Hungry Ghosts

by Peggy Blair

  “What is it?” a female tourist asked the tour guide. “What’s going on?”

  “We have to leave the building. Come,” the tour guide said, her legs quivering, “I’ll explain outside.”

  Another security guard jogged over to the policeman. “I’ll go with you. Our policy requires that more than one person check the building.”

  “No,” said the policeman. “It’s too dangerous.”

  The security guard hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  “You want to risk blowing yourself up?” said the policeman. “Move. Get everyone out of here. And make sure your colleagues block off the streets.”

  Scores of turistas and museum staff poured onto the sidewalk, running for their lives as word of the bomb threat spread. The museum director, Romero Garza, sprinted to the end of the block with Carlos Hernandez, the head of security. Once he recovered his breath, Garza paced back and forth.

  At least a dozen security guards stopped traffic at each intersection while others milled around.

  “Oh my God, Señor Garza,” said one of his staff, weeping. “If a bomb goes off, it will destroy all our beautiful art.”

  Garza hugged her briefly. “Don’t worry. The important thing is that everyone is safe.” He released her and chewed his lip. On the other side of the giant wooden doors, he heard the piercing sound of a fire alarm, then a second one, so loud his eardrums vibrated.

  “Where is the bomb squad?” his staff member said. “What’s taking them so long?”

  “I don’t know,” Garza said, worried.

  Moments later, sirens blasted. The line of security guards parted and a half-dozen white Peugeots blew through. The police cars pulled in front of the museum, blue lights flashing. “What are they doing?” said Hernandez. “They’re too close, those monados.”

  Another siren yelped. Security guards leaped out of the way as an aging fire truck careened through the intersection of San Rafael and Monserrate. The truck barely missed smashing the row of police cars as it squealed to a stop. It left a long streak of rubber on the steaming asphalt.

  Firemen scrambled out. They wore red helmets with orange ear protectors and black rubber boots. Sweat poured down their foreheads.

  As they raced towards the marble stairs, Hernandez waved frantically: “You can’t go inside. There’s a bomb!”

  The fire chief shouted at his men to stop. He held up a gloved hand impatiently. “What are you talking about?”

  “A policeman told us to empty the building,” Hernandez explained.

  “What policeman?” asked a young policía. He hitched up his pants as he joined them.

  “I don’t know his name. A foot patrolman, I think,” said Hernandez, recovering his breath. He tried to remember if he’d seen a patrol car when they ran outside. “It’s on the fifth floor.”

  The policeman glanced at the fire chief.

  “Move the cars,” he yelled at the other patrolmen as he pulled out his radio. “And you, get that fire truck out of here.”

  The fire chief clenched his jaw. “I was sent to a fire, not a bomb,” he said. “While we’re standing here talking, the museum could go up in flames.”

  The young policeman shifted his feet. “If what this man says is true”—he nodded his head at Hernandez—“we need to wait for the bomb squad.” He radioed his dispatcher, puffing out his chest to compensate for his uncertainty. “No one goes inside until we have more information. And, compañero, let’s carry on this discussion a little further away from the building, okay?”

  The fire chief glowered. “You’d better hope it’s not a fire,” he said, and ordered his men to move back.

  Garza grabbed the fire chief by his heavy jacket sleeve. “I’m the museum director. The art in there is priceless. Please do whatever you can to save it.”

  An extranjero materialized from the crowd. At his side was a woman who looked to be in her thirties. The foreigner looked directly at the fire chief. “Do you speak English?”

  The fire chief nodded, watching the building warily.

  “I am the Italian curator responsible for the exhibition on that floor. I’ll give you and each of your men one hundred convertible pesos if our paintings are brought out of there unharmed.”

  The tourist pesos were worth roughly seventeen times more than domestic pesos. It was a fortune to a man who earned less than ten dollars a month. The fire chief narrowed his eyes and set his jaw.

