An Inconsequential Murder 45u61

An Inconsequential Murder

By Rodolfo Peña

Copyright 2010 by Rodolfo Peña and Untreed Reads Publishing

Cover Copyright 2010 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

An Inconsequential Murder

By Rodolfo Peña

Contents

Part 1: Day 1

Chapter 1: Victor Disappears

Chapter 2: The Dead Young Man

Chapter 3: The Three Foreigners and the Car

Chapter 4: The Governor Gets a Phone Call and Makes a Phone Call

Chapter 5: A Meeting at the University

Chapter 6: Clues in the Parking Lot

Chapter 7: Lombardo Visits a Laboratory

Chapter 8: A Home Like a Hole in the Ground

Chapter 9: The Computer Center, Again

Chapter 10: A Not Too Religious Meeting at “The Church”

Part 2: Day 2

Chapter 11: A Visit to the Medical Examiner’s Office

Chapter 12: The Governor Calls the Dean

Chapter 13: No Rest for the Dead

Chapter 14: When a Case Is Not Your Case

Chapter 15: An Invitation to a Cruise

Chapter 16: The Team Flies Home

Chapter 17: The Start of the Project

Chapter 18: A Meeting with the Widow

Chapter 19: The Keys to the Tale

Chapter 20: A High-Stakes Meeting on the High Seas

Part 3: Day 3

Chapter 21: A Two-Day Drinking Spree

Chapter 22: The Logs of Life and Death

Chapter 23: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Part 4: Day 4

Chapter 24: The Cowboys Play Dominoes

Chapter 25: A Series of Political Murders

Chapter 26: A Visit with the Dean

Part 5: Day 7

Chapter 27: Bad News Is Good News

Chapter 28: Misery Does Acquaint Men

Chapter 29: A Terrible Chess Game

Chapter 30: An Invitation He Cannot Refuse

Chapter 31: The Devil Is Loose

Chapter 32: Lombardo Confronts His Boss

Chapter 33: The Director Is Directed

Part 6: Day 10

Chapter 34: Lombardo Makes a Promise

Chapter 35: Lombardo Talks to the New Boss

Chapter 36: Off to See the Wizard

Chapter 37: A Dance with the Devil

Chapter 38: John Gets the Green Light

Chapter 39: A Deadly Roadblock

Chapter 40: Tying Up Loose Ends

Chapter 41: The Awful Truth

Chapter 42: The Prodigal Son Comes Home

Chapter 43: g Away the Past, Arranging a New Future

Epilogue: The More Things Change…

Part 1: Day 1

Chapter 1: Victor Disappears

Victor Delgado left the University’s computer center a few minutes past one in the morning. He started his car and pulled out of his private parking spot. As he turned into the main boulevard of the University campus, a car parked in a side street started its engine and slowly pulled out of its parking space a few seconds after Victor’s car went past it.

The traffic was light in the streets of Monterrey at that hour, yet Victor drove slowly, carefully, just as he did everything else in his life. Victor was a methodical young man, and his training as a computer engineer perfectly suited his conscientious, careful manner.

The three men in the car following Victor’s were careful and patient, too. The driver of the car made sure that Victor was unaware that he was being followed; he used whatever other cars came along as shields and as cover.

When Victor turned into Figueroa Avenue, the man sitting in the enger’s seat of the car that was following Victor’s said, “This is it; cut him off.”

The car with the three men jumped forward in a burst of speed and the driver expertly maneuvered in front of Victor’s car and stopped. Victor tried to avoid hitting the car that had suddenly appeared in front of him, but even at the relatively slow speed at which he was driving, it was impossible: Victor’s car swerved, hit the left-rear side of the car in front of him and broke its back light.

Before he could get out of his car to inspect the damage, the three men jumped out of their car and ran toward Victor’s. Startled, Victor pushed a button to open

his window and apologize, but before the glass was halfway down, one of the men opened Victor’s car door, grabbed his arm, and dragged the young man out of the car.

Victor hardly had time to make out the three dark silhouettes grabbing at him before a blow to the back of his head made him lose consciousness.

Chapter 2: The Dead Young Man

Lombardo got out of the car slowly. The drawn look on his face, italicized by a furrowed brow and an ample frown, eloquently stated how badly he’d slept. His lack of sleep was not unusual. For the better part of his thirty some odd years as a cop he had rarely slept well. The reason was obvious to anyone who had known him during that time; he abused his body—keeping it awake at all hours by plying it with black coffee and cigarettes, allowing it to get bruised, battered, and beaten in countless violent arrests, fights, and car crashes. Then there were the scars from two gunshot wounds with their litany of aches and pains, which frequently kept him awake until the painkillers kicked in and allowed him a fitful rest.

The night before had been no exception. He had been asleep only two hours before his cell phone rang and woke him. The duty officer had called to tell him that an anonymous caller to the 060 number had reported a body by the railroad tracks.

“Why can’t people get killed at a decent hour?” he muttered as he stared at the corpse under the white sheet. “Say at noon or two in the afternoon.”

Lombardo slammed the car door shut and as he did, it squealed making an ugly metallic noise as if it were a wounded animal in agony. His old Ford Fairmont was falling apart, but in spite of his many requests, there was no sign his wreck of a car would be replaced. “Damn the Purchasing Department,” he said aloud.

He lit a Delicado and stood there, smoking his pungent, cheap cigarette— mumbling to himself—until he noticed that everyone was looking at him. “The usual gang of incompetents has already gathered,” he said stifling a yawn. He was referring, of course, to the agents from the Public Ministry, cops from the Municipal Police Force, and the sleepy reporters that were assigned to the “night watch.”

The agents from the Public Ministry, looking tough and mean in their black uniforms, black boots, and sunglasses, stared at him. Lombardo stared back and looked at the guns and automatic rifles the Public Ministry agents held at the ready. “Always out in force after the fact,” he growled.

He crossed the street and his black mackintosh flapped like the wings of a flightless bird. The only thing people criticized more than his bad smelling cigarettes, was the way he dressed. He always wore the same black suit and a raggedy burgundy-colored tie. The suit had been pressed so many times it shone like sharkskin.

The people standing inside the secured area pointedly avoided his eyes, but one of the younger cops walked over to Lombardo, smiling. He carried a thermos bottle and a plastic cup. “Would you like some coffee, Captain? It’s a chilly morning,” he said gingerly.

“Yes, thank you,” he said as the young cop poured the coffee. He took a sip and then walked over to the group that was standing around the corpse.

Although the crime scene had already been “secured” and yellow warning tape had been placed—going from a nearby telephone post to a tree and then to a couple of bushes—there were a lot of the people milling about inside of it. The majority were municipal cops who were untrained in even the most basic of forensic procedures. It was obvious that they had already trampled over what little evidence there was.

As he approached the group that was staring down at the forensic medics working on the corpse, one of the municipal cops turned, clicked his heels, and gave him a half-hearted salute. “Jefe,” said the saluting cop—the others just mumbled, “Buenos días.”

The cop that had clicked his heels, saluted again, and said he was Sergeant Pedroza of the Municipal Traffic Department. He began his report with, “Con la novedad de que recibimos.…” These old cops had a formulaic way of giving a report that had always irritated Lombardo. As the sergeant began to talk, Lombardo interrupted him and asked who had found or reported the body.

Sergeant Pedroza said that they had received an anonymous phone call at the 060 number. According to the emergency services people, the caller said that there was a body by the railroad tracks near the brewery and had hung up. He had arrived at the scene soon after. “We found some kids going through the pockets of the deceased but they ran away when they saw us,” said the traffic cop finishing his report.

Fat Gonzalez, possibly the laziest and most corrupt cop in the Investigations Department, was grinning at him and pointing to the corpse. “Won’t you have a look at what the morning brought, Captain Lombardo?” he said cackling like an old crone. “The Director must really like you; he assigns you to all the most interesting cases—burglaries, dead drunks on the street.”

“Yeah? What does that say about you, you fat pig? You’re here, too,” Lombardo mumbled.

For the last year or so, since the present Director had arrived, Lombardo had been assigned to all of the “easy” cases—the suicides, fatal traffic accidents, the persons who had asphyxiated because they left a gas heater on in a closed room, and so on. Things had started badly between the Director of the Agency and Lombardo. When the Director first arrived, he tried to woo Lombardo saying that he was glad to have someone as experienced as Lombardo to act as his personal confidant and counselor. Lombardo had responded that he didn’t like being wet nurse to anybody and that he was nobody’s lackey or “personal” counselor; that he was just a street cop and he liked it like that.

The Director had not taken Lombardo’s frankness kindly, to say the least, and said that Lombardo was too old for the tough, dangerous police work that involved multiple murders by the drug cartels, or using high-tech gadgetry such as cell phone trackers. He threw a case file at Lombardo and said that the last time Lombardo had investigated a smuggling operation it was one coming the other way: an airplane that had crashed with a load of televisions and other smuggled electronics. It was true. It was twenty years ago that Lombardo had been part of a squad dedicated to fighting corruption in the Customs Inspection Services. In those days, illegal goods flowed from the United States into Mexico. People bought a television in a shop on the American side and paid the shop an extra fee to have it smuggled into Mexico.

How innocent those times seemed now. Smugglers spent a few days locked up while their lawyers bribed them out of jail, and the most dangerous criminals were bank robbers who used rusty .38 caliber guns to shoot at the policemen when and if they arrived on the scene.

Now the drug-crazed young killers of gangs like the Zetas would chop off the heads of a dozen rival gang or policemen and send pictures to their families. “These times are too violent for an old cop,” said the Director.

He looked down at the corpse that lay on the gravel by the railroad tracks, arms extended backwards, palms up. The head had been neatly severed by the train.

“Very little blood,” he said. “The man must have been dead when he was dumped here.”

Fat Gonzalez shrugged. “Probably a drunk, killed by other drunks.”

“Is that your professional opinion?” asked Lombardo derisively. Gonzalez had been brought over from the Municipal Police as “liaison” when the Director had been promoted from there to the Investigations Department of the Public Ministry. He had been the Director’s lackey there and he was his lackey in Investigations. His job was to snitch on any detective that “lost” evidence from a case—especially if that evidence was in the form a pack of $20 bills from a drug smuggler’s stash. Since Lombardo was never assigned to any “lucrative” cases, Gonzalez was never around, but lately he had shown up at the scene of the cases assigned to Lombardo. It was obvious that Gonzalez had been asked to gather enough proof of “professional incompetence” to warrant Lombardo’s dismissal.

“Where’s the head?” Lombardo asked the Fat Man and blew a large cloud of blue smoke into the cold morning air.

“Over there,” said Fat Gonzalez, nodding toward a couple of forensic medics that were squatting a dozen meters down the track.

“Who got here first, Gonzalez?”

“I did, Jefe,” said Sergeant Pedroza and clicked his heels again. “You see, sir, I was on my way to work at the station, when I, uh, I heard the call; they ordered us here in response to the 060. When I got here, I too thought it was a drunk, or something, and then. I, uh, I.…” The cop was obviously very nervous.

Lombardo looked at the sergeant. His face was ashen and he kept swallowing hard, probably trying to keep from throwing up. He was just a poor, dumb cop, about Lombardo’s age. His job did not usually involve the nasty business of finding mangled corpses on busy city streets. He was the kind they usually assign to traffic duty on busy street corners or to stand around during public spectacles and gatherings like football games. He was the kind of cop that ed the force 30 years ago when being a policeman was a safe job for an uneducated man. He had spent all of those years supplementing his meager pay with small bribes he took from drivers that committed some small traffic violation or drunks rounded up as they stumbled out of bars after the 2 a.m. closing time. There was a joke that the young cops, fresh from the Academy, said of these old cops: “The only cold, lifeless body he’s ever seen is his wife’s.”

A taxi stopped and the driver leaned out the window to ask, “Eh, what happened? Another dead narco?”

Lombardo said, “Please see to it the traffic keeps flowing, Sergeant Pedroza; don’t let them stop to gawk.”

“Si, Jefe,” said the cop as he clicked his heels and saluted. He was obviously relieved to get away from the corpse and to do what he was used to doing.

“Move along,” he said firmly to the taxi driver and he blew his whistle at him.

“Come on, Fatso,” Lombardo said to Gonzalez. “Let’s see what this charming young man looked like when he was alive.”

“How do you know he was a young man?” asked the fat cop. His greasy, black hair was combed back over the large head; the light of the early morning sun made his round, dark face shine like polished leather. Lombardo disliked him. He knew nothing of police work. He was just the Director’s lackey, keeping an eye out for “opportunities” to make a buck, taking the bribes himself so the Director would not be involved. If he had been a soldier in Lombardo’s company when Lombardo was a captain in the U.S. Army, he would have classified him as unfit for infantry duty and would have transferred him to a non-combat job, like a cook or a mail clerk.

“Didn’t you see his hands?” asked Lombardo, his words accompanied by little puffs of smoke from the Delicado that dangled from his lips. “They are the hands of a young man, a well-educated young man. No calluses, no scars or bruises. Also, he was well dressed. He was no ‘teporocho.’”

Lombardo used the street slang for the homeless alcoholics that died in the streets of the city by the dozens each year either from cirrhosis or exposure or simply from hunger.

“OK, so maybe he was not a drunk, but he must have been drinking to wander around at night and fall on the railroad tracks. Anyway, we’re turning him in as a no-name; he didn’t have any identification on him or it was stolen by some of the kids hanging around when the sergeant got here.”

Lombardo ignored the Fat Man’s attempt to sell him on the dead guy being just a drunk killed accidentally by the train—case closed. Lombardo could guess why the Fat Man was eager to get him to agree on that. The judges in the criminal courts were flooded with files of crimes that were pending resolution. Nearly six thousand murder cases had been reported the year before. In places like Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Juarez, or Tijuana it was not unusual to find 20 or 30 corpses on any given night.

The Investigations Department and the Public Ministry itself were “encouraged” to deliver cases for judgment that were practically solved and that the judge could declare closed, so the Fat Man and other snitches were sent on cases by the Director to see if a certain case was susceptible to being closed without much fuss.

“I don’t think there’s much to this case, eh?” insisted Gonzalez.

Lombardo’s silence irritated the Fat Man so he said, “The Director sounded pretty pissed off this morning when he called to say you were assigned to the investigation. So, what did you do? You didn’t refuse the little Christmas present again, did you? The one they say narcos sent over?”

They say. People always used that little formula to justify spreading rumors and innuendo. The latest one said the Gulf Cartel had sent a briefcase full of dollars to the Investigations Department of the Public Ministry and that the money had been spread around so the cops could go on Christmas vacation while the Cartel went about its business undisturbed.

Lombardo stopped, threw away the cigarette stub, and lit another Delicado.

“Did the kids take everything?” he asked the Fat Man.

“Huh? What kids?”

“You said there were some kids hanging around when the sergeant got here. Did they take anything?”

“What? From the corpse, you mean? How would I know? We didn’t want to touch anything until you arrived.”

“Look, you fat bastard. You told that poor, old cop to say that kids were rousting the guy. If you took anything, I mean any goddamned thing, money, a watch, anything, I will see to it you are found among the next batch of narco executions, you understand, you lazy, fat pig? Now go back there and see if there is something in his pockets that will help us identify the victim. Do you understand me?”

Fat Gonzalez wasn’t smiling anymore when he went back to “search” the corpse.

“I’m sure you’ll ‘find’ something,” Lombardo said. The PM agents looked at Lombardo with a smirk on their faces. “They’re thinking we’re going to mess this up just like we mess everything up,” he said to no one in particular, “and they are probably right.”

He walked over to the two young forensic medics that were preparing the container in which they were going to place the head.

“Good morning, boys,” he said.

They looked up and said, “Good morning, Captain.” They knew him from other cases and he vaguely ed them, too.

The two young forensic specialists seemed merely boys to him. They usually sent out newly hired people on these unimportant cases. They were probably trainees. There was no swarm from SEMEFO, the forensic services, on this one as there was when the bodies of dead cartel soldiers were found in some field. In those cases, the newspapers needed good photos of the “authorities in action.”

Whenever something especially heinous happened, all the politicians would show up at the scene of the crime to declare their will to fight the lawlessness. “Those responsible for these terrible deeds will be punished to the full extent of the law,” the Prosecutor would tell the press. “We will pursue this matter to the highest level, whoever may fall as a consequence,” the Governor would tell the press. But the press, and the public, and the Prosecutor, and the Governor would forget about it the next day when another brace of corpses was found in a field or in the desert. A week or two later, when an even more atrocious murder scene was discovered the same charade would be repeated.

Lombardo looked down at the bloody, muddy ball that had once been someone’s head. “The train didn’t kill him, did it?”

“No,” said one of the boys while placing a plastic bag over the head. “He wasn’t shot or stabbed either. There seem to be pieces of plastic around his neck so he might have been suffocated, or strangled, but there’s not much of his neck left for us to tell at this point,” said one of the boys.

“I lifted his shirt, Captain. His body looks like he was well worked over. There are plenty of bruises,” said the other boy.

“Did you guys get a chance to go over the area before that crowd over there trampled all over it?”

“Yes,” said the one who seemed the older of the two boys. “But there was nothing—no bullet cartridges, no blood, no cigarette butts, nothing. I think he was dumped from a car.”

“Any tire tracks, footprints?”

“Nope,” said the boys in unison.

“Hmm,” said Lombardo puffing at his cigarette and sipping the last of the coffee. He went back to the body and looked at the young man’s hands, turned palms up, like a baby sleeping on its stomach. There were no marks of his having been tied up. “It doesn’t make sense; too clean.” he said aloud.

He came back to where the boys were now putting the head in a container with blue ice bags.

“Too clean,” he said again.

“What’s that, Captain?” one of the boys asked.

“This was not a robbery and this is not the style of the cartels.”

“What makes you think it was not a robbery, Captain?” asked the other boy.

“Oh, I have a hunch,” he said and turned to the sound of the Fat Man’s approaching footsteps.

He was smiling again and waving a billfold, shaking it as if he was trying to dry it. “Look what I found in the bushes,” he cackled. “And I found his rings, and watch, and other stuff. They were in those bushes over there.”

“You’re a great cop, Fatso,” said Lombardo. “I knew you’d find the stuff if anybody could.”

He turned to the boys again. “How long do you think it will be before you send the body to the SEMEFO?”

“About an hour. We’ll be putting the body into the ambulance in a few minutes. The Public Ministry people are already writing up the report.”

“Mm, I guess they’re in a hurry to go get some breakfast,” said Lombardo dragging on his cigarette. “Tell Doctor Figueroa I’ll come by the University Hospital tomorrow.”

He had always trusted Dr. Figueroa, the Director of SEMEFO’s forensic services. The good doctor would tell him all the things that the body had revealed about how it met its violent death. Dr. Figueroa and his staff were a small island of honesty in a sea of official corruption.

“I am evidence of the resiliency of the Mexican people,” he told Lombardo once. “No matter how corrupt the political system, how brutal the drug wars get, how much larceny, mayhem, natural disasters, economic crisis, are thrown upon us, we bend and sway but never break as a country.”

“I don’t know, Doctor,” Lombardo had responded. “There is just so much people can take. Look at the revolutions in , here in Mexico, and Russia; look at how tough the Jews have gotten and how tough the Arabs are getting. You can push people just so far.”

“Send me a copy of your report, boys,” Lombardo said to the young forensic doctors and he went back to his lamentable heap of a car.

Chapter 3: The Three Foreigners and the Car

The three men arrived early in the morning at the garage where they had been instructed to go. They honked just one time, and the garage door opened. Two men in dirty overalls were waiting inside.

The men in the car got out; the driver threw the keys at one of the men in overalls and said, “Límpialo bien y luego deshazte de él.” The man’s Spanish

had a slight foreign accent, but the orders were clear: clean it up and then get rid of it.

A second man, a black man, threw another set of keys at them. “Y este también. Está en la Presa de la Boca,” he said indicating that another car, that was somewhere near a reservoir, had to be gotten rid of, too.

The three foreigners went out the back door, which they closed gently. The sound of a car’s motor told the men inside the garage that the three foreigners were now gone.

The first thing the two men in overalls did was take out the back seat. They stripped the blood-soaked cover and stuffing from the seat’s frame and one of them took them outside to burn. The other man got some rags and bottles of naphtha.

When the other man came back, they both went over every surface of the car, cleaning conscientiously, carefully wiping away any possible trace of fingerprints or palm prints. Then they vacuumed it and washed the tires and wheel wells.

After they were satisfied that the car was clean, they proceeded to dismantle it, expertly taking care not to damage the parts because they would be worth a good amount of money in the used car parts market, where the parts would disappear —after having lost their provenance—into the dozen of junk yards that bordered the northern suburbs of the city.

Anything with a serial number or any sort of identification was put into a large

wooden box that would be given to the man that came and carted things off to be sold as scrap iron. The identification numbers would disappear under the thousand degree electric arc of a smelting plant.

The work took most of the morning. Early that afternoon a truck rumbled up to the garage. Two men got out of the truck and after greeting the two men in the garage proceeded to load the car parts into the closed back of the two ton truck.

The two men from the garage sat in an old car seat drinking beers and watching the two men load the truck.

After the loading was done, the driver of the truck said, “We will be back for the rest tomorrow.”

“No,” said one of the men from the garage. “You have to take it away today.”

The driver of the truck shrugged. “OK, I’ll be back for it later, then. This old bitch can only carry so much, you know” he said and got into the truck. One of the men in the garage used a remote control to open the garage door and the truck rolled away.

After closing the door, the two men continued to drink beer in the quiet of the garage until they fell asleep. The only sound disturbing the deep silence now was the snoring of the two men.

In the middle of the chop shop, as if it were the skeleton of a horse that had died

in the desert, the chassis of the dismantled car lay stark, naked, stripped of all usefulness, as it waited for the truck that would take it to its final resting place, the smelter’s furnace.

While the garage men slept, the three men who had brought them the car to be dismantled checked out of their hotel and left in another rented car. Their first rented car, the one that had been dismantled, would later be reported as missing by the car rental company, and upon trying to the gentleman who had rented it, they would discover that the credit card that had been used to rent the car was created for a man who died in a small town in the state of Oregon some years ago.

On their way to the airport, the three men stopped to have a late lunch at a roadside restaurant.

They ate in silence until the black man said, “You should have let me drive the guy’s car to that garage. I don’t trust those two fools to go get it right away.”

“It was too risky to let either one of you drive it back,” said the oldest of the three.

“It’s just as risky relying on those two clowns,” insisted the black man.

“Look,” said the older man who, if anybody was watching them, would have been easily identified as the leader of the three, “if a cop had stopped you it would have been hard to explain what you were doing with the car and if he got suspicious, who knows what would have happened.”

“A cop might also stop one of those guys when he drives it back.”

“Maybe so, but he has a better chance of getting away with it. He can speak the lingo, he knows the local customs and how to bribe these guys, and even if they run him in, he won’t know a thing. He can just say he stole it.”

Again there was silence. But a few minutes later, the black man spoke up again, “I still say we should have…”

“Shut the hell up,” said the leader angrily, “what’s done is done.”

Other people in the restaurant turned to look their way and the leader lowered his head. The last thing he wanted was to be ed by the other patrons.

Chapter 4: The Governor Gets a Phone Call and Makes a Phone Call

At ten in the morning that same day, Governor Platón Sanchez Reyes, Constitutional Governor of Nuevo León, had been dictating orders to his personal assistant when his secretary buzzed his telephone: Dr. Filiberto Herrera, Dean of the State University, was calling.

“Put him through,” said the Governor.

“Governor Sanchez, good morning,” said the Dean.

“Dean Herrera, good morning.”

“Governor, I hate to bother you with bad news so early in the day, uh, but, uh, one of our employees, a young man named Victor Delgado, was found dead by, uh…it seems he was, uh, found dead on the street, and, uh, I believe it was near or on the portion of railroad tracks that go by Cervecería del Norte.”

“Hmm, yes, terrible news. Well, Dean Herrera, I am very sorry to hear that one of your employees has died but I don’t see…”

“The reason I called, Governor, is that Victor, the young man who died, was helping us in our, uh, ‘project.’”

The Governor paused before he spoke. “And, you think that maybe…”

“I don’t know. That is why I am calling. I thought maybe you…”

“No, I don’t get reports from the Public Ministry or the Secretary of the Interior until noon.”

“Also, I was wondering if you might, uh, talk to your press people and have them, I mean the media, keep this a bit quiet, until we find out more, you know.”

“Yes, yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll tell my press secretary to call people and say that, uh, well, we would like, you know, to not make things worse for the family making a big thing or showing pictures or, uh, you know, something of that nature.”

“Yes, that would really help, Governor.”

“I’ll also make some phone calls to the people at the Prosecutor’s office to see if they know anything,” said the Governor.

“Yes, yes, that would be helpful, too.”

“Meanwhile,” said the Governor forcefully, “you’d better get your people ready for this. The media or the people from the Investigations Department might come around, you know, to do their job, investigate what happened, and so on. Tell your people to keep a low profile, to just do the minimum, don’t get involved. Let’s find out first what this means. It could have been just an accident but we should make sure.”

“OK, I’ll do that,” said the Dean,” I’ll call Dr. Delgado, the head of the Computer Center first.”

“Keep me informed if anything comes up and I’ll let you know if I hear anything that might be of interest to you, OK?”

“Yes, Governor,” said the Dean.

“Goodbye, then.”

“Goodbye, Governor.”

As soon as the Governor hung up, he buzzed his personal assistant, “I want to talk to the Prosecutor, the Director of Investigations, and the Director of the Public Ministry Agency. I don’t want them on the phone, I want them in my office as soon as possible.”

“You have several appointments this morning and you are to go to…”

“Fine, but find me times when I can see them today. The first person I want to see is the Director of Investigations, and tell my Press Secretary to come up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“OK, make the phone calls, but before you get started bring me my secure cell phone.”

“Yes, sir,” said the personal assistant jumping up from his chair.

The assistant took a cell phone that was recharging in its cradle and brought it to the Governor. He placed it on the Governor’s desk and quietly walked out of the office.

The Governor bit his lip and stared at the cell phone for a moment before he picked it up and punched in a number. It took a few seconds for the call to go through. The cell phone he had called rang four times before it was answered.

“Why are you calling?” said a gruff voice.

“There’s been an incident that I thought you should know about.”

“Yes?”

“Uh, a young man, from the University, who was helping us on the project, was, uh, found dead this morning.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I just thought that, since this is so sensitive, that, you should…”

“So, they found a man dead who was helping us on the project?” asked the voice.

“Yes, and…”

“What are the circumstances? How did he die?”

“I don’t know; I, uh, just thought I would let you know, because…”

“Look, don’t call me with half-assed information. When you have all the facts, and, if they are important, I mean, important to the project, let me know; otherwise, don’t call me. I am in the middle of something here.”

“Uh, yes, OK, I will find out more and, uh, if there is something you should know…”

The Governor heard a click. The other phone had ended the call.

His desk phone buzzed and his secretary said, “The Press Secretary is here, sir.”

“Right, tell him to come in.”

Chapter 5: A Meeting at the University

As Lombardo drove into the huge parking lot of the State University, he

ed the times he had spent there in the sixties—the student movements, the strikes, the fight against the goons the University hired to break up the student strikes.

His generation had been different from these sissies who only thought about getting an MBA, which was a port to an easy, high-paying job in one of the many corporations that sprung up in Monterrey after the Second World War.

After hundreds of students were gunned down by the paramilitary groups and the army in Mexico City in 1968, and the murder of leftist leaders of the “Tierra y Libertad” commune in Monterrey, things had gotten ugly for the group of leftist students to which Lombardo had belonged.

Many ed the infamous 23 of September League and had responded to the government’s repression by trying to kidnap government leaders and industrialists, among them the most powerful businessman in Monterrey, don Everardo García Salinas. The botched kidnapping had ended with the murder of the old man.

Lombardo’s participation in the urban guerilla movement had abruptly ended when his cell, which was part of the 23 of September League, had been cornered in one of its safe houses—which was in the infamous Condominios Constitución housing project—right in the center of midtown Monterrey. Lombardo had avoided the massacre and the arrest of those who survived because he had been out buying groceries and drinks. He had fled, hiding in friends’ homes for weeks, until he had been smuggled to safety in the U.S.

ing the legendary Mexican thief who had said that if you want to hide something from somebody you should place it in the most visible place, he had hidden from the police in a house in front of the Police Department; then he had

fled to the only place he thought they would never think of looking for him: the U.S. Army.

It was easy enough. He bribed a small-town mayor to give him a fake birth certificate with a false name that recalled that of a mysterious Irishman who has a statue dedicated to him inside the Column of Independence, a monument which is sacred to Mexicans. With those false papers he became Guillermo Lombardo. He once remarked that he relished the idea of sharing a name with a man who had been accused of sorcery, of conspiring with a band of Mexican natives and black slaves against the government, and of having seduced the wife of the Viceroy of Mexico.

“I’ve almost forgotten what my real name is,” he whispered as he got out of the car.

He looked around as if embarrassed that someone might have heard him but there was no one in the parking lot. He reached around to his shoulder and massaged the bruise caused by his gun holster’s straps as they rubbed against the spot where a large scar ran along his clavicle. Then he scratched the ones that peppered the small of his back.

“Damned scars,” he said reaching around to scratch his back with the little wooden hand he kept in the car.

Lombardo always kept one of those around because since he had come back from Viet Nam, itching had been a part of his waking life. He attributed his sensitive skin to Agent Orange, the defoliating chemical the U.S. had used there, but he had refused to go to a Veteran’s Hospital for treatment when a doctor suggested it.

As he scratched, he ed that he had gone straight to the recruiting office in the old District Court House building after he bought a residency card from a forger in Laredo, Texas. The Army had around 400,000 men in Viet Nam at the time and they were desperately drafting and g up anyone with a heartbeat. They would promise you anything: schooling; the “buddy system,” which said you would be assigned to the same unit as a friend; generous benefits after you had done your hitch. Of course, they were all lies or half truths. But Lombardo had not cared. He did so well in his exams that after basic training, he was sent to O.C.S., the Officer Candidate School. Army lieutenants and second lieutenants were being killed by the bushel so the Army had waived the required college degree as a way of mass producing squad leaders from draftees, similarly to what they had done during World War II. All you had to do was get a score of 110 or more in your Military IQ test and you were sent to O.C.S. to become a “90 day wonder.” Lombardo had scored well above that.

He had done two tours in Viet Nam, and then stayed in the Army, having nowhere else to go. But, he got tired of the banal postings in Korea, , and even Panama, so after 10 years he had quit, leaving the service with the rank of a Captain. On a whim, he had gone back to Mexico, traveled around and had liked Guadalajara so much he decided to stay there.

His only “work experience” being the Army, he did the only thing a man with extensive familiarity with guns and violence could do—he ed the police force. At that moment, his life had come around full circle. He became part of that which twenty years before had tried to kill him.

“So now I’m a damned cop,” he said as he lit yet another Delicado.

Lombardo turned to look at the car that was racing toward him. It was one of the Ministerial Police’s white cruisers with a small, mobile turret flashing on top.

As it slid to a stop in front of him, through the cloud of dust he saw the Fat Gonzalez’ face grinning at him.

The Fat Man opened his window and said, “The Director ordered us to accompany you in case you needed some help.”

“You mean to see what I am up to so you can report back to him,” said Lombardo. But he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Come on, then.”

The Fat Man jumped out of the car and followed him, waddling as fast as he could in order to keep up. “Where are we going?”

“To see the victim’s boss,” said Lombardo.

“How do you know his boss is here?” asked Fat Gonzalez waving his arm toward the University’s Computing Center.

“You are not only a lousy cop you are a lousy thief. If you had not been so busy trying to steal the dead man’s money, you would have noticed an identification card that said he was a University employee, and a security card which gave him access to the Computer Center.”

“Oh, I noticed them but they were of no value to me,” laughed the Fat Man. “What would I do with them? Go in there and steel a computer?”

Gonzalez was sweating by the time they reached the reception desk of the Computer Center. “But I mean, how do you know his boss is here?”

Lombardo dropped the cigarette stub on the floor and stepped on it before going in, “The old-fashioned way—I called.”

At the reception desk he asked the girl to announce him to the Center’s Director, Dr. Fernando Delgado.

“Go right up,” said the girl, “they are expecting you. It is the first door on the right.”

As he and Gonzalez went up the winding staircase, Lombardo said to the Fat Man, “Notice she used the word ‘they.’ Someone has told Dr. Delgado about the murder and he has called the University lawyers, I bet. It would be interesting to know who called him, Gonzalez. The newspaper guys were still taking notes and hadn’t been told who he was when I left the scene of the crime. At this point, only you and I—theoretically at least—know that he was a University employee.” Lombardo laughed, “You fat bastard! Snitching is the only thing you’re quick at; you called the Director, the Director called the Dean, the Dean called his Computer Center Director: ‘Someone killed one of your guys and they are coming to ask you about it.’”

He opened the door and went into a large reception room. There were people sitting about as if waiting to see Dr. Delgado but the girl at a desk that stood by two large doors got up and while opening the doors said, “Please come in; they are expecting you.”

Lombardo smiled. He wouldn’t be catching anyone by surprise here.

Dr. Delgado, or the man one would assume was Dr. Delgado because he was standing behind a large, glass-topped desk, was short and mustachioed; his very black hair was combed to one side, and some of the hairs on the back of his head stood straight up, giving him a boyish look.

Two men in dark suits stood by the chairs that were in front of the desk. Both were tall, wore glasses and bright, silk ties. From their stern demeanor one could safely assume they were lawyers.

“Ah, the gentlemen from the police,” said Dr. Delgado, “I am Francisco Delgado. These two gentlemen are from the University’s Legal Department. We have been discussing this very tragic, uh, event.”

Lombardo advanced to shake the doctor’s hand and just nodded to the lawyers. “I am Captain Guillermo Lombardo, Judicial Police, Investigations Department.”

“Ah,” said the Doctor smiling. “Any relation to the illustrious Lombardo Toledano?” he asked referring to the man who was a great teacher, politician, and labor leader.

“No,” said Lombardo curtly.

“Please sit over here,” said Dr. Delgado, pointing to a couch on the other side of the large office.

Lombardo’s thin body seemed to disappear into the soft cushions of the couch. His dark gray suit, soft as well as shiny from so many ironings, seemed empty, as if someone had laid it on the couch for its owner to put on. The Fat Man, on the other hand, dressed in the dark brown khaki uniform of a traffic cop, looked like a ball of chocolate ice cream sitting on top of the vanilla-colored cushions.

The two lawyers sat, one on each side of the Doctor, as if they were guard dogs protecting their owner.

“I am here to ask a few questions about your employee,” said Lombardo. He was not a man used to the formalities so common in conversations in Mexico.

“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor lowering his head. “A very unfortunate circumstance.”

“How did you find out about it, Doctor?” Lombardo asked.

Dr. Delgado, obviously embarrassed by the question, looked down at the floor as if searching for an answer there, but before he could find one, the lawyer-guard dog to his right barked, “We were notified, of course, since the unfortunate victim was a member of our staff.” That told Lombardo everything even though the lawyer had disclosed nothing.

“Do you have any idea who might have done this, Doctor? Any problems, enemies, people who did not like him or anything like that?”

“No, no, of course not. He was a very well-liked member of our staff. He was very diligent in his work; he was very diligent indeed. This is a great tragedy.” The Doctor’s words seemed rehearsed. The lawyers had probably advised him to remain very uncommitted in his comments. Express regret, but stay aloof from the circumstances, was probably the advice he had gotten.

Lombardo took out a small notebook from the inner pocket of his coat. He pretended to read something in it. He often used this trick to make people think that his questions were really routine, nothing to worry about.

“His name was, uh, Victor Delgado,” said Lombardo casually. “Was he related to you, Doctor?”

Lombardo saw the Doctor glance briefly at one of the lawyers, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Yes, yes, he was my cousin.”

“Is it normal to hire relatives here at the University?” asked Lombardo with a tone that might have been mistaken for harmless curiosity.

“It is not normal or abnormal,” said one of the lawyers.

“How does that relate to the investigation?” asked the other.

Lombardo ignored the question. “What was his job here, Doctor?”

“He was in charge of the Systems Management Department,” he answered.

Lombardo wrote a note into his little notebook. He wrote slowly, deliberately. The Doctor fidgeted as if unnerved by the silence. The two lawyers looked at each other.

Finally Lombardo spoke again, “What does that mean, Doctor, uh, systems management?”

Before the Doctor could answer, the lawyer on his right said, “We can prepare a brief with the answers to all of your questions if you’d like, Captain.”

Lombardo looked at the lawyer with the same stare that had made seasoned sergeants cringe in the Army and said slowly, “I’d rather hear it from the Doctor.”

Turning to the lawyer, the Doctor said, “It’s all right. I will explain to the captain what Victor did here in the Department.” He turned to Lombardo and his face showed genuine grief.

“Victor was a very good systems engineer,” he began. “His job was to maintain

all of the computing equipment and the University’s network in good running order, as it were.” He paused and sighed. “To do this, of course, he had other engineers on his staff and software, computer programs that helped him monitor the health of the University’s computing resources. There were other duties as well. He and his staff were in charge of running the many programs that keep information flowing in our campus and in all the University’s campuses for that matter.” He stopped again briefly. “It is a complicated and difficult job, which he did very well. We will miss him professionally as well as personally. His death represents a great loss, a great loss.”

Dr. Delgado lowered his head and took off his glasses.

“So, this business of running all of the University’s computers—that meant he had access to a lot of information, probably some of it very sensitive—is that correct?” asked Lombardo.

“Of course!” answered the Doctor vehemently. “It’s the nature of the job. Our computers handle everything from payrolls to grades for individual students. There are research papers, teacher evaluations—I could go on all day.”

One of the lawyers added, “But, he was not the only person to have access to that information.”

“I suppose you had anticipated this line of questioning,” said Lombardo to the lawyer.

“That’s our job,” said the other lawyer. “We wouldn’t want people to assume that Victor Delgado’s murder was somehow connected to the confidential

information he had handled here.”

“In which case the University would be liable, am I correct?” asked Lombardo, but the lawyers said nothing.

“Hmm,” said Lombardo who pretended to write that down as well. “Who is in charge of security for this part of the campus? I mean security for the buildings and grounds.”

“The University’s Security Department handles all security,” said the lawyer to the Doctor’s left.

“Can you call them and tell them to send over the person who was on duty last night?” asked Lombardo. “I mean the staff officer, not the guards.”

“We thought you might want to talk to them so we called the Director of Security and his man is probably outside this office now,” said the lawyer to the Doctor’s right.

“You have a very efficient Legal Department, Doctor,” said Lombardo. He got up. It was useless to ask him anything further while the lawyers were present. He would try to see him at another time, without the guard dogs. “Thank you for your time, Doctor. I would like to see the security officer now.”

As they all moved toward the door, Lombardo turned and said to the lawyers, “I would appreciate it if you sent me a copy of Victor Delgado’s file. I assume the

University keeps personnel files on all of its employees.”

“Yes, but these are confidential and…” one of the lawyers started to say but Lombardo interrupted him.

“Of course you being a lawyer probably already know that in a homicide case I can subpoena anything that might constitute evidence or information relevant to the case.”

“Of course, of course,” said Doctor Delgado as if wishing to end any further discussion. “We will willingly cooperate with your investigation, Captain Lombardo.”

The other lawyer asked, “Why are you calling it homicide, Captain. Shouldn’t you wait for the Medical Examiner to…”

“Corpses don’t make it a habit of walking to the railroad tracks to wait for trains to sever their heads. The evidence where he was found tells me he was killed elsewhere and then dropped there. This was no suicide, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The lawyer opened the door. Another dark suit was standing outside, waiting. “This must be the security man,” said Lombardo.

“Again I must congratulate your Legal Department, Doctor Delgado. This visit was very well choreographed.”

He shook the Doctor’s hand and left Gonzalez to apologize for Lombardo’s rudeness.

Chapter 6: Clues in the Parking Lot

The security man, a tall fellow with a shirt collar that was so frayed that it was transparent in parts, identified himself as a Manager for the security services company that handled all security issues for the University.

Lombardo just nodded as he heard the man regurgitate the company’s spiel about being “an integrated security firm with several levels of service.” When the man made a pause Lombardo said to the Fat Man, “Gonzalez, you were pretty quiet in there. I thought you had fallen asleep.”

The Fat Man laughed and said, “I did. People don’t believe me when I tell them I can sleep with my eyes open.”

“Well, since you are so well rested, why don’t you go over to your car and call in. Ask them if the body was taken to the University’s morgue.”

Lombardo had been told by the forensic medics that that’s where it was going to be taken but with the Fat Man out of the way Lombardo could make a certain request of the Security Manager.

When they were outside, Lombardo lit a Delicado and said to the security man, “What I would like is for you to look through the recordings made by those cameras.” He pointed to the two white boxes perched above the Computer Center’s main entrance. “I would appreciate it if you could get me the bit that shows when Victor Delgado left the building.”

“Of course, Captain,” said the security man.

“Also,” said Lombardo while spitting out bits of tobacco that the unfiltered cigarette had deposited on his tongue, “any recordings that show people unconnected to the Computer Center—you know, suspicious characters.”

The security man looked at Lombardo as if trying to decide if this last was meant as a joke or sarcasm, but Lombardo was looking straight ahead with a serious look on his face.

“Yes, Captain—suspicious activity. I’ll order copies for you.”

Lombardo extended a hand; the security man mistook the gesture for a handshake until he saw that Lombardo was holding a calling card.

“Here is my phone number. Let me know when the copies are ready and I will send someone over to pick them up.”

“Don’t worry about that, Captain. I will have them delivered to you.”

Lombardo said good-bye and walked over to the car where the Fat Man was busily talking on the radio.

“Let’s go, Gonzalez. Stop snitching to your boss because we have another stop to make,” he said loudly to the Fat Man so the Director could hear over the radio.

As Lombardo walked toward his car, he saw that the security man was still standing there on the steps to the Computer Center, looking at his card, and talking into his phone. “Probably checking to see if he should do what I asked him,” Lombardo said. “Everyone’s a bureaucrat; they’re all afraid of losing their jobs.”

Gonzalez was huffing and puffing again as he tried to keep up with Lombardo. “Captain, that interview was something one could not describe even as routine. You were so tame with them, you put me to sleep.”

“Look, Gonzalez,” said Lombardo stopping suddenly in the middle of the parking lot, “these bureaucrats are not going to tell us anything they don’t want us to know. I’m sure your boss called to warn them I was coming so they knew beforehand what they were going to say. I would bet that they are probably relieved that my questioning was very brief. Everybody is happy, you see?”

“No, I don’t see,” said Gonzalez, “but I’m glad that there was nothing much to report to the Director. No one got upset, no feathers ruffled, eh? I think I’ll go have lunch now and then have a nap at home and then I’ll go to the station sometime in the late afternoon.”

He whistled to his driver and the white cruiser rushed to pick him up.

“Where are you going now?” asked the Fat Man.

“I thought I would go down to the Public Ministry and read the report your buddies wrote. Don’t you want to come along?”

“Listen, Lombardo,” he said, “I know you’re just lying to hide what you are really going to do. You consider yourself a better man than me but as you can see I am more honest than you. I could have said I had some urgent business back at the Department but I told you I was going home for lunch,” said Gonzalez. “I am not a shining example of honesty, Lombardo, but at least I don’t mistrust the whole world.”

Lombardo shrugged. “It’s in my nature, said the scorpion when he stung the poor frog in the middle of the pond.”

The Fat Man shook his head, got in his car, and drove away.

Lombardo smiled and said, “The fat, lazy bastard has a heart.”

On his way to his rambling wreck of a car, Lombardo saw an old man sweeping the gutter of the parking lot’s sidewalk. Lombardo looked at the pile of rubbish the old man had collected and was about to scoop up with a makeshift scoop cut from an oil can. There were a lot of cigarette butts among the trash—some of them unusual.

“Señor,” he said to the old man, “Buenos días.”

The old man turned—his mouth opened and his eyes widened as if startled that someone would speak to him.

“The students smoke a lot, eh?” said Lombardo nodding toward the pile of trash that held a large number of cigarette butts. What had attracted Lombardo’s attention were the long, thin cigarette filters with a gold band. He had seen those before, somewhere, although he couldn’t exactly where.

The old man smiled and agreed, “Oh, yes, they smoke a lot. That’s all they do when they sit in the cars out here.”

“And they like to smoke the expensive kind,” said Lombardo while hunkering down to look at the cigarette butts.

The old man shrugged. He probably did not know a cheap cigarette from an expensive one, as these obviously were. “English,” said Lombardo to himself.

“Pardon me,” he said to the old man as he started to pick some of the cigarette butts up by the tobacco end and putting them into his clean handkerchief.

He asked the old man where the cigarette butts had come from and the old man pointed to a spot in the parking lot a few car spaces away.

He asked him if he swept the parking lot every day. He said he did.

“Were there a lot of these on the ground yesterday?”

“No, there were not. I swept the lot clean yesterday morning, too. I sweep it every day. That’s my job.”

Lombardo thanked the old man and went to the place the old man had pointed out. Lombardo stood on the sidewalk and looked down at the space between the two white lines. It was clean, freshly swept, as the old man had said. There was nothing unusual about the spot nor was it any different from the hundreds of other spots in the parking lot, but Lombardo stood staring down at it as if he had seen something.

