An Inconsequential Murder

by Rodolfo Peña

  “Hmm, but they’re Americans?”

  “Yeah, and real patriots, too,” said John Wayne and he laughed.

  “But, if something happens, you know, they’re Americans and we could…”

  “Listen, this country is swarming with guys from the States; you got your CIA guys, your FBI, our own Agency, and who knows what else…three more guys, who’s gonna to notice?”

  “Where are they now? Are they in place?”

  “They are in Monterrey as we speak. I heard from them this morning and they are coming here to report.”

  “I thought you said they had their own support.”

  “They do but I told them that if they needed something, you know, something out of the ordinary, to call me, or come and see me.”

  “So, what did they want?”

  “I think they want their money, for one—we promised to pay them when the job was done—and they had trouble at the airport in Monterrey. They wanted to carry their hardware on board and security wouldn’t let them so I had to make a couple of phone calls.”

  “But, still why do they have to see you?”

  “The team leader said they had had some sort of trouble up there and he wanted to fill me in on it. It seems their support told them they should.”

  “Oh, hell, I hope it’s nothing bad.”

  “It didn’t sound like it when he called. I’m gonna have them chill in a hotel room for a couple of days before I see them, though. If they’re hot, I don’t want them near me. I’ll see them when I’m sure they’re cool. I’ll talk to them on the phone though and get the lowdown.”

  “OK, so let me know how things went up there as soon as they report to you. Now, about our own plan…”

  Miller got up and went to the wall where he opened a small safe and took out a sheaf of papers.

  “Here’s what has been coming down from Washington and elsewhere.” He sat down and handed the printed documents one by one for John Wayne to read.

  The communications talked about the big man, Alfonso Echeverría Garza, who was first cousin to the President of Mexico. They had identified the woman, his lover, as Phillipa Everton-Smythe, born Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK, October 21, 1974; Vice President in charge of special foreign accounts for NY Central Bank.

  “I know a lot of this shit already,” said John Wayne impatiently. “So, she has been laundering his money. She carries it up in her bag; we know all that.”

  “Yeah, but it gets better. Read on.”

  John Wayne skimmed over the text: Laura Gonzalez de Echeverría Garza, wife, born Mier, Tamaulipas, January 6, 1959. Report from INTERPOL and confirmed by our (blacked out); has been depositing checks for…in three accounts…using false passports. All passports have the suspect’s picture…different names on…

  “Where is the money coming from; do we know?” John Wayne asked.

  “We know,” said Miller. “Not only has the Gulf Cartel given him moral and logistic support, they are giving him substantial financial support as well.”

  “Can’t we get the Swiss or somebody in Europe to do something about this?”

  “Not yet. There are a lot of people in Washington who want us to keep quiet, keep a low profile. They are about to wrap up the negotiations on the Bilateral Trade Agreement and the last thing they want are stories in the papers about the President’s cousin being in cahoots with the drug cartels or that Mexico is a lawless country where corruption, not the law, governs. There is too much at stake; lots of money to be made by big companies and lots of political points to be won by many in Congress.”

  “So we just sit around and watch them go through with their plans?”

  “For a while. The BTA goes to the Senate for ratification in a week or so. After it passes, we will have a free hand; or at least one of them won’t be tied behind our back.”

  John Wayne tossed the papers onto Miller’s desk. “The same old bullshit,” he said and stubbed out his cigarillo on the inside of the wastebasket.

  “Hey, watch out you don’t burn the place down,” said Miller peering into the wastebasket. “Yeah, same old bullshit. So, bottom line, my friend: keep countering them as much as you can but don’t do anything to, you know, let our hand show, as it were.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I won’t.” He got up to go.

  “One more thing before you go. It would be my guess that their first target is going to be our inside guy, or our presidential candidate. Let your people know so they keep their ears to the ground; there’ll be some rumbling soon. If somebody puts out a contract on either of them, hopefully we will hear of it before something happens.”

  “Right,” said John Wayne as he exited Miller’s office.

  As soon as the door closed, Miller picked up his phone and tapped in a number.

  “Hi, this is Bob. Look I just had a talk with John, yeah, that John. He said something about the Monterrey operation having had a bit of trouble. Why don’t you talk to his boss, get him on the same page, you know, tell him to let us know as soon as he knows, ok? Why? Because I always like to have both sides of the story, that’s why. Right, talk to you soon.”

