The expression on Gómez’s face suddenly turned somber. Or at least so it seemed to me after a brief glance, because I’d actually begun to pay more attention to my drunken coworker than to the suspect.
“Besides …” Sandoval paused while he paged back and forth through the file. He stopped at the photographs of the crime scene. “I don’t know if you took a good look at the woman,” he said, turning the dossier around so I could get a proper view of it and trying to focus his baleful eyes on me. “She was beautiful …”
He spun the file back around to his side. “A beauty like that,” he said, “is like a miracle, out of an ordinary guy’s reach.” Then he went on as if to himself, in a voice that was suddenly sorrowful, “You’d have to be a real man to get to her …”
“Yes, you would! You sure would!” I turned my head. It was Gómez who had spoken. His features had gone rigid; a sudden grimace of contempt had appeared on his lips. And he wasn’t taking his eyes off Sandoval. “No doubt, the poor sap she wound up marrying must be a very macho guy! No doubt!”
Sandoval looked at him. Then he looked at me, and shaking his head slightly in Gómez’s direction, he said, “Don’t pay attention. The kid doesn’t understand. You remember telling me yesterday that the victim must have known the killer, because the main door of the apartment house showed no signs of a break-in?”
Fantastic, I thought to myself. It was my last scrap of a clue and I’d been hoarding it like a wild card, waiting for a chance to play it, and this cretin had given it up for nothing. I said, “So?”
Was it possible he was so crocked he didn’t notice the homicidal tone of my voice?
“So think about it.” The worst of it was that Sandoval looked so lively, so alert; it seemed incredible that he didn’t realize how badly he was screwing up. “Do you suppose a woman like this has time, has room in her head, to remember her Tucumán neighbors and open her door to them one Tuesday morning just like that, after who knows how many years of not seeing them and not thinking about them? Not a chance, Benjamín. Seriously.”
Sandoval dropped the case file on the desk and spread his arms, as if his theory were successfully proven and his demonstration over.
“Who is this guy?” Gómez’s question was directed to me, and it sounded aggressive. I didn’t answer him, because in a burst of lucidity, I’d begun to grasp what Sandoval was doing and to realize that the one who was groping around and stumbling into things was me, not him.
“But in that case, we’ll have to refocus the investigation completely,” I pointed out, addressing Sandoval. The doubt in my voice wasn’t fake.
“Precisely,” Sandoval said, giving me a satisfied look. “We have to look for a tall man. A good-looking guy, I should think, maybe a blond. Someone … let’s say … someone capable of making an impression on a woman like that.” Quickly switching to a reserved tone, he added, “Don’t you think we should maybe have another look at her … at her friends?”
“Stop talking bullshit.” Gómez had turned red, and he couldn’t stop staring at Sandoval. The bruise over his eyebrow suddenly looked inflamed. “For your information, Liliana remembered me perfectly well.”
I jumped. Sandoval looked at him with the indifferent impatience of someone tolerating the mailman who’s rung the doorbell and asked for his Christmas tip. He became very serious and said, “Don’t be ridiculous, son.” Then he turned back to me: “And another thing. According to the autopsy report, the guy who attacked her was a big brute … a stud, actually. Listen.” He opened the case file and read—or rather, pretended to read, making it up as he went along: “ ‘From the depth of the vaginal lesions, it can be deduced that the assailant is a very well endowed man. Similarly, the neck bruises demonstrate that he is possessed of extraordinary strength in his upper extremities.’ ”
“There you go, asshole! I fucked her and fucked her good, the slut!”
In a flash, Gómez had leaped to his feet and started shouting, inches from Sandoval’s face. The guard, reacting quickly, yanked the suspect back onto the chair and reattached his handcuffs. Sandoval made a movement of disgust, I didn’t know whether because of the insult or because of the prisoner’s fetid breath. Then he drew close to the young man once again. “Son,” he said. With an expression that mingled compassion and weariness, Sandoval looked like a man whose forbearance was being pushed to the limit by an insistent child whom he had no wish to punish. “Don’t go swinging at the piñata, today’s not your birthday.” Then he turned around to me, as though he wanted to continue expounding his theories.
“You pathetic bastard. You can’t even imagine what I did to that filthy whore.”
Sandoval turned and gazed at him again, with the look of a man gathering together the last shreds of his patience. “Oh, yeah? And what have you got to say? Come on. Let’s hear it, stud.”
21
During the course of the following seventy minutes, Isidoro Antonio Gómez spoke practically without stopping. When he finished, my fingers hurt, but except for a few words with transposed letters, the deposition I typed was almost error-free. I asked the questions, but Gómez spoke only to Sandoval, staring at him intensely as if expecting him to break into pieces or turn into a pile of dust on the wooden floor. As for Sandoval himself, he ran an expressive gamut of grandiose proportions: very slowly, he transformed his initial look of annoyance and incredulity into one that showed greater and greater interest. By the end of the statement, he’d constructed a mask in which there appeared a harmonious combination of respect, surprise, and even a touch of admiration. Gómez ended by discoursing, in breezily pedantic style, upon the measures he’d had to take after talking to his mother on the telephone and learning that Liliana’s father had been inquiring about him.
