An Inconsequential Murder (9 page)

T
he 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 drug-crazed ‘
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 joined 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 admit 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 account, 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 Accounting 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 passion. 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.