Law of Return, page 27
Guillermo shrugged and turned away to hide his confusion. “I’m sorry you feel that way. You don’t leave me much choice.”
“Or you, me.” Something in the tone of voice made Guillermo turn back, just in time to be blinded by a flash of sun on silver as the walking stick was raised, handle first, and brought down with savage swiftness.
The professor dodged instinctively; his ear stung from a glancing blow. He staggered against the wall of the bridge and clumsily tried to roll sideways as the glittering silver-headed cane was raised again. Blood spattered on the warm stones. Guillermo dodged again, panting for breath, aware that his opponent was twenty years younger and considerably more experienced at this type of combat. He yelled for help, a futile gesture in the deserted street, and then kicked out desperately. His foot connected with something solid, probably a shin, and he surprised a grunt out of his attacker. But the counterattack had been a bad idea. Guillermo felt himself lose his footing. He stumbled to his knees, clutching the rough stones of the bridge’s railing to remain semiupright. He cried out again as another blow landed, clinging stubbornly to consciousness, though nearly blinded by his own blood.
Then, quite suddenly, the shadows under the bridge erupted into motion and noise, there was the report of a pistol as someone fired into the air, and footsteps clattered on the cobblestones. Guillermo’s last thought before he passed out was that he had never been happy to hear the words “Guardia Civil! Hands up!” before.
When he awoke, the first thing he was aware of was the unpleasantness of the beads of sweat dribbling down his upper lip. He licked them away and realized that they were blood. Someone was pressing his forehead, and a voice was saying, “No, head wounds always bleed like that. Why don’t we just take him back to the post?”
“Because the university clinic is closer.” Guillermo cautiously opened his eyes, squinted against the sun, and made out the vaguely familiar shape of Sergeant Hernández. “And because the lieutenant will kill me if we bring him in looking like that.”
“Yes, sir.” The first voice was submissive. Guillermo had closed his eyes again, but he guessed that the sergeant had turned away when he heard the voice above his head add in a rebellious mutter, “I still don’t see why. It makes a better case for attempted murder this way.”
Something in the mutter made the professor suspect that the boy holding his head was the same age as an undergraduate. He smiled, and realized that he had a splitting headache. “Have you ever had a broken head?” he demanded with a slight groan.
“Are you awake then, sir?” This voice might have belonged to another student; young, deferential, slightly embarrassed.
“More or less,” Guillermo agreed. He tried to sit up, and discovered that he could not. “But I can’t move.”
“He caught you a couple of good cracks.” The guardia kneeling by the professor spoke comfortingly. “But you were only unconscious for a couple of minutes or so. You’ll be fine.”
“Good.” Guillermo had the feeling that he ought to ask about the success of the operation. But his head hurt and he found himself uninterested in anything beyond his immediate physical discomfort. He kept his eyes shut and allowed the conversation of the guardias to flow around him, responding only when they asked him direct questions to make sure that he was still conscious. The pair of guardias who sounded like students stayed with him until a stretcher arrived, and then took him to the hospital, where—deference forgotten—they managed to obtain surprisingly fast service.
It was only several hours later, when his head had been neatly stitched and bandaged, and a brisk nurse had forced him to drink a seemingly huge quantity of water, that Guillermo managed to interest himself in external practicalities. When he emerged from the consulting room the two guardias who had escorted him were waiting. They started to their feet and moved toward him, and Guillermo reflected that they were probably only half aware of the menacing picture they presented. “We’re here to take you home, sir,” one of them explained as they took the places of the nurses at Guillermo’s elbows. “Lieutenant’s orders. There’s a car waiting.”
“Thank you.” It occurred to Guillermo that if María saw one of the Guardia vehicles drive up and deposit him on the doorstep in his current state she would probably have hysterics. “Do you think it would be possible for me to call my wife and explain what’s happened?”
“The lieutenant’s already spoken to your daughter, sir.”
“Of course.” Guillermo allowed himself to be led out of the hospital and driven home without further protest.
Elena met him on the doorstep, her eyes full of tears. “I’m so sorry, Papa,” she whispered as she hugged him. “We should never have asked you to do this.”
Guillermo returned her hug, and thought, a little sadly, that she already said “we” when she spoke of the Guardia. “At least it worked,” he said, resigned to the inevitable.
“Oh, yes, it worked like a charm,” Tejada assured the Fernández family that evening at dinner. “We have enough evidence to convict Crespo of attempted murder right now, and we’ll have enough to try him for murder and money laundering within a week, I think.”
