Dance With Snakes

by Horatio Castellanos Moya

  “It’s the only story that makes sense, sir,” Handal murmured.

  The Commissioner had sat down behind his desk and was looking through a pile of folders. Handal and Chele Pedro were standing at attention.

  “But there are still the murders of my niece, Mrs. Ferracuti and the rest of the boys from DICA!” the Commissioner screamed. “Is that not enough for you?”

  Handal kept quiet. There was no use now in trying to explain to them that those deaths had been accidental. Chele Pedro turned to look at him with a sarcastic expression that read: You’re screwed.

  “Tell him what they were up to, Pedro.”

  The DICA Chief explained that Agent Pineda’s group was investigating the Cali cartel that operated throughout the country, not just in terms of drug trafficking, but they were also looking at investments and money laundering.

  “The gringos are going to go apeshit,” the Commissioner said. “They’re going to want a good explanation, not the garbage you just gave us. Get me that son-ofa-bitch tonight!”

  The Deputy Commissioner went down the staircase again. He was pissed off. Those two idiots didn’t understand how much work he’d put in, but when he got that Bustillo they’d have to eat crow. Especially Chele Pedro. He could shove those sarcastic little looks right up his ass.

  He told Villalta to move over, he’d drive. They left headquarters at top speed, tires screeching, the siren blaring as loud as it could go, as if they were on their way to a place where the yellow Chevrolet sat waiting for them. But they were only driving around with no real destination. They were getting closer to the bars, keeping in touch with the units they’d placed on surveillance, when Flores casually suggested they head for the Zona Rosa entertainment district – the best place to find the kind of crowds Bustillo liked to target.

  “Of course!” Handal exclaimed.

  He asked for backup cars to patrol the area before the suspect and his snakes could show up to cause a panic and end another dozen lives.

  “Listen boss, he still might find a whole bunch of people on Los Mártires Boulevard,” said Villalta while the Deputy Commissioner parked the Nissan by one of the intersections just before the Zona Rosa. Handal told him not to be an idiot. That was a main artery and there were crowds all up and down it, not concentrated in little areas, like at the supermarket or the gas station. But Bustillo hadn’t ever repeated targets. Handal leaned back in his seat to get comfortable. This could be a long wait. Outside, a bunch of well-dressed kids were coming and going from bars and clubs, in little groups, drinking and smoking marijuana. They always made sure to stand as near as they could to the nicest car, the most expensive one, the least attainable.

  “Looking at them makes you wonder whether it wouldn’t be a good thing to have a few Jacinto Bustillos to get rid of all that stupidity,” Handal murmured after a few minutes of silence, once his anger from the meeting with the Commissioner and Chele Pedro had diminished.

  “Man to man, boss, what do you think happened to Bustillo?” Flores asked from the back seat.

  It was getting cold. None of the units had reported any suspicious activity. Handal scratched inside his ear with his little finger and mumbled, “Maybe only Doña Sofía Pineda knows.”

  They were there until three in the morning, along with the other units who were searching all the streets that led to the Zona Rosa, a strategy that was supposed to lead Bustillo into a trap he couldn’t escape from, but for whatever reason, that never happened. They decided to go back to headquarters and sleep, if only for a few hours, as long as Bustillo didn’t decide to attack again at dawn. Their return was a little like defeat, and all of them wanted to forget about the case for a while. In a few hours, when the Black Palace was up and running on Saturday morning, they’d be exactly where they were now: with a great theory to explain the tragic events of the previous day, but still lacking the arrest that would be the mother of all proof.

  Handal went up to his office, turned off the lights and leaned back in one of the armchairs. His instinct told him that was it for the day, that Bustillo and his snakes were dozing in the yellow Chevrolet, hidden in a garage somewhere. Maybe one right near the Black Palace.

