Requiem for a Killer (6 page)

“Did you find any other substance, any
drugs?”

“Only residues of marijuana.”

“What time do you think he died?”

“Between two and five in the morning.”

“After how long in this state of coma you
mentioned…?”

“Hypoglycemic.”

“That’s it. How long afterwards do you think
he died?”

“It’s difficult to say. A couple of hours.
It depends on how deep the coma was, which would be directly
proportional to the dose of insulin he had in his blood, which, I
repeat, was enough to kill a horse.”

“Do you know how long it took?”

“It was quick, between one and three
hours.”

“Suicide?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“He had a purplish mark on his back,
probably where the insulin was injected. Large doses usually leave
a bruise where the needle goes in. Besides, if you want to commit
suicide with insulin, you don’t give yourself a shot in the back.
It’s a lot easier in the arm, leg or even your buttocks, which are
the places most used by diabetics.”

“Thank you.”

Dinner arrived. Dornelas seasoned the fillet
of sole with lemon and poured olive oil on the broccoli with a
heavy hand. Dulce had the
penne al pomodoro
pasta sprinkled
with basil leaves, one of Vito’s wife’s specialties, and close to
the divine according to his friend. They ate in peace, caught up
with each other, and emptied the bottle of wine.

“You’re still a shithead, Joaquim. But a
shithead I can’t help liking,” she said when they were out in the
street.

“Can I take you home?”

“No need. I’m going to stop somewhere else
before going home.” Dulce went up to him and kissed his cheek.

“Good night and take care of yourself
Inspector Joaquim Dornelas”; the sugar-coated words were thrown out
lightly.

“Thank you. You take care too.”

And then when she turned to leave;

“And you really are beautiful.”

“And I’ll pretend I believe you.”

*

Dornelas felt as if he were at the bottom of
the sea when the alarm went off at four in the morning. His head
was pounding and his body felt like it didn’t belong to him, as if
he was some kind of strange mannequin.

He pushed himself out of bed clumsily and
went stumbling into the bathroom. Lupi, rolled up in a ball on the
rug next to the shower, didn’t move when the inspector came in to
relieve himself and get a drink of water straight from the tap by
cupping his hands together. Thirst quenched and partially revived,
Dornelas put on old clothes and rubber boots, picked up a cap and a
flashlight, checked the batteries and went out.

He would be back after sunrise to take the
dog for a walk.

*

A fresh breeze was blowing lightly, causing
the boats anchored in the bay and tied up at the dock to rock
lazily. When seen from far away they looked like little cradles
rocking to a never-ending lullaby. The gently rippling waves
reflected the moon’s fading light; by then it was already low on
the horizon and ready to dive into the ocean and go to sleep. The
scene had everything; the shape, movement and content of an immense
sleeping pill.

Dornelas moved jerkily, like a disjointed
doll, to the small beach that led to the pier, further down from
where the body was removed the day before. They had agreed to meet
there.

The inspector pulled himself up awkwardly
and sat on the sea wall, back to the ocean, his body feeling heavy.
Then he threw his legs over so he was facing the sea and was taken
by surprise to see a man gliding toward him. Had he had so much to
drink that he was now seeing a prophet walking on water? He rubbed
his eyes, struggled to clear his mind and recognized Claudio,
standing upright in the skiff and paddling towards him from Monkey
Island.

“Good morning, Inspector,” said his friend,
jumping onto the beach.

Dornelas muttered an answer and stepped down
onto the sand. Claudio dragged the skiff out of the water and
asked:

“Where we going?”

“Up the canal, beyond the curve in the
mangrove.”

Dornelas was making an effort to overcome
his tiredness and not sound disagreeable. Not wanting to fall
sprawling into the water at that time in the morning, he got in the
boat carefully and sat down on the floor. His friend pushed the
little boat into the water, jumped in and began paddling. Claudio
had the dexterity and lightness afoot of an acrobat on a
tight-rope.

