The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  But when his light caught her, he realized it was Celia Jones. She sat on the wooden steps, blood smeared on her face, holding a cigarette.

  Sanchez’s body lay crumpled at her feet, a black gun held loosely in his fingers. Ramirez walked to her and trained his flashlight on the ground. The earth around Sanchez’s head was stained dark. There was a hole in his temple.

  “He shot himself. He couldn’t bring himself to kill me. He was a policeman, Inspector. He just couldn’t do it. I think he was afraid you would think less of him.” She started to cry.

  Ramirez held his fingers to his friend’s wrist. No pulse. Sanchez was dead. He pulled the gun from Sanchez’s fingers with his index finger and thumb. He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and dropped it in. He noticed the beads wrapped around the fingers of Sanchez’s other hand.

  “Did he confess?”

  Jones nodded, shaking. “He told me everything.”

  A confession. A final prayer to Chango for forgiveness. Ramirez shook his head sadly. Some crimes were too terrible to forgive.

  The other policemen milled around, confused.

  “Stay back!” he shouted. “Call the technicians. This is a crime scene.”

  Ramirez put his arm around the lawyer and helped her up. He draped his jacket over her shaking shoulders. He helped her into the passenger seat of his car and closed the door softly. The back seat was empty; the boy was gone.

  “I will drive Señora Jones back to the hotel later, but I need to debrief her in person, alone,” Ramirez said to Michael Ellis. “The other patrol cars have to wait here for the technicians to arrive. The Viñales police division is responsible for this crime scene, not mine, so there is no car here that can take you back to Havana. I will ask one of the policemen to see if they can find you a ride back into town, but you may have to pay for it.”

  “I understand,” said Ellis. “That’s fine.”

  “Drop by the office in the morning. I’ll return your passport then.”

  “Thank you, Inspector, for everything. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  SEVENTY - TWO

  It was late by the time Inspector Ramirez got back to Havana, but the lights were on in Hector Apiro’s office. He went upstairs to tell him what had happened.

  When Ramirez poked his head in, a beautiful woman was sitting on a stool, drinking a cup of Apiro’s fresh-brewed coffee. Apiro introduced her. Ramirez had never met Maria Vasquez before, although he knew her name from the investigation. He was even more surprised when he realized that the two were romantically involved.

  Vasquez looked oddly familiar. “Just a minute,” Ramirez said to her. “I think I have a picture of you in my file.” He reached for the folder and flipped through it until he found the photograph that Candice Olefson had taken on the Malecón. “This was on a camera we found in Nasim Rubinder’s hotel room.”

  She looked at the photo and laughed. “But that’s not me,” she said. “Look, that woman is wearing flat sandals. I only wear really high heels. But I was dressed almost like that on Christmas Eve when I met Señor Ellis. That woman must be his wife. Perhaps that is why he was so attracted to me.”

  She winked at Apiro, who grinned back, not bothered in the slightest by her comments.

  Ramirez looked at the photograph again. “Lovely woman. And there is quite a resemblance.”

  He told them what had happened and lit a cigar, satisfied with the outcome of the day’s events. He had done his job and then some. He had lost one friend but gained another. Not a bad week for a dying man. “I will have quite a story to tell Francesca when I get home.”

  “It is quite a story,” Apiro remarked. “Quite a remarkable week, all things considered.”

  “And what of Señora Jones?” Vasquez asked. “Will she be alright? She must be terribly traumatized, after having a gun held to her head. Knowing she could die at any moment.”

  “She is enormously grateful to be alive, as you can imagine,” said Ramirez. “But she told me on the way back here that she enjoyed being involved in a police investigation again, much more so than doing legal work. I’ve told her she can come work with us anytime. She plans to return to Havana soon, in any event. She saw some children in an orphanage in Viñales that she seems interested in.”

  “Is she thinking of raising supplies for orphans now, instead of puppies?” Apiro asked, smiling.