  Chapter 18: A Meeting with the Widow

  Two days after having been told he was off the case, Lombardo arrived at the Investigations Department’s building and as was his habit, he went to the reception desk to ask if anything had come for him. The policewoman at the desk handed him a sealed manila envelope with his name printed on a label. As he walked to his desk he was still mumbling about the information Dr. Figueroa had given him a few days ago: “Why did someone go to all the trouble of sending three guys to beat up on that little guy? What did they want from him? If it was something important, why not just try to bribe him? He was a working guy; he could’ve used a couple of bucks. Why all the violence? Even the cartels tried money first. It wasn’t until you refused that they shot you and your family. Maybe someone had tried already and he had refused; hence the beating.”

  Some of the people sitting at the desks that he passed on the way to his looked up and just shook their heads when they heard him; but most of them were used to his eccentricities and paid no attention.

  The majority of the people in the Department either did not like Lombardo or did not want to have anything to do with him. The younger crowd, graduates of the new Police Academy, thought him old fashioned, probably corrupt, and definitely unsociable. The older hands, most of whom were on one cartel’s or another’s payroll, wondered why he had survived so long. They expected him to get in somebody’s way sooner or later and to be shot to death in the street by some motorcycle rider or by the occupants of one of the black SUVs that roamed the streets of Monterrey like angels of death.

  Most people knew that he was on his way out, one way or the other, and no one wanted to be around him or be associated with him when that time came.

  When Lombardo reached his desk he opened the manila envelope the policewoman had given him and took out the papers. It was a copy of Victor Delgado’s personal file. He saw Victor’s home phone number on the first page and remembered he wanted to talk to his widow. He dialed.

  He looked at his watch; it was half past eleven.

  “Señora Delgado? This is Captain Lombardo. I am in charge of your husband’s, of uh, finding out what happened to your husband, that is. May I come to, uh, visit you? I would very much like to talk to you. Yes, today. OK, thank you.”

  Lombardo sat down at his desk to read the file.

  Paternal Last Name: Delgado

  Maternal Last Name: Ramirez

  First Name(s): Victor Manuel

  Date of birth: 24-08-1982

  Civil Status: Married

  Dependents:

  Name: Laura García Rodriguez Date of birth: 16-02-1980 Relation: Wife

  Victor Lisandro Delgado García Date of birth: 15-09-2006 Relation: son

  Lombardo flipped through the pages of the file of the young man. “So, in death one is reduced to this,” he said, “a file with names of people you lo
ved and cared for, things you studied, places where you worked, money you earned, letters of commendation for a job well done, of recommendation from former employers—bits and pieces of a life.”

  He was a 15B level technical employee. He had been married for nearly two years. He had worked full time for the University for three years; before that he had been a part-time employee of the same. He earned $8,000 pesos a month, received a transportation supplement of $500 pesos because of his position, he had a discount card for the University store, and not much else.

  His bosses had always given him good but not outstanding reviews: loyal, trustworthy, reliable, does his job well, punctual, and so on. His former employers, a bank, and a supermarket where he had been, respectively, a messenger, and a part-time computer operator, had given him respectable but not extraordinary letters of recommendation.

  His grades in school and later in the University had been middle of the road seven and eights on a scale of ten. He had been slowly, steadily working on a master’s degree, one class per semester at a time.

  He would just as surely climb up the bureaucratic ladder of the University staff, gaining small pay raises, and sedate letters of commendation.

  By all measures and accounts, this young man was unexceptional, decidedly unremarkable. So, why was he killed? Why did he swallow a paper with numbers and letters on it before he was killed?

  A policewoman approached his desk, “Captain Delgado?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You were assigned to the Victor Delgado investigation?”

  “Yes, but I have been taken off the case.” he said furrowing his brow a bit annoyed.

  She shrugged her shoulders and nevertheless dropped the papers on his desk. “The press room sent this up. It’s an extract from what will be printed in tomorrow’s newspapers.”

  This was one of the Director’s latest bright ideas. He had ordered the press room to demand from local newspapers, any editorial, commentary, and/or news item pertaining to particular cases before they were printed, and for copies to be sent to the case officer. According to the memo the Director had sent around, it was a way of letting the investigators know what public opinion was saying about a particular case, and a way of “spreading the pressure around” instead of it being leveled only on the Director and the upper echelons of the Department.

  Lombardo looked at the photocopied article that had the next day’s date under the byline:

  “The Office of the Federal Prosecutor of the Republic has confirmed that the murder of a University employee, Victor Delgado Ramirez, whose body was recently found by the railroad tracks that cross one of the city’s main avenues, was not the work of any element of organized crime. Therefore, the case is being remitted to the State Prosecutor.

  “In the statement made available to the public media, the Office of the Prosecutor said that there was no evidence that could lead the Federal Authorities to consider the murder of Delgado Ramirez as an act of organized crime.’

  “In spite of the fact,’” the statement continued, “that the evidence proved that the victim had suffered extreme violence, Federal Authorities did not consider that there were any circumstances that would place the case in their jurisdiction.”

