Midnight in Havana

by Peggy Blair

  For a moment, Ramirez wasn’t sure which man Apiro was describing: Ellis or Sanchez.

  SIXTY-NINE

  “You mean you started abusing children.”

  Rodriguez Sanchez nodded slowly. “The first boy was Rubén Montenegro.”

  “Arturo’s brother?” Celia Jones guessed, drawing on the cigarette he had offered her. She coughed. She didn’t smoke but she was going to die soon anyway; couldn’t really see the downside. Cancer wasn’t the most serious threat to her life at the moment.

  “I didn’t realize they were related until this week. Rubén Montenegro ran away from this place when he was fourteen or fifteen years old, many years later. His body is probably in that valley down below, in the fields. He had no way to get home from here. I am sure he knew that when he ran away. We all escaped in different ways. But he was only eight or nine when I first encountered him. He had been in school for about a week. We were both assigned chores in the barn. He was happy, always smiling, singing, stupid boy. He seemed to like the rabbits and the pigs.

  “He hummed when he worked. It made me furious that he could be happy here, in this place, after what I was forced to do at his age. Then he told me he was going to have dinner that night with the priests, in the rectory. He was so excited to be going over to that building for dinner. He thought it would be fun.

  “I grabbed him and punched him and threw him on the ground. I would show him what fun was. Even then, Rubén was strong and he tried to fight back. He landed a few hard kicks and started to cry. I hit him, told him to shut up. I told him, better me than them. That he should toughen up or he would die here.

  “He was doubled over in pain, still crying, when I left. I said if he told anyone, I would kill the rabbits. He missed dinner that night. We all slept in the same dormitory; I saw him curled up in his bed. He did not get up in the morning, not even to go the bathroom. He made no more sounds.”

  “But he was alive,” Jones said. Thinking of a lonely boy, hurting so badly, so far away from his family. Frightened, betrayed, abused. And then of the small boy he’d raped.

  Sanchez nodded. “At breakfast, the priest who patrolled the boy’s dormitory came to check on him. He was unconscious. That is when I first discovered how badly I had hurt him. I felt sorry, but it was too late. The priest pulled off his bedcovers. The sheets were saturated with blood. The priest told me to run for Father O’Brien and tell him there was an injured boy. O’Brien called the local policía. They took him away. A few days later, I was taken to another school for re-education. Rubén must have told them it was me after all.”

  “Where did they put you?”

  He laughed bitterly. “Santa Clara. Some ‘re-education.’ It was another school just like this one. Did you hear in Canada about the priest who was stabbed and set on fire in Santa Clara in 1998? The same year the Pope came? That, I believe, was in the international news. Back when we still had newspapers with real news in them, not just state propaganda. Students did that.”

  She did remember seeing something about it, a few lines, nothing to convey the anguish of children who had killed a priest to save themselves.

  “He was the same as the priests here. He liked little boys. That was the year that Castro finally closed the schools. He had kicked the Catholic Church out of Cuba years before but let some of the teachers stay. He threw them all out that year. These were not unrelated incidents.”

  “Castro knew?”

  He nodded. “I think so. That was the same year Rubén ran away. I always considered it unfortunate, that if he had waited a little longer, he would still be alive today. But who could know that the schools would close? We all believed we were trapped here until we graduated. Or died.”

  “So when you graduated, what did you do? Is that when you joined the police?”

  “I wanted to have some control in my life,” said Sanchez. “I joined the Cuban National Revolutionary Police Force. I knew no one could hurt me again if I had a gun. I had no criminal record; I was too young to be charged for what I did to Rubén. I was smart, I worked hard, I passed all the tests at the top of my class.

  “I was stationed in Havana. I spent several years working on street patrol, and then I was assigned to the International Airport. Ramirez worked on an investigation with me. He saw my potential. He had me transferred to his unit almost a year ago. He made me feel good about myself for the first time. And I proved him right. I am a very good investigator of sexual assaults and violence, Señora Jones, because I experienced so much of it myself.”

