The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  She looked at the photographs of Ernest Hemingway hung on the wall as she sipped her drink. As she recalled, Hemingway’s mother had dressed him up as a little girl for two whole years, even called him Ernestine. Hemingway’s own son was a transvestite: Gregory at birth, Gloria when she died in a women’s prison in Florida. Ernest Hemingway had committed suicide. So had his father. Blew his brains out with his favourite gun. Behind the smiles on the wall, there were dark secrets, tangled relationships, and some serious mental issues.

  Cuba was making Jones nervous.

  She paid the bartender and left feeling desolate. She hoped she had done the right thing by finding a link to the internet instead of waiting for his call.

  FORTY - THREE

  After another restless night’s sleep, Inspector Ramirez swung his legs over the side of his bed, careful not to wake his wife. He looked at the clock. Not even six. He was not only tired but hungry. He arrived home around midnight, then straight to bed. He had eaten almost nothing the day before, only a plantain croqueta from a street vendor.

  Francesca was still asleep, snoring lightly. He tiptoed into the kitchen and pulled out a plate of leftovers from their small fridge. Moros y cristianos. Beans and rice. Literally translated, it meant Moors and Christians. Everything in Cuba is either political or religious, thought Ramirez. Even our food.

  He turned to walk into the living room with the plate of food in his hand and almost collided with the dead man. He managed not to drop it; only the fork clattered to the floor. The ghost leaned against the doorway in the darkened room, his arms folded. He looked unhappy.

  “You scared me,” Ramirez whispered, his heart pounding. “Once this indictment is issued, I’ll get to your file. Sanchez and I finished almost all the paperwork last night. We’ll go through it again this morning; then we’re done. And then, I promise, I will find out who you are.”

  The dead man shook his head, unconvinced.

  “Who are you talking to, Ricky?” called Francesca. He heard the rustling sounds of her getting up. “Is someone here? I heard a noise.”

  “I’m talking to myself, cariño,” said Ramirez softly as his wife walked into the kitchen, buttoning the front of her robe. “I was hungry; I dropped a fork.”

  “I hope this ends soon,” said Francesca. “You have been working late every night this week. And then back at the office early each day. Last night, you talked to yourself in your dreams, too. I’m worried about you. You haven’t had a proper night’s sleep for weeks, Ricardo. You’re living on air. Look how much weight you’ve lost: it’s as if you are melting. It’s not healthy to work so hard.”

  “I know. But it’s almost over, Francesca. The charges will be filed this afternoon. Once this is done, things will get back to normal.”

  “I hope so,” said Francesca, but he wasn’t sure she believed him. “They don’t pay you enough for this kind of aggravation. They don’t pay you enough even without it. Here, let me warm that up for you.”

  She took the plate out of his hand and opened the cupboard to remove a heavy frying pan.

  Ramirez raised his eyebrows at the dead man, signalling he should leave. The ghost looked longingly at the rice and beans, but left, gripping his hat in his hands.

  I still don’t know your name, thought Ramirez. But like the rest of us, you were hungry. Which doesn’t really help me narrow the search to find out who you are.

  FORTY - FOUR

  The clock alarm buzzed at six-thirty, and Celia Jones dragged herself free of dreams of white swans with broken wings.

  She packed up her laptop and put it in her briefcase. She wondered how she’d be able to transfer information from the old computer in the gallery to her new one. Her laptop didn’t even accept diskettes, only CDs and memory sticks. She hoped the computer in the gallery had a working printer and a lot of toner if she couldn’t crack that nut. She showered and dressed, then walked down the two flights of stairs to the restaurant for a quick breakfast.

  A woman, a beggar, pushed her face against the window next to her table, pointed to her mouth. A husky security guard ran along the sidewalk and briskly hustled the woman away.

  Juanita was already waiting across the street. Once again, Jones thought how unfair it was that Cuban women were not allowed in hotels. Alex was right. Havana had two faces: the one the tourists saw and the real one.

