The Poisoned Pawn (12 page)

“Excuse me,” Ramirez said, and tried to walk around the stranger. He had no knife, no means of protecting himself. Only his useless, frozen hands.

The man stepped in front of him again. Ramirez looked around for a policeman but saw no one who could assist him. My God, he thought frantically. I am about to be robbed in a foreign
country that has no armed security. In Cuba, there were
fianas
on every corner. Here, not a single one. Only old men with clip-on ties and plastic pens.

“Rick Ramirez? My name is Charlie Pike. Chief O’Malley asked me to give you a ride.”

TWENTY - ONE

“Detective Pike. Of course. A pleasure to meet you,” Ramirez said, as he tried to get his heartbeat down to normal. For some reason, he had thought Charlie Pike would be wearing a feathered headdress and carrying a small hatchet. Silly ideas that Hector Apiro had planted in his head.

Still, Detective Pike looked more like a prisoner than a police detective, with ink-blue tattoos on the backs of his fingers. He wasn’t wearing a suit, only jeans and running shoes, a light jacket, no hat or gloves. Unlike Ramirez, he wasn’t shivering at all.

Ramirez started to walk towards the glass revolving doors. Detective Pike blocked him once more. Ramirez realized that Pike was trying to prevent the cluster of men with television cameras on the sidewalk outside from shooting his
picture
. He breathed out, relieved. So irrational, he thought. But I am new to this country. It will take me a while before I understand how things work.

“Not that way,” said Pike. “There are reporters out there, waiting for you. They aren’t allowed to bring their cameras inside the airport for security reasons, unless they have airport approval. I made sure they didn’t get it. We’ll take the skywalk
to the parking lot. My truck is parked up there. Is that all the baggage you have?”

“Yes.” Ramirez had only the single carry-on bag, packed with his few warm things. Mostly borrowed—some, like the coat, pilfered. He had worn his heaviest suit jacket under the coat but already knew it would not be enough. He owned no suitcase and couldn’t borrow one; no one he knew possessed one either.

They walked up a flight of stairs to the second level of the terminal. It was filled with shops. One was named Virgin, which startled Ramirez, until he realized it sold books and CDs, not women. Another was stocked with enough perfumes and body lotions to make Francesca swoon.

A shop called Relay held even more goods: candies, chips, soda pop, and bottled water. At least thirty different newspapers were stacked in neat rows on white metal shelves.

“Do you mind? I so rarely see foreign newspapers.”

Ramirez stopped to look at the names of the papers, greedy for outside information. He scanned the headlines. An ice storm in Nebraska. Two female Komodo dragons had laid fertile eggs without a male. An Elvis sighting. A baby with two heads.

“I expected there would be more international news,” the inspector remarked, disappointed. “About politics and economic matters.”

“Those are just the tabloids,” Pike frowned. “They make things up to be sensational. All the papers do these days. Don’t worry, this is Ottawa. You’ll get more than enough news while you’re here. Probably too much.”

Ramirez inclined his head towards the newsstand. “Do people actually read such stories here?”

Pike nodded. “You’d be surprised. And this is nothing compared to what’s on the internet. Most of it’s pornography; the rest is garbage.”

“Ah, yes, of course, the internet.” Ramirez followed the long-haired detective towards the signs for the parkade. “In Cuba, it is available only to tourists, although some of my staff have access for investigative purposes.”

All computer searches were kept under surveillance by Cuban Intelligence as well as the Major Crimes Unit. That had been Sanchez’s assignment, monitoring the internet, looking for
jineteras
with web pages and child pornography.

They walked past a store with maple-sugar candy; a display of bright art painted on canvas. Another store sold purses, briefcases, scarves, and ties. Ramirez already felt overwhelmed. He wondered how Canadians could pick out what to wear each day with so many choices. In Cuba, most stores had only a rack or two of wares; the other shelves were empty. Even in Havana, the
bodegas
generally had only one brand of canned goods. If they had anything to sell at all.

A blast of freezing air assaulted them as automatic doors opened to the parkade. Charlie Pike led Ramirez to a red pickup truck with giant tires. Ramirez had never seen tires so large except on military trucks and tanks.

“You know what the Ojibway say, Inspector. No tires are too big for an Indian.”

Ramirez laughed. He hoped it was meant as a joke and was relieved when Pike chuckled.

