The Poisoned Pawn (8 page)

Mike was cleared to return to work in November by the departmental shrink, Richard Mann. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the psychiatrist said. No way of knowing if Mike would ever fully recover, but diazepam was supposed to control his panic attacks.

O’Malley promoted Mike to detective and put him in a section where he wasn’t likely to deal with armed men. Into a desk job, essentially, in the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Unit. He’d just started there when he and Hillary decided they needed a vacation.

There were passages in Dr. Mann’s report that worried Jones the more she thought about them.

For one thing, Mike was infertile. And yet the Cuban police had found a package of birth control pills in their search of the Havana hotel room where the couple stayed. But according to Dr. Mann’s notes, Hillary Ellis had just found out she was pregnant when Mike was wounded. She miscarried the following week.

Whoever got Hillary pregnant, then, it wasn’t Mike. That was motive.

There was another red flag, too. A week before they left for Havana, Mike asked Jones to witness their signatures on an amendment to his departmental insurance policy. In addition to the standard million-dollar life insurance coverage, they added a million more. Each was named as the other’s primary beneficiary, with Hillary’s parents the residuary beneficiaries. Meaning if one of them died, the other got it all.

A little less than three weeks later, Hillary was dead.

Sherlock Holmes once stated that the most repellent man he’d ever known had given money to charity, but the most fetching woman he’d ever met had poisoned three small children for their insurance proceeds.

Mike Ellis was hardly fetching anymore. Not since the “accident,” as O’Malley always referred to it. An accident that left Sloan dead and Mike almost unrecognizable. But Mike stood to gain two million dollars in insurance benefits from his unfaithful wife’s death.
Tax-free
. It made Jones wonder just how charitable he really was.

FIFTEEN

A stray dog lay curled on the sidewalk, panting in the heat. Inspector Ramirez and Juan Latapier stepped around it; so did the cigar lady.

She accompanied the two detectives until they reached the piled stones and twisted metal that formed the pillars at the entrance to Blind Alley, then halted like a stubborn mule. It made Ramirez feel uneasy that even a ghost didn’t want to pass through Blind Alley’s gates.

She waved goodbye as they stepped into another world.

The buildings that ran the length of the alley were covered with African murals painted from leftover paint supplies. Frenzied designs, as if the hands of the artist were possessed. A full-size Chango doll balanced on a beam. At least, Ramirez hoped it was a doll.

African death masks glared at them, trapped in the gaps left by missing bricks in crumbling walls. Huge coloured obelisks towered beside palm trees. Colourful shrines were littered with gifts to the different
orishas
: Obatala, the god of peace; Babalu Aye, the god of illnesses; Chango; Oya; Yemayá; Oggun.

Chango was the god of machetes, hammers, and shovels.
Oshun, the goddess of lust and love, was the promiscuous younger sister of Yemayá, mother of fishes. Oggun was responsible for swords, guns, and crucifixes.

Blind Alley was once called Smuggler’s Alley in honour of its founder, a man who, like Oggun, had brought weapons into Cuba. But it had been transformed by the
orishas
and their human conduits into a centre for Afro-Cuban drumming and dancing, trances and possession.

The alley held the sacred drums that summoned the gods. To the believers of Santería, it was a portal, a gateway to the other side.

The
babalaos
claimed that the police were kept away by sacrifices they made to Oshosi, the god of traps and spell-casters. Oshosi was also known as Saint Norbert, a Catholic canonized for restoring sight to a blind woman; hence the name Blind Alley.

But most police considered Oshosi their own
orisha
, since he was also the god of courts and prisons. It made for a certain ambiguity that left Ramirez wondering which side Oshosi would favour if he and Latapier ran into problems.

“You say your police are afraid to come here?” asked Latapier, smiling. “That’s funny. I feel right at home.”

“My men try to stay away from Blind Alley,” said Ramirez. “They say arresting people is one thing, engaging in the supernatural another. Personally, I worry more about the
babalaos
than I do about spirits. I’m never quite sure where they get their blood sacrifices. There may be a shortage of animals because of rationing. But there’s never a shortage of police.”

