The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  FORTY

  Celia Jones changed out of her suit. She put on a pair of shorts, a light top, leather sandals. Alex had left a message on her hotel phone. He was glad to hear her voice, would be in surgery all day, loved her, missed her too, and hoped she was enjoying the sun. She smiled, played it back several times, couldn’t bring herself to delete it.

  She had a quick bite to eat at the upstairs lounge beside the beautiful rooftop pool. She worked on the brief as she munched, stopping occasionally to admire the spectacular beauty of the view around her, careful to avoid looking down. The terrace overlooked the squalor of Havana but also framed the majestic Capitolio Nacional. It was so close she felt she could almost reach out and touch its gleaming dome.

  The Capitolio was a knockoff of the Capitol building in Washington, built to scale, but much smaller. It held the fiftyfoot-high Statue of the Republic, reputedly covered in twentytwo-carat gold. The steps of the Capitolio ran the entire width of the building. At the ground level, they were rimmed with 1956 Chevys and lineups of tourists, along with the ubiquitous beggars, stray dogs, cigar women, and young boys. Even the dogs begged.

  She walked to the edge of the terrace and tried to look below but felt dizzy almost immediately. She’d been fine before the crazy suicide jumper. She recalled looking down to the parking lot, seeing his body flattened into sharp angles in the snow, like a white origami swan with red wings. Now she suffered from all kinds of phobias: heights, claustrophobia, even chionophobia, a fear of snow. Not good for a Canadian. I should have pushed him myself, she thought. It would have been easier to deal with.

  Looking straight ahead, she saw the Gran Teatro, one of the world’s largest opera houses. The ocean sparkled on the other side of the flat tops of crumbling buildings that surrounded her hotel. The view was beautiful and ravaged at the same time. She glanced at her watch and realized it was just after eight. It was so much brighter here in the evening than at home; she hadn’t marked the passage of time.

  Damn. She was late.

  Jones ran to the elevator, pushed the “down” button several times, then jogged down the four flights of stairs from the terrace to her room when the elevator didn’t arrive quickly enough. She grabbed her laptop and locked the door, flew down the two remaining flights of stairs to the hotel lobby.

  Artez was nowhere to be seen. She hoped he hadn’t left. She paced around the lobby for a few minutes before she finally asked the concierge if he knew where Miguel was. He shrugged, apologetic, and said Miguel had finished his shift hours ago.

  She might have screwed up badly, but there was nothing she could do about it. She sat at the bar and watched for Artez, while a very good three-member band sang together. The men played guitars; the woman shook castanets, swirled her dress, and stamped her feet as she sang. Jones applauded, but her mind was elsewhere.

  She needed Artez desperately. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if he had changed his mind. She was stranded as it was, without any other access to the internet and running out of time. But then he strolled in and casually waved at her as if he weren’t twenty minutes late.

  “Come with me, Señora Celia,” he said. “My hypothetical cousin is waiting outside.”

  FORTY - ONE

  It was late, long past dinner. Another missed meal with his family. Francesca would be irritated, but Inspector Ramirez had little choice. He had two problems to keep an eye on: a foreign lawyer determined to poke holes in his evidence, and a politician pushing for a conviction.

  “I wish I knew where he got the drugs,” Ramirez remarked to Sanchez as he put down the summary of their evidence. “That part of this case troubles me the most.”

  It meant Rohypnol could still be out there, that other children could be drugged and abused as easily as the murdered boy. Ramirez had sent Sanchez to the airport to see if the detective could trace the shipment of Rohypnol through Customs, but Sanchez reported that there had been no deliveries to Havana for years.

  “I don’t think we need to know where the Rohypnol came from, Inspector,” said Sanchez. “We have more than enough evidence to charge the Canadian with rape. It doesn’t matter if he brought the drug to Cuba or not: the important thing is that we found it in his room.”

  Perhaps Sanchez was right, but Ramirez didn’t like loose ends.

