The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  Two shapes emerged from the shadows. A man and a small boy, side by side, walked towards the Malecón. The man clasped the small boy’s hand tightly in his own, keeping him close. He held his battered hat in his other hand.

  They were heading to the Ferris wheel, Ramirez guessed, from the way the dead boy skipped joyfully beside the ghost that had followed Ramirez all week. A man who had waited patiently for Ramirez, twisting his hat, wistfully hoping for a few moments of the inspector’s undivided attention.

  The dead man turned his head to look back at Ramirez. He smiled widely for the first time. Ramirez saw the dimples and finally grasped who the man was, who he once had been.

  Arturo’s father.

  After he took his son to the Ferris wheel for the last time, Señor Montenegro would return Arturo to the ocean, where they both belonged. Yemayá, the ocean orisha, would care for them from now on. They were leaving Ramirez’s jurisdiction.

  The dead man tipped the brim of his hat. Ramirez raised his hand slowly and waved goodbye to Eshu’s messengers.

  SEVENTY - EIGHT

  Ramirez had practically forgotten he had New Year’s Day off, his first in years. Once he got home, he could actually sleep in for a change. Make love to his wife, play with his children, and finally listen to that CD of Lucy Provedo that Francesca had given him for Christmas.

  He wanted to do something special to celebrate their future together, a future now as uncertain, and thus as hopeful, as that of anyone else. Perhaps they would have another child. The world was full of possibilities.

  The Beggar’s Opera was playing at the Gran Teatro on Sunday afternoon; he had seen posters for it all week. When he got home, he would take a surprised Francesca in his arms, dance her around the apartment, and tell her of his plans to make it up to her for working on Christmas Day.

  It was their favourite. An opera about political corruption, with a lively cast that included well-bred whores with impeccable manners, men disguised as women, beggars, even prisoners. It was a story of poisoned chalices, violence, and revenge; false charges, even a threatened execution. But it was also about love and loyalty and, above all, friendship. It seemed to fit the events of the week.

  The original opera ended with a hanging, but the audience demanded a happy ending, and so its ending was rewritten. And so was his.

  Ramirez whistled an aria as he walked to the parking lot, a bounce in his step. He opened the door to his small blue car and was about to climb in when he saw her. A dignified elderly woman walking slowly towards him as she tried to ignore her ruined dress and the knife protruding from her chest. A giant fabric flower was pinned to the white bandana wrapped around her head.

  “It’s my day off,” he said kindly, as he escorted her back into the shadows. “But it looks like I have tomorrow.”

  EPILOGUE

  A week had passed but the ride operator still trembled, still jumped whenever he heard a police siren, felt his heart race at the mere sight of a policía.

  He was haunted by thoughts of the dead boy, could not forget how the boy had shown up at the park at midnight, just as Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day. The bells and horns were still sounding; even a distant bagpipe honked in the night air. But the rides were not running when the small boy slid beneath the metal gates the ride operator had just locked together and materialized at his side. “Please,” the boy begged. “Please let me ride the big wheel. Please.”

  “We are not open, little one. Come back on Monday.”

  The boy looked terribly disappointed. “Please. I have never been on the rides. Just this once. I have money.” He showed the man five pesos that he pulled carefully from the pocket in his shorts. He held the coins out on the palms of his two hands.

  He seemed so downcast that the ride operator smiled. Perhaps it was not a problem to open the ride this one time. He took the little boy by the hand to the bottom seat, strapped him in, then pulled the bar down. After making sure the boy was secure, he started the ride.

  But as the wheel moved higher, the boy squirmed in his seat, then lifted the bar to stand, and sweet Virgin Mary there was no time to tell him to sit down before the boy fell over the side. It was that quick and that sudden, the ride operator could not believe it. Not even a scream, just a small noise as the boy hit the metal post that held the Cuban flag with the back of his head, then fell on his back on the ground.

  And there the boy was, not moving, already limp and empty. A small amount of blood, a few drops, trickled from his ear.

  The ride operator knelt beside the boy, but he was dead. Some children became dizzy on the wheel. It was not his fault. But there the boy was, his head soft on the hard cement.

  “Jesus,” the ride operator whispered, “Jesus, forgive me, what have I done?”

  He felt the boy’s neck, his wrist, put his face against the boy’s face looking for breath, searched desperately for signs of life. He felt the panic rise in his chest, his heart beating quickly like that of a bird.

  He was crying, but he had to stop, he had to think what to do. The bells were ringing; it was Christmas Day already, midnight, madre mio, Christmas Day. He was alone at the park, no one else was there, everyone at church or at mass. Thank God at least for that.

  Jesus, he prayed to his saviour, and then to Yemayá, the orisha who was supposed to protect children, who he had angered in some unknown way. Forgive me, I did not mean to harm him, he was just a child.

  But the child was dead. And all his prayers could not change that one fact.

  The ride operator thought of running to the policeman who always stood on the Malecón, a bored young man in a light blue shirt, little more than a boy himself. He should confess, tell the officer that he shouldn’t have opened the park when it was closed, that he was trying to be kind, that the boy simply fell. But how could he explain that a little boy could afford the price of a ride? Too much money for a small boy to have. Five tourist pesos, and there was no way to account for that.

  He hadn’t asked how or where the boy got the money, he had just been happy to see the child smile, and now the boy was dead and somehow, one way or another, he would be blamed for it, of that he was sure.

