The Black Minutes

12

When Cabrera asked for the volume with the newspapers from May and June, the attendant came back empty-handed.
“That’s strange! They’re not where they should be or anywhere in the stacks. It must be misplaced. I’m very sorry, but I have to go now. You should report it to the director, Don Rodrigo Montoya.”
The director turned out to be one of the people from the funeral; he had been talking to Bernardo’s father. Cabrera’s request seemed to surprise him.
“Excuse me?”
“I need to see the fourth volume from 1970, the book that has May and June.”
“It wasn’t there?”
“No. I read though March but they couldn’t find the next one.”
“It’s very odd that it’s not where it should be. I’m obsessive about organization. It’s probably the social service people, they mess everything up.”
He called the attendant in charge on an intercom and ordered her to look for it again. From his window, the lagoon was visible, surrounded by cranes and bulldozers.
“They’re checking on it right now.”
He was about to say something else when the attendant called back. “I already looked, Licenciado, and it’s not there.”
“Keep looking, Claudina.” He looked out the window again at the bulldozers, and after thinking for a minute he turned to Cabrera. “Not many people come to the archives. Now that I think about it, only one other person ever asked me for that volume, and we buried him this morning.”
Cabrera explained that he was in charge of the case, and the director looked at the bulldozers.
“Look,” he said, “three months ago, Bernardo came for the first time. He said he was researching the economic history of the city. I warned him he wasn’t going to find much, because things here have never changed, but he came anyway to read in the archives every day for three weeks, and it took me a while to understand what he was looking for. He was very discreet. One afternoon I found him making copies of some pages that definitely had historical value but had nothing to do with the local economy, or at least not in an obvious way, so I stood next to him and said, ‘There are a lot of people who would be very angry if they found out you were poking around in that case; it’s a very delicate issue.’ And he asked me, ‘What would Dr. Quiroz Cuarón have said?’ That comment made me realize that Bernardo knew about my humble participation in the case when I worked for the police force more than twenty years ago, so I answered, ‘If you want to know what the doctor said, I have his testimony, and you can see it if you like . . . but if you want to get even more information on the case, there’s someone else who could tell you more interesting things, things that have been forgotten.’ I warned him it could be dangerous, because that person lives at the margins of the law. He was a cop back then, and he knew how everything went down. Bernardo made a note and told me, ‘I’ll think about it.’ He disappeared for several weeks, and then ten days ago he came looking for me to ask me the informant’s whereabouts. I got him an appointment and found out they met together. I thought that since this person had some unresolved problems with the law, they would pin Bernardo’s death on him, but as you know, that’s not how it happened: they blamed El Chincualillo. But I’m absolutely certain that the informant is innocent: I can vouch for him.”
“I’d like to talk to that person,” Cabrera said.
“I’ll do what I can. In the meantime”—he unlocked a drawer and took out a notebook that had a blue cover with psychedelic drawings all over it—“It’s my account of what happened twenty years ago. Bernardo read it, too.”
He called the attendant and asked her to make a copy, and while they waited, they stared out the window. In the distance, the bulldozers worked incessantly. Then the secretary came in, handed back the original and the copy, and Cabrera left. He had a lot to do and only three days off.