There were large piles of a grey substance pushed to the sides of the parking lot. It took a moment before Ramirez recognized it as snow.

“You can expect the media to be all over you about the Callendes matter,” he cautioned, as he pointed something at the passenger door. The truck’s horn sounded and its lights flashed, startling Ramirez. He realized Pike had some kind of electronic
key. It was a new truck, American. Ramirez hadn’t seen one in decades. Pike loaded Ramirez’s bag into the back seat.

“There was a reporter waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs in the arrivals section,” said Ramirez. He pulled out the business card and looked at it more closely. “A woman. Jennifer White.”

“What did you tell her?”

“The truth,” said Ramirez. “I told her I was cold.”

TWENTY - TWO

Fernando Espinoza walked into the men’s washroom. It was only minutes before midnight. He admired his reflection in the mirror, slicked down his hair with water. He imagined dancing with Rita Martinez. Touching that firm body, kissing those full lips.

He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He leaned into the rusty mirror, checking his teeth, adjusting his shirt collar.

Yes, Fernando, you are a fine-looking man, he thought.

And that Rita Martinez.
Esta heba estaba para comérsela con ropa y todo.
She was hot enough to eat with her clothes on.

Espinoza was washing his hands in the cracked sink when a woman screamed.

He ran out of the toilet, reaching for his gun. He and several police officers scrambled towards the stairwell. Others huddled in a circle at the top of the stairs. He caught a glimpse of a man on the floor wrestling with a woman.

“What is it? What’s going on?”

Then he realized the
policía
wasn’t trying to subdue the woman at all.

Rita Martinez lay on the floor, gasping for breath like a fish
flopping inside a boat. He shoved the gun back in his shoulder holster. “Is something stuck in her throat?”

He pushed his way through. As he leaned over Rita, her panicked eyes fixed on his. The edges of those full lips around the red lipstick were already blue from lack of oxygen.

“She can’t breathe,” a large Afro-Cuban woman from the cafeteria said frantically. “Oh my God, someone do something. I don’t know what happened. I brought up some coffee an hour ago and she seemed fine. And then, when I came back to get the empty mugs, she started to stagger, and then she fell down, right there on the floor.”

“Rita, you’re going to be fine. Is she choking?” Espinoza asked the man kneeling beside her.

“Her mouth and throat are clear, no obstructions.”

“Maybe it’s an insect bite,” said one of the detectives. “An allergic reaction.”

“Rita,” Espinoza said, “look at me.” He squatted and took her hand. He held her wrist between his index finger and thumb. He took her pulse as he watched the second hand tick by on his watch. Over two hundred beats a minute. “Can you speak to me?”

She shook her head and gripped his hand tightly. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she convulsed. Her hand went limp in his fingers. The rapid pulse under his fingertips suddenly stopped. She was no longer breathing.

“Call a doctor,” Espinoza said firmly. “Get Dr. Apiro here,
now
.”

TWENTY - THREE

Just after Christmas, Maria Vasquez had agreed to move into Hector Apiro’s cramped flat. But when she saw it, for the first time in almost a decade, she expressed second thoughts.

“I can’t live here, Hector,” she exclaimed. “Look, your bed is much too small for both of us. And I am far too old now to sleep on the couch in your spare room the way I did before.”

“What do you mean?” Apiro asked, crestfallen. “Have you changed your mind?”

He tried to conceal the overwhelming sense of loss that crept through him. The broken heart that Maria had so recently repaired began to rip apart like torn fabric.

“Don’t be silly,” said Maria, patting his arm. “You won’t be able to get rid of me that easily. It simply means we have to wait until we can find a proper bed. After all, it has to be at least queensize.” She laughed. “Living with someone isn’t all about making love, you know. It’s about sleeping together, too.”

Apiro breathed a sigh of relief. But he didn’t know. He had never made love to a woman before Maria. And he had never shared a bed with anyone in his entire life. Not even at the orphanage.

“Where will we find one?” Beds are expensive, thought Apiro, and difficult to acquire. How can I possibly afford one on my salary?

“Leave that to me, lover,” she winked. “Remember my favourite saying: Life is a struggle, but eventually you find shoes that fit.”

Apiro had to admit that when it came to finding a suitable bed, a Cuban prostitute had significantly better resources than he did.

