The Secret in Their Eyes

by Eduardo Sacheri

  “I’ll be damned.” Petrucci’s real surprise was mingled with a touch of retroactive fear: What if the kid had been carrying a weapon?

  “So now you’re some sort of guardian of the law, see?” someone else said.

  “Stop with that bullshit, Zimmerman. You should see this boy, he’s got a face like a little lamb. And he’s wanted for murder? He must be one of those Montoneros or something like that, right?* In any case, I’m going home. I’m wasted.”

  They exchanged lethargic farewells. While walking to the stop for bus 644, Petrucci figured the day hadn’t turned out so bad, after all. That stupid young punk had lifted him right out of his bad mood. And the timing of his four days off was fantastic, just what he needed to finish installing the subfloor in the back room. He’d been given some horse painkillers, according to the doctor, so his nose hardly hurt. And surely, sooner or later, Racing would win a championship again, after all. He wondered how long it would be before that happened.

  He took a seat on the bus. He felt something in his pocket that turned out to be the piece of paper Ávalos had handed him. “The kid’s name,” his colleague had said. At the time, Petrucci hadn’t given it a second thought, but now he was curious. He unfolded the paper and read, “Isidoro Antonio Gómez.” The conductor crushed the paper into a ball and dropped it on the dirty floor of the bus. Then he settled in for a brief nap, careful to keep his nose well away from the window. Should the two come into contact, he was sure he’d see stars, and his nose might even start to bleed again.

  * TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The Montoneros were a Peronist urban guerrilla group active in Argentina during the 1960s and 1970s.

  20

  When I had him in front of me, the suspicion that I’d built a skyscraper out of thin air returned. Could this kid with the placid expression and the relaxed stance, as if the fact that his hands were manacled behind his back affected him little or not at all—could this kid be guilty of murder?

  After spending two or three days almost motionless and practically incommunicado, sick from eating jail rations and disgusted with being dirty and nervous and cooped up in a cell, many people in custody are pictures of distress, their faces marked by forced submission to the capricious will of others.

  Not Isidoro Antonio Gómez. Naturally, he bore signs of the confinement he’d been in since the previous Monday: the rancid odor of unwashed human flesh, the incipient beard, the sneakers with no shoelaces. There was, moreover, the cast on his right hand, plus the greenish bruise above his right eyebrow, souvenirs of his scrimmage with the bellicose conductor on the Sarmiento Line.

  I was consumed with doubt. Could someone who knew himself to be guilty of murder remain so calm? Maybe he hadn’t even been told why he’d been arrested and brought to the Palace of Justice for questioning, which meant there was still a possibility that he thought all this was a mere procedure, however overdone, a consequence of his having ridden a train without a ticket and fought with the person in charge of curtailing such behavior. No, I thought; he was clearly an intelligent guy, so he must have known he was there for some other reason. But if he was guilty, how to explain why he’d let himself get involved in such an outrageous scene? I concluded that he was either innocent or a thoroughly callous son of a bitch.

  My head was spinning at a thousand revolutions per minute. If he was innocent, why had he gone into hiding in late 1968? And if he was guilty, why had he acted with such egregious stupidity that he got himself arrested?

  When I’d arrived at the clerk’s office that Tuesday, the day after Gómez’s detention, the news was already waiting for me, and Báez himself had confirmed it over the telephone. We’d agreed to let the guy marinate for two more days, until Thursday, mostly to give me time to figure out how I was going to go about getting a statement out of him, and also so I could discuss the case at length with Sandoval. No one else who worked with me had half his powers of discernment.