Ramirez and Latapier joined a crowd of people gathered around a young black woman who danced frantically on the cobblestones as drummers pounded the sacred drums. Her feet looked swollen, but she seemed oblivious to the pain. Her bald head was
covered with paint splatters. Her sweat formed coloured trails as it ran down her cheeks.

The sound of the conga drums built in volume and intensity even in the few minutes that Ramirez and Latapier were there. Women chanted in Yoruba; they swayed and clapped to the beat. The young woman began to scream, whirling and spinning in her white dress as a
babalao
watched. The hairs on Ramirez’s arms stood on end, despite the heat.

“It seems unusual, to have an initiation during the week,” said Latapier quietly. “I thought the
nangale
, the purification ceremony, was conducted on Sundays.”

“Maybe everything is skewed because of the holidays.”

They skirted the crowd to get to an art gallery built so deep underground it was almost completely buried. The stone stairs curved as if bent by the hands of giants.

Once inside, it was damp and cool. Ramirez took a deep breath, gratefully filling his lungs. The shrieking above them was muted by the thick walls. Even so the drums filled the space like a pulse, as if the earth had a heartbeat.

Ramirez looked around. The gallery smelled like a
botánica
, a shop that supplied herbs for Santería rituals. Dozens of paintings hung on its walls. An Afro-Cuban man piled books into stacks for sale, seemingly oblivious to the ceremonies taking place above ground.

“Excuse me, we need your help,” Ramirez said to the man and showed him his badge. “My name is Inspector Ramirez.” He turned to introduce Latapier, but the detective had walked away and was examining a painting on the wall.

“Of course,” the man said. “My name is Carlos Neruda. What can I do for you?”

“The body of a woman was found not far from here early on New Year’s Day. An elderly woman. Afro-Cuban. She was
dressed completely in white. I’m hoping you might know who she was.”

“Why would you think that has something to do with me?” Neruda asked, looking nervously around the gallery.

“We assume she came from around here. And that she may have been an initiate.”

“We, meaning who?” said the man.

“The Major Crimes Unit. I’m the inspector in charge of the section that deals with homicides. And this woman’s death was no accident, believe me.”

“How did she die?”

“She was stabbed through the heart.”

Ramirez gave him only part of the truth. The exact cause of death was still unknown, but in a police investigation, it was always useful to hold something back that only the killer could know. He made no mention of the fish knife. “The murder may be linked to that of two children. In one case, the victim’s heart was cut right out of her body.”

Carlos Neruda visibly flinched. “We practice Santería here. Not
brujería
.”

The noises above suddenly stopped. The silence was almost more startling than the drumming and screams had been.

“No one has accused you of witchcraft,” said Ramirez.

“You seek answers in the wrong place. A
bruja
would never be accepted into our initiations. We do not believe in black magic.”

The dark man’s eyes flicked to a painting on the wall, the one Latapier was scrutinizing.

“Look here,” Latapier said to Ramirez, calling him over.

The inspector joined him. The painting was formed from splashes and dribbles of white, black, and red paint. The paint looked as if it had been thrown wildly on the canvas. And yet the image was immediately recognizable once one’s eyes adjusted to
the artist’s technique. As Ramirez examined it, a woman’s body emerged, almost as clear as a photograph.

The portrait had incredible energy. An elderly black woman was garbed in white, her head flung back. Her body was twisted and contorted as she danced in front of the drums. There was no doubt in Ramirez’s mind: it was the woman who waited outside the gates.

Ramirez pointed to the painting. “Was this woman initiated into Santería here, in Blind Alley?” he asked the gallery owner.

The man shifted his weight from foot to foot. He avoided Ramirez’s eyes. “I have sworn an oath to the gods to keep our ceremonies secret.”

“The name of the artist, Señor Neruda. Or I will arrest you for obstruction. I would not wish to see you in a situation where you had to rely on the gods to protect you in jail.”

His bluff had the desired effect.

Latapier and Ramirez walked back up the narrow stone steps.

The drummers were gone. There was no sign of the initiate. The singers had melted away into the crowd.
Turistas
sat at the outside bar, holding watery, overpriced drinks as they were hustled for money and soap by
jineteros.

