Siaka had promised her he’d find out where Roberto was and rescue him. He told her to trust him, said they couldn’t risk sabotaging all their years of work. When Zinoviev showed up with the kid and told him to get in the car, Siaka had tried to let her know by texting a single word: lake. But she got there too late. Siaka had never forgotten what she said to him, completely beside herself, had never forgotten the hatred in her eyes. When he found out she’d committed suicide, he went to her apartment. He was afraid, scared that the police would find something that might connect him to Laura. It wasn’t the police he feared, though; it was the Matryoshka. He found her laptop hidden behind a dresser with the picture of the three of them from the day she took him to see the house where she’d grown up, so he took it all.
He was convinced that the Matryoshka were the ones who’d killed Zinoviev. He’d gone off the rails, become too unrestrained, and was attracting too much attention with his dog fights, brawls, and ranting and raving. No one had ordered him to kidnap—much less kill—Roberto. They must have set it up to make it look like Laura had done it: the handcuffs, the photo nailed to his chest with a nail gun police later found at her place. Nobody had foreseen the possibility of her suicide, but it did save them a hassle. Two birds with one stone.
Siaka knew the Matryoshka’s methods and he knew Laura. She’d never have been capable of killing Zinoviev like that, no matter how much she hated him. It had to have been professionals. He was convinced: the way the body had been flayed, the severed testicles. And if they found Siaka, they’d do the same to him. He knew the names of police informers, could provide the names of clients, show them videos so graphic that the public would be sickened beyond belief and have to stop pretending to be oblivious. Plus, he’d promised Laura that he would see it through to the end—for Roberto, and for himself—provided she stuck by him. Laura had promised that she would. But then she’d committed suicide, and now he was all alone.
Rather than make a run for it and start a new life someplace far away, he’d given Gonzalo her laptop and now here he was, wondering whether or not to get on the train to Paris. Why? Because of a conversation he’d had with her that day at the lake. He’d known Laura for three years, been working with her all that time. He’d watched Roberto grow, gone to her house and even met her husband, Luis. But until that day at the lake, Laura had never talked about her life, her father, the memories contained in her childhood house. Good memories, although Laura seemed sad recalling them.
That was the first time he had heard about Gonzalo. Laura had shown Siaka their names carved into the handrail on the bridge over the creek, shown him the places where they played at being pilots, told him about the snow sculptures she and her brother used to make in wintertime. She was proud of him, and saddened by the distance between them. If anything ever happens to me, look him up. Gonzalo always knows how to take care of things. He’ll help you.
Siaka was no longer concerned about what might happen to him. The worst had already been done; they’d taken everything he had. But he wanted a final triumphal entry, and for that he had to make sure arrests were made, with courtrooms, cameras, and stenographers. Snowflake’s last stand, before disappearing into the mist forever. And Gonzalo, whose bravery he saw no evidence of whatsoever—despite Laura’s claims—was his last chance for redemption.
“I’ll give you everything I have: proof, recordings, ledgers, names…and the password to that confidential file. But only if I’m sure you’ll go through with this regardless of the consequences. That’s what Laura would have wanted.”
Gonzalo moved with difficulty, touching his side. “I’m not going to lie; this is overwhelming.”
Siaka wiped a drop of sweat from the back of his neck. At the moment, his future was not looking bright.
“My train leaves in thirty minutes. And I’m not missing it. I need an answer now. And I want to warn you: You might feel tempted to get involved because you think you owe it to your sister; if that’s the case, forget it. Brotherly love is sweet and all, but you have no idea who you’re dealing with. They won’t just go after you and me. They’ll go after your family, your kids, the way Zinoviev did with Roberto. If you say yes, you have to do it for you. Do you understand?”
“I can’t handle this on my own. We have to go to the police.”
Siaka flat out refused. The only reason he was still alive was that Laura had kept her word and not revealed his identity to anyone.
“No cops. Your sister had a prosecutor she trusted, and I’ll give you his name, but that’s it until I see you’re serious about this.”
Gonzalo remained pensive for a moment.
“I know someone who can help us. Chief Inspector Alcázar. He worked with my sister.”
Siaka’s face tensed on hearing the name. “I don’t know what kind of cop he is now, but I know what he was like thirty-five years ago.”
“What are you talking about?”
Siaka frowned disbelievingly. “You seriously don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Your sister told me that your father disappeared in 1967…”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“The guy she worked with, her boss Alcázar, was the man in charge of the investigation.”
Gonzalo couldn’t remember. He was just a boy back then, but the first time he saw Alcázar was in 1967. Alberto Alcázar was a deputy inspector at the time, dressed in a light-colored summer shirt. A drop of sweat ran out from beneath his brown toupee and down the middle of his forehead. He was leaning against the counter, having a soft drink and smoking a filtered Rex cigarette. Gonzalo’s father came to town on the first Monday of every month to stock up on provisions. Rita’s supply store was the only place in the village that sold wholesale back then. You could find anything from farm tools, quicklime, and bulk oil to fuses for a meter box or candles to light the long nights when the power went out, which was often. Elías Gil would cram the old Renault full and Gonzalo would be forced to sit straddling sacks of onions between his legs. The memory had faded but not the smell. To this day he still hated the smell of onions and didn’t know why.
