An Easy Thing

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  Chapter Ten

  …Breathe deeply and above all make sure you don’t drop your gun as the ground rushes rapidly toward your face.

  —Roque Dalton

  His eyes were two slits, his arms hung limply at his sides, he dragged his feet across the soft ground; his mouth was dry and bitter, and little invisible hairs grew around his teeth.

  He would gladly have traded his gun for a fountain of cold, pure water where he could wash his face, revive himself, listen to the birds come to drink and the children passing by on their way to school.

  For lack of a fountain, he got a maid to lend him the hose she was using to wash her employer’s car, and he ran the cold water over his face until it was numb.

  Shaking himself like a wet dog, he walked back to his car and ended his wasted vigil in front of the apartment building on Irrigación.

  Something had to give: if he went on like this, just letting things evolve slowly on their own, he was going to end up keeled over from fatigue on some street corner, with his back to the wall and his eyes caked with sleep. It was time to stir things up. He was sick and tired of not being able to play all eleven positions at once. The ball kept passing him by, and even though he ran up and down the field the whole game, he could never make a play. The time had come to throw a wrench into the works, to make something happen.

  But how to break this scoreless tie?

  ***

  The sister led him to an unused classroom, with an old piano and the remains of a cardboard-and-wood stage set depicting clouds. The room had a wooden floor and was half-filled with broken chairs and desks. Héctor lit a cigarette and sat down on one of the chairs. It creaked under his weight. He hung his head and rested his elbows on his knees, allowing the cigarette to burn down on its own, glancing occasionally at the thin line of smoke that drifted lazily toward the ceiling.

  “Señor Detective, here are the girls,” said the young nun. He could see Elena’s three friends waiting in the hall behind her.

  “Could I have a minute with the girls alone, Sister?”

  “I hope it won’t take long. Their English teacher asked to have them back in class as soon as possible.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll only take a minute.”

  The girls filed in, a mixture of shyness and curiosity, laughing and giggling among themselves. Héctor motioned them toward the chairs and they sat down, mechanically reaching out to pull their skirts down over their knees. Héctor thought about the girl in his bed and her jokes about the lost virginity of Catholic school girls.

  “Gisela, Carolina, Bustamante…” Héctor began.

  “Ana Bustamante,” corrected a thin, bright-faced girl, black hair falling across one eye.

  “I need your help,” he said, and paused. The girls nodded.

  “Is Elena all right?” one of them asked.

  “She’s okay right now. But if I don’t find what I’m looking for, she may be in a great deal of danger.”

  He looked the girls in the eye, one at a time, with as much intensity as he was capable of in his exhausted condition.

  “Did Elena give any of you something to keep for her?”

  The girls looked at one another.

  “Not me.”

  “Me either.”

  “She asked me if I could keep a package in my papa’s safe, but I told her I didn’t know the combination,” said the girl named Bustamante.

  “When was that?”

  “A couple of weeks ago, before they started coming to harass her at school.”

  “Did she say anything else about it to any of you?”

  “No,” one of them answered, and the others shook their heads.

  “Thanks,” Héctor said.

  The girls stood up and filed out of the room.

  Now what? wondered the detective, slumped down in a broken-backed chair.

  “Wait!” he shouted, and ran into the hall.

  “Does Elena have a locker here at school?”

  ***

  With the package stowed under the VW’s backseat, Héctor pulled up in front of the courthouse in Santa Clara. He was in no hurry to open it now.

  One third of his problems were over, and he knew that the solution, wrapped up in a small parcel of brown paper and tied with a piece of string, would wait safely in the parked car. He entered the building and roamed the halls, asking for the office of the public prosecutor in charge of the case.

  “What’s your business?” asked a young, dark-skinned bureaucrat wearing a loud necktie. The tie had a spot of egg yolk smeared across it.

  “I’ve got some important information about the murder of engineer Alvarez Cerruli at the Delex plant.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Héctor Belascoarán Shayne.”

  A door opened and Héctor stepped into an office where two men stood waiting.

  One of them seemed like an old friend after the last few days: Commander Paniagua. He leaned against a metal file cabinet in the back of the room, with his gun showing conspicuously at his belt. The other man introduced himself as Attorney Sandoval, public prosecutor. Abandoning formalities, Héctor took a seat without waiting for an invitation.

  “You say you have some information pertaining to the murder of Engineer Alvarez Cerruli?” Then, pointing to his associate, the prosecutor asked, “Do you know Commander Paniagua? He’s in charge of the investigation.”

  Héctor said he did, and Paniagua returned a puzzled look from behind his dark glasses.

  “What I’ve got pertains to the case, all right. It shows that you boys are barking up the wrong tree. And I can prove it.” He took out his notebook and glanced at a page, letting the challenge hang in the air.

