The Poisoned Pawn (33 page)

“I don’t know what you mean,” the priest said. He swayed on his feet. He looked around for a bin for the empty bottle. He put his hand over his heart and coughed.

“I’ll take that bottle back, thank you. As you probably know, we believe in recycling here. Have you ever heard of the Greek sacrifice in chess, Padre? It’s where one deliberately sacrifices a bishop in order to protect one’s pawns. It’s one of my favourite moves. Apparently one of Raúl Castro’s as well. He told Ramirez what time you were leaving today. I’m sorry, I
did
warn you not to drink the water.”

The priest looked at the bottle in Apiro’s hand, confused. “Was there something in that?”

“Yes,” the small doctor shrugged. “But you have a choice as to what to do about it. There are paramedics coming any minute. They’re bringing a patient I’m escorting to Canada. Why look, there’s the ambulance now.”

Apiro pointed to the yellow van that had pulled up in front of the glass doors.

“They can take you to a hospital for treatment. But if you go, I’m quite sure you won’t leave Cuba alive. Cuban Intelligence believes you leaked highly confidential documents to the media in Canada, together with information proving they were forged by the Ministry of the Interior. I’m not sure how many friends you have left in the minister’s office. On the other hand, if you take your flight now, you’ll probably collapse in a few hours. The pilot will land the plane somewhere and they’ll take you to a foreign hospital. By then, you’ll most likely be brain-dead, but able to donate organs so that others may live. This seems to me to be a choice even your Catholic god might respect. Not suicide, according to your own analysis, but rather more selfless.”

The old priest’s face collapsed as he worked through his options. He grabbed his arm; a shooting pain from his heart ran down his shoulder to his elbow. He nodded slowly. “How much time do I have?”

“A few hours at most.” Apiro handed the priest a blank organ donor card. “You might want to complete this.”

Callendes bowed his head, accepting his fate. Apiro had offered him the possibility of another life, of divine forgiveness. Whereas Cuban Intelligence could offer him nothing of value.

“They’re calling my flight. I should go now, Doctor.” The priest’s face had turned grey, his damaged heart no longer fully pumping blood to his extremities. “I assume you know Inspector Ramirez?”

Apiro nodded.

“There’s an old man in Ottawa. An Indian. His name was Manajiwin. His brother died in one of the schools I worked in. Tell Inspector Ramirez it was no accident.” The loudspeaker called all passengers on the flight to Rome to the departure gate. “I’m
sorry, there’s no time to explain. As for Rubén …” he hesitated. “May God be with you. With both of you.”

“I’d wish you the same, Father, but I don’t believe in God,” said Apiro. “Trust me, that makes this much easier.”

Hector Apiro rolled his carry-on bag out to the pavement. The paramedics were already pushing the little girl’s wheelchair over to the van.

He tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin. Water bottles were hard to come by, and there was nothing wrong with this one. There had been nothing in it except water. It wasn’t always the truth that was important, after all, but what people believed.

I was wrong, thought Apiro. Words
can
kill.

SIXTY - TWO

Inspector Ramirez was in his office completing the paperwork from his trip when the phone rang. The clerk transferred him directly to the Minister of the Interior. Ramirez resisted the temptation to ask her if she was “licking” the New Year.

The minister got directly to the point.

“Rey Callendes died of a heart attack on his flight to Rome, Ramirez. He had a donor card with him, apparently. I’m told his organs are now travelling around the world without him.”

“A heart attack?” Ramirez was surprised. He had planted the idea in the acting president’s mind, as Apiro had suggested, of Callendes being removed altogether, but without really expecting Cuban Intelligence to act on it.

“Cuban Intelligence insists they had nothing to do with this. I don’t believe them, of course. But I must say, Ramirez, his death solves a number of political problems. I want you to notify the Canadians. Tell them the man was old and in poor health. There was no time for us to proceed with an indictment.”

“Of course,” said Ramirez. “I’ll take care of it.”