“Where did you learn that,” asked Dornelas
in admiration.

“Learn what?”

“To paddle standing up.”

“My father, Chief.”

“Have you ever fallen?”

“Two or three times...those damn
motorboats!”

With his curiosity satisfied, the inspector
decided to keep his mouth shut and turned his attention on the
water he had just noticed in the back of the boat. With each stroke
of the paddle it went rolling back and forth along the bottom,
drenching his pant legs.

He shrugged his shoulders and let himself be
taken in by the starry sky and the dark shape of the mountains
behind the city, the Historical Center, the houses with their
closed windows, the streetlights still glowing. He lowered his eyes
and admired the faint luminescence of the trails made in the water
by each stroke of the paddle, as if they were navigating a shining
space ship. The sound of the paddle cutting through the surface and
the water’s soft murmur were all he could hear.

He thought back to his childhood, fishing at
night for squid using shiny bait and fishing rods with three sharp
hooks. He and his father. The happy memory of getting filthy from
the black ink the squid spit when fished out of the water came back
to him. The next day they removed the pincers and beaks, his mother
sliced up the little heads into rings and with their tentacles
fried them coated in flour. Crunchy, cooked just right, they
seasoned the squid liberally with lemon and gobbled them down as
appetizers before lunch.

“Left or right, Inspector?”

The question jerked Dornelas out of his
daze. It was now possible to see clearly the mangrove’s skinny
trunks suspended above the cluster of roots holding fast like
devilish hands in the black mud; a small mangrove that ended
abruptly in the marsh used by the island’s residents to hoist in
the skiffs.

“Neither. Go upstream and let the boat loose
in the middle of the river between the mud beach and the fence.

On the other side of the canal a barbed wire
fence protected an imposing summer house, which clearly highlighted
the great contrast that was Palmyra: wealth and poverty, face to
face, separated by a muddy, filthy, foul smelling canal.

Claudio went a little beyond the spot
Dornelas had indicated, adroitly turned the skiff around, dropped
the paddle on the bottom of the boat and sat down.

The tide would do the rest.

“Do you know the name of the dead guy you
took out of the bay?” asked the fisherman.

Claudio had been a faithful friend for a
long time and Dornelas trusted him blindly.

“White Powder Joe. Ever heard of him?”

“Vaguely.”

Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, the
current from the tide going out, sucking the water back into the
ocean, began to drag their boat downriver towards the mouth of the
estuary.

“And José Aristodemo dos Anjos?”

His friend’s eyes immediately opened wide
apprehensively, his muscles tensed as if he were preparing his body
for a blow that was coming any second. But after his initial
reaction, realizing it was the inspector he was with, Claudio
relaxed and let out with:

“Demon? He was bad news, Chief”

‘
Demon?’
Dornelas asked himself. Was
it possible that besides Dindinho and White Powder Joe the man had
yet another nickname? He pricked up his ears, doubling his
attention.

“But I don’t know anything about it.”

And his friend clammed up tighter than an
oyster. Holding on to the gunnels of the skiff Dornelas got up from
the floor and sat down in the seat he’d been using as a
backrest.

“Claudio, please, it’s important you tell me
everything you know about this man.”

His friend eyed him pensively, picked up
some tangled fishing line from the floor, found the end and began
untangling it, wrapping it around a piece of wood.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything. In the first place if you’re
sure José Aristodemo dos Anjos’ nickname was Demon.”

“That was his nickname in school.”

“How well did you know him?”

“He was in my class in school when we were
kids. But that sure didn’t last very long. That dude was bad from
day one, he was born bad. My father had a saying that went ‘a
branch that starts out crooked grows crooked.’ Demon left school
early and got mixed up with a badass gang from the island that was
mixed up with drugs. After that I didn’t see him much anymore.”

Since Solano was having a hard time finding
any documents in José Aristodemo dos Anjos’ name, his
identification so far was based solely on the testimonies of a
politician and a woman who claimed to be the deceased’s sister. If
Demon, White Powder Joe and Dindinho were in fact the same person
was something Dornelas would confirm later, but the connection with
drug trafficking was something all three had in common.

