The Beggar's Opera (35 page)

“So I’m not sure you ever did tell me how you met,” Ramirez reminded them.

“I was a patient of Hector’s once, long ago,” Maria explained. “And then the night that Señor Ellis was released from your custody, I came here to see him. Señor Ellis had mentioned Hector’s name to me in connection with your investigation and I realized he was still working in Havana.”

“Yes, Maria came by for coffee. And one thing led to another,” Apiro said with a wide smile.

Ramirez felt the small boy’s presence again. The dead boy
stood behind Maria’s chair, his arms around her neck. Looking closely at the two of them together, Ramirez realized Maria Vasquez could easily pass for Arturo’s mother. The resemblance was striking. But Señora Montenegro had mentioned no older sister, only the son who went missing in 1998.

Ramirez remembered the photograph of Rubén Montenegro in his file. “The priests told us he fell down the mountainside trying to get home,” the mother had said. But there had been no body, no burial. Ramirez looked at the two of them together again, and then he saw it. He realized for the first time just how good a plastic surgeon Apiro really was.

So the street child that Maria Vasquez protected was her own little brother. She could not have told Arturo who she really was. He was just a child and would not have understood how a brother he had never known could somehow be his sister. But Maria knew where Arturo Montenegro lived. She knew exactly who
he
was. No wonder she had been so worried for his safety.

Señora Montenegro believed her older son was dead; that Rubén had vanished, had died in the hills years earlier. She had no idea that he was alive, that he now lived as a woman. But the similarities between the two siblings, once one saw through the surgery, were startling, unmistakable.

The boy walked over and put his small hand in Ramirez’s. The boy nodded, then smiled, and Ramirez saw the dimples for himself. He felt the small fingers slipping from his hand as the boy once again showed the inspector his empty palms.

Why was he still here instead of playing wherever dead boys played? thought Ramirez. Ramirez had apparently missed something important, but what? And why does he keep showing me his empty hands? And then Ramirez finally understood what the boy was trying to convey.

Michael Ellis gave Arturo Montenegro a lot of money. It wasn’t
on the body. Where had the boy spent it? He’d never thought to check.

The boy smiled a final time and skipped away, as if someone waited outside the door.

“I am very pleased for both of you,” Ramirez said and raised his glass to Hector and Maria again. “Trust me, there is nothing like having a strong woman on your side. The secret is learning how to fight and how to forgive. It is time, Hector, that you visited my home. Francesca will welcome having another girlfriend to complain to about my bad habits. Like me coming home late again, on New Year’s Eve.”

Ramirez looked at his watch and stood up. It was almost midnight. It was time to go home and have a difficult discussion with his wife. He owed it to Francesca to finally tell her about his illness. To share with her the bad news he had tried to protect her from for too long.

Francesca would be terrified, livid that he had kept such a secret to himself. He rubbed the side of his face, anticipating her slap and the angry tears that would follow. But together, they would face whatever happened. They always did; they had no choice.

“Thank you,” Apiro said, inclining his head. “You are absolutely right. I have lived like a hermit crab for too long, cramped in my small shell. I swear, Ricardo, I have grown a few inches already.”

“And that’s just his height,” Maria said, and the three of them laughed, Apiro the loudest, with his raspy caw.

Ramirez put down his empty glass. As he did, his hand quivered. He saw Apiro, always thoughtful, swivel his head like a parrot to focus on the movement.

He was several steps down the narrow hallway when he heard Apiro’s door squeak open, the sound of Apiro scuttling after him. He turned to see his small friend waving a piece of paper.

“I have something for you, Ricardo. My sincere apologies: I completely forgot with all the excitement this week. Our medical records are computerized now. I finally found the results of that autopsy that I promised to get for you so long ago. Your grandmother’s. Here.” He handed Ramirez the sheet of paper. “Look. Not a single Lewy body in her brain; no signs of plaque. No dementia of any kind. She died of old age.”

Ramirez skimmed through the document. The autopsy report listed “natural causes” as the reason for his grandmother’s death. “There was nothing wrong with her?”