He turned to look at the Computer Center building—the entrance was plainly visible from the spot. He moved to stand at the place where a driver might have sat if a car had backed up into the parking space. Then, he looked down: “If the man who had smoked the English cigarettes had been sitting in a car about here,” he whispered, “then he would have thrown down his cigarette butts about there.” Lombardo hunkered down and looked into the loose gravel of the parking lot floor.

Lombardo had only two friends. He met with them occasionally in a bar and sometimes during those long bouts of drinking he talked about his wartime experiences. He said that war had changed how his senses reacted to things. He often said that he had survived the many patrols he had been on because he would come to a spot in the jungle and something, a broken twig, the unusual stillness, the too obvious normalcy, had told him the enemy was there, waiting in

ambush.

Now, like a hunting dog that stiffens to point, he stood motionless looking down. He trembled a bit as if a slight chill had cursed through his body. He could feel the danger. His senses told him that someone had been here waiting in ambush.

The wind kicked up and gray clouds rushed overhead. Lombardo put his hands into his overcoat’s pockets. A northerner was blowing in—his scarred shoulder told him so.

Chapter 7: Lombardo Visits a Laboratory

Everything was white—the floor, the walls, the counters, the machines, the stools. Everything was clean, spotless, and immaculate. One could have expected the smell of formaldehyde or antiseptic but even the air was neutral, as if it too had been scoured clean.

It was lunchtime so everyone had gone, but the person he was looking for was still sitting on a properly white stool at the far end of the laboratory in a space enclosed by glass walls. His white lab coat hung down nearly to the floor in a perfectly unwrinkled line. The only color on him, and in the entire place, was the light blue of his shirt’s cuffs and collar, and the light brown of his hair. His face was as pale as the counter on which sat the large, bulky microscope into which he was peering.

Lombardo stood by the glass pane for a moment and then, while tapping on it, said the man’s name: “Casimiro.”

“Ah, Captain Lombardo,” said Casimiro without looking up, his voice muffled by the partition. “Your cigarette scorched voice is unmistakable. To what do I owe this disagreeable visit?”

“I need you to look at these,” said Lombardo holding up his handkerchief.

Casimiro pulled his head away from the microscope and stared at the handkerchief in Lombardo’s hand. He got up and came through the pressurized door into the corridor. Without a word, he stopped in front of Lombardo and took a brief look at what Lombardo was holding.

“In my expert opinion, they are cigarette butts,” he said dryly.

Lombardo ignored the sarcasm. “Casimiro, I need to know who has been smoking them.”

“Obviously not you, my friend. You only smoke the best.”

“Do I need to remind you…?”

“No, you don’t need to remind me. I know I still owe you. Leave them and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

Casimiro had often told Lombardo that in his highly disciplined life, he only had one bad habit—he liked to gamble. On Saturday afternoons, as the football games were starting in Mexico, he would arrive at the Caliente betting parlor on Garza Sada Avenue, impeccably dressed in a blue blazer, gold and blue stripped silk tie, and gray tros. He would stay there, sipping whiskey and sodas, eating very little or nothing at all, and betting heavily on every single game. During the American football season, he would do the same thing on Sundays.

As he had itted to Lombardo, he won and lost small fortunes each weekend.

During a particularly bad losing streak, Casimiro had not gone to the Caliente betting parlor but rather to independent bookies and had bet large sums on the horse races in Tijuana in an effort to recover from his losing streak. He had gotten into an even deeper hole.

When the bookie’s bill collectors had come looking for him, Lombardo had called on some of the thugs that owed him favors to get them to back off. Casimiro had paid off his debt to the bookies but he was grateful to Lombardo for having avoided the beating Casimiro would have surely gotten.

When Casimiro offered him half the money he had won in a football pool, Lombardo refused it and said that he only wanted three favors in return. He always put a number on the amount of favors he asked of someone because he believed that an open-ended obligation was comparable to blackmail or extortion.

Lombardo handed Casimiro the handkerchief.

“Where do they come from?” asked Casimiro.

“Casimiro, don’t tell anyone you are doing this for me, OK? In fact, don’t tell anyone you are doing this, period.”

“Of course not. I would be fired if I did.”

“I’m not worried about your boss, I’m worried about the floosies you hang around with,” said Lombardo dryly.

Casimiro laughed. “But seriously,” Lombardo continued, “I have a feeling that if the thugs who smoked these found out what you are doing for me, it might do you worse harm than getting you fired.”

“Hmm, it’s that bad, huh?”

“Yeah, because if my hunch is right the heavies that left those around wouldn’t like me to know what you’re going to tell me, you see? And they are pretty dangerous folk.”

Casimiro looked at Lombardo. The Captain was not a man to warn you about inconsequential things or imagined threats.

“OK,” Casimiro said quietly.

“Let me know when you have something. Don’t use voice on your cell phone and don’t leave voice messages on my cell phone. Send a text message saying my laundry is ready. Got it?”

“Your laundry is ready, right,” repeated Casimiro. “By the way, why didn’t you take this to your people in the forensic lab?”

“I want to know right away who I am dealing with; the forensics people have a lot of other cases; I would just get put in the back of the line because I haven’t saved any one of them from thugs, you see?”

“I’m beginning to think I should have taken the beating.”

“Aw, that would have spoiled your beauty, Casimiro.”

“I would’ve recovered, which is something I can’t say about our ‘friendship,’” said Casimiro. “By the way, how old are these things and where did you get them?”

“Whatever’s on them can’t be more than a day old. There’ll be a lot of dust and stuff on them because they were on the ground, in a parking lot.”

“Hmm, properly contaminated with all sorts of junk from cars, I suppose.”

“You tell me, Casimiro. I have to go now. Let me know as soon as you’ve got something.”

Lombardo turned around and left the laboratory.

“Yes, you are welcome, Captain,” shouted Casimiro at the retreating Lombardo who did not go out the front of the building but rather through the back door.

There was a small parking lot for the laboratory’s personnel in the back of the building that opened onto a side street.

Like a lot of the streets in the Obispado section of Monterrey, the little side street was steep and narrow. During the thirties, forties, and fifties, this section of the city had been the place to build a mansion—if you were rich and wanted to be in high society. In those days, there were three things that were indispensable if you wanted to be part of Monterrey’s elite: a mansion in the Obispado, a hip in the Country Club, and a hip in the Casino.

The Casino was still an exclusive place for the wealthier classes, although it was now mostly where the young and rich went to get drunk during the afternoon “soirés” or for “quinceañeras,” the coming-out parties for 15-year-old girls. The Country Club was, well, the Country Club where, if you could find someone to sell you a hip, it cost around three hundred thousand dollars just to . But in of places where to live, the very rich had created other, more exclusive sections in the farthest corners of the city. The growing insecurity and appalling rate of kidnappings had driven them to gated communities with homes protected by security people hired in the United States or Europe. Now, most of the mansions in the Obispado, which had been built during the time when the rich could live in a house surrounded by huge lawns and open spaces that looked like private forest reserves, were now abandoned or had been turned into offices

for computer-related businesses, or clinics, or worse, insurance companies.

Only those very stubborn or old-fashioned, or those whose fortunes had dwindled to the point that they were of no interest to kidnappers, had stayed. Their mansions, like old elephants walking to their graveyard, slowly slipped into that state of decay from which they would not or could not be recovered. One by one, after their owners died, they were being razed and replaced by yet another clinic, or a convenience store, or just simply a parking lot.

Lombardo reached the street where he had left his car. As he opened the door, he noticed it had a flat tire. “Damn!” he said as he slammed the door shut. He was forced to go back down the street to Hidalgo Avenue to hail a cab. As the cab started off, he ed he had not locked the car so he said aloud, “I hope someone steals the damned thing.”

“What’s that, sir?” asked the cab driver.

“Nothing, nothing—just talking to myself.”

Lombardo looked at his watch; it was one thirty in the afternoon. He might as well as go home and have something to eat, and like the Fat Man, have a little nap.

Chapter 8: A Home Like a Hole in the Ground

Lombardo was glad to be home. He liked the quiet, cool darkness of the house.

They had called him very early to inform him of the body that had been found so he had not slept much. The nap he would have after eating something would be welcomed.

As he took off his coat and unholstered his gun, he stared at the photographs on the wall. There were still many things in the house that were reminders of a time when it had been less quiet and much more full of life. In the small living room there were pictures of the boys and of his former wife; some had been taken when they had gone on a skiing holiday, others in some beach resort when on summer vacation. Lined up on another wall were the school photos, one for each year his children had been in primary and secondary school. He stared at them longingly. It was almost like seeing them grow up again.

On the wall opposite the one with the vacation photos there were formal studio portraits of Lombardo and of his former wife, and one that had been taken on their wedding day. A young man, dressed in a tuxedo and black tie, with a thin beard and long hair stood by a beautiful, dark-haired girl dressed in white. He often looked at the picture and wondered aloud, “What happened to those two people? Where did they go?”

He went to the fridge and got a beer; he opened a can of sardines and got a couple of packets of crackers. He doled out a dozen of the delicious Spanish olives stuffed with peppery pimento and sat on his easy chair. He turned on the TV to watch to the news.

There was nothing in the newscast about the dead man. If the murder was not reported in the afternoon editions of the newspapers or the evening news, that meant that someone had managed to suppress it. That was more than likely. The University and the Dean were powerful entities in the community and from the way the interview with the Director of the Computer Center had gone, it seemed they were not eager for the story to be treated as a big news item.

Lombardo felt sleepy when he finished his lunch. He was too tired to go to the office and face the Investigations Department’s Director’s questions about the investigation. Most likely Gonzalez would hurry there in the late afternoon to give him a full of the interview with Dr. Delgado anyway.

Lombardo went upstairs to his bedroom. As he undressed, he looked out the window. The street was quiet, peaceful under the grayish light of the autumn afternoon.

Lombardo’s little, three-bedroom house was in the southeastern part of Monterrey. Most of the houses in this area had been built during the eighties. The walls were made of the cheapest, thinnest cinder blocks and the rooms were tiny. Originally they had been marketed to young, newlywed couples but now most were occupied by retired people or low-income families who, in spite of the number of children or family , could not afford anything larger.

All of the cars parked in the street (the houses were built in the smallest piece of land allowed by law and therefore did not have space for a garage), were used, ten-year-old models—not only because they were cheap to buy but because the owners avoided paying the yearly “car ownership” tax. “Stupid morons,” said Lombardo to himself when he thought about the bureaucrats that thought up the damned tax that encouraged people to keep old, smog-producing heaps of junk and punished those who bought newer, more efficient cars.

When the Social Security System for the state’s bureaucrats had offered him a zero interest loan to buy a bigger house, Lombardo refused it, because, he said “I like where I live.” He had explained that he liked the modest, unpretentious people that brought out chairs to sit on the sidewalk after dinner and who politely left you alone if they sensed that you wanted to go no farther than the customary “Buenas noches” when you ed them on the street. He said he

liked the fact that they were quiet folk who sent their uniformed children on foot to the near-by public school instead of rushing out in a stream of vans and SUVs as was the case in most upper–middle-class neighborhoods of the city.

But, most of all, he liked the tranquil rhythm of life of the neighborhood: father went to sleep early because he left at seven for the factory, mother had had a long day of housework (there was no morning swarm of maids coming to work in these homes) so she retired early, too, and the kids, well, the boys played football in the park and the girls gathered in the corner store to gossip about the boys. After dark they went home, had dinner, did their homework, and watched TV. When he saw these kids going by in the morning, with their khaki-colored uniforms and blue sweater, well-brushed hair, and well-pressed clothes, Lombardo would pretend to be reading the paper outside just to be able to say “Buenos días.” He liked these well-mannered kids; they reminded him of his own.

His two boys had once gone to school dressed like that, carrying huge backpacks full of books, and chatting with their friends. Now, one was a lawyer in Mexico City and the other, having something to do with computers, was living somewhere near San Francisco. “Don’t you ever call your sons?” Lupe, his friend, had once asked him. “Yes, yes, I call them often,” he had said—but the truth was, he never did.

Lombardo had bought his house as an “investment” when he was in the police force in Guadalajara. But the truth was that he had bought it to please his former wife who was from Monterrey and had always said she wanted to come back here to live. But, they had divorced and his wife remarried and, ironically, settled in Guadalajara. His boys had lived with their mother until Guillermo, the oldest one, went to Mexico City to study law, and Roberto, the younger one, went to get a graduate degree in Computer Science in Berkeley. He never saw them again.

After his divorce, he made the mistake of confiscating a truck full of smuggled goods that were under the protection of the General in charge of the 14th Military Region. That and the fiasco with the Governor’s daughter who had eloped with the drug lord had left Lombardo’s superiors with no other option but to force him to accept a promotion to Captain, which meant he would also be transferred out of Guadalajara. Given several options, he chose Monterrey for no other reason than the fact that he owned a house there.

Even with the promotion, his pay was a pittance, but he had acquired the house on fixed interest so the monthly payments were very low. He bought his food and sundry items at the store that was exclusively for the state’s bureaucrats. Everything there was heavily subsidized and his needs were few so he had no problem subsisting, and had even finished paying for the house.

He was, if not happy, at least at peace here. On hot days he could sit outside like his neighbors and drink a beer while his radio, tuned to the station that played music from the forties and fifties, played softly inside.

Lombardo was not a man of strict habits but rather one of small routines. Every time he came home, the place was cool, almost cold, and dark because he made sure that when he left, the blinds were closed and the curtains drawn.

As soon as he was inside, he would cross the small hallway in two steps and go into the living room-dining room area where he hung up his coat and his tired mackintosh on the door peg of the toilet that was under the stairs. He always took off the holster with his heavy .45 automatic and hung it on the second peg. He was fond of that old firearm; it was the only thing he had kept from his days in the Army.

He would then fling his tie onto the sofa in the living room and go into the

kitchenette, which was just a space with a stove, a sink, the fridge, and a few cabinets, divided from the living-dining room by a small breakfast bar. He would open the fridge’s door, which diluted the darkness with its soft, yellow light, and would take a beer from the shelf on the door.

His meals were simple and usually involved no preparation. Although he liked to cook, and was very good at it, fatigue, lack of time, and the fact that he always ate alone, had reduced the content of most of his meals to some dry, hard Spanish sausage and bread, or cans of sardines, or frozen meals. Except for the ever-present beer, his refrigerator was mostly empty. Today, when he opened it, the only other thing in it was a lettuce, brown and completely wilted, which sat like a prisoner in solitary confinement in the plastic drawer labeled “vegetables.”

When Lombardo woke after his nap, he realized that he had slept much more than he had intended. The red numerals on the digital clock said 16:50. He got up, washed his face, and went downstairs to get something to drink. The salty sardines had made him unusually thirsty.

The beer can sighed softly as he opened it and his easy-boy chair whooshed as his thin frame sunk into its soft cushions. From the wooden folding table next to his chair he took the clicker and turned on the television.

The afternoon newscast was starting. In the international news, there were terrorist attacks here and there, a plane crash, and the usual bevy of politicians traveling about visiting each other. In the local news there were car accidents, the mayor and governor inaugurating a new public building of some kind, and people protesting the high prices of water and gas. A union leader called for the boycott of the new market into which all of the vendors from the old market had been forced to move after the old one was torn down. The weather girl, looking like a streetwalker, said it was going to be a cold night in spite of the fact that it was only late September, and the newscast ended with the usual ments disguised as news that announced the latest films opening in local theaters, the

concert that the gay singer was going to give for “charity and love of the most underprivileged.” But, there was no mention of the young man’s death.

He clicked over to the other local channels but not one of them was reporting the young man’s demise. It was useless to try the national channels. They only reported national news or happenings in Mexico City. The murder had been very effectively suppressed indeed. It seemed that to everyone but Lombardo the murder was quite inconsequential.

A whish and a plop came from the hallway—the afternoon’s newspaper had dropped through the mail slot in the door.

He turned off the television, got up, brushed his teeth, and peed. He went to the door, picked up the newspaper, and turned on the hallway light. The newspaper rustled loudly as if protesting the brusqueness with which he turned the pages scanning for any mention of the homicide.

There, on the last page, in the section reserved for the drunken brawls, car accidents, burglaries, and arrests that had not gotten into the morning edition or had been deemed too unimportant for it, there was a story tucked into the bottom, right corner. It showed a grainy color picture of a body, covered with a white sheet, being carted off on a stretcher. “Murdered Man Found by the Railroad Tracks” read the headline in bold but small print. The story was very brief. It did not give the person’s name or any hint of who he was or where he had worked. It just said that the police had found the body of an unidentified man by the tracks and that there was an ongoing investigation to determine the cause of his death.

To this uncaring city, it was just the faceless fatality of a nobody—but to an experienced cop such as Lombardo, the short shrift given the facts was evidence

that somebody had acted quickly to quash the details. He knew that when this newspaper ed on a story like this, it had probably been bribed or pressured to do so. A juicy advertising contract from the government or a company was more effective at determining editorial policy than social concern. So much for freedom of the press. But the most likely suspect of suppressing the story was the University. The jaded investigator that Lombardo was could understand a company that didn’t want bad publicity that might hurt business, or a politician trying to keep stuff from the public that might hurt his chances in an election, but the University? How could the news of the death of one of its employees hurt or damage the University? It didn’t happen on campus; nor was it related to any University activity or to his job—apparently. So, why had they scrambled their forces to suppress it?

To the ever-suspicious mind of an investigator, this was more than concern for the family’s feelings as the Director of the Computer Center had alleged; this seemed more as if the University was trying to hide something.

He threw the paper into the cardboard box he reserved for old newsprint and went upstairs to change.

Before going into his bedroom, he went into the small room he used as a studio. It had shelves filled with books in English and Spanish. He had had a large bookshelf built into one of the walls, with an integrated desk where he had his computer. He sat down and went through his emails quickly; there was nothing of any importance so he typed out an email to a friend: “Need your advice, when can we meet?”

He clicked the Send button and then went into a third room. This he had turned into another studio but dedicated to his hobby, painting. The easel held the unfinished portrait of his ex-wife and his sons when they were two and three years old. He touched the paint. It was dry. He would be able to go back to it when he had the time—rather, if he ever again had the time. He looked at the

photograph he was using as a model. His ex-wife looked beautiful, the innocence of a young mother lighting her face; his sons, chubby babies, looked firmly at the camera with expressions that presaged the determined lawyer the oldest one would become and the gentle intellectual of the youngest one was. Lombardo had at times said that he missed them, but he never explained why he did nothing about seeing them.

From the closet of the third bedroom, he got a well-pressed, white shirt (all of his shirts were white), a tie, and a fresh t-shirt. Then he went into the bathroom to change.

He looked into the mirror. A gaunt, thin face stared back. His dark features were musty, like unpolished leather—the result of the thousands of cigarettes he had smoked throughout his life. He pulled at the skin that hung down from his chin to the top of his sternum; it seemed as if the circles under his eyes were getting darker by the day. He combed his graying, lanky hair and then brushed the back of his hand over the black-and-white specks of beard. He sighed, “I’ll have to shave.”

When he left the house, the bright afternoon sunlight made him squint as if he were a rabbit coming out of its hole. He fished for his sunglasses in his coat pockets but then ed he had left them in the car.

His phone dinged. There were three missed calls and two messages on the cell phone’s lists. They were all from the Director’s office. He deleted them without listening to the messages or calling back.

“Goddamn it, how could I forget the sunglasses!” he said. “I bet they won’t steal the damned car but they’ll steal the damned sunglasses.” He called the Department’s garage and told them where the car was. They told him they could

not go get it until the next day.

He snapped the cell phone shut and said, “Damned lazy bastards.”

He walked the couple of blocks to Paseo de las Fuentes and hailed a cab. “This is the only good thing about this damned city: lots of cabs,” he said to the driver.

He told the cabbie to take him to the University. This time he would arrive unannounced.

Chapter 9: The Computer Center, Again

Traffic was heavy going down University Avenue. When he finally reached the main campus entrance, Lombardo told the cab driver to drop him off at the Computer Center.

At the reception desk, he showed the girl his badge and said, “I’m Captain Lombardo of the Public Ministry, Investigations Department.”

The girl ed him from the morning visit and said, “Doctor Delgado is not in his office at the moment. I think he’s left for the day.”

“Yes, I know,” he said lying. “The person I want to see is in charge of the Computer Center at the moment. Dr. Delgado said it was, uh, the person in

charge of...,” he searched his pockets pretending he was looking for something, perhaps a piece of paper.

“Maybe David López? He’s in charge during the second shift,” said the girl.

“Yes, I believe that’s the person the Doctor mentioned,” said Lombardo.

The girl picked up the phone and punched in a number. “David? Captain Lombardo of the Public Ministry is here. He says that Doctor Delgado told him to speak to you. (a pause). I don’t know. He just said he wants to speak to you. (another pause). OK, I will.” The girl hung up the phone and said, “He will be right out. Please have a seat.”

Ten minutes later a chubby, pale young man came through the heavy door that had a sign warning that only authorized personnel were allowed to enter. He looked around and seeing Lombardo walked forward with an extended hand, “Captain Lombardo? I am David.”

After shaking hands, they went to the reception desk where Lombardo signed in and was given an electronic . At the door, David López asked him to his security card over the detector at the side of the door. “This will keep a record of where you are and the areas for which you have clearance.”

“Hmm,” said Lombardo looking down at the white, unmarked card. David ed the card that hung around his neck over the detector. David led Lombardo down a hallway, the right side of which was floor to ceiling glass. Small and large boxes with wires that hung out their backs and went into the false floor were arrayed in neat rows throughout the large room that was bright with

fluorescent lighting. Young men and women moved about the machines, peering into screens, moving a mouse, removing a printout.

“I noticed that you also ed your card over the detector even though my card had already opened the door. Is that standard procedure?” asked Lombardo.

“Mostly it is habit. A detector on a door will sense a card within a radius of 3 feet and if you have clearance, it will open the door for you. There are other detectors that only keep track of the movements of your card or allow you to use an elevator.”

“That’s very sophisticated,” said Lombardo. “I wish my boss could see this. I’ve often complained that the Investigations Department’s doors don’t even have locks.

“Well,” said David, “it’s the smart building concept. I could give you the name of the company that supplied the hardware.”

“Hmm, yes, but I doubt that anyone in the Investigations Department would care. Anyway, I’d rather they spend the money on getting me a new car.”

When they reached the end of the hallway, a glass door slid open. The steady hum and buzz of computers running and printers printing filled the large room. David gestured toward the opened door of a space in the middle of the large room; it was a small office walled in by s that were half aluminum and half glass.

Inside the office there was a desk, two chairs, and a bookshelf with manuals and thick, black folders. The room’s roof was solid aluminum s so there was relative quiet when David closed the door.

“Please sit down,” he said gesturing toward a chair. “So, Doctor Delgado told you to talk to me?”

Lombardo weighed the chances that maybe David had called the good Doctor during the ten minutes he had had to wait. He decided not to lie.

“No, actually he did not. I just said that to the girl to save time.”

David nodded and lowered his head to hide a half smile. “So, what makes you think I could help you with what happened to poor Victor? I assume that that’s why you are here—to ask me about Victor.”

Lombardo nodded and asked, “I supposed I can’t smoke in here?”

“No,” said David simply.

Lombardo sighed, “Well, I don’t know that you can help in any way at all. I just want to know more about Victor, and about his job. If I’m to find whoever killed him, I have to know more about him. That’s the only way I can find a motivation or reasons for his murder.”

David nodded and said, “Well, his job was much like mine but although I am in charge of system management for the computers in this center, he was my boss; he was in charge of system management for the entire campus, all five faculties.

“Doctor Delgado described briefly what Victor’s job was but can you give me your description of it?”

He squirmed in his seat like a doctor who is asked to describe in laymen’s a complicated neurosurgical procedure. “Uh, system management is not one thing; it is many things, many jobs and tasks. For example, we have to determine not only what the University needs as an institution but also what s need, or certain groups of s, like the Math Department for instance. Then, when we buy stuff for them we have to set it up, keep it running, you know, maintain it, get upgrades and enhancements as needed. On top of that, we have to manage the network and the databases, make backups, copies that is, of the data, and so on.” He sighed, “Lots of stuff.”

Lombardo smiled wryly and said, “I suppose you’ve had to answer that question a thousand times. It probably bores you to have to explain yourself to nontechnical people, but as I said, since we don’t know why he was killed, we have to look everywhere for a possible motive.”

“I understand, Captain, and I am willing to cooperate as much as I can if it will help to find the people who killed Victor.”

“Hmm,” said Lombardo and took out a little notebook and a pen. Lombardo had noticed early in his career as a cop that people took questioning more seriously when they thought their answers were being recorded. So he wrote something in the notebook and then he asked, “Were you on good with Victor? You know, were you more than just colleagues? Were you friends?”

David shrugged, “I guess so; you know, as much as you can be friends with someone you see at work every day.”

“But, outside of work: did you ever, you know, go out for a beer or something?”

“Sure, plenty of times, and when somebody in the Department had a birthday we would all go out to lunch together, to some restaurant, you know.”

“Did he seem worried lately—as if he had problems?”

“We are system engineers; we always have problems,” said David with a bemused smile.

“I meant personal ones, the kind that would make you notice that something was wrong, or that he was worried about something.”

“No, not particularly. Victor is not, or, uh, was not the kind of guy to go around moping or crying about something. He was very quiet, and just did his job. He was a good boss, not the kind to interfere too much or be looking over your shoulder all the time. He only came around when there was a big problem or there was something special that needed to be done.”

Again Lombardo wrote something down. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Yesterday afternoon, before I went home.”

Lombardo’s phone started to vibrate. He fished it out of his coat pocket and flipped it open. He had a call from the Director’s office. He turned the phone off and said, “How did you come to see him? Just casually? Did he come by here?”

“No, he called me and asked me to come to his office.”

“What about?”

“Oh, nothing special. He just wanted to know some technical stuff.”

“Technical stuff? What do you mean by technical stuff, David?”

“He wanted to know the schedule for backing up some files. He said he had to start writing up next year’s budget and that he wanted me to give him the schedules and space requirements for certain system files.”

“Was this an unusual request, David?”

“Not at all. It’s part of my job. We go through this capacity planning every year, sometimes twice a year.”

“You said that these cards,” Lombardo lifted his security badge, “keep track of where you are in the building. Do you record the movements of people, you know, keep tabs on them?”

“Yes, we keep general logs of most everything.”

“Would you mind giving me a copy of just his movements, where he was at a certain time and such? Just for that last day, of course.”

“Sure, I’ll ask the log manager to get that for you. He’s not here now but I can have it for you tomorrow. Is that ok?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Lombardo made another pause then asked, “Do you have any idea why anybody would want to hurt Victor, David?”

David’s face darkened, as if a shadow had ed over it. “No, not at all. He was just a simple, working guy. Never harmed anyone. Went about his job just like most of us here; he had a wife and a kid, like most of us, and not much money, like most of us.”

“I haven’t seen his personal file yet; so he was married?”

“Yes, and had a boy, about the same age as mine.”

“Where did he live?”

“In ‘La Florida’, I believe. I don’t know exactly where but I could find out.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get his personal file sometime tomorrow.” Lombardo put his notebook away and got up. He extended his hand and said, “Thank you for your time, David.”

“I’ll accompany you to the door.”

“Don’t bother; I can find my way out.”

“It’s not a courtesy,” said David, “it’s part of our security policy.”

As they shook hands once again and he handed his security to the girl at the desk, Lombardo asked David, “By the way, these system files that Victor asked you to inform him about, what do they contain?”

“Oh,” said David off-handedly, “mostly system logs, backup for system files, and things like that.”

“System logs, eh? What do they record?”

“Well, mostly activity of the various systems. What procedures are running, what databases are being accessed, security stuff, s and s, you name it. As I said, we have logs for a lot of stuff.”

“Would they show what Victor was working on that night?”

“In a general way, yes.”

“Did you know what he was working on, David?”

“Not particularly but I assume he was working on one of the many tasks we have as systems managers. As I said, there’s lots of stuff we have to take care of.”

“Well, thanks again.” Yet another handshake and Lombardo left.

Once in the parking lot, Lombardo lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke into the cool night air. Having heard hundreds of persons give testimony, witness s, and sundry information to the police, Lombardo had become very sensitive to nuances in speech and to the choice of words people used when describing something or recounting an event.

That had been the case when David had said that he hoped Lombardo would find the “people” who had killed Victor. Lombardo had written into his notebook two questions, “Why did David use the plural? What makes him think there was more than one?”

He also recorded in his little notebook that David had blanched when he asked him if he knew of any reason why anyone would want to hurt Victor. Why? Was that a reaction to feelings of guilt? He had written down: “Must look into that. Pry much more next time.”

The wind picked up and he closed his mackintosh against it. He started to walk toward the University Avenue entrance to the campus.

In the Investigations Department, colleagues had often criticized Lombardo for being “old fashioned” and “behind the times.” Lombardo had never bothered to counter the clichés people chose to describe him. He had often said that the less people thought he knew the more they revealed without knowing it.

He reached the campus entrance and signaled the first taxi he saw. It didn’t stop.

Lombardo had never told people at the office that he had a computer at home or that he often spent hours on it researching things on the Internet. He never commented or much less boasted how well read he was. Although he had a couple of hundred books in his studio at home, no one at the office ever saw him read anything, not even a newspaper.

He had once startled a judge by quoting Horace’s words about a good judge preferring the honorable to the expedient.

A friend had once described him as “a catalogue of missed opportunities” to which Lombardo had answered that he “had never wanted to live his life according to anyone’s expectations, least of all his own,” which was another quote.

It was true that when he was a boy his teachers, amazed that a local newspaper had published a couple of his essays in the editorial page, thought he might become a writer or journalist and had encouraged him in that direction. But, of course, he had not. When he was a few years older, his ease with technical subjects and his ability to learn mathematics with little effort led his parents to think he might choose some sort of engineering career at University—again, he did not.

At the University, he was so evidently brilliant during his studies in economics and political science that teachers and fellow students speculated he might end up in government or in some think tank in the U.S. Instead, he had ed the urban guerilla movement.

Throughout his life he had dabbled in many things—photography, painting, computers, sports such as tennis and golf, and had become knowledgeable and even a good practitioner of most of them, but never mastered any and had eventually abandoned all. He often said that he was happy to know about things rather than be their master or slave—which to him were the two faces of the same coin.

He signaled another taxi and this one screeched to a stop in front of him. “Take me to the Public Ministry building on Ruiz Cortines Avenue,” he said. The taxi merged quickly into the river of rush hour traffic as Lombardo huddled in the back seat and stared out the window at the thousands of cars streaming down the avenues and boulevards. “They’re going home,” he murmured, “home to dinner, with family and friends.”

“What’s that, sir?” asked the taxi driver.

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

Chapter 10: A Not Too Religious Meeting at “The Church”

As the taxi made its way slowly up Manuel L. Barragán Avenue, Lombardo turned on his cell phone and it dinged telling him he had a text message. It read “A las siete vamos a rezar a la iglesia, jajaja.” The message was from his geek friend telling him he was going to be at a bar called La Iglesia (the church). “At seven we’ll be praying in church,” it said. Lombardo told the taxi driver to forget about going to the Public Ministry building and to take him to that bar instead.

This silly custom of giving bars cute names such as “The Office,” “The Union Hall,” “The Factory,” and so on was started in Monterrey during the seventies. Men thought it was clever to say to the wife, “I am going to ‘The Office,’” as if women were too dumb to catch on that they were really going to a bar.

Lombardo had never liked Monterrey. To him, it wasn’t a classy city; it had no style, no character such as cities like Guadalajara or Querétaro, which he preferred.

After being transferred here, he had tried to quit the Public Ministry and get a job in a private security firm.

On a cold December morning he had stood across the street from the Cervecería del Norte, the brewery where he was going to be interviewed for a position as a security guard. The traffic on University Avenue had been incessant, and the steady drizzle mixed with the smog and dust to form a sticky, ugly paste on the pavement. A smokey, dilapidated bus, rushing over the numerous potholes had

splashed mud on his tros.

The interview had not gone well so he took the afternoon bus to Nuevo Laredo to visit his parents. When he told his father that he wanted to quit his job but was having trouble finding another one, his father invited him to have a beer. In the bar they met one of his father’s friends. The man had a son who worked for the newly formed Investigations Department of the Public Ministry. They were looking for people; he had asked Lombardo if he would like for him to call his son and arrange an interview. Lombardo had objected and said he had quit the Public Ministry because he didn’t like the work, but his father’s friend insisted that this was different. According to his son this was a regular police investigation unit not a catch-all like the Public Ministry that was full of thugs and “lawyers” with shady credentials.

He had agreed to go back to Monterrey for an interview with the Investigations Department and that’s how he had come to have this job that he liked in a city that he did not like.

Although he disliked Monterrey’s materialistic, money-focused attitude intensely, he had come to like some of its people, especially the kind of people that lived in his neighborhood. So, he had come to accept things because, as he had said once, quoting someone or other, humans are forever accepting a compromise between the ideal and the possible. If we didn’t, life would be unbearable.

Once out of the cab, and as he walked the length of the small plaza in front of the bar, he finally called the Director.

“Where the hell have you been?” asked the charming man.

“I have been questioning people.”

“Listen, Lombardo, wrap this up quickly. Gonzalez said it was probably a mugging by drunks or drug addicts, so write a report to that effect and just wrap it up, ok?”

“I don’t think it was a robbery.”

“What?”

“I said, I don’t think it was a robbery, or that he was killed by drunks or drugcrazed ‘teporochos’ or hippies or what have you.”

“Look, I have been getting calls from the Dean of the University, from the Governor, and who knows who else, and they all want to spare the University any embarrassing publicity or scandal, so, just take it easy, make like you carried out an investigation, and wrap it up, understand?”

“Yeah, I understand,” he said, “I understand all right. See you, boss.” He closed his cell phone which dinged again and showed him he had a message. It was from Casimiro who was still at the lab. He said that Lombardo’s laundry was very dirty and it would take a while to wash it. He sent one back: “nsto la ropa lmpp” (I need the clothes as soon as possible.). Then he added, “xtrma kuida2,” warning him to be careful. Lombardo hoped he would understand that he shouldn’t be sending frivolous messages.

He stood in front of the entrance to La Iglesia and made another phone call. The Medical Examiner’s office receptionist was gone and the answering machine came on but he knew Dr. Figueroa’s extension.

Dr. Ernesto Figueroa, head of the forensic lab answered. Dr. Figueroa said that the body had been formally identified by the victim’s father and brother. The widow, too distraught, had not shown up. The father had signed the form authorizing further pathology studies after the required autopsy. He would let Lombardo know the results as soon as they were done.

“When will that be, Doctor?” Lombardo asked.

“Come by tomorrow afternoon; I might have something for you then,” said Dr. Figueroa.

Lombardo typed a reminder into his phone about the widow. He would go and see her in a day or two, after she had been through the worst and had a chance to calm down. He also wrote a note about talking to the father and the brother.

Finally, he called the department and told the policewoman at the reception desk that if anyone sent him anything, not to put it on his desk but to wait to give it to him personally.

“I don’t want anybody messing with anything sent to me, OK?”

“Yes, Captain.”

He pushed the heavy wooden doors—leftovers from when the place was a convent—and walked in.

Inside it was cool and dark. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lugubrious atmosphere lit only by red and blue neon signs. A projector was displaying a football match on a huge screen. The sounds of the game filled the cavernous room. Way in the back he saw a hand waving at him.

He weaved his way through the mostly empty tables to where his friend sat grinning at him; his dark features blended into the shadowy atmosphere so that only his Cheshire Cat smile shone like a waning moon.

“¿Qué tal, Lupe?” he said as he shook his friend’s hand.

José Guadalupe Salgado was a friend from his University days. While Lombardo had studied economics because that was where all the political action was going on, his friend Lupe, always the practical man, had ed the very first generation of a brand new faculty, Computer Science and Systems Engineering. While Lombardo was hiding away in the U.S. Army, Lupe had graduated as a Systems Engineer and worked for corporations as a programmer, computer technician, and computer site manager. Eventually he quit to form his own company. He had set up the very first ISP, Internet Service Provider, in Monterrey.

Ugly as a toad, Lupe nevertheless had a “way with the ladies” and had 6 kids with two different women by the time he was 21. “I love fast cars and faster

women,” he would say with a chuckle. Lombardo thought him a jerk on that score but had to it he was a genius when it came to computers.

Before Lombardo even sat down, the waiter was already there waiting to take his order. “The same,” said Lombardo pointing to his friend’s Bohemia beer.

“It’s been a long time,” said Lupe.

“Yeah, too long. They keep me busy at the Department,” said Lombardo while lighting a Delicado.

“I can’t believe you still smoke those things; I mean, I could see why you smoked them when we were students and had no money but now…” said Lupe. He smoked Marlboro Lights. He had always smoked the most popular brands. Lupe had smoked nothing but Raleigh cigarettes when they were the most popular, and the most expensive, back in the seventies. Then, for a time he smoked small, Cuban panatelas because it was very fashionable to do so.

Lombardo, on the other hand, was oblivious to what was fashionable and trendy. People mistook this for a stubborn devotion to habits, but in reality it was that he saw no need or reason to change. He clung just as stubbornly to his honesty and his immunity to corruption for the same reason, not out of any set of moral beliefs but as a way of life that he saw no reason to change. He had no ambition for money and certainly no use for power, so why change his way of life?

Lupe said, “I know what I am going to give you as a Christmas present, one of those nice, light tan colored summer suits so you don’t have to wear this damned, drab coat in hot weather.”

Lombardo shrugged and said, “It’s your money.”

Lupe laughed, “I can see that you’re thrilled by the idea. You’re still wearing the same suit you wore at my wedding.” The waiter brought Lombardo his beers. It was still happy hour; beers were two for the price of one. The second beer was put into the little pail with ice where Lupe’s second beer was being kept cold as well. “I was really surprised when I got your email; it has been so long.”

Lombardo poured the beer slowly into the frosted glass the waiter had brought. There was one thing that never changed in Monterrey—no matter what the weather, beer was served very cold. “The thing is,” Lombardo said finally, “I need you to explain some things to me and to give me some advice.”

“What about?” asked Lupe with a little laugh. “I don’t know a damn thing about police work.”

“Have you heard about what happened to Victor Delgado?”

The smile left Lupe’s face. “That’s all computer people have been talking about today. People are really riled up; everybody’s fed up with all the killings, and murders. Every goddamned day there are pictures of bodies in the papers. They are saying they want the Army to come into this. People have had enough.”

“Yes, I know,” said Lombardo. “I have been assigned to Victor’s case. That’s why I called you.”

Lupe poured beer into his glass and said, “Sure, what can I do to help?”

“Did you know Victor Delgado well, Lupe?”

Lupe twisted his lips in the half-pout and half-frown that was his equivalent of shrugged shoulders. “He was a colleague. I had dealings with him, you know, professionally. We developed some applications for the University and Victor had to sign off on them.”

“Did you ever hear of him being in trouble, or having problems?”

“Victor? No, never. He was known as a quiet guy, a bureaucrat type. You know, kind of ‘gray’ professionally; not too smart but not dumb either, more of a technician than an executive; the type of guy who does his job and is happy with that.”

“Do you think he was well liked? What did your colleagues think of him?”

“I don’t think they thought anything about him. He was not the kind of guy that makes much of an impression on people. Certainly he was not disliked, I think.”

“Well, somebody didn’t like him, judging from the way he was killed.”

Lupe was silent for a moment then asked, “Was he badly, you know, uh…?”

“Yes, he was pretty well worked over. That’s why this case is kind of strange. By everyone’s , he was a quiet, unremarkable person—a bureaucrat, as you say, albeit a technical one. And someone picks him up, beats him to a pulp, and then kills him. It’s not a robbery—I know that. It’s not the cartels—I know it from the way it was done, it’s not their style. This is why I called you. As I said, I need you to explain some things to me.”

“Sure, what do you want to know?”

“Do you know anything about his personal life?”

“I know what’s common knowledge in the computer community. He married some girl who was a student in the Business Management and ing School. It seems they had to get married. She was pregnant at the time and rumor has it that Victor was not the father. They married two or three years ago. Other than that, he has been a pretty low-profile kind of guy, you know, nose to the grind stone and all of that.”

“He didn’t fool around with women, did he?”

“Victor? No! The guy was like an altar boy. Why do you ask that?”

“I’m trying to rule out a crime of ion. I guess I should ask his wife and maybe his brother.”

“You can but I doubt very much that you’ll get a different answer. Word would’ve gone around. You know, Monterrey may have nearly 4 million inhabitants but the middle class is the size of your thumbnail. Everybody knows everybody. And the computer community is even smaller.”

“That’s true, Lupe, but if there is something I’ve learned in this job it’s that people never cease to surprise you.”

“Well, if he was fiddling around, he kept it well hidden, and I certainly would be surprised, considering what he had at home.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You haven’t met the wife, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You’ll see what I mean when you meet her.”

After talking to Lupe for several hours, Lombardo left the bar very late that night. Lupe wanted to go to a whorehouse and asked him to come along but he begged off saying he was tired, had had a long day, and had to get up early the next day. Lombardo had never liked whorehouses; he hated the smell of the mixture of cheap perfume and cigarette smoke that impregnated every stitch of your clothes, and worse, the over made up, over ripe, and over aggressive

whores were unbearable. “Bad whiskey and worse women,” is how his father had described them, although Lupe would surely have disagreed.

The taxi he took home raced down the nearly empty avenues and streets. The cool night air cleared his mind and he made notes about what his friend had explained. Yes, system managers have access to everything that’s in a computer, one way or another. Yes, there is very little information that they cannot reach, access, manipulate if needed. “What was the most sensitive kind of data?” he had asked. “Well, that depends on where you work. In a University it is probably budgets, salaries, performance evaluations, email, lots of stuff.” Lupe had said. “Sensitive?” “Yes, but nothing to get you killed,” Lupe remarked. And, according to Lupe, no one had ever heard of Delgado doing anything shady or illegal.

Lupe wanted to know why Lombardo was so interested in Victor’s job. Lombardo had said that he could only think of three things that could have led to someone wanting to rough up and eventually kill the young man: something to do with his job, something to do with drugs, something do to with a love affair— a crime of ion. Since this last was out of the question, he was starting to look at the other two possibilities.

He had said that his instincts and experience told him that it was probably not a drug-related case—not in the traditional sense, anyway. He was not killed in the usual way, was not left in the usual spots, and so on. A love affair? A crime of ion? Homosexuals gone rampant? Jealous husband that hired goons to work him over and kill him? Not from what everyone kept telling him; nice guy, normal, quiet, a simple technocrat. Jealous lovers kill in the bedroom, in the hotel room, even at work, like that woman who walked into the corporate offices where she worked and shot her boss. Those were the easy cases. Not much to do —gather the facts, let the Medical Examiner do his job, the judge took care of the rest.

No, there was something about this case that did not fit. It was too cruel for a simple murder. Was this a message? Was someone sending a message? But, who, to whom? What was being said? Who was being warned? Why would the killer or killers leave the body in such an obvious place and his wallet and things on his body, which would make it easy to identify him? Was the severed head a mistake? Or was it intentional? When cartel killers severed heads they made sure that the act made the headlines, like those poor seven bastards, the soldiers they had rounded up in a whorehouse and executed by the highway. Heads neatly severed and put into sacks, hung on the fence near the bodies, just to show the Army that if they came into the drug wars, it was in for a tough fight.

Then there was the speed with which the story had disappeared from the media. Who had squashed it? This bullshit about the University being embarrassed— they had had riots on campus, for Christ sake! Someone had called his boss to get him to wrap up the case, be done with is as soon as possible. Why was this little guy’s murder so important behind the scenes, yet made to look unimportant publicly? Why did it matter if the media made a big thing out of it or not. No one seemed to care to muffle stories of the thousands of cartel , soldiers, and innocent bystanders that died every year in the drug wars, so why was this one different? Nothing made sense. Nothing—including those cigarettes.

Lombardo put away his notes. He had arrived home.

Part 2: Day 2

Chapter 11: A Visit to the Medical Examiner’s Office

Lombardo had no hangover the next day because he had learned from his father that to avoid one you had to take two Alka-Seltzers and an aspirin before going

to bed.

As he shaved, he frowned at how his face seemed even more haggard and worn of late. “Damned cigarettes are killing me,” he said aloud and put out the one that was burning in the ashtray on the toilette’s lid. He looked at his slight, thin frame with its too prominent collarbones, and light brown, leathery skin. When he was a student in the University they had called him La Agonía, the agony. Everybody had a nickname, which one usually got around secondary school or a bit later. It usually stuck for life. Lots of conversations started with questions like “Do you La Güera? or, “Have you seen La Marrana lately?” The blonde one or the sow—funny how most nicknames were of the feminine gender. He moved his shaving mirror so he could look at his back. There were red spots where the shoulder strap of the holster rubbed against his back. He reached back to dab some of the antiseptic cream he had bought at a discount pharmacy. “It’ll ease the itching,” the young woman behind the counter had said, “but it won’t cure anything.”

A couple of years ago he had relented and gone to see a doctor in the Social Security Health Center. He had had a nagging cough for weeks and wanted something to get rid of it.

“There’s no medicine that will cure it,” the doctor had said, “it’s just your lungs protesting against all the filth you insist on putting into them. You’ll have these fits of cough the rest of your life—what little there will probably be of it if you keep smoking and eating badly the way you do.”

“Well, thank you, Doctor,” he said aloud and relit the stubbed out cigarette.

