The Poisoned Pawn Read Online Free PDF

then why are you? Don’t try to change the subject, Ricardo. I know something is going on.”
    Ramirez sighed. Francesca was right. He was working long hours, exceptionally so. And she would be furious if she knew how many of the murder victims whose deaths he investigated had followed him home.
    His most recent case sat on a wooden chair in the corner of their tiny living room. The old woman held her long, thick cigar loosely in her stained fingers, bored. Legs crossed, swinging one of her feet, she watched the back-and-forth of their marital conflict as if she’d heard it all before.
    “Francesca, cariño , maybe you should look at this from a different perspective,” said Ramirez. “The ministry will pay meto spend two days in a country where there are shops. Think of all the things I can buy that we can’t get here.”
    He thought she would like the idea of him shopping for her. His mistake, as it turned out. The old woman held her cigar like a gun and pointed it at his groin, cocking the trigger.
    “Paid for with what , Ricardo? The twenty-five pesos you get as salary each month? Sometimes I think you are the only policeman in the entire Cuban police force who doesn’t take money from the extranjeros before sending them home.”
    Ramirez frowned. As the senior officer in charge of the Havana Major Crimes Unit, he felt he needed to set an example. Someday, beyond any doubt, Fidel Castro would be gone for good.
    Despite popular belief, the old man was not supernatural; he couldn’t live forever. Although he might just come back, thought Ramirez, as he watched the cigar lady throw down her fabric flower and grind it into the floor.
    Once Castro died, billions of American dollars would surge into the capital. If Ramirez began to take the relatively small sums offered by tourists now in exchange for throwing out their charges, how would he possibly resist the major bribes then?
    Religion causes even good men to commit evil deeds, his Yoruba grandmother had cautioned. But money, he’d discovered, was its own religion.
    “Would you have me put a price on my integrity?”
    “This from a man who steals rum from the exhibit room?” Ramirez winced. Of course he took things from the exhibit room. He confined himself to scavenging items that were no longer needed as evidence but necessary to the day-to-day functioning of his unit: rum, batteries, film.
    The batteries and film were needed for crime-scene photographs. The rum, because they needed a strong drink sometimes, after the terrible things they saw. Perhaps a little more rum thesedays to help quiet the trembling in his hands. But he had never accepted a bribe.
    Francesca wasn’t finished. She had one more blow to strike before the referee called the fight. Hardly fair, thought Ramirez. I am already pinned to the ground.
    “We have two small children to worry about. And your parents are elderly. They depend on us more and more. You come home from this meeting with nice talk of Canada. Of soap and shampoos, of toys we can’t afford. But while you are at work, I am the one standing in the queue with a ration book, watching the smug wives of young policías walk by with bags stuffed full of steak and chicken from the black market.”
    She knew how to throw a punch.
    The old cigar lady used one hand to hold up the other in victory. Ramirez smiled uncomfortably.
    By the time the performance began, Francesca’s anger had retreated. She slipped her warm fingers into his—a kind of truce. The battle wasn’t over, but for the moment she would hold her fire.
    Yes, we argue, thought Ramirez, but so does every couple. The fighting is not important. It’s how we make up that matters. At least we don’t try to kill each other.
    “If I remember correctly,” Francesca whispered as the curtains parted, “the first singer who played Polly Peachum ran away with her married lover in real life. You should be careful I don’t find one myself, what with you working late so