The Black Minutes

5

Almost everyone gaped at him when they saw him come in: the blue suit coat was far too big for him and the multicolored tropical shirt he wore underneath it was all too visible. The first person he saw was the deceased’s father, Rubén Blanco, talking with three respectable elderly gentlemen. The mother and sisters wept on some nearby couches. At the other end of the room, four ranchers stood guard next to the coffin.
Cabrera nodded to the dead man’s parents and approached the coffin to pay his respects to the departed but actually to examine things in detail. That’s when he recognized him. Damnation, it can’t be, he thought, it’s the kid with the yogurts, the one who’d been living in San Antonio. What the f*ck happened to him?
The cut on the neck was covered with a scarf but what he saw was enough to raise his suspicions. This wasn’t a regular Colombian necktie: either the attacker’s hand was shaky or the killer was no expert, otherwise there was no explaining the erratic trajectory of the cut. He then took a look at the body, and confirmed that he couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Poor boy, he thought. What could he have possibly done to be taken out so young? According to Chávez’s report, El Chincualillo was breaking in to rob the house when the journalist surprised him. No, he thought, it doesn’t fit. Why would a member of the Paracuán cartel break in to steal? As if they needed the money! With what they earn in a day they can live for months without working.
“Sons of bitches,” a mourner behind him murmured. “He was a defenseless kid.”
He felt as if he were the one they were complaining to; their eyes were on him, and he thought, As if I had anything to do with this.
As soon as he could, Cabrera gave his condolences to the victim’s father and, on Chief Taboada’s behalf, asked if they could talk privately.
“In a minute,” the man answered, and shook his head disparagingly.
Cabrera didn’t like being treated like this, but he told himself that Don Rubén was going through a difficult time and you had to be understanding; so he stepped outside and waited for him at the end of the hallway. There was a vending machine with instant coffee, but it was out of order, and his longing for a coffee made the wait seem many times longer. Since he had nothing else to do he took out the confiscated weapon and inspected the initials for a second time: C. O. Damn, he thought. If the gun belonged to Cochiloco, he had problems.
He was still considering the gun when in walked one of the most attractive women he’d ever seen in his life. She was an impressive blonde, her head full of fierce curls. She wore a black dress, and even the most discreet of the men there followed her with their eyes. She was the woman who’d been living in his wallet since he picked up her picture at the bus station: the journalist’s girlfriend. Before Cabrera could react, the woman walked by him and at the sight of the gun opened two delicious lips. Troubled, Cabrera cursed himself for his slipup and put the gun away. The woman walked on by, pretending not to have noticed a thing, and went into the viewing room. She left behind a flowery scent that made Agent Cabrera tremble. Sweet Jesus! a voice inside him said.
Five minutes later, Mr. Blanco still hadn’t come out in search of him. It’s only natural, he told himself. In cases like these people take their anger out on the police; if we did our job right, these things wouldn’t be happening. At eleven-fifteen, he thought he’d waited long enough and went downstairs to the lunch counter, to see if he could find some real coffee.
There was a brew from Veracruz that seemed tolerable. The lady at the counter was handing him a steaming little cup when he felt his cell phone vibrating: it was his boss’s secretary.
“Cabrera? Are you at the funeral? I have one of the mourners on the other line. She says there’s a suspect in the area.”
“Tell her I’ll be right there. I’m down the hall.”
He left the coffee on the counter without even tasting it.
“She says he’s right there! He’s walking into the room.”
“Ask her to describe him.”
“Sky-blue Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.”
“Gimme a break, Sandra, tell her the suspect is me.”
He watched the blonde woman nodding her head, and acknowledged her with a wink. The young woman blushed. In different circumstances, Cabrera would’ve been irritated, but not that day, even less with a woman like her. People get nervous in situations like this; it’s natural, he told himself. Later, when things calmed down, he thought about returning the picture to her, but his shyness got the better of him.
