More lines I liked:
The problem was that he seemed to be going in reverse, knowing less all the time rather than more. He didn't know how or where Pribluda died, let alone why. The circle of Pribluda's acquaintances constantly expanded...Arkady had never before encountered such a variety of pristinely unrelated people and events: men in inner tubes, Americans on the run, a madman from Oriente, a ballerina, now Chinese bones and Chihuahuas. The truth was, Arkady thought, that apart from grave-robbing there was no suggestion of any crime at all, except for the attacks on him, and that was an error in timing, all they'd had to do was wait.
[because he was going to kill himself in Havana-that Russian humor is as deadpan and downbeat as it gets.]
[the entire sequence of Ofelia and her mother collecting their rations is hilarious. Just an excerpt]
"Tomatoes next week," Ofelia said. "That's good news."
Her mother exploded with a laugh. "My God, I've raised an idiot. There will be no tomatoes, no evaporated milk, no flour and maybe no beans or rice. This is a trap for morons. Hija, I know you are a brilliant detective, but thank God you have me to shop for you."A woman behind them hissed and warned, "I will report this counterrevolutionary propaganda."
"Piss off," Ofelia' mother said. "I fought at Playa Giron. Where were you? Probably waving your tits at American bombers. I assume you had tits."
[Ofelia describing a murder scene]
A body that had been cut up was like a flower in bloom, releasing a smell that lodged like beads of blood in the sinuses and a taste that coated the tongue.
[and later describing that scene to Renko and how she threw up. Renko's lines are obvious.]
"Then I thought the dead man looked like you."
"There's a compliment you don't get every day."
.....
"Dr. Blas has never been sick.""I'm sure."
"Dr. Blas says we should welcome smell as information. A body's fruity bouquet might indicate amyl nitrate. The hint of garlic can be arsenic."
"He'd be a delightful man to have dinner with."
[Ofelia recalling her childhood in the cane fields of Hershey-yes, named after that Hershey who set it up in 1917. The mill evidently was closed in 2002, along with half of Cuba's sugar mills.]
Suddenly she was back in Hershey, in the cattle fields where the egrets came from their roosts along the river. The birds were as white as shavings of soap, and as they crossed the carbon-black smoke that lifted from the chimneys of the sugar mill her anxiety was for the egrets' purity.
[a Russian Embassy staffer-they are "between" Ambassadors-talking to Renko]
"This is a ghost ship. Never mind that we drove ourselves into bankruptcy to pay for this floating circus, that our entire system came crumbling down while they danced the salsa. The point is, relations between us and the Cubans have never been worse and now you tell me that you can't identify Pribluda's body?"Did people die of love? Arkady knew a man on a factory ship in the Bering Sea, a killer, who had fallen in love with a woman, a whore, who died at sea. He erased himself from the face of the earth by stripping off his clothes and plunging through the ice. The shock of the water on bare skin must have been incredible, but the man was immensely strong and kept swimming away, away, away from the light. For murderers, senators, whores and good wives, love proved to be not the lamp at the ship's bow but the ship itself, and when the light was gone a person had no place to go but down.
[and this-THIS-is how you write a sex scene]
Outside, he heard the ocean say, This is the wave that will sweep away the sand, topple the buildings and flood the streets. This is the wave. This is the wave.
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