The Beggar's Opera Read Free

laughed at his confusion. “Is this supposed to be funny?” he demanded. “Who sent you?”
    The corpse shrugged his shoulders, conveying his inability to speak.
    Ramirez looked at the man more closely for signs of subterfuge. But unless the murder victim had a twin, there was no disputing his authenticity. His neck gaped red where his throat had been slit, and the bruises on his face were identical to those Ramirez had observed on the body just minutes earlier.
    “This can’t be possible,” said Ramirez, trembling.
    Hector Apiro and his technicians were still at the crime scene, processing this man’s remains. How could he be lyingthere, dead in an alley, and yet be here, sitting in Ramirez’s car?
    Ramirez blinked several times, hoping the ghost would disappear, but each time he opened his eyes, the dead man was still there. He waved at Ramirez hesitantly. Ramirez didn’t wave back.
    The un-dead man followed Ramirez around police headquarters all morning like a stray dog. He vanished from sight only when Ramirez used the toilet. Ramirez walked out, zipping up, to find the ghost waiting in the corridor. He hurried down the hall, the spectre close on his heels.
    Apiro had scheduled the man’s autopsy for two that afternoon, only twenty minutes away. Ramirez walked as quickly as he could to the morgue without running, trying not to draw attention to himself, again wondering why no one else noticed the bloodied ghost in his wake.
    You’ve been dead for twenty-four hours, thought Ramirez. Apiro is about to cut you up. What in God’s name are you?
    Ramirez darted through the metal door into Apiro’s private sanctuary. The dead man stopped outside, frowning. As Ramirez entered the morgue, there was no sign of the apparition.
    Ramirez leaned against the door to make sure it was firmly closed. He peered around the small room anxiously. Only Hector Apiro was inside. He stood on the top step of a threerung stepladder, leaning over a body stretched out flat on the metal gurney he used for autopsies. A proper table would have had runoff areas for blood and other fluids; Apiro made do with metal buckets.
    Ramirez hung up his jacket and tried to work his arms through the sleeves of the white lab coat that he was required to wear inside Apiro’s workspace. His hands shook and he kept missing the holes. Apiro, busy, didn’t notice.
    Apiro turned his head to greet him. “Good afternoon, Ricardo. My goodness, you’re pale. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    “It’s nothing, Hector.” Ramirez swallowed a few times. “I’ll be fine.” But he wasn’t sure if that was true.
    “There’s a glass on the filing cabinet, if you’d like to get some water. Autopsies are unpleasant at the best of times, even for me. And if you need to get some air, please, go ahead. This body isn’t going anywhere.”
    Ramirez wasn’t so sure of that either.
    He approached Apiro tentatively, almost afraid to look in case the body moved.
    Apiro had removed the clothes from the cadaver, but it was definitely the same man who had haunted Ramirez all morning. Ramirez half expected the dead man to wink at him, but the eyes that stared at the ceiling were lifeless, waxen.
    The thing in the hallway is alive compared to this, Ramirez thought. What in God’s name is it?
    “He is dead, isn’t he?” Ramirez asked. But the proof of death lay on the table in front of him and in glass jars on the counter.
    “If he wasn’t before, he is now,” Apiro said, laughing. “I’ve removed all his organs.”
    Ramirez fumbled in his pocket for a cigar. “Tell me something, Hector. Do you believe in ghosts?”
    “As a man of science, I don’t believe in much,” said Apiro, holding his scalpel thoughtfully. “Although I am sure such illusions serve a valid social purpose. After all, Catholic priests believe in ghosts, don’t they? The consecrated Host? The Holy Ghost?”
    “You don’t believe in them yourself?”
    “In priests, Ricardo?” the