Lombardo went into the bedroom to get a fresh set of underwear. He looked at his body in the full-length mirror on the closet door. “It certainly does show the

wear and tear,” he said. He looked at the ugly scar on his left shoulder—a hastily sewn rip that a piece of shrapnel had made in Viet Nam; his right knee had scars on both sides, too—souvenirs from a car crash he had suffered as he and a former partner chased two suspects. He had survived it, his partner had not. The skin of his upper arm was starting to sag as was the skin on his neck. He had a small pot belly in spite of his overall thinness. He said, “Not too many kilometers left on this old wagon.”

After his shower, he dressed slowly, putting on a fresh, white shirt over his V neck T-shirt. He put his suit into a bag which he would drop at the cleaner’s on the way to the Department. His other suit was the same as the one he had taken off. They were interchangeable in style, in the worn look they had, in the same dark-gray color. No wonder people thought he always wore the same clothes.

He called the Department’s garage. Yes, they had retrieved his car. Yes, they had changed the tire, the oil, filled the tank. OK, he’d take a taxi to the Department and pick it up.

He called the Medical Examiner’s office. Was the doctor there? “Doc, have you got anything for me? OK, I am on my way.” He told the taxi driver to go by the cleaner’s on Garza Sada Avenue and then to take him to the Medical Examiner’s office.

After he dropped off his suit at the cleaners, he sat back to wait for the taxi to thread its way through the usual morning rush hour traffic. He thought about his boss and again wondered why people wanted this case to go away as quickly as possible. “There’s something wrong, something’s not right,” he said aloud.

The taxi driver looked at him through the rear view mirror. “What’s that, sir?”

“I said that the dry cleaning is getting very expensive,” he said and laughed.

“Dry cleaning, sir?”

“Yeah, but never mind.”

The taxi exited from Gonzalitos Avenue and turned into Madero Avenue. At the red light it turned into the University Hospital. He showed his badge to the guard so that the taxi could go into the reserved parking lot.

“Wait for me,” he said to the driver whose face stiffened thinking he was out of a fare. Lombardo said, “Keep the meter running. Don’t worry; you’re going to get paid.”

He went into the stark white building whose only features were the glass entrance doors and a few small windows, which were curtained with white cloth. A sign above the entrance simply read, “Servicios Médicos Forenses” to announce the Forensic Medical Services.

A girl in a white lab coat, sitting behind a beige counter asked, “Yes?”

“Dr. Figueroa, please.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“He’s expecting me,” he said.

The girl, without taking her eyes off of him picked up the phone, spoke into it, and then pressed the buzzer, which sounded unusually harsh and loud.

“You may go in,” she said. “Do you know where he has his office?”

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” he said to the girl and opened the buzzing door without waiting for her to reply.

Dr. Figueroa was standing by the door to his office, with one foot out of it, and speaking to someone inside. He made a motion to Lombardo to stop, and said to the person inside that he would be right back.

He made a motion for Lombardo to follow him and they walked quickly down a hall and into another office. A sign on the door said that this office belonged to a Dr. Pineda but Dr. Pineda was not there.

Dr. Figueroa closed the door and without any preliminaries said, “The body you came to see is not here anymore.”

Lombardo furrowed his brow but did not ask the question.

Dr. Figueroa sighed. “The family had an order signed by a judge. It allowed them to take the body away without further, uh, abuse to it, as the father put it. We had to stop the autopsy, return the organs, and forget about including the lab reports in our write-up.”

Lombardo nodded and was about to ask him something when the Doctor reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag, the kind reserved for evidence. There was a wet and crumpled piece of paper in the bag. “I found this deep in his trachea.”

Chapter 12: The Governor Calls the Dean

In the Dean’s office at the University, his new cell phone rang.

“Yes?” said the Dean tentatively.

“Ah, Dean Herrera. I see you have installed the cell phone I sent you. Well, from now on, I think we should use these phones exclusively when communicating.”

“Yes, thank you Governor; I was…”

“The reason I called,” interrupted the governor, “is that I spoke recently to the Head of the Public Ministry and he gave me some very disturbing facts about the demise of that poor boy, what was his name?”

“Victor Delgado,” said the Dean.

“Victor Delgado, yes,” said the Governor. “Well, I am sorry to say that the reports are pretty gruesome. It seems that the young man was tortured and beaten, as if they were trying to find out something.”

“I can imagine what it was,” said the Dean.

“Yes, yes, I do, too. The, uh, consensus is that, uh, these men, whoever they are, are most likely professional thugs, people who are used to this sort of thing.”

“How do they know this?”

“Well, from the way that they, uh, delivered the blows and other nasty evidence, you see.”

“I see,” repeated the Dean.

“My concern is that the case reveal things, or, circumstances, if you will, that might, uh, lead people to find out about our project.”

There was a small pause as the Dean considered this last statement and what the Governor was implying. Then he revealed, “The day before, Victor, or rather,

Victor’s unfortunate, um, the incident that, uh…well, I had asked him to see to it that all of the files and communications be encrypted such that…”

“Encrypted? What do you mean encrypted, Dean Herrera?” asked the Governor somewhat alarmed.

“I mean that all of the information concerning the project be converted to such a state that only persons with the right key could have access to it, and, uh, be able to read it, actually.”

“And, who has this key, Dean Herrera?”

“That is the issue, Governor; he was working on that the night he disappeared, so I never had a chance to confirm if he had done what I had asked.”

“Is there no way of knowing? I mean, this information shouldn’t lay about…”

“It’s not,” said the Dean mildly irritated. “It is in a secured file in a secure computer. I just thought that it would add an extra layer of security to also encrypt it.”

The Dean did not say that what had prompted his concern was the series of intrusions that Victor had reported—that had prompted the decision to encrypt the files.

“OK,” said the Governor in a tone that betrayed his discomfort with the Dean’s disclosure. “But, what about any present communications?”

“The idea,” explained the Dean, “is that a program he was to install would take anything that dropped into our special mailbox and encrypt it into that file.”

“What about the stuff on our individual computers?” asked the Governor nervously.

“There is nothing in our individual computers. Our emails went through what we call a web service, all the emails that have gone back and forth are here, stored on our web server. We thought it was safer having everything in one spot rather than spread all over.”

“I see. Well, if you can find out, discreetly, whether the information was, uh, encrypted as you say, let me know. In all cases, I think it should be destroyed but I’ll have to ask the others what they think.”

“All right, I will make some inquiries.”

“By the way, another reason I called is to inform you that I am ordering the Public Ministry to forward this case to the federal people.”

“Why? Is that better for us?”

“Yes, I think so. You see, if it is a federal case and it is thought to be drug related, it will, uh, you see, as I’ve said, our concern is that his help in the project might come out. And, I don’t trust the state people; I think that half of them are on the Gulf Cartel’s payroll. When I say ‘our concern’ I don’t mean just this office, or myself, but rather to let you know, Dean Herrera, that the ‘concern’ comes from higher up.”

“But, if we do that it might reflect rather badly on the poor young man and his family,” said the Dean rather meekly.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. The case will probably get filed among the many unresolved cases they have up there. And, the steps you’ve taken to recompense the family…you have taken steps, have you not?”

“Yes, yes,” the Dean replied, “we’ve told the family that the University would give the widow an extra, uh, compensation on top of the regular insurance, and we made it clear that the child would get scholarships, medical care, and so on.”

“Fine, good, well, let me know what you find out about the information, and be sure to use this phone from now on when you call me.”

“I will, Governor.”

“Good-bye, then.”

“Good-bye.”

As soon as he snapped the secure phone shut, the Dean buzzed his secretary and asked her to locate David López.

As he waited for his secretary to locate David, he called his home.

“Hello, Gilberto, is that you? Listen, I just had a call from the Governor. Yes, I know what you have said a dozen times about trusting the man. You know I’ve never trusted him completely. He is a politician and politicians are not to be trusted, ever! They’ll throw you to the sharks in a minute if it serves their purpose, if it will save their skin, or if you are no longer useful to them. What? Well, I think I’d better have some sort of security just in case. Yes, I am going to do that right now. What I want you do to is to get things ready in case we have to…yes, that’s what I mean, have cash in hand, a couple of open tickets, and so on. Yes, look we will deal with that later when I get home, OK? Bye.”

His desk phone buzzed. “David López is on the line, sir.”

“David, how are you?” said the Dean feigning a jolly tone.

“Fine, sir,” said David.

“David, I need a favor from you: Victor, you see, was doing some work for us, uh, testing to see, I believe, if the University’s data could be made more secure. Do you know, or, are you aware of how his, uh, testing was going?”

“Well, I know he was testing some encryption software but I don’t know if he had finished his tests or had decided if we were going to use it, and so on.”

“Yes, I think that’s it. You see, I have a memo from him,” the Dean lied, “asking for budget approval so I was wondering if that should be, that is, if I should sign it so the thing could go ahead.”

“I see,” said David, “well, I could look into it, if you wish, sir.”

“Yes, please, do that and let me know what you find.”

“I will, sir.”

“And, if there are any files, or, uh, software, or anything he might have been working on, please secure them and I will bring the subject up in our next Security meeting, and we will decide what to, uh, where to go from there, all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, have a good day, David, and thank you.” The Dean hung up.

David picked up his cell phone and sent a text message in English. “Locked pkg knt y.” He had been laboring all day trying to get around the security locks Victor had put on the email files. Having failed, he sent a text message telling

someone he couldn’t make a readable copy of them.

Chapter 13: No Rest for the Dead

Lombardo came out of the cool SEMEFO building into the bright, cloudless day. He liked these late autumn days: the heat had abated and the cool northern winds cleared the sky and blew away the smog.

He woke up the taxi driver and told him to take him to the Department. He ordered the driver not to take Madero Avenue but to go through the neighborhood streets in back of the hospital and the medical faculty. He wanted some time to read the copy of the notes Dr. Figueroa had made and write a few notes of his own.

Dead bodies have many things to say to the living; their language is physical and visual and only understood by those who know how to look, where to look, and can interpret what they see.

Dr. Figueroa said he had had little time to examine the corpse before the PM agents showed up. They had the young man’s father with them and the identification forms already filled out and signed, so the body had been turned over to a funeral director who had been appointed to prepare it before the family could see it.

But in the couple of hours that Dr. Figueroa had it, he had examined the head, opened the chest cavity and extracted the trachea and lungs, examined the heart, and secured contents of the stomach and some of the intestines.

There had been no time to open the skull but the Doctor had noticed two dark spots at its base. He said that torture or blows may cause unconsciousness and cause a victim to fall, so the victim’s head might have received a blow as a consequence. But there was no cut on the scalp or dried blood around the head or neck. In his opinion, the dark spots were evidently caused by blows with a blunt instrument or the fist of a very strong man—the spots were large. The Doctor speculated that the blows had probably caused some hemorrhaging in the brain.

In his notes, Dr. Figueroa stated that he had noticed that the skin pallor of the body and head was bluish and pale, especially around the lips—that sort of hue is usually associated with oxygen deprivation.

Although the head had been severed and afterward had rolled a few meters down the track, Dr. Figueroa said that the signs of choking were evident so he had looked into the victim’s mouth but seeing nothing he opened up the trachea to look into the victim’s air age. There he had found the paper.

But the paper was not the only thing there; the lungs also contained water.

The liquid was muddy and had black particles, which were probably wood ash. Since more of them were found in the bronchial tubes it proved that the young man was still alive when his head was put in that dirty water.

“It’s possible,” Doctor Figueroa noted further, “that the perpetrator or perpetrators saw the victim faint and they put his head in the water to revive him. The cold water woke him up; he panicked or reflexively opened his mouth to breath and aspirated both water and the paper into this trachea.”

“The person or persons who did that to him probably weren’t aware of what was going on when he started to choke and even if they had been, there was little they could have done.”

“Anyway,” concluded Dr. Figueroa as a matter of fact, “if the obstruction in the trachea had not killed him, I am sure the blows to the back of the head would have, since it is more than likely they would have caused fatal hemorrhaging in the brain.”

Although he was sure that asphyxiation was the cause of death, he had nevertheless sent samples of blood, urine, bile, and other fluids to the lab to rule out any possibility of drugs or any substance being the cause of the victim’s demise.

“What about the plastic the forensic medics found around his neck?” Lombardo had asked. “No,” the Doctor had said, “that had nothing to do with his death.” Maybe they had tied a bag around his head so it wouldn’t bleed or spill water when moved. The Doctor could only speculate on that because he had seen drug war victims covered with large plastic bags so they would not bleed on the cars or trucks where they were transported to be dumped elsewhere; but he was sure that the blows to the skull, which had not broken the skin, were probably delivered by a fist or a nonmetallic instrument—perhaps a billy club or truncheon.

The body bruises, in his opinion, were caused by the same instrument and maybe fists. One thing was obvious: he had not been tied but rather held in such a way that one of his shoulders was dislocated.

As he had stated, the organs were turned over to the funeral director when the family claimed the body but he had been able to have a close look at some of them. He said he had been especially intrigued by the type of water the lungs contained.

To Dr. Figueroa it was interesting because the liquid was very dirty. It had mud, tree leaf particles, and that black substance—probably charcoal ashes. Water such as this spoke volumes about where the victim had died. Of course it was on the shore of a river, lake, pond, or reservoir—the leaves were a clear testimony of that since they were obviously from trees that grew near water’s edge. The muddy, fine sediment was evidence that the water was shallow and still so it was more likely to be a pond or reservoir. And finally, the black particles, when viewed under the microscope had proved to be wood charcoal, the kind people use to grill.

“Look for a place near a pond or reservoir where people go for picnics or weekend fishermen go for beer parties,” he had said and Lombardo had dutifully noted it down.

Lombardo was even more convinced now that the Zetas, or any of the killers hired by the cartels, had nothing to do with this death. They were pretty consistent about the way they did things: abduct the victims, bind their hands, have them kneel by the side of some dirt road or clearing in the desert, then a bullet in the back of the head. Outside the city, in the vastness of the desert, one could hear the gunshots, which carried a long way in the still, dark night. The Zetas didn’t care about being quiet; they knew no one was going to rush to investigate what was going on. And, when they wanted to make a statement, they did something particularly gruesome, like lop off heads or .

These killers, on the other hand, had been quiet. No guns were used on the victim. The plastic bag might have been applied only after the fact but before it too. Near suffocation with a bag was a tactic to terrorize a victim, but it was also

a way to muffle screams or groans.

Then there was the business of the paper. Lombardo took out the small plastic bag that Dr. Figueroa had given him. The wad of paper had been chewed but not to the point where it had been destroyed. It had been carefully unfolded so Lombardo could see the long series of numbers and letters that had been hand written on it with permanent ink.

Since Dr. Figueroa had suggested looking for some pond or reservoir shore as the scene of the crime, that meant that Victor had been taken out of town by his killers. Most likely toward the south where all the city’s reservoirs were.

Lombardo had also made notes about the shoulder separation, which suggested that there had been at least three of them: two to hold him, one by each arm, and a third to deliver the blows. They beat him for a while, perhaps trying to get something out of him; according to Dr, Figueroa’s examination, most of the blows had been delivered where they would be painful but not cause serious injury. If the blow to the back of the head had not been deliberate, it could have been caused when they let go of him for a moment and he had ed out, fallen to the floor, and possibly hit his head against something. He believed that Dr. Figueroa was right when he suggested that they might have tried to revive him by putting his head in the cold, muddy, water and that Victor had aspirated water and the paper when he revived.

Lombardo wrote another note: “Perhaps when they saw he was dead, they put the bag on his head and dumped him by the railroad tracks. They might have been trying to lay him on the tracks so when the train came by at four in the morning it would crush the boy so much the traces of torture would be erased.”

Someone, a er-by, or a police cruiser, might have scared them away and they

didn’t have time to place the body in such a way it would be completely mangled. Either by accident or by design only the neck had rested on the railroad track.

About the unknown perpetrators, Lombardo wrote: “These were not amateurs; they were not drunks trying to steal hooch money, or muggers, or gang . These were pros used to the ways of interrogation.”

Sometime during the interrogation or perhaps even before it started the victim had put the piece of paper in his mouth—a last foolishly heroic act, which tried to protect something or somebody.”

Finally Lombardo wrote into his little notebook: “Questions: What did these letters and numbers mean? Why was he trying to hide the paper and why was it so important that he gave his life for it? Did the killers know about it and is that why they beat him half to death? What was the damned paper about?”

Dr. Figueroa also wrote about the young man’s heart: it was healthy and strong; it had not given out even under the stress of the beating. The young man had been small and a bit frail in life but he had taken it and not said a word!

Although the lab reports would take a few days to complete, Dr. Figueroa wrote that in his view the stomach contents showed no sign of anything unusual. The stomach was mostly empty. Obviously, the young man had not reached home to have his dinner. Dr. Figueroa’s final comment was that he would forward the toxicologist report on the fluid samples he had sent to the lab.

Dr. Figueroa’s suggestion that he look for a spot near one of the large reservoirs

formed by the many dams that surrounded Monterrey was not a trivial task.

The city was very large and demanded a lot of water during the long, hot summers, so there were half a dozen large reservoirs within a half-hour drive. Also, a lot of the ranchers in the area kept ponds for their cattle and the desert to the south and southeast was riddled with stagnant waterholes left over from the rainy season.

When the taxi stopped in front of the Investigations Department’s building Lombardo exclaimed, “But, there were those ashes! I’ll have to think about that.”

Chapter 14: When a Case Is Not Your Case

Lombardo strode up the steps of the Investigations Department’s entrance in his slow, weary way. The policeman on guard, with a heavy, bulletproof vest on, and an AR-15 at the ready, looked at him warily. They changed the guards frequently so this guy didn’t know him. Nowadays, anyone was susceptible to being bribed by the cartels and there had been rumors that since police departments were so rife with corruption and awash in cartel money bribes, the Army would soon take up policing the most dangerous cities, such as Juarez, Tijuana, and Monterrey.

The policewoman at the front desk motioned to him as soon as she saw him. “The Director said you were to go to his office as soon as you came in,” she said.

“Ah, am I going to get a raise, a promotion, or a medal for good-conduct?” asked Lombardo while lighting a cigarette.

The police woman said, “Probably all three. You shouldn’t smoke in here. It’s a public building.”

“Be sure to warn the cartel gunmen about that when they storm the place,” said Lombardo as he blew a plume of smoke into the air.

The Director’s secretary opened her mouth to say something when Lombardo was about to open her boss’ door but he said, “He’s expecting me.”

The Director was his usual charming self. When he saw Lombardo come in he said, “Don’t you ever knock, Captain?”

“I thought you had an ‘open door’ policy.”

“Yeah, but you’re excluded--and put that damned cigarette out! This is a public building!”

“I’m glad to see you’re so concerned about people’s health. Instead of worrying about my cigarette maybe you should hand out more of those bulletproof vests like the one that monkey at the door is wearing. They way things are going, cigarette smoke is not the main health hazard here.”

“Damned funny,” said the Director as he scowled. “Look, I just want to let you know that you can forget about the Delgado case. We’ve been ordered to let the federal people handle it. The Public Ministry thinks it is drug related and so it

falls under federal law.”

“You know, there are, what, three or four dozen murders in this country every day. Why is everybody paying so much attention to this one all of a sudden? Or rather, telling me to pay attention to the fact that I should not pay attention to it?”

“Who cares?” reed the Director casually. “All you need to know is that it’s not our case anymore and that you should send the file to the Federal Prosecutor’s office as soon as possible.”

“What case file,” Lombardo retorted, “I haven’t even had a chance to write up my report and nothing will be coming in from the forensic people until they are done in a couple of days.”

“OK, so write up your report and put it on file. Send that if that’s all we have and tell forensics to send their stuff over to the Federal Prosecutor’s office.”

Lombardo said nothing about the information that Dr. Figueroa had given him but as he turned to leave he said, “This is not a drug-related case, you know—at least not in the sense that the victim was involved in drug dealing or anything like it.”

“I repeat,” said the Director, “it is not our case anymore. If they think it is drug related, then it is drug related. And, if they want to handle it, they will handle it. OK?”

Lombardo shrugged and said, “OK. It’s your circus so I guess you say who swings from the trapeze and who’s a clown.” He left the Director’s office.

Lombardo went to his desk and sat down to fill in a standard report form. When he was finished, he took the form to the Archives room and asked the policewoman in charge to make a copy for their files and to send the original to the Federal Prosecutor’s office.

“So, you’re off the case, Captain?” asked the policewoman as she took the report from him.

“So they say,” said Lombardo.

Chapter 15: An Invitation to a Cruise

Governor Sanchez Reyes was alone in his office when the secure cell phone rang. He ran to pick it up from its cradle.

“Hullo, what a pleasant surprise, I…”

“Yes, Governor,” the gruff voice interrupted. “Listen I am calling because I need to see you tonight.”

“Tonight? Why, yes, of course, are you coming here or…”

“Of course not; why would I go there. No, listen. I am inviting some of our friends to me on my yacht. We are docked in the Acapulco marina, the one on the northern side of the bay. Fly down here tonight and I’ll send someone to pick you up. Don’t fly commercial, get an air taxi and tell the guy to bring you to the airport for private planes. Got that?”

“Yes, but can you tell me a bit more about this reunion?”

“You’ll find out all about it when you get here.”

“Yes, but I mean, is there anything I should prepare or bring along?”

“Just your appetite and your legendary drinking ability,” said the gruff voice and it laughed.

“All right. What time are you expecting us?”

“Be here by, say, 6:30 in the afternoon. We’re going to take a little cruise and discuss some business so bring your Hawaiian shirt, eh?” He laughed again.

“How long are we going to be…”

“We will sail for Mazatlán as soon as everyone is here so you’ll be able to fly

home from there early the next morning.”

Before the Governor could say anything else, the other man hung up.

The Governor looked at the phone for a few seconds and then put it down. He opened a drawer with a key he took from his pocket and took out a leather bound notebook. He wrote an entry: “BZ called. Wants to meet in Aca tonight.” He dated it and wrote down the time.

BZ was the code name that the Governor used when writing in his log any dealings with the President’s cousin. He had started the log the day he had been asked to the faction of the Party that ed the presidential candidacy of Leobardo Contreras. When he was named as a member of the group that would help to draw up the candidate’s platform and positions on issues, he was very flattered and thought that it might even lead to a Cabinet position. But when the President’s cousin started using the platform committee to push the drug legalization issue, he thought it wise to keep an accurate record, if for no other reason than for protection against “eventualities.”

He buzzed his personal assistant, “I will need to fly to Acapulco this afternoon. Please get me an air taxi, not a reservation on a commercial flight, and put it on the special , OK?”

“OK. Will the pilot wait for you or...?”

“No, I will come back by other means; get me on the first plane out of Mazatlán tomorrow morning,” he said.

“To come back here?”

“Of course to come back here,” he said a bit irritated.

The Governor then picked up the secure phone and called Dean Herrera and after the usual greetings he said, “Dean Herrera, I have been called to a meeting tonight with our mutual friends and I’m sure they are going to ask me about the, uh, situation with the information we have.”

“Yes, Governor, well, I have a man working on that.”

“What do you mean? What do you have him doing?”

“I asked him to look into what Victor was doing the night, he, uh, the night of his unfortunate, uh, the night of his death. I did not say specifically what it is I was looking for but rather I asked him to tell me generally what Victor was doing.”

“And how is that going to help us?”

“I think he will find the files, report that they are encrypted, and, most importantly, he will be able to tell us if anyone has had access to the files, or worse, has copied them.”

“If somebody got hold of them, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“That depends; you see, if they got them after Victor encrypted them, they will be no good to them—unreadable.”

“But, will we know one way or the other, that is, if they got them before or after they were made unreadable?”

“Oh, yes. He will be able to tell us.”

“OK. Look, I am leaving around four or four thirty in the afternoon, so if you know anything before that, or even after, while I am on the flight, call me.”

“Right, Governor.”

“Who is this person who is helping us now?”

“He has worked here for quite a while. He worked under Victor. His name is David López.”

“Is he trustworthy?”

“Oh, yes. He’s a loyal employee.”

“In this business,” said the Governor, “that means nothing. Don’t tell him more than you have to and keep him away from the press and the police.”

“I will, sir.”

The Governor hung up and made another entry into his log then he put the notebook back into the drawer, which he locked.

He buzzed his personal assistant again, “Call my house and tell my wife to send me a small overnight bag with my shaving kit, some chino tros, Bermudas, and a couple of print summer shirts. Oh, and two sets of underwear. Tell them I need them within the hour. After you do that, come in here because we are going to have to reschedule a couple of things.”

The Governor sat back and stared out the windows. The President’s cousin’s call had made him quite uneasy. Things were getting very complicated. Those damned email files were becoming a threat to everyone.

He sighed and said, “I wish I had never volunteered to keep them at the University. What a damned fool I was.”

Chapter 16: The Team Flies Home

Two of the men were waiting by the Aeroméxico counter while the third one was

in a telephone booth. He was not using the booth’s phone; he was using a cell phone.

“Yes. Yes. There was a problem. I’d rather talk about it in person, not now. Yes, all three of us. We’re on the next plane and should be in Guadalajara in a couple of hours. OK. Where? I’ll be there.”

The man slid his phone shut and walked over to the two that were by the Aeroméxico counter.

“He wants us back today,” he said to them.

The black man shrugged, “So we are going back. No problem.”

“Was he pissed?” asked the other man.

“He’s always pissed.” The sound system announced their flight. “You two wait here. I will go talk to the security guys.”

The black man’s eyes, invisible behind the dark glasses, saw the team leader walk over to the security man standing by the x-ray machine. The team leader said something to the security man and then discreetly showed him identification. The team leader turned and nodded toward the black man and his partner. The security man said something and went off. He returned with another man who shook hands with the team leader. They talked and the second security man shook his head several times. The team leader finally assented and walked

back to the black man and his partner.

“Damned pinheads won’t let us board with the hardware. We have to put it in a bag and hand it over to them and they will have someone hand it over to us in Guadalajara.”

“Aw, man!” said the black man.

“Come on, let’s go buy a stupid bag,” said the team leader.

In one of the airport stores they found a bag; they heard the boarding call so they hurried to the airport toilettes. There, they locked the door, quickly unstrapped guns and other “hardware” from under their coats and inside pockets of their pants, and put them in the bag they had just bought. They then hurried to the security man by the x-ray machine and handed him the bag.

Once past the security check, they sat in the lounge waiting for the other engers to board. The black man wanted to smoke but saw the sign that said it was forbidden so he took out a pack of chewing gum instead.

“Want some gum?” he asked the others.

Chapter 17: The Start of the Project

Although he had an office there, John Wayne rarely went to the consulate. In his line of work it was bad business to follow a routine. He knew the cartels had people watching the consulate building and he didn’t want to give them a route they could count on if they ever wanted to “levantar” (lift) him, to use the euphemism for sequestering that was in vogue with the bad guys.

John Wayne had adopted his cover name many years ago and he had been so secretive about his own name and people had grown so used it that now no one called him by any other. His tall, lanky frame and habit of carrying two .45 caliber guns enhanced the aura of a Wild West persona, which John Wayne did nothing to diminish.

He often justified his secrecy and his mania for hiding everything about his personal life by recounting what had happened to the man who had been head of the DEA for this region before him. According to John Wayne, his predecessor’s family had been sequestered in order to pressure him into revealing the name of the undercover informant the DEA had infiltrated into the gang’s upper echelon. After he gave them the name, the family was let go, but he and the informant had been shot through the head and dumped into shallow graves.

John Wayne let every official in the consulate know that he preferred cell phone calls rather than face-to-face meetings when discussing business. But, if it was an urgent matter and his presence was really needed, he would reluctantly come out of the cold.

So, when he got the call from Robert Miller, the head of the Benjamin Franklin Library, who said he needed to see him, John agreed to come in and talk.

Robert Miller was not a man to call a meeting to discuss the weather. His large, ruddy complexion belied the though, rigorous man who had been a CIA station

chief in some of the world’s most dangerous places: Beirut in Lebanon, Medellín in Colombia, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, among others. The plaque on Robert Miller’s door said he was in charge of USAID for the region, but everyone in the consulate guessed he was more than that, although what exactly he was no one knew for sure.

John Wayne knocked on the door and walked in.

“Mr. John Wayne,” said Robert Miller as he stood up and extended a huge hand. Before Robert Miller’s physical presence, even John Wayne with his 6'4" felt smaller.

“Hi, Bob. How’ya been?” said John Wayne.

“Oh, all right. I could be better if I lost a few pounds,” he said and laughed.

John Wayne smiled and looked at Robert Miller’s shirt collar, which seemed about ready to burst. Indeed he should loose a few pounds.

Both men sat down and Robert Miller picked up the phone to speak to the sweet little old lady outside the office who pretended to be his secretary: “Hold all my calls, please, Mrs. Jeffrey.”

“Hmmm,” said John Wayne, “must be something important you want to talk about—you’ll be bringin’ out the old bottle of whiskey next n’ offerin’ me a drink.”

Robert Miller laughed, “You wish! No, it’s too early in the day for that. I can offer you some coffee or a soda?” This last word betrayed that Miller, like John Wayne, was a southerner.

John Wayne waved his hand. “Naw, I’m ok. Let’s get down to ‘bidnez’,” he said.

“All right,” said Miller, let’s.” His large, round face, which was covered with beads of perspiration in spite of the air conditioning, lost all of its mirth and hardened into a serious scowl.

“I got word from Washington that the other team has started to move.”

“What are they going to do? Does anyone know?”

“No, that’s the problem. Our inside man says that something is coming down but he has been kept out of the loop, so it must be big.”

“Well, what the hell do they want us to do? If we don’t know what they’re up to we can’t counter them.”

“I know; that’s what I told them,” said Miller wiping his brow. “What they want is for us to move faster with our stuff. What about the info you were going to get? We could leverage that to neutralize the big man.”

Ignoring the “no smoking” sign, John Wayne lit one of his dark cigarillos. He shot a plume of smoke into the air conditioning extractor opening and shook his head. “The hackers got in, all right, but the info had been encrypted by the time they got it, so we have a copy but it’s useless without the means to decrypt it.”

“Damn,” said Miller, “how did that happen?”

“Who cares; it happened.”

“So, what are you going to do now?”

“They sent a team down to roust the guy who we think did the encrypting—to see if we can get him to help us decrypt the thing.”

“You’d better be careful; if something goes wrong, we could…”

“They’re not Agency people; they’re freelancers. They have their own so nothin’ can link them back to us.”

“Hmm, but they’re Americans?”

“Yeah, and real patriots, too,” said John Wayne and he laughed.

“But, if something happens, you know, they’re Americans and we could…”

“Listen, this country is swarming with guys from the States; you got your CIA guys, your FBI, our own Agency, and who knows what else…three more guys, who’s gonna to notice?”

“Where are they now? Are they in place?”

“They are in Monterrey as we speak. I heard from them this morning and they are coming here to report.”

“I thought you said they had their own .”

“They do but I told them that if they needed something, you know, something out of the ordinary, to call me, or come and see me.”

“So, what did they want?”

“I think they want their money, for one—we promised to pay them when the job was done—and they had trouble at the airport in Monterrey. They wanted to carry their hardware on board and security wouldn’t let them so I had to make a couple of phone calls.”

“But, still why do they have to see you?”

“The team leader said they had had some sort of trouble up there and he wanted to fill me in on it. It seems their told them they should.”

“Oh, hell, I hope it’s nothing bad.”

“It didn’t sound like it when he called. I’m gonna have them chill in a hotel room for a couple of days before I see them, though. If they’re hot, I don’t want them near me. I’ll see them when I’m sure they’re cool. I’ll talk to them on the phone though and get the lowdown.”

“OK, so let me know how things went up there as soon as they report to you. Now, about our own plan…”

Miller got up and went to the wall where he opened a small safe and took out a sheaf of papers.

“Here’s what has been coming down from Washington and elsewhere.” He sat down and handed the printed documents one by one for John Wayne to read.

The communications talked about the big man, Alfonso Echeverría Garza, who was first cousin to the President of Mexico. They had identified the woman, his lover, as Phillipa Everton-Smythe, born Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK, October 21, 1974; Vice President in charge of special foreign s for NY Central Bank.

“I know a lot of this shit already,” said John Wayne impatiently. “So, she has

been laundering his money. She carries it up in her bag; we know all that.”

“Yeah, but it gets better. Read on.”

John Wayne skimmed over the text: Laura Gonzalez de Echeverría Garza, wife, born Mier, Tamaulipas, January 6, 1959. Report from INTERPOL and confirmed by our (blacked out); has been depositing checks for…in three s…using false ports. All ports have the suspect’s picture…different names on…

“Where is the money coming from; do we know?” John Wayne asked.

“We know,” said Miller. “Not only has the Gulf Cartel given him moral and logistic , they are giving him substantial financial as well.”

“Can’t we get the Swiss or somebody in Europe to do something about this?”

“Not yet. There are a lot of people in Washington who want us to keep quiet, keep a low profile. They are about to wrap up the negotiations on the Bilateral Trade Agreement and the last thing they want are stories in the papers about the President’s cousin being in cahoots with the drug cartels or that Mexico is a lawless country where corruption, not the law, governs. There is too much at stake; lots of money to be made by big companies and lots of political points to be won by many in Congress.”

“So we just sit around and watch them go through with their plans?”

“For a while. The BTA goes to the Senate for ratification in a week or so. After it es, we will have a free hand; or at least one of them won’t be tied behind our back.”

John Wayne tossed the papers onto Miller’s desk. “The same old bullshit,” he said and stubbed out his cigarillo on the inside of the wastebasket.

“Hey, watch out you don’t burn the place down,” said Miller peering into the wastebasket. “Yeah, same old bullshit. So, bottom line, my friend: keep countering them as much as you can but don’t do anything to, you know, let our hand show, as it were.”

“Yeah, yeah, I won’t.” He got up to go.

“One more thing before you go. It would be my guess that their first target is going to be our inside guy, or our presidential candidate. Let your people know so they keep their ears to the ground; there’ll be some rumbling soon. If somebody puts out a contract on either of them, hopefully we will hear of it before something happens.”

“Right,” said John Wayne as he exited Miller’s office.

As soon as the door closed, Miller picked up his phone and tapped in a number.

“Hi, this is Bob. Look I just had a talk with John, yeah, that John. He said something about the Monterrey operation having had a bit of trouble. Why don’t

you talk to his boss, get him on the same page, you know, tell him to let us know as soon as he knows, ok? Why? Because I always like to have both sides of the story, that’s why. Right, talk to you soon.”

Chapter 18: A Meeting with the Widow

Two days after having been told he was off the case, Lombardo arrived at the Investigations Department’s building and as was his habit, he went to the reception desk to ask if anything had come for him. The policewoman at the desk handed him a sealed manila envelope with his name printed on a label. As he walked to his desk he was still mumbling about the information Dr. Figueroa had given him a few days ago: “Why did someone go to all the trouble of sending three guys to beat up on that little guy? What did they want from him? If it was something important, why not just try to bribe him? He was a working guy; he could’ve used a couple of bucks. Why all the violence? Even the cartels tried money first. It wasn’t until you refused that they shot you and your family. Maybe someone had tried already and he had refused; hence the beating.”

Some of the people sitting at the desks that he ed on the way to his looked up and just shook their heads when they heard him; but most of them were used to his eccentricities and paid no attention.

The majority of the people in the Department either did not like Lombardo or did not want to have anything to do with him. The younger crowd, graduates of the new Police Academy, thought him old fashioned, probably corrupt, and definitely unsociable. The older hands, most of whom were on one cartel’s or another’s payroll, wondered why he had survived so long. They expected him to get in somebody’s way sooner or later and to be shot to death in the street by some motorcycle rider or by the occupants of one of the black SUVs that roamed the streets of Monterrey like angels of death.

Most people knew that he was on his way out, one way or the other, and no one wanted to be around him or be associated with him when that time came.

When Lombardo reached his desk he opened the manila envelope the policewoman had given him and took out the papers. It was a copy of Victor Delgado’s personal file. He saw Victor’s home phone number on the first page and ed he wanted to talk to his widow. He dialed.

He looked at his watch; it was half past eleven.

“Señora Delgado? This is Captain Lombardo. I am in charge of your husband’s, of uh, finding out what happened to your husband, that is. May I come to, uh, visit you? I would very much like to talk to you. Yes, today. OK, thank you.”

Lombardo sat down at his desk to read the file.

Paternal Last Name: Delgado

Maternal Last Name: Ramirez

First Name(s): Victor Manuel

Date of birth: 24-08-1982

Civil Status: Married

Dependents:

Name: Laura García Rodriguez Date of birth: 16-02-1980 Relation: Wife

Victor Lisandro Delgado García Date of birth: 15-09-2006 Relation: son

Lombardo flipped through the pages of the file of the young man. “So, in death one is reduced to this,” he said, “a file with names of people you loved and cared for, things you studied, places where you worked, money you earned, letters of commendation for a job well done, of recommendation from former employers —bits and pieces of a life.”

He was a 15B level technical employee. He had been married for nearly two years. He had worked full time for the University for three years; before that he had been a part-time employee of the same. He earned $8,000 pesos a month, received a transportation supplement of $500 pesos because of his position, he had a discount card for the University store, and not much else.

His bosses had always given him good but not outstanding reviews: loyal, trustworthy, reliable, does his job well, punctual, and so on. His former employers, a bank, and a supermarket where he had been, respectively, a messenger, and a part-time computer operator, had given him respectable but not extraordinary letters of recommendation.

His grades in school and later in the University had been middle of the road seven and eights on a scale of ten. He had been slowly, steadily working on a master’s degree, one class per semester at a time.

He would just as surely climb up the bureaucratic ladder of the University staff, gaining small pay raises, and sedate letters of commendation.

By all measures and s, this young man was unexceptional, decidedly unremarkable. So, why was he killed? Why did he swallow a paper with numbers and letters on it before he was killed?

A policewoman approached his desk, “Captain Delgado?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You were assigned to the Victor Delgado investigation?”

“Yes, but I have been taken off the case.” he said furrowing his brow a bit annoyed.

She shrugged her shoulders and nevertheless dropped the papers on his desk. “The press room sent this up. It’s an extract from what will be printed in tomorrow’s newspapers.”

This was one of the Director’s latest bright ideas. He had ordered the press room to demand from local newspapers, any editorial, commentary, and/or news item pertaining to particular cases before they were printed, and for copies to be sent to the case officer. According to the memo the Director had sent around, it was a way of letting the investigators know what public opinion was saying about a particular case, and a way of “spreading the pressure around” instead of it being leveled only on the Director and the upper echelons of the Department.

Lombardo looked at the photocopied article that had the next day’s date under the byline:

“The Office of the Federal Prosecutor of the Republic has confirmed that the murder of a University employee, Victor Delgado Ramirez, whose body was recently found by the railroad tracks that cross one of the city’s main avenues, was not the work of any element of organized crime. Therefore, the case is being remitted to the State Prosecutor.

“In the statement made available to the public media, the Office of the Prosecutor said that there was no evidence that could lead the Federal Authorities to consider the murder of Delgado Ramirez as an act of organized crime.’

“In spite of the fact,’” the statement continued, “that the evidence proved that the victim had suffered extreme violence, Federal Authorities did not consider that there were any circumstances that would place the case in their jurisdiction.”

This was indeed a strange turn of events. Someone had first tried to suppress Victor Delgado’s death from appearing in the newspapers, and suddenly it had become a matter that warranted the General Prosecutor to issue a statement.

In another photocopied sheet, there was an article in which the State Prosecutor’s office was to issue its own statement. It said that ‘the decision of Federal Authorities to return the case of Victor Delgado Ramirez’ murder to the State Prosecutor is hailed by [this] office not only as proof that the victim was not murdered by a person or persons connected with the drug cartels, but that the Federal Prosecutor had ample reason to believe that the State Prosecutor’s office would pursue the case to the full extent of the law.’

Lombardo threw the sheets of paper into the wastebasket. “I guess the ball has been slammed back into our court,” he said. But as he got up to go across the street to a small restaurant that offered a decent lunch, it occurred to him that there was something in that news extract that, if one read carefully, and one interpreted the words with a pinch of malice, one could see that there were things happening in this case that were unusual for most murder cases. Bodies appeared on the streets or in the desert by the dozens every day but few of them ever received more attention than the usual photo in the back section of newspapers.

Anybody with any sense could see that this was not as simple a case as some people were suggesting. The back and forth between the Federal and State Prosecutors was proof of that. The many-sided war between rival gangs and the Mexican Government was complex enough without having to consider corruption, the personal ambition of politicians, the intervention of foreign governments (especially the U.S. government), and the general fear of the population. It was easy to sweep any murder nowadays under the carpet of “cartel sicarios killing each other in their fight for control of territory and export routes.”

But, as Lombardo had said, the Public Ministry goons had been too quick to write up their report, the body was retrieved a bit too quickly, and the press seemed to be towing the official line on this one just a bit too accommodatingly. “This whole business has a strange feel to it,” he said as he ate his lunch. To

which the waitress who brought him his food just sighed, knowing full well he was speaking to no one in particular.

After just picking at his food, he went back to the office, brushed his teeth and checked his phone for messages before he went off to see Victor Delgado’s widow.

As he ed the reception desk, the duty officer told him that the Director wanted to see him.

“Tell him I know that the case was kicked back to us and that I’m on it again,” he replied.

Victor had indeed lived in “La Florida” as David had said. It is a neighborhood crowded with three-bedroom, concrete and brick houses inhabited by the families of technicians and engineers—skilled workers who keep the plants and factories that surround the suburbs north and east of Monterrey going. If the men who live here were in the Army, they would have been non-commissioned officers because just as in the Army, they are the ones that keep things running.

Don José Barrios Garza, the city historian, had once explained to Lombardo that it took four generations for the descendants of a peasant family that migrated to the city, to become the owner of a house in one of these residential areas. The father arrived from the countryside with his wife and kids; they lived in a shanty town, usually in a house made of cinder blocks and sheet metal that the father, a self-taught mason, stole or bought from the foreman of a construction site where he worked; his kids would be the first generation of the father’s family to go to school so they became skilled laborers; the girls of the family became shop attendants because, unlike their cousins who had stayed behind in the village, they could read and write.

The second generation, the kids of the skilled laborer or the shop girl went to a technical school and became foremen in a factory. By the third generation, some of the girls might set up a beauty shop or corner neighborhood store and some of the boys might have been successful enough to buy a small row house like the ones built by a government agency such as Infonavit. By the fourth generation, the grandsons and great-grandsons of the peasant who had moved to the city many years before, were getting engineering or istrative undergraduate degrees from State University and maybe an MBA or degree in finance from private University. These are the ones that, like Victor, were finally able to leave the social housing projects where their parents lived and were able to buy a house in the residential areas of the southern part of the city! This was the Mexican version of the American Dream. It had taken the Delgados 50 years to put Victor into this little house. Too bad he would not be alive to see if the fifth generation of his family made it to the executive suite.

Judging from what people had said about him, it was obvious that Victor himself would never have made it. He was not like his cousin, the Director of the Computer Center, who came from that side of the family that had immediately understood and adopted the entrepreneurial, materialistic spirit of the city and had achieved both economic and social success soon after arriving in Monterrey. Victor’s side of the family had only managed modest success and was firmly ensconced in the lower middle class.

The taxi turned into one of the many similar streets and stopped in front of one of a series of equally small houses. It was the type built during the housing boom when the government wanting to incur favor with the growing lower middle classes, who were demanding affordable housing, had relaxed its construction codes and allowed the proliferation of these so-called “social interest” structures. Their drab design and suffocating crowding was no different from the row houses of the Industrial Age and their conception had been just as “enlightened.”

Lombardo had once stated, and incurred much derision from his colleagues, that

it didn’t take a genius to figure out why there was so much crime, drug-related violence, and social upheaval. The pattern was the same whether it was Detroit, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, or Paris: overcrowded suburbs, favelas, ghettos, housing projects, where people had lost their roots, their customs (by governments demanding people “assimilate” into a “national” culture), and their identity. To that you add frustration, boredom, lack of opportunity, discrimination, and lack of education, and you have a perfect cocktail for producing the drug wars, the riots in Paris, guerilla warfare in Colombia, or the rampant criminal activity of the shanty towns in Rio de Janeiro.

Don José’s description of how folks from the country were assimilated into urban culture didn’t work anymore. No one wanted to wait 50 years and hope that one’s grandchildren or great-grandchildren made it to a steady job and a three-bedroom, 60 square meter house made with a cookie cutter. To a lot of Mexicans, either taking your chances crossing a deadly desert to get to California or taking your chances by ing a Cartel death squad for 500 dollars a month, were better options.

The Latin American governments and U.S. companies that had had the “brilliant” idea of pushing people from the countryside into the cities so that there would be plentiful cheap labor for factories had created an uncontrollable monster. It was time to pay the piper and the piper played to the sound of automatic rifles.

* * *

The only difference between Victor’s and the other 20 houses on the block was the color; it was painted a pastel green with darker green highlights while the others were in pastel shades of blue, pink, light brown, and so on. Lombardo knocked on the door softly and then noticing a small button, rang the bell, which made a pleasant ding dong sound somewhere deep inside the house.

After a half-minute, the door opened. Lombardo was startled by the beauty of the woman that stood in the doorway framed by the darkness of the house’s interior. Her body, wrapped in a light gray dress that faintly implied mourning, seemed sculpted by the strong sunlight that attenuated the interior shadows. She looked at him with large, dark eyes, and her hair, black and wavy, streamed over her bare shoulders, which were a smooth, light brown. She said nothing as she stood there, her eyes widening as if questioning who he was.

