The Beggar's Opera (36 page)
The boy’s body was no heavier than a bag of yams. He carried his light load to the stone wall and let the boy go. Dropped him over the seawall. Heard the small splash on the edge of the shore. He prayed that Eshu, the god of misfortune, would give safe passage to the boy.
He could not see the body in the dark, but the tide would move it out overnight. The boy would be found, he was sure, by
the fishermen in the morning, and then the boy’s parents would believe he had slipped while playing on the rocks, where all the boys fished and waded. They would be sad, devastated by his death, but no sadder than if they knew how he really died. An accident, either way. No one’s fault.
A dead child, he thought, is a dead child, there is no greater loss, but how he died is less important than
that
he died and I am sorry that this happened, but I cannot change fate. This little boy will never grow old, but it was not my fault. How could I know?
He said a prayer for the boy and the waves that caressed him.
Grace be to God and may his soul be carried to Heaven.
And then he made the sign of the cross, and carrying a weight in his heart as heavy as the Christmas cross itself, he walked slowly across the Malecón, gripping the boy’s five tourist pesos, which his own family needed as much as any other.
He went home to his wife and his young children, but first he folded up his tarp carefully, because it was hard to find good tarps in Cuba, and had been since the revolución.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve never lost sight of the fact that I wouldn’t have been published at all if I hadn’t been standing in the bar on the last night of Theakstons Old Peculier crime writing conference in Harrogate, U.K. (having lost the Debut Dagger the night before), at the very moment that the Scottish author Ian Rankin walked by.
The bar was almost deserted. Everyone else was in a session. I was having a last glass of wine before I went back to my hotel room to pack for my red-eye trip home. I asked him if I could take his picture, which I almost never do—if I see a celebrity, I usually leave them alone. But I’d promised the Crime Writers of Canada that I’d take pictures for their website if I saw anyone famous.
He was kind enough to say yes. He asked me where I was from. I said Ottawa. It turned out he had just returned from Ottawa’s Bluesfest the week before, where he’d been with his son. Now how weird is that?
If we hadn’t had that five-minute chat about the crazy fortydegree heat the previous week in Ottawa and how great Bluesfest was despite it, I doubt he would have asked me why I was in Harrogate, or if I had an agent or a publisher, which I didn’t. But he did. And he generously offered to let me use his name to contact them. Thanks to his referral, I found my U.K. agent, Peter Robinson, and through him my Canadian agent, Anne McDermid, both of whom I adore.
“I worked so hard that I got lucky” is the phrase that comes to mind. But some things about this book (and this series) seem to be tied much less to hard work than to a very benevolent Lady Luck indeed.
So many wonderful friends have stepped up to the plate to read
The Beggar’s Opera
(sometimes several times) and offer advice. Thelma Farmer takes the absolute record: I think she read the manuscript at least a dozen times. Then there’s Bill Schaper, Lou Allin, Debbie Hantusch, Mike Hutton, John Lindsay, Ken Stuart, Brian French, Beth McColl, Mark Bourrie, E. Kaye Fulton, Paul Olioff, and, of course, my daughter, Jade, who not only helped me think through the plot of the story in its earliest stages, but had a hand in designing the book jacket. Guillermo Martinez-Zalce helped me make sure the Spanish words I used were accurate; Alex Schultz ensured that the same could be said of the English ones.
Thanks to all of you. And profound thanks to the Crime Writers’ Association of the U.K. for starting me on this adventure by shortlisting me for the Debut Dagger. A final thanks to Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Canada for believing in me.
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