The Beggar's Opera

by Peggy Blair

  “You called the police?”

  “Yes. I did not give my name, but I told the officer what I knew. I even gave him the address of the building. But no one arrested him. I realized that as soon as I saw him in the bar.”

  “Why did Nasim come to El Bar that night?”

  “To threaten me. He knew I had reported him to the police. He was very angry. He said I was nothing but a stupid puta and that he had a powerful friend who would hurt me if I opened my mouth again. He drew his finger like this.” She mimicked slitting her throat. “He told me to keep my nose out of things that did not involve me. It frightened me, that Nasim knew I made the call.”

  “You were afraid that someone in the police department had tipped him off.”

  “How else could he know? The fact that he was out on the street and not in jail meant I was in great danger.”

  “In danger of what?” asked Jones.

  “Of disappearing, Señora. It happens here. More often than you would think.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to Mike about this?”

  “What could I say? We were going to spend the night together, so I knew I would be safe for at least that night. I assumed Nasim would leave Arturo alone if he thought my client was a policeman from another country.”

  “Mike was your client?”

  “Yes, of course. We had agreed to meet there, at the bar. At seven. We made arrangements over the internet.”

  “Mike says he never saw you before that night.”

  “Not in person, but he emailed me in the afternoon.”

  “He used his name?” Jones asked.

  “No. Of course not. Men never give me their real names online. And I never, ever, give them mine.”

  Jones thought back to her interview with Mike. Then she shook her head. “This doesn’t make any sense, Maria. Mike was with his wife pretty much all afternoon right up to dinnertime on Christmas Eve. And there is no email access from his hotel: the server’s been down for days. I don’t see how it could have been Mike who contacted you. It had to be someone else. ”

  “But he sat on the third stool. That is where I always meet my clients. The third bar stool, at El Bar, at exactly seven o’clock.”

  “When were these arrangements made?”

  “Late that afternoon. Maybe five-thirty or so. Why?”

  “Then it couldn’t have been Mike. There were witnesses who saw him on the Malecón around then. With his wife.”

  Jones hesitated, not wanting to scare Maria unnecessarily. On the other hand, the boy had been murdered. The woman had reason to be frightened.

  “I think you were set up. I think the person who contacted you is involved in all of this somehow. In Arturo’s death.”

  “Why would you think that?” Maria asked, shocked.

  “Because if Mike wasn’t the person who contacted you, no one else showed up at El Bar that night at seven except Nasim. Was he ever a client of yours?”

  “No, of course not.” Maria bristled. “I am very particular.”

  “Well, you tell me how he knew exactly where to find you, and when. I don’t believe that was an accident.”

  “I had not considered this before. So you think he found me on the internet, and how do you say, ‘lured’ me to El Bar? My God, I could be dead. That must be it.” Maria wiped her eyes again. “It is ironic, you know. If I tell the police, they will care more about the fact that I had an internet transaction than about the sex. I could go to jail just for going online. Five years for unauthorized internet transactions.”

  This country was insane. “Why El Bar?” asked Jones. “Why not some other bar?”

  “The bartender, Fidel, protects me. I am not supposed to be inside the bar. He takes a small commission for turning his attention the other way. He warns me if he sees the police.”

  “How did you connect with this man over the internet in the first place?”

  “I have a webpage.”

  “I thought Cubans didn’t have access to the internet.”

  “It is not easy, Señora. But nothing is impossible. See?” Maria brought a cellphone out of her tote. “I am not supposed to have this, either. But I do. I must be very careful not to be accused of prostitution. I could be jailed for years. And so, like the other girls, I use computers to find my clients.”

  “Your clients, are they always foreign tourists?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “They come here from all over the world. Even some Americans still visit Havana, although it is illegal. But we must be careful; we can all be jailed. So it is best to go somewhere where others will lie for us, like El Bar.”

  “Tell me about the man you were supposed to meet. What else can you remember about him?”

