ARSENIO VITRI — Engineer
It was the only sign in three blocks that announced someone of that profession.
Like the other houses in the area, the flowering garden spread out in front of the living room, and stopped at the tiled path that led up to the sliding glass door; then it carried on to form an angle and cover the whole of the side wall of the house. A crystal canopy protected the upper floor from the rain.
I stopped and rang the bell.
The sliding door opened and in the doorway I saw a mono-browed mulatto woman with wicked eyes who asked me rudely what it was I wanted.
When I asked her if the engineer was in, she replied that she would go and see, and in her turn asked me who I was and what it was I wanted. Without getting annoyed I said that I was called Fernán González and that I was a draughtsman.
The mulatto came back and let me in, more friendly this time. We went through several shuttered rooms, then she suddenly opened the door into a study, and at a desk to the left with a green-shaded lamp on the top I saw a bent grey head; the man looked at me, I said hello and he signed for me to come in. Then he said:
‘A moment, señor, and I will be at your service.’
I looked at him. He was young despite his hair.
There was an expression of fatigue and melancholy in his face. He had deep worry-lines on his forehead, the bags under his eyes formed a triangle with his eyelids, and the ends of his lightly drooping lips mimicked the posture of that head, which he now held supported in the palm of his hand as he bent over a paper.
The walls of the room were covered with plans and designs of luxury buildings; I looked at a bookcase that was filled with volumes, and had managed to read one of the titles, Water Legislation, when Señor Vitri spoke to me:
‘How may I help you, señor?’
In a low voice I replied:
‘Excuse me, sir; first of all, are we alone?’
‘I would imagine so.’
‘May I ask what might seem an indiscreet question? You are not married, are you?’
‘No.’
Now he was looking at me seriously, and his narrow face gradually, so to speak, dropped its expression of grave contemplation and replaced it with one even more grave.
Leaning back in his chair, he had thrown his head back; his grey eyes looked sternly at me, at one moment they stared at the knot of my tie, then they paused at my own eyes and seemed, so immobile in their sockets, to be waiting to surprise something out of the ordinary in me.
I understood that I should stop beating around the bush.
‘Sir, I’ve come to tell you that they are planning to rob you tonight.’
I was expecting to surprise him, but I was mistaken.
‘Right, yes… and how do you know about this?’
‘I’ve been invited to be in on the theft by the thief. I know that you have taken a large sum of money out of the Bank and that you’ve put it in your strongbox here.’
‘That’s true…’
‘The thief has the keys, the key to the strongbox and the key to this room.’
‘Have you seen them yourself?’ He took a keyring out of his pocket and showed me a key with an over-large guard.
‘Is it this one?’
‘No, it’s this other one.’ I picked out one that was identical to the key The Crip had shown me.
‘Who are the thieves?’
‘The organiser is a cart attendant called The Crip, and your servant is his accomplice. She took your keys away at night and The Crip copied them very fast.’
‘And what was your role in this business?’
‘I… I was invited to the party as someone The Crip knew. He came to my house and asked me to be his accomplice.’
‘When did he see you last?’
‘At about midday today.’
‘And before that, did you know what this guy was planning?’
‘Not what he was planning, no. I know The Crip; we got to know each other because I sold paper to people at the fair he worked at.’
‘So you were his friend… it’s the sort of thing you only tell your friends.’
I blushed.
‘He wasn’t really my friend, no… But I was always interested in his psychology.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No, why?’
‘I would say… But when were you meant to come tonight?’
‘We were going to wait for you to leave for your club, then the mulatto was going to open the door for us.’
‘It’s a good plan. Where does the guy you call The Crip live?’
‘Condarco 1375.’
‘Okay, it’ll all get sorted out. And where do you live?’
‘Caracas 824.’
‘Okay, come round tonight at about ten. Everything will be well guarded by then. Your name is Fernán González.’
‘No, I gave a false name just in case the mulatto knew via The Crip about my participation in this business. My name is Silvio Astier.’
The engineer rang an electric bell and looked around; a few moments later the maid appeared.
Arsenio Vitri’s face was immobile.
‘Gabriela, this gentleman will come tomorrow morning to pick up this roll of plans,’ — he pointed to a sheaf of papers abandoned on a chair — ‘give them to him even if I am not here.’
Then he stood up and held out his hand to me coldly and I left accompanied by the maid.
The Crip was arrested at nine-thirty that night. He lived in a wooden attic, in a house owned by some poor people. The agents who were waiting for him had found out from Little Guy that The Crip had come home, ‘gone through his stuff and left’. As they didn’t know where he usually went, they appeared unannounced to the lady of the house, made it clear that they were police agents and then went up the steep staircase to The Crip’s room. It looked at first as if there was nothing there worth the trouble of examining. However, and this was an inexplicable and strange thing, they found the two keys, the strongbox key and the office key, hanging on a nail in full view of anyone who came in. In a kerosene tin, alongside some old rags, they found a revolver, and hidden away almost at the bottom of the tin, some newspaper cuttings. They referred to a robbery whose perpetrators had never been identified by the police.
Because they were all articles about the same crime, they assumed with reason that The Crip must have something to do with it, and they formally arrested Little Guy on suspicion of being somehow involved as welclass="underline" that is, they sent him with an agent down to the local police station.
There was also a white pine table in the attic, with a drawer. They found a lathe and a set of fine files in the drawer. Some of them showed signs of recent use.
With all the evidence gathered and bagged up, the landlady was again called for.
She was a little old lady, rude and greedy; she wrapped up her head with a black kerchief that knotted under her chin. White curls dropped over her forehead, and her jaw swung wide when she spoke. What she had to say shed little light on The Crip’s movements. She had known him for three months. He paid her punctually and worked in the mornings.
When asked about the visits that the thief had received, she gave vague details; however she did remember that ‘last Sunday a black woman came by at three in the afternoon and left at six along with Antonio.’
Deciding that there was no possibility of her being complicit in these events, they ordered her to maintain complete discretion, something which the old woman promised for fear of later complications, and the two agents went back up to the attic to wait for The Crip, because the engineer had explicitly said that The Crip should be arrested at his own house, in order to lighten the punishment he would receive. Maybe he also thought that I was closer to The Crip than I had implied.