Lombardo stammered—an unusual thing for him, “I, I’m Detective Captain Lombardo.”

“Come in, Captain Lombardo,” she said in a soft almost whispered voice. She turned and he followed her into the dimly lit interior.

“Please sit down,” she said gesturing toward the small sofa in the living room. She went to one of the windows and pulled the curtains aside to let some light into the gloomy room. As she stood on her tiptoes and reached for the curtains, the cotton dress clung to her body—Lombardo looked away.

“Would you like something to drink? I have Jamaica or cold water—no beer or liquors, I’m afraid.”

“No, that’s alright. I can only stay a moment and I will be going soon.” Had fellow policemen accompanied Lombardo they would have wondered why he said that. He had no pressing appointment for later on in the day. They would have also been puzzled by the look of embarrassment on his face and how ill at ease he looked. But then, no one in the Department had ever seen Lombardo as emotionally moved at the sight of a female as he was now. Lupe had been right

—Victor had probably not had any desire for philandering when this woman had been waiting at home.

She sat in an armchair opposite Lombardo. Thankfully, her dress draped well below her knees.

“Mrs. Delgado, as I said on the phone, I was assigned to the, uh, to find out the facts of your husband’s, uh, unfortunate.…” It was obvious that Lombardo was not comfortable using such formal . He usually did not speak like that. He was talking like some damned funeral director.

“You were told to find out why my husband was murdered, is that it?”

“Yes, in so many words; yes, that’s it.” He was obviously relieved by her directness. It was clear that she did not expect the usual hypocritical language everyone used on these occasions. Lombardo had always hated the mellifluous phrases, which were commonly used in Mexican society as an indirect way of broaching a subject, so he was glad he could dispense with them.

“Mrs. Delgado, were you aware of any problems, I mean serious problems, that your husband might have had?”

“No, I wasn’t aware of any problems.”

“Did he ever talk about any people he thought, uh, that he might have considered as, enemies, or threatening him, or, someone who might, uh.…”

“My husband was an employee of the University,” she said curtly, “he did his job and came home every night. He didn’t drink, he didn’t gamble, and as far as I know he never quarreled with anyone. He was a very serious person.” She looked away. “And he didn’t run around either; do you understand?”

Someone had asked her these questions before. It was obvious that when asked if he “ran around” she had been offended. He assured her that he considered Victor’s character beyond reproach. Then he added, “Everyone I have talked to about your husband has more or less said the same thing. Yet.…”

“Yet he is dead,” she completed his unfinished sentence.

“Yes, that’s my point.”

They were both silent for a moment, then she said, “I’ve been trying to understand it myself; I have tried to if he said anything or did anything that might have…; but I can’t. We had a very quiet life.”

“You had been married just a short time, uh, less than two years.”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Did you, do you know any of the people he was friends with before you met him?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of people were they? Were they…”

“What kind of people? They were like him, computer technicians, operators, friends from school.”

“Can you think of anyone from his past that might, that maybe…?”

She looked at him and guessed what he wanted to know. “I was the first woman with whom he was seriously involved; he was a shy person, not given to…”

“I understand. Mrs. Delgado, if this is too, uh, difficult for you, I can come back...”

“No, I’m perfectly fine,” she said, and anyone looking at her at that moment would have believed it. Someone once said that the real tragedy of life is not having lost but having almost won. In spite of her beauty, there was sadness in Mrs. Delgado’s eyes and in her manner that went beyond her immediate grief. It was the sort of melancholy that permeates a life that has known a lot of unhappiness and has come to accept heartbreak as a constant in existence.

“Mrs. Delgado, a piece of paper was found in your husband’s possession,” said Lombardo sparing her the details, “that contains a string of numbers and letters. Did he ever mention anything about a piece of paper like that?”

“No, not that I can recall,” she said hesitantly, “but what do you mean, a string of numbers and letters? Do you mean like a phone number and name?”

“No, Mrs. Delgado, it was more like a code or what they call a , perhaps.”

“I don’t recall that he ever mentioned anything like that.”

“You never saw a piece of paper around the house, or forgotten in his pockets, maybe?”

She shook her head. “Why do you ask, Captain? Is it very important?”

“I don’t know. I just thought that since it was found in his possession, it might have been very important to him or to his work.”

“He never talked much about his work here at home. It was very technical and something I wasn’t…that I don’t quite understand.”

“I see,” murmured Lombardo. “I understand that his father and brother came to identify the, uh, your husband.”

“Yes, that’s right. They have been very helpful with the arrangements for the

funeral.”

“Do you have their phone numbers and addresses? I’d like to talk to them as well.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll get my directory. Please wait a minute,” she said and getting up she went into the dark recesses of the rooms upstairs. Lombardo heard her muffled voice softly asking a child to go back to sleep.

She came down the stairs, stepping on the balls of her feet to avoid making noises; in her hand there was a notebook bound in flowery printed plastic and a letter-size envelope. She gave it to Lombardo without saying a word and she sat down in the armchair.

Lombardo looked at the envelope; it was addressed to Dean Herrera. The flap of the envelope had been lightly sealed with its own glue.

She must have noticed the puzzled look in Lombardo’s faces so she explained, “Your comments about a paper with some kind of code on it made me that he had given me that envelope some time ago. He said that if anything ever happened to him, I should hand this over to the Dean or someone in the University.”

“Do you know what it is, what the envelope contains?”

She shrugged. “I always assumed it was some kind of insurance policy.”

“May I open it, Mrs. Delgado?”

“I don’t know if we should. My husband addressed it to the Dean.”

“If you are worried about any legal complications, I will tell you that as an investigator of a criminal act, I can legally ‘search’ for evidence without the need of a warrant.”

Lombardo looked up at Mrs. Delgado before opening the envelope. She saw the question in his eyes and said, “I am giving it to you because he said I should give it to the Dean or to someone I trusted.” After a small pause she added, “I think I can trust you to give it to Dean Herrera.”

“Yes, yes of course,” Lombardo assured her. “Did you ask him what it was?”

“No; it was enough for me that he said it was information for the Dean and that I should have it delivered to the University.”

“Had he done something like this before?”

“No, never.”

“Didn’t you feel any curiosity or didn’t you want to know what it was?”

“No, it was something he had asked me to do and I felt that if it was something that concerned me, he would have told me so. Victor and I had no secrets. We were very open with each other, very sincere.”

“Although I will hand it over to the Dean,” Lombardo reiterated, “I think I should have a look at the contents, Mrs. Delgado. It might have information that could shed some light into his, uh, demise.”

Lombardo easily slipped his finger under the envelope flap. Inside there was a single sheet of paper. A long series of numbers and letters was printed on the top part of the page. Below this series there was a single sentence: “Dean Herrera, this is the private key.”

He showed her the paper. “Do you know what this means, Mrs. Delgado?”

She looked at the paper intently then shook her head.

“Have you shown this to anyone else? Or told anyone about it?”

Again she shook her head.

Lombardo thought about how he should phrase his next question. “Mrs. Delgado, why did you, that is, what made you decide to show this to me?”

She sighed. “He said I should send it to the Dean or to someone in authority at the University but not deliver it myself—just to make sure it was someone that could be trusted to deliver it. I don’t know anyone there and I feel I can trust you.”

She looked back into the dark house as if anxious that she might be overheard, as if what she was about to say might be compromising.

“I think that you will try to find out who killed my husband, and why.” Then she added, “And, I don’t know anyone at the University who can be trusted.”

“Why do you say that?”

“When I was studying there, we heard all sorts of rumors. The State University has always been very politicized, but there were speculations that the Dean might be using the resources of the University to help the PLR Party.”

“Did your husband ever mention anything about that? Or, if he was involved in something like that?”

“No, as I’ve said, he didn’t talk much about his work. But, I always felt that he was involved in something or doing something with which he wasn’t too happy. Lately, he would get phone calls late at night and he would rush off saying there was a problem at work and he had to go and see about it.”

“He never mentioned what kind of problems those were?”

“No, never. But, I always felt that it was something that worried him.”

“Why did you feel that, Mrs. Delgado?”

She shrugged and said, “A woman’s instinct tells her a lot of things, Captain Lombardo.”

She looked into his eyes and for the first time in many years, Lombardo was made to lower his eyes by someone else. Lombardo, the fierce infantry captain who could make a soldier tremble with a look, could not stand the soft gaze of her eyes so he looked down at the paper again, not because he was trying to understand it but because he was afraid he was blushing, afraid she might see in his eyes what he was thinking about her.

Finally, when he felt it was safe, he raised his head and asked more of the usual questions. Getting back to a routine police questioning would help to reestablish a distance between them. Did he ever talk about anyone at work? Did he ever mention that he was in any kind of danger? Did he ever seem unusually nervous or tense? Did she know any of his colleagues well? Did he ever talk about any of them disparagingly? Did he ever say anything negative about any of his bosses?

He probed from every angle that he thought might give him an insight, a clue that Victor’s job or the people and circumstances around it might have put him in some sort of danger, or in conflict with anyone.

She answered all of his questions quietly, but negatively. She insisted that he

didn’t talk much about his work and when he did, it was mostly banal stuff— about a possible raise, about someone leaving or coming into the Department. Apparently, there had been nothing really eventful in his uneventful life.

As he listened to her answers, Lombardo had made a note to ask how this beautiful woman had married such a simple, unremarkable young man.

“Where did you meet Victor, Mrs. Delgado?”

“We met in the University. I was a student in the School of ing and he was working in the Computer Department. We were given an assignment, a project that had to do with using ing programs and I didn’t understand much about them so Victor was kind enough to help me out.” She made a pause as if ing something and then she said, “We became friends.”

“So, you are a graduate of the School of ing?”

“No,” she said and made another pause before adding, “You see, I was expecting my son when I met Victor. I had to stop my studies. We were married soon after I quit school.”

She looked straight into his eyes again; there was defiance, perhaps pride, maybe a challenge in her look. She had been through this before and she had not bowed her head in shame. Her penetrating look seemed to want to know how he was going to judge her.

“I’ll spare you the embarrassment of having to ask me, Captain Lombardo, so I will tell you that because I was pregnant, I lost my job. You see, my former boss is the father of my child. If it had not been for Victor I would have had a very difficult time.”

“Do you have no family?”

“Yes, but my father asked me to leave the house when he found out, that is, when I told him of my condition.”

“Did Victor know the, uh, your former boss?”

“Yes, but if you are thinking that they might have had some sort of problem let me assure you that Victor never once mentioned him and was truly indifferent to the man.”

Lombardo busied himself putting the paper with the key back in the envelope. He got up and said, “I am going to keep this for a while before I send it on to the Dean, Mrs. Delgado. Please don’t tell anyone else about it or that you have given it to me. I think that this is a very sensitive document and it is best that other people don’t know it’s been in your possession.”

“You mean the people that killed my husband.”

“Yes, among others.”

“Very well,” she said getting up, too.

“There are no copies that you know of, are there, Mrs. Delgado?”

“No, not that I know of.”

He extended his hand to shake hers. Her hand was long, and Lombardo held it a bit longer than was customary.

“Again, I am sorry for your loss, Mrs. Delgado. I hope the University does well by you. If there is anything I can do, please let know.” He gave her his card. “My cell phone number is there so if you think of anything else, anything at all, no matter how trivial, please don’t hesitate to call.”

“I will,” she said. “Would you like for me to call you a taxi?”

“No, it’s OK. I’ll just walk down to the avenue and get one.” He said goodbye and walked down the street midst the bright sunshine. He sighed as if he were relieved to have done with a difficult chore.

Once he was in a taxi, he called Lupe Salgado. “Look I have to see you right now. Where? Where is your office? OK, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

He tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder and said, “Take me to the Kalos Building.”

Chapter 19: The Keys to the Tale

The Kalos Building in Monterrey is the flagship and corporate offices of a large real estate and business parks empire said to be owned by an ex-Governor of the State of Nuevo León. It houses not only the headquarters of the Kalos Group itself but also the headquarters or offices of a gaggle of international corporations.

Lombardo walked into the building and read the directory. He saw that “Omega IT Consulting” was on Level A-3. “Lupe must be doing good business to be able to afford this,” he said aloud.

The security guard by the elevator doors turned to look at him but said nothing.

When he walked into Lupe’s office, he gave the secretary his name and told her he was expected. Lupe was busily typing into his computer so he greeted Lombardo without looking away from the screen and asked him to sit down.

Lombardo put the plastic bag and the paper the widow had given him on Lupe’s desk and took out his cigarettes and lighter. “Do you mind if I smoke,” he asked the busy Lupe.

“Yes,” Lupe said, “but go ahead anyway.”

When he finished typing, Lupe turned to Lombardo and extended his hand. “Sorry about that,” he said, “but I had a lot of emails to answer.”

“That’s a snazzy looking three-piece suit you got there, Lupe. You’ve come a long way from the computer operator I met in the Technological Institute so many years ago.”

“Well, you know what Manolete said, ‘To be a bullfighter, you not only have to be one, you have to look like one’; the same goes for consultants,” he said laughing.

“Yeah,” agreed Lombardo, “but that’s not true for cops—at least not in Mexico.”

“I can see that,” said Lupe pointing at Lombardo’s mackintosh. He looked at what Lombardo had put on his desk and asked, “What have you got there?”

With small puffs of smoke punctuating his words, Lombardo said, “The paper in the plastic bag was in the victim’s trachea; the paper with the letters and numbers was given to me by his widow. She said he instructed her to give it to someone in authority, someone she could trust.”

“So, why did she give it to you?” said Lupe laughing at his own sarcasm.

Lombardo did not laugh and continued, “After the long series of letters and numbers, in that paper she gave me, it instructs the Dean of the University that this is a ‘private key.’ Now, I have a general idea of how encryption keys work,

which I think this is what these are, but more importantly, I have a hunch that this has something to do with what he was doing at work, maybe what he was doing the night he was murdered.”

Lupe picked up the paper the widow had given Lombardo. He looked at it carefully as if he were an archeologist looking at old parchment. Then he picked up the plastic bag gingerly, as if afraid it would stain his fingers, and looked at the paper inside.

“I think the guy knew he was doing something that could put him in some kind of danger, that’s why he gave that paper to his wife.”

“Well, if he was using it as insurance, it didn’t work,” said Lupe glibly.

“I don’t think it was insurance. I think he just wanted someone to know what had happened to him, in case something did happen to him.”

“He must have had a pretty fatalistic outlook on life,” said Lupe after putting down the plastic bag. “Why didn’t he just deliver the thing himself instead of this roundabout, mysterious way?”

“I think he was setting the thing up and maybe doing some last minute work that night with the intention of giving the key to the Dean the next day. He never got the chance, but something or someone must have told him that what he was doing was dangerous so he made sure the Dean would get the key.”

“A loyal employee, eh?”

“Yeah, too loyal for his own good—and loyal to the wrong people. I think the Dean is fooling around with stuff he shouldn’t and Victor was just carrying out orders. So, do you agree that these are keys? Have you used stuff like this before?’”

“Of course that’s what they are. What you have here is a set of encryption keys, alright. The one in the paper the widow gave you is the private key; the one in the plastic bag is the public key. The public key is used to encrypt information— anyone can use it and it is usually freely distributed. The private key is used to decrypt information encrypted with the public key.”

“I see,” said Lombardo and was silent for a moment as he thought about what Lupe had said. “So, I am probably right in assuming that he set this up before he went to work that night—or maybe that same night. He gave the paper to his wife to make sure it reached the Dean in case something happened to him, but why would he hide the public key from his abductors? It would not have helped them.”

“Unless they wanted to send an encrypted message,” said Lupe snickering.

“No, the killers were sure he had the private key on him,” said Lombardo reflectively.

“How could they know that?”

“Someone told them,” said Lombardo. “Someone who knew what he was doing that night.”

“An inside man! But, how in the world did that paper get into his trachea?” asked Lupe picking up the plastic bag again.

Lombardo lit another cigarette. He was more relaxed now because he now understood what had happened and why.

“There was water in his lungs,” he said leaning back while staring at the paper in the plastic bag. “I think he somehow managed to put the paper in his mouth as he was being beaten up. He must have fainted or maybe they tried to ‘waterboard’ him, I don’t know; in any case, he aspirated water, dirty water, and the paper went into his lungs with it.”

“Damn! That’s horrible,” said Lupe putting down the paper.

“Yeah, that’s horrible,” repeated Lombardo. “The thing is, he was either pretty foolish or pretty brave to take such a beating, but he took it for a purpose. He knew the public key was useless to them but the fact that he tried to hide it was meant to convince the killers it was the private key.”

“Man, that was either pretty foolish or pretty brave of him.”

“Both,” said Lombardo. “Lupe, how could we get hold of what he was encrypting that night, or at any other time?”

“Talk to the system managers; get them to show you the logs. But, I am sure they’ll know if there are encrypted files or volumes in their machines.”

“I questioned David López yesterday. Do you know him?”

“Yes, I met him once when I was trying to sell the University on some network security software. He worked for Victor; he should know exactly what Victor was doing.”

“I asked him if he knew what Victor was working on that last night and he sort of shrugged it off saying that Victor was probably going about his normal duties.”

“That’s bullshit. Most system managers know what the other guys are doing. There’s reports and logs one looks at, and meetings. Big servers keep lots of logs, so many, in fact that they have a guy, a log manager, dedicated to that. They keep a record on everything: s, file activity, security measures being applied, you name it. Lots of stuff is recorded and system managers systematically look at logs to see what’s going on. You have to know where to look for things, but then when you are familiar with your machines you basically know where to find information. When you’ve got a problem, the main tools for finding out what went wrong are the system logs.”

“I suppose I should get that David guy to show me some of the logs but I wouldn’t know which ones I should see. Will I be able to read them or are they, you know, in computerese?”

“They’re not like a handwritten diary, I can tell you that,” said Lupe. “You’ll need help to understand just what the information means.”

“Will you have time to come along with me if I go to the University tomorrow?”

Lupe sighed. “I’m pretty busy with the report I am preparing for my client in Mexico City; it depends on when you want to go. Look, why don’t you go and see him and if you find he’s being unhelpful, we can then go together and I’ll have a look at the logs, too.”

“OK, I’ll do that. But, what about making a list of the logs you think I should see.”

“Yeah, I can do that right now.”

“By the way,” asked Lombardo, “if we find that file or files Victor encrypted, we’ll be able to open them with these, right?”

“All you need is the private key,” Lupe assured him. He handed Lombardo a paper. “Here’s a list of some of the logs you should see. This one will tell you how he was moving around, logging into what computers and so on; this one will let you know about the files he was accessing. Now, the security files and logs are kept pretty well guarded so they might balk at letting you see them, but be sure to lean on the log manager, he’s a pretty nervous little fellow but he’ll help you, I’m sure.”

“Thanks, Lupe.”

As Lombardo left Lupe’s office, his cell phone rang: it was the University’s chief of security. He told Lombardo that the information he had requested was ready. It had been recorded on a DVD. Lombardo asked him to send it by messenger to his home, not his office. He asked for the messenger to deliver the disc to him personally.

When Lombardo got home, the messenger was there standing by his motorcycle, with the disc in his hand. There was also a note from the Security chief. It said that they had thoroughly searched the security recordings and found only a brief glimpse of Victor but that there was something very interesting on the disc and that he hoped it would help Lombardo in his pursuit of the killers.

Lombardo sat on his easy chair and watched the blurry black-and-white images. Indeed something very interesting had been recorded—the time shown was 1:32 a.m. In the sequence, Victor came through the Computer Center main door, looked to his left, zipped up his jacket, and went off camera as he walked down the steps. A few minutes later, at 1:37 a.m., a car whizzed by the camera. Lombardo assumed that it was Victor’s car. A few seconds later, a second car was recorded going by. A second car!

Lombardo hit the Back button and stopped it as Victor’s car went by; then he forwarded the disc, frame by frame until the second car showed up. He tried to see who was in the second car but the image was too blurry; it was dark and the parking lot lights shone on the windshield and car windows.

Excited, Lombardo called the University’s security chief. He asked him for the make, model, and license plate number of Victor’s car. “Sure,” said the Security Chief, “we have all employees’ car registration and plates on file—for insurance

purposes, you know.”

“I’ve got to find that car,” said Lombardo as he called his good friend Ramiro Lozano who worked in the State’s Traffic and Road Security Department.

“Ramiro,” he said when his friend answered the phone, “I need to find an automobile right away.” He gave him the make, model, and license number and told him to send it over to the Federal Highway Patrol as well as the Metropolitan Police. He told him to warn officers that the car would probably have been abandoned somewhere south of the city or maybe even outside the city, perhaps near one of the reservoirs. They had to act quickly because most likely that car was going to disappear.

Chapter 20: A High-Stakes Meeting on the High Seas

The large yacht sailed out of Acapulco’s sheltered marina, turned to port when it cleared the peninsula, and then to port again as it headed out to sea.

The guests stayed in their cabins until the coast was out of sight; then, a crew member came around tinkling a bell softly and announcing that cocktails were being served on the aft deck.

A large man dressed all in white and wearing stylish sunglasses stood, drink in hand, leaning against the aft railing. As his guests arrived, a waiter offered the men whiskey highballs and the women champagne.

The last to arrive was a tall blonde woman who took a glass of champagne and went to stand by the large man in white.

“Salud,” said the man and all guests repeated “salud” and then sipped their drinks.

“I am glad all of you could come on such short notice. As I mentioned on my telephone calls, I arranged for this meeting because we have urgent business to discuss and some important things to arrange tonight. For your information, we will sail up the coast to Mazatlán. You don’t have to worry about how to get back home because I have arranged flights for all of you from there. You’ll be back by morning and no one will know you were even gone,” he laughed expansively after he said that and looked pointedly at Abelardo Unzúntia, who instead of being in his jail cell awaiting the outcome of an extradition procedure, had been “allowed” out for the night by the jail’s warden.

“But before we get down to business,” said the man in white whom everyone knew as “the President’s cousin,” “let’s enjoy this wonderful sea air, our delicious company,” he said as he bowed to the blonde woman, “and the great meal the chef is going to cook for us tonight, eh?”

“Yes, of course,” they all agreed and again raised their glasses when he said “salud.”

The meal was indeed grand. The chef had agreed to come on this trip because the man in white had lured him away from the Maria Isabel Hotel with an offer that doubled his pay at the hotel and provided for an interest free loan and help so he could set up his own restaurant in Mexico City.

After the dinner, the women went back to the aft deck to lie down on the deck chairs and gossip in the balmy night air. The sea was calm. The yacht glided effortlessly over the small waves and the women’s laughter floated out into the moonlit night. Far-away the lights of a coastal town twinkled like stars that had fallen to Earth.

The men sat in the dining room, chatted loudly, puffed on their large cigars, and drank generously from their snifters of port. The last crew member to leave the room closed the heavy glass doors. Now the chatter and laugher of the women in the aft deck could barely be heard in the dining room.

Alfonso Echeverría, who was not only the owner of the yacht and the evening’s host, but also the President’s cousin, turned to the young man on his right, Francisco Elizondo, the recently elected Senator from the northeastern State of Coahuila, and asked, “So, how are the arrangements going?”

Before answering, Senator Elizondo ran his hand through his hair. His young face seemed curiously mismatched to his thick, gray mane. He sighed and said, “I think I have the right man ,but we are still checking him out.”

“What does that mean, ‘checking him out’?” asked Governor Sanchez who was sitting at the end of the table—the “place of honor” according to the host.

Senator Elizondo turned to him with a weary look and said, “It means we are looking into his personal and professional life to see that there are no loose ends.”

“Let’s not get into details, don Platón,” said the President’s cousin to the

Governor. “I am sure that the distinguished representative of the State of Coahuila will handle this as it should be. The important thing is to get things done before our ‘cousins from the North’ can act.”

“What is the latest on that? Do we know anything more?” asked a dark-skinned man who was still wearing sunglasses even though night had fallen and surrounded the yacht in gloom hours ago. Since he had come on board, the other men on the yacht had hardly spoken to him, except for the exchange of the necessary civilities. He was the necessary evil of the group: Abelardo Unzúntia Jimenez, underboss of the powerful Gulf Cartel. If he had been asked he would have let his fellow guests know that he had no qualms about going back the next day to the jail cell where he was supposed to be awaiting the outcome of his deportation trial; he already knew what the outcome would be. The week before, a hundred thousand dollars had been deposited in a Swiss bank . The number of the had been mailed to the judge who would “decide” his fate. His cynicism made the others detest him, but his well-known penchant for violence made them fear him as well. The fact that he was there at all was a demonstration of the power and reach of the Gulf Cartel.

“Our friend who works for our adversaries said that they are ready to move; he thinks that the announcement will come sometime next week, probably Friday so the markets don’t have time to react.”

“How are they going to do it? Does he know?” asked the underboss.

“From what he has heard, he thinks that Senator Romero will make the charge during the Senate’s afternoon session; he will state that he has documents that prove that the candidate, Leobardo Contreras, if elected, will ask Congress to legalize drugs; the newspapers and television people will ‘cover’ the story and read the prepared stuff they will have been given, and the President of the United States will be forced to make a statement by Monday or Tuesday.”

“How will that guarantee that…?” the underboss began to ask.

“Well,” the President’s cousin continued, “our friend thinks that the U.S. President will send a private letter to President Cervantes urging him to withdraw his of Leobardo Contreras as his party’s presidential candidate and to start a request for consensus within the party to name another presidential candidate. That’s when Senator Romero’s name will show up on the list, and the rest is easy.”

“What do you mean ‘the rest is easy’? How can Romero prove what he is saying?”

“Our friend’s from the north say that their people have got hold of documents that prove that, if elected, Leobardo Contraras will ask Congress to legalize drugs.”

“Do they exist? I mean the documents?” asked the underboss.

“Oh, yes, they exist,” said the President’s cousin.

“How do we know they exist?” insisted the underboss.

“Because we wrote them,” said Senator Elizondo.

There was a silence. Through the window that had been left open to allow the cigar smoke to exit, the soft, rustling sound of the yacht parting the seawater drifted into the room.

“Let me explain,” said Senator Elizondo. “When President Echeverría pushed the party into naming Leobardo Contreras as presidential candidate, and his successor, he did so with the understanding that Contreras would include drug legalization in his presidential agenda.”

Alfonso Echeverría, continued. “You see, my cousin, the President, couldn’t openly that because he wanted the Americans to approve the Bilateral Trade Agreement. So we had to prepare the candidate’s platform and ideas on legalizing drugs. That way, the President could have credible deniability before the Americans. We also had to do demographic studies to see what the people thought; we will need their , whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, the other side found out about the documents and they have been trying to get hold of them because they not only prove that the future President is going to ask Congress to legalize drugs, but that the present President has secretly ed that agenda.”

“How did they find out about the documents?” growled the underboss.

Echeverría shrugged and said, “That doesn’t matter. What is important is that they know about them and are trying to get them.”

“So why don’t you just have them destroyed?” asked the underboss.

Alfonso Echeverría said, “It’s not that simple. There are a lot of documents:

surveys we made, emails we sent back and forth between those of us who were handling the project, drafts of speeches for the candidate.” He paused as if thinking and then continued: “We had to gather all of the documents, especially the emails that were in several computers, and then put them in a safe place. And , we will need the information when the presidential candidate starts his campaign so we can’t just destroy everything.”

“Are you sure the documents have been stored in a safe place?” asked Governor Sanchez. “I am especially worried about emails; those concern me directly.”

“Yes,” said Echeverría, “I was informed by a reliable source that all of the documents are in a safe place.”

“So, it seems that circumstances will force us to accelerate the execution of our plans; our man will have to act before Friday,” said the underboss.

“Yes, don Abelardo,” said Echeverría to the underboss, “he will have to be ready before next Friday.”

“You should have let one of my men handle this,” said don Abelardo.

“No, don Abelardo. We can’t risk the cartels being blamed. The hit has to seem to come from an unknown source. We can’t risk it being traced to anyone of us and through us to the President.”

“One thing worries me,” said Governor Sanchez. “When Senator Romero is out

of the way, what will stop our northern cousins from coming up with another guy or producing the documents anyway?”

Alfonso Echeverría stood up and looked out of a porthole into the darkness. “Everyone will understand and get the message, see? No one will want to risk the same fate. If someone so high up can be hit, that will mean that no one is safe. And, as a bonus, it will give the President an excuse to say that in spite of the fact that the Conservative Party holds all the top law enforcements positions, they have been unable to stop the lawlessness. He will then proceed to replace all the Conservatives with people from our Party. Our people, in turn, will ask the Americans to scale back their intervention in our country and to recall most of their agents. It will be a clean sweep, you see?”

“They will be furious,” said the Governor. “We will have to be ready for whatever they do in reprisal.”

The men smoked and drank quietly and then the Governor said, “Are you sure we’re not going to cause your cousin, President Echeverría, a big problem?”

Alfonso Echeverría smiled. “My cousin is a smart man. He can handle this. Now, why don’t you go the ladies and entertain them while I discuss some other details with my friend, Governor Sanchez? The ladies must be bored. Don’t be greedy. There’s one to a customer,” he said laughing. “I certainly have to entertain my lady guest because she will be leaving us when we get to Mazatlán.”

“Where is she going?” asked Senator Elizondo.

“Back to New York. She works there, you know.”

The men filed out of the dining room and went down the short flight of stairs to the aft deck where they ed the women, who were now drowsy with drink. As soon as the men ed them, couples formed and one by one, they left for their respective staterooms.

As soon as Alfonso Echeverría closed the dining room door the Governor asked, “Do you think they were satisfied?”

“With what? With the way the plan is going?” said Echeverría while lighting another cigar.

“Yes, but I am more concerned about the documents.” He got up to pour himself a full snifter of port. “I hope we fooled them into thinking that they’re in a computer under your control and that they don’t come sniffing around our University. Those people from the Cartels are capable of anything, with so much money and so many violent people in their ranks.”

“You worry too much, Governor,” said Echeverría. “You have to that those documents are a double sword: they can be harmful to us but they can be harmful to our enemies as well. I am sure our ‘cousins from the North’ would hate to see them made public.”

“Yes, I know that but I’m sure that that underboss, Unzúntia, has already figured out that apart from being dangerous, those damned documents could be used to extort a lot of people, even make a lot of money.”

“Oh, I am sure he has, yes. If I have figured that out he surely has,” said Echeverría.

In spite of the warm night, and the warmth of the cognac, when he heard those words the Governor trembled slightly as if a chill had cursed through his body.

“Tell me, what was it you called me about yesterday? Didn’t you mention that one of our collaborators had been killed or something?”

“Yes,” said the Governor warily, “he was a young man that worked in the University’s Computer Department.”

“Oh, I see,” said Echeverría, his eyes narrowing like a cat that’s focusing on its prey.

“What were the circumstances? Is this related to our project, do you think?”

“We don’t know. The Judicial Police are looking into it; I’m having my people keep an eye on the investigation.”

“Hmm,” said Echeverría as he drew on his cigar, “I wonder if there should be an investigation.”

“Ah,” said the Governor in a sigh of relief, “I have wondered the same thing, so just in case, I prepared a document stating that because of lack of resources, or something to that effect, we would turn it over to the federal people.”

“How would that help?” asked the President’s cousin furrowing his brow.

“Well, if we send it to the federal people, it will be archived behind a lot of other unsolved cases and that will as good as bury it, as it were. It will take months if not years for them to dedicate any resources to it.”

“Mm, ok, but I hope you have taken steps to insure the safety of the information.” The Governor could sense the veiled threat weaving through the words.

“Yes, yes, I talked to the, uh, person who is taking care of it and he assured me it was quite safe,” said the Governor hiding a card or two himself.

“Right, so keep me informed. When you get back to Monterrey, look into it again and call me if there is anything I should know. Now, let’s go and our friends and see if they left anything for you, eh?” He laughed his ugly laugh.

Part 3: Day 3

Chapter 21: A Two-Day Drinking Spree

The two men in the garage were dismantling yet another car when they heard a single honk of a car’s horn.

One of the men looked through the garage door’s small dirty window and then clicked the button to open the door just enough to allow a man, who was dressed in very dirty and greasy overalls, to come through.

He was the man who had taken away the car parts a couple of days before. Without saying a word, he went straight to the refrigerator on the far side of the garage, got a bottle of beer, opened it, and drank the entire contents. Then he turned toward the two dismantling experts, burped loudly, and said, “Close the damned door; we’ve got business to attend to.”

The door was closed and the two garage men came toward the man in greasy overalls who was drinking another of their beers. They didn’t like the guy and it was out of necessity that they dealt with him.

“Muchachos,” he said, I have very good news. I sold all of the parts yesterday, the entire load. So, I have brought you your share.”

He put the bottle of beer down and reached into the back pocket of his overalls. He brought out a greasy paper bag. For a minute, the two garage men thought he was joking and that he was going to produce one of the smelly, greasy tortas he was always eating. But, instead, he produced a large roll of bills.

“This is your share, amigos—five thousand pesos!”

One of the garage men took the roll of bills and put it in a drawer of the tool box. Without a word, the two garage men then went back to work.

“Hey,” said the man in greasy overalls as he threw the empty beer bottle into a trash can, “aren’t you going to celebrate?”

“Yeah, we’re going to celebrate but not just now,” said one of the garage men.

“And not with you, you cheating bastard,” said the other.

Feigning hurt feelings, the man in greasy overalls said, “OK, I just wanted to invite you to have a few beers so we could toast, you know, to our good fortune.”

“Your good fortune,” said one of the garage men from under the hood of the car they were dismantling.

“OK, if that’s the way you want it, amigos. I just wanted to be friendly with my partners.”

“We’re not your partners, we’re your customers,” said one of the garage men.

“Your suckers, I’d say,” said the other garage man.

The man in greasy overalls chuckled and wagged his head as he hit the garage door button. Without waiting for it to open completely, he ducked under it as he yelled back, “See you later, muchachos. Let me know when you have another load.”

The two men in the garage said nothing. They knew they had been cheated by this pig, but there was nothing they could do. Just as long as it didn’t get out of hand because then they would have to do something about it and the greasy bastard would be found in back of the shack where he lived with a knife in his back and his throat cut.

He had probably gotten around ten or twelve thousand for the parts and the chassis, so an honest thief would have kept only 30% and given them seven or eight thousand. But then, five thousand pesos, even when split between them, was more than most workers got in a month; and, they knew it was no good complaining because if they did, he might rat them to the police. Honor among thieves is a myth.

“Compadre,” said the man under the hood to the other man, “let’s go get a beer. We’ll finish this tomorrow.”

“Si, compadre,” the other man agreed.

They washed up, changed clothes, then they went to the tool box, split the money evenly, and then they headed for the door. One of them said, “Wait a minute, compadre,” and he went back to the tool box, lifted the tray where they kept the heavy wrenches and put about 1200 pesos under it. “My old woman would kill me if I come home with nothing,” he said laughing. His compadre

laughed too as they went out the back door.

“Where do you want to go, compadre?”

“Well, you know, we have to go get the other car that the gringos told us about. It is somewhere in the Presa de la Boca so why don’t we go to a nice little bar I know near there? It’s on the road to the Cola de Caballo waterfall. We can sit outside under the trees, have some beer and some tacos, and then, we can pick up the car after that, no?”

They say that there are three lies that all Mexican drinking men utter at one time or another during their lives: “Just one more and then, I promise you, we’ll go”; “I’ll pay you tomorrow!”; and, “I’ll never drink that much again!”

The two friends who took the bus that afternoon to Villa de Santiago, the town that sits on the border of the Presa de la Boca reservoir, would say all three of those lies during the next two days. The first one was said by one of them around ten o’clock that night when the other told him they should go and try to find the car they had promised to pick up. The second lie was said around three in the morning of the next day by the man who had left some of his money in the garage under the heavy wrenches tray—he said it when he needed money to pay the girl in the whorehouse—and the third lie would be said by both forty-eight hours after they had started their drinking binge when they woke up in a jail cell.

The two garage men used their last few hundred pesos to bail themselves out of jail. As they sat on the bench of a bus stop, sweating alcohol under the midday sun, just 300 meters away, near the edge of the reservoir formally known as Presa Rodrigo Gomez, but popularly known as Presa de la Boca, a police cruiser stopped to investigate a car parked under a mesquite tree. The car seemed abandoned. One the policemen in the cruiser called in the license plate number

while the other inspected the vehicle.

Fifteen minutes later, Lombardo got a phone call from his friend in the Traffic Department: “They found the car,” he said.

Chapter 22: The Logs of Life and Death

Lombardo didn’t like mysteries. He liked things clear, concise, unraveled. In the Army, he had rewritten some of the training booklets intended for recruits who could barely read and write. He had thrown out all of the patriotic crap, and the convoluted language, and simplified the instructions. He added pictures that one of his sergeants drew. His superiors were miffed, but accepted the fact that they worked better than the stuff sent out by the jerks in the TRADOC, the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. In Viet Nam too many boys had been killed because no one had explained, simply explained, how booby traps worked or what signs to look for in a trail that had been set up for an ambush.

It had become part of his nature to feel uncomfortable before unresolved things, unexplained events, and unfinished wars. He had become a good cop not only because he was bright (although at times it seemed as if he went to great lengths to hide the fact), but because he disliked loose ends so much.

The murder of this boy had too many of those loose ends, too many blurry edges, and too many people trying to treat it like an unfortunate accident: “Yes, it was terrible, regrettable,” they kept telling him, “but there is nothing to be done about it and one should wrap it up and move on.”

“Move on? I’ll be damned if I do!” said Lombardo aloud. The policeman driving

him back to town just looked at him and said nothing.

He was very angry at himself for being so sloppy. He had assumed that Victor had been picked up by whoever killed him and had not thought about inquiring about his car.

“No hay mal que por bien no venga y vise versa,” was Lombardo’s favorite saying. Something good always comes out of the worst of things, and vice versa.

But, the Director, and the University, and all those trying to put a damper on this investigation had also not asked what had happened to Victor’s car. Since Lombardo had not mentioned it in his reports or made any official effort to look for it, no one else had suspected it existed, so the car was not found before Lombardo could get to it. The car’s location told him a lot of what had happened to Victor; it helped Lombardo form a complete picture of the scene of the crime. He was now satisfied that he knew exactly what had happened to the young man, because the sequence of events of that night had started to line up in his imagination.

The Forensics people were still working on the vehicle when he had left the reservoir shore. They would surely turn up some valuable evidence, but now he didn’t need any of it to understand what had happened there.

When Lombardo had arrived on the scene he had walked around until he had found the spot where it was most likely that they had put Victor into the water. It was a curved depression in the reservoir’s edge that was about 20 meters from the car. The trees and tall reeds that grew along the shore would have hidden Victor and his torturers from the view of anyone strolling or fishing around the dam itself or from anyone driving along the road that ran along the edge of the reservoir.

Lombardo had walked along the edge of the depression and looked into the shallow water, which was transparent under the afternoon sun. He had seen the remnants of charcoal, some bones, and trash people had thrown in the water after broiling meat perhaps for a picnic. Nearby he had found signs of a campfire and empty beer bottles. Yes, his instincts told him, this was the place where they had killed Victor.

Some Sunday, in the late afternoon, perhaps after a picnic, or some warm summer night when someone had spent a night fishing from the spot, charcoal ash from a fire had been dumped or swept into the edge of the reservoir where it had lain, waiting for the young man’s head to be dunked into the muddy water, waiting for it to be aspirated as bits of charcoal and flakes of ashes into the lungs of the unlucky Victor.

There, in that lonely stretch of road, called La Cortina because it ed by the cement “curtain” that was the dam, they had dragged him out of their car and beat him; then, when he had lost consciousness, they had put his head into the water. The cold water had revived him; but, startled, he had opened his mouth to breath, perhaps to scream, and he had sucked both dirty water and the small wad of paper down into his trachea.

The darkness probably hid from his abductors his desperate eyes and spasms of choking. When they guessed what was happening to him, they might have tried to help him, but not knowing about the paper, their efforts to revive him had been futile; they were unable to prevent his death.

“These damned gringos were not only incompetent bastards,” Lombardo said to himself, “they had badly misjudged Victor.” They thought that with a bit of roughening up he would crack, but he had resisted to the point where the blows had become violent enough to make him lose consciousness.

Lombardo had seen this before in Viet Nam—the interrogators, frustrated at the resistance of a prisoner, becoming extremely violent and the punishment reaching a point so severe that it had nothing to do with gaining information or intelligence anymore. It was just an outpouring of frustration, hatred, and rage that turned the interrogator into something inhuman whose only purpose now was to tear the victim apart.

These “methods of coercion” had always been like that. Whether in Mexico in the sixties, in Argentina in the seventies, in Chile, in China, in every country where there has been a repressive regime. The last resort of such a regime has always been indiscriminate violence. It is the human condition: despise the “other” so he has less value as a human being. Call him or her a terrorist, a communist, an enemy of the people, a subversive, a capitalist pig—anything to justify the illegal incarceration, the torture, the wanton murders. There’s not much difference between the Turks who killed Armenians, the guards in Auschwitz, the Argentinean secret police, Pinochet’s interrogators, or that woman in Abu Ghraib. Now we have a brand-new reason for wholesale slaughter: the billions of dollars to be made from illegal drugs. We have learned nothing in the last 100 years.

The damned politicians who let loose these beasts on the population or their own country or, indeed, on the world, always justified the unjustifiable by claiming that they were saving democracy, the party, the country, the something or other. They claimed to be heroes fighting the monster—until someone held up a mirror and they saw in the reflection that the only monster was them. Now the ambition and lust for power of the politicians is being matched by the ambition and lust for power of the Cartel chiefs. As usual, the population is caught in between, ground to a pulp by the struggle. “We’re really in fucking trouble now,” said Lombardo.

As the police car left the highway and ed the traffic in the city, Lombardo called David López:

“David? This is Captain Lombardo. I left you a message earlier about coming to see you. Yes, I am on my way to the University. (pause). Well, I am sorry if you are busy but this is very important. We are on Garza Sada Avenue, just about to enter Lázaro Cárdenas so it will take us about half an hour to get there. Please wait for me, ok?”

As the police car sped into the over that led to Lazaro Cárdenas Avenue, Lombardo reread the notes he had made with Lupe about what the encryption keys might be guarding. It was obvious that the information was not Victor’s alone; he had been working for the Dean, at least the paper the widow had given Lombardo pointed to that. But, what could the Dean have that the three foreigners wanted? What was so important to them that they killed Victor for it?

After he had a look at the contents of the information, he would have to have a serious talk with the Dean, but he must get to the information first before the Dean or someone else destroyed it.

Lombardo had the feeling that David might be working for someone other than the University, too. He might have been the one that alerted Victor’s abductors that the information was being encrypted. If that was true, the bastard was probably aware that his snitching had been responsible for Victor’s death. But that was irrelevant now. Going after David was a waste of time. Lombardo needed his help to understand what Victor had been doing on the last day of his life and to find out what was inside the files or documents Victor had encrypted.

Once he reached the University Computer Center, he barged into the waiting room, grabbed a visitor’s card from the startled receptionist, and went straight to where David was.

David blinked, surprised at seeing Lombardo bursting into his office. Without a word, Lombardo put the keys on the desk then he sat down and said, “I know that these are the keys that Victor used to encrypt and decrypt some files. I know those files are somewhere in the labyrinth of computers in this Center, and I also know that there must be logs somewhere that could tell us what Victor was doing that last night. What I want from you is, one, to get the damned logs and tell me what he was doing, and two, to find the files, decrypt them and tell me what’s inside.”

David started to complain that if there were such files or information they were the private property of the University and that he did not have the authorization to show them to anyone without the proper permission from the Center’s director.

“Look, David,” Lombardo said in a quiet voice that in spite of its low volume still carried a lot of threat, “I have no time for this bullshit. You either give me what I want or I will drag you down to the police car that is waiting for me and take you the Public Ministry building and jail you for obstructing an investigation and then find you suspicious of five or ten more things; it would take your lawyers five years to prove you are innocent of any of the charges. But I promise you that you would spend every minute of that time behind bars. So, you tell me how we’re going to proceed here.”

“OK, OK, what do you want to see?”

“Do you know where the files are—the ones he was working on that night?”

“Not exactly, but I have an idea. Let’s start with the logs as you suggested.”

As Lupe had explained, logs record a lot of things—events, as computer people call them. The amount of events recorded is huge in an organization the size of the University which has so many computers online. The log entries themselves are almost unintelligible to anyone outside of the systems management profession. Agents (little programs on the lookout for what’s going on in the computers and networks of an organization) send out brief, abbreviated reports related to specific events. These little reports are recorded into a file, which becomes a log of events. Each agent has a specific task: one watches file activity, another watches activity, and so on.

There are a lot of different logs indeed, and many of them have to do with security. These are the first that David started to read, but they were so complicated that he called someone whose job is specifically to manage the logs.

When the logs manager showed up, he said that the problem would be to ascertain the time slot we wanted and the kind of activity in which we were interested.

Lombardo gave him the date and the time: “I’m interested in what Victor Delgado was doing between 10 p.m. and 1:30 in the morning the day he was murdered.”

Lombardo knew from the surveillance recordings that Victor had left an hour and a half after midnight; and the amount of those strange cigarettes told him that the killers had waited for him at least a couple of hours. Someone, perhaps David, had told them he was working late; or perhaps they had been watching him for sometime and knew he would be working until the early morning hours. In any case, Victor had had a good reason for not going home at the usual time, skipping his dinner, and working until past midnight. Lombardo wanted to know what was so urgent that it had kept him there working so feverishly.