  SEVENTY

  “You were just a child, Rodriguez. It wasn’t your fault.” Sanchez had not yet shot her and Celia Jones considered that progress. “Do you have any happy memories? Tell me about your family. What was it like before you went to school?”

  She wanted his stress levels lower, so he wouldn’t pull the trigger accidentally. She’d hate like hell to be killed unintentionally.

  Sanchez looked at her for a moment. His eyes brightened. “I remember picking berries with my mother. I must have been five or six. I remember bright red berries peeking through the leaves. I can still taste the way they popped in my mouth. The bees seemed too heavy, too slow, to fly. I remember the air buzzing, there were so many of them. I tried to hold on to these things at night, whenever he came for me. They were the only memories I had left of home. By the time I graduated from Santa Clara, my parents were dead. I was too ashamed of what happened to me to look for my brothers. Ramirez should never have given me that job on the internet, you know. I had managed to control myself for a long time.”

  Sanchez pulled out his package of cigarettes, lit one. He offered her another. She accepted, hoped the small gesture meant she had reached him. Because he had certainly reached her.

  She had wanted to humanize herself to him. Ironic that what happened instead was he became more human to her. She could never forgive the crimes he had committed, but she could understand them now.

  Somewhere, underneath all that pain, there was a small boy who had picked berries in the sun, who had shielded himself as much as he could from the evil of adults by holding their sweet taste in his memory, who had blocked out the sounds of his own abuse by listening to the placid humming of bees.

  He wiped his eyes. “Well, now you know everything. You were right. I have carried this burden alone for years. Now it is yours, too. At least for a few more minutes. Do not worry; I won’t make you suffer. I promise.”

  But she saw the gun waver in his hand. “Killing me won’t change what happened to you,” she said, as she tried to change his mind. “It just means another family will be destroyed. Mine this time. Shouldn’t all this pain stop now?”

  “I feel badly for that, trust me.”

  He pointed the gun at her head and cocked the hammer. She was running out of options. She tried a different tactic. The truth.

  “You know, Rodriguez, there was an incident when I was with the RCMP years ago. I was a police negotiator back then. A man had barricaded himself on the top floor of a five-storey building. I managed to talk him into letting his wife go, but he kept their baby with him. She was only five months old. He went out on the ledge, holding her. She was crying, so terrified. I went out on the ledge after him. It was the middle of winter. Freezing cold. It was icy on that ledge, and it was snowing. I was supposed to talk him down. But I screwed up.”

  “He jumped?”

  She nodded. “I kept asking him to let the baby go. But I didn’t realize he would take me literally. He looked at me finally, like he was tired of hearing me say it. He spread his arms out like wings and let the baby go. I tried to grab her and I almost fell, but she slipped through my fingers. I lost her. Then he jumped.”

  “Did she die?”

  “No. She landed in a snowbank. A fractured skull. A miracle, they said, but it didn’t feel that way to me. I never found out what kind of disability it caused; I’ve just always assumed it was serious. Every time I see a disabled child, I feel responsible.
I know it’s irrational. It doesn’t matter. I ended up quitting the force. I couldn’t go through that again. I’ve never been good with heights since. Or snow, for that matter. My husband, Alex, will never believe that I went for a walk up the side of a mountain. He knows I’d never get that close to one voluntarily. He will find out what happened to me if it kills him. We’re like a pair of old swans.”

  Sanchez nodded slowly and exhaled. He seemed more relaxed than before. “Yes, I know the net is tightening around me. I made stupid mistakes. Trying to cover it up.”

  Keep the hostage-taker talking.

  “I’m guessing you made up the anonymous complaint about the man in the park. And then got Inspector Ramirez to search Mike’s room so you could pretend to find that evidence. That was smart.”

