An Inconsequential Murder

by Rodolfo Peña

  The Dean of the University, where the incriminating documents were held, had fled the country for parts unknown, and all of the other government officials and members in the opponents’ team were heading for cover, so that whole thing was pretty well taken care of.

  The only problem was this damned investigator, this Captain Lombardo who was out for blood. He had to be taken care of because everything else was going so well for them.

  “Well, look, John; we can’t have a big stink about this just now. Here in Washington everything is about the damned Bilateral Trade Agreement and they’ll cut our balls off and feed them to us for breakfast if we do anything to fuck it up. So, here is my advice to you: cut a deal with this guy. You decide how far you have to go on that and don’t tell me anything about it. I want credible deniability if this thing blows up. You got me? I am going to go to my boss and some other people and tell them we got a situation down there but that you’re taking care of it and that you are going to report back to me.”

  “I got you, Boss.”

  “Handle it, John. I trust you to do whatever is necessary. Understand?”

  “I understand, Boss.”

  “I’ll cover your ass as much as I can up here.”

  “Thanks, Boss.”

  “Awright, good-bye then and let me know when it’s taken care of; no more details, just the outcome.”

  “Right, Boss.”

  They both hung up at the same time. John Wayne looked at his watch. That damned Mexican was due to be in his office in about two hours. Just enough time to have another drink and then a shower.

  Chapter 37: A Dance with the Devil

  The flight from Monterrey to Guadalajara took less than an hour.

  As the airplane circled the city to get into the queue of aircraft lining up for landing, Lombardo remembered the days he had spent here as a young man. Having recently left the Army, he had collected a nice sum of back pay, that supplemented by the combat pay, and the 12.50 exchange rate, made a decent sum of pesos.

  After traveling around most of southern Mexico, drinking and getting into trouble—like the time he had ended up in jail and met the cartel’s underboss in Pátzcuaro—he wound up in Guadalajara.

  He had spent two weeks at the Hilton—hardly ever leaving the hotel, waking up near noon, having lunch in his room before showering and going down to the lobby bar for his first drink of the day. It had been very easy to pick up girls in the penthouse bar at night.

  He had left the hotel, albeit reluctantly, because he had met Olga—the widow of a gambler who had been found shot to death, probably due to his unpaid gambling debts in Las Vegas, or so she said. He had lived with her the better part of a year. She was 15 years older than Lombardo and had grown very demanding and jealous so he had left her and got a small apartment near the Minerva, the large roundabout in the middle of the city with the fountains and a sculpture of the Roman goddess of peace and wisdom, but also of the art of war.

  During the months he had lived with Olga, Lombardo had come to know and like the city. He liked the cool mornings and pleasant afternoons that were so crisp and filled with the aroma of wet earth during the rainy season. Unlike the hot, dry, dusty towns of his native northeastern Mexico, the streets of Guadalajara were lined with trees and the dividers of the avenues planted with roses and bougainvilleas. He had liked the civil, provincial manner of its people and the stately dignity of its old residential sectors like Chapalita. He had then decided that this was where he wanted to live and that he would not go back to either northeastern Mexico or the U.S.

  Having run out of money, Lombardo looked for a job and found that with his Army background, he would be welcomed in any police force. He joined the State Judicial Police.

  Like a charming beautiful woman you meet at a bar who turns out to be quite a bitch once you live with her, within months of having joined the force, Guadalajara had shown him its other side—the one that was rotten with rampant corruption in every branch of government and public service. During the years he worked here, Lombardo had seen the gangs and cartel slowly grow into powerful organizations that flooded every sector of society with drug money, corroding not only the “fabric of society,” but the very functioning of the state and city governments.

  When one of the young drug capos eloped with the Governor’s daughter, Lombardo had been part of the team sent to investigate the “kidnapping.” The Director of Investigations had told them that the capo and his new wife were in Argentina, which had no extradition treaty with Mexico at the time because the generals who had staged a right-wing coup did not like the fact that Mexico had given political asylum to so many Argentinean leftists.

  Lombardo’s team had also been told that although the Governor was pressuring the State Police to get the girl back, the capo had sent word that if the team came to Argentina, he would be glad to see that they were well treated and well rewarded if they went back home and said that they could not find the girl.

  All the members of the team had agreed that this was a good proposition—all that is, except Lombardo. He had asked the Director of Investigations to be assigned to another case; he did not want to go to Argentina.

  When the team had come back from its little jaunt—their pockets well lined with packets of hundred dollar bills—they had nevertheless invited Lombardo for a drink. That’s when the Governor’s personal assistant had shown up. He was drunk and when he saw the cops celebrating, he came to their table and yelled that they should be ashamed that they allowed themselves to be bribed into letting a young girl be kidnapped by that hoodlum.