  This was indeed a strange turn of events. Someone had first tried to suppress Victor Delgado’s death from appearing in the newspapers, and suddenly it had become a matter that warranted the General Prosecutor to issue a statement.

  In another photocopied sheet, there was an article in which the State Prosecutor’s office was to issue its own statement. It said that ‘the decision of Federal Authorities to return the case of Victor Delgado Ramirez’ murder to the State Prosecutor is hailed by [this] office not only as proof that the victim was not murdered by a person or persons connected with the drug cartels, but that the Federal Prosecutor had ample reason to believe that the State Prosecutor’s office would pursue the case to the full extent of the law.’

  Lombardo threw the sheets of paper into the wastebasket. “I guess the ball has been slammed back into our court,” he said. But as he got up to go across the street to a small restaurant that offered a decent lunch, it occurred to him that there was something in that news extract that, if one read carefully, and one interpreted the words with a pinch of malice, one could see that there were things happening in this case that were unusual for most murder cases. Bodies appeared on the streets or in the desert by the dozens every day but few of them ever received more attention than the usual photo in the back section of newspapers.

  Anybody with any sense could see that this was not as simple a case as some people were suggesting. The back and forth between the Federal and State Prosecutors was proof of that. The many-sided war between rival gangs and the Mexican Government was complex enough without having to consider corruption, the personal ambition of politicians, the intervention of foreign governments (especially the U.S. government), and the general fear of the population. It was easy to sweep any murder nowadays under the carpet of “cartel sicarios killing each other in their fight for control of territory and export routes.”

  But, as Lombardo had said, the Public Ministry goons had been too quick to write up their report, the body was retrieved a bit too quickly, and the press seemed to be towing the official line on this one just a bit too accommodatingly. “This whole business has a strange feel to it,” he said as he ate his lunch. To which the waitress who brought him his food just sighed, knowing full well he was speaking to no one in particular.

  After just picking at his food, he went back to the office, brushed his teeth and checked his phone for messages before he went off to see Victor Delgado’s widow.

  As he passed the reception desk, the duty officer told him that the Director wanted to see him.

  “Tell him I know that the case was kicked back to us and that I’m on it again,” he replied.

  Victor had indeed lived in “La Florida” as David had said. It is a neighborhood crowded with three-bedroom, concrete and brick houses inhabited by the families of technicians and engineers—skilled workers who keep the plants and factories that surround the suburbs north and east of Monterrey going. If the men who live here were in the Army, they would have been non-commissioned officers because just as in the Army, they are the ones that keep things running.

  Don José Barrios Garza, the city historian, had once explained to Lombardo that it took four generations for the descendants of a peasant family that migrated to the city, to become the owner of a house in one of these residential areas. The father arrived from the countryside with his wife and kids; they lived in a shanty town, usually in a house made of cinder blocks and sheet metal that the father, a self-taught mason, stole or bought from the foreman of a construction site where he worked; his kids would be the first generation of the father’s family to go to school so they became skilled laborers; the girls of the family became shop attendants because, unlike their cousins who had stayed behind in the village, they could read and write.

  The second generation, the kids of the skilled laborer or the shop girl went to a technical school and became foremen in a factory. By the third generation, some of the girls might set up a beauty shop or corner neighborhood store and some of the boys might have been successful enough to buy a small row house like the ones built by a government agency such as Infonavit. By the fourth generation, the grandsons and great-grandsons of the peasant who had moved to the city many years before, were getting engineering or administrative undergraduate degrees from State University and maybe an MBA or degree in finance from private University. These are the ones that, like Victor, were finally able to leave the social housing projects where their parents lived and were able to buy a house in the residential areas of the southern part of the city! This was the Mexican version of the American Dream. It had taken the Delgados 50 years to put Victor into this little house. Too bad he would not be alive to see if the fifth generation of his family made it to the executive suite.

 
; Judging from what people had said about him, it was obvious that Victor himself would never have made it. He was not like his cousin, the Director of the Computer Center, who came from that side of the family that had immediately understood and adopted the entrepreneurial, materialistic spirit of the city and had achieved both economic and social success soon after arriving in Monterrey. Victor’s side of the family had only managed modest success and was firmly ensconced in the lower middle class.

  The taxi turned into one of the many similar streets and stopped in front of one of a series of equally small houses. It was the type built during the housing boom when the government wanting to incur favor with the growing lower middle classes, who were demanding affordable housing, had relaxed its construction codes and allowed the proliferation of these so-called “social interest” structures. Their drab design and suffocating crowding was no different from the row houses of the Industrial Age and their conception had been just as “enlightened.”