  The policía clicked off his radio. He turned to Hernandez, bewildered. “I don’t know who you spoke to, but our dispatcher has no report of a bomb. No foot patrolman has checked in from this location. I’m the first policeman to call in.”

  “Then get out of the way and let us do our job,” said the fire chief. He motioned to his men. They ran up the wide stairs and inside the building, carrying a heavy grey hose.

  The young policeman looked at the museum director and made a sign of the cross. “I hope he’s right,” he said. He gripped his radio, training his eyes on the fifth floor.

  A few minutes later, the alarms stopped ringing. Another twenty minutes passed before the fire chief came out.

  “There was no fire,” he said, disgusted. “Not even any smoke. Someone smashed a fire alarm on the fifth floor. The second alarm went off when the emergency exit door on the same floor was pushed open.”

  Garza exhaled slowly. “Thank God nothing’s damaged.”

  “I didn’t say that,” said the fire chief. “There’s red paint all over the place. I’m assuming it wasn’t there before.”

  Garza gasped. “Are the paintings all right?”

  The fire chief shrugged. “I’m no artist.”

  “The foot patrolman, where is he?” asked Hernandez.

  The fire chief shook his head. “The building is empty. We checked all the bathrooms, the coatroom, everything.”

  “Empty?” Hernandez frowned. Then his expression shifted. “It was a diversion. He was alone in there for at least ten minutes, maybe more. It has to be a theft.”

  He started to run towards the museum entrance but was stopped by the young policeman. “No one goes in until I say so. This is a crime scene. You heard the man. Willful destruction of state property.”

  “What’s going on?” the Italian curator demanded. Garza translated for him.

  “Merda,” the Italian said. “That’s not Cuban property; those paintings belong to Italy. If any of our paintings were damaged . . .”

  The policeman put his hand in the air. “Enough. Everyone stop talking.” He pulled out his radio a second time and called the dispatcher. He spoke rapidly for a few minutes before he clicked the radio off.

  “Detective Espinoza is on his way from Major Crimes. No one leaves until he gets here. That means no one.” He looked nervously at the fire chief. “Not even you.”

  “We should have set a fire ourselves; we could have rescued the paintings,” the fire chief said to the fire truck driver as he rolled himself a cigarette. They watched the younger firemen coil up the hoses. “What were you going to do with all your money?”

  “Me?” The driver spat on the ground. “Fix the fucking brakes.”

  4

  Celia Jones listened anxiously to the news as she cleared away the detritus from her mother’s second attempt at cooking dinner. CBC television was predicting another twenty or thirty centimetres of snow. Her father planned to take advantage of the short window of good weather to go into White Harbour for groceries to replace the burned burgers, the scorched buns.

  Emma Jones sat transfixed before the TV. The men wearing bandanas over their faces frightened her, but she wouldn’t let Celia change the channel.

  The CBC reporter spoke excitedly as wind whipped the hood of her parka, leaving her stiff, sprayed hair intact.

  “Standing behind me are a dozen Mohawk Warriors who joined the lines l
ate last night in a show of support for the Ojibway protestors who have blocked the access road to the mill. The Wabigoon River Pulp Mill is in the traditional territory of the Manomin Bay First Nation. And that’s the problem. The natives are unhappy with what they say is a lack of consultation by the government. They’re afraid their traditional fishing grounds will be devastated once the mill reaches capacity.”

  Behind the reporter, dark smoke twisted in the wind from oil barrels filled with burning firewood. Around thirty Aboriginal men dressed in camouflage held rifles. They stood around the open fires, bare hands extended over the flames.

  The camera cut to an interview with the chief of the Manomin Bay First Nation.

  “Of course we feel betrayed,” Chief Wabigoon said. He sounded more puzzled than angry. “Forty years ago, the government promised my father that this mill would never open again. Now we find out it’s been open for months. The white man has a short memory. The government has a fiduciary duty to us, to our treaties, but they don’t care. No one even told us.”