  “Not very much. He wrote his emails in English. There was some urgency, as I remember. He wanted to meet me that afternoon.”

  “What can you remember from the bar? Can you remember anything else about Nasim?”

  Maria took a moment to think. “Not really, no. Only that after Nasim showed up, Señor Ellis became very drunk. So quickly that I was worried about him. I thought I should get him back to his hotel. I had to almost carry him there.”

  “Did Miguel Artez see you come into the hotel?”

  “The doorman? Yes, of course. Miguel knows all the girls. He takes money to let us in when we have a customer. He even helped Señor Ellis to the elevator. By then, Señor Ellis could hardly stand up.”

  “He lied to the police. He said Mike was alone, that you were never there.”

  “Of course he did. That doesn’t surprise me at all. Miguel is not stupid. He is not going to go to jail to protect someone like me. He would never admit he allowed a Cuban woman into his hotel with a drunk turista. He would be fired first, then arrested.”

  “There was no security guard there that night?”

  “On Christmas Eve? All the hotels have a reduced staff. Everyone wants to be at mass or at home with their families.”

  “Did you and Mike have sex?” Thinking of the sheets, the hard evidence the police might want before they’d believe Maria Vasquez’s story.

  “Nothing happened, Señora. He passed out and I left. I was very worried about Arturo because of Nasim’s threats.”

  “Did you take money from Mike’s hotel safe?” Jones asked. Then she realized where Mike’s wallet had gone.

  FIFTY - THREE

  The Canadian lawyer was unhappy with the turn of events. So was Detective Sanchez. And so, it seemed, was the Minister of the Interior.

  The medical report, Ramirez assured the politician, didn’t mean that Ellis was innocent. It simply meant that someone else was in the hotel room that night, left his seed on Ellis’s sheets, his underwear in Ellis’s drawer.

  “We will find him, Minister, trust me. The killer has to be someone that Señor Ellis knows. The new evidence eliminates a woman.”

  “Then it must be a man.”

  Ah, yes, Ramirez thought. The minister’s famed powers of deduction. “Most likely another foreigner. I’ve never, in my entire career, heard of a child killed in a sex crime by a Cuban.”

  “A homosexual?”

  Ramirez shook his head. “Unlikely. The man, or men, who drugged this boy and then disposed of him so casually brutally violated this child for their own selfish needs. This is a different kind of man than those who take pleasure in the company of consenting adults.”

  Yes, there were men who preferred to have sex with men in Cuba, but they were gay men, not pedophiles. Lonely men, forced to hide their true nature. Despised by policemen not just in Cuba, but as he had seen, in Russia, too. A threat to machismo, Latin and Slavic, it seemed.

  The only thing Ramirez had noticed about homosexuals over the years was that they were prone to dramatic displays of violence in their domestic disputes. Like the man he had in custody now, who had stabbed his lover forty-three times with a piece of glass because he wrongly suspected him of having an affair. Jealousies, it seemed, ran deep in the gay commun
ity. The men could be just as vicious as any woman.

  Here, the police harassed them and sometimes beat them. Ramirez came down hard on men in his department who behaved with such cruelty. He had demoted one of his detectives who acted that way and put him back on the street to lean on lampposts.

  We are all Cubans, thought Ramirez. We are lucky enough to have a common enemy in the Americans; it keeps our minds off our difficulties. We must not turn on each because of something we cannot control, like who we love.

  “This is exactly what we were afraid of,” said the minister. “This boy’s murderer came to Cuba precisely because there are children like this to exploit. Even small sums of money will entice hungry children to do things they would never consider doing if their stomachs were full. The Americans and their embargo, this is all their fault.” He shook his head. “You have Detective Sanchez following the Canadian lawyer now?”

  “If her client knows who raped that boy, then she does, too. And if she doesn’t, she’ll find out soon enough. It’s just a matter of time before she contacts the suspect or he finds her.”

