by Blair Peggy
“Do we understand each other, Ramirez?” the minister asked, standing up. It wasn’t really a question; the meeting was over. The politician had smoking to do.
“Perfectly,” Ramirez lied. He reluctantly pushed himself up from the comfortable chair.
He checked his watch. There was still time to get tickets to the opera. He hoped those, and the promise of Canadian soap, might placate his wife.
But first he had to find Apiro and get his advice on what to do next.
“Oh, Inspector Ramirez? I almost forgot,” said the minister, drawing on his cigar. He smiled unexpectedly, which made Ramirez uneasy. “Happy New Year.”
SIX
Inspector Ramirez looked out the window in Hector Apiro’s thirteenth-floor office in the medical tower, watching a young patrolman slouch against a lamppost on the sidewalk below. Apiro had gone down the hall to get water for coffee. It was the one treat the pathologist allowed himself, and he was always happy to share: fresh beans from the bolsa negra, the black market. Rationed coffee was cut with chickpea flour as neatly and efficiently as if the government bureaucrats responsible had been coached by Mexican drug dealers.
The old woman had managed to squeeze her rather large rear end into Apiro’s small swivel chair. She waited impatiently for Ramirez to finish his business with Apiro and start investigating her murder.
If this apparition was real, thought Ramirez, Eshu had certainly lived up to his reputation as a prankster. All his other emissaries had been extremely polite. They willingly disappeared whenever Ramirez needed time alone. They enjoyed riding in his car and wandering around his family’s tiny apartment. They offered whatever silent assistance they could, along with the occasional mute, but gentle, criticism. They never spoke, only gestured.
But this one made it clear that she wasn’t impressed with his inability to decipher her clues. In fact, she gave Ramirez the impression she considered him somewhat clueless.
Apiro opened the door, carrying a kettle in his large hands. He appeared downcast.
“I’m sorry, Ricardo. No coffee today. The water isn’t running. What little trickled from the tap was dark brown. I’ll have to postpone the autopsy I’d planned for this afternoon. Luckily, our refrigeration units are working. Did anyone tell you about the woman’s body that was discovered near Blind Alley this morning? She was elderly, perhaps seventy or eighty.”
The old woman listened intently as Apiro described the crime scene. “What’s interesting is that under her bandana, her head was completely bald. I don’t think it’s from cancer; we have barely any chemotherapy these days, what with supplies being so short. I think she shaved it. Very odd. If I can do the autopsy tomorrow morning, will you be able to join me?”
“I think so. After that, Espinoza will have to handle that file. It looks as if I’ll be going to Canada sooner than I expected.” Ramirez described in detail his conversation with the minister. “He wants to read my report before it goes to the Attorney General. He’s even given me a script to follow.” He pulled out the attestation from his pocket and handed it to the pathologist.
Apiro lit his pipe and nodded thoughtfully as he read through the document. He shook his match to extinguish it.
“Interesting. It’s odd for someone with the minister’s work ethic to be this engaged in a file, isn’t it? And why not let the Canadians deal with Rey Callendes? Why do you think he wants him brought back to Cuba?”
Ramirez shook his head. They were all good questions, for which he had no real answers. “Some of the children in Callendes’s photographs were Cuban. There could be a connection to Sanchez he wants covered up.”
“Perhaps he is concerned about the effect it would have on tourism if word got out that a Cuban detective was involved in a child sex-abuse ring. Although I don’t know how that could happen. Something like that would never be reported in Granma or on television for fear of scaring off tourists.”
“I agree, it’s very strange.”
“By the way, Ricardo, I found out some information today about that little girl, the one Señora Jones wants to adopt. The child’s name is Beatriz Aranas. She’s three years old. Unfortunately, she has serious health problems. She contracted rheumatic fever following a strep infection last year. She should have received antibiotics as a preventive measure afterwards, but too often there weren’t any. The last infection damaged her heart; that’s why she’s in a wheelchair. She needs surgery, perhaps even a transplant if her condition deteriorates further. But these days, such procedures are problematic because of the shortages.”
