7. THE CRASH
I COULDN'T WAIT TO CALL YOU, my dear, things are heating up so fast. I talked to Alberto, about an hour ago, as soon as I got back from your house. I gave him a piece of my mind about the disgusting things he did with Olga María. I had no intention of even letting him defend himself, all I wanted to do was throw in his face everything Pepe Pindonga told me. And that’s just what I did: I told him he was a son of a bitch, a real bastard, how dare he betray his friendship with Marito and my trust; how dare he make a mockery of our best friends’ marriage. I guaranteed him this was not going to be the end of it, I’d get even with him, he’d better watch his step. I caught him completely off guard, he wasn’t expecting anything of the sort, and I didn’t let him answer or get a word in edgewise. I didn’t hold back: you pig, I said, you slept with my best friend, you betrayed every principle in the book, you took advantage of all of us, we all trusted you. I didn’t spare him any of the gory details. I even threatened him, just so he’d know it wasn’t all just hot air: Marito is going to hear about this, and your family, I told him, and my mother and my father, I’m going to tell everybody. The cherry on top was to warn him that the police suspect him, maybe he arranged Olga María’s murder so he could cover up the disgusting things he’d done with her and so that neither Marito or I would find out, so he could stay in good with Olga María’s family and mine. I don’t know why I said that, my dear, but suddenly I realized it actually could be true, come to think of it, one of the many hypotheses could point to Alberto as a suspect. I told him that, and also that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that he’d had Olga María murdered, that’s when I stopped to take a deep breath. I was exhausted, panting, I expected Alberto to start mumbling some excuses or maybe even denying in a really cynical way that he’d had sexual relations with Olga María. But Alberto didn’t react: I didn’t hear a peep from the other end of the line, as if he’d put the phone down on the table and left the room. Then I shouted at him not to be such a coward, to say something, admit he’d been a pig, a hypocrite, and in the end everything had turned out badly for him because he’d pushed through our divorce hoping he could be with Olga María, that’s what I shouted at him, now I understood his last-minute hurry, what a beast, though mostly just a fool, as if he didn’t know Olga María, as if she’d want to separate from Marito so she could be with the most boring man in the world, the worst man on the entire planet Earth to have sex with, an idiot who all he does is go to bed in his undershirt and underwear and wait for someone to climb on top of him, and she’d only do that because she wanted a little relief from the worst case of boredom ever. I ripped into him again, my dear, until I felt I had nothing left in me. Again, I stopped, panting, to catch my breath. That’s when I realized he was still on the other end of the line, listening to me. I thought he’d hung up, but no: he barely mumbled something about me being unfair. Can you believe it? Me, unfair, to him? Stupid fool. I was about to haul off on another tirade, really set him straight, tell him that fairness is something between human beings, not animals, when all of a sudden he exploded, hysterically — it was incredible, I’ve never heard such frenzy in his voice — he started shrieking uncontrollably, saying I should quit bothering him with trifles like this gossip about Olga María, it’s totally inconsequential compared to the catastrophe that’s befallen him, a catastrophe that will land him in jail or murdered. Then he let it out: Finapro is bankrupt. Imagine that. Dreadful, my dear. The investment company has gone bankrupt. That’s what he said. All the money’s gone to hell. I still can’t believe it. Alberto is the vice president — if he says so, it must be true. He was beside himself. He told me that instead of haranguing him with ridiculous lies about Olga María, I should be helping him, the police were on their way to arrest him. He told me the whole thing was Toñito Rathis’s fault. Now that guy, he’s insane, my dear, he wants to be president of everything: Finapro, all his family businesses, the governing party, the soccer team, and, needless to say, the country. That’s what Alberto told me, that Toñito made a horrible mess of everything, he used the money from the company to cover losses in other family businesses, to finance the party’s election campaign, and to pay for his obsession, the soccer team. Imagine that, my dear. Tomorrow the scandal is going to be all over the news. Alberto is dying of fear. They’ve lost more that a billion colones — incredible — more than a hundred million dollars. Do you realize what that means? This will be the end of everything. Almost everybody I know put their money in Finapro — hundred of thousands, millions of colones. Alberto started sniveling on the phone: he said that he’ll end up being the fall guy, Toñito Rathis still thinks he’s untouchable, after all, he belongs to one of the country’s top fourteen families. Poor