  Sanchez nodded. “Ramirez is usually more professional than that, but recently he has been acting strangely. I can tell you this, Señora, it was nice to get new briefs. It can be difficult to find them here.” He laughed. “You will never know, Señora, how close you came to getting Michael Ellis out of jail with that report of yours.”

  “My bloody report. Pun intended.” She forced a smile.

  “You know, I should kill you just for that joke.” He laughed again. Incredibly, she found herself laughing as well. Maybe it will be okay, she thought. We’re connecting; we’re laughing. Maybe he’ll let me go.

  “I do feel sorry about the boy, you know,” Sanchez said. “Arturo. He reminded me of Rubén, of what happened to me here. I admit, I beat the boy. I tried to frighten him from talking to anyone again. I told him that if he said anything, it would be worse the next time. But I didn’t kill him. Nasim must have panicked and done that later that night. I have only ever killed one person in my life. And he deserved it.”

  “Nasim?”

  Sanchez nodded. “To quote Lenin, he was a useful idiot. But if Ramirez had found him, he would have told him everything. He was a whiner, that one. No cojones.” His eyes flicked away, but just for a moment. “I was not unkind, Señora. Arturo had no idea, never did, what was done to him. Better than what was done to me here, I can tell you that.”

  “Perhaps the panel will understand that and spare your life,” said Jones, although she didn’t believe it for a moment. There was only one reason to drug the boy: to make it impossible for him to identify his attacker. And to stop him from fighting back. “Maybe they’ll only send you to jail.”

  “Do you really think I would let myself be arrested? A Cuban policeman in custody with a hundred political dissidents? I would be dead within a night. But you are the only person who knows about all of this. If I kill you, I can live a while longer, perhaps find some way to escape this island. My life has some value, if only to me. It certainly means more to me at the moment than yours. I’m sorry, Señora.”

  He pointed the gun squarely at her face and drew his finger down on the trigger. She blinked hard and tried not to flinch as she waited for the bullet. “So this is it?” Jones said. “I can’t talk you out of doing this?”

  “You don’t beg. I like that. I never begged for anything either.”

  Sanchez released the trigger and stepped forward to sit below her on the steps. He looked up at her, one leg bent. He rested the gun on his knee, but still aimed at her. He reached into his coat pocket with his left hand. He brought out a tiny tape recorder and put it on the steps between them. Sanchez clicked the recorder on, hit “fast forward,” played with the buttons. He looked at the beaded bracelet on his wrist for a long time. For the first time, he seemed ashamed.

  “In my country, the statement of a dead person is admissible in court. Is it the same in your country?”

  “Yes.” She swallowed. “May I use that recorder to say goodbye to my husband?”

  The final lesson in hostage-taking. Negotiate. Offer to trade something small for something of value. But she had nothing of value to exchange. He already had the forms.

  Sanchez laughed. He pushed the button and the small machine whirred. He clicked it off and on. “I thought you wanted to hear everything.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Padre Rey Callendes was his name. The Catholic priest. He was transferred to a school in another country for a while. Who knows? Maybe yours.”

  Then he fell silent again, thinking, she supposed, about the man who had betrayed him so callously, physically and then emotionally, by withdrawing what he had masqueraded as love.

  Sanchez shook his head. “I thought I was safe, Señora Jones. I never expected you to pursue the drugs all the way to Viñales. You were supposed to be leaving tomorrow. You should have taken a different tour.”

  “I’m sorry now that I didn’t.”

  “So am I.”

  “Please. Let me leave a message for my husband. You can hide the tape in my clothes. They may not find my body for years. I just want to tell Alex how much I love him. That I’m sorry I’m leaving nothing of the two of us behind. That we never had children.”

  “You see?” he observed. “Everyone begs eventually.”

  The small recorder beeped twice. Out of tape. “Too bad.” He threw it on the ground and stood up, kicked it. “Made in China. A ‘piece of shit,’ as you might say.”