The engineer that managed the logs was so small and frail that he seemed more a child than a young man. His hair grew so far down his brow that it covered the top half of his glasses; he had to constantly brush it aside. He sniffed and constantly flicked his hair away from his eyes as he explained that log files are a problem because there are many sources. Not only did they get information from agents, but also from system programs, and even computer hardware, which generates log entries with different types of information in varying formats.

“So, to start looking for what you want,” said the waif-like kid, “we’ll look first at the authentication logs.” Authentication servers, he explained, log the time and location of the person logging into a system or network. Programs that are in charge of looking out for intrusions and unauthorized entry keep a close watch on s and record the activity of every .

After a moment of peering at his screen and scrolling through what seemed like gibberish, the log manager stared at something and said, “It seems that Victor was logging into and out of several machines; yes, he seems to have done this constantly, as if he was.…”

He turned to a laptop that he had set up next to David’s computer. “Let me look at something else,” he said.

After a moment, he said to David, “It seems as though he was chasing after someone who was telneting into your machines. See how his appears every time after this one? He logs in just a minute or two after this other guy.”

“Telneting?” asked Lombardo. “Do you mean someone was logging into University computers from a remote machine? Someone from outside the University?”

“Yup,” said the little guy.

David rolled his chair over to have a closer look at the screen. “But that’s impossible! Those ports are supposed to be closed.”

“Well, somebody enabled them,” said the little guy. “Let me see something else.” He clicked and clacked on his keyboard and then said, “And then, he quarantined a computer.”

David seemed astounded that all of this had been going on. Either he really was surprised or he was a good actor.

Lombardo asked, “What do you mean by quarantined?”

The little guy explained: “There are programs that check computers to see if they can be trusted, that is, that they haven’t been compromised, before they are allowed to communicate with other computers in the network. If there is a doubt about their reliability or security, they are quarantined; that is, they are not allowed to the network.

The little engineer further explained that such computers are put into a “VLAN”—a virtual network. Since the programs or servers that do this job log everything they do, including the checks they performed and the reasons they quarantined a machine, the log manager showed us that the machine had been separated from the network because it was considered compromised by intruders.

“But, how come we never got any alerts about all this?” asked the astonished David.

“It’s very simple,” said the log manager, “Victor lowered the priority of those messages so they would not issue alerts. It looks like he had been fighting off intruders that were invading the system and had finally thwarted them by isolating a machine they were trying to penetrate.”

“OK, so can we go look at that machine and see what’s in it?” asked Lombardo.

“Let’s find out first which one it is,” said David.

Another series of log entries scrolled on the screen:

[**] [1:1407:9] SNMP trap udp [**] [Description: Attempted unauthorized ] [Priority: 0] 03/06-8:14:09.082119 112.147.1.167:1052 -> 110.30.156.27:143 UDP TTL:118 TOS:0x0 ID:150947 IpLen:50 DgmLen:47

11:14:07 PM,"Trigger ""Block Windows File Sharing"" blocked (112.147.1.54, netbios-ssn(139)).","Rule ""Block Windows File Sharing""blocked (112.147.1.54, netbios-ssn(139)). Inbound T connection. Local address,service is (UNIMTY(102.30.128.27),netbios-ssn(139)). Remote address,service is (112.147.1.54,39922). Process name is ""System""."

3/3/2006 9:04:04 AM,Firewall configuration updated: 398 rules.,Firewall

configuration changed: 254 rules.

11:33:50 PM,Definition File ,UNIMTY,k,Definition er 3/4/2006 11:33:52 PM,AntiVirus Startup,UNIMTY,k,System 3/3/2006 3:56:46 PM,AntiVirus Shutdown,UNIMTY,k,System

240203071234,16,3,7,UNIMTY,k,,,,,,,16777216,”Virus definitions are corrupted.”,0,,0,,,,,0,,,,,,,,,,SAVPROD,{ xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx },End ,(IP)-192.147.1.121,,GROUP,0:0:0:0:0:0,9.0.0.338,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

DSO Exploit: Data source object exploit (Registry change, nothing done) HKEY_S\S-1-5-19\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\0\1004!=W=3

“Man, look at all the stuff that was going on!” said the log manager.

David moaned and said, “We’d better have a look at the audit records.”

David explained that there would be a lot of security information in the audit logs. If someone was trying to gain access to the computers and had failed to several times, it would show up there. Also, if rules, regulations, or policies had been violated or sidestepped, the audit information would tell us.

What amazed David and the log manager was the amount of activity of creation and deletions, changes to privileges in the s and then changes denied. It had been a battle between someone trying to gain access and

giving himself or herself privileges to do very much what he or she pleased, and Victor trying to deny the intruder access. Then a “strange” security log entry appears on the auditing system.

Event Type: Success Audit Event Source: Security Event Category: (1) Event ID: 517 Date: xx/xx/xxxx Time: 1:16:40 AM : SYS AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Computer: UNIMTY-2 Description: Cleared Audit Log Primary Name: SYS Primary Domain: UNIMTY AUTHORITY Primary Logon ID: (0x0,0x4F9) Client Name: SYS-0909 Client Domain: UNIMTY Client Logon ID: (0x0,0x22ACC)

Victor had quarantined the server; then, he did something very unusual for a Systems Manger—he cleared the Audit Log.

According to this trail of electronic evidence, Victor had spent part of the night following an intruder; he then quarantined the computer the intruder had tried to penetrate. He must have had been confident that he had expelled the intruder and that it wouldn’t be back because after midnight he had worked on the quarantined computer and his had remained there for an hour. After he was done, he cleared the audit files so that no trace would remain of what he had done, and since he had lowered the priorities of the security system no one would be alerted as to what had happened. Before he left, he brought system alerts back up to normal security levels.

But, if we had seen the battle, or the signs of the battle that were left here and there, the intruder too must have realized it had been defeated and that whatever it had been after was now inaccessible.

“So, if I understand his correctly,” said Lombardo summing up, “someone came into your system to try to get something. Victor fought them off, denied them

whatever it was they wanted, and then hid it in a quarantined computer. But, whatever it was he hid, and whoever it was he fought off, he did not want anyone here in the Center to know.”

“That about sums it up,” said the little log manager.

“And since they could not get it that way,” said David, “they came and got him.”

“That too sums it up,” Lombardo said.

There followed a deep silence after which Lombardo said, “Let’s have a look at what he hid in the quarantined system.”

The little guy gained access to the suspect computer through what he called a “tunnel,” which is a virtual pathway through a network.

Upon inspection, most of the files in the machine were humdrum copies of files and archives that were on other machines.

“Yeah, this machine is used mostly for backups,” said David. “Most of this stuff is old anyway and should be deleted.”

“Maybe so,” said Lombardo, “but not now.”

“Let’s look at the files by date of creation,” said the little guy. As he listed them, a file showed up at the top with a date and time very close to the date and time the machine was quarantined.

“What’s this, what’s this?” asked David as he tried to list the contents of the large file. His laptop beeped and clacked and displayed gibberish on the screen.

“It’s encrypted,” said the little log manager.

Chapter 23: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Lombardo strolled slowly into the Investigations Department’s building, his head hanging down, his hands in his pockets, his black mackintosh flapping in the draft of the corridor, looking like a don walking in the mall of some English University.

Most of the people that ed him did not greet him and the few that did were not greeted in return.

When he reached his desk, he called to the policewoman that handled the Department’s file section and asked her to open an averiguación previa (preliminary investigation) file.

These preliminary investigation files hold not only all the documents and evidence that stems from the initial investigation, which might include the original complaint, s by witnesses, and statements made by individuals,

but may also include any medical and expert reports called peritajes in Spanish legal jargon. It also includes all of the reports made by the investigating officer or officers and has to be filed under a unique reference number before the judicial process begins. If legal action is deemed necessary by the Public Ministry, the file is turned over, or at least copies of all the documents, to the judge assigned to review the case.

For several years now, these files had been digitized. It was not only a way of having faster and ubiquitous access to the information, but it was also as a means of safe keeping it, given that in the past, reports, evidence, and statements had disappeared from the files; and indeed, there had been instances where the entire file itself had mysteriously vanished.

Since the accused, the victims, and their respective lawyers have a right to demand copies of the files, the electronic archives made a lot of sense. The State of Nuevo León, always having prided itself that its industry, commerce, and general population were in the forefront in adopting new technologies, had a vast pool of information systems talent from which to hire people when it decided to computerize all of its documentation and archives.

Although, Article 16 of the Federal Code of Criminal Procedures states that only the accused, the victim, and their respective legal representatives may have access to the records of the preliminary investigation, it does not bar officials from the Federal Prosecutor’s Department or the State Judicial Police from obtaining a copy of the preliminary investigation file and only needs the authorization of the public Prosecutor responsible for the investigation.

According to Mexican law, a preliminary investigation file can be assigned one of the following statuses: if more evidence is needed to warrant pursuing the case, the file can be put on hold while such evidence is sought; if the case grows cold and/or the investigation cannot prove there is a case or that there was any criminal or civil wrongdoing, it can be archived which means that there will be

no legal action pertaining to the case; finally, it can be forwarded to the court, in which case the public Prosecutor can request an arrest warrant given that the preliminary investigation’s evidence has gathered enough evidence to justify one.

What is not very clear in this legal tangle of laws and responsibilities is the dividing line between federal and state jurisdiction. The division between the two is often shifted in accordance to political expediency of the time, Presidents or Governors pushing through legislation obeying public pressure, or sometimes in response to legislation and/or pressure from its giant neighbor to the north. The line is further blurred by the arbitrary way certain officials—Presidents, Governors, and legislators—often stretch the boundaries of jurisdiction to fit their political purposes during election periods. This was particularly true during the more than seventy years of the one-party rule Mexico suffered during the twentieth century.

As Lombardo was filling out another of the preliminary reports of the investigation, his telephone buzzed. The Director wanted to see him so he left his paperwork and walked over to the Director’s office.

Before he even sat down, the Director picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and said, “Read this.”

Lombardo took it and sat down to read.

M E M O R A N D U M

Subject: Death of subject, named Victor Delgado Ramirez

Directive: 1005938: Office of the Governor

State authorities have determined that the murder of the person named Victor Delgado Ramirez could be linked to organized crime. Therefore, it is hereby ordered that the investigation and pertinent judicial procedures that stem from said investigation be turned over to the jurisdiction of the Office of the Federal Prosecutor.

The Office of the State Prosecutor stated that there is sufficient evidence to suspect that elements of organized crime participated in the death of the above named, and that his execution in the early morning hours of the 15th of this month, was conducted by a person or persons linked to the organized crime elements operating in the State of Nuevo León.

The State Prosecutor, Alejandro Peniche Saldivar, stated that “there is credible evidence” to strongly suggest that this is the line of investigation that should be followed and that “now it should be the Federal Prosecutor who should continue with further investigations.”

Peniche Saldivar pointed out that from the moment he was informed of Delgado Ramirez’ execution he issued instruction to the State´s Public Ministry to use every resource possible during the investigation of the crime, but that it should be recognized that there has been no substantial progress.

The head of the State’s Public Ministry has stated that although his organization will continue its own investigations, unfortunately as of today there has been no progress.”

The State’s Public Ministry Director in a communiqué to the Governor stated that given the nature of the crime he believes that it falls under the jurisdiction of the federal police.”

The Governor of the state agreed with both the Director of the State’s Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State’s Public Ministry that the case should be turned over to federal authorities given that “the state does not have sufficient resources to deal with this kind of problem.”

Governor Platón Sanchez Reyes said that these violent acts “not only shame city, state, and federal authorities, but they are the bloody evidence that proves how organized crime has extended throughout the entire country.”

For his part, the mayor of the city, Nestor Villarreal, insisted that “there should be ample cooperation between the city, state, and federal authorities as Governor Sanchez has instructed,”

He added that “this is something that concerns the Federation and is clearly under its jurisdiction but we will not shirk from our responsibilities and will aid in the investigation until those responsible are brought to justice and the groups that have organized to break state and federal laws are brought under control.”

Signed by__________________on______

Lombardo needed to go only halfway down the page before understanding what the directive meant.

“When is this going to be issued?” he asked.

The Director shrugged his shoulders, “In a couple of days.”

There was a silence and then the Director spoke. His words were said in an unusually calm voice. “Look, just write up a simple, final report: a body was found, foul play is suspected, and it looks like the work of the drug cartels.” He made a pause and then added, “I have better things for you to do than this.”

“Why are they so eager to get rid of this case?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care; just do as I say.” It was obvious that the question bothered the Director. He was relatively young for a Director of Investigations. He was a graduate of the State’s Law School and had worked in the State Prosecutor’s office before ing the Judicial Police. He had risen quickly since graduating five years before from the Judicial Police Academy.

He had often said that as a policeman it was not in the best interest to question authority; it was in his interest to obey.

He would have a great career if he survived. The citizens of Monterrey had lost track of the number of Directors that had been murdered in the last few years. Was it 5 or 6? Lombardo himself, if asked, could probably not . Although younger than Lombardo, the Director already had more gray hair. “The reason you have less gray hair than me, Lombardo,” he had once said, “is that you have a lot more Indian blood.” The man was a bundle of charm.

Lombardo slapped the paper and said, “You know that there is no ‘evidence’ that this was the work of the cartels. In fact, there is no ‘evidence’ period. We don’t even have a complete autopsy report, or a report from the forensic lab people going over the car, and the body has already been released. What the hell are they talking about? How can they proclaim that they have ‘sufficient evidence’ to say this was the work of the cartels?”

“Look, this is a direct order from the Prosecutor and he got it straight from the Governor. It is not our case anymore. It has been turned over to the federal people.”

“Yeah, where it will be put under a stack of unsolved cartel murders or they’ll blame it on the Zetas and wait until they catch a couple of ’em alive so they can pin all the unsolved cases on them.”

“If that is the way they want it, I don’t care.” He pointed to the paper and said, “That says it is no longer my problem and I say it is no longer your problem. If they want to pin it on one of those murdering bastards from the Zeta gang, what’s the difference? They are all hired killers so what does it matter who goes to jail?”

“It is not who goes to jail but why he goes to jail.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The Federal Prosecutor and the State Prosecutor are tossing this case back and

forth like it was a live grenade ready to explode. One day it’s their case, the next it’s ours. Some little guy is tortured and killed and all of a sudden everybody’s acting like the JFK cover up. Nobody wants to find the real killers.”

“JFK cover up? What the hell are you talking about? Who’s covering up anything?”

Lombardo got up. “You and your damned boss, the State Prosecutor, and that damned incompetent drunk who is the governor of this glorious state.”

The Director got up, too. His face was red with rage. “Get out. Get out before I have you arrested for insubordination. No wonder they kicked your ass out of Guadalajara; you didn’t obey orders then and you don’t obey them now.”

“They didn’t kick me out for not obeying orders; they kicked me out because I wouldn’t volunteer to shovel bullshit like this,” said Lombardo flinging the paper to the floor.

“You’re not only off the case, you’re suspended!”

“OK, I’m suspended. Who gives a damn?” Lombardo knew that the suspension didn’t mean anything. The Director would have to present it in writing to the policemen’s union and then to the state civil servants review board, so by the time there was a ruling two or three months from now, the case would either be forgotten or in the hands of a judge. Times had changed since he had ed the force. In the old days, the Director could have asked for his badge and he’d be in the street in five minutes. Now the unions had control over the firing and hiring of all civil servants, which included cops. Most of the cops fired nowadays were

fired on corruption charges, which only needed an executive order. But proving corruption in Lombardo’s case was tough; some of the other cops in the Department disliked him precisely because of the opposite!

Lombardo walked out of the Director’s office leaving the door open. Everyone in the office could hear the Director yelling into the phone that an order of suspension should be immediately issued against.…

He didn’t hear the rest because he walked down the hallway to his desk and picked up the paperwork and file on which he had been working. He went downstairs to the filing desk and asked the policewoman to copy the paperwork in the file and give him the copy.

“Will you be upstairs, Captain?”

“No, I’ll be in the bar down the street. If you bring it over I’ll buy you a drink.”

Her chubby face twisted into a smirk as she said, “I’ll have one of the cops at the door take it over to you.”

“Aw, but they’re not as cute. Oh, well it’s your loss, darling,” he said as he turned to leave.

Part 4: Day 4

Chapter 24: The Cowboys Play Dominoes

The crew leader and his two crew took a taxi from the shabby motel where they had been hiding for the last two days and went into the city. The crew leader asked the cabbie to take Lazaro Cárdenas Avenue and once there he would tell him where he wanted to go.

“Check our sixes,” he said to the black man who discreetly turned to see if they were being followed.

When they reached the avenue, he called the safe number at the consulate.

“Yes, this is Russell. Is John Wayne around? No? OK, I’ll call him at that number.”

He called John Wayne’s house. After a few rings, a gruff voice said, “Yes?”

“We’re here in the city,” he announced simply.

“OK, come on over. Do you know the address?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it on my cell phone.”

“Right; take two cabs. If you’re in a cab now, tell him to take you to López Mateo Avenue. There’s a soft drink bottler there; lots of gringos go there, so it’ll look natural. Take another cab from there and come here—not to the house, just the street; get off a block or two away and then walk the rest of the way, ok?”

“Got it,” said the crew leader.

He told the cab driver where to go and when he saw the software bottling company, he told him to stop; he paid him off and waited until he had gone before hailing another cab. He gave this one only the street name and told him he’d give him further directions once they got there.

He stopped the cab when they got to the street in the Bougainvilleas area. Again they got off and waited until the cab had gone, then the three men continued for a block and a half to another street, which was lined with trees and large houses that were set 20 meters from the curb.

“Nice digs,” said one of the men.

“Yeah, John Wayne always picks inconspicuous places to live,” he said derisively.

“Is that his real name? John Wayne?” asked the black man.

“No. Nobody knows his name. That’s what he calls himself.”

They walked up to a house with a fence made of brown bricks topped with wrought iron railing. The crew chief saw that the fence was discreetly wired to warn of intruders. He pushed the button marked timbre.

A half-minute later he saw the curtain in one of the large windows move slightly. John Wayne was home.

Inside the house, a tall, bald man with a gun strapped to his shirtless body looked out the window through the slight opening in the curtain.

“Ah, my guests have arrived,” he said derisively and turned to the three men that were sitting at a poker table. “You guys go into the kitchen. Let me talk to these guys.”

The bald man went to the door and spoke into the intercom as he pushed the buzzer button: “Come on in, fellas.”

He left the door ajar and went over to the poker table to put on his shirt.

The three arrivals walked into the house cautiously; the crew leader squinted into the cool, semi-darkness of the house, the black man instinctively put his hand under his coat, and the third man waited a couple of seconds before going into the house.

“Come on in, come on in,” said John Wayne, “and shut the door. I’ve got the air conditioner on.”

The three men relaxed when they saw that John Wayne was alone in the house.

“Sit down and take it easy,” he said. “Wanna drink? There’s whiskey on that table, and ice in the bucket.”

The three men made no move to get a drink.

“You got a poker game goin’?” asked the crew leader.

“Had one,” said John Wayne lighting a cigarette. “They boys just left.”

“Mm,” said the crew chief and he took out a packet of Lambert & Butler cigarettes. No one spoke while the crew chief lit up. “I’m glad we finally got to see you, John, after sitting around on our ass for two days.”

“Well, I’ve been busy, boys.”

“Playin’ poker?” asked the black man.

John Wayne ignored the dig. “So, things didn’t go well for you in Monterrey? My inside man says you didn’t get what we wanted.”

The crew chief blew out a long plume of smoke before he answered, “No, things didn’t go well.”

“So, you didn’t get what we wanted,” John Wayne repeated.

“I told you over the phone we didn’t,” answered the crew chief irritated by John Wayne’s insistence on the subject.

“Ah, that’s too bad. We’re going to have to find another way. Where’s the guy now?”

“He’s dead,” said the crew chief.

There was a silence. John Wayne went to the poker table and poured whiskey into a glass. His informant in Monterrey had already told him what had happened, just as he knew that the files were now inaccessible and encrypted. But he said nothing. You have a great advantage if you know what cards the other guy is playing.

“You didn’t tell me that when you called.”

“I didn’t think it was something that should be discussed over the phone and since you didn’t get in touch the whole time we were in that roach motel you sent us to.…”

“We’ll arrange better accommodations for you boys now. So, tell me, what happened?” he asked as he went back to his chair.

“We were, uh, questioning him; he ed out, so we stuck his head in water. He must have swallowed something in the water ‘cause he choked and died, asphyxiated. I think something stuck in his throat, or something.”

“You killed the guy?” asked John Wayne, as if surprised.

“We didn’t kill him; he died while we.…”

“I don’t care what the hell you call it; you killed the guy!”

The three men said nothing; they sat looking straight head.

John Wayne got up and paced in front of them like a father strutting before children who had misbehaved.

“You didn’t get what we wanted and you killed the guy!” He stopped and spoke to the crew chief.

“Whad’ you do with the body?”

“We, uh, dumped it near some railroad tracks. We, uh, took his money and his watch, and, uh, sort of made it look like it was a mugging.” The crew chief lied. He wasn’t about to tell the angry John Wayne how badly they had botched up that part of the job.

“Yeah, right. His damned lungs are going to be full of water, he’s going to leak like a damned water balloon at the autopsy, and you think they’re going to think it was a mugging.”

“Well, we left him on the tracks. There’s a 4:30 freight that comes in every night, so his body might be too mangled for them to figure out what happened.”

John Wayne looked at him with the kind of look a sadistic teacher gives a student that has just given the stupidest of answers.

“Where did you pick him up? I hope nobody saw you.”

“I don’t think so. We waited for him in a parking lot and when he left the place where he worked we followed him. We caught up with him as he was going along in his car, then we snatched him, and took him out of town to, uh, you know, interrogate him. While we were doin’ that, uh, he, you know, uh, swallowed something in the water and died.”

“Do you know if the people at the Monterrey consulate know about this?”

“No, we came here right after; we had no time to talk to anybody.”

“So, the people in Monterrey have the files but can’t decrypt them, eh“?

“Hell, I don’t know. I’m no damned computer expert. They said the guy had found out that they were in there and he had blocked them or something and then hid the information to where they couldn’t get at it, so we had to go in, and get from the guy the key to open the stuff up, you see?”

“Yeah, I see. I see that we have a bunch of idiots down there botching up every job I ask them to do.”

“So, what do we do next? Didn’t you have a guy on the inside who could help?”

John Wayne gulped down his drink and thought for a moment. “Yeah, we have a man inside but he told us the stuff is not available to him either. He also told me that there was some local cop snoopin’ around, so we’d better get moving before people find out about you guys.”

John Wayne turned to the crew leader, “Tell me, did you clean up after you? You didn’t leave any bread crumbs leading back to us, did you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said the crew chief defensively.

John Wayne paced some more and then stopped again. “What about the car?”

“We took our car to the shop as per instructions. They’ve probably got rid of it by now.”

“Not your car, his car!”

“Oh, we gave the keys to the garage guys and told them to break it up, too.”

“Why the hell didn’t one of you guys take it back with you?”

The third guy spoke up for the first time. “It was a Saturday night,” he said. “We were advised by our control that in Monterrey they put up roadblocks as a measure against drunk driving; we were afraid of getting stopped and, you know, being foreigners and all, at that hour.”

“We’d already risked a lot when we took him out of town for questioning. We didn’t want to push our luck,” said the crew leader.

John Wayne snorted a laugh, “Where do they get you guys?” he asked derisorily. “Well, you’d better make damned sure they got rid of that second car.”

He went to the poker table and wrote down something. He gave the piece of paper to the crew chief. “Here, you had better move from wherever you are and stay at this hotel until I can find a way to get you safely out of the country. Take a suite, ‘Gran Clase’; I want all three of you in the same room. Don’t go out unless it is absolutely necessary. Room service for meals and such. Stay there until I call.”

“How long?”

“Until I call! A day or two, I don’t know.”

The three men got up and John Wayne said, “Walk to the avenue and grab a taxi. Tell him to take you to that hotel on Mexico Avenue.”

He saw the men to the door and closed it behind them. Through the window he saw that they left the premises and turned left toward the avenue.

The three men who had been in the kitchen came back into the room.

“You guys set up the next hand; I gotta make a phone call and then I’ll you.”

The three men sat down and started talking and laughing.

John Wayne typed the fast dial code and said, “Shut up, you guys.” After a pause he said, “Yeah, boss. Yeah, it’s important. That crew that they sent down to get what we need? Yeah, that’s right. Well, they didn’t get it and they also created a problem. Well, we’d better discuss that item in person, the nature of the problem I mean. When are you coming down? OK, but listen, our program is on schedule so we’d better fix this problem before it, uh, you know, causes things to go wrong. Well, lots of things; I’ll fill you in when you come in. Yeah, I’ll pick you up at the airport. Right: see you then.”

Chapter 25: A Series of Political Murders

The working lunch had been held in a restaurant about three blocks from the Chamber of Deputies.

Senator Juan Alberto Romero, leader of the opposition party, and ex-Governor of the State of Veracruz, told his driver he would walk to the Chamber of Deputies where the afternoon session would start at 16:00 hours. He disliked being chauffeured about in bulletproof cars and argued he needed the exercise anyway. He told his driver not to follow him, but to go directly to the Chamber of Deputies’s parking garage.

He walked down the unremarkably named 64 North Street at a fast pace; there were few people about and car traffic was light, an unusual thing for Mexico City. As he turned into 85 East Street and headed toward the Consulado Metro station, a young man crossed the street to walk behind him.

As the crowd streamed out of the Metro station, Senator Romero slowed down to thread his way through the flow of people; the young man wearing a backpack caught up with him at the corner of 85 Oriente and Eje 2 Oriente. He reached into his short, suede jacket and pulled out a black, 9 millimeter Baretta and pointed it at the back of Romero’s head.

The young man was so close to Romero that the gun’s muzzle bumped the Senator’s head; as he turned to see what or who had bumped him, the young man pulled the trigger.

The head having turned, as well as the slight bump, caused the gun to be lowered so the bullet penetrated Senator Romero’s neck rather than his head. It severed the left common carotid artery completely, exited through the front part of the laryngeal prominence, commonly known as the Adam’s Apple, and lodged itself in the fleshy thigh of a woman erby.

Juan Alberto Romero fell to the ground, the wounded woman fell into a sitting position against the Metro stop building and started yelling and crying at the sight of her own blood, and the young man put the gun back into this jacket, and walked firmly into the Metro station. Another man, who had been hired for the purpose, started to yell, “There he goes; he is escaping; he is running down the street.” He pointed toward the Eje 2 Oriente Avenue and away from the direction of the fleeing assassin.

As the people in the Metro station rushed outside to see what had happened, the young assassin went into the Metro station’s toilette, stepped quickly into an empty stall, took off his pants and shirt, changed into jeans and a T-shirt that he took from his backpack, put the jacket, shirt, pants, and gun into the backpack, left it there, and walked out of the toilette.

In the Metro station’s corridors people asked each other what was going on.

As the young man stood by the yellow line waiting for the next Metro train, an old man asked him, “Que paso allá afuera?” He told the old man that he didn’t know what was happening outside and that he had heard there had been some kind of accident.

As the Metro train arrived and the doors opened for the engers to board, the young man heard the high-pitched sound of approaching sirens—they seemed far away and above him.

He boarded the Metro and stood by the door until he got to the Martin Carrera station where he got off and went to the Line 6 entrance. There he stopped to tie his shoe lace and make sure that there was no one following him.

He boarded the line 6 train and again stood by the door. When he got to the 18 de Marzo station, he walked slowly to the stairs that led to Line 3; the train arrived, he boarded that, and finally got off at the División del Norte station.

As he left the station, he turned west on Matías Romero street, just as he had been instructed. He walked the two blocks to the Arboleda Park and sat down on a bench on the Pestalozzi Street side of the square where cars were allowed to park, just as he had been instructed. The men that washed cars were taking a break and one of them turned up the radio as the news of the murder was broadcast.

…member of the political elite of the most conservative faction of the PAC party, he had served as Governor of Veracruz before being elected to the Senate and was linked by marriage to the family of President Echeverría…

A car rumbled noisily by; the young man looked casually at the occupants; they were not his s. He paid attention to the newscast again:

…the assassination is a direct attack on our collective psyche, and to the plans of the government for a more open presidential election as was announced in…

Another car came by but it parked and two women descended from it. One of

them yelled to the car wash guys that she wanted her car washed. The men waved an “OK.”

…he was described as a tall young man, green or light-colored eyes, tanned and short, military-style hair. The woman who was also wounded in the incident said that the man was…

A black SUV, with dark, polarized windshield and windows turned slowly onto Pestalozzi Street. The young man stood up and the SUV stopped in front of him. The door clicked open and the young man got in.

The two car wash guys saw the SUV through the corner of their eyes but instinctively did not turn to look at it. They ate their tacos and stared straight ahead. They knew better than to pay attention to something that was none of their business.

Inside the SUV, a well-dressed man with a youngish face, despite his completely gray hair, extended his hand and said to the young man, “Congratulations, Isidro, you did very well.”

“Thank you, Senator Elizondo,” said the young man.

The Senator spoke to the men sitting in the front seats of the SUV, “Give Isidro a drink, He deserves to celebrate.” Then turning to Isidro he said, “I’m having whiskey; would you like one, too?”

“Yes, yes,” said the young man, flattered that he would be treated like this by someone as powerful as Senator Elizondo.

One of the men in the front seat gave him a whiskey high ball.

“Salud,” said the Senator as he clicked his glass against Isidro’s.

The black SUV rumbled along slowly until it turned into Matías Romero Street, went down that lane for several blocks and then turned left into Insurgentes Avenue as it sought a way to leave Mexico City by the quickest route.

An hour later, Insurgentes Avenue had turned into the highway leading to Cuernavaca, the city of eternal springtime. By then, Isidro was fast asleep knocked out by the drug in the drink and the Senator was on the phone.

“Yes, yes,” he was saying into his phone. “No, he’s fast asleep here beside me. Yes, when we come to the ranch, I’ll let you know. Yes, they are both with me. They are driving and I am having a drink! Do you think I would drink and drive?” The Senator laughed. “Yes, I’ll call you when we are done.”

The black SUV drove off the highway and onto a dirt road. It stopped in front of a gate marked Propiedad Privada, Prohibido el Paso. The private property sign was for others. One of the men in front got out and opened the gate. The SUV drove through and they continued up the dirt road until they came to a stand of pines.

The black SUV was almost invisible among the pines. The two men got out and took off their coats and ties. They went to the back of the SUV and took out two shovels. A few meters away from the car they began to dig.

The ground was soft and it didn’t take long for them to dig a grave deep enough for the bodies they were going to bury.

Then they went back to the car and said, “Please step out, sir, so we can drag him out.”

The Senator, a bit woozy now since he was on his fourth highball, stepped out of the SUV and drink in hand, stood by the grave as the two men dumped Isidro, the young assassin, into the hole. The young man moaned softly as he lay face down in the dirt. One of the men screwed a silencer to his gun and then pumped three bullets into the young man’s back and one into his head.

As Senator Elizondo stood grinning down at the body, the other man came up behind him and put a bullet into his head. The glass fell from his hand as he slid into the grave beside the young man he had hired to kill Senator Romero. The two men fired several more bullets into both bodies.

One of the men flipped his phone open and punched in a number. Alfonso Echeverría, the President’s cousin answered, “Yes?”

“It’s done,” said the man simply.

“Both of them?”

“Yes,” said the man.

“OK, so now…”

“Now we leave. Please deposit the money as agreed. We don’t want to have to come back, OK?”

“Yes, the money will be there tomorrow.”

The man snapped the cell phone shut, took out the battery, and threw both items into the grave. They then shoveled the dirt back in, tamped it down with the shovels and put the shovels into the cargo space of the SUV.

The black SUV went back to the highway where it turned south, toward Cuernavaca. There a private plane was waiting for the two men at the airport. It would fly them to Miami where they would take the late evening flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Chapter 26: A Visit with the Dean

Lombardo went directly to Dean Herrera’s home. He did not phone to announce his visit; he wanted to make sure the Dean would be home.

Lombardo rang the door bell and an old woman, whom Lombardo assumed was the Dean’s housekeeper, opened the door.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to see Dean Herrera, please,” said Lombardo taking off his hat.

“I am not sure the Dean is home,” she said, visibly annoyed at Lombardo’s brashness.

“I am,” said Lombardo. “Please tell him Captain Lombardo of the Public Ministry’s Investigations Department is here and that I would like to speak to him.”

The Dean appeared at the banister thus sparing the old lady from having to go up the grand marble staircase that led from the open, courtyard-like first floor to the second floor, to fetch the Dean. He asked, “What is it, Ponciana?”

“This man says he is a police Captain and he wants to see you.”

“I will be down as soon as I change,” said the Dean who was wearing a dressing gown.

When the Dean opened the door to the room from where he had emerged, Lombardo heard the voice of a man asking, “What is it? Who’s down there?” He didn’t hear the Dean’s reply because the door closed behind him.

Lombardo turned to Ponciana and said, “I hope I am not disturbing the family.”

Ponciana looked at him with a face dripping with disapproval. “There is no family to disturb, señor. The Dean is not married.”

“Oh, I thought I had heard someone…”

“That is a close friend of the Dean’s,” she said and walked away. The manner in which she had pronounced the word “friend” spoke volumes.

When the Dean came down, Lombardo introduced himself and the Dean politely asked, “How can I be of service to you, Captain?”

“I’d like to talk to you about a young man who was murdered a few of days ago —he worked in the University’s Computer Center, you know.”

“Yes, I know, Captain,” said the Dean, apparently undisturbed by Lombardo’s ironic tone. “But I thought you had already talked to people at the University about him. Weren’t they helpful?”

“Yes, they were, but, you see, I’ve learned a lot more things about this

remarkable young man since I talked to your people.”

“Oh?” said the Dean. “Do you mind if we sit down while you tell me all about what you have learned? Would you like something to drink?”

He took Lombardo by the elbow and led him to a pair of sitting room chairs that were in the large niche under the staircase. From a small, roll-top desk that stood between the two chairs he took out a bottle of whiskey and glasses. “Do you want ice or sparkling water?”

“Neither,” said Lombardo.

After they both had taken a sip of their drink, the Dean took a gold lighter and a pack of cigarettes from the pockets of his cardigan sweater. He offered Lombardo a cigarette.

“No, thanks,” said Lombardo, “I have my own.”

Lombardo lit his cigarette and said to the Dean,” You are going to great lengths to show me you are not that interested in what I have to say or what I am going to ask.”

“Not at all, Captain; I am very interested. But I also believe that there is no circumstance which calls for abandoning civility.”

“Too bad that the people who killed Victor didn’t think the same way.”

“Yes,” agreed the Dean, “that poor, unfortunate boy—I am very sorry about what happened to him.”

Lombardo finished his drink and poured himself another. “Exactly what do you think happened to him?”

“I am sure you know more about that than I do,” answered the Dean coyly.

“I am not talking about the circumstances of his murder. I already know all the details of that.” Lombardo made a pause and as if accusing the Dean of something, he looked at him with hard, cold eyes. “Three men abducted him shortly after he left the Computer Center; they took him to the edge of a reservoir outside of town, beat him, and then, to wake him up after he had fainted, they stuck his head into the reservoir’s water. He aspirated water and dirt and ashes, and something else, and he asphyxiated. The something else he aspirated was a piece of paper, Dean Herrera. He probably had that piece of paper in his mouth because it was recovered from his trachea by the forensic medical staff.”

Lombardo stopped talking and the Dean waited, anxiously swirling his whiskey until he had to ask the obvious question, “What was on the paper, Captain?”

“It was a long series of numbers and letters. I had a friend look at it—a friend who knows a lot about computers. He told me it was one of a pair of what he called ‘encryption keys.’” Lombardo took from his pocket the paper Victor’s widow had given him. “This is the other half of the pair,” he said showing it to

the Dean. “As you can see, it says you were supposed to have the other half, the one that matched the key that ended up in his trachea.”

“But, I never…,” the Dean started to protest.

“I know, I know,” said Lombardo. “You don’t have to tell me you never got the private part of the pair. He didn’t live long enough to give it to you.”

“Where did you get the private key, Captain?”

Lombardo ignored the question and said, “The important question is, why was he sending you the private key?”

“I assure you I…,” the Dean started to say, his cool composure and his ‘civility,’ now having vanished.

“Don’t assure me anything, Dean Herrera; I am not interested in you. Although, God knows someone should take an interest in you.” Lombardo put his glass down and said slowly. “I have read some of the documents that Victor encrypted before he died. I have an idea of what was going on but I would like for you to fill in some of the details. I want to know the whole story.”

“And, what will you do when you have ‘the whole story,’ as you put it?”

“I am not going to run to anyone to denounce anybody, if that’s what’s worrying

you. I am certainly not going to my boss because I have a feeling he has recently shifted sides in this little war you people are fighting. I am just interested in catching up with whoever killed Victor.”

“Why?” asked the Dean.

“Because I’m a cop, that’s what I do,” said Lombardo. “But, never mind that. Tell me how you are involved in this and why.”

It was now the Dean’s turn to pour himself a large drink. “I became involved, in a way, years ago, before I was named Dean of the University. You see, my doctorate was on demographic research. As head of the School of Social Sciences, I did a lot of work for the PLR.”

“What kind of work?”

“It was all pretty innocent stuff. They wanted to know voter tendencies, what undecided voters were thinking, what issues rankled voters most—the usual preelection stuff. They also had me test ‘pre-candidates’ for local, state, and federal offices—you know, to see how they were perceived by the voters.

“Governor Sanchez was then the party’s secretary for political action. He was the one who approached me to use the school’s computing resources to crunch the numbers, as it were, and apply my knowledge of predictive statistics to the information. We developed, if not a close friendship, at least a close working relationship, so, when he became Governor of the state, he named me Dean of the University.

“When this drug problem started getting out of hand, with the Cartels fighting each other, and practically every institution of the country being corrupted with drug money, people not only in the government, but in the private sector, started to worry about Mexico being turned into another Colombia.

“A lot of talk revolved around the fact that Mexico was suffering because of the insatiable demand of the United States for drugs. ‘Why should we suffer so much violence and corruption,’ they said, ‘just because the damned gringos want to consume tons of junk.’

“A lot of people were angry that the United States kept pointing the finger at Mexico, calling us corrupt and so on, while they did nothing about consumption. They pressured us into a ‘War on Drugs’ but where was their ‘War on Drugs’? And, if you want to talk about corruption, if tons of the stuff were getting into the United States, what does that say about corruption on their side?

“Anyway, people in the Party started discussing the idea of legalizing drugs, or at least some drugs. We knew that the United States, especially the more conservative elements, would be violently opposed to it, so when the PLR’s presidential candidate was named, and he seemed agreeable to considering legalizing drugs, the Governor asked me to conduct some demographic research. They wanted to know how the people in Mexico would react to a presidential candidate proposing the legalization of drugs or usage of drugs, and so on.”

Lombardo said, “But, it seems to me, having read some of the emails and other documents, that it was not only the gringos who were opposed to the idea of a future President, or shall I say potentially future President, ing the legalization of drugs.”

“No, of course not,” agreed the Dean. “The party has never been monolithic. It has left-wing factions, conservatives, center-right and center-left groups, Unionists, and what have you. A strong, conservative faction that is controlled by several ex-Presidents is strongly opposed to what we are trying to do. And, of course, they get money and from the conservative elements in the U.S.”

“Was Senator Romero, who was recently assassinated in Mexico City, part of the group that opposed you?”

“Yes, he was one of the leaders of the group that opposed us,” said the Dean, “at least the visible leader—there were a lot of powerful men, both from the public as well as the private sector, behind him.”

“Some of the emails I read mentioned that a certain Senator from Coahuila was entrusted with keeping an eye on him.”

“Yes, I reading something about that,” said the Dean in an obviously nervous tone, “but I thought it best not to make it my business, understand?”

“Yes. What is the good Senator from Coahuila up to now? Do you know?”

“No, certainly not, and I don’t want anything to do with that man. He is dangerous.”

“What do you mean by ‘dangerous’?”

“He’s the kind that will do anything, anything, to get ahead, and to, uh, gain the favor of the powerful, do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, I do,” said Lombardo. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything else you think I should know? Something that might help me to find whoever killed Victor?”

“I can’t think of anything for now,” said the Dean; then, after a pause he added: “I tried to keep from getting too involved is this whole thing. In fact, I wish I had never been involved at all.”

“But you are, Dean Herrera, you are.” Lombardo got up, put his hat on, and without shaking hands said, “Good night, Dean Herrera.”

As Lombardo walked to the door, a man’s voice from the top floor asked, “Are you still down there, Filiberto?”

Part 5: Day 7

Chapter 27: Bad News Is Good News

After Governor Sanchez’ last attempt to send the case up to the Federal Prosecutor failed, Lombardo was informed that he was on the case yet again. The suspension order had gone nowhere, as Lombardo had predicted, so his boss reluctantly allowed him to go on with the investigation.

But the Director was still very unhappy that Lombardo had not closed the case as quickly as he wished. He had repeatedly called Lombardo to ask him to hand in the final report.

So, Lombardo had spent two days writing his findings, collecting reports from the SEMEFO on their forensic studies, and generally filling the case folder with information. He had not filed a suspect profile report or asked for an arrest warrant, which was necessary before the Public Ministry could hand over an indictment to the judge assigned to the case.

Lombardo’s boss called him into his office and asked, “You’ve been working on this for nearly two weeks, so why haven’t you arrested anyone or charged somebody with the murder?”

“Because I don’t know where they are.”

“They?” repeated the Director. “You think there’s more than one?”

“Yes; in fact, I think there were three men involved.”

“Well, who do you suspect and where do you think they are?”

“Read my reports in the case file when I am done,” Lombardo said getting up.

“Where are you going now?”

“To visit one of the main men of the only organization that knows what’s really going on in this damned state.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

“A guy who’s in jail,” he answered.

When Lombardo left the Investigations Department’s building, the sun was setting behind a feature in the mountains commonly known to the people of Monterrey as the “M.” There weren’t many things that he liked about this city but Lombardo had to it that the sunsets were spectacular. “Unfortunately,” he’d tell people, “they owe their extravagant coloring to the smog and dust in the air.”

His eyes were tired from having gone over the forensic reports time and again, trying to find that bit of information, that connection between the facts that would make it all coalesce, come together into a whole, as if it were a photograph, slowly appearing under the action of the chemicals of reason.

What did he know? He knew that Victor had accidentally died under interrogation. He had been interrogated out of town and had been dumped by the railroad tracks perhaps in a clumsy attempt to hide the reason for his abduction. The forensic evidence pointed to three men having been the abductors. And, he knew that Victor was helping the Dean to safeguard information and incriminating emails that named the on both sides of a struggled to legalize drugs. It was obviously the anti-legalization faction who had sent the

three thugs to coerce Victor into giving up the key that safeguarded the information, but, who had sent them and where were these three men now? If he didn’t answer those two questions, he’d never be able to nail the bastards.

It was no good going to the Public Minister or to a judge with what he had; everyone, all the way up to the Governor, was trying to bury this case, so if there were any loose ends, it would be shelved. So he would have to solve it on his own, and hand the case over when it was so tight that they would have no choice but to issue warrants.

Then there was that other reason for solving this case—he had to find the murderers or else he would never be able to face the widow’s eyes again.

As he went down to the garage, his cell phone dinged. The message said, “Your laundry is ready.” The message was from Casimiro.

It had been a long time since he had been eager to do anything swiftly or go anywhere in a hurry. Not wanting to fool around with his cranky old car, he asked one of the cruisers that were going on duty to get him to the laboratory where Casimiro worked as quickly as possible. He was even tempted to ask the driver to use the siren and lights but thought better of it.

The patrol car swerved into Fidel Velazquez Avenue and he settled back to look through the decrypted print out of the documents that were in the files they had found.

After David and the log manager had managed to decrypt the information, he had asked them to let him look at it alone. He told them that for their own safety,

and for credible deniability in case someone asked them, they should be ignorant of what was in the file.

As Lombardo read the contents, he selected some of the most interesting documents for recording on a CD.

When he was done, he asked them to encrypt the files again, to make a copy of them on a CD and to have the copy delivered at the Investigations Department addressed to him. Then he told them to isolate the machine not only virtually but physically from the network, and to say nothing of his visit to anyone, although he was sure David would report to whoever he was working for.

As his patrol car reached Hidalgo Avenue, he told the driver to go around to the back of the laboratory and drop him off in the street parallel to the Avenue. He didn’t think anyone was following him but he could not avoid his habit of being careful. When he got out of the car he told the driver not to wait for him. He would take a taxi when he was done.

He went in through the employees’ entrance and after showing his badge to the private security cop that sat in the bulletproof booth, he went straight to where he knew he would find his friend hunched over some piece of equipment or other.

He rushed by the enclosed lab spaces in which young men and women, dressed in lab coats, surgical masks, and caps, moved about slowly, quietly from instrument to instrument as if following a soundless choreography.

He spotted his friend and tapped on the glass partition. His friend pointed to the

partition’s door and when he came out, he nodded his head toward an office. After they sat down, Casimiro took out two unlabeled bottles of beer from a small refrigerator. “I made this at home,” he said as he opened the bottles. “It’s better than the piss they sell in stores.” Lombardo swirled the beer in his mouth a bit before swallowing. It was.