“The foreman on the worksite almost croaked when I told him I was quitting,” he said, speaking to Sandoval like an experienced and patient pedagogue. He’d regained his serenity, but he didn’t give the slightest indication of wanting to take back any of his earlier declarations. “He offered to recommend me to people he knew. I turned him down, of course—I didn’t want to give the police a way of locating me.”
Sandoval nodded. He stood up, sighing. He’d spent the whole time barely perched on the edge of the desk, listening with folded arms. “To tell you the truth, kid, I don’t know what to say. I would never have thought …” He pressed his lips together, making the face we make when we’re about to give in to the evidence. “Maybe it happened the way you say …”
“It did!” Gómez’s conclusion was comprehensive, triumphant, categorical.
I struck the keys a few last blows, closing the deposition with the usual formulas. Then I stacked the pages and pushed the pile toward him with a pen. “Read it before you sign it. Please,” I said. Without having any idea why, I too had adopted the calm, cordial tone Sandoval had used at the end of his participation in the scene.
It was an extremely long deposition, which started out like an informative statement but immediately turned into a confession, with all the applicable legal guarantees. I’d included an express mention of the fact that the suspect was waiving his right to make no declaration as well as his right to have legal counsel present to advise him during any declaration. By a strange trick of fate, the public defender on duty that day was none other than Pérez, the eternal moron. Gómez signed the pages of his confession one after the other, barely glancing at them as he did so. I looked at him, and he met my gaze as he handed the pages back to me. Now you can go fuck yourself, I thought. Now it’s over for you, sweetheart.
At that moment, the door opened, and in came the one and only Julio Carlos Pérez, our former clerk and current public defender. Fortunately, I was more skilled at dealing with assholes than with psychopaths.
“What do you say, Julio?” I called out in welcome, pretending relief. “Good thing you’ve come. We’ve got a statement of information here that we had to change into a statement of confession. For first-degree murder, no les
s. An old case, from when you were clerk.”
“Ah, what a problem. I was late because there was a hearing in Number 3. So you’ve already started?”
“Well, actually, we’ve already finished,” I said, as if excusing us, or excusing him.
“Uh …”
“Anyway, we discussed the case with Fortuna, and he told us to move ahead with it, and he’d bring you up to date on the proceedings later,” I lied.
As usual when faced with any eventuality beyond the pale of his daily routines, Pérez didn’t know what to do. In some part of his brain, there must have been a suspicion that he ought to take some initiative. It seemed an appropriate moment to offer him a decorous solution.
“Let’s do this,” I proposed. “I’ll add you in at the end and say you joined the deposition after it began, and that will be that. Provided, of course,” I added after a short pause, “that your defendant agrees.”
“Uh …” Pérez hesitated. “I guess it wouldn’t be possible to start all over, would it?”
I opened my eyes wide and looked at Sandoval, who opened his wide, too, and finally we both looked wide-eyed at the guard. “Excuse me, counselors,” he said, prudently including all of us in the lawyerly brotherhood. “It’s getting late, and if you want the prisoner transported back to the police jail, the trucks are about to leave … I don’t know. It’s up to you.”
“Another day over there in the police lockup? And still in solitary confinement? That seems too irregular, Julio,” said Sandoval, suddenly concerned for the suspect’s civil rights.
“Right, right.” Pérez felt comfortable doing what he was best at, namely concurring with somebody else. “Well, if the accused has no objection to the foregoing proceedings …”
“No problem,” said Gómez. His tone was still haughty and aloof.
I handed Pérez the pages and a ballpoint. He accepted the pages, but he preferred to sign them with the handsome Parker fountain pen that was one of his most precious worldly treasures.
“Take him back to the station,” I instructed the guard. “I’ll send somebody along with the official letter to the Penitentiary Service and an order to remand your prisoner to Devoto.”
While he was being handcuffed again, Gómez turned to me and said, “I didn’t know there was so much work here for drunken losers.”
I looked at Sandoval. By this point, we had what we wanted: a signed confession, and Gómez in deep shit. Anyone else—me, for instance, to cite the nearest example—would have taken advantage of the opportunity to exact a modicum of revenge. To remark to the lad, say, that he’d just fallen for a trick that only a conceited jackass like him would fall for. But Sandoval was beyond the reach of such temptations, and therefore he confined himself to gazing at Gómez with a slightly bovine expression on his face, as if he hadn’t completely understood the kid’s comment. The guard gave Gómez a light push, and he started walking. There was a click as the door closed behind them. Almost immediately afterward, Pérez left, too, saying something about another obligation he couldn’t postpone. Was he still carrying on his affair with the female public defender?
When Sandoval and I were alone, we looked at each other and remained silent. After a while, I extended my hand to him.
“Thanks.”
“It was nothing,” he answered. He was a humble guy, but he couldn’t hide his satisfaction with the way things had turned out.
“What was that part about the perpetrator being ‘a very well endowed man’ with ‘extraordinary strength in his upper extremities’? Where did that come from?”
“Sudden inspiration,” Sandoval said, laughing contentedly.
“Let me take you to dinner,” I offered.