  The camera cut back to the blockade. Two yellow school buses lay on their sides obstructing the road. HONOUR YOUR TREATY PROMISES, read a banner strung along the side of one of them. The red, yellow, and black flag of the Mohawk Warriors flapped above it.

  An Ojibway elder sat on a green lawn chair with a small hand-­lettered sign in his lap: I DIDN’T FIGHT IN WORLD WAR II TO PROTECT YOUR LAND.

  Ontario Provincial Police cars lined the gravel road, their motors idling. Exhaust was carried upward by the wind. A dozen or more protestors stood warily across from them, stamping their feet to stay warm.

  “If you can hear that drumming behind me, Peter,” said the reporter, “the natives have built a sweat lodge behind the barricades.” She pulled a grim face and pointed to a structure behind the overturned buses. “It looks like they’re here to stay. I had a moment to speak with the CEO of the pulp company, Malcolm Byers, for his reaction to the occupation.”

  The camera cut to an executive in a white shirt and striped tie. He looked relaxed, tanned. He sat behind an expensive-looking wooden desk.

  “We have a provincial permit to proceed with our mill and we’re going to do what the law says we can. These are Crown lands. What we’re doing is legal, and believe me, the residents up here need the work. You remember the scene in The Graduate—the future’s in plastic? Well, wood fibre, that’s the real future. Recycled paper. Every time you see a picture of a dead bird strangled by a plastic bag, we have a marketing opportunity.”

  When Celia Jones arrived in Manomin Bay, her father took her aside, out of her mother’s earshot. It was her first time home in a year. She saw the lines in her father’s brow, the grey tinge of fatigue. Eric Jones was frightened too. But not of native protestors disguised with bandanas.

  “She let herself out about an hour before you got here. I found her wandering down the gravel road towards the reserve. She said she saw a broken down truck from the upstairs window and wanted to go over to see if she could help. But there was nothing there when I found her, just some old red plastic pylons.”

  “Cripes, Dad,” Celia said. “She could have been hit by a car. There are no lights on that road.”

  “She’s losing us,” her father said, his voice catching. “It’s getting worse all the time. We try our best. She takes notes, keeps lists. We walk a lot, down to the bay. And the old photographs,” he smiled sadly. “Those help.”

  “How long has she been like this?”

  Celia’s mother had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s years before, but her parents had coped so well that her condition seemed barely noticeable. Until this visit, when her shakiness and disorientation were obvious.

  “A couple of months, I guess. There was a doctor up here a few weeks ago running a clinic. I took her in for tests: blood, urine, the whole nine yards. Dr. Kesler was supposed to call back with results. Nothing yet.” His forehead creased as he fought to hold back tears.

  “What did she say about Mom’s symptoms?”

  “She said she wanted to see her results first. She should have called by now. It worries me that she hasn’t.”

  “Now, Dad, no news is usually good news,” said Celia. But as it turned out, she was wrong.

  “Would you like some tea, dear?” Emma Jones said kindly. She held the kettle in the air. It was the third time she’d asked. Each time the kettle boiled empty when she forgot to unplug it.

  “Thanks, Mom.” Celia followed her mother into the kitchen.

  A burning pot, a frying pan left unattended, could burn down the entire house. Celia was starting to understand what her father had been dealing with.

  She felt guilty; she hadn’t known. She and Alex had been caught up in their own affairs, getting Beatriz ready for surgery, trying to navigate a tangled bureaucratic maze.

  Emma looked puzzled. “I don’t understand why you’re home so early this year, Celia. Have you finished school already?”

  Celia sighed. She gave her mother a hug. She’d got her law degree over a decade before. She’d been a lawyer with the Rideau Regional Police Force in Ottawa for more than six years.

  5

  Inspector Ramirez stood inside the lobby of the museum while Detective Espinoza briefed him. His stomach growled; he hadn’t eaten all day. “How long was the vandal inside the museum, Fernando?”