Apiro and Maria sat at the tiny wooden table between Apiro’s kitchen and living space, the chessboard between them, the window open. The grey smoke from Maria’s first attempt at cooking rice was almost gone. Their eyes only watered occasionally.

Apiro had started to teach Maria chess when she was fifteen, when she first stayed with him during her treatment. They resumed their lessons as if only a few hours, rather than nine years, separated them.

“I want to show you the moves in a famous match between Martin Ortueta and José Sanz Aguado that took place in Madrid in the 1930s,” said Apiro. “Petrosian told me he devoted his entire life to chess after he was shown this series of moves. He was only ten years old.”

Tigran Petrosian was the Soviet Armenian grandmaster. He taught Apiro chess when Apiro was studying reconstructive surgery in Moscow. Petrosian had emphasized the need to wait for one’s opponent to make a mistake and then pounce quickly.

Apiro arranged the pieces until he was satisfied. “What do you think, Maria?”

Maria wrinkled her forehead as she concentrated on the sequence. “It’s simple,” she said, “but brilliant.”

Apiro smiled. He was pleased that Maria so easily grasped the strategy behind the moves. She had an agile mind. Like many
brilliant men, Apiro had spent much of his life struggling to fit in, but being with her was effortless.

Perhaps, Apiro thought, it is because she is so beautiful that she wants to be with me. Knowing it’s not her appearance that’s important but that I accept her for what she is. And in return, she accepts me.

“Sometimes chess can be that simple,” said Apiro. “But remember the Kotov syndrome. Under pressure, a player can make extremely unwise decisions. The Poisoned Pawn variation is a good example. A player places a pawn where it can be easily captured. If the other player takes the bait, his own men are exposed to attack. But the ploy is risky, because it can reveal both sides’ weaknesses.”

“I love chess. It’s so much like life.”

Apiro nodded. “It brings out the best but also the worst in us, because there is nowhere to hide behind one’s choices. The author Vladimir Nabokov created one of my favourite characters, a brilliant chess player named Luzhin who began to confuse reality with chess. But few chess games are ever perfect. One can replay one’s moves over and over again in one’s mind until it becomes self-destructive. Luzhin eventually committed suicide. Perhaps this urge towards endless self-examination is why H.G. Wells called the passion for chess the least satisfying of men’s desires.”

“I think I prefer Boris Spassky’s thoughts when it comes to understanding men’s passions,” said Maria. “Particularly when you know how much such matters interest me.” She grinned wickedly, her eyes sparkling. “When he was asked if he preferred sex or chess, he answered that it depended on his position.”

Apiro almost fell off the faded couch, laughing. And then someone pounded on the door.

TWENTY - FOUR

“She’s not getting any air. Get me a knife. A sharp one.” Fernando Espinoza was going to try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and if that didn’t work, he’d cut open Rita Martinez’s trachea. Like half the taxi drivers in Havana, he’d spent a year in medical school before he realized there were other occupations that paid better.

“Dr. Apiro will be here in a few minutes,” a detective called out. “Patrol is bringing him; they’re on the way. So are the paramedics.”

Espinoza turned to the police officer who had checked Rita’s throat. “We need to do compressions. Fifteen for every two breaths. We have to breathe for her until they get here.”

Espinoza tilted back Rita Martinez’s head and checked with his finger to make sure her airway was clear. Then he put his lips over hers. Her ample chest rose and fell as the two men administered CPR.

Another man produced a knife. “It’s okay,” said Espinoza. “The air is going in; it’s not a blockage. Maybe she had a heart attack.” He lowered his mouth again on the count of fifteen.

Sirens shrieked in the distance.

“Stand back, please,” said Apiro, materializing through the crowd. “Everyone, please, move aside. Let me see the patient.” The crowd moved aside. “You’re doing CPR? Good. Keep it up while I check her vital signs.”

Apiro might be short, but he had an unmistakable air of competence. His stethoscope was already out, ear tips inserted. He kneeled on the other side of Rita Martinez, speaking soothingly to her. A man who knew his business.

As soon as Espinoza removed his mouth from Rita’s, Apiro checked her pulse and pulled back her eyelids. He looked at the palms of her hands. The small doctor gently parted her lips and examined her gums. “Please,” he implored the people standing over them. “If you can give us a little room. She needs air.”