An Inconsequential Murder (40 page)

Although the polls were very clear, h
e 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.