“Not quite,” said Apiro. “She suffered from hyperthyroidism, a hereditary illness. I couldn’t help but notice your hand was shaking again tonight. And how out of breath you were this week. These can be symptoms of that disease. I’d like to arrange an iodine scan for you. If I’m right, a single dose of radioactive isotope will put you back to normal in no time. And the good news, Ricardo, is that we have the supplies.”

SEVENTY - SEVEN

Ricardo Ramirez walked slowly through the lobby, savouring the news. The burdens he’d carried for so long lifted from his shoulders. Hector Apiro had given him the greatest gift of all for Christmas: a future. But if I’m not dying, he thought, then what in heaven’s name have I been seeing all these years?

He cast his mind back to his grandmother’s last words. Could his visions truly be spirits, sentinels from the other side? He had treated them as mere distractions, as games played by his subconscious. He had even ordered the apparitions out of sight when they annoyed him.

As Ramirez thought back on it, the dead man had provided him with all the clues he needed to solve the boy’s death, if he had just paid more attention.

In the hotel room, the dead man tried to warn him that Sanchez had planted the capsule. When Sanchez pointed to it, the dead man pointed at him. He had shown Ramirez just how Sanchez had pulled the photographs and CD from his pant pockets, but once again Ramirez misunderstood.

In the back of the car, he had pretended to hold a collection plate, representing the Church. The dead man had even
demonstrated how Sanchez would kill himself with a bullet to his own head, with his own gun.

Ramirez’s subconscious mind could not possibly have invented those details. The man was real, Ramirez realized, astonished. Or at least as real as any ghost could ever be.

Ramirez recalled the other clues the dead man provided. The circles he drew with his hands when they drove past the Ferris wheel as children screamed. The boy had done the same; Ramirez had seen his fascination with the hamster wheel but paid it little attention. What did all that mean? And why had the dead man appeared in relation to the child’s death instead of his own?

The man had drowned; Ramirez was sure of that, he had seen foam spill from his mouth. Yet if he was murdered, Ramirez had no way to solve his death. He still had no name for the man, not even a missing persons report.

Two shapes emerged from the shadows. A man and a small boy, side by side, walked towards the Malecón. The man clasped the small boy’s hand tightly in his own, keeping him close. He held his battered hat in his other hand.

They were heading to the Ferris wheel, Ramirez guessed, from the way the dead boy skipped joyfully beside the ghost that had followed Ramirez all week. A man who had waited patiently for Ramirez, twisting his hat, wistfully hoping for a few moments of the inspector’s undivided attention.

The dead man turned his head to look back at Ramirez. He smiled widely for the first time. Ramirez saw the dimples and finally grasped who the man was, who he once had been.

Arturo’s father.

After he took his son to the Ferris wheel for the last time, Señor Montenegro would return Arturo to the ocean, where they
both belonged. Yemayá, the ocean
orisha
, would care for them from now on. They were leaving Ramirez’s jurisdiction.

The dead man tipped the brim of his hat. Ramirez raised his hand slowly and waved goodbye to Eshu’s messengers.

SEVENTY - EIGHT

Ramirez had practically forgotten he had New Year’s Day off, his first in years. Once he got home, he could actually sleep in for a change. Make love to his wife, play with his children, and finally listen to that CD of Lucy Provedo that Francesca had given him for Christmas.

He wanted to do something special to celebrate their future together, a future now as uncertain, and thus as hopeful, as that of anyone else. Perhaps they would have another child. The world was full of possibilities.

The Beggar’s Opera
was playing at the Gran Teatro on Sunday afternoon; he had seen posters for it all week. When he got home, he would take a surprised Francesca in his arms, dance her around the apartment, and tell her of his plans to make it up to her for working on Christmas Day.

It was their favourite. An opera about political corruption, with a lively cast that included well-bred whores with impeccable manners, men disguised as women, beggars, even prisoners. It was a story of poisoned chalices, violence, and revenge; false charges, even a threatened execution. But it was also about love
and loyalty and, above all, friendship. It seemed to fit the events of the week.