“Has the captain given you a week?” Elena asked.
Tejada smiled at her. “Yes. He won’t let us touch Crespo because he’s afraid of his powerful connections, but based on the evidence we have, he’s letting us hold on to him. And I think he’ll let us be a bit more persuasive once I talk to Judge Otero.”
“You think Judge Otero will support you?” Elena was dubious.
“I think so.” The lieutenant sounded pleased with himself. “After all, I can give him two very good reasons. First of all, that walking stick Crespo used is a twin to Otero’s. I’m going to suggest that Crespo deliberately chose it and planned to abandon it by the body as evidence to implicate the judge.”
“But that’s nonsense!” Guillermo protested. “He couldn’t have come definitely intending to kill me. And lots of men must have canes like that.”
“True,” Tejada admitted. “But I think if I plant a little seed of doubt about Crespo’s loyalty, His Honor will be more willing to listen to my second argument: that it would be very unpleasant to be charged with illegal money laundering.”
“Arrest Judge Otero!” Guillermo laughed. “You must be joking. He’ll know you’re bluffing.”
Tejada shook his head. “Not if he thinks Crespo will finger him. And Crespo will finger him if the captain allows us to question him properly.”
“Which he’ll only do if Otero withdraws his support,” Elena pointed out.
“Which Otero will do, if he thinks that Crespo will betray him first,” Tejada finished.
“Classic prisoner’s dilemma,” Guillermo commented.
“It’s not just used in philosophy classes, Professor,” Tejada smiled. “And thanks to you we know that Crespo had more than one client with a Swiss account. With any luck, by the time we go through his office we’ll have half a dozen pressure points.”
“What do you mean?” Elena, who had only heard a summary of Guillermo’s encounter from the lieutenant, looked puzzled.
“Crespo didn’t just have a Swiss bank account for himself,” Tejada explained. “He specialized in setting them up for other people. If we can find a list of names in his files, we’ll have that many more men to lean on. One of them is sure to crack.”
“You think that was what he meant when he said his clients wouldn’t like him sharing that information?” Guillermo asked.
Tejada nodded. “It was smart of you to ask for the number or numbers. I thought Arroyo might have been blackmailing Crespo based on one account. It didn’t occur to me that Crespo might have been handling a large number. It makes sense though.” He sighed. “Crespo told me that his clients would have been uncomfortable with a man of Arroyo’s political sympathies working for him. I should have guessed that maybe it wasn’t Arroyo’s politics that was the problem.”
Guillermo frowned slightly. “But most of them are probably men in good standing. They’ll be hard to arrest. Especially only on my word.”
“We won’t get all of them,” Tejada said frankly. “But we’ll get Crespo.” He fell silent, and realized that Elena was regarding him steadily. He flushed. “A penny for your thoughts?”
“Why does getting Crespo matter to you?”
Tejada considered. “I didn’t particularly like Arroyo Díaz,” he said at last. “He struck me as a windbag when I knew him and he was certainly involved in illegal currency transfers. But he stuck up for his friends. For Unamuno, of course.” The lieutenant smiled briefly. “And then for Tomás Rivera.”
“For Doctor Rivera?” Guillermo interjected. “What do you mean?”
“He knew Rivera was broke in ’36,” Tejada explained. “So he went through some kind of analysis with him to funnel a little money his way. He was very clever really. He told Rivera he had to do it because he “hat einen Vogel.” And that was the exact truth, in a way. He did have a banker, named Vogel, who provided him with enough spare cash for a little charity. And I think . . .” Tejada paused.
“Yes?” It was Elena who prompted him.
“I think he was very . . . loyal.” Tejada tested the word like the rung of a shaky ladder. It creaked under his weight but held firm. “He called Rivera again, a little while before he died. I think he’d found out about Crespo’s accounts then, and was trying to decide what to do about them. He might have tried to blackmail Crespo, but I think he might have just decided to keep quiet too. He was loyal to Crespo for giving him a job . . . even though the job wasn’t much better than an insult.”
“But if he just kept quiet, why did Crespo kill him?” Guillermo protested, unwilling to let the lieutenant romanticize his late colleague.
“Rivera says Arroyo called him on a Monday evening,” Tejada said quietly. “I think he called from Crespo’s offices. And I suspect he was overheard.” The lieutenant’s mouth twisted bitterly. “At any rate, the last time his wife saw him alive was on his way to Crespo’s offices. They would have been empty. And he was an old man, and unarmed. It was easy enough for Crespo to club him and then dump the body in a place where it would implicate Rivera, or at the very least cast doubt on anything Rivera said, just in case he’d gotten too much information from that phone call. And it was even easier for him to suggest that Arroyo had been planning to disappear and send me running off in the wrong direction. Especially since we didn’t even notice that he was dead for two weeks, thanks to an administrative screwup!”
