The Beggar's Opera Read Free Page B

prognosis?” Ramirez was almost afraid to ask.
    “Fatal. Usually within five or six years.”
    “Is there no treatment?”
    “Nothing, I’m afraid.” Apiro looked up and searched his friend’s eyes carefully. “Are you worried that your father may have it? It is not usually considered hereditary, but I could try to arrange an MRI. It could take months, maybe a year, to get an appointment. There are only two machines in Havana and limited supplies. And like most things, the tourists come first.”
    Ramirez shook his head. His father was old but healthy. He didn’t know how to tell Apiro that he was the one seeing ghosts, not his father. And what was the point of an MRI if there was no way to conclusively diagnose the illness, and nothing Apiro, nothing anyone, could do about it anyway?
    Ramirez breathed in and out rapidly, deeply stunned. Francesca was four months pregnant with their second child. What should he do? He couldn’t tell his wife that he would probably die before their unborn baby started school. Francesca would kill him herself.
    Apiro stepped down and snapped off his gloves. “If you give me your grandmother’s name and her date of birth, I can check our records to see what the autopsy revealed. When did she die?”
    “In 1973, when I was nine. She must have been in her nineties by then. But I don’t know her exact birthday, Hector,” Ramirez answered slowly, his thoughts heavy as cement. “She was Yoruba. Born a slave.”
    Until the late 1800s, slaves were considered property, and birth certificates were never issued for them. But his grandmother was a free woman when she died. A person, no longer a thing, under Cuban law. “Would they have done an autopsy that far back?”
    Apiro nodded. “If they suspected Lewy body dementia, yes. It’s been a matter of medical interest for at least a hundred years. It may take me some time, Ricardo, but I’ll find out, I promise.”
    Those old records were Ramirez’s only hope.
    But they weren’t computerized, and Apiro called him later that day to say that until they were, he had no way to find a pathology report for a former slave who died more than three decades earlier.
    The dead man disappeared a few days later, after Ramirez found his killer, and Ramirez never saw that particular vision again.
    But a month or so later, another dead man appeared in the hallway outside his apartment. Like the first ghost, this one was silent. He communicated with Ramirez through shrugs, raised eyebrows, and somewhat clumsier charades. He, too, vanished after Ramirez solved his case.
    With increasing frequency as his disease progressed, Lewy body hallucinations popped up in Ramirez’s office, his car, and his apartment. The dead people he conjured never spoke, only gestured or made motions in the air. They always disappeared once their killers were identified.
    To his surprise, Ramirez managed to get used to them. He even found the products of his dying synapses occasionally amusing, as Apiro said they might be.
    His hallucinations looked over his shoulder, grimaced slightly at his mistakes. They were unfailingly polite. They stayed out of the bathroom and the bedroom, and if Ramirez suggested they leave, they left. All it took was a meaningful glance.
    Eventually, Ramirez convinced himself that they were simply manifestations of his overworked subconscious. Images manufactured by his tired brain to help him process clues he might otherwise miss. Sometimes he talked to them about his investigations, and they always listened attentively, either nodding in agreement or shaking their heads if they had other ideas.
    He didn’t tell Francesca about his illness. He didn’t know where to begin. After all, he felt fine physically, although tired from lack of sleep. If anything, his police work was better, more focused, despite the nights he tossed and turned.
    His little Estella was almost five years old, no longer a baby, when Ramirez’s hands began to tremble