The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  “I would rather wait until the autopsy. Are you are still coming?”Apiro looked at his watch. “It’s eleven-thirty now. Say two-thirty?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Well, I should get back to the lab. I will see you later.” The doctor peered through the glass. “Interesting scar. I wonder how he got it.”

  Ramirez was pleased with Apiro’s update. Everything was on schedule, ahead of it even. If all went well, he might yet spend some time with his family before Christmas Day was over. Kiss his wife, play with his children, and put the tragic death of this little boy aside for a few hours. And maybe even enjoy some leftover chicken.

  He resumed watching Sanchez question the Canadian through the two-way glass while he decided how best to use Apiro’s findings.

  Ramirez had trained Sanchez himself. He expected that Sanchez would take over his job one day. Likely sooner than Sanchez expected.

  Before he joined the Major Crimes Unit, Sanchez spent several years on Patrol, then five years at the Havana International Airport with the Customs section. Ramirez discovered him there and arranged for his transfer. This was another of Ramirez’s talents: scavenging not just the supplies his unit needed, but the personnel.

  A useful interrogation so far, if not a terribly skilled one. Sanchez needed to learn to be less aggressive, less predictable. Even so, the back and forth of their dialogue was interesting. Not so much for what the suspect said, but how he said it. Watching his body language, Ramirez was sure he was lying. Not that it mattered. Ramirez had enough evidence to arrest him already.

  Still, given the political aspects of a case such as this, which involved a foreigner from a friendly country — and a police officer at that — it was always better to have more evidence than needed. Ramirez planned to listen to the entire recorded interview later on, but he was ready to question the man himself and form his own impressions.

  He stepped into the bathroom down the hall to change out of his uniform and into his suit and tie. It was time to start the clock.

  SEVENTEEN

  Mike Ellis looked frantically around the interrogation room, nearly paralyzed with disbelief. The small muscle in his chest began to corkscrew. He took a few deep breaths and tried to relax the tightness above his heart. The boy was dead?

  “Beaten, raped, and murdered,” said Detective Sanchez. “Were you afraid he would tell your wife about your, oh, what is the word in English,” he searched for a moment, “your predilection for young children?”

  Ellis thought of his missing hours the night before. In his eagerness to be helpful, he had answered questions without a lawyer, had even volunteered information. He might have dug his own grave. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears. Anxiety.

  “What happened? How did he die?”

  Sanchez ignored his questions.

  “Your wallet was hidden in the boy’s underwear. You were the last person seen with him. We know you gave him a great deal of money, as much as some Cubans earn in a month.”

  “If you are going to accuse me of a crime, I should have a lawyer,” Ellis said, but he was finding it hard to form words. It was getting harder to breathe, and the room seemed much smaller than when he first sat down.

  “Do you need one?”

  “I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong here.” It was an answer nuanced enough to fail a polygraph, as Ellis well knew.

  “If you are innocent, you have no need of procedural protections. Which is good,” Sanchez twisted his face into something approximating a smile, “because we have very few of them. You have no right to a lawyer until you are indicted. Once indicted, you can have assistance for your defence, provided you pay for it yourself.” The detective paused. “Those are your rights. Now tell us why you killed the boy.”

  Ellis realized someone else was watching. He tried to see who was on the other side of the mirrored glass but glimpsed only shadows.

  “I have no idea what happened to the boy after I saw him,” he repeated, careful to speak into the tiny machine, catching his breath between each word. “But before I say anything else, I want a lawyer.”

  “I have already told you, Señor Ellis, you have no right to one.”

  Sanchez sat silently, waiting. Ellis wondered if he had taken the right tack. These people were bureaucrats. He wasn’t a Cuban, he was a Canadian citizen, a foreign national. Surely they couldn’t just detain him indefinitely.

  So he had been seen with the boy, so what? The bartender at El Bar would remember him. The woman who had sat with him might be a regular there, someone easy to track down. She knew the bartender; she had called him by name. He reconsidered.

