“Do what?” said Santiago.
“Get the killer before midnight.”
Astounded, Santiago hesitated, stuttered inanely, and finally managed to say, “But Victor—”
Quevedo cut him off sharply. “I am being embarrassed politically and otherwise,” he snapped. “If you wish to continue as Chief of Police, find the killer. Don’t — and you’re finished.”
Sweating profusely, Santiago dropped the phone and sat back. Slowly with trembling hands he lit a cigarette and dispersed a cloud of smoke. His thoughts were in chaos, dark face swollen to bursting. Slowly the agitation within him receded. Behind his tinted glasses his cold eyes lit up as a face focused in his mind.
He crushed his cigarette, arose, opened the door, called Captain Torres into the office, and gave him his orders: “Pick up Manuel Domingo for the murder of Rosa Belmonte.”
Manuel Domingo’s criminal activities were long known to the police — but murder? Captain Torres raised his brows in surprise.
“Are you sure you have the right man?” he asked.
“Are you doubting me, or my source of information?” Santiago wanted to know, asserting both the authority of his office and intimating that the phone call he’d received was the “voice” of a reliable informer.
Captain Torres flushed and retreated to the door. From there he said, “I’ll pick up Manuel Domingo personally.”
At nine that evening, a black sky threatened the city and the lacy jacarandas stirred to a faint errant wind from the mountains where yellow lightning ignited the empty heavens. Behind the Municipal Building four bars faced the plaza, loud voices broke from each of them.
Saturday night was just beginning and musicians lolled on the plaza benches, barefoot boys shined shoes, hawked blood-red and dove-white roses on trays of cardboard, like every one else, forgetting Rosa Belmonte.
It was on this scene that Captain Torres arrived with three of his men after an intensive and fruitless search of all the usual haunts of the criminal Manuel Domingo.
Captain Torres was convinced that Domingo had fled the city when chance directed his eyes to a bench where two shoeshine boys vied for the privilege of doing the shoes of Detective Fiala.
Granting them each a shoe, Fiala, who was short and soft-fleshed, with the pallid complexion of a priest, looked up to see the strapping, youthful Captain Torres and his three men confronting him.
The latter were innocuous fellows, Captain Torres an arrogant whelp, but hardly that now. He needed help and Fiala, whom he despised and who despised him, might provide the information he needed so badly.
“I am looking for Manuel Domingo,” Torres announced. “Perhaps you happen to know his whereabouts?”
With a derisive smile, Fiala nodded toward a bar directly across the street. “Manuel Domingo is in there. You’re picking him up?”
“For the murder of Rosa Belmonte,” Captain Torres replied and turned on his heels.
Fiala sat where he was. A half minute later Manuel Domingo came through the door of the bar across the street accompanied by Captain Torres and his three men. All five passed through the plaza and entered police headquarters.
Fiala, who had gone off duty early that day, lit a cigarette and shook his head. No matter what, Manuel Domingo’s fate was sealed, the murder solved. Tomorrow the newspapers would be full of it.
In disgust, Fiala flicked his cigarette to the gutter and noticed the group of men who’d come from the bar across the street. Anger echoed in their voices; word spread quickly round the plaza: Manuel Domingo had been picked up for the murder of Rosa Belmonte. Manuel Domingo—
Under the black angry sky a crowd began to converge on police headquarters, but too late to give vent to its feelings, for the brief interrogation of Manuel Domingo was already completed. Guarded by police, he stepped to the sidewalk and was quickly ushered into a waiting car.
Into a second car stepped Chief of Police Santiago and Captain Torres. With an escort of ten motorcycle policemen, both cars roared off toward the scene of the crime, a spot in the desert several miles from the outskirts of the city.
The cavalcade soon reached it, the glaring lights of cars and motorcycles focused on a tall yucca beside the road. At its foot Luis Espina, a gatherer of fibre obtained from a small spiny desert plant, had discovered the body of Rosa Belmonte.
As Manuel Domingo stepped from the car, his face took on a ghastly hue, perhaps because of the lights, perhaps out of fear now that he was at the scene of the crime. Whatever he felt, he said nothing; he appeared dazed.
A sharp command from Captain Torres sent the policemen into a wide semi-circle, with guns drawn to prevent an attempted escape. That done, Captain Torres walked to the edge of the road with Santiago and Manuel Domingo. There, on orders, he took up position, while the prisoner and Santiago proceeded to the foot of the yucca.
Once there, Manuel Domingo stopped and stood like a soldier ordered to attention. Headlights impaled him in a glaring cross fire. A sheer wall of black enveloped this luminous area. Now the brief interrogation that Santiago had conducted at headquarters continued. He was seen to gesture; his voice in an unintelligible murmur carried only to Captain Torres.
Manuel Domingo turned, spoke for the first time since stepping into the car. He was frightened, the terrible black sky threatened, he did not trust Santiago.
“Get me out of this,” he said, “or else—”
“Quiet, you fool. This is routine. You’ve been accused.”
“Who accuses me? Name him.”
“Shut up and listen.”
Manuel Domingo came to attention again. His chest heaved, chin lifted, then suddenly he bolted in an attempt to escape. Calmly Santiago fired from the hip.
Domingo seemed to be running on air, the weight of his body carried him forward, then his legs buckled and he plunged forward to sprawl on the desert floor. Moments later Santiago stood over him and fired another shot as the others closed in.
The black night enveloped the desolate scene as the cavalcade roared off toward the city. Santiago glanced at the clock on the dashboard and settled back. It was still early, the issue settled. The mayor no longer had reason to be embarrassed.
As Santiago smiled to himself, Captain Torres turned and said, “Officially, we know now that Manuel Domingo was guilty of murdering Rosa Belmonte, but—”
“You don’t think he killed the girl?”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Then why did he run?”
“I told him we couldn’t protect him from the mob, that if he ran, I’d cover him and let him escape because I knew he was innocent.”
“But you shot him down.”
Santiago put a cigarette to his lips. “I had no alternative,” he answered, flicking his lighter, and the cavalcade moved on toward the lights of the city.
In the early morning the body of the murderer Manuel Domingo, naked but for a white sheet that covered the lower half of his body, lay on a long table beneath a tree in a small plaza near the center of the city for all to see and take warning. Flies came with the heat; the light brought crowds.
All through the day the people of the city filed past the dead man and at dusk he was taken away, mourned by none.
Here, the matter would have ended, interred along with Manuel Domingo, but for Detective Fiala who knew one thing beyond doubt: Domingo hadn’t killed the girl. With the murderer still at large, on his own time, Fiala conducted an investigation that quickly proved fruitful. That done, he appeared at the Municipal Building, asked to see Mayor Quevedo and was informed that he was at lunch, dining with several men of importance.
Obtaining the name of the restaurant, Fiala went there, seated himself at a table next to Quevedo’s party, bowed and, in a voice soft enough to elude the ears of the others, said, “If I may have a word. It’s a matter of grave importance which concerns you.”