison. It was protected by a rusted iron fence. Its gardens had grown wild. The dried grasses had raised themselves almost to shoulder height, and it was hard to tell whether the spindly, unkempt trees were supporting the creepers on their branches or the other way around.
    Oddly, the path that ran from the front door to the main gate was clear enough to walk along.
    The windows were all boarded up. And one of them, on the top story, had the blackened marks of an old fire around it, although strangely it didn’t appear that the blaze had spread.
    The roof sagged massively where its supports had rotted.
    Its grounds ended at the waterside, a steep incline with an array of jagged rocks below.
    Jack would have seen all this. And one more thing.
    As the sun began to drop past the horizon, he might have noticed one of the boards in a ground floor window move.
    *   *   *
    Dolores Vasquo peered out through the gap, watching as the sun dropped behind the Old Town. She’d read once—in one of those countless leather-bound books in the house’s mildewed library—that sunsets were considered beautiful by people in the outside world. But the setting sun didn’t look that way to her eyes. The colors in the sky looked like the same shades as a week-old bruise, sickly pinks and ugly purples, tinges of ochre and turquoise round their edges.
    The only good thing about the sight,