  Señora Jones would lead them straight to the accomplice, Ramirez was sure of it. To the man who had raped, and most likely murdered, Arturo Montenegro.

  “You’d better hope so, Ramirez.”

  After his meeting with his superior, Ramirez drove back to Old Havana, unhappy himself. He was tired and grumpy. His solid case had crumbled with one piece of paper: the only evidence the female lawyer had produced.

  He parked his small blue car and walked up the concrete path to the police station. The dead boy walked beside him, skipping a little. Avoiding the cracks.

  Ramirez walked up the stairs to his office. No sign of Rodriguez Sanchez, which was good: it meant the lawyer was on the move. He called the switchboard and asked her to hold his calls for a few minutes. He needed to consider his future, professional and otherwise.

  “Put no one through except my wife or Detective Sanchez. And the minister’s clerk if she calls, of course. Gracias.” Although the minister was unlikely to contact Ramirez, he’d left his implied threat hanging in the air like the smoke from his cigar.

  Ramirez opened his drawer and pulled out the bottle of añejo. He poured himself a drink, then another. He watched his fluttering fingers settle down, lose their independence. For the first time in almost a week, he let himself think about his illness.

  The New Year was around the corner. It was almost 2007, a new start for the world, and possibly for Cuba.

  Despite the minister’s assurances about Castro’s health — in fact, because of them — Ramirez believed that Fidel Castro was seriously ill. Change was in the air. Ramirez didn’t want to waste what remained of his life by worrying about the future. There was too little time for remorse. This was the only way he could manage, he decided. After all, no one ever knew how much time they had left. The dead man who followed Ramirez all week probably expected to catch many more fish before he drowned.

  Ah, well. The Christmas holidays were almost over. Ramirez still hoped he could find time to make love to his wife, to convince her that things were fine, even if they weren’t. The only form of sexual and social intercourse left, he thought wryly, that was not yet regulated by the Cuban government.

  The dead boy looked away, embarrassed.

  FIFTY - FOUR

  “It was you, wasn’t it? You took Mike’s wallet.”

  Maria Vasquez shrugged. “He owed me money for the night. It was not my fault he became so drunk. Christmas Eve is one of the best nights of the year: we all charge extra. I could not afford to lose that income. Yes, I took his wallet. I hoped he would think he had lost it. But I took nothing else, I swear. Only what he owed me.”

  “Why take the whole thing? Why not just the money in it?”

  “He was so drunk, I was not sure he would remember our arrangement the next morning. I was afraid if only the money was missing, he would think someone had stolen it. And if he called the police to report it stolen, people had seen us together. I could have been arrested. Better if he believed he had lost it.”

  That made sense. Celia Jones hesitated to think what the penalty for prostitution and theft might be.

  “Besides, credit cards can be replaced, as can passports. Tourists lose them all the time. Much harder for me to replace a lost client on Christmas Eve. I took nothing more than that to which I was entitled.”

  Jones could see her point. “And then you went looking for Arturo.”

  “Yes. I knew I could not trust the police to protect him if they were protecting Nasim. I went down the back stairs, and ran all the way back to the Plaza de Armas. The boys there told me Arturo was at the Plaza de Marzo, that he was hurt. I ran all the way there. When I saw him, I realized my worst fears. His face was badly bruised. He said a man had dragged him into a car. The other man, not Nasim. The man made him drink something; after that he could remember nothing.”

  She put her head down again and cried softly. Jones patted her hand.

  “I gave him the wallet. It was something to cheer him up, to play with, maybe sell for a peso or two. It was Christmas, after all. It was all I had. There are no toys in Cuba, Señora. Besides, I could not keep it. If the police stopped me and I had a foreigner’s identification on me, I would have been arrested for that, too.”

  Maria smiled a little, remembering. “He really liked the gold badge. But he was still so dizzy and confused. I told him to go straight home to bed, and if anyone asked about the wallet, to say he found it. His apartment was just around the corner. I should have kept him with me,” she said, choking up again. “If I had, he would still be alive.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Maria shook her head, and Jones dropped it; the woman clearly felt guilty enough as it was. “It seems pretty clear, then,” she said. “Nasim must have found Arturo and killed him after you left.”