“My tests are not complete,” said Casimiro, “because, as you can see we’re very busy and I have to do things discretely, in off hours, but I can tell you two things: the persons that smoked those cigarettes are not Mexican—most likely they are males, Anglo-Saxon—and one of them might be African-American.”

“That’s it?” asked Lombardo.

“That’s all I have had time for,” said the laboratory technician.

“Three guys,” said Lombardo.

“Yup, three guys,” repeated the lab technician.

Lombardo finished his beer. “This is damned good, Casimiro. You ought to give up the lab business and set up a brewery.”

“One or the other of the big ones would have me shot or would ruin me before I got started. what happened to the guy who started the ice cube business?”

An urban legend from the seventies says that the head of one of the huge corporations in Monterrey threatened the man who first came up with the idea of selling ice cubes at every gasoline station with bankruptcy if he didn’t sell the corporation the man’s ice cube business.

“But,” the man reputedly protested, “you already have so much!”

“Yes,” the corporation’s CEO reportedly responded, “and how do you think we got so big? We always want more!” The man sold the corporation his business.

“Times have changed, Casimiro.” Lombardo said.

“But not the way this city does business,” Casimiro reed.

Lombardo thanked his friend and left. He now had enough evidence to put somebody in jail for 40 years. More importantly, he now had the evidence that proved the true motive for Victor’s murder. All he needed now were the three names and the faces to go along with them.

ing he had told the policeman not to wait for him, he went down to the Avenue to look for a taxi. As he stood in the corner waiting for one, he called someone he knew in the telephone company.

“Alicia? This is Captain Lombardo.”

“Well, Captain; it’s been a long time.”

“Yes, it has, Alicia. Look, I need the cell phone number of Don Armando Aréchiga Jáuregui.”

“Who in the world is that?”

“The warden of the State Penitentiary, of course! The name should be familiar to you, with the kind of boyfriends you’ve had.”

She laughed and said, “Just a minute, Captain.”

Chapter 28: Misery Does Acquaint Men

It wasn’t as if Warden Armando Aréchiga had never received a request from an investigator asking to see a prisoner; but, since the request came from Captain Lombardo and the prisoner he wanted to see was the notorious underboss of the Gulf Cartel, the Warden was noticeably nervous and suspicious.

“Listen, Warden Aréchiga,” said Lombardo when he had noticed that the Warden was waffling, “I could get a warrant but let’s save my time and avoid your embarrassment; you know, a little birdie told me that another little birdie was let out of his cage for a whole night a few days ago.”

“Alright, alright, don’t overdo it; come on over,” he had said relenting.

Abelardo Unzúntia Jimenez, known to his friends, underlings, and enemies as El Tarasco, because he was said to hail from the Tarascan culture in the State of Michoacán, had been languishing in the Nuevo León State Penitentiary for six months while the United State’s Attorney General and the Mexican Federal Prosecutor wrangled over his extradition.

Many years ago, when Lombardo was wandering around Mexico, he had stopped in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán to spend the night. He had been a young man then and just out of the Army. After drinking a dozen beers, he had gotten into a drunken brawl and wound up in jail. He was put in the common cell where another prisoner had tried to take his shirt and shoes. Lombardo had defended himself, but would have wound up with a knife in his back if Unzúntia had not interfered and told the other prisoners to lay off.

Unzúntia had liked Lombardo’s spunk and invited him over to his “private” cell to have coffee. They had spent the night talking and drinking until Lombardo had fallen asleep. The next day, Unzúntia had invited him to him in his “business efforts,” as he called them. Lombardo had politely declined but they had formed, if not a friendship, it was a mutual respect society because each man knew that the other was somebody to be reckoned with.

Through the years they had seen each other from their respective sides of the “fence,” exchanging nods of recognition, but knowing full well that if it ever came to a confrontation, although the outcome could not be predicted, it would surely be deadly.

Lombardo had asked the warden to see Unzúntia in a private office. When El Tarasco came in, he smiled at Lombardo and said, “How come we only meet in

jail?”

“Because we are both such bad boys,” said Lombardo. “Do you want some coffee, Tarasco?”

El Tarasco stirred the sugar in his coffee and then said, “How am I supposed to make a knife with this?” He threw the plastic spoon into the wastebasket. “Jails are not fun anymore,” he said.

For the first time in many days, Lombardo laughed.

“It was no plastic spoon they were going to use on me that time in Pátzcuaro. It was a long time ago but I still that you saved my ass, Tarasco.”

Unzúntia laughed and said, “I did it because I ired your balls, Lombardo, and, besides, a murder in the cells would only cause a lot of trouble for everyone.”

“Whatever the reason, it was a lucky circumstance you were there.”

“Life is nothing but circumstances, my friend.” He sighed. “Do you know why I was in that jail?”

“No, I never asked. It was none of my business.”

“Because I killed…no, because they said I had killed a highway patrol guy.” He shook his head. “But you know what? I was not in jail because I was accused of that; I was there for my own protection. The other motherfucker highway patrolmen were out hunting for me.”

“So, you paid the municipal police to guard you?” Lombardo smiled.

“I was pretty comfortable in there; do you ?”

“Yes, I ,” said Lombardo.

“Nice music, comfortable furniture, a couple of little queers to do my washing and cooking.”

He sighed and looked around. “This place is not so comfortable.”

“And the American jails are worse,” said Lombardo.

“Yeah, the damned Americans are trying to extradite me. So, you know about that, eh?”

“Yes, I know about that—and a couple of things more.”

He sighed again and said, “Captain, I know you are not here for a social visit.”

“You’re right. Again I need your help, Tarasco.”

“Favor con favor se paga,” he said citing the Mexican saying that says a favor is repaid with a favor.

“Of course,” said Lombardo.

“What can I do for you?”

He made a signal to El Tarasco and shoved a notepad toward him. In it Lombardo had written, “Aguas, hay muchas orejas.” (Careful, there are a lot of ears around here.)

“A young man, Victor Delgado, was murdered a week ago. I know that three men picked him up, beat the hell out of him, and then killed him. I don’t think it was any of your men or the Zetas but I want to know for sure; and, I know that you can find out where these three men went after they killed Victor. They are gringos so your people probably kept an eye on them when they were in town.” Lombardo took out his cell phone and said, “I need you to make a phone call or two.”

Unzúntia said, “You know I can’t do that for you,” but he wrote down, “Who do you want me to call?”

“Look, I can put in a good word for you with the Prosecutor who’s trying to ship you to the Americans,” said Lombardo as he wrote, “Get me the names and destination of the three gringos.”

“A good word with the Prosecutor; a lot of good that will do, said the underboss and wrote, “OK, so if I do this, what will you do for me? Really?”

“I’m the only friend you got, Unzúntia,” said Lombardo while writing, “How would you like to wait in the State Penitentiary in Michoacán instead of this High Security Prison while the judge decides your case?”

El Tarasco laughed and said, “You’re no friend; you’re a cop!” but he wrote, “The State Pen in Michoacán is like my second home!”

“OK, my friend; if that’s the way you want it,” said Lombardo, and wrote, “Well, I think I know a way to get you there.”

“No cop is a friend of mine, you’re like the rest; you just want something for nothing,” said Unzúntia while writing, “How do I know you can do this for me?”

“Look, it’s all I can offer but it is better than anything you’ve got now,” said Lombardo slowly as he wrote, “The evidence I have will earn me a lot of favors.”

“Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe the gringo jail won’t be so bad,” said Unzúntia as

he was writing, “And maybe a bullet in the head, too?”

“Oh, they won’t let you have a TV and a stereo and a couple of little queers to cook for you, I can tell you that,” said Lombardo as he underlined the words, “Killing me won’t solve anyone’s problem. The stuff I got is my insurance policy.”

“OK, let me think about it, but, first I have to talk to my mother,” said Unzúntia as he opened Lombardo’s cell phone.

Lombardo nodded. “Alright, call whoever you want and let me know.” Lombardo wrote: “Tell your boss that I’m after the same people who want to spoil his plans.”

“OK, give me fifteen minutes.”

Lombardo got up. “You’ve got ’em. I’m going to go take a leak.”

Lombardo went to the bathroom and then had a smoke in the hallway. Before he went back to talk to Unzúntia, the warden confronted him.

“What are you doing making deals with that murdering bastard?”

“Warden,” said Lombardo, “if you’ve been listening to our conversation, you’d better keep it to yourself. You’ve no idea the size of the scorpion under this rock. It’s got enough poison to kill a lot of people. Besides, he said he had to think about it. He didn’t say he’d help me.”

The warden got out of his way.

When Lombardo went back into the office, Unzúntia was chatting with somebody on Lombardo’s cell phone. From the way that he laughed and the things that he was saying, he was apparently talking to one of his mistresses. As soon as he saw Lombardo he cut the conversation short and snapped the phone shut.

“Sorry,” he said. “There’s no deal. I didn’t get permission to help you.” At the same time he shoved the notepad back to Lombardo. He had written, “Airport— someone will give you a enger list.”

Lombardo put the notepad in his mackintosh pocket and said, “Well, I hope you enjoy your stay in Disneyland, or wherever the gringos have reserved you a suite.”

“See you in Hell,” said El Tarasco, grinning as they shook hands.

Chapter 29: A Terrible Chess Game

John Wayne was working out in the back yard when Robert Miller came through

the back door of the house.

“Pumpin’ iron; big man workin’,” said Robert Miller in a mock TV commentator voice.

“What’s up, Bob?”

“I got word that the other team started the game while we were not even on the field.”

“Yeah, I know,” said John Wayne while puffing and straining.

“They took out our man—Romero,” said Miller in a voice that had a note of reproach to it.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Yeah, you know, yeah, you know—what the hell are we doing about it?”

John Wayne stopped the weightlifting and used a towel to wipe perspiration from his bald head and face. “I’ve got some people on it, ok?”

“What do you mean, ‘I’ve got some people on it’? I just came back from

Washington last night and let me tell you that Mister Vice-President reamed my ass royally. He was foaming at the mouth about this.”

“So, what did they expect us to do? We can’t bodyguard these people or shadow every move they make. Hell, I don’t even have enough guys in the street to do what we’re supposed to do.”

“You could’ve got word to him—warned him.”

“Warned him? Do you think he didn’t know? He was married to the sister of the President’s cousin for 14 years. He knew the murdering bastard better than we do.” John Wayne drank some water and continued. “What got into his stubborn head to walk around like that in the middle of Mexico City, we’ll never know. It was stupid on his part and there is nothing we could’ve done about it.”

Miller looked around. They were in the back yard, not a good place to be discussing these issues. “Let’s go inside,” he suggested, “and think about what our next move is gong to be.”

They went into the house and to the kitchen where John Wayne opened two bottles of beer.

“Look,” said John Wayne calmly, “he is too close to the President, so we can’t just come out and say we suspect him of having masterminded this ex-brother in law’s murder. I’ve called all the government people we know, and the Judicial Police, and the Federal Prosecutor, and so on, pressuring them to do something about this. I also called the publisher of El Amanecer and leaked stuff to him so he could get the media side rolling. Our embassy people are working on the

legislators they know. If we put enough pressure on this, something will turn up.”

And, something did turn up a couple of days later. Trying to reduce the pressure from the media, from the congressmen demanding a thorough investigation, and from the general public’s outcry about lawlessness and impunity in the country, Alfonso Echeverría had the body of the assassin of his ex-brother-in-law removed from its grave in his ranch and dumped into a shallow grave on the edge of a cow path near the road to Cuernavaca. He hoped that if the assassin of Senator Romero was found, the authorities and the public would be, if not satisfied, at least calmed down.

A day later, a shepherd smelled and then saw the gruesome feast that coyotes and buzzards were trying to dig up.

The Federal Prosecutor announced that the body, although badly decomposed, had been identified as Isidro Covarrubias Maza, the assassin of Senator Juan Alberto Romero. Eyewitness s and descriptions taken from surveillance camera recordings proved that the clothes on the body and those of the assassin were identical and that a shoe print that had been left at the scene of the crime was identical to the print of the running shoes the man in the grave was wearing.

Meanwhile, Alfonso Echeverría, called his fellow conspirators and assured them that the find was a good thing for their group because it would keep the cops busy for months looking for leads that would point to the ‘intellectual author’ of the crime—the person who had hired the assassin. Of course, that person, too, had ‘disappeared,’ so by the time they had any clue as to what had happened to Senator Elizondo, and the missing Senator became the prime suspect in Senator Romero’s murder case, the presidential elections would be over, their man would be occupying the Presidential Chair, and, as President, he would name someone to the Federal Prosecutor’s job who would quietly close the case.

But John Wayne and his men were not so easily put off. He got Robert Miller to bring down FBI forensic specialists and when the soil and debris that were found in the assassin’s pants pockets were analyzed by the “soil experts,” they pinpointed the real place where Senator Romero’s assassin had been buried before he was so conveniently found elsewhere.

The samples showed that he had been previously interred about 20 kilometers farther north, because the silica in the dirt was known to come from sandy soil that had been part of a dry riverbed, which had been identified by spectrometer bearing satellites years ago. The biologist of the team identified pollen and plant material found on the dead man’s shoes as that of a particular pine native to a certain part of the state; and the mineralogist found traces of a peculiar quartz that when looked up in the FBI’s database of samples and geological information gathered by satellite, pointed to a certain place near a hill where the runoff in the rainy season deposited similar materials.

A quick check of the land registry records showed that the land suspected of being the spot where the body had been buried belonged to Alfonso Echeverría, the President’s cousin. When the FBI team, pretending to be land surveyors, inspected the suspected area, they noticed that some of the spots that had the potential to be the burial plot showed signs of ‘disturbance,’ in the parlance of the specialist.

The FBI team called John Wayne and he told them to leave the site alone and to return to the city. He then called the crew that had been sitting around a hotel suite since they had come back from the botched job in Monterrey.

“Hey, you guys,” said John Wayne, “I got a job for you, which I hope you won’t muck up like the job on Monterrey.”

When John Wayne explained what the job was, the crew chief asked why he wanted them to do it. John Wayne said he couldn’t risk any U.S. governmental agency people getting caught or shot in private land.

“You guys are expendable and if you get caught, I can always ask the police to declare you are American drug smugglers. You’ll spend a couple of months in jail and then I’ll have you sent back to the States,” he said.

The crew went to the suspected burial spot a couple of days later. They were fully equipped with metal detectors, eco locators, and other equipment, and also pretended to be land surveyors. They dug around a few promising locations and soon found the body of Senator Elizondo, the mastermind behind Senator Romero’s murder. They reburied the body, as per John Wayne’s instructions, and marked the spot with a couple of rocks. The only thing they took was the dead cell phone, which upon analysis was found to contain the number of a cell phone belonging to the President’s cousin. The wallet that they found on the body had identification that said that the dead man was Francisco Elizondo, Senator from Coahuila.

John Wayne called Robert Miller: “We’ve got the bastard.”

Robert Miller asked, “Yeah? How’s that?”

“We’ve located the place where they dumped the assassin. Guess who had been in there with him?”

“Who?”

“Senator Francisco Elizondo Elizondo, a close friend of the President’s cousin. He has been reported missing, you know. I think he organized the Romero hit and then got blown away himself.”

“Geez, these people won’t stop at anything. So, what’s our next move?”

“I’m giving the Federal Prosecutor all the info and the cell phone. He is going to act based on a confession and is going to ask for a search warrant.”

“Who’s confessing, and what?”

John Wayne said, “They have some guy in jail that was identified as an accomplice of the assassin. He was seen on the surveillance tapes misdirecting people as the assassin ran away.”

“So, he confessed to what?”

John Wayne sighed and said, “It doesn’t matter, you see? The Prosecutor will say that the guy told him that the bodies were buried in the cousin’s ranch, so, they’ll get a warrant, find the body and the telephone, which I will give him, and then they will make an arrest.”

“President Echeverría will be pissed. The guy is family.”

“Yeah, but Washington will cool him down. He’s got too much riding on the Bilateral Trade Agreement; it’s coming up for a vote in the Senate tomorrow. Washington will suggest that he say that law and order has prevailed and that no one is above the law so he is confident that justice will be served and that if his cousin is innocent he is sure the judicial system will protect his rights, blah, blah, you know the drill.”

“Yeah, I know the drill,” said Robert Miller. “Well played, my friend.”

“It’s like a fucking chess game,” said John Wayne.

Chapter 30: An Invitation He Cannot Refuse

A week after John Wayne’s conversation with Robert Miller, the Federal Prosecutor, Mr. Eugenio García Loera, held a press conference to announce that acting on information supplied by an anonymous source, and the confession of an accomplice in the assassination of Senator Juan Alberto Romero, the body of Senator Francisco Elizondo Elizondo had been found in a grave in a rural property belonging to Mr. Alfonso Echeverría Garza, Head of the Confederation of Rural Workers and Cooperative Farmers (this was his official position in the federal bureaucracy).

In the press release he read, the Federal Prosecutor did not mention that Mr. Alfonso Echeverría Garza was related to the President of Mexico. But some of the reporters who were present were on the payroll of conservative elements in the government, so, following orders, they immediately asked, “Is not Mr. Alfonso Echeverría Garza related to President Echeverría?”

“Yes, I understand he is the President’s cousin,” answered the Federal Prosecutor curtly and following the script that had been prepared by anonymous antilegalization forces.

“Has the President been informed?” asked another.

“Yes, I called him this morning and gave him a full of the investigation.”

“What was the President’s reaction?” asked a newsman from Teleuniverso, the largest television chain in Latin America.

“He is in complete agreement that the investigation should be conducted in such a way that all of the facts of the case are…”

“Are you going to arrest Mr. Alfonso Echeverría?” yelled another reporter interrupting.

“ of the Judicial Police and of the Public Ministry are at Mr. Alfonso Echeverría’s home, as we speak. He will be requested to accompany them to the Palace of Justice in order to clarify why this person was interred on his property.”

“What about the assassin, Isidro Covarrubias? Isn’t his murder being investigated, too?”

“We are following several leads in that case. We hope to have some results soon. I am sorry I can’t say more because that investigation is ongoing and I would not like to jeopardize…”

“Are these two murders linked? Is there a possibility that both persons were murdered by the same person or persons?”

“I cannot speculate on anything like that. Until the investigation has been concluded, I prefer not to discuss motives or possible suspects,” he said, and added, “If you have any further questions, please refer them to my assistant and press secretary, Mr. Samuel Zamora.”

Television coverage of the President’s cousin’s “invitation” to clarify the circumstances by which the body of Senator Elizondo had come to be buried on his property was intense. A dozen vans, including O Globo from Brazil, CNN from the U.S., as well as Televisa and Televisión Azteca, the two large Mexican chains, were present. Photographers climbed the walls to photograph the house and the moment that Mr. Alfonso Echeverría was asked to “accompany” the Judicial Police to the waiting Public Ministry van.

Dozens of microphones and recorders were shoved in his face as he came through the large, wooden gates that usually only opened for his armored, bulletproof limousine.

The newspapers and television cameras also covered the activities of the Judicial Police, Public Ministry agents, and forensic medics and scientists that scoured the ground in and around the gravesite where the Senator’s body had been found, as well as the shallow grave where the assassin’s had lain.

A day later, El Metropolitano, a newspaper known for its “courageous” reporting and “fearless” denunciation of official wrongdoings, broke the story of the cell phone that had been found along with Senator Elizondo’s body. It was confirmed that the only phone number in its memory was that of Alfonso Echeverría, the President’s cousin.

That same afternoon, CNN interrupted its evening business program with a report on breaking news: Phillipa Everton-Smythe, a Vice President of the New York Central Bank, had been arrested at Kennedy Airport as she was about to board a plane for Zurich. A spokesman for the FBI, which is now in charge of investigating the case, said that Ms. Everton-Smythe had come under suspicion because a guard dog had alerted its trainer to the possibility of drugs in Ms. Everton-Smythe’s luggage. Upon inspection, the luggage was also found to contain an envelope with cashier’s checks totaling more than six million dollars. Correspondence found in the same envelope instructed Ms. Everton-Smythe to deposit the checks in three different s in Switzerland. All of the checks in Ms. Everton-Smythe’s possession were in the name of Mr. Alfonso Echeverría Garza, said to be cousin of the President of Mexico.

Ms. Everton-Smythe, through her attorney, denied any wrongdoing. She said she was empowered, as a Bank officer dedicated to special clients, to manage Mr. Echeverría’s investments. She denied all allegations of money laundering and said that these were legitimate deposits in a Swiss bank that were intended for legitimate investments in Europe and elsewhere. As for the cocaine found in her luggage, she had no idea of its provenance since she denied ever using any illegal drugs.

When the New York Central Bank was asked to comment on Ms. EvertonSmythe’s arrest, a spokesman for the bank said the institution had no comment to issue at the time.

That night, John Wayne phoned Robert Miller and said only three words: “Check and mate.”

Chapter 31: The Devil Is Loose

Dean Herrera had just concluded a meeting with the faculty heads when the special cell phone rang. He answered and said, “Just a minute, please.” He then thanked the faculty heads for having come to the meeting and waited until they filed out before speaking into the phone again.

“Sorry; we were just concluding a meeting here.”

“Filiberto,” said the Governor, which surprised the Dean because he rarely used the Dean’s first name in a conversation, “I just talked to our friend in Mexico City and he said that ‘the devils have been set loose,’” said the Governor, using an old Mexican saying that signals the start of a “witch hunt.”

“What do you mean, Governor?”

“I mean that our friend asserted that they had enough on him to keep him in jail for ten years, even without bringing any specific charges, and that it was every man for himself now, because they were going to start looking for accomplices to his crimes.”

“Are things that bad?”

“Worse,” said the Governor. “He said it would be the last time he would be able to talk to any of us so he advised we make provision for finding safe haven.”

There was a pause and the Dean could hear the Governor ordering someone to pack this and destroy that, or to shred some papers.

“What are you going to do, Governor?”

“Wait a second,” said the Governor and then the Dean could hear him ask people to leave his office for a minute or two. “Listen, I have made a deal with our ‘cousins from the north.’ They want me to, uh, to sort of fill them in, on, you know, some of the things we were thinking of doing, and on, some of the people who ed us, and things like that.”

“I suppose you are going to tell them about me.”

“Yes, but they are not interested in you—I don’t think. It’s other people they want to know about, you see.”

“Yes, I see.”

“I will be announcing my resignation tomorrow—citing health reasons and personal problems. Then I am leaving for the U.S. where, I will say, I will be receiving medical treatment, and then probably go into what they call ‘the witness protection program.’”

“My God! So, it has come to this?”

“Yes, I am afraid so. Look, my advice to you, as I have said to all of my closest associates, is that you find some sort of safe haven.”

“But, where can I go? I don’t have anyone except my sister who lives in Galveston, Texas.”

“Don’t go there. They’ll know about that and they will be watching her.”

“But, I thought you said the Americans were not interested in me.”

“It’s not the Americans you should worry about—it’s the other people, the ones who opposed us.”

“I see, yes, I see what you mean.” The Dean buzzed his secretary and asked her to come in to his office. “Can’t you call the President and ask him to help us out?”

“I have, but he said he was too busy with this Bilateral Agreement thing and that he could not jeopardize his relationship with Washington just now.”

“So, we are on our own?”

“Yes,” said the Governor, “we are on our own.” Then he added: “Look, there are things I have to do before I prepare tomorrow’s announcement. Good luck and I hope things turn out well for you. By the way, get rid of this phone—destroy it. Good-bye.” The Governor hung up.

When the Dean’s secretary came in he said to her, “Teresita, I am sorry for having kept you here so late but I need you to do one last thing for me tonight. I have to leave for Europe urgently. Please see if you can get me a first class ticket on the Aeroméxico flight to Paris tomorrow. There’s one that leaves Mexico City around 8:45 p.m., I think.”

She was about to leave his office when he called her back, “No, wait! That won’t do.” He had a sudden realization that Mexico City might be a dangerous place for him.

“Do you have the number of that air taxi service we used about six months ago, Teresita?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Well, call his cell phone number and tell him I need to fly to, uh, let’s see, Dallas tomorrow—first thing in the morning, say around eight o’clock in the morning.”

Teresita made a note of his instructions although there was a worried look on her face as she wrote down the unusual, hurried orders.

“And then, get me a first class ticket on American Airlines, direct flight, to Paris, from Dallas, OK? Call the frequent flyer number; you won’t be able to get a regular reservation person this time of night.”

“Yes, sir,” said Teresita.

While Teresita made the arrangements for his trip, Dean Herrera typed out his letter of resignation on his computer. He sent a copy by email to the Governor, and printed a copy, which he signed and put into an envelope, which he addressed to the Governor as well. He then made a third copy and addressed it to the Board of the University.

When Teresita came in to give him the details of the arrangements she had made, he gave her the envelope and told her he wanted it delivered to the Governor’s office first thing the next morning.

That following day, at 8 o’clock in the morning, as the Governor made some final corrections to his announcement, the Dean arrived at the Aeropuerto del Norte, the old city airport, which was now used exclusively by private aircraft.

The media started to gather in the Governor’s Palace press room around 8:30. They had been informed the night before that the Governor would be making an important announcement.

At 9:30 the Governor entered the press room and after saying good morning to the of the media and his staff, whom he had asked to be present, he

began his announcement.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my duty, as Constitutional Governor of the State of Nuevo León, to inform you that on the advice of my private physician and of the medical staff of the University Hospital, I am reg my position as Governor of the State of Nuevo León, effective immediately. In my judgment, as well as that of my closest advisers, this is the best course to take in view that my first loyalty is to the State and.…”

In other parts of Mexico, a couple of deputies asked for prolonged leaves of absence from the Chamber of Deputies, some liberal writers and University professors decided they needed a long vacation, and the heads of the various drug cartels, knowing that now there was no chance of drugs being legalized in Mexico, began to prepare for what they knew was coming—an all out war among each other and confrontations with the Mexican Army.

As the Dean’s rented plane landed in Dallas’s Love Field, he wondered if anyone had informed Leobardo Contreras, the presidential candidate, of what was going on.

Chapter 32: Lombardo Confronts His Boss

Lombardo sat at his desk in the Investigations Department’s office, a rare thing for him. He was waiting for the Director to come back from the press conference. His cell phone rang; it was Lupe Salgado, the computer guru.

“Have you heard the news? The Governor resigned and I hear that Dean Herrera has left town. The rats are leaving the sinking ship.”

“I knew about the Governor; I didn’t know about Dean Herrera.”

“I was talking to some of the people I know at the Computer Center a few minutes ago, including your friend David. The rumor that the Dean has left is all people can talk about in the main campus of the University.”

“Do they know where he’s gone? Any speculation about that?” asked Lombardo, knowing full well that Lupe Salgado had his own intelligence network well in place at the University and elsewhere; after all, he is a consultant.

“Well, don’t let anyone know your source but, Teresita, his secretary told me she had arranged for a private plane to take him to Dallas and he also asked her to get him a first-class ticket to Paris.”

“The man has always done things with style,” said Lombardo.

“I’ll say; have you ever been to his house?”

“Yeah, a little Greek temple. Did he take his friend with him?”

“Hmm, she didn’t say. Why is that of interest to you?”

“Because if he left him behind, I might want to talk to him later; he probably

knows more about the Dean than anyone else. You know how wives are!” said Lombardo. “And, if anyone wants to find the Dean, they should keep an eye on this guy. I’m sure they’re not going to resist being apart.”

“You’re getting bitchy in your old age, my friend,” said Lupe laughing.

“I gotta go,” said Lombardo, “the Director has just arrived.”

Not five minutes had ed when Lombardo’s desk phone rang. “The Director wants to see you,” said the secretary.

When Lombardo walked into the Director’s office, he saw that there were piles of papers on his desk, and folders neatly tied up and placed in cardboard boxes.

“Going somewhere?” Lombardo asked glibly.

The Director ignored the sarcasm nodded toward the copy of Victor Delgado’s case file and said, “You’ve been doing a lot of work on that case.”

“That’s what we’re supposed to do when there’s been a crime committed.”

“Listen, Lombardo, you’re messing around with dangerous stuff, stuff you don’t understand.”

“Oh, you would be surprised how much ‘stuff’’ I understand.”

The Director stopped looking through the papers on his desk and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I know why the Governor quit and the Dean of the University has left town.”

“The Dean?” asked the surprised Director.

“Yeah, the Dean. And, I know who killed Victor Delgado and why.”

“Well, if you are so damned sure, why haven’t you filed an investigation report so charges could be…”

“Because you and your pals would just dump my report into the pile of unsolved cases and let it go at that. Look, Mr. Director, I don’t give a damned about the power struggles you and your kind play, or how many of you get killed at game time, but I do care when little people get hurt, ground up, as you people fight for the right to ruin this country.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. You know that the Americans and some of our most ‘loyal’ citizens are trying to thwart those who want to legalize drugs in this country. I

also know that the Governor, the Dean, and a bunch of federal Deputies and Senators were being led by someone very close to the President, and that they were pushing to have the presidential candidate put drug legalization as the first item on his agenda once he is elected.”

Lombardo took the CD out of his pocket and continued, “I know that you know that your group is financed by ‘foreign’ money and that your enemies are being financed by drug money. The cartels would pay anything to see drugs legalized, and the people that finance you and your group would do anything to see that they are not.”

“These are very dangerous accusations you are making.”

“I am not accusing anyone, and I don’t intend to accuse anyone. I couldn’t care less if you and your rivals all kill each other.”

“What are you after, then?”

“I’m after the guys who killed Victor Delgado. I want to see them in jail, rotting away for twenty years. That’s what I want.”

“And how do you propose to do that if you don’t file an investigation report and hand it over to the Public Ministry?”

“Because, as I’ve said, that would go nowhere. What I want is for you to call your pals and tell them they have to give up the three men who were involved in

Victor Delgado’s murder.”

“Supposing I knew who I should call—what makes you think that they would be turned over to you or anyone else?”

Lombardo waved the CD he had taken from his mackintosh pocket and threw it on the Director’s desk. “There’s a lot of interesting material on that CD: documents, policy drafts, and so on. But most importantly, a lot of emails between Senators, Deputies, a Governor or two, and even someone, euphemistically put, very close to the Presidency. It also provides insights on how a foreign power has been meddling in our internal affairs. Can you imagine what the media, both domestic and foreign, could do with that? In fact, it could be worth a lot of money on the media market.”

“People have been killed for less than that,” said the Director threateningly.

“Don’t bother trying to scare me. I am no Victor Delgado. And, anyway, do you think that there are no more copies just waiting to be released upon my most lamentable death?”

Lombardo got up and went to the door but before he opened it he said to the Director, “I repeat, I don’t give a damn what happens to you and your pals or anyone else on the other ‘team.’ I have filled in a request form for a ticket and money to fly to Guadalajara. I hope you will be so kind as to sign it authorizing the expenditure. I want those three guys.”

“What makes you so sure they are in Guadalajara?”

“I have a copy of a enger list in my pocket that a friend gave me. It has the name of three gringos on it. I know they’re there.”

As soon as Lombardo left his office, the Director picked up his cell phone and called a number in Guadalajara.

“Yeah?” John Wayne answered.

Chapter 33: The Director Is Directed

The Café Florida is located directly in front of the main entrance of Cintermex, the large convention center in Monterrey. It is a favorite place to have breakfast meetings for politicians and government officials, so, it was no surprise to anyone when two black SUVs stopped at the entrance of the Café and the Director of the State Judicial Police, Alejandro Peniche Saldivar, got out of one of the vehicles, and Lombardo’s boss, the Director of Investigations for the Public Ministry, Hermenegildo Gutierrez Zavala, descended from the other.

Gutierrez Zavala had recently been informed that he was going to be named Head of the Federal Criminal Investigations Department reporting directly to the Federal Prosecutor. He knew that the job meant going after the heads of the Cartels so he would need a tough man to serve the arrest warrants.

That morning, he was going to offer the job to Peniche Saldivar, whom he trusted and had known since they were both rookie prosecutors fresh out of law school, and from when they had both been at the Judicial Police Academy.

As the two men walked through the Café, they were greeted heartily by the politicians and officials sitting at various tables. Word about the appointment had gotten around. These were two rising stars in the tough, dangerous world of law enforcement. They were now men to be respected and feared because they were credited with having played a big part in breaking up the pro-legalization “conspiracy,” as it was now being called. Losers always get the pejorative epitaphs.

Several of the politicians rose from their seats and greeted them with an abrazo, the embrace, accompanied by back slapping, which is a sign of friendship and respect among Mexican men.

Outside of the Café, two of Peniche Saldivar’s bodyguards stood on either side of the main entrance to the place, while two of Gutierrez Zavala’s covered the back entrance. They told the cooks who were taking a smoking brake to go inside and to tell everyone in the kitchen that they were to stay inside until their boss left the Café.

The two SUVs were parked on the curb by the Café’s main entrance, their motors going and their air conditioning on. A traffic cop parked his motorcycle in back of the first SUV. He turned on his turret lights and proceeded to wave the heavy, early morning traffic past the parked vehicles.

Inside, the two men were shown to a table discreetly tucked into a back corner of the room. The head waiter brought a folding screen and placed it between the two men and the rest of the customers in order to afford them a measure of privacy. The two men sat down and after the waiter had served them coffee, they began to talk in soft, confidential tones.

Another waiter, a tall, thin fellow with dark hair and dark brown skin, came up to the two men and greeted them cheerfully by name, “Buenos días, señor Gutierrez; Buenos días, señor Peniche.” He asked them if they would like fruit juice, but since both men said they didn’t, he asked them if they would like to order. The two men said they did, so the waiter reached into the inside pocket of his blue jacket as if to get a pad and pen but instead, he withdrew a small-caliber automatic, which had a thin, tubular silencer. The two men did not notice the gun pointed at them since they had gone back to conversing. The first bullet, a hollow cavity round, entered Gutierrez Zavala’s head just behind and above his right ear, destroying most of the occipital lobe with damage reaching down into the cerebellum as the soft lead shattered into pieces after penetrating the skull. The second bullet entered Peniche Saldivar’s left temple at an angle since he turned, with a look of surprise on his face, when he heard the strange “piewf” as the first bullet left the silencer. The bullet that entered his skull did not break apart as much as the first one had done, but rather lodged, almost complete, in the parietal lobe.

Both men were dead instantly, with Gutierrez Zavala’s chin resting on his chest as if he were in deep meditation about something and Peniche Saldivar’s head resting on the wall, his eyes closed as if he had been overcome by sleep.

An official of the Parks and Recreation Department, who was facing the table of the two murdered men, and who was the only person to witness the event because he could see Peniche Saldivar’s back by the space left between the screen and the wall, would later testify that the waiter walked out from behind the screen, coolly put his gun away in his jacket, walked normally past him (he said he was so shocked and afraid that he was literally speechless), even smiled at him, and went out the front door.

The two bodyguards standing by the entrance would later say that indeed a waiter had come out the door and had said that there was something wrong with one of the bosses and that they were needed inside.

After the bodyguards ran inside, the driver of Peniche’s SUV would relate that he saw a waiter come out of the Café, talk to the bodyguards, and then walk away around the corner of the building.

A taxi driver waiting for customers at the corner taxi stand testified that he too saw a waiter walk out of the Café and talk to the bodyguards. He added that the waiter had walked away and had gotten into a white car that was parked halfway down the block. The car drove off normally and not in any particular hurry. He said he thought it odd that the waiter would leave the restaurant in the middle of the morning.

Lombardo was arriving at the Investigations Department’s building when he heard the sirens of unmarked cars that were rushing out of the Department’s underground garage. Inside the building, people ran about and talked excitedly into telephones and radios; one of the secretaries was wiping tears from her cheeks.

Lombardo went up to one of the uniformed officers who stood guarding the main entrance. “What’s up?” he asked. The officer without looking at him said they had just gotten word that Gutierrez Zavala had been shot.

Lombardo went down to the underground garage. A van, filled with heavily armed men wearing body armor and black riot helmets was about to leave. Lombardo asked the driver if he was going to the scene of the crime and the driver said he was. Lombardo jumped into the van.

Avenue Cristobal Colón, the street that runs past the Café Florida, where the crime was committed, was now blocked by police cars. They were diverting traffic to a street two blocks before the Café Florida location. The driver of the van had to ask one of the police cars to move before the van could get through.

After it did, the Major leading the squad of helmeted, armored policemen ordered the area’s perimeter secured. Lombardo thought the whole thing unnecessary but it was probably done for the benefit of the television cameras.

Lombardo had to show his badge to three uniformed cops before he could get into the Café itself. Inside, a large group of men in suits, as well as all of the Café’s waiters, cooks, and busboys, had been herded into a corner and were being held there by a squad of policemen bearing automatic weapons. The cops stood, stone-faced with rifles at the ready, facing their charges as if they were guards in a miniature concentration camp.

Most of the men in suits were protesting loudly and shouting at the police captain who seemed to be in charge of the squad holding them. Lombardo walked up to the captain and after identifying himself asked, “Customers and the staff?”

“Yes,” said the police captain, “and most of them are big shots, or so they say.”

Men with unholstered weapons walked around hurriedly talking into their handheld radios. Lombardo walked over to the corner of the Café where a group of forensic medics huddled. Looking over their shoulders, he could see the two bodies; the entry wounds were small and clean. The powder burns were evidence that the shots had been fired at close range. The exit wounds were horrendous. To Lombardo it was obvious that the bullets used had been modified to do the most damage possible. He doubted they would ever recover but bits and pieces of them.

A few meters away, Lombardo saw the Fat Man standing with his hands in his pockets, his mouth hanging open as if his face had been frozen into a look of disbelief. Lombardo walked over and lighting a cigarette he said to the Fat Man,

“I guess we’re out of a job, Gonzalez.”

The Fat Man looked at him as if he did not understand what Lombardo had said.

“What was this meeting with Peniche about, do you know?”

Gonzalez swallowed hard and said, “He got the word just last night. He was going to Mexico City as head of, uh…what’s it called?”

“Never mind, I know,” said Lombardo. “But, what was he doing here with Peniche?”

“We heard he was going to ask him to come along, you know, to go down with him to the capital.”

“I guess the ‘chilangos’ didn’t want them down there,” said Lombardo using the derogatory name most Mexicans use for the inhabitants of the capital.

Gonzalez looked at him with an expression of a child who had heard someone laugh at the death of his puppy. “How the hell can you make jokes at a time like this,” he said and walked away.

Lombardo walked over to the police major who was telling a captain to keep the media out of the Café until the Public Ministry people had arrived and done their work. Lombardo identified himself. “Major, I’m Captain Guillermo Lombardo. I

worked for Gutierrez in the Investigations Department.”

“Sorry about your boss, Captain,” said the major.

“Yeah, he was a good man,” said Lombardo dryly. He nodded toward the corpses. “It looks like a very professional job.”

“Very professional, Captain. The man shoots them both, walks out, gets in a car and drives away.” He shook his head. “No one saw anything. The restaurant was crowded but I can’t even get a general description of the perpetrator.”

“How about the bodyguards? What were they doing all this time?”

“They say that they were standing outside, by the door. One of them re a waiter coming to say that something had happened to their boss but they say it’s none of the waiters that are here now. No one can say if the waiter who talked to them was the perpetrator.”

“I bet you won’t get much out of the staff either. They will have been too busy to have noticed a new waiter or will now be too scared to say anything if they did.”

“Well, I will leave that to the super cops of the Public Ministry.” He nodded toward the door. “Here they are now.”

A group of men dressed in black military-style pants and shirts, wearing

sunglasses, and body armor with the letters MP in large, white type painted on it, and Glock automatics strapped to their waist in fast-access holsters, rushed into the room. “Who’s in charge here?” yelled one of them.

“That’s your cue, Major,” said Lombardo as he started for the door.

Outside, Lombardo walked over to the spot where the getaway car had been purportedly parked. The taxi driver who had reported seeing a waiter get in the car was still being questioned. He could not now be sure if the waiter had gotten into the enger side or if he had driven the car away himself.

Two forensic specialists with the letters MP on their white robes were carefully studying the empty parking space where the white car had been.

Lombardo knew that the whole exercise was useless. It was clearly the work of the Gulf Cartel and they were very good at organizing these things. The shooter was now probably on a flight to Los Angeles or New York or Mexico City or Acapulco.

The assassin was a pro, probably brought in from somewhere in the world exclusively for this. He was no Zeta. Those murdering bastards were used for mass killings of rival gang or Mexican Army soldiers. They would have walked into the place and sprayed it with their AK-47s. No, this was a guy contracted in Chicago or Sao Paolo, Brazil—a man with no police record, untraceable. Gone—like a shadow goes when you shine a light on it.

It was Lombardo’s guess that his boss had somehow betrayed or threatened the Gulf Cartel. He might have changed sides, having decided that the powerful

federal job he was getting was worth the risk. It was obvious that the wind was changing in national politics, and that the country, tired of the gang violence, kidnappings, and general lawlessness was ready to elect a conservative candidate who would take on the Cartels and the gangs.

If his boss had decided not to protect the Gulf Cartel anymore and had accepted to become their mortal enemy as the Federal Prosecutor’s enforcer, he had signed his death warrant. Don Oscar Garza Cantú, head of the Gulf Cartel himself had probably ordered the hit.

The Public Ministry would investigate the deaths for months and eventually blame it on a Zeta or a Gulf Cartel member that was caught in some raid. It was useless trying to unravel the complicated political and criminal alliances, betrayals, corruption, and personal vendettas that motivated these killings. In a cruel twist to an old adage, another detective had once told Lombardo, “If you line up against a wall all the guilty parties in this country, who’s going to be left to order the firing squad to shoot?”

There was nothing Lombardo could do now but wait to see who would be named to replace his dead boss. Probably someone from the conservative party would come to head the Department. That seemed how the prevailing winds were blowing over the political landscape.

The ruling Partido Liberal Revolucionario (the Revolutionary Liberal Party) feeling the mounting pressure of the opposition led by the Partido de Acción Conservadora (Conservative Action Party) had recently named of the latter to key law enforcement positions.

According to the political strategist of the PLR, this would be doubly beneficial to their party because one, it would ease the pressure applied by the opposition’s

calls for getting tough with the cartels and gangs, and two, any further fumbling around or gaffes in high-profile criminal investigations would reflect on the opposition not the ruling PLR.

As an added benefit, the charges of corruption in police forces would now be lessened since they were now in charge of overseeing the police forces of the nation and cleaning them up—or at least attempting to do so.

“The country is spinning out of control,” said Lombardo as he walked across Cristobal Colón Avenue. The cops diverting the traffic stopped the flow of cars so the man, who seemed to be talking to himself, and who seemed oblivious to the cars, could cross the avenue.

Two days later, as Lombardo had predicted, and to no one’s surprise, a member of the conservative PAC was named as the new State Prosecutor. What did surprise both the media and the public was the fact that the new Prosecutor was Alberto Peniche Saldivar, a brother of the murdered State Judicial Police Director.

Although very close to his older brother Alejandro, they had been of opposing political parties. Known for his tough stance on law enforcement, Alberto quickly named one of his closest friends to replace his murdered brother as Director of the State Judicial Police, and another close confidant as Director of the Investigations Department.

On his first day in office, Joaquin Loera Neri, Lombardo’s new boss, declared that “as Director of the Investigations Department, any officer or investigator who did not have an immaculate record as a member of this important Department will be asked to resign.” He promised a “clean sweep” of the force and the incorporation of well-trained elements, and so forth.

Lombardo who had heard all of this before sighed and said, “More good intentions as we pave the way to hell.” Knowing that his new boss would be busy starting an intended reformation of the Investigations Department, Lombardo waited a couple of days before he asked to see him.

In his first few days in office, the new Director had been playing at being the tough gangbuster so he had sent out memorandums and “white papers,” which talked about change and the “new way of doing things.” When Lombardo walked into the new Director’s office, Loera Neri greeted him curtly as if trying to affect a very businesslike manner. It was obvious that he came from the private sector because his memorandums talked about efficiency and resultoriented objectives, whatever that meant.

Lombardo used an old trick to indirectly ask a question: “I have heard of a police chief called Loera in Morelia; is that you by any chance?”

“No,” he said, “I was with the National Security Services before coming here. It’s a private security company.”

“Oh, I see,” said Lombardo.

“Captain,” said the new Director, “I understand you have been investigating a murder case; a, uh, man called (he looked into a folder) Delgado, Victor Delgado, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir, that’s correct.”

“Can you brief me on how that is going? Are things, uh, proceeding?”

Lombardo slowly took out his packet of Delicados, more than anything to give himself time to weigh the consequences of keeping the gravity of the case from this bumbling idiot. He was about to start to tell him everything when the new Director said, “I am sorry, Captain, but in accordance with the new regulations prohibiting smoking in public buildings, I must ask you to refrain from smoking in my office.”

Lombardo nodded, put away his cigarettes, and decided to tell him nothing more than what was absolutely necessary.

“Well, sir, we have pretty good evidence that the suspect may be in Guadalajara. In fact, before, uh, before you came to, before you were named Director of Investigations, I had been requested by the late, that is, by the former Director, to go to Guadalajara and follow up on those leads.”

“Was it you that filled out an Expense Request? The one in this file?” The new Director rifled through the papers in the file.

“Yes, I filled it out. I don’t think the former Director had a chance to review it, which is why it is probably, that is, why it was not signed, sir, before he, uh… before his unfortunate demise, sir.”

When you tell a lie, Lombardo ed the old saying, stick to the truth as closely as possible.