  At twenty after six the next morning the Deputy Commissioner made a few checks, but the suspect hadn’t shown up anywhere. He called his wife to tell her that he’d be by in half an hour to shower, change and have a decent breakfast. They’d just brought him the newspapers. Now he’d really start feeling the pressure, he thought, even though Rita hadn’t published anything about the link she suspected between the deaths of Sofía Bustillo and Agent Pineda.

  But he didn’t get out of the office. Chele Pedro called him to say he needed to talk to him; there were reports that could refocus the investigation. He’d better wait for him; he’d be there in half an hour at the latest. Other reports? That son-of-a-bitch was already trying to position himself to take charge of the investigation.

  Flores and Villalta came in to ask for permission to take an hour to go home and shower. He told them to hurry. Chele Pedro was already trying to get them thrown off the case. There was no way those shits from DICA were collecting the medals for the work his team had spent all yesterday doing.

  He took a shower, but put on the same clothes as the night before. He figured he’d get a quick breakfast at Mc-Donald’s or at Biggest. What the hell was Chele Pedro going to come up with?

  Then the phone rang. The operator told him a man who refused to give his name had called to say that up to half an hour ago, the yellow Chevrolet had been parked at the Lomas del Guijaro, a new housing project still under construction, just a few kilometres away from Jardines de la Sabana, in the suburbs. Handal looked at his map of the city. If the anonymous tipster was telling the truth, Bustillo and his snakes were camping out near the city limits. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that? He ordered a unit to go search the area where, according to the tip, the yellow Chevrolet had spent the night. He backed away a little from the map, which covered a large part of the wall, after sticking red pins in the places Bustillo had struck or been seen. There wasn’t any logic to it, or at least none that he could see. It seemed the suspect was picking his spots at random.

  That’s when Chele Pedro came in, solemn and with a stern look on his face. Pineda’s group was investigating some bankers who were involved in laundering drug money, he said. He took a seat, rubbed his double chin without speaking and waited, as though this new revelation would suddenly enlighten Handal to the hidden motives behind the crimes. But the Deputy Commissioner, still standing, kept quiet and gave no sign that he understood.

  “Mrs. Ferracuti,” Chele Pedro finally muttered. “She was from a banking family . . .”

  So now this idiot was trying to turn this case into a settling of scores by drug traffickers, without any proof, when that woman’s death had been completely accidental, Handal thought. Just what he needed.

  “Someone saw the yellow Chevrolet a little while ago,” Handal said.

  “Where?” Chele Pedro asked.

  “In a new housing development called Lomas de Guijarro, near where he was operating last night.”

  “We have to get him,” Chele Pedro replied as he walked out of the office, as if he were already in charge of the investigation.

  The Deputy Commissioner sat back down in his swivel chair. He needed to eat something right away; his stomach was starting to burn. The phone rang. The operator said that someone wanted to talk to him directly to give him an urgent message.

  “Put him on.”

  “The snakes just attacked Dr. Abraham Ferracuti’s house,” an anxious voice mumbled. “On the street that goes up to the volcano.”

  “What!” Handal exclaimed, jumping to his feet.

  “I’m a neighbour. I saw the old yellow car they described in the newspaper go to the doctor’s house. Then there were shots. Then the car left and headed up the street . . .”

  THREE

  Eight-twenty A.M.

  A
nxious, her curly hair still damp from the shower, Rita arrives at the newspaper office. She wears a flowing summer skirt and a sleeveless blouse.

  Dr. Abraham Ferracuti has died.

  She heard the news five minutes ago on the bus, when they interrupted the musical programming for a special news update.

  She looks for Matías, the news editor, but he hasn’t arrived yet.

  El Zompopo hurries in with his camera dangling from his neck.

  “I’m on my way over there right now,” he says.

  She asks him to wait a second, takes her tape recorder from her desk, grabs her walkie-talkie, and runs after him.

  They get into the Volkswagen Beetle. Víctor, one of the newspaper’s drivers, is at the wheel.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “Towards the volcano, past Escandón,” El Zompopo tells him.