  During the previous three years in the court, few things had changed. We’d been able to get the wretched Clerk Pérez off our backs—he’d been promoted to public defender—but losing our boss that way had left a bitter taste, because it appeared to confirm our belief that a certain level of congenital stupidity, such as the kind he displayed like a flag, could augur a meteoric ascent in the juristic hierarchy. As for His Honor, Judge Fortuna Lacalle, we hadn’t been so lucky. He was still our judge, and he was still an asshole. But, even worse, it was 1972, and being the friend of a friend of Onganía’s no longer provided a very effective push up the road to the Appellate Court. If Fortuna hadn’t been able to reach his goal when the mustachioed general’s star shone brightest, his current chances were practically nil. And so he continued to vegetate in his old position. The good news was that he’d recovered from his insufferable mania for showing off to impress his superiors. He let us work, signed where we told him to sign, and abandoned his pointless insistence that deputy clerks go to the crime scenes in homicide cases. This was all to the good, because in Argentina back then, the number of dead bodies lying about was on the rise.

  For all these reasons, seeing that we were (as Sandoval jocularly put it) “bereft of competent leaders,” he and I had sat down together to reread the Morales case, which had stopped cold in December of 1968. Now it was three and a half years later, and the court order requiring the subject’s appearance had just been served the previous Monday, in the Flores train station.

  Sandoval, who was going through one of the longest periods of sobriety I’d ever known him to persist in, based his conclusion on iron logic: “Even assuming he’s guilty, Benjamín, the outcome’s still doubtful. Unless he puts the noose around his neck all by himself, our goose is cooked.”

  This was painfully true. What did we have, really, that gave us sufficient cause to try him for first-degree murder? A widower who accused him (fictitiously, as it happened, because we’d invented Morales’s statement to use in case Fortuna Lacalle balked at the police reports) of having sent some threatening letters that were nowhere to be found. Some preliminary formalities, turned over to me by Báez, according to which Gómez had left his place of residence as well as his job hours before the police arrived to carry out the investigations outlined in those very formalities. The time card from the suspect’s job, which showed that he’d arrived at work very late on the day when Liliana Emma Colotto de Morales was murdered. Pure shit, in other words. We had nothing at all, and even the stupidest defense attorney would go before the Appellate Court and pulverize our preventive detention order, assuming, incidentally, that we could get Judge Fortuna to sign it.

  Because of all those considerations, I suppose, I hadn’t bothered to call Morales and inform him. To what end? To make clear to him why we’d have to release the only suspect we’d managed to identify in the course of more than three years? The very suspect that he himself was still looking for—I had no doubt of it—in the train stations, on a rotating schedule, every evening from Monday to Friday?

  I had Gómez brought to the clerk’s private office, which was empty. A replacement for Pérez hadn’t been named yet, and for the moment, our documents were being signed for us by the clerk of Section No. 18. I preferred there to be as few witnesses as possible. I myself didn’t know why, but I didn’t want witnesses, and so I gave orders that I wasn’t to be interrupted. I stepped into the office behind Gómez and the prison guard who was pulling him along by one arm. I asked the guard to take off his handcuffs. Gómez sat down in front of the desk and crossed his right leg over his left. He’s sure of himself, this little prick, I thought. It wasn’t a good sign to see him so calm.

  At that moment, I heard the exterior door of the adjacent office open and a chirpy voice sing out a “Good morning” that made my hair stand on end. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Sandoval stuck his head not very far into the office where Gómez and I were sitting and repeated his merry greeting, accompanied by a broad smile. Although he disappeared immediately, I sat staring for a long time at the
spot where he’d stood in the doorway. “The worthless, worthless motherfucker!” I said under my breath. He was loaded. Uncombed, unshaven, wearing yesterday’s clothes, with one shirttail partially hanging out of his pants. That was the reason for the cheery salutation. Although I’d seen him for barely an instant, it had been enough for me to recognize a sight all too familiar from the many years we’d worked together. I tried to remember the previous afternoon. Hadn’t I looked out the window and made certain he was on his way home and not bound for the Bajo bars? Or had my head been so focused on today’s interrogation that I’d forgotten to check? Either way, it made no difference. We were fucked.