  “Detective Sanchez, believe me, I didn’t do anything to that boy. You have no reason to keep me here. Am I under arrest or not?” He tried to ignore the muscle turning in his chest, tightening its grip around his heart.

  Sanchez raised his voice. “Why did you kill him? Had you already paid the boy for sex and he demanded more money? Were you afraid your wife would find out when he began to follow you around? Or maybe she knew, and that is why she decided to leave Cuba so quickly. Is that what happened?”

  “I had nothing to do with this. I didn’t lay a hand on that boy.”

  Ellis heard a rap on the glass and Sanchez looked up. A signal from someone. A summons.

  Sanchez left Ellis alone in the room. Ellis wondered if he would leave Cuba alive.

  EIGHTEEN

  Inspector Ramirez rapped on his side of the glass. Moments later, Rodriguez Sanchez entered the anteroom.

  “I’ll take over now, Rodriguez. Dr. Apiro has made a strong link between the forensic evidence and the suspect,” Ramirez announced. “Your question about how he paid for his drinks was particularly clever. Perhaps you can stay for a while and watch, in case you pick up something I miss?”

  “Of course, Inspector. I had no plans.”

  As far as Ramirez knew, Sanchez had no girlfriend, no wife, and he never spoke of a family. He appeared as relieved as Ramirez that they had the killer in custody this early in their investigation.

  “I may turn the tape off and on. To make him uncomfortable,” said Ramirez.

  Señor Ellis would wonder why Ramirez had stopped the tape, whether it meant Ramirez planned to beat him up. Insecurity was good, so was confusion. They permitted Ramirez to build a rapport with the suspect, to offer him assurances, comfort. Physical force was no substitute for a relationship. But he would be a challenge, this one. A trained policeman would be familiar with his tricks, and the Canadian had a face that was hard to read.

  “I’ll run a second tape recorder on this side.”

  “Good.”

  The anteroom had been designed so that conversations in the interrogation room could be easily taped, and the small recorders, although Chinese, had an incredible range.

  Ramirez walked the short distance to the interrogation room and entered. The heavy metal door clanged shut.

  “Detective Sanchez,” Ramirez said to the mirrored glass. “Can you get Señor Ellis a nice strong Cuban coffee? And one for me? Señor Ellis, we have no cream. Or milk. Rationing, I’m afraid, is a fact of life in Cuba. But we always have sugar. Would you like some in your coffee?”

  Michael Ellis shook his head.

  Ramirez swung the empty chair in the room around and sat down casually, informally. He spoke to Ellis courteously, like someone who could do business with him.

  “Forgive me, Señor Ellis. Let me introduce myself. My name is Inspector Ricardo Ramirez. I am in charge of the Havana Major Crimes Unit. I know you are an off-duty police officer on vacation. I am sure you agree that a child’s death is a serious matter? I hope you don’t mind giving us a few hours of your time to help us determine the child’s whereabouts yesterday.”

  “I’ve been here all afternoon and I’ve told your partner everything I know, Inspector. I only saw the boy briefly. He was begging. I gave him some money. That was it.”

  The dead man leaned against the wall in the co
rner, his arms folded. He watched the back and forth of their conversation, his head turning from side to side as if observing a Chinese table tennis match. Ramirez sensed he was being evaluated. He tried not to look at his hallucination.

  Sanchez re-entered the room and put two cracked mugs of coffee on the table, one in front of Ramirez, the other in front of Ellis. Ellis’s lacked a handle.

  Ramirez reached into his side pocket and pulled out a small bottle of añejo. The rum helped calm the tremors in his fingers. He turned off the tape recorder. Sanchez left, pulling the door closed.

  “It is excellent, this rum,” Ramirez said. “Detective Sanchez and I seized it from an illegal exporter last year. We could have just thrown it away when it was no longer useful as evidence, but that would have been a tragic waste. Most Cubans cannot afford to buy rum as old as this, only tourists. It is a matter of great regret to us — the cost of rum, that is — not our inability to purchase tourists. Are you sure you would not like a taste? As a professional courtesy?”