  Rita is in the back seat, chewing her nails. Ferracuti’s death has just wrecked the angle she was working for her article for the Sunday supplement. She’ll have to rethink it now. Shit!

  “The snakes again,” the driver says.

  “But there were shots fired, too. There was a confrontation,” El Zompopo answers.

  Maybe one of those disgusting snakes died, she thinks to herself. She hates them. She doesn’t know what she’d do if she ever saw one. Probably die of fright.

  “Your pictures of the gas station came out great,” she compliments El Zompopo, pointing at the newspaper she’s leafing through. Last night, when she finally managed to get to the scene, the firefighters had nearly finished putting out the flames.

  A helicopter flies over the slope of the volcano.

  The street in front of Dr. Ferracuti’s house is blocked off. There are police cars, the forensic unit’s van, and luxury cars on the scene.

  They hurry out of the Volkswagen. They pass police officers and bodyguards. An absent-minded officer asks to see their press passes, as if he doesn’t know who they are.

  El Zompopo takes pictures indiscriminately. The bodies are still fresh. Rita notices that the narcotics squad appears to be taking charge of the case. The DICA chief and his team of maniacs are moving around as if they’re going to cordon off the crime scene.

  Her colleagues from Radio Red, Sistema YSA and Canal 12 are there. Her competition from El Gráfico hasn’t arrived yet. She looks around for Jonás and Arturo, the other two reporters assigned to the case by Ocho Columnas.

  She walks over to Deputy Commissioner Handal. He’s talking to Chele Pedro. Detective Flores stops her.

  “The boss can’t make any statements now.”

  Things are heating up.

  The Police Commissioner himself comes through the front gate. She tries to approach him, tape recorder in hand, but his bodyguards stop her.

  The Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner Handal, and Chele Pedro stand around Dr. Ferracuti’s body, near the front door.

  “He killed them all,” Detective Villalta says in her ear. She flinches. She didn’t see him coming.

  Mirna and Epaminondas from El Gráfico arrive, followed by more colleagues.

  “The wife, both girls, three maids, the security guard, the driver, and the bodyguards,” Villalta whispers. “Ten in total, including the doctor. A total massacre.”

  The lead officers go into the house. The journalists have to wait outside, prowling around the bodies, the garage, and the garden, waiting to be let inside.

  She looks at Dr. Ferracuti’s body. A really good-looking man, she thinks, but the way he’s laid out makes him look pathetic.

  “It looks like they all died of snakebites,” El Zompopo whispers to her.

  “What about the shots?” she asks, turning to look at Villalta.

  “The bodyguard emptied his submachine gun,” the detective explains. “We think he was shooting at the yellow Chevrolet, because of all the glass on the ground. But there’s no blood trail.”

  There’s another commotion at the scene. The Minister of National Security himself has arrived: Dr. Ferracuti had been mentioned as a probable presidential candidate for the governing party.

  The reporters swarm the minister, but the sour-faced cripple walks right into the house without stopping. Rita doesn’t even try to get close to him. She’s hated that conceited jerk ever since he publicly scolded her.

  It looks like the yellow Chevrolet burst onto the property in a well-timed assault, Villalta explains to her. As soon as the security guard opened the automatic gate, the car ran him over and crashed into the Mercedes Benz to stop it. The security guard managed to react, but the snakes were quicker.

  Rita’s walkie-talkie squawks. It’s Matías, the news editor, anxiously asking for details. She tells him that with the death of Ferracuti, the case has taken a new turn and they’ll have to find a different angle for the story. He says the shit must have really hit the fan if the Minister felt obliged to come to the crime scene. He orders her to get back to the office right away.

  She approaches Villalta again.

  “So the stuff about Jacinto Bustillo is down the drain, right?” she asks, biting her nails.

  He shrugs his shoulders.

  El Zompopo sketches a diagram with the location of the bodies and the Mercedes Benz in his notepad so that the graphics guys won’t complain that they don’t have enough information.

  The lead officers come out of the house.