Ramirez sighed. “Señora Jones will be devastated. And if that’s the case, I really don’t know how I’ll be able to persuade her to sign this attestation. That was the only thing I could think of that might work—helping to arrange the adoption.”
Apiro smiled. “I’m only surprised you haven’t asked me to call Francesca and falsely attest that you are at the Gran Teatro right now, waiting in the cola for tickets.”
Ramirez looked at his watch and jumped to his feet. “I totally forgot. I’d better get over there before it’s too late.”
He glanced at the ghost. She tapped her wrist and frowned.
Ramirez breathed a little easier once he slipped the pair of tickets into his pocket. He walked back to his car, still troubled by the minister’s orders.
Apiro was right. There was something important going on behind the scenes. Once Ramirez knew what it was, the rather unequal relationship he had with his superior was likely to change dramatically. Of course, he still had to deal with his real superior.
He drove home slowly, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Beside him, the old lady held her flower out like a posy. Ramirez understood the form of appeasement she was suggesting, but he had no money left for bribes.
The afternoon breeze ruffled the crocheted curtains. Outside, birds sang arias, hidden in the leaves of fragrant magnolia trees. The devastated buildings across the street were bathed in golden light.
It was humid and sticky inside their apartment, and getting hotter every minute.
“I knew this would happen, Ricardo. You always work late, and you never come home for dinner. And now you’re leaving the country?”
The use of always and never was a particularly bad sign. It meant Francesca was not going to raise a specific complaint that Ramirez might respond to, but rather a collection of grievances she’d stored up over time.
“Christmas Day was supposed to be your day off, too,” she said. “But I had to entertain your relatives alone. Every night last week you came home late and were out of here by dawn. You toss and turn in your sleep, but you won’t tell me what’s going on. Sometimes I think you are having an affair.”
“I would never do that, Francesca,” said Ramirez. “You know there is no other woman for me.”
“Not with a woman, Ricardo. With Hector Apiro.”
Ramirez barely stifled a laugh. He walked into the kitchen cautiously and put his arms around his wife’s sturdy body. “Now, Francesca, you know how silly that is.” It was a poor choice of words, he realized, as soon as they escaped his mouth.
“You think I’m silly?” Francesca snapped, pushing him away.
“Of course not,” Ramirez said, attempting to recover quickly. “But Hector no longer works so many nights himself. He has a girlfriend now. She was a patient of his long ago. She was close to that little boy, Arturo Montenegro, the child murdered on Christmas Eve. She came forward as a witness. That’s how she found out Hector was still in Havana. They seem happy together. I think we should invite them for dinner once we get the new coupon book.”
Even the lure of gossip was not enough to distract his wife.
“If Hector Apiro is not working nights anymore, then why are you? Don’t try to change the subject, Ricardo. I know something is going on.”
Ramirez sighed. Francesca was right. He was working long hours, exceptionally so. And she would be furious if she knew how many of the murder victims whos
e deaths he investigated had followed him home.
His most recent case sat on a wooden chair in the corner of their tiny living room. The old woman held her long, thick cigar loosely in her stained fingers, bored. Legs crossed, swinging one of her feet, she watched the back-and-forth of their marital conflict as if she’d heard it all before.
“Francesca, cariño, maybe you should look at this from a different perspective,” said Ramirez. “The ministry will pay me to spend two days in a country where there are shops. Think of all the things I can buy that we can’t get here.”
He thought she would like the idea of him shopping for her. His mistake, as it turned out. The old woman held her cigar like a gun and pointed it at his groin, cocking the trigger.
“Paid for with what, Ricardo? The twenty-five pesos you get as salary each month? Sometimes I think you are the only policeman in the entire Cuban police force who doesn’t take money from the extranjeros before sending them home.”