“OK, well, I will review it and if all is in order I will approve it.” He said closing the folder. “But, Captain, I also notice that there are very few investigation reports in the file. Haven’t you filed any lately?”

“Well, no, sir. I was waiting to see what results I got in Guadalajara.”

“Hmm, I see. Well, I think you should file a report now and update it when you get back from Guadalajara. By the way, why do you have to go to Guadalajara? Can’t they assist us and follow up on the leads that we have?”

“I talked to them about a week ago, sir. They will assist us, but they prefer that someone familiar with the case come down and handle the investigation. That’s normal procedure, sir; and, they insist that they are short-handed at the moment, sir.”

“Yes, yes, of course, we all are. OK, so file the report and I will sign the Request for Expenditures.”

“Expenditure Request, sir,” Lombardo corrected and almost smiled.

“Yes, yes, Expenditure Request.”

Part 6: Day 10

Chapter 34: Lombardo Makes a Promise

Lombardo wrote a report which left out many of the details about the encrypted archive of emails, documents, and messages. He simply said that evidence pointed at the possibility that three men were involved in the crime, that the motive was still unclear, and that a enger list, cooperatively provided by the airline, pointed to three foreign men boarding a flight for Guadalajara the day after the murder.

The reason that three men of foreign provenance were suspected was that evidence found in the University parking lot plus surveillance recordings provided by the University’s Security Service, pointed to a certain make of car common to a car rental service. A follow-up investigation revealed that International Cars had rented a vehicle to a foreigner whose name matched a name on the enger list. He was possibly an American or Canadian and the car rental people ed that he had been accompanied by two other men.

The car had not been returned to the car rental facility, reported the rental clerk, and it had been reported missing or stolen by the company. “That,” Lombardo concluded in his report, “points to the possible guilt of these men or that at least they have something to hide, which might relate to the case in hand.”

“As close to the truth as necessary,” Lombardo ed again as he handed in the report.

Lombardo was ambiguous in his feelings about keeping information from the new Director. His impulse to always “do the right thing” and his natural distaste

for lying and dishonesty made him uncomfortable about withholding information from his superiors, but he distrusted this new man. Lombardo had had no chance to investigate where the Director stood on the loyalty issue. Was he a rabid “law and order, come hell or high water” conservative? Had he already reached an “agreement” with the Cartels in order to survive? Was he a paid stooge of the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, or all of the above? Many people in law enforcement were or could have been described (when alive) in any of these ways.

The report, Lombardo felt, would serve one of two purposes—either it would be accepted as it was and therefore prove to Lombardo that his new boss was very naïve about police work; or, if he rejected the report, it would mean that his loyalty had already been sold to any of the groups fighting to decide what Mexico’s attitude and public policy toward drugs would be in the future.

He knew that the Director would call him in a day or two and ask him to explain the report before he signed the Expenditure Request. So, he decided he would use the time to do two things he had been postponing for several days—he would call his ex-wife and he would visit Victor Delgado’s widow.

Calling his ex-wife was a chore; there would be haggling and arguments about money. Any question about his son or daughter would usually be answered with a sarcastic “Well, you finally ed you have children,” and so on. Lombardo decided he would call from his house that night.

Mrs. Delgado was a more pressing matter. He found himself thinking about her and feeling anxious about seeing her again. He was attracted to her not only because of her dark beauty and the obviously sexual aura a twenty-nine-year-old woman in the physical prime of her life can project, but also because there was a sorrow in her eyes that went beyond the grief that her husband’s death had caused.

Her restrained manners and words told Lombardo that there was something in this woman’s life that had saddened her even before this tragedy. In Lombardo’s book, beautiful women always lead a tragic life. His own wife had been a beautiful woman, the kind that can never be satisfied with what they have. The kind that is always convinced that life has short-changed them and that they could have had more than they have.

She had spoken of Victor as being very kind to her, of helping her, and being very protective. Yet, it was obvious she had accepted his protection only as a last resort. She had referred to their relationship not in the starry-eyed, married-forlove of a girl, but rather in the way a mature woman that understands that a lasting relationship has to be based on more than desire and ion. The instincts that six million years had bred into women had kicked in and she had sacrificed all she had, beauty, sexual aura, for insuring her child’s survival.

He called her and she agreed to receive him that afternoon.

When she showed him into the living room, Lombardo noticed that the house had changed. The heavy curtains that had plunged the small rooms into deep darkness and a silence that sealed the house from the outside world, were gone. Light, filtered by white lace curtains, filled the house with cheerful rays that seemed to play about, shining and sparkling as they reflected off the chromed tubes of the dining room chairs and the cut crystal vases that sat on a small table near the window.

Mrs. Delgado herself had also changed. Though her face was still serious and serene, it was not drawn with the strained look of grief. Her black hair cascaded in curled strands down to and around her shoulders. The gray mourning dress, made of a thin print fabric, made no effort to hide the fullness of her figure.

“Mrs. Delgado,” Lombardo began, “I will be going to Guadalajara in a day or two. I think I have enough information to arrest three men that I suspect are guilty of what happened to your husband.” Lombardo could not bring himself to say the word “murdered.” He didn’t want to evoke anymore horrible images; he too, like Victor, felt the urge to protect her, shield her from the worst this world had to offer.

“I hope you manage to apprehend them, Captain,” she said in the quiet, even voice Lombardo was beginning to expect from her. “Please be careful,” she added.

These last words pleased Lombardo and he lowered his head trying to hide the faint smile that, like some schoolboy afraid of betraying a crush, was proof of the pleasure her plea for caution had given him. But, then he recovered and tried to affect a businesslike tone.

“But, Mrs. Delgado, letting you know about my trip is not the real reason, or I should say, the only reason I am here. I need to ask you a few questions more and since they are of a, uh, delicate nature, I refrained from asking them in my first visit.”

“Please, go ahead and ask about anything you wish to know, Captain. If it will help bring these terrible people to justice, I am willing to bear anything.”

Lombardo looked at her with the unblinking stare of the professional interrogator he was—a stare that saw beyond the answers that he got, that could pick up the almost invisible nuances in a person’s features that betrayed how much truth, or lack of it, there was behind the words.

“Mrs. Delgado, as I have said before, I have ruled out robbery and any involvement of the drug cartels in your husband’s unfortunate occurrence. But, before I leave for Guadalajara, I want to eliminate another possibility.”

“What’s that, Captain?” she asked and her eyes widened just a fraction as if anticipating what he was going to say.

“Mrs. Delgado, forgive me, but I have to rule out the possibility of, uh, what they call, a crime of ion.”

“You had asked me before if I thought that Victor was having an affair, Captain,” she said.

“I know, Mrs. Delgado. But, this time I am asking about you.”

She did not answer immediately. A light breeze moved the curtain in one of the half-opened windows and the shadows of the lace curtains flittered about the floor.

She did not look at him when she began to speak but rather at a point just over his shoulder—which was really a space somewhere in the distance of memory.

“You are aware of the difference in our age when we married and of the circumstances. I know you are aware that our marriage was one of convenience?”

“Yes, I know all that,” said Lombardo.

As if in a dream she continued: “I was going to night school and working during the day before I met Victor. I worked in a small company that sold cheap long distance service to companies. My job was to total up each client’s minutes and send out the bills.

The owner of the company, was…well he was a rich, well-known man.” She now turned to look at Lombardo. “I had an affair with him.” Lombardo made as if he was going to speak but she went on as if obsessed with the remembrance.

“When he found out I was pregnant, he fired me. One day, I was in the school cafeteria, crying, desperate. I had just gotten notice that if I didn’t pay my tuition I would be suspended.”

She turned to look at a picture hanging on the wall. Victor and the boy stood by the monkey cage in the zoo; they smiled, innocent of the future.

“Victor took pity on me. He helped me out, paid my tuition. He was very kind, and gentle. He would wait for me every night and drive me home. When I told him I was four months pregnant, he said we should marry. He didn’t mind about the boy. To him, it was his son.”

She stood up and went to close the open window. The afternoon air was now cold.

“I told Victor about my life. He said he didn’t care what had happened before we met. He said that all he wanted was to protect me, to help me. He said he loved me and understood that if I did not love him, I would at least feel…” She stopped talking.

“Mrs. Delgado, you don’t have to…” Lombardo said.

“No, it’s fine. I want you to understand that I loved Victor in my own way for his kindness and his gentle way. So, you see, Captain Lombardo, it would have been impossible for me to have been so ungrateful that I would…”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Delgado. I understand. I am sorry but I had to ask.” Lombardo got up to go. “In my profession, one sometimes has to do things that are, well, painful to people, cruel sometimes.”

“I understand, Captain.”

As they walked to the door, Lombardo said, “I give you my word, Mrs. Delgado, the men who did this to Victor will pay for it.”

She smiled at him as if saying that he didn’t have to make that promise in recompense of what he had asked her. “I believe you, Captain. Just be careful in Guadalajara.”

“I will,” he said, and added “again, I am sorry for having distressed you.”

Without a trace of self-pity in her voice she said, “In this country, Captain, poor girls learn early that they are going to suffer a lot of moments like this. No one expects us to behave ‘properly.’”

“I imagine it is even more so if you are, uh, of a certain…I mean if you are a woman with looks that, uh…” said Lombardo.

“Do you mean if you are a good-looking woman whose poverty makes her vulnerable to a certain type of man?” She looked straight at him with an air of pride and defiance.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted to say,” said Lombardo. Mrs. Delgado opened the door for him.

As they shook hands and Lombardo said good-bye, Mrs. Delgado looked at him and without letting go of his hand she asked, “Tell me, Captain: did you ask the questions in order to eliminate the possibility of a ‘crime of ion,’ or was it to satisfy your own curiosity?”

“Both, Mrs. Delgado,” he said truthfully and after thanking her again for her time, he walked away.

Chapter 35: Lombardo Talks to the New Boss

The morning after his visit to the widow, Lombardo sat watching the news, and drinking his morning coffee. He paid little attention to the economic news that announced yet another crisis in the world economy and the analysis of the “economic experts” that predicted a dire future for Mexico, which depended so much on oil and tourism.

Lombardo couldn’t concentrate on any of it because his thoughts were with the widow. It was clear that from the moment he saw her he had been smitten, utterly infatuated by her. God! She was at least 20 years younger. The old cliché “she could be my daughter” was never truer. Yet, he had never had such feelings for any human being, let alone a woman, before, so he didn’t know how to deal with them. He wanted to protect her, take over where Victor had left off. Such a beautiful thing should not be left to the mercy of this world, of the uncaring humanity of this city, of men like that bastard who slept with her, got her pregnant, and then fired her. Those rich bastards got away with everything; they never had to own up for the crap and the damage they left behind, as they moved like sharks through this life.

“Damn, I’m mixing my metaphors,” he said aloud as he got up from his easy chair. He went into the bedroom to dress. “I ought to look up the bastard and break his goddamned neck.”

His cell phone rang. “Captain Lombardo?” It was the new Director’s secretary.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Loera Neri would like you to come to his office as soon as possible.”

“OK. I am at home so I’ll be in the Department soon.”

“What time do you plan to be here?” she asked.

“That’s the last thing I damn well need,” said Lombardo, “is a damned secretary busting my balls. Tell your boss, Miss Whoever-you-are, that since the damned Department has not been able to find the money to give me a decent car, I have to use taxis to get around, and since I have no idea how long it will take me to find one, I have no damned idea what time I will be there.”

“Well, try to be here as soon as possible,” she said and hung up.

“Stupid bitch,” said Lombardo to the dead connection.

When Lombardo got to the Department, he went straight to the Director’s secretary’s desk. She was talking to a young, newly hired investigations officer. “Probably came with the new boss,” said Lombardo, and then he said to the girl, “Listen…”

The secretary turned to Lombardo and said, “Just a minute, please.”

Lombardo turned to the young man and said, “You, beat it!”

The boy was so startled he walked away without a word.

“Captain Lombardo,” the girl started to complain.

But Lombardo interrupted her, “Listen to me, Minerva,” he had noted the name plate on her desk. “I already have one boss, I don’t need two. You don’t tell me what to do, when to come here, or how to get here, understand?”

She started to speak again, but Lombardo in a cold rage now said loudly, “Understand?”

People in other desks turned to see what the trouble was.

“I am blocking your phone number,” continued Lombardo while holding up his cell phone, “you have no permission to call me at any time for any reason. If your boss wants me, tell him to call me from his phone.”

The door to the Director’s office opened. He saw that his secretary was nearly in tears and that Lombardo was standing in silent rage looking at her as if he were going to beat her senseless with his cell phone.

“Captain Lombardo,” said the Director, “please come into my office.”

As soon as Lombardo closed the door, the Director started to speak, “Captain, you can’t go around…”

“I don’t need some girl calling me to tell me I’m late for school,” said Lombardo. “With all due respect, Director, if you need to talk to me you can call me yourself.”

“And I don’t need a second-grade investigator telling me how to run my office,” said the Director just as firmly. Lombardo had to respect that the man wasn’t easily cowered.

Lombardo saw that the Delgado case file was on the Director’s desk. The Director sat down and without asking Lombardo to do the same he began,

“I got a phone call this morning…”

“From Guadalajara?” interrupted Lombardo insinuating that the call had been from the DEA.

“…from the acting Governor, Mr. Nepamuseno Gomez Cruz. He wants me to review the Delgado case in view of the fact that the former Dean of the University, Filiberto Herrera, sent in his resignation and left the country. Governor Gomez thinks that there might be a connection between the death of Victor Delgado and the sudden departure of the Dean. Additionally, there will be fraud charges filed against the former Dean, because a subsequent audit has discovered irregularities in the University’s s.”

“They always find them after the fact,” said Lombardo.

The Director ignored the remark and continued. “It seems to me,” he said opening the case file, “that the report you filed is, how shall I put it, incomplete.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Look, Lombardo, let’s stop the bullshit. I also got another call telling me that the persons you want to find in Guadalajara are DEA agents, and that you’ve been getting help from the Gulf Cartel people in tracking them down.”

“I get my information from whatever source is available. The man owed me a favor so I called him on it.”

“Owed you a favor or gave you the information as a favor—a favor you’re going to have to pay back!”

“Oh, do you think I’m on the Cartel’s payroll? Director, that would be unheard of in this Department.”

“Lombardo, I know you think I’m some political flunky just minding the store before the elections and that a new Governor will appoint the real head of this Department, but I know more about what’s been going on here than you believe, and I mean to do a good job while I am here. Now, as I said, let’s stop the bullshit or I will not only not sign the authorization for you to go to Guadalajara, I will take you off the case, put you under review for insubordination and hiding case evidence, then I will fire your ass and put you in a cell next to your Cartel buddy.”

The Director took Lombardo’s report out of the case file and put it on the desk. “Now, take this piece of crap back and write a real report with all of the facts we know about the case and all of the evidence you have gathered. Understood?”

Lombardo took the piece of paper, tore it up, and tossed it into the waste basket. “All right,” he said, “you want no bullshit, I don’t either.”

Lombardo sat down and lit a Delicado. “Don’t tell me you got a call from that puppet they’re now calling interim Governor. It was from your DEA friends and they want to know how much evidence I have against them.”

The Director said nothing but stared coldly at Lombardo.

“They also want to know if I have certain information which would not only incriminate them but would also open up a sewer full of shit about what has been going on in this country.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am talking about two groups of powerful, high-level people who are fighting each other, who will go to any lengths, even murder, to achieve their goals. I am talking about a group of people who want to legalize drugs, much to the Cartels’ joy, and another that wants to stop them and is so rabid about it that it foams at the mouth. I don’t know for sure which side you are on but I can make a pretty good guess.”

“Which side are you on, Lombardo?”

“I’m on Victor Delgado’s side. I am on the side of a little guy who gets killed and everyone wants to just brush his case into that sewer you guys have built for the purpose. Well, you can tell your DEA friends that they can’t come into my territory, crap all over the place, and then get away with it clean.”

“What do you want, Lombardo? What’s in it for you out of all of this?”

“What do I want? I want those three murdering bastards in jail, that’s what I want. And I don’t give a damn who they are or what they are; I want their asses in a cell with a twenty-year sentence pinned to their balls.”

The Director thought for a few seconds and then said, “Look, these are very dangerous times. As they say, ‘the devil is loose.’ This could be very dangerous for you or anybody who helps you.”

“I’m an old man by today’s standards, Director. I’ve been a cop for 30 years. A bullet in the head doesn’t scare me; in fact, they would do me a great favor—put an end to my misery. But, here are the facts, sir. I have a CD, with copies, that would go to a lot of people if something were to happen to me. Oh, the national newspapers and that magazine, Progreso, would have a field day with this stuff. But I don’t give a rat’s ass about that so I am willing to make a deal.”

“What sort of a deal?” The Director’s eyes narrowed like a cat’s eyes narrow when it has a bird within grasp.

“You sign that authorization so I can go to Guadalajara and I will give you all the dirt on the former Governor and the Dean. I know your party wants to thrash the ruling party in the next election and that this would be some pretty good ammunition for them. And, don’t tell me that that would not earn you boy scout honors, because you know and I know that your party is just a step away from grabbing power and this will help a lot toward that end.”

“OK, so I authorize for you to go to Guadalajara with full powers and expenses —then what?”

“Then I go to Guadalajara and cut another deal—with the head man, the gringo who sent the three men down here. You won’t be blamed for anything that happens after that because it will be up to him to save his government the embarrassment this case would cause, never mind the damage he would inflict on your party, which he has been funding for quite some time.”

The Director looked at Lombardo as if he was deliberating between g the damned authorization or shooting him on the spot.

“OK, so he gives you the three guys. What the hell are we going to do with them? It would be just as bad for them to have the media say that DEA people are going around the country committing murder.”

“You know and I know that there are a lot of ways to handle this. They can be just three gringos, dealing in drugs, caught in a sting operation. There’s no need to say that they are DEA. Their asses wind up in jail; justice will have been done.”

“OK,” agreed the Director, “but give me a couple of hours. I have to make some phone calls.”

“Thank you, Director. You are a very reasonable man. You have a bright future ahead of you—if you survive.”

Lombardo left the Director’s office thinking, “Little people don’t win big victories, they win small victories, but small victories can add up to become big ones.”

Chapter 36: Off to See the Wizard

John Wayne hesitated before calling Washington.

He’d thought of calling Robert Miller but he knew what Miller would say: “Call Washington; ask their advice.”

He also thought of writing a situation report and sending it in with a high priority status, but then a back and forth would ensue. They’d want substantiating evidence, original authorization for the team being down in Mexico, and all that bullshit.

No, he’d have to find a way to handle this unofficially. He mistrusted most of his superiors, but he knew that his boss had spent a lot of time on the field before being tied down to a desk. He’d probably gone through situations like this one and probably knew which was the best way to handle it.

He picked up the secure phone and dialed.

“How ya doin’ Big John?” said the deep, raspy voice.

“Awright, Boss; how ‘bout you?”

“Fuckin’ bored—up to my ass in paperwork.”

“Well, you wanted the life of Riley. I bet your wife is thrilled to have you home by seven every day.”

“Except on Thursdays when all the other hags come over for tea ‘n’ bridge, ‘n’ crap like that.”

“Ooh, the other hags—I gotta tell her you said that next time I see her.”

“I’ll kick your ass upside your brain; God knows there’s enough space up there to put it.”

John Wayne laughed.

His boss said, “What’s up, Big John? I know you don’t call just t’ shoot the breeze.”

“Boss, I gotta situation down here.”

“Yeah?”

John Wayne told him he’d had a call from the Director of the Investigations Department in Nuevo León. He’d told him that one of his men, a guy called Lombardo had a copy of a bunch of documents, emails and such, which would do a lot of damage to their project if that information got into the wrong hands or if it was given to the media, especially the American media.

“How did he get hold of stuff that belongs to us?” his Boss asked.

“The thing is, it didn’t belong to us. The email and documents belonged to the people that are pushing the legalization thing. Let me explain where this thing is coming from and how it got like this.”

He took a sip of whiskey and said, “ that I asked for an interrogation team to be sent down?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, if you , the reason was that those documents we were trying to

get had been locked up.”

“Locked up where?”

“In a computer—not in a safe or anything.”

“Yeah, so what happened?”

“Well, they fucked it up. They snatched the guy who could help us unlock the files where the documents were stored but they got too rough and killed him, accidentally by their , and yet they got nothing out of the guy.”

“Oh, shit. OK, so they’re finding dozens of bodies a day down there; I’m sure they could find a way to ‘overlook’…”

“Yeah, well, they tried but, you see, this guy Lombardo from the State Investigations Department started sniffing around and somehow got hold of the stuff before we did.”

“Geez, what are you guys doin’ down there? How could this Mexican cop get the stuff and you couldn’t?”

“It’s a long story,” said John Wayne and he downed the rest of the whiskey.

“I bet it is,” said his boss. “Tell me more about this stuff we’re trying to get; why is it so important, anyway?”

John Wayne said, “As I said before, the stuff includes a bunch of emails and other documents. And, there are conversations our, uh, opponents were having about how they were going to advance their legalization agenda, but they also talk about who is opposing them. The problem is that they name a lot of the people we’ve been helping out and a lot of the people we’ve got on the payroll.”

“Geez! Is the stuff credible? I mean, can’t it be discredited or say it was falsified or something?”

“The stuff is pretty credible, all right. There are emails from Governors, federal representatives, senators, you name it. And, I understand, there are scanned documents with signatures and what not. It’s all pretty lethal.”

“OK, so we’re in a pretty big tub of shit here. What can I do about it? What do you want from me?”

“The guy on the case, this guy Lombardo, is coming to see me.”

“To see you? How in the Hell did he know…”

“I’ll explain that later. The thing is, he wants to cut a deal, from what I was told. He wants the three guys, our guys, the ones who interrogated and killed this Mexican. He wants them put in jail.”

“He’s fuckin’ crazy!”

“I know boss but he has the goods on us, and he has evidence, according to my source, which proves that our guys did the deed. So, he wants us to give up our three guys or he will turn the documents over to the media, press charges, and so on.”

“Shit, what an understatement when you say you got a situation down there.”

“Yeah, this is a bad one. We could get kicked out of the country all together if the leftists get hold of this.”

“Give me some details. If I am going to go to somebody with this, I need some more details. Who else is involved?”

John Wayne told him that they had managed to neutralize the head of the opposition, the President’s cousin, who had ordered the assassination of the man walking point for them, Senator Juan Alberto Romero. He told him that the Governor of Nuevo León, who had been doing all sorts of jobs for the President’s cousin, had handed in his resignation, and had gone into the FBI’s witness protection program. What the FBI wanted him for, John Wayne was not too sure because Robert Miller wasn’t saying anything.

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 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 ed 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 ed 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 ed 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 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 “” (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 enger’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 enger 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 ri 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 about 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?”

“Look, Mr. John Wayne, I know the games you and your opponents have been playing. I know that you guys want to stop the initiative of the PLR to legalize drugs and you have been at each other’s throats for months, if not years. This is not ing the documents to damage your playmates or your enemies; and I don’t give a rat’s ass if you go around killing each other for your stupid political reasons, but when you come into my city and kill an innocent young man, you really piss me off. This is about putting those three bastards in jail.”

“What is it you really want, Lombardo? And don’t tell me you just want justice!” growled John Wayne.

“It would surprise you, wouldn’t it? You’ve been wallowing in filth so long it’s all you can smell,” Lombardo shot back.

“Well, at least I am doing it for something I believe in; not like you and you buddies who do things for a bag full of drug money.”

“Ah, the sanctimonious bastard has finally showed up,” said Lombardo sarcastically. “The man who has dedicated his life to the cause de jour? You haven’t told me what you call it this time around. God save the Western World, perhaps? You haven’t got Communism to give you license to go around murdering people, so now you use drugs and terrorism as an excuse, huh?”

“Look, Lombardo, you’ve got a lot of people, on both sides, really pissed off. Things could happen to you.”

“Don’t threaten me, you pinhead. I’m no twenty-five-year-old kid you can scare into submission. In fact, you couldn’t even do it with a twenty-five-year-old; he resisted until you killed him.”

John Wayne’s eyes were darting back and forth between Lombardo and something under the desk. Lombardo was sure now that he was being recorded. So, he continued, “So you can tell your bosses that even if they make minced meat out of me, the stuff will still get to the right people.”

John Wayne lit another twisted cheroot and changed his tone, “Sit down, Captain. Let’s see if we can find a way to satisfy both our, how shall I put it,

both our needs.” He now took the enger’s list and pretended to look at it. “Suppose these three persons did work for us, and, suppose they did do this heinous crime you say they committed. If your evidence proved this to be true, well, I could then offer you that those persons would be expelled from the service and brought to stand trial for manslaughter in the U.S.”

“Not good enough. They’d get ten years, reduced to five for good behavior and then go to a minimum security prison where they would spend three growing vegetables and then get a pardon due to ‘health’ reasons, after which they would get a job for the C.I.A. or a private security company doing the same shit in the Middle East or wherever. I want them in a Mexican jail where nobody gets paroled.”

“OK, Captain, let me level with you. Even if I were willing to give these men up to you—given that your evidence would prove to be substantial—my superiors would never allow it. It would be too embarrassing for us, not to mention dangerous if their lawyers started poking around your evidence.”

“Well, the ball’s in your court. You tell me what we can do about this. What will the market bear, as your compatriots would put it, and we’ll go from there. But, tell the other pinheads in Washington that this is not about money. There’s no one to bribe this time and no killings will get you out of this. Those three guys have to pay for their crime.”

“OK, but give me three days. Some of the people I have to talk to will have to talk to others further up the ladder, and that takes time.”

“OK,” agreed Lombardo, “three days counting this one. Call me when you’ve decided something. You know where to find me.” Lombardo opened the door and left the office. He felt a small twitch of satisfaction at the fact that he had left

without shaking the man’s hand to say good-bye.

Chapter 38: John Gets the Green Light

John Wayne hit the button under the desk to stop the recording and opened a desk drawer to retrieve the memory card where the conversation had been stored.

He went back to his office and thought for a few minutes before making the phone call. He knew what the best solution was but he needed clearance from several people, not only to protect himself, but also to protect his boss. He had to convince all parties that his proposal was the only way out of this mess.

He picked up the secure line and called. It was 3 p.m. in Washington, his boss was sure to be in the office.

The phone rang a few times before it was picked up. The gruff voice of his boss said, “Yeah?”

“Hey, Boss, it’s John.”

“Hey, how ya doin’? You talk to that Mexican cop yet?”

“Yeah, he just left a few minutes ago.”

“So? How do things look?”

“Not good,” said John Wayne, “he’s not going to negotiate.”

“OK, so what’s the bottom line?”

“He wants the three guys. He wants to see them in jail, that’s what he wants.”

“Bullshit! Call his bluff and offer him some money.”

“No, Boss; this ain’t about money—I’m sure of that. This guy’s got a personal grudge of some kind and he wants to see our three guys in jail.”

“A personal grudge? Against who?”

“Against us, against Mexican politics, against the system, who knows—the thing is that he is dead set on this thing.”

“Can we, uh, neutralize him in any other way, you know…”

“No, that’s no good. He says he’s got the thing set up to where if anything

happens to him, the stuff goes to a bunch of people, and I believe him. He’s an old hand. He knows how to handle himself and doesn’t scare easy.”

“Some Mexican president said that he didn’t know a Mexican general who could stand a cannon shot of fifty thousand pesos in gold; I’ve never known a Mexican cop who could stand one of fifty thousand dollars.”

“I think this guy is the exception to the rule,” said John Wayne.

The Boss sighed heavily and said, “OK, tell me again about the three guys. Who are they?”

“Oh, they’re a crew from a private firm. They hired them in Washington but they come from out west someplace.”

“Hmm, probably nut jobs from one of those mercenary camps in Wyoming or such.” He sighed again, “So, they are not Agency people; I mean they weren’t, uh, they didn’t start with us, you know, go through our training and such.”

“No, they’re not Agency people,” John Wayne said. He was relieved because he now knew where this was going.

“So, why did we hire these clowns in the first place?”

“The idea was that if something went wrong, the Agency would be clear of it.

And, you see, they were right to do it.”

The Boss sighed yet again and said, “OK, you take care of this, personally. We got word from way up at the top that the President has a lot riding on this Bilateral thing and he doesn’t want anything, anything, messing with Mexican relations right now. So, they want us to keep a low profile until after he signs the bill, you get me?”

“Yeah, I get you, Boss.”

“So, anything you do, you do on the quiet. No mess, no bother.”

“Right, Boss.”

“And, like I told you: when you do, don’t give me any details, just let me know it’s been taken care of, OK?”

“OK, Boss.”

“And, John, let me tell you something: you might think that these desk jobs in Washington or a field office somewhere in the U.S. are boring, but John, believe me, there comes a time when you, well, sort of grow into them, and it sure is a lot more comfortable being surrounded by people you can trust and that you like, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I get you, Boss.”

“So, once this is over and our man is safely in the President’s chair in Mexico, you should start thinking of asking for a transfer up here. You’ve done a hell of a lot for this country. It’s about time you started takin’ it easy.”

“I think you’re right, Boss, and that’s exactly what I’ll do when this is over.”

They said good-bye and hung up. “I’ll be damned if I ever become a fuckin’ desk jockey,” he said aloud and then reflexively looked to see that he wasn’t being recorded.

He was very relieved that his boss had given him carte blanche in handling the problem, and given the way he had suggested he ask for a transfer stateside, he was sure there was some sort of promotion for him if he handled the Lombardo thing right.

He flipped open his cell phone and scrolled through the phonebook. He came to an entry recorded as “Man in Green.” He dialed hoping that the man hadn’t changed his phone number since he had last talked to him a few months ago.

A voice answered in Spanish, “¿Diga?”

“Ey, Mayor García, ¿cómo está?” said John Wayne.

“¿Quién habla?” asked the Major curtly, wanting to know who was calling.

“Es tu amigo, John Wayne,” he answered jovially.

“Ah, que milagro, cabrón; hace mucho que no te comunicas,” said the Major reproaching him that it had been a long time since John Wayne had called.

“Mucho trabajo, mucho trabajo,” said John Wayne alleging he had had a lot of work, and then inviting the Major to have a beer, “pero vamos a tomarnos unas cervezas, no?”

“Cervezas, madre; unos tragos,” said the Major who preferred Scotch to beer. “¿Cuando?”

He met with Major García that night. They had a great fish dinner in El Huachinango on López Cotilla Avenue and then went to a quiet bar on Argentina Street just off Vallarta Avenue. They both knew that there would be few people around; just a few couples who regularly used the bar for clandestine meetings and the fat bar owner who sang into her wireless microphone as she served her customers. The karaoke she used was loud enough to accompany her, but not so loud they couldn’t converse.

They sat in a booth where there was little light. Both men liked the shadows.

“OK, John,” said the Major, “it’s about time you told me why you really called.”

“I just wanted to see an old friend; one should never let friendships fade away just because we’re busy.”

The Major laughed, “Don’t give me that, you fuckin’ gringo. You are always up to something. And, whatever it is, you need my help.”

It was John Wayne’s turn to laugh, although it was a mirthless laugh, a forced laugh. “My friend, you are right. I do need your help.”

He told the Major that there were three Americans, drug smugglers, who were leaving the country in a day or two. He said that he had tried to get them arrested, both in Mexico and in the U.S., but that they had always managed to escape him. They were very clever. They had never been caught with anything in their possession or in the act of selling or buying drugs. But he knew that the three bastards were big-time smugglers. He wondered if the Major could take care of them.

“And, how do you propose I ‘take care of them’?” asked the Major.

“My men in the field tell me that these guys are planning to go back to the U.S. by car. I have a feeling that the reason they are doing that is because they probably plan stops in Sinaloa and Sonora to talk to a capo of the Sinaloa Cartel.”

“And so?” asked the Major signaling for two more whiskeys.

“Well, I’m sure that they are going to be carrying a kilo or two in the trunk of their rented car—you know, hidden in the trunk—it would be very bad for them if they came upon a roadblock. And, if they did not stop, well, the soldiers would be forced to shoot at the car in an effort to halt them, wouldn’t they?”

“You are a devious bastard, John. That’s why I like you,” said the Major, smiling. “OK. Three guys, thirty thousand.”

“Thirty thousand!” said John Wayne in mocked surprise. “My, your price really has gone up.”

“It’s this damned inflation, my friend. And besides, I have to give my soldiers something—to improve their aim, you know.”

“OK, it’s a deal.” They shook hands.

“Just make sure the stuff is in the trunk, eh? I won’t want to be accused of mistaking innocent tourists for drug smugglers.”

“Of course it will be in the trunk! You see, I’m the guy providing them with the car!”

They both laughed. They stayed there until both were rather drunk after which they went to a very elegant whorehouse in the Las Aguilas section. It was a house with which both the Major and John Wayne were very familiar.

Chapter 39: A Deadly Roadblock

John Wayne woke up with a horrible hangover, but a cold shower and his favorite remedy, a half glass of tomato juice combined with a half glass of beer, got him into working condition. He had a lot of things to do; he couldn’t lie around all day.

After he shaved and dressed, he picked up his phone and called the crew at the hotel. He told the crew leader they should be ready to move the next day.

“Where are we going?” asked the crew leader.

“You’re going home, buddy,” said John cheerfully.

“That’s good news. We’re tired of sitting around this damned place.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said John Wayne, “but I’ll see to it you get a bonus from your company. Now listen up, here’s the drill. There’ll be a rental car waiting for you tomorrow morning at the hotel’s entrance, so check out and take the car; the keys will be in the ignition. You are not leaving from the Guadalajara airport because it’s too hot. Drive north. Take the road to Zacatecas, understand? The drive to Zacatecas takes a good three-and-a-half or four-hours, so leave early. When you get to Zacatecas, head for the airport, which is farther north. There are signs, so you can’t miss it. Go to the Aeroméxico counter—there will be three e-tickets waiting for you there. You’ll leave on a direct flight to Los Angeles. Your people have been informed; they will take it from there, OK? Did you get all that?

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

“Repeat it back to me.”

“A rental car will be waiting for us downstairs. We drive to Zacatecas, go to the airport, and there will be e-tickets for us at the Aeroméxico counter. We will fly to L.A. and meet our people there.”

“Right; now, as I said, you have to leave early because the flight is in the afternoon at two o’clock, fourteen hundred hours, OK?

“Got it,” said the crew leader.

“Good man. This will be the last time we talk, so good luck and have a good trip back.”

“Before you go,” said the crew leader, “can you tell me why we have to go to Zacatecas? What makes you think it’s too hot for us to leave from here?”

John Wayne didn’t want the guy to get suspicious so he tried to sound as casual and straightforward as possible. And, like Lombardo, he always told lies as close to the truth as possible. “Look, I don’t want to go into a lot of details with you, but there was a Mexican cop that came up from Monterrey to see me. He’s on your trail and that’s why I have to hustle you out of here as soon as I can. He knows you’re in the city so he’s probably got the airport and the bus stations

covered, so our best bet is to get you out of here by car and then fly you out of Zacatecas. There’s no way he can know you’ll be flying out of there.”

“How did he get on to us?”

“He didn’t say,” said John Wayne truthfully. “Maybe somebody ratted on you.”

“Maybe your garage guys.”

“Yeah, maybe those guys. I’ll have to talk to them next time I’m in Monterrey.”

“You do that,” said the crew leader angrily. “Sons of bitches.”

“Listen, I have to go now; there’s lots of stuff I have to arrange for you guys.”

He hung up and called the Major. “Mi amigo, how are you this morning?” he greeted the obviously hung over Major Garcia.

“Oh, that damned whore must have put something in my drink last night.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it was that and not the 20 or so whiskeys we drank. Listen, amigo, our friends are leaving tomorrow. They are going by car to Zacatecas.”

“What time are they leaving?”

“I told them to leave early, around eight in the morning.”

“So, what time do you think they will be arriving in, let’s say, Jalpa or Tabasco?”

“Hmm, that’s about a two-hour drive, so I’d say around ten.”

“OK, we’ll be ready.”

John Wayne’s next call was to a garage he used on these occasions. He told the man that answered that he needed a car. A new one, untraceable—a Chrysler C300, or a Durango would be better. That afternoon, a Durango was stolen from a parking lot at a shopping center.

The Major showered and shaved and put on a fresh, crisp uniform. He left for the General Headquarters of the XV Military Zone where he could ask a friend in military intelligence to request a roadblock for the highway between Jalpa and Tabasco because of reports of drug smugglers moving stuff north the next day via that road.

John Wayne called a friend on the Judicial Police and asked for a kilo of cocaine from the stash that had been confiscated on the last raid to a safe house. Then he went to his friend’s garage, where they were changing the color of the Durango from bright red to black with fast-drying car paint. He put the kilo of cocaine in

the wheel well of the Durango. He told the garage man to deliver the Durango to the Miravalle hotel the next day at seven in the morning, park it near the entrance, and to leave the key in the ignition. He was to tell the valet parking attendant that the car was a rental for the people staying in suite 123.

Major García went to the commanding general’s office as soon as he got the call. The general ordered him to set up a roadblock just north of Jalpa. Military intelligence reported that a drug shipment was expected through there the next day. He was told to take two squads, heavily armed, and an armored vehicle. “Yes, sir, General,” said Major García and snapped a salute.

The following day, as the three men in the black Durango got to Jalpa, one of them suggested they stop for breakfast there but the crew leader said, “No, who knows what you can catch in these greasy spoon restaurants. We’ll have lunch at the airport; it looks like we’ll be early for our two o’clock flight anyway.”

About 10 kilometers outside of Jalpa they came upon some soldiers waving them toward the side of the road.

“What the hell is this,” said the black man alarmed by the roadblock.

“Just take it easy,” said the crew leader. “Roadblocks are common here in Mexico. They’ll ask us a few questions and then let us through. Get your ports ready.”

Chapter 40: Tying Up Loose Ends

The day that he got back from Guadalajara, Lombardo started writing a report on his investigation of Victor Delgado’s murder that detailed all of the facts, and listed all of the evidence that he had gathered. He wanted to be ready in case John Wayne reneged on the deal and Lombardo found out that the three men he wanted arrested had been spirited out of the country and into the United States.

He also made a copy of the resignation letter he kept in his desk but did not date it; he knew that if he handed in this version of the report, he would have to hand in his resignation at the same time. His only salvation now was for “justice to be served” one way or another.

He made other copies of the report and his resignation, which he stuffed into the envelopes that were addressed to local and national media, as well as The New York Times and the CNN correspondents in Mexico City and put them into FedEx envelopes ready to be sent out.

Lombardo’s boss had been in Mexico City all week so he was able to work in peace, without having to explain to him the result of his meeting in Guadalajara, although he was sure that his boss had gotten an update directly from John Wayne or maybe even the U.S. Consul in Guadalajara himself.

At ten o’clock in the morning of the second day after his return, Lombardo arrived at the Investigations Department’s building and went directly to his desk. He had decided that he would give John Wayne until three in the afternoon to call or send some sort of communication; otherwise, he would post his copies to the media before the 4 p.m. deadline for sending things via FedEx for next-day delivery.

As he sat down at his desk he noticed a white unaddressed envelope inside a plastic bag that had a sticker on it: “Delivered by Special Courier.”

He opened the envelope and found a single sheet of paper on which a single sentence had been printed: “Justice has been served.”

Lombardo picked up his cell phone and called the American Consulate in Guadalajara; he asked for “John Wayne” but was told that there was no one by that name in the Consulate. He then asked for the office of the DEA there and was informed that they had no office in the Consulate—perhaps, they suggested, if he called the embassy in Mexico City they could give him more information.

His desk phone buzzed. It was the Director’s secretary. He wanted to see Lombardo.

As soon as Lombardo walked into the office, the Director shoved a newspaper across the desk and said, “Have you seen this?”

The incident was tucked away discreetly in the third page where the “National News” of lesser interest was reported. But it did have one picture. It was a black SUV with a body hanging halfway out of one of its opened doors.

The text said that the SUV had failed to halt as requested at a military roadblock. It had attempted to run over the soldiers, who had signaled it to stop. The engers of the SUV had shot at the soldiers, which had prompted the commanding officer to order his soldiers to return fire. The engers, three males, two Americans and one Canadian, had died in the shootout. Upon inspection of the vehicle, several kilograms of cocaine were found hidden in the wheel well of the spare tire. Identification found on the three men proved to be false but fingerprint and other forms of identification revealed that all three had criminal records in their respective countries and had been identified by both

international and national law enforcement agencies as known drug dealers and smugglers.

“I guess that’s the end of it,” said the Director.

“As far as the murder of Victor Delgado is concerned,” said Lombardo.

The Director leaned back on his chair and said, “I understand that the interim Governor has named a new Dean at the University.”

“So?” said Lombardo shrugging his shoulders.

“So, soon the only copies of the information, which has caused so much trouble, will be the ones you have. I am sure the new Dean will order the Computer Center to do a lot of housecleaning.”

“Are you asking me to destroy those copies, sir?”

“I’m not asking you anything, Captain Lombardo. You said that the information you have is evidence. Well, I suggest you keep it in a safe place. It might be very useful if the case is taken up by the Public Ministry.”

“It’s even more useful as insurance for me,” said Lombardo.

“I really don’t think you need it anymore,” said the Director dryly. “By the way, there was a reported burglary at the Planetarium. Some valuable equipment was stolen. I’m asg you to the case.”

“How exciting. Thank you, sir. I was worried you might assign me to investigate your predecessor’s murder.”

“No, that’s been assigned to a ‘crack team’ of combined forces from the Judicial Police and the Public Ministry. Good day, Captain.”

As he left the Director’s office, Lombardo wondered how long it would take the “crack team” to bury the case under the slush pile of unsolved murders.

He went back to his desk and sat down. The note that John Wayne had sent seemed to mock him: “Justice has been served.”

“The hell it has,” said Lombardo and he hurried out of the building and down to the garage. He went to the head mechanic and yelled, “Where the hell is my damned car. I’m tired of paying for taxis.”

Lombardo rushed through the midday traffic to his downtown destination. When he got there, he left his car in a no parking zone in front of the Kalos building, but ed to put the “Police on Official Business” card on the dashboard.

He went to Lupe Salgado’s office and walked right in, in spite of the secretary’s protestations.

“It’s all right, Miss Flores,” said Lupe Salgado when she said that the Captain had barged in without announcing himself.

“Lupe, I need you to do something for me,” said Lombardo.

“How can I help you, Captain?”

“I want you to find out where Dean Herrera is.”

“You confuse me with one of your colleagues, Captain; I’m not a detective,” said Lupe laughing.

“No, but here’s my idea,” said Lombardo. “ that the Dean has a ‘friend’ to whom he is very emotionally attached, to put it nicely?”

“They’re lovers,” said Lupe.

“Yeah, they’re lovers.” Lombardo said that he was sure the Dean was communicating with him. “Not, by cell phone—the Dean knows they are too easy to trace—but the old-fashioned way, by email.”

“What makes you think that?” asked Lupe.

“Because among the many things Victor Delgado squirreled away into that encrypted archive were the Dean’s personal email files. And after having read some of them, it wouldn’t surprise me if that is how this whole encryption thing started; that is, the Dean wanted his email files encrypted and when it became dangerous to have the emails of their jolly little group in files their enemies could steal, they decided to encrypt those, too.”

“So, the intruders that Victor was chasing the night he was killed were probably snooping around trying to find the emails and other documents.”

“Yeah, they wanted to find out the names of all of the conspirators that were pushing the drug legalizing thing. They were especially interested in knowing who was getting money from the Cartels. Can you imagine what they could do with that information?”

“OK, but why do you want to find the Dean?”

“The men who killed Victor are dead. They were killed because I wanted to arrest them and their buddies thought that would be too embarrassing and would lead to too much exposure for a couple of governments and the DEA, FBI, and who knows what other foreign agencies that are running around loose in this country. The people who tried to stop me from investigating Victor’s murder thought that by killing them, the case would grind to a halt. The bad guys are dead, there’s nothing more to investigate.”

“That seems reasonable,” said Lupe.

“Not to me. The people that had Victor’s murderers killed are guilty of much more than just those killings and Victor’s murder. And the Mexicans who opposed them are just as guilty of who knows how many crimes. Their damned little wars are turning this country into a killing field. They have to be stopped.”

“It seems to me, Captain, that although it is a noble proposition, it is a very dangerous one. If these people won’t stop at killing some of their own, what do you think they’ll do to us if they find out you’re still pursuing the case?”

“But, you see, I am not going to pursue the case. I am going to let the case pursue itself.”

He explained to Lupe that once he had found the Dean, he would tell him that as long as he was running around the world, his life was in danger. If these guys caught up with him, he would be dead and at the bottom of some river in no time. The Governor had fled into the witness protection system because he was probably ratting on all of his former colleagues in the pro-legalizing drugs lobby. He was valuable to them for that, but the Dean was a danger, and of no use, so he was a prime target for elimination. But if the Dean came back, with a copy of the documents in his hand, he would probably find that the politicians, whom the Governor had antagonized with his ratting, would help him and protect him in a safe jail.

“That’s in theory,” said Lupe, “who knows how it will play out in real life.”

“All I can do is try,” responded Lombardo. “So, can the emails, if they exist, be traced?”

“It can be done. Once we find the recipient, all we have to do is hack his to get one of his emails. Unless the Dean is very careful and uses an anonymous mailer, we can use the header to trace it. But, let’s see what we can do.” As he started to type away on his computer’s keyboard, he added, “By the way, I am charging my usual hourly fee for this, OK?”