  This time, they travelled to the alley without Miguel. The same dark Afro-Cuban opened the office and provided Jones with a written password to get online. Juanita said she would wait upstairs. Thankfully, no one locked the door.

  The office was even more disorganized than before. Jones removed piles of CDs from the chair and sat down. She was happy to see there was a working printer and a stack of copy paper. She booted up the computer, logged on, and checked her emails.

  There were messages from Miles O’Malley and Cliff Wallace. The chief had PDF’d everything on Mike’s police file for her, encrypting it with her birth date. He must have been up all night, she thought. He’s worried about Mike being convicted. Well, so am I.

  She opened his attachments quickly and began to print them off while she read Cliff Wallace’s email.

  According to Wallace, Canada was the only country that allowed Rohypnol to be exported to Cuba. Because of this, it was easy to trace deliveries: shipments had to be approved by both Canadian and Cuban authorities. He had checked the paper trail with the help of a Customs and Immigration official late the night before.

  The last shipment of Rohypnol was authorized for delivery to a clinic in Viñales by a Candice Olefson from Ottawa. Olefson filed her itinerary with the request: she left Ottawa on December 18 and would return home on January 2.

  Wallace included the clinic’s name and address. For privacy reasons, Customs wouldn’t release a copy of the manifest itself without a warrant, not even to the Rideau Police. But Wallace had found out that Olefson was registered at the Plaza Martí Hotel. That was just between the Paseo de Martí and the Avenida de las Misiones, not far from the Parque Ciudad Hotel.

  Just for interest, Wallace had included a National Crime Information Centre caution about a “Viper Lady,” a young woman, or perhaps a man dressed like one, in Costa Rica, who cozied up to men in bars, drugged them with Rohypnol, then stole their money. A caution was like a BOLF, an alert to “be on the lookout for” an offender on the move.

  Just as the last pages came off the printer, the lights began to flicker in the room. She lost the dial-up connection and then the power went out.

  She called for Carlos, who explained that the telephone line was not always reliable and that power outages in Cuba were frequent. She walked upstairs and told Juanita about the early end to her session. The woman offered to bring her back later that morning if she needed to finish her session, but Jones had run out of time.

  She asked Juanita to drop her off at the Parque Ciudad Hotel. She gave her the twenty-five pesos in the car. Her computer time had become expensive: fifty pesos for two hours’ access, a small fortune in Cuba. That didn’t include the drinks she had purchased, and she had no receipts for any of it. She winced, knowing the costs would come out of her own pocket. Her Scottish ancestors were rolling over in their graves. She couldn’t help but notice that Juanita didn’t offer a refund even though she didn’t get her full hour.

  She needed to get to the Plaza Martí Hotel and find Candice Olefson. She hoped the woman hadn’t left for a day tour somewhere or, worse, for another part of Cuba.

  It was just after nine in the morning. She had less than five hours until Inspector Ramirez filed for his indictment.

  FORTY - FIVE

  The dead man sat in the front seat of the blue mini-car as Inspector Ramirez drove to work. He pointed to Ramirez’s gold wedding ring.

  What is my brain trying to tell me? Ramirez looked more closely at the dead man’s hand. He narrowly missed a coco-taxi in the heavy morning traffic as his car swerved. The round yellow fibreglass vehicles were mounted to m
opeds but worked more like rickshaws and moved just as slowly. He pulled back into the correct lane, ignoring the complaining horns.

  He hadn’t noticed it before: the faint mark of a missing ring. A white line through the brown skin of the dead man’s ring finger where the sun hadn’t tanned it. But it wasn’t unusual for a fisherman to remove his wedding ring so it wouldn’t slide off when he pulled up his heavy nets. The ring itself could be in the dead man’s pockets, or it could be at the bottom of the ocean. No way of knowing until someone found the body.

  If I ever lost my wedding ring, Ramirez thought, the police wouldn’t have to look very far to find my murderer.

  “I was wrong to think you were a bachelor. Then why has no one reported you missing? If not your wife, why not a fellow worker?”

  The dead man shrugged.

  This was Cuba: someone always noticed when someone was missing. Despite its size, once you took away the turistas, Havana was really a small town.