“This is good, Juan,” said Ramirez. “We have our first solid lead.” They had the artist’s name: Luis Martez. And Martez’s address.

“She was just an old woman, Inspector Ramirez. I didn’t know her,” Luis Martez said. He lived about fifteen minutes from the Callejón, on the top floor of a building that was falling down. The one-room studio was full of stacked canvasses, a small metal bed, a television, a wash basin, but little else. None of his other canvasses displayed the same frenetic strokes used in the painting in the gallery.

“When did you paint that portrait of her?”

“She was at a
rhumba
in Blind Alley in December. Around three weeks ago. She danced with fury, as if she were decades younger. She was screaming the whole time that Oya had taken over her body. I wanted to see if I could paint a woman who claimed to be possessed. It was as if Oya grabbed the brushes from my hand. I found myself throwing paint at the canvas, wildly, almost out of control. The face of the old woman formed on the canvas almost by itself, then her body. Let me tell you, it was a powerful experience.”

Ramirez raised his eyebrows. “You said she ‘claimed’ she was possessed. You didn’t believe her?”

“I paint; I try not to judge. I admit, at first I wasn’t sure she was really possessed or making it up. But when she finished dancing, I couldn’t help but notice there were
veves
on the stones beneath her feet.”

The Santería believed that after possessing a human body, the
orishas
left symbolic paintings behind.
Veves
were portents of the future, tokens of thanks to the drummers for their skills. Ramirez was skeptical, having stopped more than one
babalao
at night with a small jar of paint concealed beneath his clothing.

“It looked like a heart with a knife through it. It could have been a blob of red paint. I may have interpreted it artistically, fair enough. But then, the gods are not renowned for their artistic talents, are they? It’s difficult to manage a brush using someone else’s hands.”

“Did you know her name?”

“I heard someone in the crowd call out to Mamita Angela. That’s all I know. The painting is a good one, don’t you think? I thought it captured the spirit of the old woman perfectly. But I couldn’t keep it in the apartment.”

“Because?” asked Ramirez.

The artist shrugged. “In case I had captured Oya as well.”

Ramirez’s cell phone rang as they walked back to his car. It was Detective Espinoza.

“Listen, Inspector, I made some calls. One of the policemen who works on the Malecón investigated an old woman a few weeks ago. She fits the description of our victim. He received a complaint that she might be engaged in animal sacrifice; she was trying to find a live chicken. The police officer who responded couldn’t find any evidence to support a charge of animal cruelty.”

That surprised Ramirez. Animal cruelty could mean anything in this country. Eating pork without a ration card was sufficient for an arrest. “And the woman’s name, Fernando?”

“Angela Aranas. I have an address for you, too.”

Ramirez wrote it down. It wasn’t far from where they were.

“Excellent work. We’ll check it out before we head back to the station. I have a visiting detective with me, from the station in El Gabriel.” He clicked off his phone. “Luis Martez was right,” he said to Latapier. “Her name
was
Angela. Her last name was Aranas.”

“That’s funny,” said Latapier. “My wife and I have picked out that name, Angela, if we have a girl. The baby’s due in a few months. And Aranas is my wife’s family name as well, so my daughter will keep it. My wife is Basque.”

“Well, it’s a lovely name, Angela,” said Ramirez. “Congratulations. Your first?”

“Yes,” the dark man smiled. “My wife is finding it difficult, what with all the food cravings. They’re so strong, her mother is convinced we will have a son.”

“I can imagine,” Ramirez grinned. “I think we all have food cravings. I go to sleep some nights dreaming of chickens.”

Ramirez’s stomach growled. He realized he hadn’t eaten all
day. “We can stop at a vendor’s on the way back. Maybe grab a
tortas de lechón.
Although these days, a pork sandwich is all squeal, no pig.”

“I should get back to El Gabriel soon. But I appreciate the offer. I’m just not that hungry.”

“You must be the only Cuban who isn’t,” Ramirez smiled. “Do you have time to check out this address with me?”

“I’m happy to, Inspector. But then I really do have to leave.”

Ramirez nodded. He started up his car, feeling beads of sweat trickle down the back of his shirt. He envied Latapier, who seemed unaffected by the heat.