  He thought of his wife and his three children and all the lives that would be ruined if the police put him in jail. He made his decision. He hoisted the boy up like a sack of potatoes and carried him to the back of his truck, where he laid the boy gently on his back, then covered him with a tarp. He went about his business of closing up of the park. No one had seen him; no one had seen the boy.

  He drove his family to late mass, his wife completely unaware of his small cargo. Later that night, as she slept, and the sounds of partying along the Malecón quieted, when the last trumpet and guitar that filled the night air ceased their music, he got up, dressed himself, and drove to the Malecón. He parked across from the medical towers, the darkest part of the seaway, where there were no working lights.

  The boy’s body was no heavier than a bag of yams. He carried his light load to the stone wall and let the boy go. Dropped him over the seawall. Heard the small splash on the edge of the shore. He prayed that Eshu, the god of misfortune, would give safe passage to the boy.

  He could not see the body in the dark, but the tide would move it out overnight. The boy would be found, he was sure, by the fishermen in the morning, and then the boy’s parents would believe he had slipped while playing on the rocks, where all the boys fished and waded. They would be sad, devastated by his death, but no sadder than if they knew how he really died. An accident, either way. No one’s fault.

  A dead child, he thought, is a dead child, there is no greater loss, but how he died is less important than that he died and I am sorry that this happened, but I cannot change fate. This little boy will never grow old, but it was not my fault. How could I know?

  He said a prayer for the boy and the waves that caressed him. Grace be to God and may his soul be carried to Heaven.

  And then he made the sign of the c
ross, and carrying a weight in his heart as heavy as the Christmas cross itself, he walked slowly across the Malecón, gripping the boy’s five tourist pesos, which his own family needed as much as any other.

  He went home to his wife and his young children, but first he folded up his tarp carefully, because it was hard to find good tarps in Cuba, and had been since the revolución.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’ve never lost sight of the fact that I wouldn’t have been published at all if I hadn’t been standing in the bar on the last night of Theakstons Old Peculier crime writing conference in Harrogate, U.K. (having lost the Debut Dagger the night before), at the very moment that the Scottish author Ian Rankin walked by.

  The bar was almost deserted. Everyone else was in a session. I was having a last glass of wine before I went back to my hotel room to pack for my red-eye trip home. I asked him if I could take his picture, which I almost never do—if I see a celebrity, I usually leave them alone. But I’d promised the Crime Writers of Canada that I’d take pictures for their website if I saw anyone famous.

  He was kind enough to say yes. He asked me where I was from. I said Ottawa. It turned out he had just returned from Ottawa’s Bluesfest the week before, where he’d been with his son. Now how weird is that?

  If we hadn’t had that five-minute chat about the crazy fortydegree heat the previous week in Ottawa and how great Bluesfest was despite it, I doubt he would have asked me why I was in Harrogate, or if I had an agent or a publisher, which I didn’t. But he did. And he generously offered to let me use his name to contact them. Thanks to his referral, I found my U.K. agent, Peter Robinson, and through him my Canadian agent, Anne McDermid, both of whom I adore.

  “I worked so hard that I got lucky” is the phrase that comes to mind. But some things about this book (and this series) seem to be tied much less to hard work than to a very benevolent Lady Luck indeed.

  So many wonderful friends have stepped up to the plate to read The Beggar’s Opera (sometimes several times) and offer advice. Thelma Farmer takes the absolute record: I think she read the manuscript at least a dozen times. Then there’s Bill Schaper, Lou Allin, Debbie Hantusch, Mike Hutton, John Lindsay, Ken Stuart, Brian French, Beth McColl, Mark Bourrie, E. Kaye Fulton, Paul Olioff, and, of course, my daughter, Jade, who not only helped me think through the plot of the story in its earliest stages, but had a hand in designing the book jacket. Guillermo Martinez-Zalce helped me make sure the Spanish words I used were accurate; Alex Schultz ensured that the same could be said of the English ones.

  Thanks to all of you. And profound thanks to the Crime Writers’ Association of the U.K. for starting me on this adventure by shortlisting me for the Debut Dagger. A final thanks to Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Canada for believing in me.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty - One

  Twenty - Two

  Twenty - Three

  Twenty - Four

  Twenty - Five

  Twenty - Six

  Twenty - Seven

  Twenty - Eight

  Twenty - Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty - One

  Thirty - Two

  Thirty - Three

  Thirty - Four

  Thirty - Five

  Thirty - Six

  Thirty - Seven

  Thirty - Eight

  Thirty - Nine

  Forty

  Forty - One

  Forty - Two

  Forty - Three

  Forty - Four

  Forty - Five

  Forty - Six

  Forty - Seven

  Forty - Eight

  Forty - Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty - One

  Fifty - Two

  Fifty - Three

  Fifty - Four

  Fifty - Five

  Fifty - Six

  Fifty - Seven

  Fifty - Eight

  Fifty - Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty - One

  Sixty - Two

  Sixty - Three

  Sixty - Four

  Sixty - Five

  Sixty - Six

  Sixty - Seven

  Sixty - Eight

  Sixty - Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy - One

  Seventy - Two

  Seventy - Three

  Seventy - Four

  Seventy - Five

  Seventy - Six

  Seventy - Seven

  Seventy - Eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgement