Umbrella Man Read online

  Praise for

  THE INSPECTOR RAMIREZ SERIES

  “Peggy Blair writes like an author possessed, with story-telling skills that make her a must-read writer beyond the mystery genre.”

  —The Hamilton Spectator

  “Blair’s prose is evocative, nary a word amiss.”

  —The Vancouver Sun

  “An affecting series. Even if impoverished and politically oppressed Havana presents unique burdens, Ramirez is not without a sense of humour as he goes about his clever sleuthing.”

  —Toronto Star

  “This series… continues to be a delight.”

  —The Chronicle Herald

  “Blair invests Havana geography (with its decaying buildings and rusting American cars) with new vigor by focusing not only on photo-worthy street scenes but also on the complex lives of the people who live inside the broken buildings.”

  —Booklist

  “Ramirez is a wonderful guide—hiding nothing but hoping we’ll look past the poverty, hardship and political corruption to see the beauty and humanity of his battered city.”

  —The New York Times

  “Great sensitivity and a well-timed sense of humor.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Top-notch mystery… A new level of sophistication.”

  —Ottawa Citizen

  “Ricardo Ramirez, head of the major crimes unit of the Cuban National Revolutionary Police, could easily invade and captivate international crime television.”

  —Winnipeg Free Press

  “Blair’s plots are amazing, especially the surprises near the end. Just when it appears that everything has been solved, it turns out that there is more—much, much more—to maintain suspense.”

  —Guelph Mercury

  TO IAN RANKIN, WITH THANKS

  A murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

  —Jean-Paul Sartre

  1

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2007

  An old black woman sat on the curb beside Ramirez’s small blue car. She lifted her head as he approached, fixing her dark eyes on his. He couldn’t tell from her expression if she was sad or angry.

  Inspector Ricardo Ramirez eased himself onto the curb beside her. “Your grandmother,” Mama Loa said, in her soft Creole accent, “she come to see me last night. She say the gods don’t like that you gave back your gift.”

  Although Ramirez’s long-deceased slave grandmother was Yoruba, and Mama Loa was Vodun, both adhered to Santería, a mix of Catholicism and African animism. They both believed the dead were everywhere, and that they visited their dreams.

  “Have you found a new home yet?” Ramirez asked the old woman uneasily, changing the subject. The last time he’d seen Mama Loa, he had given her a thick braid of gold chain, one of the many seized items that never quite found their way into the police exhibit room. The chain was valuable enough on the black market to pay for at least a few months’ accommodation for the old woman and her strays.

  “Not yet,” Mama Loa said, shaking her head. Her long grey dreadlocks bounced on her shoulders. “The government still looking for a place for us, I guess. I got a new goddaughter waiting to move in with me. But Nevara say she don’t want to wait no more. She say some Russian’s going to pay her to go to work for him instead.”

  Her goddaughters, Mama Loa called them. Prostitutes. Jineteras who had no safe place to live when they wanted to get off the streets. They found a sort of refuge with her, or at least they had, until the apartment building she’d lived in was declared too dangerous for habitation, which in Havana was saying something.

  A bureaucratically displaced person like Mama Loa had few options. She’d ended up living in a shack made from scavenged wood in a shanty town on the outskirts of the city. The Isle of Dust, locals called it. That’s about all that was left of their hopes once they landed there, thought Ramirez—ashes and dust.

  “Believe me, I appreciate everything you done for us.” Mama Loa glanced at him sideways. The whites of her eyes were bright against her ebony skin. “I know you think I’m crazy. But I always speak the truth.”

  Ramirez tried not to smile at her unabashed honesty. “I’ve never doubted that for a moment, Mama Loa.”

  “It’s not your fault you don’t know the way. Your grandmother, she say she warned you to never make the gods angry.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you had such frightening dreams.” Ramirez shifted from one foot to the other. How could she possibly know about his grandmother’s warning, or what he’d done to rid himself of his visions? Had Mama Loa followed him to the beach that afternoon in March, watched him scrape a shallow hole in the hot sand?

  He’d burned heaven money he’d purchased at a Chinatown kiosk—paper bills in ridiculously high denominations. The vendor had laughed and called it hell money. The irony hadn’t escaped him—that he’d found himself pleading with ancient gods to convince ghosts he wasn’t sure existed either, to leave him alone so his life could return to normal. But afterwards, the spirits that haunted him had vanished. Had they ever been real?

  Ramirez’s beloved grandmother had died when he was ten. On her deathbed, she’d warned that he would see ghosts, his gift as the eldest son. But his mother quickly disavowed him of that notion: his grandmother had been sick. She had dementia; she didn’t always know what she was saying.

  Eventually, as time passed without him seeing any ghosts, young Ricky reluctantly came to accept that his grandmother had made it up. After all, she’d also told him fanciful stories of lost pirate ships and giant squid, of huge octopuses that waged deadly underwater battles by gripping poisonous blue jellyfish in their tentacles as weapons.

  But then he joined the Cuban National Revolutionary Police, or PNR, and, as soon as he was promoted to homicides, the murder victims of his unsolved files began to haunt him. He’d begged the gods to take them away, that hot day in March, and now the ghosts were gone. Ramirez had since managed to persuade himself that the apparitions were simply hallucinations, products of stress, too much work, too little sleep.

  As for how the ghosts so often knew things that Ramirez himself didn’t know, his friend Hector Apiro once described how the human brain could retain information without being aware of it. “A German suffers a head injury one night and wakes up speaking Welsh,” Apiro had chortled, bobbing his large head, “a language he claims he’s never heard before, and an excruciatingly difficult one at that. And yet he must have encountered it somewhere, because suddenly he’s fluent. The brain is a complex repository, Ricardo—the biggest library in the world.”

  That’s all the ghosts were, Ramirez decided. Buried memories. Subconscious tricks. People he’d encountered somewhere and forgotten. Nothing to do with an absurd, superstitious prayer to the orishas on a stifling hot day or a dying woman’s vivid imagination.

  Suddenly embarrassed, he glanced at his watch and stood up. The light fabric of his pants clung to his legs. He tried to straighten the creases.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Mama Loa. My wife and I have plans to go to a movie this afternoon. She’ll be annoyed if I’m late. And trust me, even the gods don’t want to see Francesca angry.” He smiled, but Mama Loa’s face remained stern.

  “I know you don’t believe me yet,” she said, “but you will.” She pointed a long, nicotine-stained finger towards the heavens. A jetliner was passing high overhead; it left a brushstroke of white against the intense blue sky. “The sky gods aren’t happy with you. Those people up there who fly in the clouds? Some of them are going to die.”

  2

  Elizardo Ramos Avilo parked his bright yellow coco-taxi in the shade of a royal palm tree. The cab—a round fibreglass shell mounted on a three-wheeled moped—was o
pen at the front and sides with a cut-out rear window to let in the breeze. Even so, the plastic seats were hot. So was the chica in tight little shorts and a skimpy top shimmying towards him down Paseo del Prado, past the tourists and the old men playing dominoes in the shade of the boulevard’s trees. She wriggled her hips to the rhumba music that drifted from cafés, the blasts of Carlos Santana from car radios.

  “Hey, linda,” he called out, “you wanna ride, sweetheart?”

  He was still grinning when his vehicle rocked sideways as an extranjero clambered in the back and tossed a handful of pesos his way. “You speak English?” the man said.

  “Sure, dude.” Elizardo reached down to pick up the bills, astonished to find a hundred CUCs, or convertible pesos. The usual fare was five, and even that was generous in a country where most people lived on less than the equivalent of ten or fifteen dollars a month. He ran his fingers over the tourist currency, hardly believing his good luck.

  “Then drive. Fast.” The passenger pointed towards the Malecón. He slapped the back of Elizardo’s seat. “Fucking go!”

  “Okay, okay,” said Elizardo.

  Turistas, he thought. Why the rush? It was a beautiful day: deep-blue sky, only a few thin clouds, a slight breeze. Why not relax? Besides, the speed limit in Havana was fifty kilometres, and there were policías on almost every corner. He couldn’t afford to pay a hefty fine, not even for a big fare like this.

  He strapped on his black helmet and started the ignition. He pulled the coco-taxi around and headed north, towards the Malecón.

  “This way,” the man urged, as they approached the intersection of El Prado and the famous seaway. He gestured west, in the direction of Vedado. “I need to get back to my hotel.”

  Elizardo checked the two round mirrors that poked up like tiny periscopes on either side of his cab. The squat little taxis were so low to the ground that buses and trucks couldn’t easily see them, and they had no protective bumpers. Coco-taxi drivers had to be alert to avoid accidents; if they hit another vehicle, the odds weren’t in their favour.

  A red car suddenly pulled up behind them—too close for comfort.

  Elizardo turned his head, shouting to be heard above the put-put-put of his motor. “Hey, acere, give us a little room, man.”

  The driver held an arm out the window and waved at Elizardo to pull over.

  Elizardo was offended. He had a high-paying passenger in a hurry, and it wasn’t a police car. Why should he stop? He shouted at the driver to change lanes if he wanted to pass and kept going. Then he heard a loud crack, and the fibreglass shell of his taxi shattered.

  “Yob tvoyu mat,” his passenger screamed in Russian. Fuck your mother.

  Something whizzed past his head and Elizardo ducked. “Jesus,” he shouted, crossing himself with his right hand. “He’s shooting at us.” He hit the throttle hard and jerked the handlebars to the right, swerving across two lanes of traffic. The red car stayed right on his tail. Angry horns barked; worn brake pads screamed as a carro skidded sideways to avoid a collision. Elizardo’s coco-taxi clipped the front wheel of a bicycle rickshaw. The bici-taxi almost tipped over as the coco-taxi jumped the curb.

  “¿Que coño?” the driver bellowed, waving his fist. What the fuck? “You’re on the sidewalk!”

  “Sorry,” Elizardo yelled back.

  “Keep going,” his passenger shouted, leaning forward. “Don’t let him catch up!”

  Elizardo narrowly missed hitting a decades-old Chevy as he raced down the pitted limestone sidewalk next to the seawall. He steered the moped between tourists, hustlers, and street musicians, who scattered to get out of his way.

  A young policía dove to the side as the vehicles almost ran him down. “Hey, you!” he shrieked. “Stop!” He grabbed for his police radio and began to run after them. Two other foot patrolmen quickly joined the chase.

  The red car pulled beside Elizardo’s vehicle, forcing him towards the stone wall of the Malecón. As soon as Elizardo was trapped, the red car rammed his cab hard.

  The coco-taxi careened crazily. Two of its three tires lifted off the ground; it took all of Elizardo’s strength to keep it upright. Then the red car butted it again.

  The little cab spun like a top before it wobbled into the path of a heavily loaded truck. The impact knocked the coco-taxi over and stopped the truck cold. Hundreds of watermelons tumbled from the truck’s tailgate, scattering fragments of green shell and pink flesh as they bounced and smashed along the seaway.

  The coco-taxi rolled like a billiard ball before it finally came to rest on its side.

  Elizardo crawled out. He tried pulling his passenger from the debris, but the man was firmly stuck. Blood trickled down the man’s forehead.

  Elizardo saw the driver’s door of the red car open; he heard it slam shut. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, tears filling his eyes at his cowardice. He scrambled on his hands and knees behind the melon truck, leaving his injured passenger behind. The truck driver remained in his cab, too dazed to move.

  Seconds passed before Elizardo dared to peek beneath the truck’s chassis. All he could see were sharp-toed boots as the driver approached the wreckage of Elizardo’s livelihood. But when the driver squatted down, Elizardo’s eyes fixed on his small black gun.

  “I thought it was you,” the gunman said in Russian.

  “Potselui mou zhopy,” the passenger responded angrily. Kiss my ass.

  The gunman rifled casually through the passenger’s clothing as the man struggled to get free. He pulled a flat booklet from the man’s pants pocket and flipped it open before slipping it into his own. “Nu vse, tebe pizda,” the gunman said and shrugged. Elizardo understood the words: That’s it; you’re fucking dead.

  “Fuck,” said Elizardo. He looked over his shoulder. There were always policías lounging on every street corner. Where were they today? Sirens throbbed in the distance. He saw the three foot patrolmen running towards them—getting closer—but they were still at least two blocks away.

  Elizardo watched, stunned, as the gunman pressed his gun to the temple of the best-paying passenger he’d ever had in his short life and pulled the trigger.

  3

  The lineup snaked down Avenida and all around the block. People spilled over the sidewalk and onto the street. Cinemagoers queued as if lining up for the monthly ration of black beans instead of a Sunday matinee.

  A handful of policemen stood on the street, closely watching the cola. Sometimes, crowds surged when the theatre doors opened. On occasion, people were injured.

  “Open the doors!” someone yelled. Others in the lineup whooped and cheered.

  “Are you sure you want to take a chance on waiting?” Ramirez asked Francesca. He craned his head to count the people ahead of them, calculating how many seats there were in the Cine Acapulco’s auditorium and their odds of getting in.

  “I’m sure we can find something to do at home if we have to,” Francesca squeezed his arm and grinned. “After all, we don’t have to pick up the children until late this evening. But we so seldom go out, Ricardo. Let’s wait and see if we get lucky.”

  “Well,” said Ramirez, leaning in to her, “I certainly like the backup plan. It sounds as if I’ll get lucky either way.” He kissed the side of his wife’s neck, almost hoping the cola proved to be too long.

  The manager opened the glass doors to the flat-roofed brick building and the crowd pushed slowly forward. Once they’d squeezed inside, Ramirez bought two tickets. They cost four pesos, the equivalent of around twenty cents. Ramirez wondered how many tourists in the line with them were aware they would be charged CUCs and pay almost twenty times as much to see the same show.

  They made their way through the foyer, admiring its giant mirrors and ornate wood panelling. The screening room was a huge auditorium with an old projector and faded screen.

  Most of the cinemas in Havana had been shuttered or demolished after the revolution. Most of those that remained were hot and stuffy like this one, and the s
eats were hard; it was the reason Cubans nicknamed their equally uncomfortable buses “Saturday movies.” Nonetheless, people were addicted. Supply and demand, thought Ramirez. They always want what they can’t easily have.

  They found seats near the back of the room just as the first reel unwound. Ramirez sat back, enjoying the warmth of Francesca’s hand resting against his thigh. He let go of thoughts of Mama Loa and her unnerving prophecy and began to relax.

  The Lives of Others was set in Communist East Germany. A Stasi agent, Wiesler, was assigned to monitor a playwright named Dreyman. Ramirez and Francesca watched, fascinated, as Wiesler and his team meticulously planted listening devices throughout Dreyman’s apartment.

  It could be called Our Life, Ramirez thought. He hadn’t yet told Francesca that their own apartment had been bugged by the Ministry of the Interior eight months before. Manuel Flores, a criminal profiler, acting on the minister’s orders, had hoped to find something incriminating to use against Ramirez. Instead, when Ramirez discovered the listening devices, he’d left them in place so he could misdirect his eavesdroppers while he sorted out what to do. He’d used them, in fact, to trap Dr. Flores into confessing he’d conspired with the American CIA.

  But now that Flores was in custody in Mazorra, Ramirez’s somewhat rocky relationship with the minister had regained equilibrium. Ramirez once again reported to General de Soto, the head of the Havana Division of the National Revolutionary Police, instead of directly to the politician.

  Ramirez genuinely liked the general, who had once been a detective himself, and not having to deal directly with the minister relieved some of the political pressure on Ramirez and his unit. It helped as well that Havana had not experienced a homicide in months. Ramirez now spent his evenings kicking a soccer ball with his son, Edel, in the park across the street from their apartment and reading bedtime stories to his little girl, Estella.

  Ramirez wasn’t sure if the lull in murders was the reason his ghosts had vanished, but when his visions disappeared so had his resolve to tell Francesca about them. She had no idea he’d ever seen them, or how frequently. She’d always thought she and Ramirez were alone when all too often they weren’t.