The Poisoned Pawn (11 page)

NINETEEN

Officer Fernando Espinoza—no, wait, that was
Detective
Espinoza now—was on his first week in the Major Crimes Unit. Espinoza was hardly able to believe his good fortune. Just by doing his job on foot patrol and helping to identify a murdered child, he had received a big promotion. And here he was, barely twenty-one years old, already a detective. Working at a much better-paying position—almost fifteen pesos a month.

As he walked to the front door of police headquarters, he saw Apiro deep in conversation with a woman on the sidewalk. And not just any woman. She was almost six feet in her high heels. Thick, streaked-blonde hair, a low-cut blue top, tight skirt. Her voice was husky, as deep and rich as molasses.

Was she Cuban or foreign? Espinoza wasn’t sure.

“
Hola
, Dr. Apiro,” he called. “Excuse me for bothering you, but I wondered if I might have a minute of your time.”

“Of course, Detective. Maria, this is Detective Fernando Espinoza. He was recently promoted to Major Crimes. Detective Espinoza, this is Maria Vasquez.”

Maria, Espinoza guessed, despite her name, was no virgin.
Besides, the surname Vasquez came from the Basque country, and everyone knew that Basque women were feminists.

Espinoza stood on the balls of his feet, trying to look a little taller. He liked strong women.

“I’ll leave you two men alone to talk business,” said Maria.

Espinoza was quite surprised when she leaned down and kissed the pathologist on the cheek before she walked languidly away. He wondered if she was the doctor’s cousin, or maybe a neighbour.

“Forgive me for interrupting your conversation, Dr. Apiro,” Espinoza said. “I wondered—do you have any idea yet what killed that old woman in the alley? I will be handling the investigation in Inspector Ramirez’s absence.”

“No, not yet,” said Apiro, as he pulled his thoughts from one woman to another. “It looks as if she died of a heart attack, but the damage from the knife wound and the degree of decomposition are making it difficult to know what might have caused it. I’m still running tests.”

“I know how busy you are,” said Espinoza. Both men watched Maria’s hips swivel as she moved fluidly away from them through the crowds of tourists. “Forgive me for asking, but is Maria married? She’s very beautiful.”

“That she is.” Apiro shook his head, smiling wistfully. “And no, she’s not.”

Apiro didn’t volunteer any other information about his mysterious friend, and Espinoza didn’t ask. But as he opened the heavy front door to the police station, allowing the pathologist to enter before him, Espinoza wondered why the little doctor sounded so sad.

Detective Espinoza sat on a wooden swivel chair in his new office. Well, not quite an office, but the desk Inspector Ramirez had assigned to him for his first murder investigation.

It was better than the corner of the Malecón for which he had previously been responsible. There, he had been required to stand in his cheap black shoes on the hard, cracked concrete throughout his entire shift. At least in Major Crimes he could sit down.

“Stabbed through the heart
after
she was dead? Do you think she was a zombie?” Espinoza had asked Ramirez.

Espinoza believed in zombies. In fact, many Cubans believed that Fidel Castro, hovering between life and death for almost a year since his botched surgery, had become one.

“I don’t know what she was,” Ramirez laughed. “I only know that someone killed her. But try to find out if she had any family, Fernando, will you? That may help us track down her killer.”

It was late at night, but Espinoza sat at his desk, idly flipping through the stack of papers. He was working his way through hundreds of missing persons reports. He hoped to impress Ramirez when the inspector returned from Canada by telling him he had found the victim’s relatives. And maybe her killer as well.

The manager of the building where Señora Aranas had lived had been of little assistance. She had a son, he said. But he hadn’t seen the man in years.

As he thumbed through the pages, Espinoza held back a yawn. So many people had gone missing from such a small island. But then, with all the people trying to escape on rafts made of rubber tires, it was hard to keep track of the Cuban population. It would be almost more productive to have missing tire reports.

A young woman walked past his desk. He watched her turn the corner towards the exhibit room, admiring her legs. She was very pretty, and around Espinoza’s age. Civilian clothes, her dress
cut just low enough to catch his interest. She must be a clerk, he thought. A
mangito
, that one. Those breasts,
carumba
. He let out a low whistle and hissed in appreciation. The detectives sitting at their desks beside him grinned.

When she came back towards his desk, Espinoza called out, “Hey,
linda
,” using the slang for “beautiful.” “I’m off at midnight. You want to have a drink somewhere?”

“With you?”

“You see someone else here?” He held his arms out, palms up, and looked around as if he were the only officer working late.

She shrugged, but a smile tugged the corner of her mouth. “I’m working night shift,
consorte
. And when I get off work, I have other plans. You think I don’t have a boyfriend waiting?”

I have plans for you too, thought Espinoza, eyeing her appreciatively. A
cuarto
somewhere, if he was lucky enough to find an empty room in one of the few hotels that Cubans could rent. A little
hoja
later on, if she felt like fooling around. If not tonight, well, maybe soon. But no sex at his apartment: he still lived with his parents. And probably would for years, despite the big pay increase.

“Maybe so, sweetheart,” he smiled. “But you won’t have any more boyfriends after you go out with me, I promise. Come on, one drink. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life wondering what you missed, do you?”

Neither of them could legally enter a Havana nightclub, not even Espinoza, unless he was on duty. Those were for the
turistas
, who flooded the streets at night looking for echoes of Hemingway. But a nice bottle of rum and the cool breeze along the Malecón had started more than a few romances on a hot Havana night.

“Join the
cola
,” she said, teasing. “I’ll think about it.” She tossed her thick brown hair, and he knew right then that he liked her.

“Hey, you,” he said as she walked away, swaying her hips. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Rita,” she said. “Rita Martinez, Detective Espinoza.”

She already knew who he was. This is very good, thought Espinoza, leaning back in his chair. Very, very good.

“
Cuidate
, Rita Martinez.” You take care. “I’ll see you later.”

TWENTY

Ricardo Ramirez was colder than he believed possible. The pilot had apologized; there was a problem connecting the passenger boarding bridge to the terminal building of the Ottawa International Airport. Passengers needed to step outside to walk the short distance from the plane.

Ramirez stumbled forward across the tarmac on cramped geisha feet. He grasped the front of his black wool overcoat, trying to keep it closed where it lacked buttons. But this cold knew no boundaries. In just a few minutes, he was shivering uncontrollably. He had been unable to find gloves, and his fingers stung.

Ramirez could actually feel the frozen soles of his light leather shoes slapping the ground. His first impression of North America was one of acute discomfort.

Minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, the pilot had said. Fifty degrees’ difference between Ottawa and Havana. Nothing could have prepared Ramirez for that.

The bitter cold slapped his face like the back of a hand. It was crisp, clean, invisible. But menacing, like the ocean. Air and water. He had never thought of them as similar in kind. He had not realized, until this minute, that air could be deadly too.

Ramirez blew on his rapidly swelling fingers. Somehow, he managed to pull open the heavy glass door to the terminal building. Following the other passengers, he limped up the stairs and down carpeted hallways, past large murals of tulips and the Canadian Parliament Buildings.

He identified himself at the foreign arrivals section as a Cuban police officer, in Ottawa to assist with an investigation.

In the warmth of the terminal, his fingers and feet began to thaw with a thousand tiny pinpricks. He stamped his feet, trying to get his circulation flowing. He was surprised at how much his extremities hurt, as if stung by angry bees. He hoped his limbs would soon start working properly again. It was as if his body had been appropriated by an
orisha
at a
tambour
; it had the clumsy, lurching movements of the possessed.
Padrons
, Cubans called them derisively. Those who danced badly.

Ramirez was surprised when the Customs officer, not much more than a teenager, asked only how long he would be in the country. At home, it took hours to go through Customs, to have every bag checked for illegal substances, for weapons, for propaganda. Here, he was cleared in minutes.

The Customs officer flipped through the pages of Ramirez’s passport and thumped on one of them with a rubber stamp. “Have a nice visit,” he said, handing it back with a broad smile. “Welcome to Canada. Have a good New Year.”

“
Gracias
,” said Ramirez, surprised to be so quickly determined non-threatening. “And to you.”

