An Inconsequential Murder

by Rodolfo Peña

  When Lombardo walked into the Director’s office, he saw that there were piles of papers on his desk, and folders neatly tied up and placed in cardboard boxes.

  “Going somewhere?” Lombardo asked glibly.

  The Director ignored the sarcasm nodded toward the copy of Victor Delgado’s case file and said, “You’ve been doing a lot of work on that case.”

  “That’s what we’re supposed to do when there’s been a crime committed.”

  “Listen, Lombardo, you’re messing around with dangerous stuff, stuff you don’t understand.”

  “Oh, you would be surprised how much ‘stuff’’ I understand.”

  The Director stopped looking through the papers on his desk and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I know why the Governor quit and the Dean of the University has left town.”

  “The Dean?” asked the surprised Director.

  “Yeah, the Dean. And, I know who killed Victor Delgado and why.”

  “Well, if you are so damned sure, why haven’t you filed an investigation report so charges could be…”

  “Because you and your pals would just dump my report into the pile of unsolved cases and let it go at that. Look, Mr. Director, I don’t give a damned about the power struggles you and your kind play, or how many of you get killed at game time, but I do care when little people get hurt, ground up, as you people fight for the right to ruin this country.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. You know that the Americans and some of our most ‘loyal’ citizens are trying to thwart those who want to legalize drugs in this country. I also know that the Governor, the Dean, and a bunch of federal Deputies and Senators were being led by someone very close to the President, and that they were pushing to have the presidential candidate put drug legalization as the first item on his agenda once he is elected.”

  Lombardo took the CD out of his pocket and continued, “I know that you know that your group is financed by ‘foreign’ money and that your enemies are being financed by drug money. The cartels would pay anything to see drugs legalized, and the people that finance you and your group would do anything to see that they are not.”

  “These are very dangerous accusations you are making.”

  “I am not accusing anyone, and I don’t intend to accuse anyone. I couldn’t care less if you and your rivals all kill each other.”

  “What are you after, then?”

  “I’m after the guys who killed Victor Delgado. I want to see them in jail, rotting away for twenty years. That’s what I want.”

  “And how do you propose to do that if you don’t file an investigation report and hand it over to the Public Ministry?”

  “Because, as I’ve said, that would go nowhere. What I want is for you to call your pals and tell them they have to give up the three men who were involved in Victor Delgado’s murder.”

  “Supposing I knew who I should call—what makes you think that they would be turned over to you or anyone else?”

  Lombardo waved the CD he had taken from his mackintosh pocket and threw it on the Director’s desk. “There’s a lot of interesting material on that CD: documents, policy drafts, and so on. But most importantly, a lot of emails between Senators, Deputies, a Governor or two, and even someone, euphemistically put, very close to the Presidency. It also provides insights on how a foreign power has been meddling in our internal affairs. Can you imagine what the media, both domestic and foreign, could do with that? In fact, it could be worth a lot of money on the media market.”

  “People have been killed for less than that,” said the Director threateningly.

  “Don’t bother trying to scare me. I am no Victor Delgado. And, anyway, do you think that there are no more copies just waiting to be released upon my most lamentable death?”

  Lombardo got up and went to the door but before he opened it he said to the Director, “I repeat, I don’t give a damn what happens to you and your pals or anyone else on the other ‘team.’ I have filled in a request form for a ticket and money to fly to Guadalajara. I hope you will be so kind as to sign it authorizing the expenditure. I want those three guys.”

  “What makes you so sure they are in Guadalajara?”

  “I have a copy of a passenger list in my pocket that a friend gave me. It has the name of three gringos on it. I know they’re there.”

  As soon as Lombardo left his office, the Director picked up his cell phone and called a number in Guadalajara.

  “Yeah?” John Wayne answered.

  Chapter 33: The Director Is Directed

  The Café Florida is located directly in front of the main entrance of Cintermex, the large convention center in Monterrey. It is a favorite place to have breakfast meetings for politicians and government officials, so, it was no surprise to anyone when two black SUVs stopped at the entrance of the Café and the Director of the State Judicial Police, Alejandro Peniche Saldivar, got out of one of the vehicles, and Lombardo’s boss, the Director of Investigations for the Public Ministry, Hermenegildo Gutierrez Zavala, descended from the other.

  Gutierrez Zavala had recently been informed that he was going to be named Head of the Federal Criminal Investigations Department reporting directly to the Federal Prosecutor. He knew that the job meant going after the heads of the Cartels so he would need a tough man to serve the arrest warrants.

  That morning, he was going to offer the job to Peniche Saldivar, whom he trusted and had known since they were both rookie prosecutors fresh out of law school, and from when they had both been at the Judicial Police Academy.

  As the two men walked through the Café, they were greeted heartily by the politicians and officials sitting at various tables. Word about the appointment had gotten around. These were two rising stars in the tough, dangerous world of law enforcement. They were now men to be respected and feared because they were credited with having played a big part in breaking up the pro-legalization “conspiracy,” as it was now being called. Losers always get the pejorative epitaphs.