  Lombardo, who had had a few drinks too and was feeling mean, said that there had been no kidnapping; if the girl was in Argentina, it was because she liked being in the capo’s bed more than she liked being in her bed at home.

  The Governor’s personal assistant swung at Lombardo who avoided the punch and decked the Governor’s personal assistant with a solid right hook.

  It was ironic that he had been the only person asked to resign after the Argentinean incident was “investigated.” His boss told him he was not being asked to resign because he had punched the Governor’s assistant but rather because the team did not trust him. He wasn’t a player, one of them. Since he wouldn’t accept the “terms” (a nice euphemism for bribes) the others had accepted, they deemed him dangerous. “You’ll be dead within a month if you stay,” his boss told him.

  But rather than fire him, his boss arranged for Lombardo to be transferred to Monterrey and promised him that the reason for his transfer would be stated as “a promotion in rank.”

  Within weeks Lombardo had moved to Monterrey and had started working in the Investigations Department of the Public Ministry there.

  The loud thump of the plane’s tires hitting the tarmac ended Lombardo’s reminiscence. Twenty minutes after the plane landed in Guadalajara, Lombardo was in a taxi and on his way to the American Consulate.

  The city had changed since his days there. It had grown into the second largest city in Mexico, and was now suffering the noise, crowding, and pollution of any large metropolis. It had lost its provincialism, its understated gentility. It was now just another huge city, sucking up the life of nearby towns like a giant star sucks up matter from nearby bodies, and growing incessantly, out of control into a shapeless sprawl of urban growth.

  Once the taxi turned off the busy Lazaro Cárdenas Avenue into Mariano Otero, the streets seemed more familiar, less changed; and as it turned into the narrow streets of the “Colonia Americana” where the U.S. consulate is located, he recognized the houses and buildings, which seemed to Lombardo to have remained basically unchanged since he had last been there so many years ago.

  In those days, Olga was friendly with some of the personnel at the Consulate, and, Lombardo suspected, might even have slept with the Consul himself. As Olga’s friend, the American Counsel had invited him to Consulate parties several times until one day he called him and asked him to come to his office. He had said
that a man of Lombardo’s experience and background could be very helpful in many “capacities” in the Consulate’s efforts to “keep abreast of things.” Lombardo had understood what the Counsel was trying to recruit him for some service, perhaps the CIA or the DEA. He had thanked the Counsel but his answer had been “no.” Finally the Counsel had asked him why Lombardo had come back to Mexico. He could have stayed to live in the U.S., enjoy the privileges of a war veteran. “What made you come back here?” he asked perplexed. “The fact that I am a Mexican,” Lombardo had answered.

  The taxi stopped before a bunker-like building on Progreso Street. This too had certainly changed. There were no blast walls when Lombardo had last visited the building and the armed guards in the street corners certainly were an added attraction.

  A uniformed policeman asked him for identification before he was allowed to approach another policeman who sat inside a concrete kiosk peering out through bulletproof glass.

  Again Lombardo had to show identification, which he placed in a sliding tray for the guard to examine. The guard’s voice came through a speaker and told him that he would keep the identification, which Lombardo could retrieve when he left. The cop gave Lombardo a visitor’s badge and then he called someone to announce that the person going in had an appointment with John Wayne so he was to be escorted to office 21A.

  After Lombardo had gone through a metal detector (he wisely had not brought his sidearm), he was shown to a waiting room. After five minutes, a girl came to fetch him and guided him upstairs and through metal doors that she had to open with an electronic key.

  They finally reached an office that had the number 21A on it but no name. The girl told him that the person he had come to see would arrive shortly; would he like something to drink?

  Lombardo said, “No,” and sat down on the only chair in the room other than the one behind the desk. The office was spartan, to say the least. There was just the small desk, which had nothing on it, and the chair that was tucked underneath it. The walls were bare except for a picture of the President of the United States. Lombardo suspected that it contained a microphone and probably a video camera as well.

  There was a window behind the desk but the blinds were partially closed, allowing very little light to enter the room. Through the slits of the blinds Lombardo could see that the window was protected by thick iron bars.

  Lombardo had the sensation that he was being watched, although he looked around and could not spot any surveillance cameras. But he knew that meant nothing since they made cameras so small now they could watch you through a pinhole.

  He also felt that the silence in the room was too perfect, too contrived. He wondered if the conversation he was going to have was going to be recorded.

  After a few minutes, the door opened and a tall, muscular man wearing sunglasses came in. Two deep creases ran from his cheekbone down to the sides of his mouth and his bald head shone as if it had been polished. After he came in, he stood behind Lombardo who could see his reflection on the window panes. The man stood looking down at him for a moment and finally he said, “Captain Lombardo?”