The original opera ended with a hanging, but the audience demanded a happy ending, and so its ending was rewritten. And so was his.

Ramirez whistled an aria as he walked to the parking lot, a bounce in his step. He opened the door to his small blue car and was about to climb in when he saw her. A dignified elderly woman walking slowly towards him as she tried to ignore her ruined dress and the knife protruding from her chest. A giant fabric flower was pinned to the white bandana wrapped around her head.

“It’s my day off,” he said kindly, as he escorted her back into the shadows. “But it looks like I have tomorrow.”

EPILOGUE

A week had passed but the ride operator still trembled, still jumped whenever he heard a police siren, felt his heart race at the mere sight of a
policía.

He was haunted by thoughts of the dead boy, could not forget how the boy had shown up at the park at midnight, just as Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day. The bells and horns were still sounding; even a distant bagpipe honked in the night air. But the rides were not running when the small boy slid beneath the metal gates the ride operator had just locked together and materialized at his side. “Please,” the boy begged. “Please let me ride the big wheel. Please.”

“We are not open, little one. Come back on Monday.”

The boy looked terribly disappointed. “Please. I have never been on the rides. Just this once. I have money.” He showed the man five pesos that he pulled carefully from the pocket in his shorts. He held the coins out on the palms of his two hands.

He seemed so downcast that the ride operator smiled. Perhaps it was not a problem to open the ride this one time. He took the little boy by the hand to the bottom seat, strapped him in, then
pulled the bar down. After making sure the boy was secure, he started the ride.

But as the wheel moved higher, the boy squirmed in his seat, then lifted the bar to stand, and sweet Virgin Mary there was no time to tell him to sit down before the boy fell over the side. It was that quick and that sudden, the ride operator could not believe it. Not even a scream, just a small noise as the boy hit the metal post that held the Cuban flag with the back of his head, then fell on his back on the ground.

And there the boy was, not moving, already limp and empty. A small amount of blood, a few drops, trickled from his ear.

The ride operator knelt beside the boy, but he was dead. Some children became dizzy on the wheel. It was not his fault. But there the boy was, his head soft on the hard cement.

“Jesus,” the ride operator whispered, “Jesus, forgive me, what have I done?”

He felt the boy’s neck, his wrist, put his face against the boy’s face looking for breath, searched desperately for signs of life. He felt the panic rise in his chest, his heart beating quickly like that of a bird.

He was crying, but he had to stop, he had to think what to do. The bells were ringing; it was Christmas Day already, midnight,
madre mio
, Christmas Day. He was alone at the park, no one else was there, everyone at church or at mass. Thank God at least for that.

Jesus
, he prayed to his saviour, and then to Yemayá, the
orisha
who was supposed to protect children, who he had angered in some unknown way.
Forgive me, I did not mean to harm him, he was just a child.

But the child was dead. And all his prayers could not change that one fact.

The ride operator thought of running to the policeman who
always stood on the Malecón, a bored young man in a light blue shirt, little more than a boy himself. He should confess, tell the officer that he shouldn’t have opened the park when it was closed, that he was trying to be kind, that the boy simply fell. But how could he explain that a little boy could afford the price of a ride? Too much money for a small boy to have. Five tourist pesos, and there was no way to account for that.

He hadn’t asked how or where the boy got the money, he had just been happy to see the child smile, and now the boy was dead and somehow, one way or another, he would be blamed for it, of that he was sure.

He thought of his wife and his three children and all the lives that would be ruined if the police put him in jail. He made his decision. He hoisted the boy up like a sack of potatoes and carried him to the back of his truck, where he laid the boy gently on his back, then covered him with a tarp. He went about his business of closing up of the park. No one had seen him; no one had seen the boy.

He drove his family to late mass, his wife completely unaware of his small cargo. Later that night, as she slept, and the sounds of partying along the Malecón quieted, when the last trumpet and guitar that filled the night air ceased their music, he got up, dressed himself, and drove to the Malecón. He parked across from the medical towers, the darkest part of the seaway, where there were no working lights.