Alberto, I really felt sorry for him. He told me he can’t leave the country, they’ve already got a policeman on guard in front of his house, he even told me our telephone conversation was probably being taped. Total paranoia, but now for good reason. I asked him what was going to happen to people who had their money invested in Finapro. He said he doesn’t know, most likely they’ll lose it, the whole thing’s gone to hell. Atrocious. Then I thought of Doña Olga: her money’s invested in Finapro, and Olga María’s too, and probably Marito’s. That’s when I stopped feeling sorry for him and I asked him, now with anger, what was going to happen to Olga María’s family’s money, the girls’ inheritance, the interest Doña Olga lives on. You know what he told me? It’s out of his hands, they are just one of many families affected by the crash, most of his friends have their money in Finapro. He’s afraid he’ll get killed because several retired military officers, the ones who made millions during the war, also had their money there. He kept ticking off names of people we know who’ve lost all their savings, all in that same hysterical voice I’d never heard before, like he was about to have a nervous breakdown, but I was already angry as hell, my dear, most of all because I know that Doña Olga invested all the money she got from selling her fincas in Finapro, and I thought about my beautiful little girls, who from one day to the next are going to be left without any inheritance, and then I didn’t feel sorry at all for that disgusting Alberto, not only was he a crook but also a fool and a coward — and incompetent. I flew at him in a rage: I shouted at him that he was a fiend, I hope they do kill him for being such a bastard, for thinking he’s so high and mighty, the country’s leading investment manager, and look what he’s ended up doing with other people’s money. Here’s what I told him: what good has it done you to get those graduate degrees in the States, you idiot? I warned him that he better recover the money for Olga María’s family because if he doesn’t, I am personally going to eliminate him. That’s when the idiot hung up on me. Which made me even more furious. I dialed him again several times, but it was busy; he must have left the phone off the hook. Then I called his cell. When he heard my voice, he started up again with his fit of hysteria: I should stop bothering him with my nonsense — that’s what he said — he was waiting for urgent phone calls and couldn’t waste his time on me. He hung up again without giving me a chance to tell him what was on my mind, to say all the horrible things I was thinking about him, because it just can’t be that all that money’s been lost, money doesn’t just disappear from one day to the next, between him and that Toñito Rathis, they must have stolen it, they probably snuck it out of the country and are now acting like they’re the victims, pretending the investment company just crashed on its own. Damn thieves. I’m very worried, my dear. So many people are going to lose their money. I immediately called papa at the finca to tell him. He told me he’d been expecting this, it was impossible for them to be paying twenty-two percent annually when the banks were paying ten, there had to be something shady going on. That’s my father, my dear, sometimes I criticize him for being too conservative, but in the end he always ends up being right. You remember when he warned us against putting our money there when everybody else was going on and on about how Finapro was the very best? I wouldn’t have done it anyway, just to avoid having anything to do with Alberto. We did the right thing, my dear. Now I remember that I warned Olga María, told her what papa told me, but she ignored me, she said it was just my prejudices against Alberto. But here you have the consequences. She was too innocent, she let herself be led down the garden path, she must have totally trusted Alberto, and seeing as how she’d already slept with him, everything seemed under control. What a brilliant way to lose the money they got for the fincas Don Sergio left them. It makes me so mad. I told papa what I’d talked to Alberto about, the tragedy of Doña Olga and the girls, I asked him if something couldn’t be done; it’s simply unheard of that from one day to the next Doña Olga will be out on the streets. I wanted to know what papa thought before I called Doña Olga, because I was certain Alberto hadn’t called her, coward that he is. Papa told me that if Alberto couldn’t do anything, nobody else could, either. He repeated that even though he didn’t have any evidence, this bankruptcy smelled to him like a gigantic fraud, a tidal wave of shit that was going to bury half the country, and Alberto more than anybody, that’s what papa said. Thank God I separated from that imbecile, and I have absolutely nothing to do with him. Just imagine the mess I’d be in. I don’t know why I thought to tell my papa my suspicions about Alberto and his connection to Olga María’s murder. You know how much I trust my father. That’s why I told him everything, down to the last detail, just like Pepe Pindonga told me. He was quiet for a while, like