  I rolled a sheet of letterhead paper into the typewriter, which I’d carried there from my own desk. I was leery of deviating from even the smallest of my routines. “In Buenos Aires, on the twenty-seventh day of the month of April, 1972 …”

  I stopped. Sandoval was back in the doorway, as though waiting for me. I glared at him. He couldn’t think he was going to participate in the deposition, not in his current state. Since he’d been so foolish as to ruin seven months of abstinence, since he hadn’t minded shitting on something he knew was very important to me, and since his condition would no doubt prevent him from articulating three words with more than two syllables, I believed he should at the very least put a sock in it and let me do what I could with Gómez. Either Sandoval read my expression or a sudden wave of nausea persuaded him to take refuge at his own desk. In any case, he went away. I glanced at Gómez and the guard. They both looked thoroughly uninvolved with what was going on and heedless of my growing desperation. In spite of everything, I had to admit that Sandoval brought a very dignified and elevated style to his drunkenness. No hiccups, no zigzagging, no staggering into furniture. The most you could say about his exterior aspect was that he looked like a worthy gentleman who, for reasons contrary to his will, had found himself compelled to sleep outdoors.

  I decided to ignore all further distractions and concentrate on taking Gómez’s statement. I was resolved to give him a bad time, to treat him as if I knew he was guilty. Whatever I did, the game was up. In the coldest and most calmly menacing voice I was capable of producing, I asked him for some basic personal information and communicated to him the reasons why he’d been brought in. First I explained his rights, and then I described in broad outline the elements of the case. As I spoke, I banged away on my typewriter, the same one I’m using to record these memories. When I finished typing out the standard opening, I paused. It was now or never.

  “The first question I have to ask you is whether you acknowledge having a connection with the matter under investigation in this case.”

  “Having a connection” was sufficiently vague. If only he would let something slip out and give me an opening of some kind. I needed something I could hold on to, but I had no expectations. His face might have expressed many things, or nothing, but he certainly didn’t show any surprise. He took a while to answer, and when he did, he spoke serenely: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  That was it; I was done. Game over. Heads or tails, I lost. There was nothing I could do. I’d tried. I’d even leaned on the police to bring in the suspect before the public defender arrived and started giving him advice. But evidently, either Gómez knew absolutely nothing about the crime or he realized that he had me by the balls and didn’t have the slightest intention of letting me go. He was going to confine himself to playing dumb and denying everything until I had my fill of tormenting him in vain.

  At that point, Sandoval came in, squinting a little as if trying to focus his gaze. He walked over to me and bent down almost level with my ear. “The Solano dossier, Benjamín … have you seen it?” He spoke in a loud voice, almost shouting the words, as if we were separated by sixty yards instead of four inches.

  “It’s with the cases awaiting signatures,” I snapped.

  “Thank you,” he said, and went away.

  I turned back to Gómez. I hadn’t yet recorded his categorical denial in the deposition. I didn’t want to do so just yet, but I couldn’t think how to proceed. I’d tried a direct attack, and it hadn’t worked. Would it be worth it to try some more oblique approach? Or was I really just harassing a poor innocent guy?

  “Look, Mr. Gómez.” I pointed at the dossier, which was lying on the desk. “Why do you think we’ve kept you in jail for four days on the basis of an order to appear dating from 1968? Just because?”

  “You must know,” he said, and then, after a pause: “I don’t know anything.”

  For the first time, I thought he was lying. Or was that simply my desire to keep the case from expiring altogether?

  Sandoval again. What a pain in the ass. He’d found the damn Solano dossier and was brandishing it in triumph. “Here it is, I found it,” he said, putting it in front of me. “Don’t you think we ought to issue a summons to the expert who assessed the building before the auction? I mean, because that way we kill two birds with one stone.”

  Was he accumulating points to win a whack on the head? That was what it seemed like. Didn’t he realize I was trying to trap the suspect, which was like trying to trap a fly in a large room? No. No, he didn’t realize any such thing, not with the load he was carrying.

  All I said was “Do whatever you want.”