  “Well, I am quite sure that the Canadian did not bring any drugs with him. Likely not even prescription ones. I checked the surveillance tapes you picked up for me at the airport. Nothing.”

  Ramirez had watched the beagle, the best of the sniffing dogs, walk right past the Canadian man as he stood in the Customs lineup without even a second look, tail wagging. The Canadian had no drugs on him when he had arrived, then, not even small amounts. Not in his luggage, not on his clothes.

  The Rohypnol capsule had to have come from within Cuba, from someone who already had it. But Sanchez was right. Ramirez was not trying to indict the Canadian on illegal drug charges or the use of a hypnotic. Instead, in his report, Ramirez asked the prosecutor’s office to indict Michael Ellis on the charges of rape and murder, and to request the death penalty, given the special circumstances of the crime.

  The dead man met the inspector’s eyes. He pointed his index finger, thumb up, bent his fingers into the shape of a gun and aimed it at Sanchez. Then he held it to his own head and pulled the trigger.

  After Sanchez left for the night, Inspector Ramirez leaned back in his swivel chair. He folded his hands behind his head, thinking back to their conversation.

  Sanchez had raised a good point. Why was the Minister of the Interior so involved in this particular file? And if he wanted to ensure the Canadian was sentenced to death, why was Luis Perez assigned as prosecutor? There were too many layers of politics in this case for Ramirez to be completely confident of its outcome, despite the strength of the forensic evidence. He shook his head. There were too many secrets.

  His own were becoming harder to conceal. With the stresses of the past week, the trembling in his arms and legs was more pronounced. He had hoped to exhaust himself by working late so that he could finally fall asleep. But the visions seemed to be coming more frequently.

  The time would come when he would have to tell Francesca the truth. He’d left it for so long, he no longer knew how to. What was he supposed to say to her?

  He was afraid Francesca would want him examined by a psychiatrist. That’s if she didn’t immediately file for divorce. She would almost certainly insist that Ramirez move out of their bedroom and take his ghosts with him.

  That’s what would drive her crazy, he thought. Not his illness, but the fact there were strangers wandering around their apartment without her knowing about it. She wouldn’t care whether they were really there or not. She liked to keep a clean house when visitors came.

  And how would Edel react to finding out his father was either dying or insane?

  When it came right down to it, Ramirez wasn’t completely sure how anyone he cared about would react to his situation. It wasn’t something he was particularly anxious to find out.

  But he couldn’t keep lying to the people he loved. Ramirez shook his head. He had no idea what to do. He held out his hand and watched his fingers tremble like palm fronds in the breeze.

  He opened his desk drawer and pulled out the bottle of rum.

  FORTY - TWO

  The air was cooling with the evening breeze. An old red car was parked beside the taxis, bleeding diesel. Inside, a statue of the Virgin Mary stood on the dashboard, a string of brown beads wrapped around it. The windows were down, the interior open to the night air.

  A woman sat in the driver’s seat. “Come, Señora,” the woman urged nervously. “Get in. Quickly, please.”

  Miguel Artez introduced them. “This is my cousin, Juanita.”

  “Hola,” the woman said and turned the key in the ignition.

  The car snaked along the Malecón, then turned left down a side street, then right. The streets were indistinguishable, except t
he houses, if it was possible, became poorer and more dilapidated.

  Jones lost track of their route. She had to trust that they would bring her back safely from wherever they were going. They drove for eight or nine minutes, then Juanita parked the car. They got out and walked up the cracked pavement.

  “Where are we going?” Jones asked.

  “Not far now,” Artez responded, evasive.

  They walked through an archway covered with rocks into a narrow alley unlike anything she’d ever seen. The housing was the typical three-storey stone-and-wood structures of other parts of Havana, but the back of each building was painted with crazy patterns. Crevices in the stone and bricks were inset with dolls’ heads, urns, parts of gates, light bulbs, and all kinds of other unlikely decorations.

  Even in the dusk, she could make out leopard and zebra prints painted on the backs of some walls, intricate mosaic designs inset in others. Red flags hung from posts. Figures of men and women jumped from shadows, crafted out of rock, wood, and iron. Masks glared everywhere.