  “I can prove that the men you arrested couldn’t have committed the crime. The time of the murder has been set between five and five-thirty, when Gustavo Fuentes hadn’t even come in for work yet. There are a number of witnesses who can testify that Ibáñez was on the assembly line from four o’clock until five-thirty. And Contreras didn’t come in at all that day.

  “What I’m saying is that it might be a good idea if you let them go before I decide to go to the papers and tell them how you’ve gotten yourselves mixed up unfairly in a labor dispute out here.”

  Héctor lit a cigarette and waited.

  “What’s your interest in all this?” asked the public prosecutor.

  Héctor smiled.

  ***

  Scrambled eggs with ham, a pitcher of orange juice, sliced bananas and cream: it was Héctor’s idea of a perfect breakfast.

  “You look like a ghost,” said Elisa as she set the plates on the table.

  “You don’t look so great yourself, Sister.”

  They were seated in the old family breakfast nook. Elisa, wrapped in a yellow terry-cloth bathrobe, rubbed her eyes.

  “I’m tired. I was up until I don’t know how late talking to your client.”

  “How’s she doing?” Héctor asked, attacking his eggs with gusto.

  “She’s a bright kid. Sometimes she amazes me, other times I just feel sorry for her. I suppose I’d be pretty surprised to see myself at her age…Everything seemed so easy back then.”

  “Did she tell you anything?”

  “Not directly, but if I knew part of the story…”

  “There’s your answer over there,” he said pointing to the brown-paper-wrapped package. “I don’t know what it is yet.”

  Elisa picked up the glass of orange juice Héctor poured for her and downed it in one gulp. Héctor watched her with affection.

  “What have you been doing lately?” he asked.

  “Going around in circles, mostly. I haven’t felt right ever since I came home. I’ve been thinking about going back to school.”
r />   “Do you ever hear from that guy? Your ex, I mean.”

  “I get a letter from Alan once a month. A short note that always says the same thing, and a check for four hundred dollars that I rip up into tiny pieces and send back to him. Do you know why I got married and left Mexico?” She looked earnestly at her brother.

  “Well, back then…”

  “I always felt sandwiched in between you and Carlos. You were the good kid, responsible, devoted, well behaved. And Carlos was the little genius. All I wanted was to get out of the house and prove I could make it on my own. Getting married seemed like a way to do that.”

  Héctor reached over and squeezed her hand. Elisa smiled.

  “A bad time for confession, isn’t it?”

  “It’s always a bad time…The past stinks, it’s never easy to look back. Like with Papa now. Six years after he died, and all of a sudden I realize we were never close to him, we never understood who he was. Everything was covered by a smoke screen…It was the same with you and me.”

  “Alan was the perfect journalist. All day long he worked at the paper, all night long he sat drinking in the bar of some lousy hotel. Do you know what Canada was like? A house set off all by itself, a color TV, you watch the snow fall in the afternoon. I used to talk to myself just to keep from losing my Spanish.”

  “Didn’t you used to play guitar?”

  “I even gave up on that. I forgot everything. It was like living in a dream, a dream turned into a nightmare. I never got so that I could understand that country, much less get free of it. Puta madre, it makes me sick just to think about it.”

  “Let it be, Elisa,” Héctor soothed her. He pushed his empty plate to one side.

  “Are you going to wait for her to wake up?”

  “Not now. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Don’t let her go anywhere.”

  “If you’re back in time for lunch, I swear I’ll be in a better mood, and I’ll make us six different dishes of Chinese food.”

  “Hide this package where she won’t find it, will you?” Héctor said, lighting a cigarette. The smoke tasted wonderful on a full stomach, and with the whole morning ahead of him.

  ***

  “You said you saw Rodríguez Cuesta leave the plant? You said you remembered because he asked you to have his tire fixed, or his jack, or something?”

  Security Guard Rubio, badge number 6453, nodded. Dressed in a T-shirt, a cup of coffee in his hand, he offered Héctor a seat in a damp-walled room full of plastic-covered furniture. “This is my day off, I don’t work today. Understand?”

  “Was he alone?”

  “Yeah, he was alone in the car.”

  “And when he went in, earlier in the day. Was he alone then?”

  “He always comes to work alone.”

  “Sure, but what about this time? What time did he get there?”

  “Rodríguez Cuesta always comes in around ten o’clock.”

  “And on that day? Are you sure he was alone?”

  “Just a minute. I don’t think I saw him go in that day. I was checking the papers on a pickup as he drove by, and I didn’t really get a good look at him. But I think he was by himself. He always comes by himself.”

  “Who was driving the pickup?”

  “Just one of the guys from the factory—I forget his name. They call him Sleepyhead, or something like that.”

  “One more question…No, two more.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Do the engineers come to work alone?”

  “Yeah, they’ve all got their own cars. Sometimes you’ll see one of them catching a ride from someone else because his car’s in the shop…”

  “Was Camposanto by himself?”

  “I think so.”

  “And when they leave their cars in the lot…?”