  He left the office, happy as could be. When I turned to Gómez again, his small smile seemed to indicate that my colleague’s intoxicated state hadn’t escaped his notice. I urged myself not to let him take over the initiative, but my ship was going down, and I didn’t know how to jump off of it. I just sat there, typing nothing, not my stupid questions and not his predictable answers. Then I decided to go for broke, all in, come what might …

  As he could imagine, I said, we didn’t arrest people for no good reason. We were perfectly aware that he’d been a friend and neighbor of the victim. We knew he’d come to the capital from Tucumán, filled with resentment, shortly after the girl’s marriage. We knew the only day he’d ever been terribly late for work was the day of the murder, and moreover, toward the end of 1968, when the police investigation had begun to close in on him, he’d disappeared without a trace.

  Now that was really it. I’d taken my last shot, and all the odds were against me. There was a tiny possibility that he’d be scared or surprised or both at once and decide to cooperate by way of alleviating the problem. I was used to dealing with idiots who, because they couldn’t take the pressure of lying, or because they’d seen too many movies where the guilty got their penalties reduced by confessing their crimes, would wind up singing their entire repertoire, “La cumparsita” included, thereby allowing us to revive moribund cases. But when Gómez looked at me, I knew he was either innocent or very clever. Or maybe both. He remained self-possessed, confident, patient. Nothing seemed to surprise him—or perhaps he’d come prepared in advance to parry my pitiful thrusts.

  All of a sudden, I remembered Morales. Poor guy, I thought. Maybe it would have been better for the widower if the case had been assigned to someone like Romano instead of me. Romano sure wouldn’t have a problem. He and his pal Sicora could preside over one night of torture down in the police station, and by this time Gómez would be confessing to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. After all, his face was already busted up anyway. I stopped and concentrated. Was I so desperate that the methods employed by a contemptible son of a bitch like Romano were starting to seem acceptable?

  Something interrupted my digressions. Or rather, someone. For the third time, Sandoval burst into the office where I was trying to take a deposition. On this occasion, he arrived without a case file in his hand. Making himself right at home, he began to rummage in the clerk’s desk drawers. He even went so far as to move my right elbow out of the way, very delicately, so as not to hit me with the tall drawer on that side.

  “I already told you, I don’t know anything,” Gómez said. Was there mockery in his voice? “I knew the girl, yes. We were friends, and I was very sorry
to hear she was dead.”

  I looked at the sheet of paper in the typewriter and hit the space bar several times to situate my text correctly. Then I started typing pretty furiously: “Questioned by the court as to whether or not he acknowledged any connection with the events which are the subject of the present case, declarer stated—”

  “Excuse me for butting in, Benjamín.” Had I heard right? Was that shit-faced jackass Sandoval really interrupting me at a time like this? “But it couldn’t have been this kid.”

  Now I’d had it. Up to here. I considered the possibility of borrowing the prison guard’s pistol and filling my associate full of holes. Could it be possible that alcohol had rendered him so totally oblivious? There I was, almost going crazy but trying to cow our suspect with an image of calm authority, and there was my assistant, marinated in booze at eleven in the morning, taking up his defense. “Go back to your desk,” I said. Somehow, I managed to speak without insulting him. “We’ll talk it over later.”

  “No, stop, stop. I’m being serious. This is serious.” To top it all, must he keep repeating the few stupidities he was able to articulate? “Have you looked at him?” He gestured toward Gómez with an open hand. The latter, perhaps interested, was reciprocating the attention. “This kid couldn’t have done it.”

  Sandoval picked up the dossier, sat on the edge of the desk, and started leafing through the proceedings. “Impossible,” he insisted. “Just take a look. Take a look at this. And think about it.”

  He held out the case file, opened to the beginning of the autopsy. Was he fucking with me on purpose? Didn’t Sandoval, of all people, know exactly how much I hated looking at medical examiners’ reports?

  “This Colotto girl, let’s see, right here: ‘Height, 5 feet 8 inches. Weight, 135 pounds,’ ” he read, striking the lines with one finger. “You see?” He smiled an impish little smile and added, “The girl was a head taller than this kid.”