  “Unless your family thinks you’re still alive.”

  At least three thousand Cubans attempted to make the ninety-mile trek across the Straits of Florida each year. They used pieces of drywall, old tires, dinghies, even wrecked cars they had converted into clumsy boats. Most were stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard and returned to Cuban shores before they ever set foot on American soil. But many others drowned in the rough waters or were attacked by sharks. It was possible that this man had tried to leave the island and drowned on his way to the United States.

  But if that was the case, thought Ramirez, why come back?

  Inspector Ramirez and Detective Sanchez sat side by side, their documents spread out on Ramirez’s desk. They once again went through the exhibits that would be filed in support of the indictment. Ramirez wanted to make certain that nothing was missed.

  The dead man looked over the inspector’s shoulder as he flipped through the sheaf of papers. As he had throughout the week, Ramirez tried to ignore him. “Have we had any reports of a man drowning?”

  “No, Inspector. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” Ramirez said, although he realized it was a strange question. He quickly changed the subject. “Were you and Natasha able to find any car rental records, Rodriguez?”

  “No. I’m sure that neither Señor Ellis nor his wife rented a car,” said Sanchez. “They might have borrowed one, but I think that’s unlikely.”

  “Good. And are Apiro’s DNA tests back now?”

  “Yes. I have made a copy for the case file. Dr. Apiro has established conclusively from DNA that the stains on the sheets came from the same man who raped the boy.”

  “Excellent. It will be very hard for Señor Ellis to argue that someone else’s semen was on his sheets in a room where only he had the key.”

  “I think we have more than enough evidence to meet the test of probable guilt.” Sanchez looked reasonably happy, although his expressions often required interpretation.

  “I certainly hope so. I don’t want this animal released to wander the streets of Old Havana again. According to the minister, Fidel Castro wants to send a strong message to foreigners that our children are out of bounds.”

  “That means a conviction for sure. No juridical panel will acquit this man once they hear of Castro’s interest.”

  True enough. The panels were often biased towards guilt even without such high-level encouragement. Ramirez remembered the first time he appeared before one as a young police officer. Instead of asking the accused whether he was ready to plead innocent or guilty, the panel chair, a judge, had simply asked the accused if he was ready to plead guilty.

  “My God,” the man said, “don’t you even give a man a choice?” No one in the court dared to laugh.

  There was no need to stack the deck this time, however. Even Sanchez agreed. The evidence against Michael Ellis was overwhelming.

  And the Canadian lawyer, in her various telephone discussions with her client, had found nothing to rebut it. She had spoken freely to Señor Ellis, not realizing that in Cuba, where she was not qualified as a lawyer, she enjoyed no privilege in her communications. It would have been negligent of Ramirez not to make arrangements to listen in on conversations that, if useful, were admissible in court.

  “Even so, Rodriguez, there could be a great deal of foreign interest in this trial. We need to make sure we do things right,” Ramirez cautioned. “The Canadian government knows about the charges. We can expect their reporters to come here and ask questions. No foreigner has been executed by a firing squad in Cuba for decades. The last one was that American, after the Bay of Pigs, remember? The one whose family sued the Cuban government?”

  “I saw a story about that case on the internet last week, Inspector. It seems an American court awarded his family four hundred million dollars. Another judgment like that could destroy our economy,” Sanchez joked.

  Ramirez chuckled. He stacked up the documents he planned to attach to his report to the Attorney General. He hoped there was enough toner to make copies. Transcripts of the interrogation in which Michael Ellis admitted he met the boy and gave him money. The witness statement from the man on the seawall who observed just how angry Ellis was after the boy left. The photographs Sanchez found under the mattress. But not the CD; it was suspicious but not directly relevant.

  And then Miguel Artez’s statement that Ellis came back to the hotel on Christmas Eve alone. The doorman’s statement not only contradicted the Canadian’s false alibi, but also established the completely unexpected and sudden departure of the suspect’s wife, close to the boy’s death. That, in itself, was a powerful piece of evidence.