  “They don’t park in the main lot; there’s a covered place for the managers’ cars, with their names marked on their own private parking space.”

  “And is there anybody around there at that time of day?”

  “Sure, if they come in early enough, some of the guys from the factory might be back there. Later on, maybe just a forklift operator, something like that.”

  “One last question: How many more cops came besides the first two?”

  “Uh…First there was one squad car, then another one came. Then two unmarked cars, and then the ambulance.”

  “Was Commander Paniagua in one of those cars?”

  “No. No, I didn’t see him go in. I saw him leave, though. Maybe he went in the back entrance.”

  “The back entrance?”

  “There’s another gate around behind the factory, in a vacant lot where they used to take the trucks through. They keep it locked, though. I think the strikers have a guard there now.”

  “But how could Paniagua get through if the gate was locked?”

  “Let me think about it. I’m not so sure I saw him there, after all. You’re talking about the same one that arrested the three guys from the union?”

  “That’s the one. Short, dark, wears sunglasses, around fifty or so…”

  “Well, he definitely didn’t go in with the other cop cars, but he was there. I saw him leave.”

  “Did you see him inside the plant?”

  Héctor took the same question to the secretary, to a striker keeping watch over the rear gate, to a pair of forklift operators. The striking workers regarded him with distrust and answered his questions guardedly. No one remembered seeing the policeman on the day of the murder, but some said they’d seen him there at other times.

  Paniagua could be the murderer. But what was Héctor basing his suspicions on? A single anonymous phone caller who claimed that he was a homosexual? He could have gone in with Rodríguez Cuesta, in the trunk of his car, or he could have gone in through the back gate.

  Did he have an alibi? And how was Héctor supposed to find out where the commander had been that afternoon? There was no point in asking the Police Department. It was just one more shot in the dark that had missed its mark. He’d have to try another angle.

  ***

  The first thing Héctor saw when the door opened was the gun, then he saw the fear in the man’s face.

  “Am I just supposed to stand here, or are you going to invite me in?” the detective asked.

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “You can’t be too busy these days, with the factory on strike…” Héctor said, pushing the door gently with his shoulder.

  Engineer Camposanto moved to one side. Héctor walked through the oversized dollhouse and settled into a chair in the living room while Camposanto closed the door.

  “There’s nothing I can tell you.”

  Dragging his feet, the engineer walked over to Héctor’s chair and set the gun on the coffee table in the center of the room. Héctor took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. He let the lighter drop from his hand onto the floor, and when the engineer bent over to pick it up, Héctor drew his gun.

  Camposanto straightened up with the lighter, only to find the gun staring him in the face.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Give me your gun. Use two fingers and pick it up by the barrel, that’s right…” Héctor took the gun and slipped it into his coat pocket. Camposanto sat down, sank his head between his hands, and started to cry, sobbing loudly.

  Héctor looked at him uneasily, and drew on his cigarette.

  “I didn’t want to,” the engineer sobbed.

  “Then why’d you do it?” asked Belascoarán, taking a shot in the dark, like a blindfolded child swinging wildly in the air at a piñata dangling somewhere overhead.

  “Why’d I do what?” asked Camposanto, wiping his tears away with the sleeve of his gray robe.
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  “Why’d you kill him?”

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” he protested.

  “Let me think a minute.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Maybe not, but I suppose I could beat the shit out of you until you decided to fill me in.”

  “Go to hell. You’ve got no reason to suspect me.”

  “Then why’d you pull a gun on me when I came to the door?”

  Camposanto looked at the floor.

  “How long have you known Commander Paniagua?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “I’ve got time,” Héctor said, taking a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and laying it on the glass-topped table.

  They waited.

  The tension increased in proportion to the duration of their silence. Camposanto, sunk into his armchair, avoided the detective’s gaze, and occupied himself with unraveling the threads on the cord that held the robe around his waist. Now and then he directed a furtive glance at the gun in Héctor’s hand. Héctor decided the wait was in his favor. The engineer seemed to have no reserves. It was a contest between the weakness of the one and the sleepiness of the other. Héctor looked at his watch: 11:57.

  12:00.

  12:30.

  12:48.

  1:45.

  “What do you want?” asked a nearly unrecognizable voice coming from the engineer’s lips. He rubbed his sweaty palms.

  “Answers. How long have you known Commander Paniagua?”

  “Only for a few months. Alvarez Cerruli introduced us at a golf club off the highway to Queretaro.”

  “When did you realize that he was gay?”

  “Alvarez told me…I had the feeling they’d known each other for a while.”

  “How did they meet?”

  “He said they met at a party.”

  “How did Paniagua seem to you when you first met him?”

  “He was very quiet…but he seemed like a nice guy.”

  “You were drinking coffee with Fernández, from the personnel department, when the body was discovered?” Héctor changed the subject and lit another cigarette.

  “That’s right…What are you implying?”