  Maria nodded, sniffling.

  “How did he get into Mike’s room?” Jones wondered out loud.

  “Who?”

  “Nasim. He was the only person who could have framed Mike. He had photographs of Arturo and the other boys. Someone put photographs of Arturo under Mike’s mattress.”

  “Señor Ellis lost his room key that night. We had to get another one from the receptionist.”

  Jones paused to think. “Maybe he didn’t lose it. Maybe Nasim stole it from him at the bar.”

  “I remember that Señor Ellis’s jacket was on Nasim’s bar stool, but it fell to the floor. He could have taken it then. He must have gone to the Parque Ciudad before we arrived there. He could have tried the key in all the doors until one opened. Those plastic keys are only used in the new wing of the hotel.”

  “So he drugged Mike at the bar,” Jones said. “I assumed it was you. But he would have known that Rohypnol would slow Mike down and give him time to plant the evidence.”

  “Do you think he drugged and assaulted Arturo before he came to El Bar?” asked Maria.

  Jones nodded. “Probably. That fits the timeline. Then killed him afterwards to shut him up.”

  “I remember wondering what happened to make Señor Ellis so drunk. He was too drunk to make love. And that is the first time that has happened to me, ever.”

  “How many drinks did you have that night?” Jones was unsure how reliable a witness Maria Vasquez would be if she was drunk.

  “Me? Just one. I had a mojito and then Señor Ellis poured me a glass of rum. But I don’t usually drink rum, except at celebrations. He drank it himself.” Her eyes widened. “He drank my drink. Do you think perhaps Nasim meant to drug me instead?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Thank God I did not drink it. I would be dead now.” The jinetera made the sign of the cross in front of her chest. “But why did Nasim frame Señor Ellis for a murder that hadn’t yet happened?”

  Jones thought for a minute. “He didn’t frame Mike for murder, but for rape. He knew Mike was a foreign policeman. He must have
been worried you would tell Mike he’d been luring children to Campanario and that Mike would follow up on your complaint.”

  “Then it makes sense. Once Nasim put that evidence in the hotel room, he could do whatever he wanted to Arturo and implicate Señor Ellis. And if he had someone on the inside of the police force, he had a way to lead the police right to Señor Ellis as well.”

  The anonymous complaint that had so conveniently resulted in the search of Mike’s room the next morning had undoubtedly come from Nasim, thought Jones. Nasim likely had a cellphone. Mike Ellis had been set up very neatly indeed. “There was other evidence in his room, though, Maria. Stains on the sheets that matched semen found on the boy.”

  “Nasim had photographs with which to arouse himself. That would not have taken him long. Besides, we were at the bar for at least another hour after he left. He had time.”

  “Then it’s Nasim we need to find,” said Jones. “Do you have any idea where he could be?”

  “No,” said Maria. “But if he hears of your interest in this investigation through his police contact, he may go back to the address where he took the boys. To remove the evidence of his crimes. I would do this, if I were him.”

  Jones nodded. Maria might be a hooker, but she was smart. That was exactly what someone like Nasim would do. Cover his ass.

  “Come, we can go there together,” Maria urged. “We should go before he has a chance to clean up. I know exactly where it is.”

  Jones borrowed the woman’s cellphone and tried to reach Ramirez. He wasn’t in. Neither was Sanchez. But according to Maria, Campanario was only a few blocks away.

  Maria was wearing four-inch heels, but that didn’t seem to slow her down. On the way, Jones asked, “How much was your client supposed to pay you for the night?”

  “Around one hundred American dollars. Worthless now, but not for long. Although I will deny these arrangements later. Trust me, I do not want to go to jail for prostitution. Or be re-educated.” Maria frowned. “Being educated once was bad enough.”