9
Croce had a blurry photograph of an unknown man with an outstanding warrant published in the local newspapers, but no one really understood what was going on. Even Saldías started to express his doubts, timidly. The Scribe quickly went from blind admiration to concern to suspicion. Croce didn’t pay any more attention to him and, instead, left him out of the loop, ordering him to dedicate his time to typing up a report with the new theories about the crime.
That’s when the prosecutor Cueto took center stage and started making decisions designed to put a stop to the scandal. He maintained that Croce’s hypotheses were wildly ridiculous and served only to hinder the investigation.
“We don’t know what the alleged suspect that Croce is looking for has anything to do with the murder. No one around here knows that man, he has no connection to the victim. We’re living through some pretty chaotic times, but we will not allow an old country inspector to go around doing whatever he wants.”
He had the state police transfer Yoshio right away to the jail in Dolores, for his own safety, as he said, while he proceeded with his own prosecutorial investigation. They hadn’t found the murder weapon, but there were eyewitnesses who placed the suspect at the place and time where and when the crime had been committed. Cueto did everything necessary to close the case and label it a sex crime. In a low voice, to whoever wanted to hear, the Prosecutor assured people that the Inspector could no longer be trusted and that he had to be removed. In the meantime, Croce continued to go about town as always, waiting for some new development. No one really knew what he was thinking, or why, or why he believed that Dazai wasn’t guilty.
One night, at dinnertime, Renzi ran into Croce at the Madariaga Tavern. Sitting at the table by the side window, the Inspector was eating a rump roast with French fries, drawing small figures on the paper tablecloth with a pencil while he ate. Every once in a while he’d stop moving and stare into space, holding up his glass of wine.
In his work as a reporter, Renzi occasionally covered police stories, and he’d met a number of inspectors. Most were thugs without any morals who just liked having their position on the force so they could get women to sleep with them (especially the prostitutes) and acquire an upper hand into as many shady deals as possible. But Croce seemed different. He had the peaceful air of a paisano you could trust, Renzi thought — and all of a sudden he remembered the opinion that the editor at his newspaper, Luna, had about police inspectors.
“Who wouldn’t want to be an inspector?” Old-Man Luna said to him one night. “Don’t be so naïve, kid. Inspectors are the real heavies. Over forty, they’ve already put on some weight, they’ve seen everything, most have a few kills under their belts. Inspectors are men who’ve lived a lot, they have a ton of authority, they spend their time with delinquents and political strongmen, always out at night, in cathouses and bars, getting whatever drugs they want, making easy money because everyone greases them: bookies, dealers, mafiosos, neighbors. They’re our new heroes, kid. Always armed, they can get in anywhere, form a gang, knock down doors. They’re specialists of evil, the damned, their job is to make sure idiots sleep at night, they do the dirty work on behalf of the beautiful. Moving between the law and the world of crime, they fly in between. Half and half, if someone changed the balance on them they wouldn’t be able to survive. They’re the guardians of our security. Society delegates to them the role of taking care of what no one wants to see,” Luna told him. “They do politics all the time, but they never get in as politicians, when they get involved in politics it’s to take down some mid-level puppet, a mayor, a representative or two, but they never go any higher. They’re clandestine heroes, always tempted to run themselves, but they never do. If they did they’d be done, they’d become too visible,” Luna told him that night over dinner at El Pulpito, schooling him, once again, on real life. “They do what they have to do and they endure beyond all the changes, they’re eternal, they’ve always been there—” Luna hesitated at that point for a moment, Renzi remembered, then continued: “There’s been famous police inspectors ever since the times of Rosas, sometimes they lose, like anyone else, they get killed or retired or sent to jail, but there’s always another one right behind them to take their place. They’re malevolent, my dear, but the level of evil in them is minimal compared to the men who give them their orders. Cops will give it to you straight, they’re the ones in the trenches,” Luna concluded. “So don’t be crazy, just write what they tell you.” I’m going to do what he said, Renzi thought, remembering Old-Man Luna’s advice when he saw Croce gesturing for him to come over.
“Join me for something to eat?” Croce asked.
“Yes, sure,” Renzi said. “It’ll be a pleasure.”
He sat at the table with Croce and ordered a strip of short ribs and a lettuce and tomato salad, without onions.
“This store and tavern was the first thing built in town. The migrant laborers used to eat here at harvest time.” Renzi realized right away that the Inspector needed company. “When one is an inspector one starts to believe that one has managed to reduce the scale of death down to a personal dimension. And when I say death I mean murder. Somebody can be killed by accident,” Croce said, “but you can’t murder someone by accident. If Mrs. X hadn’t walked back home yesterday, for example, and if she hadn’t turned at a certain corner, could she have avoided being murdered? She might have died anyway, that’s true, but murdered? If death isn’t the intended goal, it’s not murder. That’s why there’s always a decision, and a motive. Not just a cause, but a motive.” He stopped. “Which is also why a pure crime is rare. If there’s no motive, it’s an enigma: we have the dead body, we have the suspects, but we don’t have the cause. Or the cause doesn’t correspond to the execution of the murder. This seems to be the case now. We have the dead body and we have a suspect.” He paused. “What we call motivation could be an unseen meaning, not because it’s a mystery, but because the network of determinations is too vast. We have to concentrate, synthesize, find the fixed point. We have to isolate an item of fact and create a closed field, otherwise we’ll never be able to solve the enigma.”
Drawing small figures on the tablecloth, the Inspector reconstructed the facts for himself, but also for Renzi. He always needed someone to speak to, someone to help him break out of his internal discourse, the words that went around and around in his head like a tune. When he spoke with someone he was forced to choose certain thoughts, it was impossible to say everything, he always tried to have his interlocutor reflect with him and arrive at his own conclusions even before him. That was how he could trust his reasoning, because someone else would have thought it with him. In this he was like everyone who was too intelligent — Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes — and needed an assistant to think with him, and to keep him from falling into delirium.
“For Cueto the criminal is Yoshio and the motive is jealousy. A private crime, no one else is implicated. Closed case,” Renzi said.