Seeing him looking in again, the dead man’s father stepped out to give him a piece of his mind. “If Chief Taboada sent you, you’ve got no business here.”
Cabrera explained that he was just following orders and expressed his sincerest condolences. Don Rubén looked Cabrera right in the eye for a moment—just for a moment—and shook his head, but less intensely.
“How many times do I have to make a statement? I already told Agent Chávez everything I know.”
This took him by surprise. He hadn’t been aware that Chávez had interviewed the man. “When was that?”
“Last night.”
That smelled all wrong to him, because not a sentence of Don Rubén’s had appeared in the report.
“And another thing: I’m not at all convinced that my son’s murderer is the person they arrested. I’ve got friends in the state government, and we’re going to open a new investigation.”
“That’s what I’m doing right now,” Cabrera explained. “They put me on the case.”
“Well, we’ll see how well you gentlemen do your job,” said Mr. Blanco, and he went back to his family.
Over the next half hour, old business associates and family acquaintances, classmates of the deceased, and friends of his sisters paraded through. Cabrera was surprised to see Ramírez’s assistant.
“And what are you doing here?”
“I was a friend of Bernardo’s. I studied with him in high school.”
Cabrera had forgotten his name. “Ricardo?”
“Rodrigo, Rodrigo Columba.”
They sat down at the end of the hall, where nobody came up to bother them. Cabrera asked him how well he had known Bernardo Blanco, what kind of reporting he’d done. The crime beat, the young man said. Cabrera thought it strange that Bernardo would have been interested in that, he looked so mild-mannered, but Columba said yes, it had always interested him. The deceased had prided himself on reading crime reports with the same thoroughgoingness with which others read the Bible or Don Quixote.
“Was he bad at his work?”
The young man shook his head. “No, they even gave him a prize.”
When he was living in the United States, Bernardo bought himself a motorcycle and a shortwave radio to listen in on the San Antonio police communications. Little by little he deciphered the local slang and memorized the codes they used in the city to designate each crime. A number of times he reached the crime scene before the patrol cars. He got to witness the chasing down of a drug dealer, the beginning of a shoot-out in a bank, and the day he decided to quit, it was he who had gazed into the eyes of a man with a gunshot wound as he died in a shopping mall. Bernardo watched the man die, he complained to the paramedics about their late arrival, and after he gave his statement he had no memory of anything he did, from that moment on to the end of the day. What’s impressive is that after giving his evidence he went back to work, wrote a very detailed and succinct article, and said some incoherent sentences to his editor. When he finally snapped out of it, he found himself standing on an avenue that led downtown, in the moments when the sun was beginning to set and the windowpanes and asphalt were reflecting an orangey brilliance. Rodrigo Columba told him this, then interrupted himself.
“Look who’s coming; it’s Father Fritz Tschanz.”
Since he wore his cassock they supposed he was going to say mass. The young man asked what kind of relationship Father Fritz had with the police, why he was always seen coming and going at police headquarters. Cabrera explained that the priest taught at the Jesuit school, and in the afternoons, or at need, offered his services to the community: he gave psychological counseling to the policemen, confessed them, and, when necessary, reprimanded them. When they were about to arrest a member of the Paracuán cartel and worried about the possibility of gunfire, the agents were in the habit of inviting Father Fritz to serve as mediator. Before the shooting started, the priest would talk to both sides and try to persuade the guilty party to turn himself in. He’d prevented a lot of bloodbaths that way.
“It looks like they want you,” the young man said, and he was right.
Once he’d said hello to the people in attendance, Father Fritz had recognized Cabrera and gestured him over. The last time they’d met up, the padre had devoted his time to criticizing the department Cabrera worked in, and they didn’t part on good terms. Cabrera’s resentment was tattooed on his forehead, but that’s normal; nobody likes to have his work criticized, especially if he tries to be good at his job. As soon as he could, Father Fritz stepped away from the crowd and took him by the arm.