he was thinking, then with great concern in his voice he suggested that, because it’s such a serious accusation, I should keep it in reserve. But I have this intuition that Alberto’s got something to do with our friend’s death, and this might just be the connecting thread that will tie up all the loose ends. That’s what I thought at that moment, still fuming against Alberto, and here’s how I communicated it to papa: What if Olga María and Alberto were still seeing each other and she found out what was happening with Finapro? Papa just kept repeating that I shouldn’t talk about this to anybody else. After I hung up, after all the excitement of having solved the case, I got paralyzed. It was like I saw a blinding light. I felt this terrible dread, as if my discovery, that I’d solved the case, could cost me my life. I didn’t want to keep thinking. So, instead, I called Doña Olga. Sergio answered. I asked him if he’d heard about the crisis at Finapro. He told me he had, word had already reached everybody who has their money there, and Doña Olga is falling apart, her blood pressure is shooting sky high, they were waiting for the doctor. I called about half an hour ago. I’m extremely worried, my dear. Can you imagine losing all your money a month and a half after they kill your daughter? Horrible. I’m afraid something serious will happen to Doña Olga, a heart attack or something like that. You know when things like this happen people want to die. I asked Sergio if he had his money in that company, too. He said luckily he didn’t, but Marito did and a ton of other people did, too. You know who could lose millions, my dear? Yuca. That’s what Sergio said: even the archbishop, the Spanish one papa can’t stand, he put the church’s money in Finapro. What a disaster Alberto has gotten himself into. Because he’s an imbecile, that’s why, a conceited spoiled brat. Yuca is going to kill him, no doubt about that. Sergio told me people are very upset, they don’t know what to do; neither he nor Marito has been able to get hold of Alberto to get some kind of explanation. I told him what he’d said, the situation is now out of his hands, most likely the money can’t be recovered. My poor little girls: they’ve lost their inheritance. I’m telling you, when I hung up, my head was racing a million miles a minute. You know what I mean? That sensation that you’re on the verge of discovering something very very important, the pieces are beginning to fall into place. Do you see the threesome? Alberto, Olga María, Yuca. I thought I should call Pepe Pindonga right away. But it was as if that man was reading my mind, because just as I was about to pick up the phone, it rang. Bingo: it was him. I told him about the financial scandal. He told me he already knew, everybody was talking about it, the newspapers were about to print the story, and he’d gotten all the details from his contacts. Then I told him all about my conversation with Alberto, the money Olga María’s family had lost, and also the rumors about Yuca having a big portion of his money in that company. He confessed to me that he hadn’t known that last bit; and he said that it made the situation much trickier than he’d imagined. I told him straight out my suspicions: that Olga María’s murder probably had something to do with Finapro’s crash. The more I think about it, the more convinced I get, my dear. You-know-who must have figured out the dirty game Alberto and Toñito Rathis were playing and that’s why they decided to get rid of her. Alberto probably opened his big mouth, wanting to impress Olga María — just to show you how stupid he is — and when they realized she was romantically involved with Yuca, they decided to eliminate her. It’s the only logical explanation. It scares me, as you can imagine. Of course they’re capable of that, and worse: they’ve stolen billions of colones. Do me a favor! You think they’re going to think twice about putting a contract out on someone? That Toñito Rathis is the worst, he’s a gangster, my dear, ever since he was at the American School, you could see what a scoundrel he was, even if he was three years ahead of us, he already had quite a reputation. But, you know what Pepe Pindonga, the great detective, told me? That my hypothesis sounded very far-fetched to him, there was no evidence to back it up, I must be upset by what’s going on, and that’s why I keep coming up with these bizarre hypotheses. What an imbecile. I told him I don’t have a hypothesis, that hypotheses are for the police or detectives like him, people who aren’t interested in finding out the truth because what they really want is to stretch out the investigation for as long as possible so they can keep collecting their wages. He asked me not to get so worked up, it wasn’t such a big deal. That made me even more upset: I shouted at him that now that we finally had a solid lead, something that made some sense of Olga María’s murder, now that we finally have the chance to solve the case, Mr. Smartypants starts putting on airs, doubting what’s completely obvious, instead of offering some ideas of his own, instead of taking his own steps toward solving it. So, I threatened