It was hot that morning, and the store’s fan was broken. Alcázar kept looking at Elías, who stood negotiating the price of sparkplugs with the shopkeeper. They exchanged glances once and Alcázar’s mustache quivered, as if he’d just smelled something rotten. It wasn’t long until the night of San Juan, and Elías wanted his wife and daughter to look nice at the dance that was held at the lake each year. He went to the counter to choose a few silk ribbons from a glass jar by Alcázar’s elbow. The deputy inspector hardly moved, adjusting his body only enough for Gonzalo’s father to have to look up and ask him to kindly move for just a moment so that he could open the jar. Alcázar stood staring at Elías for several seconds, wearing something that resembled a smile but was in fact simply a way of showing his teeth.
Elías prudently averted his one eye, although by the way he tensed his neck it was clear that he’d had to force himself to do so. He was fifty-six years old, gray and balding, and his good eye was almost buried beneath a bushy brow and the fleshy fold of his eyelid. Alcázar couldn’t have been over thirty; he was nearly as tall as Elías, and well built, too, though not as stocky despite the additional bulk of a holster in his waistband. Elías would have been more than capable of breaking his windpipe with one hand in the time it would take the officer to reach for his gun. There were stories about just that—things that had happened in the forties and fifties, when Elías was smuggling political prisoners and those fleeing Franco’s regime out of Spain, running people through the Pyrenees.
“My father sends his regards, Gil.”
Elías selected a purple ribbon for his wife and a scalloped gold one for Laura. He handed them to Gonzalo and motioned for him to go and wait in the car. Before leaving the grocer’s, Gonzalo had heard his father’s voice, the gruff tone
that threatened a coming storm. But of course he had no recollection of this.
“I don’t know who you are or who your father is, but I don’t like your tone of voice.”
Alcázar let out a grating laugh, it sounded like the chains on a suspension bridge, rattling. An ominous jangle. The few customers prowling nearby shelves hurried to disappear.
“My father is Inspector Ramón Alcázar Suñer. I think the two of you have had your ups and downs in the past.”
“Your father was a good man. I think he still is.”
Alcázar shrugged. “Ask the Reds like you that he locked up and got out of the way if he’s good or not.”
“He always treated me well. That’s what counts.”
“Maybe, but he’s retired now, and even though I never understood why he protected someone like you, those days are over. I’m not my father, and you’re never going to get chummy with me. To you, I’m Deputy Inspector Alcázar. Got it?”
Elías wanted to laugh out loud. Alcázar’s attempt at playing the tough guy was pathetic, as awful as his Floïd cologne. He wondered for a moment what opinion Alcázar Senior must have of his offspring. Not very high, he imagined. Times had changed, and kids were getting soft.
“Of course. I apologize.”
“Deputy Inspector.”
Elías Gil let Alcázar see the flash of amusement in his eye.
“I apologize, Deputy Inspector.”
Exactly twenty days after this first encounter, as the last few firecrackers echoed on the night of San Juan, Elías Gil disappeared without a trace.
Like wolf and sheep. That was what his mother had said at Laura’s funeral when Gonzalo asked if she knew Alcázar. Now he understood what she meant, understood why his mother had refused ever to speak to Laura again after she joined the police. It wasn’t just about the article she’d written discrediting their father’s legend, claiming he’d left them when they were kids and not been murdered by Franco’s police, as his mother had always claimed. What Esperanza had never forgiven her daughter for was having chosen to work for the man who, she swore, obstructed the investigation in order to cover up his own crime.
Alcázar had agreed to let Gonzalo come meet him at his little office on the top floor of the building where the judicial police’s regional services division was housed. It wasn’t exactly your standard police station, instead resembling a command center where various brigades and central services were coordinated and conducted. Gonzalo saw a few uniforms, but not many. Had it not been for the holstered guns and handcuffs hanging from belts, most of the officers there could easily have passed for efficient company workers. Many were young, and the whole place buzzed with energy. The chief inspector’s office was bright: A large window looked out over the street and light was filtering in through the blinds. Although the furniture was less than luxurious—gray metal, preassembled—the black armchair, photos, and the diplomas on the walls made the place feel warm. Sitting across from Alcázar, Gonzalo had time to look at the frames while the inspector poured coffee into little plastic cups. Alcázar had had a long, prosperous, and eminent career. A career that was coming to an end in just a few weeks, as the two packing boxes in the corner attested to.
“It was too much for me. Your sister’s death was the last straw, the push I needed to decide. I’m retiring; there’s nothing left for me here.” Alcázar slid a steaming cup toward Gonzalo and lit a cigarette. “Who told you I was in charge of your father’s investigation? Was it Esperanza?”
Gonzalo hesitated. He’d come to the inspector in order to ask questions, not answer them.
“Why didn’t you tell me yourself when you came to my house?”