“Are you in charge?”
Cabrera nodded yes.
“That seems like a great idea to me. Bernardo left some things in my office. Stop by for them, they’ll interest you.”
Cabrera was about to ask, What things? but a young woman came and interrupted them, and despite efforts to shoo her away, she insisted on making her confession with the priest. A woman walked up behind her, followed by another, and yet another, until a surge of unwelcome visitors had separated them completely. At that moment the first of the odd things that followed the journalist’s death took place.
The crowd parted and in walked the Lord Bishop. Cabrera, who remained trapped between the wall and the crowd, managed to see the prelate approach the Blanco family, give them his condolences, and start as he met up with Father Fritz. With the firmness for which he was notorious, the bishop dragged the Jesuit toward the coffin, and they bent forward as if to pray, but Cabrera had the impression that the bishop was giving Father Fritz an order. Fritz pursed his lips until they whitened but made no attempt to reply. He made a show of praying with the prelate, blessed the dead man’s corpse, and bent over the coffin in tandem with his superior. When the rite ended, the bishop took his leave of the relatives, showered a last sprinkling of holy water upon the attendees, and left as quickly as he had arrived. Fritz stayed behind, head bowed, and set himself up in a corner, ready to hear confessions.
The rest of the morning was extremely difficult, especially for Cabrera, who couldn’t stand funerals. He listened to every kind of idiotic comment, along the lines of “He got what was coming to him, that’s the risk of the profession,” “Who told him to come work here in the port when he had a job in San Antonio?” and “If only he’d worked in his father’s business.” There came a moment when he found the comments intolerable, and he went out to look for a cup of coffee.
In a law-enforcement setting, the first impression is what counts, and Cabrera was no exception in believing this. As soon as he saw Agent Chávez walk in, he knew his colleague was worried about something, for he looked on edge and irritable. Like Cabrera, Rufino Chávez, aka “El Chaneque” was a survivor from the seventies. You had only to look at his wide tie, his salt-and-pepper sideburns, and his gangsterish mustache. Despite his fifty years, he kept in shape, like those featherweight boxers who stay in training their whole lives. One of the new recruits had accompanied him, in point of fact the one in the dark glasses from before: pistol in his waistband, glad of being on an official mission, unaware of what kind of prick he was keeping company with. Chávez customarily took on the new guys as apprentices—and too bad for them, thought Cabrera, because, honestly, what could they possibly learn from El Chaneque?
Chávez went up to Cabrera like someone getting ready to drive off a dog.
“Did Taboada send you?”
“Yep.”
“Tell him I’m taking charge, and you make tracks. You’ve got nothing to do around here.”
Cabrera counted to ten and made an effort to answer like the pacifist he was. “If you don’t like it, complain to the boss. Got it?”
There was an audible click, and Cabrera found that Chávez was holding a switchblade against his paunch. The harder he tried to avoid it, the deeper it impinged on his belly. Cabrera felt himself turning pale. This is it . . . this is it . . . When Chávez decided it had been enough, he put the blade away and walked off. Cabrera breathed a sigh of relief.
In the hall, he gave his full attention to recovering, but then he saw that Father Fritz was headed for the exit and he approached him. The priest’s head was bowed, and he displayed not a trace of his customary optimism. Cabrera called him by name twice but had to tap him on the shoulder to get him to respond.
“Oh, right, the things.” He sounded depressed. “It’s not important in the least. I can throw them in the trash myself.”
“Certainly not,” Cabrera insisted. “Tell me when I can come by for them.”
Fritz regarded him for a moment. “Today at five, in my office.”
“The same one as before?”
“The same as ever,” he said with a grunt.
It was going to be an awfully difficult talk. Since the last time they’d seen each other, the priest’s personality seemed to have worsened.
“Now you’ll have to excuse me.” He stepped to one side. “They’re taking him off to the cemetery.”