The Beggar's Opera (21 page)

“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.

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.