  “Well, actually,” Ramirez said, “I think she’d like to adopt one. There was a girl in a wheelchair she was quite taken with.”

  “A foreign adoption? Difficult,” said Apiro. “But if she means it, perhaps we can help.”

  Apiro sipped his coffee and slipped his free hand into Maria’s. Ramirez saw how comfortable the two were together.

  “I confess, I was surprised, Maria, to meet you here of all places. I didn’t know that you and Hector knew each other. Have you known each other long?”

  Apiro turned to her. “How many years, my dear? Fifteen?”

  “Hector, if I were to say, that would give away my age.” She punched him lightly in the shoulder. “You know better than that.”

  “How impolite of me to ask,” Apiro said, pretending to be chastened. “Maria is always reminding me of my manners. She is a real lady when it comes to such matters.”

  “Like my Francesca,” Ramirez said. He took a deep breath and exhaled, then shook his head in wonderment. “Dios mio, what a week.”

  “And it is not over yet,” the surgeon announced. “I forgot to tell you. Maria is moving into my apartment. We have decided that I have been an old bachelor for far too long.”

  “Congratulations to both of you,” Ramirez exclaimed, genuinely pleased. “Give me a few minutes to go the station. I’ll pay a visit to the exhibit room and find some fine old Havana Club so that we can celebrate the good news properly.”

  After he left, Maria turned to Apiro and squeezed the small man’s hand. “Are we going to tell him?” she asked.

  “No need,” Apiro said. “Your new life began years ago. I see no reason for you to go back to it now.”

  “I have to go back to some of it. I have sisters I have never met.”

  “We will talk to your mother, then, together. Once she adjusts to the news that you are still alive, I think she will be very happy. She has lost a son and gained a daughter. And who knows, perhaps your family will want to live with us.”

  She slipped her arm through the surgeon’s and he swelled inside with happiness.

  His life had gone from being lonely to complete. And the fact that Maria had once been Rubén Montenegro? Well, that was a long time ago.

  After Apiro repaired the boy’s injuries, Rubén was returned to the school in Viñales, but that was not the end of their doctorpatient relationship. Almost six years later, there was a gentle knock on Apiro’s office door. At first, he thought it was a girl standing in the shadows.

  “Please,” the boy said. “May I come in?”

  Apiro waited quietly for the boy to tell him what he needed. Rubén took a deep breath. “I want you to turn me into a girl. I know you can do the surgery. You are a doctor; you can do anything.”

  Apiro tried not to smile. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

  “All my life. Since I was five or six. Forever,” said Rubén sadly, and Apiro heard something in the boy’s voice that broke his heart. “I am not like other boys. I like to look pretty. I know I am a girl, inside.”

  Not sure what to say, Apiro brewed a pot of coffee. He was professionally intrigued. That the boy could become a beautiful woman when he grew up, even with only cosmetic surgery, was clear. Ironically, Rubén would be treated better as a woman than he ever would as a man. Life would be unpleasant for an effeminate boy in Cuba.

  “What about getting married, having children, being with a woman?”

  “I will never be with a woman,” the boy responded firmly.

  “Because of what was done to you before?”

  “No,” the boy said. “Because of
what I am.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Fifteen next month.”

  “Fourteen is not very old to make this kind of decision. It is not unusual in adolescence to wonder if one is homosexual. Often the uncertainty passes.”

  “I am not like that. I need to do this to survive.”

  He would not patronize the boy, Apiro decided. This was Apiro’s business, after all, re-engineering people. When it came right down to it, what was the difference between altering someone’s nose and their genitals? Most medical literature supported the idea that sexual reassignment should begin in adolescence, when its chances of success were higher. But there had been only one transsexual operation in Cuba, in 1988, and that involved a mature adult, not a young boy who could be mistaken.

  Still, in a little over a year, the boy would be old enough to choose. Apiro had seen the abuse Rubén had suffered, the sexual violence done to him. Who had a stronger claim than this boy to becoming transgendered if it helped him feel more comfortable in his own skin?