Ramirez looked for exit signs as he walked down a wide carpeted corridor rimmed with stores and car rental agencies. He passed an elderly security guard dressed in the same white shirt, dark pants, and navy-blue tie as the others. His shoulder flash read “Commissionaire.”

Not really any security at all, thought Ramirez. The man was in his sixties at least and had no gun. Not a single machine gun in evidence, no sniffing dogs. Ramirez could take this whole airport hostage, if he wanted to. Break this old man’s neck like a twig.

In exchange for what? he wondered. What would he ask for? How much money would he get for a Canadian airport?

Members of the Front de libération du Québec had demanded flights to Cuba after they murdered a Canadian labour minister. That had always amused Ramirez, that political prisoners from Canada thought for some reason his country would treat them better than their own. The dissidents in Cuban jails would
kill
to get to Canada.

The elderly commissionaire smiled at Ramirez, oblivious to his near-death experience. He pointed to the escalators.

Ramirez arranged his frozen face into what he hoped passed as a smile and took the stairs. An extraordinary waterfall ran down the entire wall from the second floor to the main level of the terminal. A giant flat-screen television on the adjacent wall flashed weather updates, news, and advertising in two languages: English and French.

He had not seen real news in years, only community programming. Most of it was stories about the Communist Party, beekeeping, and nutritional advice.

He was mesmerized by the continuous line of script that ran across the bottom of the screen, updating news by the second. A magical board rotated advertisements beside it, marketing banks, lawyers, real estate.

So this is Canada, he thought, looking around. Canadians were responsible for many of the crimes the Major Crimes Unit investigated. Not because of anything they did themselves, but
because they were so easily victimized. He was starting to understand why.

The newness of everything was as shocking as the cold. It was a far cry from the worn-down, crumbling city that Havana had become in its decades of isolation from the trading world. A row of clean and shiny taxis waited outside the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. He wondered how expensive they were and whether a driver would accept his American dollars.

Ramirez was almost at the exit when a tall woman with an enormous head of hair approached him tentatively. “Inspector Ramirez?”

“Yes?”

He was surprised that she knew who he was. It hadn’t occurred to him that Canada had its own
cederistas
, citizen spies. The KGB had come up with the concept of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, but Castro had perfected it.

“You
look
like a Cuban police officer, if you don’t mind me saying so. I’m Jennifer White. Would you be able to answer a few questions about the charges against Father Rey Callendes, please? I have a cameraman outside. Is it true that children in your country were also sexually abused by this priest?”

A reporter, then. Most reporters in Cuba were in jail. Those that weren’t would never dare ask a Cuban detective about an investigation. Ramirez wasn’t sure how to respond, but guessed that less was more. “I am sorry, Señora, I missed your name.”

“Jennifer White, Inspector.” She rooted through her purse and handed him a business card.

He looked around cautiously as he slid it into the pocket of the wool coat. No one was paying the least attention to their discussion. In Havana, a reporter would instantly have been under the eyes of a dozen policemen. There would have been a foot race to see who would apprehend her first.

“Señora White, I am in town for only a few days.” He smiled at her, trying to charm her. “At this point, all I can tell you is that I am very cold.”

“Of course,” the woman said, writing furiously in a notebook. “So, you don’t actually deny that the charges involve the sexual abuse of children in Cuba, then?”

“I’m sorry?”

“We understand that some of the photographs on the laptop that was seized were of Cuban children. Is that correct?”

Ramirez hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t really comment on an investigation.”

“Well, thank you, Inspector Ramirez, for confirming that there is one under way.”

As she sped away through the revolving glass doors, Ramirez heard her say into a cell phone, “There’s our headline story, Victor. Get a long shot of his head.”

Ramirez walked slowly towards the revolving doors, confused as to what had transpired, and wary. A long shot to the head? He kept his eyes open for a rifle.

He was startled when a rough-looking man with tattoos and a long ponytail blocked his way. A gun, not a rifle, poked through the opening in the man’s jacket. Ramirez’s heart jumped. He had not brought his own firearm, uncertain if it would be returned to him if seized by Canadian airport security. Guns were hard to find in Cuba; if he lost the one issued to him, there were no coupons to replace it.