“They don’t need to know he was on a flight to Rome when it happened. The airline is happy to keep this quiet. They have no
interest in the public knowing two passengers have died in less than two weeks. Father Callendes lapsed into a coma, apparently. A lapsed Catholic at the end, after all.” The minister laughed nervously. “Believe me, the Vatican was robbed.”

Like the
windagos
, the Catholic Church collected souls, thought Ramirez. With each one, it had become more powerful, until it threatened the community.

So someone found a way to get to the priest. Interesting that the monster’s heart had been cut out, along with his corneas and all his other re-usable parts. No fear of this one coming back.

Still, Ramirez wondered who in Cuban Intelligence had managed to pull it off. It was hard to arrange a heart attack when one lacked the necessary drugs.

Well, whoever did it, it was well-played. The priest died in international airspace. No one would assume jurisdiction, not in this case. And there would be no autopsy; the organ donations would take care of that.

Ramirez called Corporal Tremblay first to inform him. Then he dialed Detective Pike’s number, but Pike was out.

“Charlie,” he said to the tinny recorded voice that responded. “It’s Ricardo Ramirez. I wanted to let you know that Rey Callendes died of a heart attack today.” Ramirez looked out the window at the swaying palms, at the colourfully dressed tourists flooding the sidewalks. “It’s a beautiful day in Havana. Blue skies, not too hot. Please tell your friend that it looks like an early spring.”

Inspector Ramirez pushed the stack of papers to a corner of his desk where he could pretend he didn’t see them.

When Hector Apiro got back from Canada, Ramirez had decided, he’d talk to him about his hyperthyroid condition.
Maybe ask Apiro to arrange for an MRI, a complete scan. Check for tumours, cancer. Just in case.

After all, the trembling was getting worse, and there were only six crates left of that old
añejo
.

But right now, it was time to go home.

For the moment, Francesca was happy. She had bags of cashews, chocolate bars, and tiny bottles of perfumed shampoo. As for
tacos
, well, maybe that was something Maria Vasquez could help her to find.

They had a little extra money, thanks to the small increase in his salary. Women’s shoes seemed a good investment, if they made his wife happy. “A happy wife makes for a happy husband.” Another of his beloved grandmother’s sayings.

And the next week was going to be busy. Once the minister identified Angela Aranas’s killer, or at least whoever he planned to scapegoat for her death, Ramirez would have to indict him. If it was a police officer, it would be bad for morale. If it was a Cuban Intelligence officer, on the other hand, no one would much care.

Ramirez walked outside into the warm night air.

The dead cigar lady materialized at his side. She escorted Ramirez back to the parking lot where they had first met. Only a week had passed, but it seemed eons longer. A few days in Canada added a whole new meaning to the word
infinity
.

“Good evening, Mamita Angela,” Ramirez said, looking around to make sure no one watched him speaking to himself. “Your time with me must be coming to an end. I had most of it wrong, didn’t I? No wonder you frowned at me so often. This case was complicated.”

The old woman smiled slightly.

Yes, a knife had been plunged into her chest. But not to
disguise the fact that she had died from a chokehold. The more he thought about that, the more Ramirez was convinced he’d been mistaken. Like with so many other things in this investigation.

The knife had been stabbed into the old woman’s body so forcefully it went all the way through her heart, making it useless for donation. It was a message to her jailed son. The old lady had told him as much, when she drew an
X
over her ruined chest.

Besides, the inspector doubted that anyone in Security Services could come up with a plot so complex as to link the old woman to
brujería
.

Instead, Ramirez believed that a grieving, superstitious old woman had put on a white dress to please the gods. She shaved her own head, trying to contact the
orishas
. She threw shells on the floor, trying to divine her granddaughter’s future, to learn if the child would survive.

She crafted a Chango doll out of fabric remnants, and prayed to it for the child’s recovery. Chango was also the god of strength, after all.

When the future was not as she wished—or perhaps when she foresaw her own death in the seashells—she cast him in the corner. Had Chango then turned on her?

It didn’t matter, really. Any way you looked at it, she’d died of a broken heart.