  They walked past a bucket that held a number of live turtles that clambered slowly over each other in the murky water.

  “The followers of Santería drink the water,” Artez explained. “They believe the urine will help them to live longer because turtles live a long time.”

  “Santería?” asked Jones. It didn’t look to her as if those turtles had a very long life ahead of them, trapped in one small plastic bucket.

  “The descendants of African slaves believe in blood sacrifice. They pray to the orishas here. The orishas are the Santería gods. This alley is their temple.”

  A male drummer with a brilliant white smile thumped African-type rhythms with his hands on a large drum. A small group of Afro-Cuban women sang, swayed, and clapped along. Torches lit the alley.

  There was a small open bar and terrace where a few Cubans drank rum in the deepening shade. A white bust of Stalin sat on a red plinth, next to a building painted with bulging eyes. It was completely surreal, the product of either a mad mind or a brilliant one. Maybe both. The women’s singing became louder, climbing towards a crescendo. It was riveting, hypnotizing.

  “What is this place called?” Jones asked. For a fleeting moment, it crossed her mind that she had been brought here as a sacrifice.

  “The Callejón sin salida,” Artez replied. Blind Alley.

  “It was created by an artist many years ago,” his cousin explained in a tone a tour guide might use to lecture a child. “Tobacco workers settled here originally, from Key West. This is where we have carnival, but also religious ceremonies and initiations. It is illegal, Lukumi, everywhere but here.”

  “I had no idea anything like this existed.”

  “Oh yes. Originally, the Yoruba had hundreds of orishas, but only a few dozen remain. You may have noticed: most baptized Cubans wear bead bracelets or necklaces to show which gods they have adopted. Yellow, blue, and white for Oshun, the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, the goddess of sexual love. She was forced to become a prostitute to feed her children, so she is the goddess of prostitutes as well. Red and white beads for Chango, the warrior, who hides behind the face of Santa Barbara. The Catholics who follow Chango believe so long as they confess all their sins, they will never die without first receiving the sacraments. But like the orishas and the Catholics, everyone in these streets gets along. Spanish, black, and others, we have no disagreements. This,” Juanita smiled, “is where the real cultural revolution took place.”

  Jones had never seen such a place in her life: a living space that combined murals, African spiritualism, and pop art. They walked past life-size images of playing cards that leaned against giant cactuses. The cobblestones below their feet had been painted in black and white swirls.

  A narrow opening carved out of the stone encouraged them down stairs and into a gallery. Posters and art covered the walls. Piles of CDs were scattered everywhere.

  Juanita spoke to a very dark man who seemed to be running the store.

  The Afro-Cuban man took them down a hall and unlocked a door, then ushered them silently into a back room. It was piled high with parts of mannequins, overstuffed life-size dolls with blackface, spears, stuffed animal heads, and books.

  An ancient PC sat on a table. It was an old desktop, the screen resolution set low so that the screen flickered. It would quickly give her a headache, Jones knew. But it displayed a Google site as its home page and Google was what she needed.

  “How much?” Jones asked Artez, knowing the price would be high.

  “Twenty-five tourist pesos. Ten for Juanita and ten for Carlos, the manager of the gallery. Five for me. And Señora, if anyone asks, you were never here.”

  “Fine.”

  She paid the money, almost a month’s salary for each of them, aware they were breaking Cuban laws by getting her internet access on a computer not authorized for her use. She had become a Cuban scofflaw. Probably best to leave that out of her report to O’Malley.

  Jones sat in front of the computer. “How much time do I have?” She looked at her watch.

  “An hour. No more. And maybe not that long,” Juanita said, clearly nervous as the singing intensified above. “The police do not come here often. They believe there are spirits here. And they are right, of course. These alleys are full of them; you must not walk here alone. But do not be afraid. Sacrifices are made to Oshosi, the god of traps, to keep the police away. Some believe that Eshu, our god of the crossroads, is also in charge of electronic communications, not just those between living and dead. Either way, you will be protected. Anywhere else on the island, you would be arrested, trust me.”