Sandoval hesitated. “I appreciate it, thanks,” he said. “But my nerves are still zinging, and I think it would be a better idea if I took a little time to relax by myself.”
I understood perfectly well what he was referring to, but I didn’t have the courage to tell him not to go. I went out into the main office and charged one of my subordinates with drawing up the official letter to authorize Gómez’s transfer to Devoto Prison, having the worthless Fortuna sign it, and delivering it to the police station where Gómez was being held. There would be time enough afterward to inform the judge of what had taken place.
Sandoval, eager to be gone, picked up his jacket and waved a sweeping good-bye to everyone in the clerk’s office. Before he left, however, he carefully tucked his shirttail back into his trousers.
I looked at the clock and figured I’d give him two hours’ head start. No, three. Inadvertently, I glanced over at the shelf that held cases waiting to be sent to the General Archive. Luckily, Sandoval would be able to occupy himself during his recovery with a good deal of sewing.
22
On the day following Gómez’s confession, I went looking for Morales. I didn’t try to see him at the bank or reach him by telephone. I counted on finding him at the Once train station. I thought it would be worthy and fitting for the poor man to learn of his great enemy’s arrest precisely while conducting one of his improvised stakeouts in hopes of catching him. Although Morales’s efforts had been in vain, I was sure, even after three and a half years, that he was still on the hunt. Going there to tell him the news seemed to be a way of including him in our accomplishment.
The little bar was almost empty. A quick glance through the window was enough to assure me that Morales wasn’t there. As I was about to turn and go, a thought occurred to me. I stepped inside and walked to the cash register. The man in charge was tall and fat, and he looked like one of those guys who have seen everything and can no longer be surprised.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said, smiling as I approached him. It always bothers me a little to go into a place of business where I have no intention of buying anything. “I’m looking for a young man who comes in here a lot, I think several evenings a week. He’s got dirty blond hair. Pretty pale complexion. A tall, skinny guy with a straight little mustache.”
The fat man looked at me. I suppose one of the prerequisites for running a bar in Once station is the ability to identify crazies and con men at once. Apparently and silently, he concluded that I fit neither of those two categories. Then he nodded slightly and looked down at the counter, as though searching his memory. “Ah,” he suddenly said. “I know who you mean. You’re looking for the Dead Man.”
It came as no shock to me to hear Morales referred to in that manner, and there wasn’t the slightest hint of jest in the fat man’s voice. He’d simply reported an objective characterization based on certain obvious signs. A customer who comes in at least once a week, always orders the same thing, always pays with coins, and spends two hours in silence, unmoving, looking out the cafe window, might indeed seem to share some qualities with a dead body or a ghost. Therefore, I didn’t feel I was being disloyal or sarcastic or excessive when I answered, “Yes.”
“He’s been in here once this week already, you know.” He paused, as if trying to recall another circumstance that he could relate to Morales’s last visit. Then he said, “It was Wednesday. Yes, Wednesday. The day before yesterday.”
“Thanks,” I said. So Morales was still making his rounds. I wouldn’t have expected anything else.
“Do you want me to give him a message when I see him?” The fat man’s question caught me when I was halfway out the door.
After a moment’s thought, I said, “No, that’s all right. But thanks. I’ll come back another day.” I said good-bye and left.
The harsh sound of the public address system assaulted me in the dimly lit corridor. Only then did I realize that the last time I’d been in Once station was the evening when I’d run into Morales, a few hours before I put an end to my marriage.
I saw Marcela two or three more times after that, when we were signing papers in the civil court. Poor girl. I reproach myself to this day for having hurt her so much. On the night when I finally decided to leave her for good, I burned the script she’d wr
itten for the way her life was supposed to go. I tried to explain. Although I was afraid it might wound her, I spoke to her of love, and I ventured to confess that I found a total lack of it in our relationship. “What does that have to do with it?” was her reply. I don’t think she loved me any more than I did her, but her plan allowed no room for uncertainties. Poor thing. If I had died, I would have caused her far fewer complications. The neighbor women holding court in the beauty parlor had no objection to the existence of widows. But an estranged wife, in 1969? Positively appalling. How was she going to get her three kids now, her firstborn son, the doctor, and her house with a garden in the suburbs, and her family automobile, and her Januaries at the beach without a legitimate husband? Sometimes, the grief we can cause without intending to is astonishing. In this case, I suspect that her pain was greater than the sacrifice I refused to make to avoid hurting her. On that early evening in 1972 when I went back to Once station, a sense of guilt weighed me down, and after it came sadness. Except for the few impersonal meetings I’ve mentioned, I never saw her again. Did she find someone with whom she could set out once more on the path she felt prepared to travel, the one that would lead her, without surprises, to an old age without questions? I hope so. As for me, or as for who I was that evening, I exited the station onto Bartolomé Mitre Street and walked home to the little apartment I’d rented in the Almagro barrio.
23
Eventually—on the following Tuesday, to be exact—I found him. The same blond hair, perhaps a little thinner than it had been at our last meeting. The same gray extinguished eyes. Sitting just as before, with his hands immobile in his lap and his back to the bar. The same straight mustache. The same low-key obstinacy.
The Secret in Their Eyes Page 15