  On top of that, Ramirez had Hector Apiro’s opinion as to the cause of death, along with the pathologist’s meticulously detailed forensic analysis. And now he had positive DNA results confirming Apiro’s earlier tests as well. Circumstantial, yes, but it should be more than enough to persuade the Attorney General to proceed.

  Yes, thought Ramirez, it is a “slam dunk.”

  FORTY - SIX

  A terrace with tables and chairs surrounded a dazzling fountain just off the lobby of the Plaza Martí Hotel. Birds trilled in the exotic garden and stained glass flooded the space with refracted colours and light. Celia Jones walked to the reception desk and asked if a Candice Olefson was registered.

  The smiling young man confirmed Señora Olefson was a guest and pointed to a beige wall phone. Jones was relieved when Olefson answered. She explained to the surprised woman that she was working on a file for the Rideau Regional Police Force. “Can I take a few minutes of your time?”

  “Oh sure, come on up. I could use a break; I’ve been writing all morning.”

  There was no elevator in the building, so Jones walked to the second level and knocked on the door. A woman who appeared to be in her thirties let her in.

  The room had two double beds, a walnut desk with a laptop, and a carved wooden armoire. It was tastefully decorated, with light peach walls and beige marble-like tile flooring. Luxurious bedding. Olefson pointed to a bentwood rocking chair next to the desk and invited Jones to sit down.

  “Can I get you something, a coffee, some orange juice perhaps? I have a very well-stocked mini-bar here with every kind of rum you can imagine. I shouldn’t tell you this,” she laughed, “but I get it re-stocked every day.”

  “Orange juice would be great. What a gorgeous hotel.”

  “You should see the view from the rooftop pool. It’s absolutely breathtaking.”

  “Do you have internet access here?” Jones asked when she saw that the woman’s laptop was turned on. “We’re supposed to have it in my hotel, but it’s been down for days.”

  “No. Just satellite television. Which so far has amounted to some really dreadful Chinese trivia game shows. They make Jeopardy seem like an adrenalin rush.”

  Olefson cracked open a small bottle of juice and pulled out a glass from a shelf in the armoire.

  “I’m almost glad there isn’t any,” Olefson said. “I’m t
rying to finish writing a mystery novel. It helps that there aren’t any distractions. I’m at that point where I’m trying to work out the twists and turns. Nothing worse than too much foreshadowing. I set it in Cuba; that’s why I’m here. My agent told me if he saw one more book about vampires, he’d stake his own heart.”

  “I’d love to hear about your book, Candice, but I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time.”

  Olefson smiled and sat on the edge of the bed. “Sorry. Writers. We should get paid by the word, the way lawyers used to bill. We’d all be rich. You mentioned something about the Rideau Police. So why are you here? And how can I help?”

  “I can’t discuss specifics, but I understand you volunteer sometimes to bring veterinary supplies into Cuba? I need to know about a shipment you brought in last week.” Jones reached for a notepad in her purse and pulled out a pencil.

  “Yes, I come here quite often. I’ve always been shocked at the terrible poverty, but it’s the dogs that break my heart. Maybe you’ve seen them? They look like terriers, with short ears and a curled tail?”

  Jones nodded. The stray dogs were all over the city. Sickly looking animals, starving, most of them. But she hoped that Olefson would get to the point.

  “I’m a crazy dog-lover, but I can’t take them all home with me. So I decided to help. Drugs for Dogs is an NGO in Toronto. I live in Ottawa, but I deliver veterinary supplies for them whenever I’m here. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them make their way into the human population, but that’s okay with me. The people here are so pleasant and easygoing that you tend to forget how much they struggle to survive every day.”

  “You brought supplies on this trip?”

  “Sorry, yes. For a clinic in Viñales. That’s a couple of hours from Havana. There was a bus tour last Tuesday; I delivered them then. I prefer not to rent a car; I think they’re held together with chewing gum and wire. Amazing, really, that they’re still running. In most countries, it’s the doctors who are highly prized. Here, it’s the mechanics.”