  “It is not safe to be on the computer any longer than that,” Artez insisted. “The police monitor all transmissions off the island. They will notice that kind of activity.”

  “And even Eshu can only warn, not prevent harm. He is just a messenger. His attentions are focused on the dead, not the living. Understood?” Juanita asked.

  Jones nodded. She could imagine how the local police might feel a sense of discomfort in this place, with the drumbeats, the chanting, and the sense of voodoo that permeated every inch.

  Upstairs, bloodcurdling screams rose above the sounds of drumming. A woman yelled that she was possessed. Artez and his cousin quickly left and closed the door. Jones heard the lock click.

  Oh, that’s just great, she thought. Leave a claustrophobe locked in a tiny room surrounded by crazy people. Like in one of those fucking zombie movies. Shit. She banged on the door, but no one responded. Artez and his cousin were gone.

  Scary. Jones’s forehead broke out in sweat. She tried to focus on the monitor, to block out the woman’s screams — until they finally stopped, suddenly. Too suddenly. Somehow, Jones managed to complete her searches and send out her emails before her time ran out.

  At exactly the one-hour mark, the doorknob rattled and the lock clicked open. Juanita let her out of the small room. Jones took a deep, grateful breath of fresh air.

  Artez and his cousin waited in the gallery. They walked out up the narrow stone stairs into the warm night. The screaming woman was gone. The night air was quiet now. Almost unnaturally still, except for the soft murmur of voices from the outside bar.

  “Interesting place,” said Jones, looking around. In the sense of the Chinese curse: “May you have an interesting life.” Her heart was still stammering. The drummers were gone. No sign of the singers either. Only a small red pool on the ground where the man had pounded away on his drum. She hoped like hell it was paint.

  “Would you like to have a drink with us?” Artez asked, and Jones knew they expected it. She appreciated the risk they’d exposed themselves to. She bought them a quick round of mojitos at the outdoor stand, along with a CD of Afro-Cuban music for Alex.

  She paid almost fifteen times more than the warm, iceless drinks were worth when the man running the bar insisted she pay tourist pesos instead of domestic ones, but she didn’t complain. She wanted to make sure they
would take her back to the hotel. I don’t want to piss them off, she thought. I don’t want to be left here alone, that’s for sure.

  As they drove back to the Parque Ciudad, she discovered they’d been only three blocks from the Malecón. Blind Alley seemed a million miles away, a place intimately connected to the spirit world, yet to the outside world as well, in a way the rest of the island wasn’t. Thanks to the internet and a telecommunications god.

  But Jones needed to return to Blind Alley the next day to check her emails, to see if the chief and Cliff Wallace, the head of the Drug Squad, had responded to her requests. Until then, she was limited in what she could do.

  She made arrangements with Juanita to use the computer again first thing in the morning. The woman seemed thrilled at the easy money, and Jones was relieved she’d be returning during daylight. They agreed to meet at 7:30 A.M. outside the hotel, across the street from the front door.

  Juanita dropped them both off. Artez was working the latenight shift, and he excused himself to get changed. Jones thanked him, then realized he was waiting for a tip and pressed another few pesos in his hand.

  “Were there any messages for me?” she asked the receptionist at the front desk. The hotel had voice mail, but messages could also be left with the switchboard.

  “Just one,” the receptionist told her, reaching behind her for a pink slip of paper. There was no name provided. Someone had left a message for Celia Jones at ten minutes after eight. Her female friend was at the bar.

  Celia Jones ran all the way to Hemingway’s favourite drinking spot, but by the time she arrived, the blonde woman was gone. The apologetic bartender shrugged and put his hand out for the money. Jones slapped the pesos in his palm, angry that she’d missed the woman by so little time.

  She ordered another mojito to quell her nerves after her experience in the alley and to compensate for her disappointment at just missing the mystery woman.