  He walked over to where he had kicked the small machine. He picked it up and rewound it, still holding the gun. She heard the tape click and waited for him to hand it to her. When he didn’t, she knew her time was up, that all her police training had failed her again.

  Jones forced herself not to cry. She wiped her eyes. She did not want Alex to imagine her weeping in her last seconds on this beautiful planet.

  Sanchez turned his wrist to check his watch. “You never know. Perhaps they will find you sooner than you think.”

  He pushed the “record” button and raised his gun. She wondered how much dying would hurt. She was still trying to decide whether to close her eyes or not when Sanchez spoke into the tiny machine. He pointed the gun straight at her forehead, only inches away. He held his red and white beads in his fingers, twisting them like a rosary.

  “This is Detective Rodriguez Sanchez of the Cuban National Revolutionary Police. May God forgive me for my sins, including this one. That is, if there is a God. I do not believe in one anymore. But best to make the request, just in case.”

  Sirens yelped in the distance. Sanchez pulled the gun up sharply and pulled the trigger.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  The blue car jumped the sidewalk as Inspector Ramirez turned it towards the Parque Ciudad. He drove down the centre of the pedestrian boulevard to save time. He blew his horn and tourists darted out of the way.

  His car screeched to a stop in front of the hotel and Mike Ellis jumped into the passenger seat. They tore off as Ellis pulled the door closed, leaving a strip of black rubber on the road.

  Ramirez took the highway to Viñales. He drove far over the speed limit, but smoothly, competently, managing to avoid the Cubans waiting for buses in the centre of the road. Several times, he wrenched the car sideways, spraying dirt and gravel, to miss the stray dogs that meandered across the highway as the sky darkened.

  It was normally a two-hour drive to get to Viñales; they made it in just over an hour and a half. Ramirez was on the radio almost the entire time, speaking Spanish. He was calling for backup and support, he told Ellis. Notifying the other units that there was a rogue officer, armed and dangerous, with a foreign hostage.

  He called ahead to other cars to block all routes leading to and from Viñales. More dramatic than it sounded, Ramirez explained, as there was only one route in and out of town.

  “Sanchez,” he said, shaking his head, trying not to allow his disappointment and shock affect what he had to do. “Rodriguez would normally be sitting in your seat, handling the radio. It is hard for me to believe this of him. In all my years as a police officer, I have never had to use my gun. I don’t want my friend to be the first man I’ve ever killed.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” said Ellis.r />
  Ramirez glimpsed the dead boy in his side mirror. The boy rolled around in the back. He hung onto the door handle as the car swerved around corners, smiling, as if he were on a roller coaster. Ramirez could tell he had no idea where they were going or why, but he liked the ride.

  Police cars from the villages they passed pulled alongside and then dropped into line behind the small blue car. The noisy little car laboured up the coiled roads towards Viñales, but it held its own.

  As they approached the crest of the Viñales mountains, there were at least twenty police cars reflected in the side mirror. Their flashing lights winked as they drove up the mountain road in single file. Ramirez used his hand-held radio to tell them to turn their sirens on. He wanted Sanchez to know he was coming.

  But by the time they got to the school, it was too late.

  Ramirez pulled into the overgrown yard of the old Viñales residential school and slammed on his brakes, leaving a cloud of dust. The other cars stopped well behind his. In a hostage-taking, the officers were supposed to contain the perimeter, but Inspector Ramirez had broken all the rules.

  “Where is she?” Ellis demanded. “It’s too dark here to see anything.”

  “Here.” Ramirez handed him a flashlight and pulled another from the dash.

  “I think I see a police car. Where the hell is she?”

  “Quiet. There is someone on the steps.” An ember, glowing in the dusk.

  “Celia doesn’t smoke,” Ellis whispered.

  Ramirez trained his light on the front of the school. “It’s Ricardo Ramirez, Rodriguez,” he called. “Give yourself up. We can work through this; you know that. No one else needs to die.”

  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.