Ramirez frowned. As the senior officer in charge of the Havana Major Crimes Unit, he felt he needed to set an example. Someday, beyond any doubt, Fidel Castro would be gone for good.
Despite popular belief, the old man was not supernatural; he couldn’t live forever. Although he might just come back, thought Ramirez, as he watched the cigar lady throw down her fabric flower and grind it into the floor.
Once Castro died, billions of American dollars would surge into the capital. If Ramirez began to take the relatively small sums offered by tourists now in exchange for throwing out their charges, how would he possibly resist the major bribes then?
Religion causes even good men to commit evil deeds, his Yoruba grandmother had cautioned. But money, he’d discovered, was its own religion.
“Would you have me put a price on my integrity?”
“This from a man who steals rum from the exhibit room?” Ramirez winced. Of course he took things from the exhibit room. He confined himself to scavenging items that were no longer needed as evidence but necessary to the day-to-day functioning of his unit: rum, batteries, film.
The batteries and film were needed for crime-scene photographs. The rum, because they needed a strong drink sometimes, after the terrible things they saw. Perhaps a little more rum these days to help quiet the trembling in his hands. But he had never accepted a bribe.
Francesca wasn’t finished. She had one more blow to strike before the referee called the fight. Hardly fair, thought Ramirez. I am already pinned to the ground.
“We have two small children to worry about. And your parents are elderly. They depend on us more and more. You come home from this meeting with nice talk of Canada. Of soap and shampoos, of toys we can’t afford. But while you are at work, I am the one standing in the queue with a ration book, watching the smug wives of young policías walk by with bags stuffed full of steak and chicken from the black market.”
She knew how to throw a punch.
The old cigar lady used one hand to hold up the other in victory. Ramirez smiled uncomfortably.
By the time the performance began, Francesca’s anger had retreated. She slipped her warm fingers into his—a kind of truce. The battle wasn’t over, but for the moment she would hold her fire.
Yes, we argue, thought Ramirez, but so does every couple. The fighting is not important. It’s how we make up that matters. At least we don’t try to kill each other.
“If I remember correctly,” Francesca whispered as the curtains parted, “the first singer who played Polly Peachum ran away with her married lover in real life. You should be careful I don’t find one myself, what with you working late so often.”
“You already have a married lover,” said Ramirez.
SEVEN
Clare Adams opened Miles O’Malley’s office door a sliver, just enough to put her head through. “There’s a woman here to see you, Chief.”
“Who is it?” O’Malley crinkled his forehead. “I don’t have an appointment in my schedule. I’m meeting the mayor in half an hour to talk about the free needle exchange and how the hell we’re going to manage the public outcry about it. ‘Not in my backyard.’ Bloody people. Whose backyard should it be in?”
Adams lowered her voice to a whisper. “Her name is June Kelly. She’s quite insistent. I asked her what it was about, but she won’t tell me. She says she needs to talk to you, and that she has to go right to the top or they’ll cover it up.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Not sure. But I think you should talk to her.” She slowly mouthed the words “or she’ll never leave.”
“Great. The first conspiracy of 2007. Is she a wing nut?”
His assistant smiled. “She seems coherent enough. But emotional. And very angry.”
O’Malley followed Adams into the reception area. A small woman in her late sixties or early seventies sat beside an even older man with a kindly face who appeared terribly embarrassed. Probably her husband, O’Malley guessed from the wedding ring and his look of long suffering. She’d been crying, eyes puffy and black tracks of makeup down her cheeks. She seemed vaguely familiar. And Clare was right, the woman was almost rigid with anger.
“Mrs. Kelly? What can I do for you? Please, come in.” O’Malley motioned to the husband to join her, but he shook his head.
“I’ll wait here, thanks,” the man said, rolling his eyes. His expression made it clear he’d heard quite enough of his wife’s tirade.