“Your sister and I had an agreement. When she came to see me and sat in the same chair you’re sitting in right now, I asked her if she knew who I was. Obviously, I had read her article. She told me she knew exactly who I was and said that was why she’d come. If she’d believed the story your mother told all those years was true—that I killed Elías Gil and then covered up the evidence—she would never have asked to join my squad, don’t you think? I’ve done a lot of things I’m not particularly proud of, but I’ve never killed a man. Did I hate your father? Not especially. Of course, I had him watched. He was the top dog, the dissident, the trade unionist, and I was an ambitious young man, but every time I got close to him, someone would stop me.”
“Are you insinuating that my father was under police protection? That he was a collaborator?”
Alcázar disabused him of any such notion. “I assure you that your father was a man of strong convictions, and when it comes down to it, I admit that that was admirable. I know that in the fifties and early sixties he was detained several times and got pretty roughed up. But they never broke him; I’d have found out if they did. The list of collaborators was pretty extensive—you’d be surprised by some of the names on it—but your father’s name never appeared. No, he was no snitch. By the late sixties things were different, the Communists were no longer our top priority. The government was teeming with technocrats; U.S. assistance and the economic upturn had shifted our priorities. Let’s just say that pragmatism trumped ideology. Obviously we were still persecuting dissidents, but our targets began to center more on universities and Basque separatists. ETA terrorists were causing a lot of headaches and there weren’t enough of us. Besides, your father was a model worker at the valley sawmill. The reports we got from his foreman were nothing to be concerned about—no labor disputes, no protests or uprisings. If he was up to anything—smuggling young people into France, storing leaflets for the UGT workers’ union or student unions—we never found out about it. I could never catch him; he was smarter than me and that’s the truth. What I can tell you, Gonzalo, is what your mother always refused to accept: that your father left you. One day, just like that, he decided he couldn’t go on living his dreary life and took off. We never found out for sure where he went, or what sparked his decision. He just disappeared, like so many others. And God only knows where he ended up. That’s the truth.”
No, it wasn’t the truth. But it was what the lawyer wanted to hear, and after all these years a few more lies weren’t going to do any more damage than had already been done.
“Laura and I made a deal. If we couldn’t forget the past, we could at least ignore it when it got in the way. And if occasionally we tripped over it, we’d just stand back up and walk around it in order to keep moving forward.”
It wasn’t that simple for Gonzalo. And he was convinced that it hadn’t been for his sister, either. Their father’s memory loomed too large, it was omnipresent. He felt confused and didn’t know what to think. His mother swore that the police had killed her husband; Alcázar was supporting the assertion Laura had made in her article, but perhaps out of self-interest. He was right, though: His sister would never have worked with the man who murdered their father; she must have had reliable proof. So why, when Gonzalo read the article, did he side firmly with his mother? Perhaps because he couldn’t accept the alternative that his father—or the image Gonzalo had constructed of him, the man he so admired—had selfishly abandoned him.
Regardless, this wasn’t why he’d come to see the inspector. He was there to feel him out.
“Do you still think my sister killed Zinoviev?”
Alcázar’s mustache twitched slightly as he wrinkled his nose in alarm. He intuited some unconnected form of coercion in the attorney’s expression, which was magnified by his thick glasses. Alcázar knew all the tricks that crafty lawyers used, and if they were good, they never asked or insinuated anything without being certain of the answer beforehand. The question was whether or not Gonzalo was the crafty kind.
“It’s not that I think it; the evidence proves it.”
Gonzalo steepled his fingers, elbows on the table, head leaning forward as though the credible explanation for something the inspector had yet to discover were contained in
the hollow space between his hands. Gonzalo worried that his inability to lie was now more dangerous than ever. With Siaka’s warning in mind, he ventured into speculative territory, which was his father-in-law’s terrain, a place where he felt himself at a distinct disadvantage.
“What if I were to tell you that I have proof Laura didn’t kill that man?”
Of course this wasn’t true, not entirely. It was a hunch that he hadn’t substantiated, one that he had no practical support for, at least not yet. But he managed to make it come off like the truth, judging by the inspector’s disconcerted expression. Gonzalo congratulated himself on how quickly he was learning.
“I’d say, tell me what that proof is and I’ll reopen the investigation.”
“But you’re retiring in two weeks. You said you were done with all of this.”
Until then Alcázar had been slouching comfortably in his armchair. Now he adopted a more austere posture, straightening his spine, the leather creaking as if it were the cogs of his mind being set in motion.
“Why don’t you tell me exactly what you have in mind?”
What did he have in mind? Gonzalo didn’t know—maybe to unburden himself of a little of the weight Siaka had placed on his shoulders. He’d started blindly down a path that seemed to border the edge of a cliff, and the only thing keeping him from tumbling over it was his instinct.
“I think I can prove that this whole thing was set up by the Matryoshka to frame Laura for that murder.”
The inspector’s modest excitement came to a screeching halt. He face clouded over.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“My sister had an informant, someone inside the organization who passed her information. You didn’t know?”
Alcázar stared fixedly at Gonzalo. His eyes had stopped flitting around and were now frozen in their sockets, like those of a statue.
“That’s insider information. How did you find out?”
A Million Drops Page 17