  “What about your family? Have you discussed this with them?”

  “I do not live with them. I live on the streets. It doesn’t matter what they think. I don’t belong in this body.”

  Apiro understood those feelings. He had lived with them his whole life.

  “If you’re serious about this, here is what I am willing to do,” Apiro decided. “I will arrange to have a colleague meet with you. A psychiatrist who specializes in such matters. Gender confusion, I believe they call it. A term I dislike, because if you are at all confused, you should not do this. If she agrees, we will prescribe hormones to suppress some of your maleness as your development continues. You will have to live as a female for a least a year, and I mean that in all its senses. After that, once you are sixteen, if you still want to do this, we will see about surgery. But not before. Because once this surgery is done, it cannot be undone. Where can I reach you, once I arrange the appointment?”

  “I have no address. I ran away from school months ago.”

  Apiro did not ask why Rubén had run away; it was none of his business. “Well, we can’t have that. You can stay at the hospital tonight. And after that, we will see what can be done.”

  The consulting psychiatrist agreed with Apiro’s approach after only a few meetings. The boy’s initial psychological tests showed the emotional affect of a female of his age, not a male. But Rubén still had nowhere to live, so Apiro cleared away his pile of papers and made a space for the boy to sleep on the old damask couch in his apartment. It was a gross conflict of interest, but Apiro ignored the rules; after all, the child had to live somewhere.

  Over the course of that year, Rubén Montenegro became Maria Vasquez. On Maria’s sixteenth birthday, Apiro agreed to do the surgery.

  During Maria’s recovery, Apiro visited each day, sat with her late into the night, brought his chessboard so they could play, sometimes brought novels to read to her. On Easter Friday, he came with flowers to celebrate the fact that she was due for release, but her bed was already empty. She had left no message for him, had simply signed herself out of the hospital.

  He realized he should not have become involved emotionally with a patient. He offered to work part-time with the police to atone for his mistake. As the years passed, his life took on a busyness that helped him, finally, to forget her. Until the body of her young brother was pulled from the ocean and wound up in his morgue.

  Apiro thought back to Maria’s revelations during their dinner at the paladar.

  “The boy who raped me all those years ago became a patrolman in Havana, Hector. I heard a nurse mention his name the night I ran away from the hospital. He was on his way to the ward to interview someone for an investigation. I was afraid that if he recognized me, he would kill me to stop me from telling others what he had done to me.”

  “I never imagined,” Apiro said, shocked. “You must have been terrified.”

  “I was. But it was foolish. I was afraid all these years for nothing. He is a detective now. Rodriguez Sanchez. I saw him this afternoon; I even spoke to him. And he didn’t remember me at all.”

  SEVENTY - THREE

  The inspector’s phone rang first thing in the morning. It was Michael Ellis. He told Ramirez he’d be over shortly. A half-hour later, the guard called up and Ramirez walked down to meet him.

  They walked up the stairs to the second-floor room where Señor Ellis had first been interviewed. It seemed as if that interview had taken place a million years before.

  “I’m still trying to sort out everything that happened,” said Ellis. “Can you spend a few minutes explaining some of the gaps in the story for me, before I leave? Did Detective Sanchez confess?”

  Ramirez filled Ellis in on what Señora Jones had told him on the drive back.

  It had taken Ramirez some time to put all the pieces together, but that was because, until recently, he’d been forced to puzzle it out in ink. He had smiled, entering his office that morning, to see the pencils Jones had left on his desk, along with a note saying, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. See you in a few weeks.”

  “How did Sanchez meet Nasim Rubinder?” Ellis asked.

  “A Customs officer confiscated Rubinder’s laptop when he arrived in Havana because it had child pornography on it. They called in Sanchez to question the suspect.”

  “So did Nasim kill Arturo? Or was it Sanchez?”