The old woman had pointed to the knife in her chest over and over again, and Ramirez hadn’t understood. The
veve
Luis Martez saw in Blind Alley; she had painted it on the stones. Another message from an old woman unable to speak out openly.

But she had found a way to communicate even after her death, through Juan Tranquilino Latapier. A self-made
ahijado
, she’d created a channel of her own. Latapier was the one who had pointed the police investigation towards Viñales.

Because of it, a beloved grandchild now had a chance at a healthy, if somewhat colder, life in a foreign country, in a family, Ramirez was certain, that would love her just as much as her own.

The dead cigar lady smiled sadly as Ramirez opened his car door. This time, she didn’t enter the back seat of the small blue car. She stood outside as he started the ignition.

She formed her fingers into a heart and touched them to her chest.

Yes, he understood what she meant. She approved of the adoption, although it, too, broke her heart. The surgery that would save her granddaughter’s life would take Beatriz from Cuba. But the child would live. And that was all that mattered.

As Ramirez pulled out of the parking lot, Señora Aranas was no longer alone. Juan Tranquilino Latapier stood beside her.

Funny that Eshu had sent a man who had died of old age to the future as a young man, but wearing his burial clothes. Ramirez sighed. He was no closer to knowing whether his visions were real. But they certainly looked genuine enough. And maybe, just maybe, they were true.

Juan Latapier had mentioned his wife was pregnant. And when the beloved daughter he and his wife wanted so much finally arrived, they had her name already chosen. Angela, Latapier said they would call her. She was not even born at the time of the famous trial or its appeal, but she was a very old woman when she died. Much older than she looked, in fact. Ninety-three, according to her birth certificate.

You had to admire her personality. Larger than life, pushy, opinionated. But principled and passionate about justice. A lot like her father.

Latapier put his arm around the dead cigar lady, companionable, comfortable, as the two of them walked away. But not
until after the old woman had taken the fabric flower from her bandana and pinned it to her father’s lapel.

He loves me; he loves me not
.

Yes, Ramirez thought. Juan Latapier had loved his daughter. Enough to interrupt his preparations for the most important appeal of his career, to give Ramirez a hand in solving her murder.

And by coming to the future to help Ramirez investigate his daughter’s death, he had probably saved the life of his greatgranddaughter, Beatriz, as well.

The sounds of Havana washed in waves through the open car windows as Ramirez drove home. An old Chevrolet sounded its horn. It was almost midnight.

A wedding car passed slowly by; a late party, a reception. Men along the seawall hissed at the beaming bride; cars honked. The groom grinned and clapped. The newly married young couple, both expectant, knowing only that their entire future lay ahead.

Above Ramirez’s small blue car, the wind picked up tiny bits of swirling white confetti. It fell against his windshield like flakes of snow.

EPILOGUE

He looked for his seat in the thirteenth row, delighted. No pandering by this company, not even the slightest attempt to trick fate by pretending the row was a different number.

The whole idea of airplanes was incredible. Like the impossible bumblebee that Western scientists claimed should be unable to fly but zeppelined its way through the air nonetheless. How little the experts knew of the worlds that paralleled their own.

The small man smiled kindly at the woman as he sat in the aisle seat beside her and adjusted his white collar.

He introduced himself, trying to make their first encounter as friendly as possible. He was amused, not offended, when she didn’t recognize his name.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, as she put on a smile. “I’ve had a long day. I don’t feel much like talking.”

“I understand completely, Señora,” he said. He smelled her body’s sad perfume.

Tragic, really, how little time she had left. He sat back in his seat, contemplative, occasionally marvelling at the ink-blue sky through the window. How easily they had gained altitude in this
metal cigar, how efficient the means of travel available to people these days. Not his usual method of flying.

When he saw that she was starting to feel ill, he was constrained, as always, by indirectness. If she had engaged in conversation, he could have told her that most sugar cane came from Brazil, now that Cuban fields had been converted to crops, and that Cuban rum was sometimes laced with cyanide because of it, and that her folate levels were too low to handle it. But she glared at him and resumed her pretence of reading.

When her breathing became laboured, he handed her an airsickness bag and showed her how to blow into it.