According to Croce, a hired killing was the greatest innovation in the history of crime. The murderer doesn’t know the victim, there’s no contact, no connections, no relationship, all traces are erased. This was such a case. The motive was being studied. The key, he had concluded, was to locate the instigator. Finally, he handed out a copy of the jockey’s letter, written in a neat and very clear hand. It was a piece of paper from a notebook, actually an old sheet from one of those large ledgers used in the estancias. On top, in round, English cursive, it said Debits and Credits. Good place to write a suicide note, Renzi thought. When he turned the sheet over, he saw a few notes written in a different hand: tether 1.2, crackers 210, herb for mate 3 kg, ox halter—there was no number after that last item. At the bottom of the list was a sum for the total. He thought it was strange that they had photocopied the back of the page, too. When one tries to solve a crime, everything eventually makes sense, the investigation slows over irrelevant details which, at first, don’t seem to play a role. The bag in the storage room, the fifty-dollar bill on the ground, a jockey who kills for a horse. I’m afraid I’ve disgraced myself over a man I don’t know. I also take this opportunity to note that I’m responsible for two other deaths, a policeman in Tacuarembó, in the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, and a cowhand in Tostado, in the province of Santa Fe. Every man has his faults and I have plenty of my own. My last will is that my horse be given to my friend, Don Hilario Huergo. I hope I may have better fortune in the next world as I give myself to the Lord. Goodbye, My Country, Goodbye my friends. My name is Anselmo Arce, everyone calls me el Chino.
“Country folk are all psychotics, they ride on their horses all day long, lost in their own thoughts, and kill whoever crosses them,” the reporter who covered Rural News for La Prensa said, laughing. “One time a gaucho fell in love with a cow, what can I say? Some guy from Corrientes, he ended up following the cow around everywhere.”
“You should have seen the small country house where he died,” Renzi said. “And the wake without any people, just the horse out in the field.”
“Oh, he took you with him,” Bravo said. “You better watch out, or you’ll end up writing The Cases of Inspector Croce.”
“That wouldn’t be so bad,” Renzi said.
The next day, Cueto filed a court order to requisition the evidence from Croce. Croce replied that the case was closed, but that the remaining evidence couldn’t be turned over to the Prosecutor until the motive of the crime had been determined. That a new case should be opened to seek out the instigator. The murderer had been found, but not the originating cause. Cueto immediately decreed what he called a preventative measure and demanded that the money be deposited at once with the court.
“What money?” Croce said.
For days this was a joke that everyone in town repeated. Everyone used the phrase as a default. Regardless of the question asked, the answer was always:
What money?
In any case, Croce refused, he defied the summons to hand over the money, using as a shield the need to keep crucial aspects of the investigation in the hands of the police. His idea was to wait until the owner of the money showed up for it. Or until someone showed up to claim it.
He was right, but he wasn’t allowed to carry out his plan because they wanted to smother the affair and shut down the case. Maybe Yoshio had left the bag filled with the money in the storage room of the hotel, Cueto argued, because he planned to go back and get it once everything calmed down. If the murderer had taken the money for himself, the case would be closed. If it could be proven that the money was destined for someone else, the affair remained open.
At this point Cueto convinced Saldías to turn against Croce. He intimidated him, he made promises, he bribed him — no one ever knew how exactly. Whatever the case, Saldías issued a statement in which he declared that Croce had the money hidden in a closet, and that the Inspector had been behaving strangely in recent weeks.
Saldías betrayed him, that was the truth of it. Croce had loved him like a son (of course Croce loved everyone like a son, because he didn’t really know what that feeling was like). People remembered that there had been some tensions and some differences about procedures, and of course Saldías was part of a new generation of criminology. Even if he admired Croce, the Inspector’s investigative methods were not, to his way of thinking, proper or sufficiently “scientific”—which is why, he said, he agreed to give a statement about Croce’s irregular behavior and his eccentric methods. He doesn’t use proper criteria in his investigations, Saldías declared. He was probably looking for a promotion and needed Croce to be retired. And that’s what happened. Cueto made a number of comments about old country policemen and a new redistribution that fell under his judicial oversight, and everyone in town understood, with a certain amount of sadness, that things didn’t look good for Croce. Soon an order came from the Province’s Chief of Police and Croce was moved into retirement. Immediately Saldías was appointed as the new Municipal Inspector. The money that Durán had brought to town was requisitioned and sent to the court in La Plata, the Capital of the Province.
After Croce was retired his behavior became even more bizarre. He shut himself up in his house and stopped doing the things he always used to do: no more morning rounds ending in the Madariaga Tavern, no more walks through town, no more being the main presence at the police station. Luckily, everything in the house where he’d always lived was in order, so they couldn’t evict him until the inquiry was complete. People saw him in his yard at night, but no one knew what he was doing. He’d walk around in the dark with his little mutt, which would whine and bark as if it were asking for help.
Madariaga came by one afternoon to say hello but Croce didn’t want to see him. He came out wearing an overcoat and a scarf and waved and made other gestures with his hands, which Madariaga didn’t understand very well. Croce seemed to be trying to say, with hand signals, that he was okay and that they should stop bothering him. He locked the front door to the house and Madariaga, outside, was unable to go in after him.
After this Croce started writing anonymous letters. He wrote them by hand, altering his handwriting slightly, as he’d probably seen criminals do at some point. He’d leave them secretly on park benches in the main square, under a few pebbles so the wind wouldn’t blow them away. He had the facts, he knew what had happened. The letters spoke repeatedly about the Belladona brothers and the factory. The anonymous notes became famous in town, everyone very quickly found out what they said and started speculating about their origin. They want Luca to be thrown out of the building of the factory so they can sell the plant and build a commercial center there, the letters said, in short, with slight variations. So the versions about Luca resurfaced, that he had called Tony, that Croce had gone out to see him, that he owed a lot of money. The stories flowed like water sneaks under the door in a flood. A few times the town had flooded when the nearby lake had overflowed. Now, the anonymous letters and the gossip were having the same effect. Several days passed before anyone said anything and then, one afternoon, when Croce showed up and started handing out his letters to people as they were coming out of church, they put him in the asylum. There might not be a school in a town like this, Croce said, but there’s always a mental hospital.