  “It looks like Rubinder killed the boy. Maria Vasquez knew about him and was threatening to call the police. That’s why he threatened her. When Rubinder left the bar, Sanchez took his seat beside you. He dropped a capsule of Rohypnol in your drink. Then he went looking for the boy. He found him begging at Plaza de Armas. But he told Señora Jones that he left the boy alive. Rubinder must have found him later on and killed him.”

  “How did Miguel Artez get involved in all of this?”

  “Sanchez was responsible for monitoring all internet transmissions to and from Havana. Artez was known to Sanchez; he was very active on the sex tourism pages. Rubinder needed access to the internet after his laptop was seized at the airport. It appears that Sanchez introduced them online; Artez was quite happy to arrange internet access for a fee. But Artez didn’t know Sanchez’s name; he knew only that Rubinder had someone protecting him, not who.”

  “And the boy, Rubén Montenegro, the child that Sanchez assaulted in the Viñales school all those years ago. He was the dead child’s brother? That’s incredible.”

  “Yes, although the parents were never notified of Rubén’s injuries. No doubt the Church was afraid of what would happen politically if a family found out their son was raped by another student at a Catholic-run school. But there is a marked resemblance in the photographs of the two boys, despite the age difference between them. Señora Montenegro told me she had another son who died in Viñales. I never thought to connect the two.”

  “It’s quite the story, isn’t it?”

  “That it is,” Ramirez agreed. “I hope I have answered all your questions, Detective Ellis. Here is your passport. I hope things go well for you in Canada.”

  “It’s a small matter, but I don’t suppose anyone admitted to taking the money from the safe in my room?”

  “I think you should talk to your wife about that.”

  Ellis nodded. “Thanks.”

  As Ellis pushed on the door to let himself out, Ramirez spoke again. “One more thing, Señor Ellis? Perhaps you can answer another question for me, if you don’t mind?”

  “Of course,” Ellis said and turned to face the inspector. “How can I help?”

  “Why did you kill Steve Sloan?”

  SEVENTY - FOUR

  “I’m sorry?” said Mike Ellis. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t kill Steve Sloan; a suspect did. The same man who cut me up.”

  “Señor Ellis, we both know this is untrue. Please sit down. There are several hours before your flight leaves. The airport is not far.”

&nb
sp; Ellis sat down slowly on the same red plastic chair he’d occupied the first time the police brought him in for questioning. Ramirez seated himself on the other side of the Formica table.

  “What makes you think I was responsible for Steve’s death?”

  “It’s been bothering me for days, ever since I saw that medical report that referred to your blood type. A fertility test that concluded you were sterile. Not your fault, of course. I listened to your interview with Sanchez again this week as I prepared my case file for the prosecutor. You told him that your wife became pregnant six months ago. The test was dated well before then. I found birth control pills in the bathroom the day we searched your hotel room, which means your wife doesn’t know of your infertility. Last night, Señora Jones mentioned to me that Señor Sloan died shortly after your wife found out she was pregnant.

  You must have known it was not your child, that she was having an affair.”

  “So you think she was having an affair with Steve? And that I killed him over that?”

  “We can only be betrayed by our friends,” Ramirez said sadly. “This is something I was reminded of this week. Perhaps you could forgive your wife for an affair with someone else, but the depth of this betrayal, an affair with your closest friend, and then the carelessness of a pregnancy? I don’t know many men who would wish to raise another man’s child, planted in their nest like a cuckoo’s egg.”

  “I told you,” Ellis insisted. “Steve died during a police incident. I was injured, badly injured, by the same suspect who shot him. Look at the scars on my face where he slashed me. You think I made those up?”

  “Not so, Señor Ellis. Dr. Apiro saw you during your interview with us the last time you were in this room, a week ago. We watched Sanchez question you together, through that very window.” Ramirez pointed to the mirrored glass. “He wondered how you got your scars. According to him, you should have been slashed diagonally. Someone who swings a knife, left- or righthanded, swings it at an angle, like a golf swing. And your scars widen at the bottom. They should widen in the middle. Dr. Apiro is sure you cut your own face. Here, I have his report.”