  “No thanks.”

  Ramirez poured some añejo into his own coffee. A few sips and the trembling in his fingers disappeared. He curved his lips at the rare pleasure of rum so aged it tasted like syrup. He put the mug down. The suspect’s remained untouched.

  “As you know, as a fellow policeman, when one deals with witnesses, there are often small details that one thinks unimportant, only to find out that they are very important. Yes?”

  This was how police work went, building details and pursuing leads in the most logical direction. The direction changed with the information one gathered. One investigation could easily turn into something very different. Ellis nodded.

  “Perhaps you can indulge me then. You told my colleague that you were very drunk last night.”

  “Yes,” Ellis said. “That’s not a crime here, is it?”

  “Not for tourists, Senior Ellis, not at all. Or we would have thousands of foreigners in our already overcrowded jails.” Ramirez paused, took another sip. “Ah … nothing tastes as good as Cuban coffee. Did you go to any of our coffee plantations on your tours?”

  Ellis shook his head. “My wife didn’t like to leave the hotel. We went to a rum factory, that’s about it.”

  “Too bad,” Ramirez sympathized. “The tours are something we do rather well. That, I think, and cigars.”

  Ramirez pulled a cigar from his inside pocket and offered it to Ellis, but the Canadian declined. The dead man looked at Ellis sadly, a foreigner who appreciated neither new cigars nor old rum.

  “We have just received a laboratory report concerning the blood tests Dr. Apiro, our pathologist, conducted on the boy’s body. There was Rohypnol in his blood.”

  “Rohypnol? You mean the date-rape drug?”

  “Technically, a medication. Like others, not easily obtained here.”

  The Canadian’s brow rippled. It seemed to be the only part of his face that moved naturally.

  “Just a moment … you’re saying that boy was drugged? He looked fine when I saw him. He was running around like a rabbit.”

  “That is what others have said,” Ramirez acknowledged. “Shall we carry on from where Detective Sanchez left off, then? May I ask where you were yesterday afternoon and evening? The tape recorder, I should explain, is standard procedure here in Cuba. We often keep a record of our dealings, because foreigners so often falsely allege that we demand bribes.”

  All lies. Bribery was endemic. And tape recordings were used only in court proceedings involving serious felonies. Like murder.

  “I was with my wife until around dinnertime. That’s when she left to take a flight home. After that, I was in a bar in Old Havana until quite late. I’ve told your colleague that already. The bartender can confirm I was there.” Ellis stopped for a moment. “His name, I think, was Fidel. Yes, that was it. There was a woman who sat next to me. I bought her a few drinks. I don’t know her name.”

  Good, thought Ramirez. Ellis was volunteering information. It meant he was dropping his guard. “What time did you leave the bar?”

  “I can’t remember; I drank at least two bottles of rum last night.”

  “What then? Where did you go?”

  “After that,” Ellis swallowed, and Ramirez noted the small shift in his demeanour, “after that, I went back to my hotel room. The doorman, Miguel, should know what time I came back. I’m pretty sure he was there, he usually is. I got up quite early. I went for a run around five-thirty, six.”

  I didn’t ask him when he woke up or what he did this morning, thought Ramirez. He’s overcompensating. Either lying about something, or leaving out something important. “Did anyone see you on your run?”

  “I doubt it. I used the back stairs to go out. But I noticed there were police cars on the Malecón when I jogged by, maybe twenty minutes later. It looked like a crime scene. Is that where the boy’s body was found?”

  Ramirez took out the cigar again, tapped it. He bit off a piece of the end and lit a wooden match. He drew on the cigar a few times as the embers turned red. Fragrant smoke circled above his head. He didn’t respond to the question, but neither would Ellis in the same circumstances. It was common for perpetrators to return to the scene of their crimes.

  Enough of the niceties. “Señor Ellis, when we searched your room, we found an empty Rohypnol capsule on the floor. Can you explain this?”

