“Snake attack!”
Drivers were getting out of their cars to ask what was going on. Then they’d rush back inside, roll up the windows and try to escape by driving on the sidewalks.
“Leave the car here,” Handal ordered. “Let’s walk. We’ll never get there like this.” Villalta looked at him distrustfully. What if the snakes were still there? They walked slowly, moving against the flow of people under the blazing sun, sweating like pigs, pistols drawn, expecting to run into snakes at every turn. But when they got to Fifth Avenue, it was clear that the snakes had gone. The only thing left behind was a devastating scene of death and chaos. Dozens of bodies lay twisted on the ground, some still convulsing, and others with swollen tongues sticking out.
The Deputy Commissioner went over to one of the two patrol cars that had managed to get to the scene. He took out the radio and ordered a red alert search for an early model yellow Chevrolet, and asked for a helicopter to search the area. Ambulances, firefighters and more police arrived on the scene. There weren’t enough stretchers for all the injured people. Handal walked over to the La Surtidora pharmacy. When the violence broke out, most of the storeowners had closed the iron shutters that covered the windows. Only a few of the street vendors’ stands were still upright. Pretty soon the trail of merchandise left in the street would attract bands of petty thieves. The area was cordoned off. Handal banged on the pharmacy’s iron shutters.
“Police!” he called. “You can open the door. You’re out of danger.”
A small door opened and several frightened employees in white coats came out. They opened the iron shutters.
“Did any of you see a yellow car parked out in front here?” Handal asked.
No one had seen anything, just the stampede of people screaming in terror. They’d closed the pharmacy right away. They knew something had happened to Doña Sofía, the owner, but they didn’t know any details. The manager would be back soon to tell them.
The Deputy Commissioner asked which employee had worked there longest. A woman with greying hair and a double chin said she’d been there ten years. Handal asked to speak to her in private. They went to the office at the back of the store.
“Mrs. Bustillo is dead,” he blurted. “She was stabbed a couple of hours ago.”
She didn’t cry or faint, but seemed overwhelmed with sadness and grief. She said she’d been afraid something terrible had happened because of how abruptly the manager had left and the expression he had on his face. She’d had a feeling. Don Jacinto? Well, he’d disappeared a long time ago, more than three years now. He had an affair, the dirty scoundrel, with his own secretary, a young newlywed. Doña Sofía found out about it and asked for a divorce. The girl’s husband found out too and she heard he tried to blackmail Don Jacinto. A little later, Don Jacinto’s mistress was killed in a robbery and he disappeared. It was like a soap opera.
“But you don’t think Don Jacinto killed Mrs. Bustillo, do you?”
“He’s the prime suspect.”
That was hard for her to believe. He’d seemed like such a nice, decent person, though he rarely came to the pharmacy.
Had she ever seen him again?
Never. She had no idea where he was; he was a taboo subject at the pharmacy. Once she heard that he’d become a drunken bum and was living in the slums. She hadn’t seen the yellow Chevrolet and she didn’t know of Bustillo having any connection with snakes, either.
The Deputy Commissioner went outside.
“Thirty-two dead, boss,” Villalta said. “So far.”
Plus the four from the Plaza Morena mall and the two women, all in less than four hours, thought Handal. A real massacre.
“We’ve got to get this nut no matter what,” he grumbled. “Where the hell did he get those snakes?”
It no longer mattered now that Mrs. Ferracuti’s death was accidental. With so many bodies, he didn’t even want to imagine how much pressure he’d be under. He got the picture right away. An officer came to tell him that the Commissioner was on the radio. It was urgent.
Then he saw her coming. Just what he needed: goddamn Rita, with her notebook open and a photographer right behind her, ready to make his life miserable with a million questions and twist the whole story for the morning paper. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with, what with this nut Bustillo roaming through the city streets with his snakes.
“Keep your mouth shut. She’s not getting anything out of you,” he warned Villalta before he stepped up to the microphone.
He knew what he was saying: it wouldn’t have been the first time Villalta spilled his guts to a halfway decent-looking reporter. All the news outlets knew it, and since they’d found out about the detective’s weakness, they’d only sent attractive girls to cover the police beat. Rita, who worked for a sensationalist paper called Ocho Columnas was the worst of them, with her provocative miniskirts, her slender but shapely legs, and the silk blouses she wore without a bra so you could see her nipples.
The Commissioner ordered him to get back to the Black Palace immediately and give him a report in person. The radio stations were saying that a “snake attack” had killed dozens right downtown and panic was beginning to spread through the city. What the hell was this all about? Handal anxiously stuck his little finger in his ear.
“Deputy Commissioner, is it true that the man with the snakes is driving an old yellow car?” Rita asked hurriedly.
Handal told Villalta to get the Nissan they’d left a few blocks away.
“Do you know the suspect’s name? Where did he get the snakes?” the reporter insisted, running behind them.
“I can’t tell you anything right now,” Handal said, turning to face her. “In a couple of hours we’ll hold a press conference at headquarters.”
But she was stubborn.
“Is there a connection between the murder of Mrs. Bustillo and the attacks downtown at the Plaza Morena mall?”
The Deputy Commissioner quickened his pace. They got in the car and tore off at full speed. Rita stayed on the sidewalk, shouting and trying to slip her foot back into a shoe that had fallen off on the way.
They didn’t talk on the ride back. Handal was mentally preparing the report he would give to the Commissioner. He climbed the stairs at headquarters in long strides. The secretary told him to go in right away. The boss was waiting for him.
“We’ve got him cornered,” the Deputy Commissioner said, after laying out the facts and dismissing the theory that the attacks were specifically aimed at Mrs. Ferracuti. Instead, he focused on his idea that a mentally unbalanced man named Jacinto Bustillo was taking revenge on the woman he’d lived with until three years ago. “As soon as we find the car, we’ll get him.”
The Commissioner was beside himself. The President’s private secretary had phoned him to ask what the hell was going on. They couldn’t rest until they found that car. What if the guy was hiding it in a garage? They needed more clues. A drunk couldn’t just wander around with half a dozen snakes in a Chevrolet. Any minute now, he’d show up at another mall and kill a dozen more people. Did that not seem like a lot to him? The press was putting pressure on them; they needed to make a statement, to say something to calm everyone down.
The Deputy Commissioner swallowed a mouthful of saliva. He felt like the hole in the pit of his stomach was growing and he knew that in a few minutes he’d be under attack by a horde of reporters who were only interested in getting him to contradict himself; to say exactly the things he wasn’t supposed to say. He went down to his office. Villalta and Flores were waiting for him.