The first thing that had to be done, according to Lupe, was find the Dean’s friend’s ISP—Internet Service Provider—for that he needed the Dean’s friend’s name. Lombardo provided that easily. He made a couple of phone calls, including one to a gay theater director who was very active in gay rights movements. The name that came back, Gilberto Jaramillo, was that of a professor in the Visual Arts Department of the University.

When Lupe queried a search engine with the name, a dozen references came up, several of which mentioned his email addresses. He had the usual Hotmail address, which it was Lupe’s guess was probably used only for chat purposes; he had a Gmail address, as did a gazillion other people in the world; he had an address at the University, and he had an address with a local ISP.

“My guess is,” said Lupe, “that the local ISP is the one he is using to communicate with the Dean. If he is using the Hotmail or Gmail s, the only way to get to his emails would be to hack his personal computer, and that might be a desktop or a laptop, which I would have to get to when he is online. That, my friend, would take time and luck.

If he is using the University , which I doubt, you can squeeze David to give you access to whatever he has stored there. My guess is there will probably be just University business in that .

No, I think we should start with the local ISP and see if he had left copies of his

emails there. Lots of people don’t check the option to delete copies of their emails once they are safely loaded to their own machine, so the ISP stores its copies for a long time.”

“So, what can we do then?”

“I suggest,” said Lupe, “that you go lean on David to give you access to this guys emails that will be stored in the University’s email server. As I said, I doubt he’ll have anything that’s useful to us there, but let’s do it for completeness sake. Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can hack into this local ISP. If it is too difficult, I can ‘human engineer’ them and use your scary name to get them to let me see his emails—assuming he has left copies on the email server.”

“OK, that’s a good start. You get busy on that and I’ll call David on my way to the University.”

As Lombardo walked to his car, he mused about the amount of information that is just floating around on the Internet. “It’s a con man’s dream,” he muttered to himself, “but it could be useful to cops as well. I’ve got to ask Lupe to show me some of his tricks.”

His car was not where he had left it. According to the sticker pasted on the curb, it had been towed away.

Chapter 41: The Awful Truth

Lombardo didn’t ask permission from the new Director to leave the country; it is customary for police officers and other law enforcement officials to ask their superiors for permission to do so if they are going abroad on official business. But Lombardo wanted to talk to the Dean before he confronted the powers that be again and he certainly didn’t want the Director to know where the Dean was hiding.

He looked at the printouts that Lupe had given him and the handwritten notes on them. The signatory of the latest emails that the Dean’s friend had received was a “Juán Pérez,” the Spanish equivalent for “John Doe.” Lupe had traced those incoming emails to an ISP in Houston, Texas and had printed the results.

Although no names were used, other than the phony signature, it was clear from the way the two correspondents addressed each other—discreet endearments and understated wishes to be reunited again—that “Juán Pérez” was most likely the Dean.

Police work and investigations always depend on a bit of luck to get results; in this case, Lombardo was lucky that Lupe had read a series of emails in which “Juán Pérez” and the Dean’s friend agreed to meet in San Antonio’s Ingram Park Mall the following Monday. The Dean had told Jaramillo that he didn’t want to meet where he was staying because in case of “trouble,” he would spare his hostess any legal, moral, and emotional hardship. From that email, Lombardo guessed that Dean Herrera was probably staying with a friend or relative in Houston.

“Juán Pérez” gave precise instructions that detailed the place, within the Mall’s gigantic parking lots, where his car would be parked. Jaramillo was to meet him there; they would then drive away together to a more discreet place—a nearby motel. “Cherchez la fame” advised the old French cliché; it seemed to work just as well for love between any combination of genders.

The meeting was set up for the afternoon to give Jaramillo time to fly to San Antonio and then drive to the Mall. Lombardo took a late afternoon flight on Sunday, rented a car, and drove to the Holiday Inn Express that is just half a kilometer from Ingram Park Mall. He wanted to be at the rendezvous point before the Dean arrived.

He spent Sunday night watching banal television programs and thinking about how he was going to persuade the Dean to go back to Mexico. He would have to convince him that his life was in danger. He decided that his argument would be that if the ex-Governor had gone into the FBI’s witness protection program, in exchange for giving away all the information he had on all of the co-conspirators he knew on the pro-legalizing drugs group, the Dean’s name would be on the list. He would also argue that Victor Delgado’s death proved that the antilegalization forces knew the Dean was involved and maybe even had access to the poisoned emails and documents. The anti-legalization forces would conclude that the Dean would have to be “neutralized” in one way or another. If he stayed out in the cold, the Dean might suffer the same fate as Victor.

Lombardo turned off the television and the lights and unlike the other night, he promptly went to sleep.

The next day he woke and was startled for a few seconds by that feeling, so common to frequent travelers, of not knowing where you are. He looked at the clock—it was eight in the morning.

He got up and decided to shower later after having coffee and something to eat. He went to the small cafeteria to get his “courtesy continental breakfast,” which consisted mostly of cereals, industrial pastry, and watery juices and coffee. The place was full of squealing kids and adults in Bermuda shorts and t-shirts—the hotel was near several theme parks. He got a cup of coffee and a pastry wrapped

in a cellophane bag and went back to his room.

He watched the news while having his breakfast. After the usual sound bites from the President of the United States and other politicians about the g of the Bilateral Trade Agreement in the Rose Garden, there was a bevy of reports on the latest victims in the Cartel wars. Finally, there was a report on the Mexican presidential campaign. The newly named conservative candidate called for a tougher stance against the Cartels and the use of the Army in the fight against them, citing the fact that police forces were usually outgunned when going up against cartel soldiers, but not the fact that a lot of those policemen had little incentive to get killed for the miniscule salary they got when they could stay out of the fight and get rewarded handsomely by the Cartels.

Leobardo Contreras, the center-left Liberal candidate, on the other hand, promised to find new, less violent ways, of meeting the challenge of the “drug problem”—he didn’t refer to it as a “war.” He also hinted that more responsibility for the problem would have to be assumed by the “great consumers” of the drugs since “if it were not for such a huge illegal market, there would be no problem.” He was also adamant about the U.S. curtailing the amount of guns and other weapons being sold to the Cartels by American gun stores and dealers.

One didn’t have to be a genius to guess where this idea of a “new” drug policy was heading. He was scaring and displeasing the conservatives on both sides of the border with these hints at a possible drug legalization initiative if he was elected. It was even rumored that the President of Mexico, who had personally picked him as his successor, was surprised and annoyed at the way the PLR’s candidate was running his campaign.

Lombardo turned off the television and showered. He checked out of the hotel and drove to the Mall. He read the email again in which the Dean described where they were going to meet. He parked his car at a discreet distance, backing

up into the parking spot so that if a car parked next to him, it would partially hide his car but allow him to see the spot where the Dean intended to park. Also, it would be easier to drive out of the parking space when the Dean and his friend left for the motel.

Lombardo looked at the time on his cell phone. He had forgotten to wear his watch. It was 11:00 a.m.. He had time to wander around the Mall and then have lunch in the food court.

Lombardo spent an hour walking slowly through the huge building. There were a few people about—the throngs having shopped until exhausted on the weekend, and, after all, this was a workday. There was little of interest to him. The spacious corridors were lined with the same stores offering the same articles as in practically every other mall he had ever visited. He went into a book store and bought a magazine.

In the upper level, he wandered into the food court, and after looking over the various junk food offerings, decided to have a couple of hotdogs with plenty of sautéed onions.

He ate his hotdogs and read his magazine. The only other people in the food court were employees of the shops and stores.

A few minutes after one o’clock, he walked out of the mall and went to his car. The place the Dean had indicated for the meeting with his friend was empty. A few cars were parked in the same row as his. He got in the car—it was stifling. Although it was a typically cool November day, it was cloudless and bright with autumn sunshine. He opened all of the car’s windows to allow the gentle breeze that had begun to blow to flush the hot air out.

He slid down on the seat to rest his head on the car seat’s back. The heat and the food made him drowsy. “Besides,” he said aloud, “he might recognize me if he sees me.”

He had a fitful snooze for about an hour, drifting in and out of sleep. Suddenly he sat upright, as if alarmed by the memory of why he was there. He looked over to the part of the parking lot where the Dean said he would park. A lone car was there.

“Damn!” exclaimed Lombardo. “I missed him!”

The car was obviously a rental—it had the color and simple four-door look of the typical fleet sedan. He was about to get out of his car to go inspect it when he noticed another car rolling slowly up the lane where he was parked.

As it ed, he saw that the driver was a middle-aged man with a beard, wearing a plaid shirt and sunglasses. Lombardo was about to turn away, dismissing him as just another shopper, when the man’s profile was outlined against the bright daylight—it was the Dean!

Lombardo slouched down again; he could barely see over the dashboard.

The Dean’s car slowly cruised by, turned, went over to the next lane of parked cars and slowly cruised along that lane until it could turn again and it cruised back on the lane where Lombardo was parked. The Dean was obviously checking to see if it was safe to stop.

Seemingly satisfied, the Dean parked next to the lonely rental. As soon as it did, a man came out of the mall and walked to the Dean’s car. Lombardo saw him get in the car, hug the Dean and kiss him. Lombardo whispered, “How could I have been so stupid! That was not the Dean’s car, that was his boyfriend’s car!”

The two men talked for a few minutes, kissed again, and then the Dean started his car. Lombardo waited for him to by on the way to the exit and then he followed at a discreet distance.

The Dean’s car left the mall’s parking lot and merged into the traffic of the side street that ed under Freeway 410’s over; it turned left and then went on to the freeway heading north.

Lombardo could see that the two men were talking animatedly so they would probably not notice him following. He nevertheless made sure there were a few cars between his and the Dean’s.

When he saw the Dean’s right-hand turning light begin to flash, Lombardo changed over to the right-hand exit lane and followed the Dean’s car into the exit ramp. A couple of blocks later, the Dean turned into the parking lot of a motel. Lombardo did not follow him in but continued down the street and went into the parking lot of a hamburger t. He parked his car, jumped out and ran back to the motel.

He was too late to see into which room they had gone so he went to the motel’s office. A skinny young man was reading a magazine at the counter that had a sign announcing that this was the “Check-in Desk.”

Lombardo flashed his badge at the young man and said, “I’m with the Mexican Judicial Police. Two men just drove into the motel; what room are they in?”

The young man’s eyes had widened at the sight of the badge and he stammered, “I, I, didn’t notice, uh, wasn’t looking…”

“I need to see your registrations for last night and this morning,” said Lombardo with marked authority.

“We had no, uh, no one ed this morning,” said the young man while producing some cards from under the desk. “Just a couple of people came in last night.”

Lombardo looked at the cards. There was a family from Dilley, Texas; a guy from Amarillo; and Filiberto Herrera who wrote “Saltillo” rather than “Monterrey” as the city where he lived when he stated his address. The room number was 17.

“Where’s room 17?”

“Up on the second level,” said the young man gesturing with a finger.

Lombardo said, “Don’t call them to tell them I’m coming and don’t leave—I have to talk to you when I’m done talking to them, OK?”

The young man nodded slowly, evidently scared.

Lombardo left the motel’s office and went up the prefabricated stairs to the second level. It was a small motel and all the rooms faced the parking lot. The construction was so cheap and flimsy that the second floor corridor trembled as he walked on it.

When he reached room 17 he tapped lightly on the door. Lombardo could hear muffled comments in Spanish before a voice near the door said tentatively, “Yes?”

Lombardo said in his perfect, unaccented English, “This is the manager; may I speak with you for just a minute?”

Lombardo could hear the door chain being slipped into place before the door was opened. A face peered out, but Lombardo pushed heavily with his shoulder, snapping the flimsy chain out of the door frame, and knocking the man behind the door to the floor.

He went inside the room and closed the door behind him

“Dean Herrera, do you me? I’m Captain Lombardo of the Public Ministry’s Investigations Department.”

The Dean looked uncomfortable in bed, pulling the sheet up with one hand to

cover his nakedness while he searched for his glasses with the other.

“You can’t come barging in like this…,” Jaramillo, the Dean’s friend, started to object.

“Shut up!” said Lombardo, “and put your damned pants on.”

Dean Herrera finally found his glasses. He put them on and said, “What do you want, Captain? Have you come to arrest me?”

“Of course not; I haven’t jurisdiction here.” Lombardo took the small chair that was under the tiny table that pretended to be a desk. He sat on it and lit a cigarette.

“This is a no smoking…,” said Jaramillo.

“I told you to shut up,” said Lombardo without looking at him.

“Then, what are you here for, Captain?”

“You’ve been very careless, Mr. Herrera. Your emails were easy to trace and you even used your name and your credit card to in this, uh, this motel,” said Lombardo, dropping the title of “Dean” to which he felt the man was no longer entitled.

“I thought nobody would think of looking for me in such shabby accommodations,” said Herrera.

“Well, that is not very smart thinking for such a bright man as you’re reputed to be, Mr. Herrera, and if I could find you in a day or two, the people that I’m sure are looking for you will find you just as quickly.”

“You mean those louts from the State Judicial Police?”

“Worse than that. I think the gringos are going to come and get you first.”

“The Americans? Why?”

“I told you, you should have asked for political asylum,” scolded Jaramillo.

“Why don’t you put some clothes on and I’ll tell you all about it,” said Lombardo to Herrera.

Obviously embarrassed, Filiberto Herrera said, “I’m afraid there’s no place to dress but in…”

“Don’t worry, we’re all adults here,” said Lombardo; then he looked over to Jaramillo, “or at least I think we are.”

Herrera quickly got up and put on his clothes.

“Why don’t you go and sit on the bed, boy,” said Lombardo to Jaramillo, “you make me nervous standing behind me.”

“All right,” said the fully dressed ex-Dean, “now please explain why you think the Americans are looking for me.”

Lombardo spoke slowly; he wanted Herrera to digest everything and understand the gravity of his situation.

“The men that killed Victor Delgado are dead. They were killed because the people who hired them to get information from Victor couldn’t afford to let them be arrested in Mexico.”

“What do you mean, ‘the people who hired them’? Who are they?”

“It’s not very clear exactly who or what organization of this country hired them, but it was the head of the DEA in Mexico who asked them to nab Victor and get information out of him.”

“Oh,” he sighed, “is this about those damned encrypted files again?”

“This whole mess has always been about that. You see, there is a DEA agent, who was trying to gather intelligence on your pro-legalization crowd. He wanted the email files and documents stored in the University’s Computer Center, which would have given him the name of a lot of important people and politicians who where participating in the drug legalization campaign.

As you well know, the University became a clearing house for communications among the legalization group, so the DEA agent got some hackers to go into your system and try to get the files where the emails and such were stored. Victor found out that the system was compromised so he encrypted the files. Even if they got them, they would never be able to read them.”

“Those damned files have been the cause of a lot of misery. How I rue the day I accepted to have them on our computers,” said Herrera.

“Now let me tell you why I think they might come after you.”

“Please do,” said Jaramillo.

“There’s a new Dean at the University,” Lombardo began, “and from what I have heard he will probably make sure that the files in question will be deleted— destroyed for all intents and purposes. If that is the case, the only other known or possible sources of the information will be you and me. As far as I am concerned, they have struck a deal with me and although they didn’t fulfill it completely—because I wanted the three men who killed Victor jailed, and they had them killed—they did see to it that they got punished for it. Besides, they know that as long as I keep the information as a guarantee, I am safe.

You, on the other hand, are a loose cannon. You’re on the run and you are liable to do anything out of desperation. So, they have to deal with you.”

“What do you think they’ll do?”

“Well, they won’t come to greet you with a kiss like your boyfriend here,” said Lombardo. “They have a lot to lose if you expose them.”

“So, what can we do?” asked Jaramillo anxiously.

“I think that your best bet is to the of your group that still have influence and power and to get them to help you come out of the cold.”

“You mean go back to Mexico?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“But, they’ll put me in jail. They are accusing me of fraud.”

“Listen, Mr. Herrera, jail is the safest place for you right now. If you stay here, any night someone will bust into your room, like I did today, and pump you and sweetie-pie here full of bullets.”

“OK, so let’s say I do go back. What’s to keep them from killing me even in jail?” asked Herrera.

“Look, now that the originals have been destroyed they’ll need a corroborating witness to prove that the copies of the files I have are not just some fancy fabrication done by some computer guru. If you have influential friends, it will be in their interest to protect you. Whatever your chances are in those circumstances, believe me, they are much better that what they are now. Here in the outside you’re just an easy way for any punk with a gun to make a few thousand dollars. In fact, I could get word to one of the Cartel bosses that you have stuff that’ll land some of their enemies in jail or get them thrown out of the country. You can’t get better protection while in jail than the one this guy can give you.”

Ex-Dean Herrera bit his lip. “So, I am the only person who could corroborate the validity of your copy of the files,” he said; and then added, “and the presidential candidate.”

“The candidate?” asked Lombardo, “How could the candidate corroborate their validity?”

“He has the originals of the documents we prepared were for him. He is going to make drug legalization one of the priorities of his istration, although he said he was not going to push it during the campaign—for obvious reasons, eh?”

“The conservatives must to try to stop him, too, of course.”

“Of course. That’s probably one of the reasons they were after the files. I am

sure they wanted to know how far he was willing to go with this; and, most importantly, they probably wanted to know if he was aware of the drug money that was flowing toward his campaign via the pro-legalization forces. If they had some hard evidence, they could pretty well neutralize his campaign.”

“You should warn him about your case and about the Governor,” suggested Lombardo.

“He probably already knows. He has some pretty smart people running his campaign, and, he has the President behind him.”

“I hope you’re right because there have been rumors that their relationship has soured lately. The candidate needs protection. These people are pretty ruthless. They’ll stop at nothing.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t dare touch a presidential candidate,” said Herrera with confidence. “He was hand-picked by the President. It would be a direct blow to him, as if they were attacking him personally. You know that Mexican presidents always rely on their successor to sort of gloss over their peccadilloes.”

“Still, they got to his cousin who is now in jail.”

“Hmm, yes, that is worrisome, but I think that they know that the President is concentrated on wrapping up his term in office and getting the all-important Bilateral Trade Agreement signed.”

“OK,” said Lombardo getting up from his chair, “so let’s get back to you. I urge you to go back.”

“What do you get out of it if I do, Captain?”

Lombardo hesitated. He looked at the man. In this shabby motel room he did not seem a key player in the political struggles between two countries, between two ideologies, and between law and order and the rule of violence and corruption. He was just a homosexual man pining for his lover. Someone willing to risk capture for a few hours of sex and love in a motel room. Maybe he would be willing to risk his life for something even more important.

“As I said before, now that the three men who killed Victor are dead, I have no more to do in that case. I am hoping you go back and that you come under the protection of the liberal forces that still have some power in Mexico. I’m sure you can convince a judge to drop the fraud charges, because there is nothing to them, is there?”

“No, not really.”

“OK, so you do a couple of months in jail while your case is being heard. Perhaps by then the candidate will have been elected and you will be freed. Then, while you enjoy the newly elected President’s protection, you can use these to go after the people who killed Senator Romero and Victor, and ruined your career,” said Lombardo producing yet another copy of the files and tossing it to Herrera.

“For such a tough policeman, Captain, you are quite a dreamer.”

Lombardo went to the door. “The death of the three guys that killed Victor let that bastard in Guadalajara get away with murder. Who knows what else they have been getting away with, helped by some not so loyal Mexicans. I just hope that someone has the guts to kick some of these bastards out of the country and put some of the others in jail.”

Herrera looked at the CD Lombardo had given him. He sighed and said, “For centuries there have been Pinochets and Somosas, and stooges like that silly little man in Panama, who do the dirty work for foreign governments while reaping huge benefits for themselves. We have been the “backyard” forever. A place where bananas and fruit grow, where you can find minerals and oil, and where you can have your product manufactured cheaply without having to worry about toxic waste and labor laws. They won’t give that up so easily. No matter how many of their ‘agents’ we kick out, more will come.”

“Maybe so,” said Lombardo, “but I don’t think about the future or worry about the ‘big picture.’ This is personal. I want this particular bastard out of here.” He opened the door. “Be careful, boys. Don’t stay too long. You have no protection,” he said while flicking at the broken door chain.

On the way out, he went to the office and asked the young man if anyone else had come around asking for the persons in room 17. The young man said that no one had. Lombardo put a $20 bill on the desk and said, “And I hope that if someone does ask you’ll say you’ve never seen them.”

“Yes, sir,” said the clerk.

Chapter 42: The Prodigal Son Comes Home

A week after having come back from San Antonio, Lombardo was still laboring to finish the reports on Victor Delgado’s murder. The judge that had been assigned to review the case was asking for the Investigations Department to hand over the case file and evidence by the following Monday. He had privately told Lombardo that he would instruct the Public Ministry to make arrests pending charges, only if the evidence and circumstances warranted coming to that conclusion. To Lombardo, that meant that the judge would take months if not years to review the case, allowing it to grow cold, evidence to disappear, and witnesses to, well, vanish one way or another.

The Friday before the Monday deadline, Lombardo left the office satisfied he would be ready to hand over the reports and the evidence. He went to a bar called La Costilla where Lupe was waiting for him.

He had just finished his first whiskey when the football game being shown on the half dozen television screens in the bar was interrupted for a “breaking news” bulletin: “Filiberto Herrera, ex-Dean of the State University, had been arrested on the International Bridge of Nuevo Laredo. After days of negotiations, Mr. Herrera agreed to turn himself in at the bridge where of the State Judicial Police of Nuevo León met him at the point designated as the international border between the United States of America and Mexico…”

“Why is it, Lupe, that we, the law enforcement people, seem to be the last to know always?”

“Because these things have nothing to do with law enforcement, my friend,” said Lupe, “they are just moves on the eternal chess game of politics, money, and power.”

“I went to see him, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know. You came back and you never said a word, not even a call to say how it had gone.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Right, so what happened?”

“He was there, at the spot he’d said he would be. His friend showed up and they went to a motel.”

“One thing you can say about ex-Dean Herrera, he always has his priorities straight.”

“Yeah, so, I busted in and told him about the case and how it had ended with the death of the three men. I told him people were looking for him and that his best bet was to give himself up to friendly forces. I don’t know if that helped him make up his mind but there he is,” said Lombardo pointing at the television screen where a video of Filiberto Herrera being taken into custody was being shown.

“So, the case is over, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s over, as far as Victor Delgado’s murder. I’m turning everything over

to the judge and the Public Ministry on Monday. They should take it from there. But, you know, I gave a copy of the documents to Herrera. I told him that now that the originals have most probably been destroyed, that copy with his testimony was the only way this whole dirty war between the two factions on opposite sides of the legalization thing could be exposed.”

“Was he willing to do that? It seems to me he doesn’t have the balls.”

“Well, he’s gambling, and so am I, that the PLR will win the elections and that the candidate, once he is President, will go ahead with the legalization program and will be more amiable to exposing all those who have opposed legalization.”

“Don’t count on it,” said Lupe, “there are rumors that the President is very unhappy with the candidate’s campaign, especially a speech he gave a couple of weeks ago in which he hinted not only at legalization, but at ending the ‘understood’ immunity of former government officials.”

“Damn, he is taking a stick to a hornet’s nest by going against the tradition,” Lombardo said. “Somebody ought to warn him about how dangerous his opponents are.”

“Yes, somebody should, but don’t look at me, I don’t know anybody that high up in the Candidate’s campaign.”

Lombardo laughed. He laughed so rarely that his laugh sounded unpracticed, forced.

“By the way, “asked Lupe, “what do you think will happen to our ex-Dean?”

“Oh, he’ll be given a chance to tell his side of the story; he’ll be in jail for a ‘reasonable amount of time’—at least while the case is being investigated—then he’ll be given a light sentence if anything at all and he’ll disappear into academic studies in Europe, or something. If the PLR wins, he might be offered some kind of position in the Budget Ministry or some other place where his knowledge of economics and statistics will be useful. And, if we’re lucky, he’ll turn the information I gave him over to the newly elected President so he can rid the country of some of the sons of a bitches who orchestrated the legalization wars.”

“That’s a long shot, brother,” said Lupe and he signaled the waiter to bring more whiskey.

“Yeah, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”

“Have you informed Victor’s widow about why the case is being closed?”

“No, I haven’t. But, I will. I’ll call her tomorrow, and see if she can receive me.”

Lupe noticed that Lombardo was hesitant, as if shy, whenever he talked about the widow.

“She’s beautiful that widow, eh?” he said smiling slyly.

“Yes, yes, she’s, uh, quite handsome.”

“Handsome? Man, we’re not talking about a male movie star! Handsome, my ass! Or rather, handsome her ass.” Lupe laughed at his clever joke.

“Don’t be vulgar, Lupe. OK, she’s beautiful. So, what?”

“So it’s a shame—a woman like that with no man now.”

Lombardo said nothing, but quickly drank his whiskey and soda and signaled for more.

* * *

Monday morning, Lombardo walked into the Investigations Department with two folders both thick with papers. He was relieved that the part of the case that he disliked most, the paperwork and preparing evidence, was over. He went over to the Documentation Department and dropped one of the heavy folders on the supervisor’s desk.

“Check that file in and send it on to the judge,” he said to the policewoman.

She told him that the Director wanted to see him.

He went over to his desk and put the second folder into a desk drawer. He locked the drawer and rather than take the elevator, he walked up the two flights of stairs to the Director’s office. He hadn’t done that in a long time, but he felt energetic, light on his feet, this morning. He did indeed feel as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

The Director’s secretary, performing the indispensable task of filing her nails, asked him to wait before going in—the Director was on the phone.

Lombardo stood in front of the secretary’s desk, pointedly looking at the nail filings that were falling on her computer keyboard. She noticed his stare and tried to ignore it but finally gave up and put the nail file down loudly. Lombardo smiled, glad that he had annoyed her.

A light on her phone turned off which meant that the Director had hung up, so she buzzed him and said Lombardo was waiting. “You may go in now,” she said with a frown on her face.

Lombardo said nothing; he just smiled, very glad at her annoyance.

As usual, the Director did not extend his hand, or ask him to sit down, or offer any of the formalities common in office environments. Nor did he look up when he began to speak.

“I understand you were to finish your investigation reports today and ready them to be handed over to the Public Ministry and the judge today. Are they ready?”

“Yes, they are.”

“As you know, the ex-Dean of the University turned himself in to the authorities last Thursday. Is his case relevant to the one your handling?”

“No, not really,” said Lombardo dryly. He didn’t want to say more than was necessary until he knew where the Director was going with his questions.

“But you said that the information that the victim’s killers were after was stored in the University’s computers and that the victim was acting under orders of the ex-Dean when he was killed.”

“Yes, but I also mentioned that Victor Delgado acted on his own when he encrypted the information, not under orders by the ex-Dean. Delgado meant to give the Dean the key to decrypt the information as needed but he never had the chance. He died before he could inform the ex-Dean and give him the key.”

“Hmm, all right, so bring me the file and I’ll look it over before I send it to the Public Ministry and the judge,” said the Director in a tone that implied that the conversation was over.

“You’ll have to ask the Files supervisor for it. I just asked her to check the file in.”

“Mm,” said the Director.

“There is one more thing I would like to mention about my investigation,” said Lombardo.

Lombardo’s words finally made the Director look up. “What’s that?”

“Reading those emails and knowing the persons behind the men who killed Victor Delgado, it would seem to me that there is another person who should know about this, because I fear he might also be in danger.”

“Who’s that?”

“Leobardo Contreras, candidate to the Presidency.”

The Director laughed in a forced, artificial way. “Are you crazy? You should be careful about starting rumors like that.”

“I am not starting a rumor. I am stating that the evidence in this case and the people that are involved lead me to believe that the candidate could be a possible target for them.”

“And what do you think I should do about your speculations?”

“I think that the candidate should be warned or at least informed.”

“Are you mad? Do you want me to call him up and say, ‘Mr. Contreras, one of my investigators thinks your life is in danger?’ Do you know what he will say? ‘My fuckin’ life is always in danger! It comes with the territory!’”

“That’s true, but in this case we know the source of the possible danger. We know who has a great interest in his never getting elected President.”

“Who? The hard-line conservatives of the PAC? The DEA and other Americans? That is no secret, my friend. Everyone knows they have always opposed the liberal party’s ideas and politics.”

“That might be the case, but this time they are willing to go to extremes. They have already committed one murder, and I suspect that they were involved in a couple others.”

“Look, just tell them to bring me the case file. You can submit an addendum with your suspicions and speculations with it and I’ll see that it gets sent to the right people, ok?”

Now the interview was really over. The Director went back to reading the file on his desk and Lombardo shrugged and left the office.

When he got back to his desk, there was an envelope addressed to him. It was official stationery of the Public Ministry.

Lombardo read:

“According to our records…”

They were being ‘nice’ enough to recognize the time he had been on the Guadalajara Judicial Police Force as part of the time he had been a public servant, therefore, according to their records, he was eligible for early retirement. It was strongly recommended that he accept that option since the difference in retirement pay and benefits was negligible if he chose to stay until the mandatory retirement age of 65. The memo went on to say that this would also benefit the Department since it would create vacancies to be filled by recent graduates of the Judicial Police Force Academy.

“Meat for the grinder,” said Lombardo to no one in particular.

There was a handwritten note by the Director: “I have asked the HR Department to have your paperwork ready for you to sign by tomorrow. If you decide not to sign, I have also asked them to prepare your transfer to the Judicial Police in Ciudad Juarez or Tijuana.”

The warning that he might be transferred if he did not retire was like a death threat: Judicial Police cops had an average life span of 6 months in those two cities.

Chapter 43: g Away the Past, Arranging a New Future

The following day Lombardo signed accepting his early retirement. Since it would become official on the last day of the month, Lombardo went to see

Victor Delgado’s widow. He wanted to tell her about her husband and about the “justice” that had been meted to his killers, but he wanted to do this while he was still a cop, not just some retiree recounting his last case.

He called her and asked if he could come to see her and she said she would be available in the afternoon. She explained that she had a job interview in the morning and that she would be home at 2 p.m. after she had picked up her son from the Social Security Day Care Center.

She told Lombardo that he could come by at 4 p.m., after she had fed the boy and he was having his afternoon nap.

Lombardo cleaned out his desk and turned in the pieces of evidence for this last case, and some from other cases that he found in the drawers and the cardboard boxes that he’d stacked on top of the filing cabinets.

The Director’s secretary came to his desk and told him that the Director had asked that he remain available in case the judge considering the case wanted to question him about it.

Lombardo said that he would be. “You have my home phone number, sweetheart; call me any time you want—day or night.” He winked at her.

“That’ll be the day,” she said and walked away loudly clacking her heels on the tiled floor.

Lombardo smiled. He loved annoying her.

He doubted he would ever be called to testify. There was now no political motivation to push it forward. It would vanish into the dead file archives of the judicial system in no time.

Victor Delgado was dead, two senators were dead, and three foreign agents, too —yet the world, the country, the city, or the system was neither the wiser nor the better for his having “solved” the case. Political power struggles would continue to grind people up, the drug trade would continue to produce dozens of deaths a month, and little people caught between the factions fighting for power and money would continue to get hurt and killed.

He looked down at his empty, battered desk. It was ready for the next guy to come and sit here and receive the phone calls that would take him out to see the dead, and the crimes, and the mayhem of a society spinning out of control. And he or she would be just as powerless as he was to do anything about it.

“Twenty-five years,” he said aloud. “What a colossal waste of time.”

Lombardo walked out of the Investigations Department for the last time.

Lombardo went home and had lunch while watching an old movie in which Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were gliding smoothly over a dance floor to Irving Berlin’s music.

Lombardo liked old movies; he thought they were the only thing worth watching on television. He fell asleep to the strains of “Cheek to Cheek” and dreamt he was in a theater watching the movie and that people were complaining that it was in black and white and not in color so he had to stand up and tell them to shut up and let him watch the movie, but a car horn kept blaring: blat! blat! blat!

He woke up—the intermittent sound was the alarm clock he had set to go off at 3:30 p.m.

He washed his face and brushed his teeth quickly, then brushed his hair down as best he could. He threw off this wrinkled long-sleeved shirt and tie and put on a polo shirt. As he walked out of the house and to the avenue to look for a taxi, he felt almost naked without a suit on—and without a gun. It had been a long time since he had been without them on a weekday.

As he walked up to the door of the house he looked at his watch; it was precisely 4 p.m. He felt strangely uneasy, like a teenager going to pick up a date for the first time. He was angry with himself for feeling like that and even angrier that he had not worn his coat and tie and hat. It would have made things look more formal, not like a social visit.

“I’m a moron,” he said, despairing at the lack of understanding for the feelings and ideas he was experiencing.

He rang the doorbell and since the door was not opened right away, he thought of walking away and calling later. “Perhaps I missed you or maybe you were having a nap,” he would say. But before he could turn away the door opened.

Lombardo was so astonished by what he saw that he blinked and said nothing for a few seconds. There was Mrs. Delgado, in a light yellow, sleeveless dress, with one strap over her left shoulder and the other hanging down over her right arm; a large, yellow pin held her hair into a knot, leaving her light brown shoulders and neck visible. She was the most beautiful woman Lombardo had ever seen.

“I’m sorry I took so long to answer the door,” she said. “I was in the back washing some things.” She wiped her hands with a small towel before she extended one to greet him.

“I’m sorry, I, uh, could come back if you’re busy,” he said apologetically.

“No, no, please come in, Captain.”

They sat down in the small living room. She sat in an easy chair and busied herself folding the towel neatly; Lombardo sat on the small sofa opposite. He wished he could smoke. For some reason, he felt nervous.

“You said you had some news about my husband’s case,” she said when she saw he would not start the conversation.

“Yes, yes, I do.” He leaned back to try to appear a bit more comfortable and said, “I found the three men who, uh, who were responsible for your husband’s, uh, tragic…”

“Have you arrested them, Captain?”

“No, I’m afraid that that is impossible; you see, all three are now dead.”

She sat quietly looking at him without a trace of emotion before she said, “How did they die?”

“You might have heard in the news about three foreigners, two Americans and one Canadian, who tried to, uh, well, they did not stop when signaled to do so at a roadblock the Army had set up somewhere in the border between Jalisco and Zacatecas. According to reports, they fired at the soldiers and the soldiers fired back, killing all three men.”

“That’s horrible,” she said looking down, “and very strange.”

“I would add convenient,” Lombardo commented.

“Why do you say that, Captain?”

“Because they belonged, or at least they were hired, by a law enforcement organization in the United States. It would have been very embarrassing to them if I had arrested these men and charges had been brought against them.”

“So, you think they were killed for that?”

“Well, according to the Army report, there were drugs in the car, which might have been the reason they tried to run the roadblock.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No, I don’t. But I have no way of proving otherwise.”

She looked at him steadily with a gaze that seemed to say she wanted to hear the truth of her next question: “Why did they kill my husband? Do you know?”

“Yes, I do.” He wished more than ever that he could smoke. “I think it was an accident.”

“How was it an accident?” she said with a trace of annoyance in her voice.

“You see, Victor was helping a group of people, politicians and businessmen who wanted the government to legalize drugs. He wasn’t doing anything wrong or illegal; he was just keeping their information safe, you see.” He was trying to find words that made the stupidity of her husband’s horrible death as understandable as possible.

“The people that opposed the legalization of drugs wanted to steal that information.”

“Why? What did they want with it?

“I don’t really know all the facts; perhaps they wanted to know the names of all the people who were in the legalization group or perhaps they wanted to use it to expose some of the more influential through the media. As I said, I can only speculate on what they planned to do with it.”

“So, why did they harm Victor?”

“I don’t need to tell you, Mrs. Delgado, that Victor was very conscientious about his job. When he found out that the information was in danger, so to speak, he safeguarded it by encrypting it—making it impossible for anyone to read without having a certain code.

“Is that what was in the paper I gave you?”

“Yes, that was part of it. Because, you see, this encryption scheme needs two ‘keys,’ as the computer people call them. One is to encrypt the information and the other is to decrypt it; that is, to make it readable again. You had the key to encrypt it, and Victor had the other key, the one to decrypt, which he meant to give to the Dean of the University, but, he, uh, never got the chance to do so.”

“So, these men were trying to get this key from Victor?”

“Yes, that’s why they abducted him.” He decided not to give her the ugly details of his death, so he just said, “They were questioning him when he died— probably his heart gave out.”

For the first time since he had met her, he saw her display emotions. She picked up the folded towel and covered her face. Her shoulders heaved, gently marking her silent sobs.

Lombardo wished he could take her in his arms and console her. He looked for his cigarettes and found he had left them in his coat pocket.

He felt guilty that he had used the excuse of bringing her news about her husband’s case to see her again. All he had done was cause her more pain. Nervously wringing his hands he said, “I’m very sorry for having told you all of this, Mrs. Delgado. Perhaps I should not have…”

“No,” she said regaining her quiet composure, “in fact, I thank you for coming here to tell me. So many people in this country go without knowing what happened to their loved ones with all of these crimes that happen every day. It is horrible not knowing. You see, they gave him to us in a sealed coffin so we could not even say good-bye properly.”

“I understand,” said Lombardo. He decided to soften the facts even further by saying, “If it is any comfort, Mrs. Delgado, the doctor who performed the autopsy told me that he had not suffered. He probably had a heart condition he was not aware of and his heart, as I said, just gave out.”

She looked past Lombardo to the window, as if trying to something and said, “He was a very gentle man. The last thing one could imagine about him was that he would be involved in any sort of violent act. He was always trying to help others. He was that kind of a man.” She had regained her soft voice when she added, “When I went to the University to retrieve his personal

things, everyone had nothing but good words, kind words to say about him.”

Lombardo was relieved that she had given him the opportunity to change subjects. “Yes, as everyone I have met, too.” Lombardo ed the fact that the Director of the Computer Center had promised to help her out financially. “By the way, Mrs. Delgado, has the University arranged to have his insurance and other benefits paid to you?”

“Yes, they have, Captain. It seems that once again he has come to my rescue. I don’t know what I would have done if Victor had not helped me when I lost my job. My family, my friends, everyone seemed to have turned away. But not Victor. He was more of a man than a lot of others...” She did not finish the sentence but Lombardo understood what she had left unsaid. Then she added, “Now it seems that once more he is looking out for me.”

“That brings up something I would like to ask you, Mrs. Delgado. We found Victor’s car by the, uh, by the Presa de la Boca. It’s been impounded as evidence but I am sure they would release it now. Would you like me to help you recover it?”

“Yes, I would appreciate it, Captain. I don’t want it, but perhaps I can sell it. We will need the money now…” she said trailing off.

Lombardo tried to put it as delicately as he could when he asked, “Are you going to be all right, Mrs. Delgado? I mean, will you be able…”

“Yes, yes,” she said, “the University has provided a small stipend and they offered a scholarship for the boy when he comes of age. There is also a small

amount from his insurance policy. I’m sure that will suffice until I can get a job.”

“Do you own or do you rent your house?” he asked.

“We, uh, the house is rented. I will have to move out—look for something less expensive; with the kind of job I can expect to get I wouldn’t be able to stay here.”

Again he struggled to find words that would not seem offensive to her. She had probably been offered ‘help’ enough times to be wary of ‘the kindness of strangers.’ “Mrs. Delgado, please don’t misunderstand what I am going to say, but, you see, I have been, uh, requested, or allowed, if you will, to retire early. The last day of the month will be the last day I work in the Investigations Department.”

“I am glad for you, Captain, because that is very dangerous work.”

“Yes, but my point is, you see, that I plan to go away for a while.” He made up the lie as he went along. “I have always wanted to travel, and never had the chance, so, I am thinking of going to, uh, and other places.

The thing is, I have a house. It is mine and I would hate to leave it alone, you know how houses seem to deteriorate when left alone, but I don’t want to rent it either. I don’t need the money and then having to collect the rent or seeing to problems that the renters encounter would just be a nuisance.

What I am saying is, you are welcome to have the house, free of rent for as long as you want. It is not a big house, but I am sure you would be as comfortable as you are here.”

She said nothing so he added, “And, there are no conditions or other, that is, I am not expecting anything in return.”

She looked at him steadily and she seemed to understand his meaning.

“Thank you very much, Captain. I will consider your offer very, very seriously. With the boy growing up I am going to need all the help I can get. The jobs they offer a woman in this city, that is, what I can get, since I don’t have my degree, are very…”

“I understand, Señora,” he said and she looked up, as if startled at the very formal way he had addressed her.

“What is your first name, Captain Lombardo?”

“Guillermo,” he answered; it was his turn to be surprised.

“My name is Laura,” she said. “It’s five o’clock. I will have to wake up my son in another half-hour. Would you like a cup of coffee before you have to go, Guillermo?”

When Lombardo left her house a couple of hours later, he was elated. It was a full five minutes before he could tell the taxi driver where he wanted to go. He sat in the taxi staring ahead and wondering, speculating what it all meant. She had asked for his first name. He could not believe it.

“Señor,” said the driver, “if you don’t tell me where you want to go you will have to get out of the taxi.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just thinking of something. Please take me to the Aeroméxico office, downtown.” As the taxi started off, he thought, “I guess I’ll just have to go to now.”

Epilogue: The More Things Change…

After having received from Aeroméxico a quote on a return trip to Europe— arriving in Paris and returning through Madrid—Lombardo checked his bank and guessed he could stay in and Spain two or three months without worry, if he was a bit frugal in his spending.

He wanted to give Laura (how happy he was to be able to finally call her by her first name) enough time to settle her business and move into his house.

He made plans to go to within a month, which is the time she said she needed to arrange her affairs and give her landlord notice. He had asked her to visit the house at her convenience and decide what furniture she wanted removed from the house and what she found useful and wanted to keep.

After she had seen the house and taken stock of what was in it, much to Lombardo’s delight, she said she preferred to sell most of her furniture rather than have to pay for storage. She said she would use most of the things in his house—after all they were practically new since he was hardly ever there but for a few hours a day.

The only thing that had to change was the studio where he painted. She needed that as a bedroom for the boy. Lombardo said that was not a problem. She had told him she would not remove a single thing from his other studio so he could store things there until he got back.

“By the way,” she wondered, “do you plan to stay in Europe or come back? What are your plans?”

“I really haven’t decided,” he said truthfully. “In , I have a friend, a man who consulted with the Investigations Department on the use of modern technology in gathering evidence and things like that. We became good friends during the time he was here. He is French but speaks very good English and Spanish. He has invited me to stay with him in a house he has in the country.”

“Yes, but what about when you come back, if you decide to come back?” she insisted.

“Look, you needn’t worry,” he assured her. “If and when I do come back, I really don’t plan to live here. I’ve never liked this city and now that I can, I’d rather move someplace else, someplace smaller, quieter.

This house, modest as it is, is too large for me. I really need something simpler,

smaller that fits my needs better.”

“Well,” she said, “if you come back and you haven’t decided where you are going to go next, please feel free to stay with us for as long as you need. This is, after all, your house.”

Lombardo’s simple heart, which had not felt emotions for anything or anybody for a long time, was very grateful for her offer.

Laura’s arrangements and Lombardo’s preparations for the trip made the time quickly. On his way to the airport, he stopped by Laura’s house to say goodbye and let her know she was free to move in anytime she wanted. He was speechless when she kissed his cheek as she said good-bye.

Lombardo had never been very good at sleeping on planes, but this time, the thirteen-hour flight was made more bearable by long bouts of dreamless, peaceful sleep.

He stayed in Paris for a week, getting reacquainted with a city he had first visited so long ago when he was so in love with an Indian dancer. He had followed her there while on leave from the Army and had almost gone AWOL when she asked him to stay with her.

After a week in Paris, he left for Brittany where his friend lived. The house was about 30 kilometers from Morlaix, deep in the woods and part of a small community with only 12 houses.

The woods and countryside were beautiful, peaceful, and only occasionally disturbed by the rumbling tractors of the farmers.

Lombardo wandered around, sketching in his notebook, and making small watercolors of the landscape and old farms that, like his friend’s, were being bought up mostly by the English and Parisians who renovated them into homes and summer cottages.

Occasionally, Lombardo went into Morlaix, to visit the modest but interesting museum, buy things he needed, and sit in a café to read the papers.

He usually tried to read Le Monde in an effort to improve his limited French, but he also bought The Times and El País, when available. Two weeks after he had arrived, he read the news in the Spanish newspaper: “Candidato a la Presidencia de México Asesinado”.

In Ciudad Juarez, the candidate of the ruling party had been assassinated. In a related story, the conservative candidate pledged that if elected, he would ask the Army to get involved in containing the drug cartels and to bring back the rule of law and order.

Lombardo closed the paper and drank the last of his coffee and cognac. “I told them so,” he said sadly.

Lombardo tried to forget the woes of his country and enjoy the two additional months that he had planned to stay in and Spain. He thought about Laura and savored the idea of staying with her for a couple of weeks while he looked for a place to live.

Although the polls were very clear, he could not have anticipated then that the conservative candidate would win the presidential elections the following July and that President Echeverría would retire to Scotland after his mandate, alleging that he and his family were being unjustly persecuted by the conservatives. In that future, the President’s cousin would linger in jail for six more years before being pardoned on condition that he leave the country.

The conservative candidate’s election would bring the Army into the fray of the drug wars and all hell would break loose. Now systematic Human Rights violations by the Army would be added to the dozens of murders a day that were being committed by one side or the other in the drug wars.

Lombardo decided to order another coffee and cognac and thought again about Laura and her beautiful face, unaware that all of those terrible events of the future would eventually shape his own.