  Ellis jumped to his feet. “And how the hell did that get there? What the hell are you people up to?”

  Ramirez gave him the patient look a teacher might give an overexcited student. “Señor Ellis, please sit down.” He motioned to Ellis’s chair. “We are interested in finding a killer, not inventing one. If we were to wrongly accuse you, then a very bad person will be wandering around Havana savaging our children. This would not be good for our children, or for our reputation as competent investigators.”

  Ellis sat back down, his hands balled into fists. “You searched my hotel room? You can’t do that. You didn’t have a search warrant.”

  “Very kind of you to explain the scope of my duties to me,” said Ramirez, “but we do not need warrants in my country to search hotel rooms. Or anywhere else once we suspect a crime has been committed. The reasonable grounds I understand are necessary in your country do not apply in ours.”

  Ramirez leaned back in his chair. He drained his mug, put it down, and pulled a notebook and pen from his jacket pocket. He turned the tape recorder on again.

  “But there is no need to be concerned. Trust me; we rely only on evidence in Cuba, not simply what people tell us. Confessions have no meaning in my country. Cuban juridical panels do not like confessions. The drafters of our Penal Code seemed to fear that they might be beaten out of people. A reflection of our history, I suppose, when force was the only tool. Now, we prefer science to witnesses, given their unreliability. That of witnesses, I mean. Not of our legislative drafters.”

  Ellis looked skeptical. But then, Ramirez didn’t believe him either.

  Ramirez began to jump around in his questioning, to see what Ellis would do. Someone who lied usually found it difficult to move between different topics quickly. When pressed, with no time to invent, they tended to repeat themselves, recycling exact words and phrases.

  “Now, as I mentioned, Señor Ellis, we found an empty capsule of Rohypnol in your hotel room. Do you have any explanation for how it got there?”

  “None,” Ellis shook his head. “Unless it was there when we rented the room.”

  A poor attempt at invention. “You took the room when — a week ago?

  “Yes,” said Ellis. “We arrived last Saturday.”

  “How many times have the maids cleaned your room since then?”

  Maids vacuumed every day. Besides, Ramirez was sure the wife would have noticed something on the floor. He drew on his cigar again and the smoke floated to the ceiling. The room was becoming hazy, uncomfortable. The dead man fanned his face with his hat.

  Ellis didn’t answer. Ramirez pres
sed. “I understand you were alone in your hotel room last night. Did anyone else have a key to your room?”

  “No,” Ellis admitted. “Just hotel staff.”

  “Did you let anyone in?”

  Ellis hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. That short pause was enough to convince Ramirez he was lying. A slight wrinkle in what should have been the smooth fabric of an unrehearsed answer.

  “I don’t know anything about that capsule or how it got there,” Ellis said. “Where would I have obtained a drug like that? I was with my wife the entire time.”

  Now Ramirez was certain. The reference to the wife was another unnecessary detail, another attempt to compensate for something untrue. “Until yesterday.”

  “Until she left, correct. And after that, I have fully accounted for my whereabouts.”

  “Except for the period in question, when the boy was killed. This is unfortunate, Señor Ellis. I am sure you appreciate the value of a good alibi.” Ramirez did not yet know exactly when the boy was murdered, but Ellis didn’t ask, which suggested that Ellis did.

  “As a matter of interest, Inspector Ramirez, on what basis did you search my hotel room for evidence? All your so-called evidence was obtained during your search.”

  A mild attempt to deflect his questions. “Señor Ellis, this is Cuba,” Ramirez responded firmly. “Witnesses saw you give the child money. A substantial amount of money. We also received a complaint of a man with your description approaching young boys for sex in Parque Ciudad.”

  “I wasn’t involved in this; I keep telling you.” Ellis’s voice broke as his façade crumbled.

  Good. Ramirez could work with stress more easily than resistance. Time to raise the stakes. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a small flat plastic exhibit bag. He pushed it across the table. Polaroid photographs. The top one of a small boy, his eyes glassy, and a man, but not the man’s face.