  The Minister steps forward and announces that the government will respond to this terrorism with the full force of the law against whoever perpetrated it; that Dr. Ferracuti was one of the most distinguished citizens in the country and that the President has ordered that a special committee be formed and led by the Police Commissioner to investigate the crimes committed by the snakes and the psychopaths who control them.

  “Minister, was there an orchestrated plan, a conspiracy, behind these snake attacks?” asks Omar, the reporter from Radio Red, a young guy too interested in getting along with government officials for Rita’s taste.

  The Minister says it’s still too early to make assumptions, but it wouldn’t surprise him if certain suspicious groups were using an insane snake charmer for their own criminal ends. He heads towards the street, surrounded by bodyguards.

  Rita confronts the Police Commissioner.

  “Commissioner, why the Ferracuti family? Are the crimes related to the Doctor’s possible nomination for the presidency?”

  He can’t reveal anything that may hinder the investigation, he answers, frowning. And reporters won’t be allowed to go inside the home out of respect for the Ferracuti family, he adds.

  “One of the daughters was naked,” Villalta whispers to Rita, rubbing his jaw, a lustful look on his face.

  Jonás and Arturo run over.

  “We got lost,” says Jonás. He’s clumsy and skinny, and has a habit of stroking his moustache at the slightest provocation.

  They’ve both been assigned to the story. They’re covering the facts, the timeline and the background; she’s writing the in-depth reports.

  Handal and Chele Pedro follow the Commissioner out.

  “Has Narcotics taken over the case?” she asks Villalta.

  No, not at all. Didn’t she just hear that they were going to form a special committee led by the Commissioner himself? It’s even possible that staff from the State Intelligence Department, the President’s own organization, will be involved in the investigation.

  She has to get back to the office right away to talk to Matías and get organized. If not, it’ll be impossible to structure her article. El Zompopo says he’ll stay behind with Jonás and Arturo to wait and see if they can get inside the house.

  Roger was right, she thinks, as she climbs into the Volkswagen. This is much more complicated than she’d thought, and now there are nationwide consequences. They argued about it last night after she’d come home from work, shaken by the events at the gas station and at Agent Raúl Pineda’s house.

  “What a bizarre massacre,” Víctor, the driver says,
as he adjusts the dial on the walkie-talkie. There’s always interference in this part of the city.

  Roger is her partner, a Frenchman in love with the tropics, with whom she’s lived for six months. A leftist who can cook and fuck wonderfully, but who’s stubborn and domineering, qualities he showed again last night when he went to bed angry that she refused to believe there could be political motives behind the snake attacks. “A destabilizing factor,” he called it. Even that’s possible now.

  “They say the narcotics team murder is related to the doctor’s death,” Víctor says. He’s one of those people who always seem to know what’s going on, even though they don’t write anything. “I’ve got a buddy in the department. He told me Pineda and his guys were investigating some bankers who were involved in money laundering,” he adds.

  “Were they investigating Ferracuti?” Rita asks, incredulous.

  “No, Miss Rita, the doctor was collaborating with the investigation and his sister may have been, too. You know they were a banking family. That’s what my buddy told me.”

  It’s five after nine when she climbs the stairs to the office, anxious and getting tangled up in her summer skirt, her curly hair shining.

  She walks by her desk and leaves the walkie-talkie and tape recorder there. Then she goes to the washroom. She always feels like she has to pee before a meeting with the news editor. She phones Roger right away, before she forgets, to tell him that with all the work she has to do, they’ll have to skip lunch together.

  Matías Cano is waiting for her in his office. He’s fat and bald, with thick lips and little round glasses.

  “There’s an emergency cabinet meeting at the Presidential Palace. It’s scheduled for eleven o’clock. Don’t you tell anyone about it, all right? They’ve supposedly only leaked it to us.”

  He smokes and drinks coffee compulsively. His office reeks of tobacco. He’s wearing a white guayabera shirt and dark pants.