could possibly like coffee without any coffee in it.
It was a hot, muggy day. He tried to study the report but couldn’t concentrate and was reading through it unattentively when another rookie interrupted him.
“Hey, where’s the concrete room?” He was wearing dark glasses in the office. These new guys know zip about the venerable institution of dark glasses, Cabrera grumbled to himself. Wearing them in the presence of a superior shows a lack of respect, and Cabrera’s tone of voice was a reproach.
“What’d you lose in there?”
“Nothing.” The young man lowered his glasses. “I was sent to look for mops. Your coffeemaker is leaking.”
“Take the one in the closet, at the end of the hall; there’s nothing for you to do in the concrete room, understood?”
His car leaked oil, the coffeemaker leaked water, what was next? Was he going to have prostate trouble, as his doctor had warned him? Perhaps, at his age, he should drink less coffee and more plain water. But could he live without coffee? After some depressing thoughts (a vision of a world without caffeine, the world as a long and boring blank space), he finally managed to concentrate on the text.
The report indicated that they’d sliced the journalist’s throat from ear to ear, collapsing the jugular, and then extracted his tongue through the orifice. In other words, he told himself, they’d given him a Colombian necktie, so there’d be no doubt about who had committed the crime. Ever since the people of the port had been associating with the Colombian cartel, these things were happening more and more often. . . . He was thinking this over when, as he began to reread the report, he felt a burning sensation in his gut. Damn it, he said to himself, what did I get myself into?
When he was almost through reading the report, his stomach growled again and he told himself it was a sign that he shouldn’t take the case. But his sense of duty was stronger than he was, and he went out to look for Ramírez.
In the entire headquarters there was only a single person who could have lent him a suit coat in his size, and that was the forensic expert, Ramírez. Not that Cabrera was fat, it was just that he was very broad-shouldered. As for Ramírez. . . .
In the port city that we’re discussing, when people get upward of forty they face a dilemma: either they find something interesting to do or they take up eating, with the universally acknowledged outcome. The expert Ramírez belonged to the second category. He had not a double but a triple chin, and his belly spilled out over his belt. Cabrera went in to say hello and noticed a young man wearing glasses typing on a computer at the desk in the back.
“So who’s that?”
“My assistant, Rodrigo Columba.”
Ramírez had no idea what they wanted from him. In the journalist’s house not a manuscript was found, no drafts, nothing. Only a notebook, of no real interest.
“Let me see it.”
“Handle with care. . . .”
“Yes, I know.” They had found Cabrera’s fingerprints at a crime scene once, and since then no one let him off without a good ribbing.
Ramírez handed him the evidence and Cabrera examined it with gloves and tweezers, so as not to worry his colleagues. It was a black notebook: a journal, which at first glance revealed nothing of importance: two or three dates, a poem about Xilitla, and a name, Vicente Rangel. . . . Cabrera felt his gastritis flare up again. Son of a bitch, this can’t be happening. He read the poem, which he thought terrible, but found no other written mark. How strange, he thought at last. He couldn’t imagine a journalist who took no notes . . . a journalist who didn’t write. And that name, Vicente Rangel. He said nothing to the forensic expert, but taking advantage as he looked away, Cabrera tore that page from the notebook and put it in his pocket, under the astounded eyes of the young agent. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to “erase” a little evidence. Cabrera completely ignored the young man’s look and spoke to fat Ramírez.
“Did he have a computer?”
“Did he have a computer? Strictly speaking, yes, he owned one, but we can’t access it. It requests a password, and there’s no way of guessing it.”
“Get a technician.”
“That’s what my colleague Columba here is doing; he’s the next generation of policemen—not like you, Macetón, still using