  Several of the politicians rose from their seats and greeted them with an abrazo, the embrace, accompanied by back slapping, which is a sign of friendship and respect among Mexican men.

  Outside of the Café, two of Peniche Saldivar’s bodyguards stood on either side of the main entrance to the place, while two of Gutierrez Zavala’s covered the back entrance. They told the cooks who were taking a smoking brake to go inside and to tell everyone in the kitchen that they were to stay inside until their boss left the Café.

  The two SUVs were parked on the curb by the Café’s main entrance, their motors going and their air conditioning on. A traffic cop parked his motorcycle in back of the first SUV. He turned on his turret lights and proceeded to wave the heavy, early morning traffic past the parked vehicles.

  Inside, the two men were shown to a table discreetly tucked into a back corner of the room. The head waiter brought a folding screen and placed it between the two men and the rest of the customers in order to afford them a measure of privacy. The two men sat down and after the waiter had served them coffee, they began to talk in soft, confidential tones.

  Another waiter, a tall, thin fellow with dark hair and dark brown skin, came up to the two men and greeted them cheerfully by name, “Buenos días, señor Gutierrez; Buenos días, señor Peniche.” He asked them if they would like fruit juice, but since both men said they didn’t, he asked them if they would like to order. The two men said they did, so the waiter reached into the inside pocket of his blue jacket as if to get a pad and pen but instead, he withdrew a small-caliber automatic, which had a thin, tubular silencer. The two men did not notice the gun pointed at them since they had gone back to conversing. The first bullet, a hollow cavity round, entered Gutierrez Zavala’s head just behind and above his right ear, destroying most of the occipital lobe with damage reaching down into the cerebellum as the soft lead shattered into pieces after penetrating the skull. The second bu
llet entered Peniche Saldivar’s left temple at an angle since he turned, with a look of surprise on his face, when he heard the strange “piewf” as the first bullet left the silencer. The bullet that entered his skull did not break apart as much as the first one had done, but rather lodged, almost complete, in the parietal lobe.

  Both men were dead instantly, with Gutierrez Zavala’s chin resting on his chest as if he were in deep meditation about something and Peniche Saldivar’s head resting on the wall, his eyes closed as if he had been overcome by sleep.

  An official of the Parks and Recreation Department, who was facing the table of the two murdered men, and who was the only person to witness the event because he could see Peniche Saldivar’s back by the space left between the screen and the wall, would later testify that the waiter walked out from behind the screen, coolly put his gun away in his jacket, walked normally past him (he said he was so shocked and afraid that he was literally speechless), even smiled at him, and went out the front door.

  The two bodyguards standing by the entrance would later say that indeed a waiter had come out the door and had said that there was something wrong with one of the bosses and that they were needed inside.

  After the bodyguards ran inside, the driver of Peniche’s SUV would relate that he saw a waiter come out of the Café, talk to the bodyguards, and then walk away around the corner of the building.

  A taxi driver waiting for customers at the corner taxi stand testified that he too saw a waiter walk out of the Café and talk to the bodyguards. He added that the waiter had walked away and had gotten into a white car that was parked halfway down the block. The car drove off normally and not in any particular hurry. He said he thought it odd that the waiter would leave the restaurant in the middle of the morning.

  Lombardo was arriving at the Investigations Department’s building when he heard the sirens of unmarked cars that were rushing out of the Department’s underground garage. Inside the building, people ran about and talked excitedly into telephones and radios; one of the secretaries was wiping tears from her cheeks.

  Lombardo went up to one of the uniformed officers who stood guarding the main entrance. “What’s up?” he asked. The officer without looking at him said they had just gotten word that Gutierrez Zavala had been shot.

  Lombardo went down to the underground garage. A van, filled with heavily armed men wearing body armor and black riot helmets was about to leave. Lombardo asked the driver if he was going to the scene of the crime and the driver said he was. Lombardo jumped into the van.

  Avenue Cristobal Colón, the street that runs past the Café Florida, where the crime was committed, was now blocked by police cars. They were diverting traffic to a street two blocks before the Café Florida location. The driver of the van had to ask one of the police cars to move before the van could get through. After it did, the Major leading the squad of helmeted, armored policemen ordered the area’s perimeter secured. Lombardo thought the whole thing unnecessary but it was probably done for the benefit of the television cameras.

  Lombardo had to show his badge to three uniformed cops before he could get into the Café itself. Inside, a large group of men in suits, as well as all of the Café’s waiters, cooks, and busboys, had been herded into a corner and were being held there by a squad of policemen bearing automatic weapons. The cops stood, stone-faced with rifles at the ready, facing their charges as if they were guards in a miniature concentration camp.

  Most of the men in suits were protesting loudly and shouting at the police captain who seemed to be in charge of the squad holding them. Lombardo walked up to the captain and after identifying himself asked, “Customers and the staff?”