“That man murdered my daughter,” the woman said loudly as she got up to follow O’Malley. “And none of you people are doing a goddamn thing about it. Walter, you need to go plug the meter. Wait in the car for me. If you don’t, these bastards will give us a ticket.”
Her husband got up wearily and made his way to the elevators.
As O’Malley moved to shut the door, he turned to his secretary, raising his eyebrows. It was a prearranged look to let Clare know she should call him in a few minutes and pretend he had an emergency to deal with.
“Murder’s a pretty serious allegation,” he said, offering Mrs. Kelly a chair. “Perhaps you can tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Mike Ellis is what I’m talking about.”
O’Malley sat down. That’s why he recognized her: from the service. Michael’s mother-in-law.
“I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Mrs. Kelly. I met your daughter several times at social events. She was a lovely woman. What makes you think her husband had anything to do with her death?”
“I don’t know how he did it, but he did it alright. My daughter had an affair. He found out about it. She was terrified he was going to kill her. She found things on his computer. Links to websites about how to slip poison into someone’s food without them knowing.”
The police chief leaned back in his chair. “They were having marital problems?”
“Did you hear what I just said? He planned to kill her. I’d call that having marital problems.”
O’Malley wasn’t surprised to hear that Hillary Ellis might have had an affair. Police work was wretchedly hard at the best of times. Policemen worked long hours, saw terrible things, drank far too much. The divorce rate was sky-high, significantly higher than the fifty percent failure rate for civilians. And with shift work, affairs were endemic.
Michael Ellis had almost been destroyed by the accident. If his wife had found comfort in the arms of another man, O’Malley could hardly be critical. Yet Michael had never raised an eyebrow when other men ogled his gorgeous wife. He didn’t seem to care in the least what she wore or how much she flaunted her sexuality. O’Malley didn’t believe he would harm her; he simply wasn’t the jealous type.
“You’ve had a terrible shock. But I can assure you, your daughter’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident.”
“You listen to me, you bloody fool. That information on his computer proves he was trying to find a way to do it. I’m not going to let you cover this up.”
O’Malley narrowed his eyes. “What are you suggesting, exactly?”
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br /> “I don’t know how he did it. Just that he did. Look at these.” The angry woman waved a roll of papers in the air. “Hillary gave them to Walter before she left. In case anything happened to her. I’m telling you, she was scared to death of that man.”
“Please listen to me, Mrs. Kelly. It was impossible for Michael to kill your daughter. He was out of the country when she died.”
“You look at these. And try to say that to me with a straight face.” She threw the papers on his desk.
O’Malley picked them up and skimmed through them. She was right, but for the wrong reasons. He forced himself not to smile. The first page had Google search results for the keywords poison, food, and Cuba.
The first hit was “Find the best deals for poisons in food in Cuba!” From there, it only got worse. The woman might as well have tinfoil on her head.
“You say these came from his computer?”
“You check his laptop. Even if he tried to erase those links, they’ll be on it somewhere.” Spittle flew from her mouth. “He goddamn well killed her. And believe me, if you won’t do anything about this, I will.”
O’Malley tried not to show his relief when his telephone finally rang.
EIGHT
Inspector Ramirez was filling out the paperwork for his trip when the scratched black phone on his desk trilled.
“The Canadian lawyer, Señora Jones, is on the line. She would like to speak to you,” said the switchboard operator.
“Thank you, Sophia. Aren’t you supposed to be working Dispatch tonight?”
“I took yesterday off to watch the parade. I agreed to work switchboard all week to make up for it.”
The first day of January was Liberation Day, the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. It was forty-eight years since Fidel Castro toppled Batista’s dictatorship and imposed his own. It had been a classic bait-and-switch, thought Ramirez, who admired Castro’s ingenuity.
“Ah, yes, the commemoration of the revolution. I missed the parade, unfortunately,” said Ramirez, although he wasn’t at all disappointed. Just one of Fidel Castro’s speeches could seem as if it lasted for weeks.