An Inconsequential Murder Page 18

  “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. Remember 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 rejoined.

  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.

  Remembering 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 join 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 remember that you saved my ass, Tarasco.”

  Unzúntia laughed and said, “I did it because I admired 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 remember?”

  “Yes, I remember,” 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 passenger 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 accounts 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.