“You’ve never heard of White Powder
Joe?”

“I’ve heard of him all right, but I never
knew that Demon and White Powder Joe were the same person.”

“Me neither. I’m just assuming they are. Do
you know what kind of trafficking he was into?”

“I don’t know, Inspector. I don’t know
anything about any drugs. But I know a lot of fishermen in the
village are mixed up with the guy.”

“How?” he asked without thinking,
immediately regretting it. He was afraid if he was too anxious he
would scare away his friend’s willingness to talk, given that he
was already reluctant to collaborate.

“The well just dried up, Inspector, that’s
all I got. Fishermen around here will do anything to make a buck.
They respect nothing, anything goes. Take shrimp, for instance.
They fish whatever they can find: Atlantic seabob prawns, tiger
prawns, white shrimp, no matter they’re tiny like this,” he said,
pressing his thumb on the first bone of his pinky.

Silence again. Claudio was searching for his
next words on the bottom of the boat while he untangled the line
between his fingers and mechanically wound it around the piece of
wood.

Dornelas respected the silence by also
keeping quiet, although he maintained his undivided attention on
his friend, like that a snake devotes to its prey. After a few
minutes the fisherman continued:

“These people don’t think about tomorrow.
The only thing that matters is what they’re going to catch today.
They’re shooting themselves in the foot and they’re going to finish
off everything there is in the sea. Soon we’re going to have to
find another way to earn a living because there’s not going to be
anything left to fish anymore. And whoever respects the law,
Inspector, they either live in poverty, like me, or start doing
business with people like Demon.”

On the mountaintops behind the city the
sun’s frail light could be seen, slowly creeping out of its
nighttime hiding place.

“Did the fishermen deal his drugs?”

“No way. He was the one who did the buying
from the fishermen to distribute in the city.”

This method of trafficking was news to
Dornelas. Unfortunately, as was the case most of the time, the
dealers were miles ahead of the police in terms of coming up with
new ways of spreading their drugs throughout the city.

For many years the efforts to combat drug
trafficking concentrated on apprehending the drugs that entered the
city on the highways, in the suitcases and bags of tourists who
came by bus, car, motorcycle and even in taxis, with their
passengers and drivers.

Apprehensions at sea were less frequent, one
or another fisherman, isolated cases, or some outsider who got
caught up in the net of justice. Usually, when the police had
previous knowledge of a big drop that was going to go down around
the city, on the pier or on nearby beaches, the busts were always
made on land, never at sea. The strategy was to catch both buyers
and sellers in the act, at the same time.

The fishing boats, on the other hand, were
inspected by the authorities as soon as they docked at the pier.
The cargo then goes on to the fisheries to be processed and to the
city’s fish markets to be sold.

“Did he have any connection to the
Doorman?”

“That I don’t know,” answered his friend as
the skiff scraped the bottom of the canal for the first time. It
only took another ten meters for the boat to become totally stuck
in the mud, not far from where the body was found the day
before.

Satisfied, Dornelas picked up the spare
paddle and helped Claudio get them out of there before the water
dried up entirely. By this time the sky was already colored in
shades of pastel tones that would disappear as soon as the sun
reigned absolute over the city. On the streets people could already
be seen walking and bicycling around, as well as dogs stretching
and peeing on the trees in the square in front of the Old
Jailhouse.

“Can you go with me to the morgue to
identify the body?” asked Dornelas before jumping from the beach up
onto the pier.

“I really don’t like seeing dead people,
Inspector. But if it’ll help you, you can count on me.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you to set up a time.
Have a good day.”

“You too.”

And he walked off towards home.

*

He reached the bank of the canal totally out
of breath and saw no one. He could see the body that some anonymous
informant had told the precinct about a few moments ago lying on
top of the dry mangrove.