The Black Minutes

16

With the weather like it was, there were only three crazy people at the beach: a group of kids wrapped in thick blankets trying to grill some meat on a barbecue. Following Montoya’s instructions, he took the beachfront boulevard up to the Hotel Las Gaviotas. As soon as he saw the Cola Drinks ad, he parked by the dunes and walked to the shoreline. A freezing wind rustled the empty palapas and rushed all the way up to the seawall. He wondered why the hell he hadn’t grabbed his jacket on the way out.
Once in a while, a hermit crab would spit a handful of sand on him. Right at the water’s edge, a tiny seagull hopped around a few feet away. Every time the waves receded, the seagull would chase the silver fish swimming in the current. They walked in the same direction for a few minutes so as not to freeze, until a second seagull arrived to pick up the first one, and he realized even seagulls had better luck than him.
Cabrera didn’t know how the porte?os managed to have a stand selling candies all the way at the farthest end of the beach, but there was one. Before he saw him coming, a vendor had already offered him coconut and milk candies. He thought that if a vendor with a portable glass showcase could walk up without him noticing, anybody could. What kind of detective was he? He wasn’t made for this, being out in the streets; he should stay in the office, chatting up the social service girls. When he noticed the three kids get in their cars and leave, he realized the beach was now deserted. It was like someone had taken the blindfold off his eyes: What if this little meeting was a trap? This sucks, he thought. There was no one to turn to if he got into trouble. The deserted beach was an ideal spot to hide a body. The whole thing might be a trick! The archive director was in cahoots with Chávez! He was going to end up buried up to his neck in the sand, like a victim of the Chinese mob. He was thinking about all that when he saw a bus stop on the boulevard. Just two people got off the bus, one of them, a child, looked at him, and he knew he was the one they were looking for.
It was a blind man with a cane and a little girl who was helping him along. The girl guided him toward Cabrera and, before he could say his name, the blind man said, “Yes, I know who you are. Don’t be frightened, amigo, I’m not going to kill you.”
He took them to the only open restaurant: a cement-block food stall, which at the very least protected them a little from the weather. They sat in chairs so cold the child was shivering. She carried a metal lunchbox, rusted, with some pictures from The French Connection. She was around ten years old and wearing a torn wind-breaker. As soon as they were inside the restaurant, the blind man sent her away to the farthest corner of the place.
“Go play, Conchita. Don’t interrupt us.” She moved to a different table, pulled out some papers and colored pencils, and started drawing. She was a very obedient girl.
His name was Romero and he’d worked in the Secret Service. At first glance, he looked like he was homeless; under his jacket, he was wearing a shirt that was missing several buttons. His hem was stapled, and he hadn’t shaved in several days.
“Did I frighten you? Don’t be scared, I managed to lose the guys who were following me. You don’t have people following you?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Conchita says there’s no one else on the beach, but be very careful, El Chaneque is serious about revenge, and this case is particularly important to him. Let’s just say he built his career on it. He owes everything to this case.”
The blind man was extremely tense, as if he were constantly expecting danger. According to the archive director, Romero had been a cop more than twenty years ago, and then he became a well-known detective. Just one mistake was enough to ruin his life forever. Cabrera asked him how long ago he knew the archive director, and after a few trivial remarks Romero said, “Whenever you like. I’m at your service.”
“Bueno,” said Cabrera. “Let’s cut to the chase. Do you know who killed the journalist?”
“Just like that? Let me have a drink first, or, what, you’re not going to ask me to eat?”
That morning, the blind man was in danger for two reasons: a group of judici ales was making his life miserable because of some business about stolen cars, and Chief Taboada was looking for him. Ever since his colleague disappeared, and especially now, with the opposition government at city hall, Romero had had no place to stay, and every week there was another charge brought up against him. There’s nothing worse for a madrina, or lackey, than to lose the people who protect him. For three years, he’d had no permanent address; often he had to hide for months, and twice he had to run away to the United States. On the morning they met, he was scratching his scraggly white beard and swore he hadn’t eaten in two days.
Romero ordered the two dishes on the menu with the most food, one for him and the other for the girl, and, on average, he finished off a Cola Drinks every ten minutes. At the same time, he ordered a block of hard cheese and devoured it in chunks, as well as his incomplete set of teeth allowed.
As the blind man finished his food, Cabrera was able to get him to say a bit more than monosyllables, and by dessert he was a different person entirely, completely unlike the aggressive, crafty bum who had first come into the food stall. When he looked more intently at Romero’s profile, he remembered having seen him at police headquarters, many years before, when Cabrera was still a young man, inexperienced and just starting out on the job.
Romero was sitting very stiffly in his chair with one hand on his cane. Cabrera couldn’t forget he was looking at a former torturer, though he didn’t seem like one: he looked more like an animal tired of running away. Once he felt more comfortable, Cabrera asked him if he knew what Bernardo Blanco had been writing about. He nodded, humbly.
“How could I not? I was his main source. You see this?” And he pointed to his eyes.
Don Jorge Romero wore dark glasses for just one reason: he had no eyes. They’d been torn out.
“In order to solve this case, you have to know what happened twenty years ago: I’m talking about the Jackal.”
After beating around the bush, Cabrera went so far as to say, “Yeah, I remember some things about the case. I was reading about it, too. People said Jack Williams was the killer, right?”
Romero asked Cabrera for a cigarette and Cabrera gave him his almost full pack. The blind man expertly lit one and shook his head as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Jack Williams had nothing to do with it.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because I caught the real killer.”