  “Less than ten minutes. Just long enough to spray paint all over the Italian masterpieces. Señor Testa says the ones that were damaged were the most valuable in the collection.”

  “Who is Señor Testa?”

  “Lorenzo Testa. He’s the curator of the Italian exhibition. He’s here from Rome.” Espinoza checked his notes. “He demanded to speak to the senior officer in charge.” Espinoza lowered his voice. “I’d like to get him out of here, frankly. He’s in the way.”

  “Are the paintings ruined?”

  Espinoza shrugged. “They’re up there now, analyzing the damage. The museum director, Romero Garza, says the exhibit will have to be closed down. Señor Testa wants the paintings sent back to Italy for restoration work immediately. This is a huge loss of revenue to the museum, not to mention a loss of face. Another thing, Inspector. Assuming the vandal wasn’t a real policeman, someone had to steal a uniform to pull this off. But no one has reported any missing.”

  “What else is on the fifth floor?” Ramirez asked.

  “The European rooms. Señor Garza says they contain some extremely valuable art as well. The Dutch masterpieces alone are worth millions. But it doesn’t look like anything was taken.”

  Ramirez shook his head. “It makes no sense. The building was empty. A thief could have stolen anything in the confusion. Why take such a risk just to damage some art?”

  Espinoza shrugged. “He was making a point. It looks like a political protest.”

  Ramirez nodded slowly. Espinoza had already told him about the large “75” sprayed on the wall above the paintings. That number had significance: It represented what dissidents called the Black Spring of 2003, when seventy-five political dissidents were rounded up and sent to jail.

  “A protest without an audience,” said Ramirez. “The people in the museum never saw it, and the media will never report it.”

  Granma reported only Communist Party propaganda, and the television stations were government-run. They carried Brazilian soap operas, old Hollywood movies, and Chinese game shows—nothing that might frighten tourists.

  Ramirez looked up at the balconies overlooking the atrium and the wide staircase that wound to the top level. The vandal was athletic, he thought. Five flights of steep marble stairs, and he’d scaled them in minutes.

  “He pulled the fire alarm before he ran out the emergency exit,” said Espinoza. “That triggered the second alarm. He probably mingled with the police on the sidewalk before he melted into the crowd. The technicians are upstairs dusting for
prints.”

  “Is Apiro here?”

  Espinoza shook his head. “No. He’s been called to the industrial section. Some children playing on the beach found a man’s body about an hour ago. It’s going to be busy, Inspector. It’s a full moon this weekend.”

  “Yes,” said Ramirez wearily. “I know.”

  Inspector Ramirez and Detective Espinoza stood in front of the black-and-white monitor at the museum security desk as Carlos Hernandez played a surveillance tape for them. The head of security’s neck was bright red. Ramirez guessed he was angry as well as embarrassed at being duped.

  The three men watched the blurred image of the vandal running up the massive marble stairs.

  “That’s from one of the cameras above the reception desk,” said Hernandez. “I’m afraid it’s not very clear.”

  Ramirez stood as close to the screen as he could, hoping the grainy resolution would improve, but it didn’t. “What about witnesses? Do we have a description?”

  “About the only thing they agree on is that it was a man,” said Espinoza. “After that, he was tall, he was short, he had a moustache, he was clean-shaven. A dozen witnesses, a dozen different opinions. No one paid attention to details. As soon as they heard the word bomb, they panicked. Even the security guards ran.”

  “Of course they did,” said Ramirez. “No one quarrels with a bomb.”

  Hernandez rewound the tape. “He pulled the fire alarm just before four. The emergency exit alarm went off three minutes later. I was standing in the street by then. I thought it was another fire alarm.”

  Espinoza turned to Ramirez. “I wonder why he didn’t take the elevator instead of the stairs. It would have been faster.”

  “Elevators aren’t supposed to be used during an evacuation,” said Hernandez.