The Black Minutes

3

Before he got into his car, he noticed that he had a flat tire and his head hurt. He didn’t know if the tire caused the headache or if the headache caused the tire, but it was clear that if he stopped to change it he was going to miss the funeral. Besides, he’d end up sopping because at that time of day the sun was broiling.
Fortunately, there was a tire-repair place two blocks from headquarters; Cabrera went to see the manager and gave him the keys. Since there weren’t any taxis in sight, he stood waiting for one in the middle of the street, deliberating whether it might not be better to walk—the funeral parlor wasn’t very far—but he had other things on his mind, a couple of ideas he couldn’t quite make sense of.
Minutes later, he saw a rickety old boat of a taxi approaching, a disco ball dangling from its rearview mirror. He told the driver to take him to the dead man’s house, the house fronting on the lagoon, where he thought he’d find more information. Cabrera was a methodical man; now that he’d reviewed the autopsy, he wanted to see the scene of the crime. The driver had on dark glasses and he’d purposefully greased down his hair with Vaseline. He was wearing a green shirt, military style. For quite some while now, Cabrera said to himself, everybody’s been wearing military-style clothing.
At first the address—No. 10 Calle Palma—meant nothing to him but as soon as he saw it he remembered. Look at this, who would’ve thought a crime would take place here? A long time ago, some twenty years ago at least, 10 Calle Palma was one of the few buildings in that neighborhood. At first, the good drainage system was bad and the electricity would go off; on the whole block there were only two or three houses, and the asphalt ended a few hundred yards farther down. Cabrera had always liked driving, to go tooling around, and when he was young he used to park nearby at nightfall, facing the lagoon, sometimes by himself, sometimes with one of his girlfriends from back then. He had a fleeting moment of happiness, remembering the things that happened there with his girls. How long has it been since I was here last? he wondered. The area had become an exclusive neighborhood, full of fancy houses, and because of the new buildings it wasn’t as easy to see the lagoon. If I weren’t here on an investigation, he thought, there’d be nothing for me to do around here.
The crime scene was an unpretentious house. It stood between two lavish mansions, but that wasn’t what most drew his attention. On the fa?ade of the house, bands of police tape blocked access to the front door; beneath it, toward the entry, they’d drawn the outline of the body. Something was off and Cabrera’s expert eye caught it immediately.
He asked the cabdriver to wait and got out of the car. Examining the bloodstains confirmed his worst fears; the carelessness with which the journalist’s outline had been drawn didn’t hold out much hope for a solution to the case. It looked as if he’d been finished off inside and then dragged out here, though the report didn’t say that. Holy shit, he thought, what did I get myself into? Do I tell the chief or not? He kicked at a flowerpot, insistently, until he shattered it. The cabdriver asked if he was ready to leave. Cabrera yelled back to him, “Wait for me here!” and walked around behind the house to see if he could get in through the back.
At the far end of the garden, where the lagoon began, sat a huge bulldozer. No trace remained of the yard’s trees, and in their place one of those mammoth gas pipelines had been installed. At the very back, an Oil Workers’ Union sign warned caution. Do not dig, and topping it all off was a big skull and crossbones.
Three impatient honks of the horn brought him back to earth. “I’m coming, motherf*cker!” he yelled to the cabdriver. “What’s the hurry, man, if I’m gonna be paying you?” The driver didn’t answer him and tuned the radio to Classics of Tropical Music.
At the mansion next door, an indigenous maid was scrubbing at the stream of blood that had drained all the way over there. The maid, who was attempting to wash away the stain with soap and a brush, got unnerved when she saw him come up. He wanted to ask if she or her employer had seen anything suspicious, but the maid thought he was going to assault her, and from the way she gathered up her things he guessed she meant to run away. Cabrera showed her his badge, but the girl was so alarmed it was impossible to get a word out of her. So he told her good-bye and got back into the boat.
As the cab pulled away, the maid went back to scrubbing at the young man’s blood. Soon there wouldn’t be a trace left of him. Cabrera looked back at the crime scene, and the wind blew the police tape.