  “Yes,” said the police captain, “and most of them are big shots, or so they say.”

  Men with unholstered weapons walked around hurriedly talking into their handheld radios. Lombardo walked over to the corner of the Café where a group of forensic medics huddled. Looking over their shoulders, he could see the two bodies; the entry wounds were small and clean. The powder burns were evidence that the shots had been fired at close range. The exit wounds were horrendous. To Lombardo it was obvious that the bullets used had been modified to do the most damage possible. He doubted they would ever recover but bits and pieces of them.

  A few meters away, Lombardo saw the Fat Man standing with his hands in his pockets, his mouth hanging open as if his face had been frozen into a look of disbelief. Lombardo walked over and lighting a cigarette he said to the Fat Man, “I guess we’re out of a job, Gonzalez.”

  The Fat Man looked at him as if he did not understand what Lombardo had said.

  “What was this meeting with Peniche about, do you know?”

  Gonzalez swallowed hard and said, “He got the word just last night. He was going to Mexico City as head of, uh…what’s it called?”

  “Never mind, I know,” said Lombardo. “But, what was he doing here with Peniche?”

  “We heard he was going to ask him to come along, you know, to go down with him to the capital.”

  “I guess the ‘chilangos’ didn’t want them down there,” said Lombardo using the derogatory name most Mexicans use for the inhabitants of the capital.

  Gonzalez looked at him with an expression of a child who had heard someone laugh at the death of his puppy. “How the hell can you make jokes at a time like this,” he said and walked away.

  Lombardo walked over to the police major who was telling a captain to keep the media out of the Café until the Public Ministry people had arrived and done their work. Lombardo identified himself. “Major, I’m Captain Guillermo Lombardo. I worked for Gutierrez in the Investigations Department.”

  “Sorry about your boss, Captain,” said the major.

  “Yeah, he was a good man,” said Lombardo dryly. He nodded toward the corpses. “It looks like a very professional job.”

  “Very professional, Captain. The man shoots them both, walks out, gets in a car and drives away.” He shook his head. “No one saw anything. The restaurant was crowded but I can’t even get a general description of the perpetrator.”

  “How about the bodyguards? What were they doing all this time?”

  “They say that they were standing outside, by the door. One of them remembers a waiter coming to say that something had happened to their boss but they say it’s none of the waiters that are here now. No one can say if the waiter who talked to them was the perpetrator.”

  “I bet you won’t get much out of the staff either. They will have been too busy to have noticed a new waiter or will now be too scared to say anything if they did.”

  “Well, I will leave that to the super cops of the Public Ministry.” He nodded toward the door. “Here they are now.”

  A group of men dressed in black military-style pants and shirts, wearing sunglasses, and body armor with the letters MP in large, white type painted on it, and Glock automatics strapped to their waist in fast-access holsters, rushed into the room. “Who’s in charge here?” yelled one of them.

  “That’s your cue, Major,” said Lombardo as he started for the door.

  Outside, Lombardo walked over to the spot where the getaway car had been purportedly parked. The taxi driver who had reported seeing a waiter get in the car was still being questioned. He could not now be sure if the waiter had gotten into the passenger side or if he had driven the car away himself.

  Two forensic specialists with the letters MP on their white robes were carefully studying the empty parking space where the white car had been.

  Lombardo knew that the whole exercise was useless. It was clearly the work of the Gulf Cartel and they were very good at organizing these things. The shooter was now probably on a flight to Los Angeles or New York or Mexico City or Acapulco.

  The assassin was a pro, probably brought in from somewhere in the world exclusively for this. He was no Zeta. Those murdering bastards were used for mass killings of rival gang members or Mexican Army soldiers. They would have walked into the place and
sprayed it with their AK-47s. No, this was a guy contracted in Chicago or Sao Paolo, Brazil—a man with no police record, untraceable. Gone—like a shadow goes when you shine a light on it.

  It was Lombardo’s guess that his boss had somehow betrayed or threatened the Gulf Cartel. He might have changed sides, having decided that the powerful federal job he was getting was worth the risk. It was obvious that the wind was changing in national politics, and that the country, tired of the gang violence, kidnappings, and general lawlessness was ready to elect a conservative candidate who would take on the Cartels and the gangs.

  If his boss had decided not to protect the Gulf Cartel anymore and had accepted to become their mortal enemy as the Federal Prosecutor’s enforcer, he had signed his death warrant. Don Oscar Garza Cantú, head of the Gulf Cartel himself had probably ordered the hit.

  The Public Ministry would investigate the deaths for months and eventually blame it on a Zeta or a Gulf Cartel member that was caught in some raid. It was useless trying to unravel the complicated political and criminal alliances, betrayals, corruption, and personal vendettas that motivated these killings. In a cruel twist to an old adage, another detective had once told Lombardo, “If you line up against a wall all the guilty parties in this country, who’s going to be left to order the firing squad to shoot?”