  Lombardo turned and shook the extended hand but he did not get up from his chair.

  “I am John Wayne.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Lombardo. “I know the real John Wayne is dead.”

  John Wayne laughed, “Of course he is, but I keep his memory alive by using his name.” He pulled out the chair tucked into the desk and sat down. He lit a twisted cheroot.

  Lombardo took the cue and lit one of his smelly cigarettes; soon the room had a small, gray cloud clinging to the ceiling.

  “So, what was it you wanted to see me about?” John Wayne asked nonchalantly.

  “I’m sure you know why I am here. I’m sure my boss called you to, ah, inform you that I was coming to see you.”

  “Yes, he did but he wasn’t too clear on what you want to see me about.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase so we don’t waste our time. Three men went up to Monterrey; they abducted a young man, Victor Delgado, who worked at the Computer Center of the State University. They interrogated him ‘cause they wanted him to hand over the key to certain information that was stored in one of the Center’s computers. But they were a bit too energetic in their efforts and clumsy when things started to go bad, so the young man died. Then they compounded their stupidity by dumping him on the railroad tracks to try to make it look like a mugging or who knows what. But, you see, Mr. John Wayne, they left too many crumbs in the forest; they were regular Hanzels and Gretels. I got so much stuff on them they might as well have left their photos and calling cards.”

  “So, why don’t you arrest them?”

  “That’s what I came here to do.”

  Lombardo could see that behind the dark glasses John Wayne’s were eyes staring at him, cold and unblinking. Lombardo had seen that stare before. It was the stare of a killer as it decides if it’s the right moment to strike. Apparently he decided it was not because he said, “What makes you think these three men are here in Guadalajara?”

  “A good friend gave me a passenger’s list with the name of three foreigners on it…”

  “Hell, a lot of foreigners come here; it’s a favorite destination for tourists,” said John Wayne mocking him.

  “Yeah, but these three guys had to hand over their weapons before boarding the flight so I will hazard a guess and say they didn’t come here to take pictures of the sights.”

  “Oh, I see, and, what do you think they did come here for?”

  “To report back to you. They are your guys so let’s stop this bullshit.” He took out a copy of the passenger list and threw it on the desk. “You’ll find three names underlined on that list. I want those guys.”

  John Wayne did not bother to look at the list. “Let’s assume that those men did work for us, what makes you think I would give them up to you?”

  Lombardo took out another paper from his inside pocket. “Here’s another list for you. I think you’ll want to look at this one. There are a dozen names on it—some are Mexicans and some are Americans. The Party you’re rootin’ for would have a hard time winning the elections if the documents from where I got those names were made public. If the liberals continue in power, they could use those same documents to kick you and all of your rootin’ tootin’ cowboys the hell out of here. And if you don’t believe me, here’s another present for you.” Lombardo threw a CD on the desk. “Those are copies of the documents in question.”

  “You’re like a regular magician, the way you pull shit out of your pockets. What’s next? A rabbit? A bunch of flowers?” There was no hilarity in his words but rather a cold, menacing edge.

  “What’s next is a subpoena for you and some of the people in the Consulate and a warrant for the arrest of your three guys.”

  “Even if all your allegations were true, Captain Lombardo, you know I can’t give up three of our men just like that. I have to follow procedure, you should know that. I will have to examine your evidence and then inform my superiors, and that takes time.”

  “You’ve got until tomorrow noon,” said Lombardo getting up. “That’s when I take the plane back to Monterrey.”

  “That’s not too much time.”

  “That’s all the time you’ve got.”

  “Listen, you two bit cop,” said John Wayne rising up like a raging beast that’s about to pounce, “you don’t tell me how it is, I tell you how it is; you understand?”

  “No, you listen, you supercilious bastard, this is my country, my territory, and you came into my town and killed that kid and you and those idiots are going to pay for it. I’d sooner put a bullet through your head and the head of those clowns you sent down than spit on the sidewalk. But I won’t ‘cause I want people to see what kind of rat you all are.”

  “You think you’re going to stop us by bringing me down, and bringing those guys down? This thing is bigger than me and these guys, Lombardo.”

  “Yeah, I know all a
bout your Patriot Agenda or whatever you’re calling it this time. You and your kind always use a threat to the nation, or your way of life, or any such nonsense as an excuse to break the law and disregard the most basic rights of people and countries. Your urge to make the world safe for democracy, or save western civilization, or fight an evil “ism” tempts you to bend the rules; but you don’t understand that in doing so, you turn into an enemy of the very thing you’re so valiantly trying to protect. Like the man wrote, “Breaking the Law to defend the Nation ends up by breaking the Nation.”

  As Lombardo went to the door, John Wayne did not get up from his chair but said, “What makes you so sure these so-called documents would be damaging to us like you say, Captain?”