Elena put one hand on his arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Tejada shrugged, impatient. “I know. As I said, I had no opinion of the man. But he didn’t sell out his friends. And he deserved better than to be murdered by a former protégé who didn’t even think to keep a clear desk because it didn’t occur to him that someone who had once been a professor might still be able to read.” The lieutenant lowered his voice, a little embarrassed at his own vehemence. “It’s bad enough that Crespo killed him. He didn’t have to humiliate him as well,” he finished illogically.
“Anyone who gets mixed up with the Reds runs that risk, you know,” Elena reminded him quietly.
“Arroyo wasn’t really a Red,” Tejada protested. “He signed a petition. That was all.” Skeptical silence greeted his remark. He shook his head, flushed. “It’s not the same thing. Anyway, Arroyo wasn’t a hypocrite like Crespo. And he wasn’t a coward!”
“That Fernández has guts, I’ll say that for him,” Sergeant Hernández remarked a few days later.
“I don’t think he would have signed that petition in the first place if he didn’t,” Tejada commented thoughtfully.
Hernández shot a surprised look at the lieutenant. Tejada had been odd and abstracted for the last several days, he thought. Ever since they had planned Crespo’s arrest. He said, “Well, his testimony ought to be worth something, anyway, even if he is a Red.”
Tejada winced slightly. “Have you dropped the surveillance on him?” he asked.
“Yes, ever since Crespo’s arrest.” The sergeant looked thoughtful. “Was that how you got him to agree to act as a decoy, sir?”
“Not exactly.” Tejada shook his head.
“What then?”
The lieutenant aligned the folders on his desk with mathematical precision. “Favor to a family member,” he said, eyes on the folders.
Hernández looked surprised. “Is he a relation, sir? You never mentioned it before.”
“I’m going to marry his daughter,” Tejada said, still avoiding his subordinate’s eyes.
“What? You’re joking!” The lieutenant’s head shot up, and Hernández realized that he had crossed a line. “I mean . . . I mean . . . congratulations, sir. But . . . But have you thought about . . . well, about the implications?”
“That any chance of promotion will be extremely slim; that I’ll be pitied or despised by friends and colleagues; that I’ll be considered untrustworthy at best and a traitor at worst?” Tejada ticked off the list on his fingers.
“Well . . . no, I meant . . . well, yes.” The sergeant was embarrassed.
“No, I hadn’t thought about them,” Tejada said dryly. “But my fiancée has spelled them out for me.”
“Oh.” Hernández coughed. His superior’s last statement had glowed with the sort of possessive pride that told him, far more than any words could have, that his incredible statement was true. The sergeant hesitated. Tejada was sitting quietly, apparently unconcerned by his fellow officer’s reaction. But his knuckles, gripping one of the folders, were white. Hernández took a deep breath, conscious that his own career might well be affected by his next words, but too curious to remain silent. “Why don’t you bring her to dinner sometime,” he said, with forced casualness. “I’m sure my wife would love to meet her.”
The lieutenant relaxed his grip on the folder. “Thanks, Hernández,” he said quietly, expelling a silent breath. “We’d love to come. That is if you’re sure it wouldn’t be an imposition?”
Hernández shrugged. “You’ve never met my in-laws,” he said.
Tejada laughed. The telephone on his desk rang, and he picked it up, still smiling. “Guardia Civil, Tejada . . . Yes . . . Yes, Your Honor, thank you for the clarification. . . . Thank you, I’m honored. . . . Yes, Your Honor. . . . Good-bye.” He hung up the phone, and his smile gained a touch of malicious satisfaction. “Speaking of in-laws,” he said. “That was Judge Otero. His Honor is worried that we are under a misapprehension as to his relationship with Eduardo Crespo. He called to reassure me personally that any steps the Guardia needs to take to discover the identity of his brother-in-law’s killer have his full approval.”
Hernández smiled back. “Let’s go have a little chat with Crespo,” he suggested.
“My thoughts exactly, Sergeant.” Tejada stood. “Before Judge Otero finds out about Elena,” he added.
“My thoughts exactly, sir,” the sergeant admitted, as he followed Tejada.
Rebecca Pawel, Law of Return
